Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question.
Speaker 1: What's the most valuable commodity in the world today? Oil, gold,
Speaker 1: natural gas, crypto, Nope. According to author and MSNBC anchor
Speaker 1: Chris Hayes, it's actually attention. Everyone wants it, and the
Speaker 1: NonStop competition to get ours is making us less productive
Speaker 1: and in some cases, downright miserable. Chris has a new
Speaker 1: book out. It's called The Sirens Call. He'll explain the
Speaker 1: title in a moment, but here's a tease. Chris says
Speaker 1: that these days, the sirens that tempted Odysseus are now
Speaker 1: living in our pockets in the form of smartphones, always
Speaker 1: trying to get our attention and make us lose focus.
Speaker 1: Chris explores how technology has changed our lives, rewired our brains,
Speaker 1: and impacted modern politics. Who's able to get our attention,
Speaker 1: even if it's negative attention seems to be winning the day.
Speaker 1: All of this has left us with less time for
Speaker 1: deep thinking and real connection, which are fundamental human needs.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you this just as I'm fighting the
Speaker 1: urge to check the notification on my phone. So here's
Speaker 1: Chris Hayes to the rescue. Hey, Chris, it's great to
Speaker 1: be here. Nice to have you my first guest in
Speaker 1: our news studio.
Speaker 2: This is very exciting.
Speaker 1: We even got flowers.
Speaker 2: They're beautiful. I love irises.
Speaker 1: Good good, Well, welcome, and I'm really excited to talk
Speaker 1: to you about this new book you've written, called The
Speaker 1: Sirens Call. We'll talk about the title in a minute.
Speaker 1: But how did a book about attention get your attention?
Speaker 2: I think the first place to start is my work life,
Speaker 2: which is hosting a television show, which I've been doing
Speaker 2: for over a decade, and the many hours I put
Speaker 2: into doing that, and I think this is something that
Speaker 2: you can very much relate to that. A lot of
Speaker 2: what that work is is thinking about the audience's attention,
Speaker 2: what will grab it, what will hold it. You get
Speaker 2: feedback all the time about whether you're doing a good
Speaker 2: or bad job. There were some years there in the
Speaker 2: beginning where I got some pretty bad feedback.
Speaker 1: Really, what was the meanest thing that was said about
Speaker 1: you or to you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well that I mean, people said mean things. But
Speaker 2: there were periods of the show was not rating particularly well,
Speaker 2: and that just kind of everyone knows that when that's happening,
Speaker 2: you know it it's like getting a grade that you're
Speaker 2: wearing on your forehead all day. And in the craft
Speaker 2: of being a TV host, I've had to think a
Speaker 2: lot about what does get people's attention, like how do
Speaker 2: I solve for this problem? And I think the craft
Speaker 2: of that led me to start thinking very seriously about
Speaker 2: how important attention was. I mean, one of the things
Speaker 2: that strikes me is certain kind of deaths get more
Speaker 2: attention than others. If they're particularly spectacular or gruesome, they
Speaker 2: might attract attention and that might lead to all kinds
Speaker 2: of political and policy changes, whereas those that might be
Speaker 2: less visible don't attract that same level of effort or
Speaker 2: policy discussion. And so as I was thinking about this,
Speaker 2: it came to be clear to me that attention was
Speaker 2: this very powerful resource. And then there was also the
Speaker 2: part of me that is a creature of the Internet,
Speaker 2: an extremely online person since I've been twelve or thirteen
Speaker 2: or fourteen years old, who spends a lot of time online,
Speaker 2: and between the work life and that part of my life,
Speaker 2: it just became clearer and clearer to me, and particularly
Speaker 2: covering Donald Trump, that attention is kind of the defining
Speaker 2: resource of our age. It's the thing that more and
Speaker 2: more people, institutions, companies are chasing. When you have it
Speaker 2: in the aggregate, you have a very valuable thing. There's
Speaker 2: a sense in which it's being taken from us often,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't feel good. And that started me on
Speaker 2: the path of writing the book.
Speaker 1: The title is called The Sirens Call, and it's based
Speaker 1: on the Odyssey, And I want to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: your book made me feel very stupid, Chris, But it
Speaker 1: was that your goal. How did the sirens tempt Odysseus
Speaker 1: and help us all remember? And why this particular title
Speaker 1: seems so apt.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing portion of the Odyssey, uh, in which
Speaker 2: Odysseus has just been on the island with Circe. She's
Speaker 2: a sort of goddess witch, and she says, hey, heads up,
Speaker 2: before you leave a warning. You're going to come to
Speaker 2: these sirens and if you they're very dangerous they will
Speaker 2: warrible you to death.
Speaker 1: And women they're not like ambulances exactly.
Speaker 2: They're women who sing this song that is so irresistible.
Speaker 2: It will pull a ship to the rocks and you'll
Speaker 2: crash and you'll die. And she says, you'll never see
Speaker 2: home again. If you listen to them. But she gives
Speaker 2: them a plan to sort of have his cake and
Speaker 2: eat it too, because she knows this has never said
Speaker 2: explicitly he wants to hear them. So what she says is, look,
Speaker 2: stuff wax in the ears of your men, and then
Speaker 2: bind yourself to the mass to your own ship so
Speaker 2: that you can hear the sirens. But then when they
Speaker 2: try to tempt you to go towards them, your men
Speaker 2: will ignore you. And sure enough we have Odysseus bound
Speaker 2: to the mast, and he starts to hear the sirens call,
Speaker 2: and he's like gesturing frantically to his men, like go
Speaker 2: towards that, and they just ignore him, as they've been
Speaker 2: instructed to, and the wax is stuffed in their ears,
Speaker 2: and they sail safely past. And that image is a
Speaker 2: very potent one in the Western canon, and I think
Speaker 2: it represents the Freudian war between ego and ID, you know,
Speaker 2: temptation and self discipline.
Speaker 1: But in this case, the sirens are our digital device.
Speaker 2: Almost literally, yes they are. It is the sound of
Speaker 2: the notification, It is the buzzing of the.
Speaker 1: Phone, and the constant, never ending temptation.
Speaker 2: Temptation and entreaties and seduction, the constant portal of delights
Speaker 2: that sits here pulsing on my pocket like Gollum's ring.
