The Siren’s Call

The longer title of this book is “How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” and that’s what the book is about: how attention has become a commodity, one that people and brands will do absolutely anything to capture. I thought it was particularly interesting as Hayes works in the trenches of the media world. Besides being a New York Times bestselling author, he’s also a podcast host. The book is ambitious. It’s very academic at times, but always interesting. It will change the way that you think, the way you view politics and media . . . it’s super interesting! Sirens are designed to compel us but now we have sirens everywhere we look. In our bedrooms, on our commutes. Everywhere, all doing the bidding of media empires and tech companies that are built to do exactly that: harvest our attention. I really took a lot away from this and like that the way he advises us wasn’t as simple as “put down your phone,” or “take a social media detox.” Because it’s so much more complicated than that.