220. Is Your Attention Span Shrinking?
No Stupid Questions
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2024
⏱️ 37 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I savored it. I absorbed it. I loved it. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Mike Mon. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. |
| 0:14.4 | Today on the show, are attention spans really shrinking? |
| 0:19.2 | Ten minutes sounds so long to me, Mike. |
| 0:40.8 | Angela, I have a question for you today. I have a question for you today. |
| 0:47.4 | I have been hearing a lot about how the modern attention span is so much shorter than it used to be. |
| 0:53.7 | And I know that there are more potential distractions today with phones, the internet, social media, etc. |
| 0:56.0 | But is our ability to focus actually diminishing? Or are there just more things battling for our attention than there used to |
| 1:03.1 | be? Do we now have the attention span of a gnat or a dog like squirrel? By the way, I have also |
| 1:09.6 | asked this question. Are our attention spans shrinking? |
| 1:14.1 | It is possible that human beings in 2024 |
| 1:17.1 | have the same attention spans that we had in 1924 |
| 1:21.8 | or 1524 or whenever, |
| 1:26.4 | but we happen to be in this buffet of amazing things. And so, of course, |
| 1:31.6 | we move from one item to the other quickly, but we have the same attention spans. It's not |
| 1:36.3 | that we're any different. It's just that our environments are very attention grabbing. But I |
| 1:41.3 | think when people ask this question, they are asking whether, because of the |
| 1:46.3 | environments we're in, we're different. Right. Can we not even pay attention if we're maximally motivated? |
| 1:52.4 | Here's where, like, I will admit, the other week I was with two of my friends at a concert. It's called |
| 1:59.3 | Croce by Crocee. So Jim Crocey died in a plane crash. |
| 2:03.7 | And his son... Who's Jim Croce? I think I know who that is, but I think I don't know who that is. |
| 2:09.3 | He has some iconic songs like Bad, Bad, Leroy, Brown. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And his son now sings his |
| 2:15.7 | music. And the amount of great music Jim Croce was able to put out that's still iconic today in just a short period of time before he died was amazing. |
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