Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep-dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives.

I'm your host, Harry Littman.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming.

So every so often you pick up a nonfiction book that gives voice to an idea you think you

already had in your head, and it fills it out in compelling detail so that it becomes one of the thoughts

that you carry with you into the world. Our conversation today is with just such an author and

just such an idea. The idea is that attention has become the most scarce resource of our time,

and that we are being bombarded with constant demands for it that leave us all a little bit insane.

And the raft of favorable reviews emphasize that this is an idea that captures a key component of our frenzied and

off-kilter lives. So well, in fact, that this just in, as they say in the media, I have

the honor of announcing that Sirens Call is going to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, both for nonfiction and fiction and nonfiction combined.

That's tomorrow morning, so timing is everything.

You've come at a very good time.

And the author of this idea is... Timing is everything. You've come at a very good time.

And the author of this idea is Chris Hayes, the New York Times best-selling author of A Colony in a Nation and Twilight of the Elites. And for the last 12 years, the Emmy Award-winning host

of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, where daily he brings home important

and difficult ideas with clarity, incisiveness, and quick wit.

I'm doing a lot less TV these days for many reasons, but there's one show I never say no to.

That is All In with Chris Hayes. Please join me in

welcoming the author of Sirens Call, Chris Hayes.

Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He seemed to have struck a timely chord.

Do you get that idea?

...