The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource appeared on President Obama’s book list for 2025. I have steered clear of too many political books recently, trying to maintain my mental health in the current situation we are in here in the United States. While there are political elements to this book, there is also plenty here that is food for thought about our information age.

Chris Hayes is a name that might be familiar to you if you watch MSNBC (or whatever they are calling it now). He has hosted the 8PM-9PM slot for quite a number of years now. In addition, he is one of the editors of The Nation magazine and has had essays published in numerous publications. Short version: He knows his stuff.

He puts forth the argument that our attention has been commodified. I would agree with that. More than ever, it feels like our attention is being pulled in many different directions. Going back to the beginning of radio and television, this was the case. The way for these endeavors to be profitable, they had to sell advertising. Advertising had to grab the listener’s or viewer’s attention. With the advent of the internet, the pull has gotten worse with sensationalized headlines and clickbait.

Hayes knows he’s one of the people competing for this attention on television. He doesn’t shy away from his own place in all of this. Throughout the book, he lets readers in on the thought process he and the people who work behind the scenes on his show have to go through, all in a desire to command viewers’ attention. When he first started, he faced a situation where there were strong ratings on the shows before and after him, which kept everyone very fixated on how they could improve it. They didn’t want to make the show “better,” they just wanted higher ratings.\

This is the motivation behind many of the news programs out there. They don’t worry about accurate reporting, but rather what they can do to grab viewers’ attention. Nowhere is this more evident than on Fox News, where they say what will keep their audience tuned in, rather than reporting accurately.

Hayes also talks about attention from the point of view of the individual. There’s some psychoanalysis as to what grabs and holds our attention and why. The Siren in this is not just the sea creature that lures men to their deaths, but also the siren that’s used by emergency services to get us to stop what we are doing and pay attention to it.

I have often said to my husband that people don’t value “rest” anymore. We are pushed to be going, going, going all the time. Vacations aren’t a time for rest, but for doing other things than what we normally do. Hayes basically makes the same argument about attention. Prisoners put in isolation felt that it was more a form of torture than beatings. We don’t like quiet time that lets our mind drift and just go wherever. We must constantly be viewing something or doom-scrolling on our phones.

And Hayes takes plenty of issue with the concept of having all the information known to man at our fingertips all the time. It sounds like a good idea, but is it just taking up our attention without giving us anything in return?

All of this is discussed extensively in the book. There are many different ways our everyday life tries to grab our attention. Is there anything we can do about it? Hayes doesn’t say. He’s just putting the arguments out there that we have allowed our attention to be commodified. He’s hoping, much the same way vinyl records are making a comeback, that the small communities or chat rooms will come back, which was the way of the very early internet.

The one issue I noticed in the book is that Hayes uses language that can be difficult for some. As an avid reader, I had no problem following his vocabulary. I listened to The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource on audiobook, and my spouse could listen when he was around. He commented that it lost him a number of times because he didn’t understand what Hayes was saying. As impressive as his vocabulary is, it can be a problem for some people to understand.

Hayes does his own narration of the audiobook, and I liked this quite a bit. His enthusiasm comes through for the topic, and I don’t have to question whether the narrator is interpreting the written word the way the author wanted it.

I think this book can make people more aware of how our attention has been commodified and make adjustments, if needed. I started avoiding a lot of clickbait headlines when I recognized them. Identifying sensationalism is just one part of it, though. In the age of social media, there are many things that keep our brains riveted, but is that the same as using them?