Speaker 1: Right, it sounded pretty dirty.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you say that, because the Sirens always
Speaker 2: have this kind of you know, uh, aspect of sexual lore.
Speaker 2: And when we think about the Internet, you know, there's
Speaker 2: this entire category that we have, even before the Internet,
Speaker 2: for things that attract our attention that we think are
Speaker 2: morally dubious, So like the words like lurid and prurient, obscene, tabloid, Right,
Speaker 2: there's this entire category of things where it's like, we
Speaker 2: know they pull out our attention, we don't think they should.
Speaker 2: And in some ways, the more competitive our attention markets get,
Speaker 2: the more they go towards that aspect.
Speaker 1: The Sirens call, I'm a generation older than you are,
Speaker 1: and I have been keenly aware of the role that
Speaker 1: the Internet and technology has played not only in the
Speaker 1: media landscape, but really how we spend our lives. And
Speaker 1: it's almost like the frog in the slowly boiling water.
Speaker 1: I mean, I felt it, I saw it, I witnessed it.
Speaker 1: I was aware of it in a way that I
Speaker 1: felt like a lot of society was a bit asleep
Speaker 1: at the switch as this was transforming our lives. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious because I started my career before the internet
Speaker 1: burst onto the scene and your generation younger, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you have seen the digital world impact your career.
Speaker 2: Well, in terms of my career, I mean, the most
Speaker 2: obvious part of it is simply that the sheer amount
Speaker 2: of things to watch has expanded most infinitely. I mean
Speaker 2: when I started, I started my primetime show in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: I remember we had the show creator for House of
Speaker 2: Cards on the show, Bo Willemon, and at the time,
Speaker 2: the conceit of the segment was Netflix is gonna make
Speaker 2: its own show. How about that? Ain't that a kick? Yeah,
Speaker 2: here's bau Willhemon. They're going to do an original show.
Speaker 2: So even the idea of streaming didn't exist then. And
Speaker 2: the way that we tended to think about competition, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure this was the case of the Today Show,
Speaker 2: Right is the other morning shows? What are the other
Speaker 2: cable news shows on at my hour? And that's fair
Speaker 2: enough that matters for.
Speaker 1: And I also thought about NPR, local radio, sound newspapers.
Speaker 1: How are people getting their information? But it was a
Speaker 1: very finite sind choices.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and now is it is not hyperbolic
Speaker 2: at all. It is a true statement to say that
Speaker 2: in every instant that you are trying to keep someone's attention,
Speaker 2: you are competing against every single piece of content ever
Speaker 2: generated by humans, basically anywhere in the language of the
Speaker 2: people that you're appealing to. I mean, there was, you
Speaker 2: know people. My kid, my six year old, will occasionally
Speaker 2: just start watching some discontinued sitcoms from the mid Auts
Speaker 2: because it's on Disney. I guess I'm like, I didn't
Speaker 2: even know this show existed. She's super into it, and
Speaker 2: it's cool at some level. It has a different life, right, Right,
Speaker 2: But at every instant you're competing for attention, the library
Speaker 2: you're competing with has just become so enormous.
Speaker 1: And I think they call it the paradox of choice,
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: Because it's paralyzing at some level, Right, what do I
Speaker 2: want to watch? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's so many, too many choices, yes.
Speaker 2: And that's partly what the algorithm solves for. But the
Speaker 2: algorithm comes with its own problems, right, And then you
Speaker 2: also get in this very strange situation this is something
Speaker 2: that's really changed. It's very interesting. It used to be
Speaker 2: the case in linear cable television that, again when I
Speaker 2: started a decade ago or more, you would see in
Speaker 2: the minute by minutes of Nielsen, you would see the
Speaker 2: numbers go down during commercial break because people don't want
Speaker 2: to watch commercials and they want to switch to another network.
Speaker 2: Now that doesn't happen. The reason is because people are
Speaker 2: just like, go to their phone, right, oh, and then
Speaker 2: you come back on. They don't even switch anymore.
Speaker 1: And it's also interesting. Now cable news will say we'll
Speaker 1: be back and they'll have a countdown.
Speaker 2: Clock, or they'll put the commercial with the image that's
Speaker 2: now our innovation. They'll do sports ring met more like
Speaker 2: on thirty second timeouts.
Speaker 1: They do that, right, so stand by, we're going to
Speaker 1: be here, and you can actually count down till we're back,
Speaker 1: which I think is so interesting that didn't exist when
Speaker 1: I was on television, and I.
Speaker 2: Think it's it all speaks to the fact that there's
Speaker 2: this kind of jumpiness to our attention that is both
Speaker 2: born of some deep things about our psychologies and the
Speaker 2: way that our brains work, and also something that has
Speaker 2: been cultivated in us through the technologies. Right, the shorter
Speaker 2: and shorter your attention span is, or the more interruptions
Speaker 2: you're dealing with, The more acclimated you get to interruption,
Speaker 2: the more that you feel that things that develop slowly
Speaker 2: or move slowly or boring. Right, So there's this relationship
Speaker 2: between supply and demand, between what our desires are and
Speaker 2: what we're craving.
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Speaker 1: Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. You know,
Speaker 1: I did a national geographic documentary series and one of
Speaker 1: them was focused on our addiction to our digital devices.
Speaker 1: And I spoke to a lot of scientists and this
Speaker 1: constant interruption, this constant jumpiness, as you say, prohibits us
Speaker 1: from being thinking deeply. It takes about twenty minutes to
Speaker 1: get in a fully concentrated state to really focus, to
Speaker 1: really activate that, you know, our deep thinking ability, and
Speaker 1: the constant interruption is precluding us from doing that, which
Speaker 1: makes you wonder, like, how are people going to think
Speaker 1: deeply if they're constantly interrupted?
Speaker 2: And this is a I mean, this is a problem
Speaker 2: for anyone that wants to think deeply. I mean for
Speaker 2: me writing the book. One of the great things about
Speaker 2: writing the book is that, like Odysseus binding himself to
Speaker 2: the mast, I signed a contract to deliver a book
Speaker 2: and I had to do it, and that forced me
Speaker 2: to focus, and it forced me to create. When I'm writing,
Speaker 2: I need two hours. Two hours is the block for
Speaker 2: me of a writing session, because there's some there's some
Speaker 2: time to sort of move through that first twenty minutes
Speaker 2: of focus. There's some time inside that zone of focus
Speaker 2: where your attention has really locked in, and there's some
Speaker 2: time sort of coming back out of it and figuring
Speaker 2: out ways to train our own attention away from a
Speaker 2: craving for constant interruption.
