
The Sirens' Call
How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource
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Narrated by:
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Chris Hayes
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By:
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Chris Hayes
About this listen
An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller
From the New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society
“An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics.”—New York Times
“Brilliant book… Reading it has made me change the way I work and think.”—Rachel Maddow
We all feel it—the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, “With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.” Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition whose only parallel is what happened to labor in the nineteenth century: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. The Sirens’ Call is the big-picture vision we urgently need to offer clarity and guidance.
Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. As Hayes writes, “Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances, and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human.” The Sirens’ Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic framework so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.
©2025 Chris Hayes (P)2025 Penguin Audio
Interview: Chris Hayes is sounding the alarm about the key resource of our age: attention
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Critic reviews
“Chris Hayes’s spirited new book, The Sirens’ Call, takes a strong stand against the temptations of social media and information overload, on the grounds that the human attention span is ill equipped to absorb and act on such a constant stream of data. Among other things, the book—already a best seller, and one of our recommended titles this week—reveals that Hayes has abandoned scrolling for the old-fashioned pleasure of reading the newspaper in print each day, which sounds like a pretty good prescription to this fan of old media.”—Gregory Cowles, The New York Times
“The Sirens’ Call is a provocative book, readable and well-argued and alarming. Hayes thinks that ‘even the most panicked critics’ of tech haven’t yet reckoned with the full breadth of its disruption, with the vast transformation it has wrought on both our public and inner lives. The book takes big swings—at political and economic regimes—but it’s also quite intimate. Reading it, I thought a lot about my son . . . I don’t want my son’s consciousness in the custody of Google and Meta and ByteDance and Apple; I want it to belong to him.”—The Washingtonian
“Chris Hayes persuasively and heartrendingly argues . . . it has become almost impossible to ‘agree’ to attend to anything in the true, voluntary sense of that word . . . This book is Hayes’s attempt at sounding the alarm, one befitting a great fire, to remind us what’s at stake . . . His writing comes alive with an emotional truth . . . with passion and erudition.”—The Washington Post
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From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.
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Absolutely Necessary.
- By JT on 05-18-25
By: Nicholas Carr
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Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
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Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
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Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran.
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A Triumphant Work -Puts It All Together With Laser Clarity
- By Sjhoffman on 09-19-24
By: Anne Applebaum
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Abundance
- By: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.
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Advice to the Democratic Party from Klein & Thompson
- By Betsy Fowler on 03-31-25
By: Ezra Klein, and others
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Mindmasters (Anna Caputo version)
- The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior
- By: Sandra Matz
- Narrated by: Anna Caputo
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg.
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An Important book!! Very well written!! Empowering!
- By onili on 02-03-25
By: Sandra Matz
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Erasing History
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Combining historical research with an in-depth analysis of our modern political landscape, Erasing History issues a dire warning for America and the world: the worst fascist movements of humanity’s past began in schools; the same place so many of today’s right-wing political parties have trained their most vicious attacks. Yale professor Jason Stanley exposes the true danger of the right’s tactics and traces their inspirations and funding back to some of the most dangerous ideas of human history.
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The bias attitude of the author
- By Elizabeth ohanna on 09-30-24
By: Jason Stanley
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Attack from Within
- How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America
- By: Barbara McQuade
- Narrated by: Barbara McQuade
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country's hard-won democracy.
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Trump bashing
- By joseph clayson on 03-09-24
By: Barbara McQuade
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War
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency. War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.
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Draws Connections
- By Kyle on 10-18-24
By: Bob Woodward
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We Do Not Part
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, E. Yaewon - translator, Paige Aniyah Morris - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step.
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Powerful, Tough Listen
- By ncnickle on 01-26-25
By: Han Kang, and others
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The Longest Con
- How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
- By: Joe Conason
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump's path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him.
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America Needs to Know the Truth and Dangers of Trump
- By Tiberius on 12-01-24
By: Joe Conason
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Why We're Polarized
- By: Ezra Klein
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
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Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
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On Tyranny (Expanded Audio Edition)
- Updated with Twenty New Lessons from Russia's War on Ukraine
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exclusive audiobook edition, which includes eight hours of new content, Snyder combines the original essays from On Tyranny with twenty new lessons that answer the questions everyone is asking about this war. With forays into history, he clarifies the causes of the Russian invasion and the meaning of Ukrainian resistance, and explains the war's connections to threats to democracy here in the United States and around the world. Linking past and present, speaking only from notes, he guides the listener into the larger moral universe of On Tyranny.
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Best book of the decade
- By Chuck on 04-21-22
By: Timothy Snyder
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Drift
- The Unmooring of American Military Power
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan.
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Half the National Debt?
- By Dolf Beil on 04-07-12
By: Rachel Maddow
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Nexus
- A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Vidish Athavale
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world.
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Painfully boring
- By 80s Kid on 09-18-24
Social Media Attention: Who Knew
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A genuine public intellectual
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Insightful threading of current impacts of technology
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Thoughtful and captivating
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Will Hold Your Attention
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Smarter than I expected
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Attention is valuable
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It confirms our confusion about what seems to be different in the way today’s society adapts to information and how our social skills have changed and how grabbing our attention is the most precious commodity of today’s new world. It was an eye opener told by a wonderful orator.
Stating the obvious truth
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Timely + important in the age of attention.
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Siren's Call was wonderful
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