The Sirens' Call

How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

By: Chris Hayes

Narrated by: Chris Hayes

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

From the New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society

“An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics.” —New York Times

“Brilliant book… Reading it has made me change the way I work and think.” —Rachel Maddow

We all feel it—the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, “With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.” Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition whose only parallel is what happened to labor in the nineteenth century: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. The Sirens’ Call is the big-picture vision we urgently need to offer clarity and guidance.

Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. As Hayes writes, “Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances, and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human.” The Sirens’ Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic framework so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.©2025 Chris Hayes (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Chris Hayes’s spirited new book, The Sirens’ Call, takes a strong stand against the temptations of social media and information overload, on the grounds that the human attention span is ill equipped to absorb and act on such a constant stream of data. Among other things, the book—already a best seller, and one of our recommended titles this week—reveals that Hayes has abandoned scrolling for the old-fashioned pleasure of reading the newspaper in print each day, which sounds like a pretty good prescription to this fan of old media.”—Gregory Cowles, The New York Times

“The Sirens’ Call is a provocative book, readable and well-argued and alarming. Hayes thinks that ‘even the most panicked critics’ of tech haven’t yet reckoned with the full breadth of its disruption, with the vast transformation it has wrought on both our public and inner lives. The book takes big swings—at political and economic regimes—but it’s also quite intimate. Reading it, I thought a lot about my son . . . I don’t want my son’s consciousness in the custody of Google and Meta and ByteDance and Apple; I want it to belong to him.”—The Washingtonian

“Chris Hayes persuasively and heartrendingly argues . . . it has become almost impossible to ‘agree’ to attend to anything in the true, voluntary sense of that word . . . This book is Hayes’s attempt at sounding the alarm, one befitting a great fire, to remind us what’s at stake . . . His writing comes alive with an emotional truth . . . with passion and erudition.”—The Washington Post

Social Media Attention: Who Knew

Excellent book on how social medial attention has changed our lives, our politics & how we interact with each other. Extremely thought provoking. Loved it!!!

Insightful threading of current impacts of technology

Chris Hayes threads the Information Age technologies and shows how it is, and to some extent has always been, about the commodification of our attention. Although touched on the challenge of our choices we make as part of the cycle we’re in, I would like to hear more about solutions now that the problem is clear. , Perhaps a follow-on subject (collaboration with Sam Harris?) acknowledging the absence of ‘free will’. Thanks Chris!

A genuine public intellectual

Chris Hayes brings fresh eyes and analysis to our current predicament. He provides more questions than answers, but that is how solutions are gradually formed.

Interesting concepts - kept my attention!

Thoughtfully constructed argument about the commodification of attention with solid references- i really enjoyed this book!

Thoughtful and captivating

I didn’t want this to end. Thank you Chris, you should create, write and read more.

Will Hold Your Attention

Mr. Hayes provides critical historical context to help us better grasp the current moment, the chronic, incessant inner turmoil of what we WANT to pay attention to and what we ACTUALLY give our attention. He reminds us of our own attention agency against seemingly insurmountable capitalist pressures; we have freedom of will and we can be better stewards of our own minds. Ultimately, thankfully, he leaves us with hope, and not the nostalgic kind, that we ARE indeed experiencing a hinge moment in attention capitalism, a point of diminishing return in terms our collective attention investment in technology and in particular, social media. Bravo, Mr. Hayes! Your book certainly held my attention and I am all the better for it.

Smarter than I expected

I appreciated Hayes’ efforts to ground his analysis of our attentional problems in philosophy and social theory. His “solution” section might have drawn on psychological and sociological thought in much the same way but instead was decidedly skimpy: let’s listen to vinyl and switch from social media to group chats.

Attention is valuable

Great book and definitely worth a listen. If you enjoyed Mr. Hayes previous two book you will definitely enjoy this

Stating the obvious truth

There is much validation in this well documented collection of truth about how our mailable minds have been so dreadfully manipulated by today’s technology.
It confirms our confusion about what seems to be different in the way today’s society adapts to information and how our social skills have changed and how grabbing our attention is the most precious commodity of today’s new world. It was an eye opener told by a wonderful orator.

Timely + important in the age of attention.

This book will probably validate a lot of things that you already feel are true, while giving you more well, researched and evidence based background information about how we have entered the age of the attention economy.