Speaker 1: Did you keep your phone out of the room.
Speaker 2: I've come up with a whole bunch of weird things
Speaker 2: that I've done through the years. I would have the
Speaker 2: phone in the room, but I wouldn't look at it.
Speaker 2: I would set a timer, though, So the way I
Speaker 2: do a writing session is for twenty five minute blocks
Speaker 2: of writing with a five minute break where I can
Speaker 2: check the phone or I can check the internet. And
Speaker 2: that kind of gets me, it's like not too much interruption,
Speaker 2: but it's structured enough.
Speaker 1: But if you can see your phone, do you know
Speaker 1: that very act of being able to change it. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: actually prevents you from focusing.
Speaker 2: The key thing too. And this is something that I
Speaker 2: think we see a lot is and I actually think
Speaker 2: younger people are better. This is actually proactively managing interruption
Speaker 2: so you can select your phone so it doesn't do
Speaker 2: any notifications, which is one thing.
Speaker 1: Like MYNC can also make it black and white, which
Speaker 1: makes it less appealing.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think we're going to see more and
Speaker 2: more people opting in these directions. There's people selling dumb
Speaker 2: phones that have been starting to be very successful. There's
Speaker 2: people selling pouches. There's all kinds of ways that people
Speaker 2: are in their own way, attempting to sort of solve
Speaker 2: this problem. The problem fundamentally is I want to think deeply.
Speaker 2: I want to regain some willful discretion and control over
Speaker 2: where I flash my spotlight of thought. I don't want
Speaker 2: it yank hither and yeah on. And I want to
Speaker 2: regain some comfort of being alone with my own thoughts.
Speaker 2: That to me is the profound human question at the
Speaker 2: core of this.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that you write about boredom
Speaker 1: and that this is that we're afraid of boredom. And
Speaker 1: I've written and done a lot of stuff about this
Speaker 1: as well, about busyness being kind of a badge of
Speaker 1: honor in our culture. But I don't think it's not
Speaker 1: wanting to be bored. I think it's not having the
Speaker 1: opportunity to be bored, because we always have something that
Speaker 1: will allow us to divert our attention if we land
Speaker 1: and we're driving. And I've often told my friends is
Speaker 1: sometimes I go to a new city, I'm so busy
Speaker 1: looking at my phone, i don't even notice where I am,
Speaker 1: or the buildings or the sites, or the sounds or
Speaker 1: the scenes of a new place. And I get to
Speaker 1: my hotel and I'm like, where am I?
Speaker 2: Where am I at?
Speaker 1: And why am I here? As Admiral Stockdale said, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's just such an attention suck. So I
Speaker 1: almost feel like it's not that we're afraid to be bored.
Speaker 1: We just there aren't moments of boredom that present themselves.
Speaker 2: I think it's both, but I think those relate to
Speaker 2: each other. I mean I think that I mean, I'll
Speaker 2: speak for myself that I am afraid of being bored.
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember being bored in childhood. Remember like
Speaker 2: reading the back of a cereal box, right, you know,
Speaker 2: over and over because it's the thing there and you
Speaker 2: want your You're craving something to put your attention on.
Speaker 2: And I think part of the reason we associate boredom
Speaker 2: with childhood is because.
Speaker 1: We didn't have phones.
Speaker 2: We didn't have phones. But the other thing is, as
Speaker 2: soon as you get old enough, you just cut it
Speaker 2: out of your life.
Speaker 1: I remember telling my mom I'm bored in the summer,
Speaker 1: and she said, read a book.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean kids complaining about boredom. I mean
Speaker 2: the thing that I've caught myself doing, which is very funny.
Speaker 2: As your kid comes up to you and they're like,
Speaker 2: I'm bored, and you say, I don't have to tell you, man,
Speaker 2: like can I screen time? No, go read a book
Speaker 2: something else. And then as soon as you say that,
Speaker 2: you go back to your phone. Right, You're like, you
Speaker 2: got to figure it out, that's true. It's like, oh
Speaker 2: what am I doing here? And sometimes they'll call you
Speaker 2: out on it. Right. So I think that you know
Speaker 2: that feeling if you go into a coffee shop, you
Speaker 2: left your phone in the car and you start that
Speaker 2: like you have the instinct you're like, ah, I gotta
Speaker 2: sit with my thoughts for four minutes. I think that
Speaker 2: the less that we have that the more the scarier
Speaker 2: it seems to be without it. And we kind of
Speaker 2: thoughtlessly run on this treadmill of the constant input because
Speaker 2: that's what we get habituated and comfortable with. And I
Speaker 2: think the work of sitting alone with our own thoughts
Speaker 2: which is which is work that stems all the way
Speaker 2: back to the Buddha sitting underneath the Banyan tree, and
Speaker 2: Pascal writing in the seventeenth century and his Christian apologetics
Speaker 2: about penses and careker guard, and you know, spiritual traditions
Speaker 2: like that's the stuff of being a human, is that
Speaker 2: you got to sit with your own mind. And sometimes
Speaker 2: the mind can be a scary place, a feral beast.
Speaker 1: But it also can be a very fertile place because
Speaker 1: your hipocampus is the part of your brain that's responsible
Speaker 1: for creative thinking, and it can only ignite when you're
Speaker 1: not distracted. And that's why you have so many good
Speaker 1: ideas or these epiphanies in the shower. The shower, yes,
Speaker 1: and so that's an argument for daydreaming, for just thinking,
Speaker 1: for not having constantly, you know, all these things around
Speaker 1: you to distract you. So you know, along with this
Speaker 1: idea of deep concentration, it does make you think how
Speaker 1: much of our creative selves, our deep thinking selves, are
Speaker 1: being sacrificed in our current culture.
