We turn now to our PBS News podcast, Settle in.

In the latest episode, we explore what's caused a loss of trust in institutions,

what the Trump administration has revealed about the way power works in this country,

and how to find hope during the onslaught of difficult daily news.

I recently spoke about all of this with the University of North Carolina professor in New York

Times columnist Tressie McMillan Kottom. Here's an excerpt. How much of our political dysfunction

is actually an attention problem? And how much has the media economy reshaped what kinds of stories and people get rewarded?

Yeah.

I think there is something to the fact that obviously our attention has been monetized in a way that is really antithetical to how, like, human curiosity has worked for millennia.

But I do think we overstate that fact because it kind of sounds like when you start

talking about, you know, so many things are competing for our attention. And so we just can't

capture people long enough to tell them what matters, right? And to move them politically. I think there's a bit of a cop-out, right?

It is true that it is hard to compete with TikTok, and it is difficult

to compete with means, and it is absolutely true that the media ecosystem now rewards the

production of cheap, emotion-driven content over meaningful information and news. But it is also the case that that is not

naturally occurring. That, too, was a political choice. It is a political choice not to regulate

technology companies. It was a political choice. I would point out that both the Democrats and

the Republicans have had an opportunity to do and have failed to do so.

No one has shown a political appetite, real strong political appetite for regulating technology

companies, because at the root of that is what I would argue is the real problem, which is

extreme wealth inequality and the extent to which money has infiltrated our systems of governance

and certainly campaign financing. And so we have been willing to cede our attention in the name

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