Ever since I left Vox Media in a full-time capacity, I spend a lot of time at the gym and my gym has communal TVs for everyone to share. There is a scary number of TVs on Fox News, frankly, but I can almost understand the terrifying reality that so many people live in after having that channel forcibly shoved down my throat. That being said, they do voluntarily subject themselves to it by watching it. Fear mongering is alive and well in America, y’all!

It isn’t only Fox News, either. Many other TVs have CNN, CNBC, msnbc and the 24-hour news cycle is alive and well. It helps anyone following along to feel like the world is on the precipice of an apocalypse.

Today alone it was the worldwide markets crashing on the Brexit news, ISIS and Al Qaeda celebrating the departure and urging supporters to attack now, Donald Trump committing a ridiculous gaffe in Scotland by claiming the people there were celebrating their independence (Scotland actually voted stay you doofus), North Korea’s efforts to up their nuclear program and the wildfires destroying homes here in California. It can make you feel like the world is crashing down around you. Especially when you have a couple of young, impressionable minds who are discovering more and more about the world every day.

On the way into the gym, my daughter asked me to explain what stocks were and why so many of them were negative today (what a great day for her to realize her iPod came with a “stocks” app!). I attempted to not only explain how stocks are created and that basically certain companies can be “owned” by the public and anyone who has the funds to purchase a part of it. I then, rather feebly, tried to explain why something like Brexit was having such a global impact on everyone else’s economy and markets. She simply said, “It seems strange that you can just buy a part of Apple or another company.”

Well, yeah. No one said that it makes a whole lot of sense. Or that some companies can rocket off to insane heights when others languish in ambiguity and obscurity. Still, sometimes those channels make my heart ache for the world and yet I also realize they have the cycles to fill. My rational and emotional sides are in direct conflict whenever I happen to see one of those news channels spouting off their fear blasts.

They have the ratings to grab and ads to sell. So they’re going to scare us. They’re going to make us feel like the world is ending so that we do crazy things like invest in William Devane’s gold!!! Or stairlifts! Because nothing is more important than getting up the stairs effectively when ISIS is coming to end us all.

Still, it’s really hard to explain things about the world to an emerging mind that likes to see the world as largely a positive, good place for good people. It’s hard to explain Orlando to a child. Though you can relish in showing them that there are people who are trying, at least TRYING, to change the narrative and make the world a safer place for them. I do like to believe that I’m doing all I can to make well-rounded kids who know about the world but aren’t naive to its perils and pitfalls. A child needs to know that they are safe and that any belief that they aren’t can create an insecure child who shows apathy towards building a better world. “Huh, people are going to kill, houses will burn, so why should I care?” I don’t want that for my kids.

It’s a tough job in this day and age, when a parent can feel just as uneasy about the direction of the world as the child. I mean the Republican presidential candidate this year is the ultimate personification of the fear-mongering news cycle. Immigrants want to take your jobs. They want to rape and kill all of us. So let’s build a wall. No, not a metaphorical wall, a real, giant wall to keep THEM out while helping US ride our Acorns upstairs to bed to sleep easier on our pile of gold. Thanks, William Devane!

I’m hoping that as the year goes along, we’ll eventually see good and hope triumph over that looming 24-hour news threat. That Brexit will just be a temporary blip on the radar screen until the next scare cycle drops on us. And I’ll have to be equipped to answer that one as well. Hopefully I’ll do better than today.