Speaker 2: I think there's an enormous loss of that creative impulse
Speaker 2: because that time is so often interrupted. And one of
Speaker 2: the things I've said to people, you know the extent,
Speaker 2: there's some like what do I do take away? The
Speaker 2: most concrete for me is spend twenty minutes every day
Speaker 2: alone with your thoughts. And for me, that's a walk
Speaker 2: where I'm not listening to a podcast or not why
Speaker 2: I'm just walking, And sometimes that can be longer you
Speaker 2: start to push it out. I'll do an hour walk
Speaker 2: the loop of the park with my dog. And it
Speaker 2: is amazing how pleasurable that state is when you get
Speaker 2: into it, of daydreaming, of letting your thoughts kind of wander,
Speaker 2: of letting creative thoughts bubble up, and how rare it
Speaker 2: has become to have.
Speaker 1: It, and therapeutic it is I think for your overall health.
Speaker 1: I think it was Jennifer Aniston. I can't remember a
Speaker 1: great philosopher named Jennifer Aniston said you shouldn't you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have your phone, and I have found this to be
Speaker 1: the case for me. It is also an enormous time suck.
Speaker 1: You know, I can spend an extra hour in bed
Speaker 1: reading stuff. Now it's worthwhile stuff. It's articles from very
Speaker 1: you know, respective publications or The Atlantic or The New
Speaker 1: Yorker or The Times or a whole host of really
Speaker 1: smart people writing great things, and I feel enriched. But
Speaker 1: you know, if I didn't have that phone, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: grab it and spend sometimes an hour and a half reading.
Speaker 1: So you have to kind of figure out how you're
Speaker 1: going to spend your time.
Speaker 2: Well and think about the imperatives on the other side
Speaker 2: of this. Right, So, if like the people that want
Speaker 2: to capture your attention, which is a wide array of
Speaker 2: entities and particularly the platforms that are some of the
Speaker 2: most powerful and profitable companies in America, right at a
Speaker 2: certain point, they have to start, like you need growth.
Speaker 2: And for a while, when for instance, the smartphone was introduced,
Speaker 2: there was this growth. Every year more and more people
Speaker 2: got up, but then it levels off and then you
Speaker 2: look to international markets and that levels off too, and
Speaker 2: then a certain point, well you need to find more growth.
Speaker 2: And what is it. Well, there's a fixed amount of
Speaker 2: people with a fixed amount of waking hours. Well you
Speaker 2: can start to eat into sleep. Well, there's a fixed
Speaker 2: amount of adults with a fixed amount of waking hours.
Speaker 2: Well you can start going for children. There's you can
Speaker 2: only watch one thing at a time. Well, maybe get
Speaker 2: people to start watching two or three things at a time. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's all these places the growth imperative starts to
Speaker 2: push against these limits, like sleeping in fact, a really
Speaker 2: upsetting thing that has happened to me, And I doubt
Speaker 2: this has ever happened to you. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you're like, have ever had a TikTok habit?
Speaker 1: Instagram reels, cooking videos? That's my vice?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's your vice. TikTok has something in the algorithm
Speaker 2: where if you look too long at it, a person
Speaker 2: pops up to be like, hey, buddy, like you you've
Speaker 2: kind of been looking for a long time, maybe take
Speaker 2: a break. It's like your drug dealer cutting you off.
Speaker 2: It's super upsetting.
Speaker 1: No, that's awesome that they do. It works against their
Speaker 1: business model.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I wonder the origin of this person who
Speaker 2: comes in. But hitting that point on a TikTok jack
Speaker 2: is an upsetting moment. It's like one point thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning and you're like, the device is telling you
Speaker 2: to log off.
Speaker 1: You must be full of shame when that happened.
Speaker 2: The Chinese government is like, buddy, your brain is cooked,
Speaker 2: please put it down.
Speaker 1: I'm curious when you said your show wasn't doing well,
Speaker 1: it made you think about how to capture people's attention.
Speaker 1: And was that fighting with what you thought people needed
Speaker 1: to know and hear and more importantly understand, versus how
Speaker 1: they would stick with you and watch your whole show
Speaker 1: or more minutes than they normally would. And what kind
Speaker 1: of Fostian deal did you have to make?
Speaker 2: That is the central conundrum. I mean, as I write
Speaker 2: in the book, attention is not a moral faculty. There's
Speaker 2: a great line from Walter Lippman when he's writing about
Speaker 2: this in the twenties. He's writing about the aftermath of
Speaker 2: World War One and the Treaty of Versaillese. He says,
Speaker 2: the American public has a great deal of interest in
Speaker 2: the outcome of these negotiations. But they're not interested in it,
Speaker 2: Like it's going to matter a ton to the US,
Speaker 2: but like no one really cares. And this is the
Speaker 2: central conundrum of being a journalist. I think, in this environment,
Speaker 2: in any environment, honestly, but in that.
Speaker 1: Particularly, it's like on steroids.
Speaker 2: Now. It's this balance. You know, you have these twin imperatives.
Speaker 2: I have to keep people's attention and hold it, and
Speaker 2: I have to deliver information and a set of stories
Speaker 2: about the world that are true and I think important
Speaker 2: and urgent to the project of self governance. Sometimes those
Speaker 2: are in competition. Sometimes they line up, you know. The
Speaker 2: California wildfires are a great example where they both compel
Speaker 2: your attention the visuals and the drama of the tragedy,
Speaker 2: and also it's a really important story. So sometimes you
Speaker 2: get them both right. Sadly, Sadly, sometimes you're fighting these
Speaker 2: twin imperatives. And part of the craft that you develop
Speaker 2: over time, that I've tried to develop is getting better
Speaker 2: and better at figuring out how to tell stories and
Speaker 2: move the audience from point A to point B through
Speaker 2: your ability, through your skills to get to talk about
Speaker 2: the things you think are important and still bring people
Speaker 2: along that's hard. It's really hard. I mean it's the
Speaker 2: it's really hard, and I don't I've gotten better at it,
Speaker 2: but I still fail at it all the time.
Speaker 1: And plus people don't necessarily want to stick around to
Speaker 1: connect A B and C. Right, So I think its
Speaker 1: those people who watch your show probably do.
