So you have troll wars, you have fake news, you have sort of the race to the bottom all at the early days of the invention of the business model.

That's Tim Wu, author of the attention merchants.

It's a book about the invention of the attention merchants, it's a book about the invention of the

attention economy when 19th century newspapers began the original race to the bottom of

the brainstem, and yes, they circulated stories that were just as ridiculous

as anything you'd find on today's

social media. He wrote a six-part series about the moon and what he'd found there

which surprising to our years they had giant huge trees, and the great revelation, these man bats that flew around and had promiscuous sex.

But what's striking about Tim's research is not just that these stories keep cropping up in print, on the radio, on television, and now online.

What's really striking is the rare moments when the race comes to a stop.

There are moments when audiences wake up and say enough.

I think it usually stems from some shock to the system that is so outlandish that there

actually tend to be mass movements. and it's not that surprising given

that what you have here is people's minds being fooled with and I think when people suddenly

realize that they've been fooled they become very upset.

With coronavirus we stand at just such a crossroads.

Today on the show we'll see what happens when the public demands a change of course

and what happens when the attention merchants

continue with business as usual,

which is the theme of Tim's second book,

The Curse of Bigness about antitrust

in the new guild that age.

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