Rewilding Attention with D. Graham Burnett
Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet Productions
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We all know our attention is being competed for — but historian of science D. Graham Burnett calls it something more alarming: a "civilizational biohack." In this episode, we talk with Burnett, a Princeton historian of science and co-founder of "The Friends of Attention," about the movement to liberate our minds from the 17-trillion-dollar attention economy. He draws on surprising sources — the German Romantics, St. Augustine, Simone Weil, Henry James — to argue that we've lost touch with older, richer forms of attention. And he makes the case that reclaiming it will require more than screentime apps or digital detox – it’ll take collective resistance. Plus: why your Pilates class, your evening needlework, or your walk with the dog might already be forms of radical attention — and how reframing everyday activities can make ordinary life feel richer, more mysterious and more full of wonder.
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- “Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement”
- The Friends of Attention
- The Strother School of Radical Attention
- D. Graham Burnett website
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0:00 Introduction
3:00 Human Fracking
27:30 Attention as Generosity
30:55 Wonder and Disenchantment
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Wonder Cabinet. |
| 0:03.5 | I'm Anne Strange Champs in a deeper register today, getting over a head cold. |
| 0:08.2 | Well, better than yesterday. I'm Steve Paulson. We talk a lot about wonder on this podcast as an experience and also as a practice. |
| 0:16.7 | Because the feeling of wonder, that combination of amazement, joy, reverence, awe, |
| 0:22.6 | that's not something you can just order up like a package from Amazon. |
| 0:26.6 | You have to keep yourself open to it. Be curious. Notice beauty. Get outdoors. |
| 0:31.6 | And that's harder to do in today's attention economy. |
| 0:34.6 | Many of us feel a little less open to wonder these days, |
| 0:38.7 | a little too stressed out for awe and mystery. |
| 0:41.7 | And maybe that's not only because our email is piled up |
| 0:44.4 | and our screen time has ballooned, |
| 0:46.4 | but because our attention is being fracked. |
| 0:49.9 | What's happened in the last 15 years |
| 0:53.0 | represents a historically unprecedented innovation. |
| 0:57.8 | The rise of a $17 trillion suite of corporations who have as their primary business model |
| 1:07.9 | extracting value from us, from our minds and our eyes. It's a civilizational |
| 1:18.8 | biohack. Dee Graham Burnett is a historian of science and an attention activist, and he's one of the |
| 1:26.1 | primary founders of a group called the Friends of Attention |
| 1:28.8 | that's building a movement to reclaim our attention. |
| 1:32.7 | We all know by now that in today's global marketplace, |
| 1:36.2 | attention is money. |
| 1:37.8 | Big tech and the entertainment giants, you know, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Amazon. |
... |
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