Speaker 2: At some level. I think we have the audience segmentation,
Speaker 2: which can be bad in certain ways, can also self
Speaker 2: select for people that are you know, at this point.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I like about my job
Speaker 2: and the relationship I have visa visa sort of these
Speaker 2: attentional questions, is I'm not just popping into a feed
Speaker 2: into someone's algorithm. We feed to try to grab their
Speaker 2: attention for a few seconds. They've never seen me. Right,
Speaker 2: by and large, there's a relationship that has been built
Speaker 2: up with the viewer. And that relationship is actually important
Speaker 2: because what the relationship means is that, in the same
Speaker 2: way that my relationship to the New Yorker is such
Speaker 2: that I have a relationship with the publication. And so
Speaker 2: if it lands in my house and I pick it up,
Speaker 2: and I go through the table contents and there's a
Speaker 2: profile of the conductor of the Bavarian orchestra, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm not that interested in it, but okay, I'll see
Speaker 2: what you got because I know. And then I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, this is this guy's fascinating right that that
Speaker 2: little friction you might feel is overcome by the pre
Speaker 2: existing relationship that you have. There's some of that in
Speaker 2: the relationship I have the audience right that they that
Speaker 2: they're willing to trust me to guide them, such that
Speaker 2: if we're starting to do something that left to your
Speaker 2: own devices, maybe you wouldn't find that interesting. You sick
Speaker 2: with it?
Speaker 1: I mean trust we could. You should write your next
Speaker 1: book on trust.
Speaker 2: I actually have thought about precisely that.
Speaker 1: Because funnily enough, that is the big another huge crisis
Speaker 1: in our culture.
Speaker 2: And they're related. I think trust requires depth of connection
Speaker 2: and the building of a relationship over time, and I
Speaker 2: think often the attentional atmosphere we exist in cuts against that.
Speaker 2: You can argue on the other side that actually people
Speaker 2: do have trust relationships that have grown very deep. There
Speaker 2: are people that trust Alex Jones to tell them the truth,
Speaker 2: and there are people that you know, don't trust me, right,
Speaker 2: But I think one of the central elements in our
Speaker 2: current condition is just that we're becoming a more and
Speaker 2: more low trust society, and it's very hard to run
Speaker 2: a low trust democracy.
Speaker 1: What are we going to do? I don't know, Dude,
Speaker 1: I've never been called dude. I like it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 2: lot of peril. You know, it's a moment or great peril.
Speaker 2: I do think I do have a very central belief
Speaker 2: in people, and in the American people. I do think
Speaker 2: collective publics can manifest both really awful tendencies and truly
Speaker 2: noble ones. I think some of the stuff you've seen
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles in the aftermath of wildfires is completely incredible.
Speaker 2: It is amazing how much people will self organize and
Speaker 2: act cooperatively and selflessly with urgency in those moments. I'm
Speaker 2: just seeing so many people and we're all just one
Speaker 2: degree removed, I think, from that disaster in many respects,
Speaker 2: and just seeing so many beautiful stories of mutual aid, cooperation.
Speaker 2: And I do think like our politics and our media
Speaker 2: environments and our cultures can cultivate different impulses collectively in US,
Speaker 2: and I think we've been going through a period with
Speaker 2: some of our worst impulses are being cultivated. But I
Speaker 2: also don't think that means that like those impulses are
Speaker 2: the true ones and the other ones are false. I
Speaker 2: think it's a question of our situation.
Speaker 1: You're more optimistic than I am, because I think that
Speaker 1: it doesn't fit the business model to try to come
Speaker 1: together and to spotlight our better angels. It is more
Speaker 1: beneficial to antagonize and enrage and divide.
Speaker 2: And I think this goes back to something that's like
Speaker 2: deep and inescapable about our evolutionary wiring, which is attention
Speaker 2: as a faculty has negativity bias. And there's an obvious
Speaker 2: reason for that. You know, if you're sitting there and
Speaker 2: there's like a pretty flower here, and there's a predator
Speaker 2: over there, that's going to get your attention to the predator.
Speaker 2: The pretty flower you may or may not linger on.
Speaker 2: And so so.
Speaker 1: We're hardwired to basically be attracted to danger or negativity reactivity.
Speaker 2: Threat. Yeah, particularly threat, I mean threat is really the ultimate.
Speaker 2: I mean, the sound of a gunshot is going to
Speaker 2: get your attention in a crowded street. And so that
Speaker 2: negativity bias, when you put it in the context of
Speaker 2: these enormous competitive second to second competitive attention markets you
Speaker 2: are going to trend towards negativity.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that, because I know you believe
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has been able to marshal this attention
Speaker 1: dilemma or you know, take advantage of the so called
Speaker 1: attention economy in a much more effective way. And can
Speaker 1: you explain how he's able to do that?
Speaker 2: I think there's basically one simple trick he's figured out.
Speaker 2: Most politicians only want attention if it's positive attention. Most
Speaker 2: people are like that. I'm like that. I don't want
Speaker 2: people to pay attention to me and be mad at me,
Speaker 2: or mean, I don't ask you with you? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm with you. And most politicians, for perfectly rational reasons,
Speaker 2: also want that because they see their job as to
Speaker 2: be popular and liked and to win majorities and to
Speaker 2: persuade people. Trump's big insight, which is born of something
Speaker 2: deep in.
Speaker 1: Him, well he you know it comes down to all
Speaker 1: press is good press.
Speaker 2: Right, It's exactly that. Basically, negative attention, particularly if attention
Speaker 2: is all that matters. Negative attention is almost as good
Speaker 2: as plausitive attention, maybe as good. The old pt Bartum quote, right,
Speaker 2: as long as you spell my name correctly, ma'am. When
Speaker 2: she a reporter says she's writing a negative piece, he goes,
Speaker 2: go with me, just spell the name correctly. All press
Speaker 2: is good press. And I think there's two levels at
Speaker 2: which he's been able to marshal this that are important.
Speaker 2: One is has to do with the fact that attention
Speaker 2: is more important than ever and so fractured that just
Speaker 2: getting it itself has a value, not as even just
Speaker 2: a means to another end. But I also think it's
Speaker 2: a hard thing to fake personally, and by that I
Speaker 2: mean other politicians have tried to do what Trump does,
Speaker 2: which is to be outrageous and polarizing, and it hasn't
Speaker 2: worked for them the same way.
Speaker 1: When you look at Carrie Lake, she's the perfect example.
Speaker 2: Like she had two winnable in that state. The first
Speaker 2: one she nearirely lost, the second one she lost by more.
Speaker 2: She has tried to do it. She's also like a
Speaker 2: former broadcaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's talent TV news anchor and Arizona who ran
Speaker 1: for office twice lost and now she's had the Voice
Speaker 1: of America.
