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The Michael Steele Podcast

How Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump Profit Off Our Attention (Quick Take)

The Michael Steele Podcast

The Bulwark

Politics, Government, History, News

4.83.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Michael Steele speaks with Chris Hayes about his new book, “The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource.” The pair discuss how companies like Apple, Google and Amazon profit off our attention and how Donald Trump used branding to capture our attention and the Presidential election in 2024.

If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review or share it with a friend!

Check out Chris' book, The Sirens' Call, here: https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Call-Attention-Endangered-Resource/dp/0593653114

Follow Chris Hayes @chrislhayes
Follow Michael Steele @MichaelSteele
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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

No one says running a restaurant is easy, but Square definitely makes it easier.

0:05.0

So much more than a point of sale, Square is packed with clever tech to help all areas of the business,

0:10.0

like staff time cards and customer loyalty programs, as well as fast access to your takings,

0:15.0

so you can focus on what you do best, delivering great food and great service.

0:20.0

Square, big in restaurants. Join at square.com. Fee great service. Square, begin restaurants.

0:21.7

Join at square.com.

0:23.0

Please apply.

0:23.6

Square Up Europe Limited is authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011.

0:27.8

Registered reference number 9-0-846.

0:30.0

The key insight about this error that we think of as being an error in which information is the most important resource, is that information is not the most important resource. Information is infinite, it's copyable, it's generative,

0:44.8

there's tons of information everywhere. It's important to this economy, but it's not fixed

0:50.4

and finite in the way attention is. And the key insight comes from a brilliant economist

0:55.4

and political scientist named Herb Simon, who in the 1970s said, information consumes

1:03.7

something and what it consumes is attention. And the more information is, the more strain there is on the attention.

1:12.4

So what it means is that the information age is actually the attention age.

1:15.8

And one way I talk about it in the book is this.

1:18.4

And I use a metaphor that Lawrence Lessig, a brilliant scholar had once used, when he was

1:24.2

talking about the difference between physical property and intellectual property.

1:27.4

So this is what he says.

1:28.2

He says, let's say you have a picnic table in your backyard and you've got a neighbor with a backyard.

1:33.3

If the neighbor steals your idea for a picnic table, then they put a picnic table in their yard

1:38.7

and like your life doesn't really change.

...

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