This is Hayden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. There are so many universals in the human experience.

Hunger, thirst, lust, fear, they drive us as much as they did humans a hundred, a thousand, or even a hundred thousand years ago.

But there are also experiences that feel unique to our current moment that only modern humans have encountered.

Among them, the many competing forces desperately seeking our attention.

The social media and news apps pushing alerts to our phones, the streaming TV services, and yes, podcasts offering us endless opportunities to binge our favorite shows.

All this clamoring for our attention can be exhausting.

It reminded us of an episode we did a little while back about how our attention is being constantly harvested and hijacked.

Esther Blyh grew up with a mom who kept her kitchen free from food coloring and high fructose corn syrup.

Esther's lunch box was subject to the same rules.

So I would have snap peas, I would have an orange, sometimes it would be leftovers, and one maybe like gummy snack, but it would only be like health gummy.

Of course, Esther craved the processed snacks and cereals that her classmates were eating. Television commercials fueled her desire.

One of her favorites was for Tricks Yogurt.

It's black and white.

Hey, a pack is from home.

Tricks rabbit is inside this costume.

And he starts describing all the wonderful fruits that aren't real, but they actually are real.

Strawberry banana bash, raspberry rainbow.

It's the rabbit!

As the kids take a bite, they start to turn the color, and at the very end, everything's like technicolour.

Now Tricks Yogurt of course was banned from the Blyh family fridge because it had artificial flavors and food colorings.

But at breakfast time, Esther says her mom allowed her one solitary sugary exception.

So I wasn't encouraged to have sugary cereals unless possibly her or my father had had them growing up.

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