Speaker 2: Yes, but she's been rewarded for her But.
Speaker 1: You're right, but why couldn't she do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Is he's a singularly talented individual in being able to
Speaker 1: do what he does. Do you see anyone who comes close.
Speaker 2: The only one now is Elon Musk, who I think
Speaker 2: is doing the same thing. And I think the reason
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk is doing is similar to Trump. It's
Speaker 2: not that he's bought the platform and he's the world's
Speaker 2: wealthiest man, although that helps. It's just at some deep
Speaker 2: psychological level, their relationship to negative attention is is different
Speaker 2: than yours or mind. And I just think it's not fakeable,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. I could try. I could
Speaker 2: take this book and study it. I could go run
Speaker 2: for office and try to be mayor of New York
Speaker 2: City and be like, you know what, I've learned this lesson.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be the polarizing shock jock of mayoral
Speaker 2: candidates who gets negative attention because I've written this book
Speaker 2: and it'll be my manual. It wouldn't work. I just
Speaker 2: wouldn't at some deep level. Wouldn't work because I don't
Speaker 2: want people to be mad at me, not like me.
Speaker 2: It would bum me out too much, and I could
Speaker 2: try to force myself to fake it. But I think
Speaker 2: that like it selects for some deep psychological attributes.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think of Alex Jones, I think he's
Speaker 1: probably close to agreed Donald Trump in his ability to
Speaker 1: get attention.
Speaker 2: Kanye is another one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in a negative way. You call this trolling politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by that? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Trolling is a term that goes back to almost the
Speaker 2: earliest moments of the Internet, when there were message boards
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies. These are mostly academics and computer
Speaker 2: scientists talking as message boards, and basically the insight of
Speaker 2: trolling is that it's easier to get negative attention the
Speaker 2: positive attention, like if you walk up to someone, if
Speaker 2: you walk into a subway, can't start screaming at people
Speaker 2: like you will get their attention, probably not going to
Speaker 2: like you very much. And that same insight started to
Speaker 2: manifest itself on social networks and bulletin boards and where
Speaker 2: people were interacting, certain people had to zeal for getting attention.
Speaker 2: They figured out the quickest way is just like, be
Speaker 2: a kind of obnoxious jerk, and people will pay attention
Speaker 2: to you, often to fight with you. And now that
Speaker 2: conflict itself draws more attention, so then you're you're constantly
Speaker 2: getting it and then you're creating a dilemma for people
Speaker 2: that know you're trying to get a rise out of them,
Speaker 2: but they don't want to let it go. This form
Speaker 2: of Internet behavior called trolling, which sort of goes back
Speaker 2: to trawling for fish, right, you put a lure and
Speaker 2: you drag it, and the fish gets distracted and goes
Speaker 2: after it has now become a huge part of our politics.
Speaker 2: So trolling politics that you see. Marjorie Tailer Green is
Speaker 2: a great exams. She's like a classic troll, right, She
Speaker 2: just constantly courts negative attention. But she's one of four
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five members of Congress, and I know
Speaker 2: her name, and you know our name, and probably some
Speaker 2: of the listeners know her name more than they know
Speaker 2: hundreds of others of members of Congress who do not
Speaker 2: court that negative attention. So she has been successful in
Speaker 2: that respect, and that is increasingly the model for modern politics,
Speaker 2: particularly I think on the right Republican Party, because it
Speaker 2: stems from Trump's you know insights.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the Democrats because they seem to
Speaker 1: be a very different kettle of fish in terms of
Speaker 1: how they interact with the media publicly, the kind of
Speaker 1: attention they get and you say, it's because they are
Speaker 1: very risk averse. Yeah, they don't want negative attention. They
Speaker 1: don't and what's wrong with that?
Speaker 2: You know, it's a totally natural in some ways. What's
Speaker 2: interesting about this is, at the same time Trump has
Speaker 2: been very successful. If you look at other Racesublicans have
Speaker 2: lost a ton of winnable races by nominating candidates who
Speaker 2: courted too much negative attention. The voters are like, I
Speaker 2: don't like that person. I mean, we just had a
Speaker 2: race in North Carolina, which is a great example. Lieutenant
Speaker 2: governor there Mark Robinson lost by thirteen points. Now, he's
Speaker 2: kind of an outrageous guy, kind of a troll, says
Speaker 2: all sorts of controversial things.
Speaker 1: He's the one that was on Nude Africa, yeah, and
Speaker 1: also Africa, right, and likes watching. I mean, got caught
Speaker 1: on all these weird porn sites. Isn't that the same guy?
Speaker 2: Yes, he was on a he had a user name
Speaker 2: that he denies was him on a porn message board
Speaker 2: called Nude Africa, where he declared himself a black Nazi. Right.
Speaker 1: He had all sorts of other strange predilections that we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to go into.
Speaker 2: Some strange predilections that he confessed to on Nude Africa.
Speaker 2: But even before that, he said things in public all
Speaker 2: the time some people need killing, for instance, that were
Speaker 2: very controversial and he did not do well. Like Josh Stein,
Speaker 2: who's now the governor North Carolina, ran a low attention
Speaker 2: I'm a likable dude race and at works. So the
Speaker 2: Democrats instinct to avoid negative attention has worked for them
Speaker 2: in some places. It's it's won them races at the
Speaker 2: lower level. At the top of American politics, I think
Speaker 2: what we've learned attention is so important that if you're
Speaker 2: constantly making the choice to avoid the possibility of negative attention,
Speaker 2: even if it means people are paying no attention to you,
Speaker 2: you are making a poor trade. And that's something that
Speaker 2: national Democrats keep doing, and I think they are suffering
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 1: So what are you saying. If you had to advise them,
Speaker 1: you would say, get out there. More so, even if
Speaker 1: you say something stupid, you have to get out there.
Speaker 1: But what if the stupid comment is the thing that
Speaker 1: everybody focuses on, how do you get get part of
Speaker 1: the solution.
Speaker 2: Part of the solution is to go say something next
Speaker 2: day too. There is a real problem. If you do
Speaker 2: fewer interviews, a gaff something you say is going to
Speaker 2: be magnified if you're doing interviews all the time. Jadvancyd
Speaker 2: interviews a ton. He said a ton of stuff that
Speaker 2: attracted negative attention. It was washed out by the next day.
Speaker 2: I think politicians should write their own social media posts.
Speaker 2: I think they should go on Instagram Live. I think
Speaker 2: they should go on podcasts. I think they should talk
Speaker 2: to people. I think they should not be afraid of
Speaker 2: saying stuff. I think if you say something wrong, just
Speaker 2: say something else next, or say I should have phrased
Speaker 2: that differently. But again, even that is dicey because part
Speaker 2: of the key to excelling in this area is never apologized,
Speaker 2: never look back, just keep saying stuff. But I think
Speaker 2: generally the idea of being authentic, speaking to people and
Speaker 2: speaking a lot. Here's one thing I think is really important.
Speaker 2: I think people have gotten more forgiving about gaffs. Gaffs
Speaker 2: partly because everyone's saying stuff publicly all the time through
Speaker 2: social media, and more and more people have the first
Speaker 2: person experience of saying something that you wish you could
Speaker 2: take back or didn't quite get across what you wanted
Speaker 2: to say right, And I think that's part of what
Speaker 2: we've seen happen where things that used to be disqualifying
Speaker 2: we would say that would be an enormous scandal don't
Speaker 2: mean anything anymore. And I think it's partly because everyone's
Speaker 2: generating content. Everyone's had the experience of like saying something
Speaker 2: someone took out of context, and so people are much
Speaker 2: more forgiving. And I think that means you should just
Speaker 2: talk more, like go communicate to people.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that is what hurt Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: that she was a there were questions about her authenticity
Speaker 1: and she was so risk averse when it came to
Speaker 1: doing interviews for quite a while during the campaign.
Speaker 2: I think it was a contributing factor. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think I think the data bear out that she actually
Speaker 2: ran quite a good campaign. And it's notable to me
Speaker 2: that the gap between her and Trump was the narrowest
Speaker 2: in the swing states, which is where they were actually campaigning,
Speaker 2: and much wider in the states where they didn't campaign,
Speaker 2: which speaks to the fact that it was actually a
Speaker 2: pretty effective campaign and she was a pretty effective candidate.
Speaker 2: The environment was pretty tough. You see this in New
Speaker 2: Jersey and New York and California, where the swings were
Speaker 2: much bigger than the swings that happened in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: That said, I think it was a enormous tactical mistake
Speaker 2: to approach the media and communications with that kind of
Speaker 2: risk aversion and not talk to people more and more
Speaker 2: in a more free, willing fashion.
Speaker 1: How are you going to cover Trump this go round differently, Chris,
Speaker 1: because that's something that I've been wrestling with same. You know,
Speaker 1: people say they don't want to know, but my job
Speaker 1: is to tell them what's happening. And if it's fact
Speaker 1: based reporting, then to pro MAGA people it seems biased.
Speaker 1: And it's a real conundrum and sometimes you just have
Speaker 1: to say, to hell with it. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: do the best I can. But it's tricky, it's really hard.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've it's still an unsolved problem even
Speaker 2: these ten years in. I've got a few guiding principles
Speaker 2: that I've been thinking about, some of which I've thought
Speaker 2: of before, some of which have become a sharper focus
Speaker 2: this time around. The first is modulation is key. If
Speaker 2: you turn the volume on your stereo up to ten
Speaker 2: and you leave it there, it starts to sound like five, right,
Speaker 2: and then you can't ever turn it up past ten,
Speaker 2: So you have to modulate. And that was really important
Speaker 2: the first term. It's important here not everything is of
Speaker 2: equal urgency or danger. Right.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people are writing about that
Speaker 1: it can't be a five alarm flyer every time he
Speaker 1: does something that you have to be much more selective
Speaker 1: about the things you shine your spotlight on. I think
Speaker 1: that's part of their strategy, is to flood the zone
Speaker 1: with so many things overwhelm, right, you don't quite know
Speaker 1: what to really dive deeply into.
Speaker 2: So that relates to the second principle, which I think
Speaker 2: is focus is power, and that falls out of a
Speaker 2: lot of the things I'm writing about in the book,
Speaker 2: and that be intentional and volitional about your focus. So
Speaker 2: like tonight I'm going to do we're doing the pardons
Speaker 2: again for the second day in a row. Now, could
Speaker 2: have just he did a lot of other stuff in
Speaker 2: the last twenty four hours that could pull us off
Speaker 2: the pardons, But I'm doing the pardons again because I
Speaker 2: think these partons are really important, an abomination truly, and
Speaker 2: I want to stick with it, so focus is power.
Speaker 2: The third thing, it's very tempting, not just around Trump
Speaker 2: and the media, to start with the story and work
Speaker 2: backwards to the facts. And by that I mean when
Speaker 2: he signs in an executive order, it plays some narrative
Speaker 2: role like Donald Trump is going to do X, and
Speaker 2: I think it's really important to start with the facts
Speaker 2: and work to the story. And what I mean by
Speaker 2: that is to actually read the executive order, understand what
Speaker 2: it means, talk to subject matter experts in that area
Speaker 2: of law. Is this actually going to tangibly affect people?
Speaker 2: Is this essentially a press release? Understanding what's happening as
Speaker 2: the first thing to build your foundation on. It sounds obvious,
Speaker 2: but it's because things happen so fast, and because he
Speaker 2: does so much. You can get trapped in covering him
Speaker 2: because the actions play some narrative role, but you don't
Speaker 2: actually have a handle of what's being done. And that
Speaker 2: to me is really important, like always always drill down
Speaker 2: the details.
Speaker 1: Will you report on things that you think are positive?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure?
Speaker 1: I mean, can you think of anything thing that would
Speaker 1: fall into that category?
Speaker 2: The first term I can like George W. Bush and
Speaker 2: pepfar which was the AIDS funding that the federal government
Speaker 2: promulgated under George W. Bush and led to literally millions
Speaker 2: of people getting AIDS drugs and saving their lives. Operation
Speaker 2: Warp Speed was by far the greatest thing that Trump
Speaker 2: administration did. That was the program where they essentially guaranteed
Speaker 2: federal purchase of a COVID vaccine, thereby incentivizing rapid research
Speaker 2: and deployment and helping get a vaccine to market in
Speaker 2: an incredibly fast period of time that saved hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of lives, millions of lives. Like Operation Warps Feed
Speaker 2: was great, If he does something like Operation Warp Speed again,
Speaker 2: I'll be like, that's great.
Speaker 1: What about his condemnation of the vaccine now.
Speaker 2: It's deeply sick. One of the most dispiriting realities we
Speaker 2: find ourselves in, particularly as we're watching bird flu percolate,
Speaker 2: is that we're in a worse position to deal with
Speaker 2: the pandemic now than we were before COVID, largely due
Speaker 2: to the insidiousness with which opposition of vaccination vaccines. More broadly,
Speaker 2: vaccine skepticism has captured one of the two political coalitionions,
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump has been part of that. He tried
Speaker 2: to fight it. In the beginning, there's these really interesting
Speaker 2: moments in his public appearances where he'd talk about the vaccine,
Speaker 2: people would boo, right, But in the end, he'll always
Speaker 2: choose the mob. He'll always choose the crowd. And so
Speaker 2: now he's basically positioned himself as anti vax even though
Speaker 2: the greatest achievement of his presidency the first time around
Speaker 2: was a vaccine development.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I want to ask you about some
Speaker 1: of these cabinet selections. What about OURFK Junior.
Speaker 2: Our f K Junior is more more responsible for the
Speaker 2: mass turning away from vaccination than almost any other public figure,
Speaker 2: and that has had consequences that add up to tens
Speaker 2: and hundreds of thousands of deaths that shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2: The fact that he petitioned the FDA to rescind its
Speaker 2: approval of the COVID vaccines, as that very same vaccine,
Speaker 2: which is the crowning achievement of the first Trump presidency,
Speaker 2: the best thing Donald Trump did, and the fact that
Speaker 2: it's saved globally in its first year, according to our
Speaker 2: best estimates, around twenty five million lives. It is despicable
Speaker 2: to me that this individual will be put in charge
Speaker 2: of the nation's health system. I know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to end not real modulated on those you know, fine,
Speaker 2: Doug Bergham an Interior Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a whole bunch where like, sure, go to town. Do
Speaker 2: you get to Doug Bergham? Great? Cool?
Speaker 1: You know, like leez Elden is EPA.
Speaker 2: Fine. Make Lee's Elden your EPA guy. Good for you,
Speaker 2: you know, make the you know, make the fracking dude
Speaker 2: the head of department Energy. Okay, that's your you know, fine.
Speaker 1: You do you do you before we go, I don't
Speaker 1: want to end on such a down note. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you talk about the fact that we live in a
Speaker 1: doom obsessed time, which I think is completely accurate, and
Speaker 1: you think a lot about the concept of the opposite
Speaker 1: of doom, and gosh, I don't know, most people I
Speaker 1: know are feeling pretty down these days and dispirited. And
Speaker 1: whether it's my twenty nine year old daughter or people
Speaker 1: I've known since college, not all of them, by the way,
Speaker 1: but many of them. So what is the antidote for
Speaker 1: a doom obsessed culture? And how can people see light
Speaker 1: at the end of what the many view as a
Speaker 1: very dark tunnel.
Speaker 2: I think one the most important antidotes community to be
Speaker 2: in fellowship with people, to be in relationships with people,
Speaker 2: talking to people, sharing things with people. Isolation is bad
Speaker 2: and pushes us towards doom. I think allowing ourselves the
Speaker 2: space to think about the world we want what that
Speaker 2: would look like if we weren't in the world we
Speaker 2: are in now is an exercise that we don't do
Speaker 2: anymore of what we should do more of magic, wond
Speaker 2: blank slate. You're the king of the world. What do
Speaker 2: you want the world to look like? What do you
Speaker 2: want things to be like?
Speaker 1: I think it's also focusing on controlling things that you
Speaker 1: can control. Like you were saying earlier, Chris, you can't
Speaker 1: really impact the macrocosmic reasons that ratings are and it's
Speaker 1: really not because of anything you're doing. But conversely, I
Speaker 1: think we can do positive things and it may not
Speaker 1: change the bigger picture, but it'll change our lives absolutely.
Speaker 2: And focusing on things you can control and things you
Speaker 2: can do is the other part of this as well.
Speaker 2: Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. And the last thing I'll say,
Speaker 2: and I think this is actually really important. I find
Speaker 2: for myself reading history so useful and encouraging. People have
Speaker 2: faced unbelievable odds and done incredible things in the face
Speaker 2: of those odds time and time and time and time again.
Speaker 2: There's lots of tragedies throughout history, obviously, but there's also
Speaker 2: just incredible stories of endurance and persistence and overcoming and
Speaker 2: going back to the those stories and understanding how fraught
Speaker 2: things looked at certain times and how little we know
Speaker 2: about what the future will bring. That actually I find
Speaker 2: really really comforting.
Speaker 1: What's the most important thing you learned writing this?
Speaker 2: I think the most important thing I learned is that
Speaker 2: whatever our technological circumstances and the particulars of this historical moment,
Speaker 2: that there are certain features of the human experience that endure.
Speaker 2: And there's something truly sublime about the fact that we
Speaker 2: are linked in a chain with all the other humans
Speaker 2: that came before us, wrestling with their own minds, trying
Speaker 2: to find solace and comfort and answer big questions about
Speaker 2: the world, and that there's something really beautiful about the
Speaker 2: continuity of that. That you can read ancient texts that
Speaker 2: speak to some of the things that we think are
Speaker 2: very modern and very contemporary, and that we're all linked
Speaker 2: together going back thousands and thousands of years. I find
Speaker 2: that really profound and it's really stuck with me.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Sirens Call, How Attention Became
Speaker 1: the World's Most Endangered resource, And I think my takeaway
Speaker 1: is that we have a choice. You know, people may
Speaker 1: be trying to get our attention, they may be trying
Speaker 1: to figure that out, but ultimately it's up to us,
Speaker 1: and we have free will, and whether the Democrats figure
Speaker 1: it out or Donald Trump keeps doing what he's doing,
Speaker 1: we have the power to decide where our attention goes.
Speaker 1: I agree, Chris, this was fun.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you
Speaker 1: have a question for me, a subject you want us
Speaker 1: to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about
Speaker 1: how you navigate this crazy world, reach out send me
Speaker 1: a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Couric Media.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are
Speaker 1: Adriana Fazzio. And Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music.
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