The Weekend Intelligence: Attention, please!

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The Intelligence from The Economist

2026-08-08

43 分钟
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What do medieval monks, Brazilian leftists and New York academics have in common? They all want to know where our attention has gone. How can we regain our focus? Barclay Bram visits The Strother School of Radical Attention in New York to find out. The founders hope to build a political movement to fight big tech's domination of our attention. Their methods might not be what you expect.  Guests and host: Barclay Bram, presenter and senior producer of ‘The Weekend Intelligence'D Graham Burnett, historian and co-founder of the Strother School of Radical AttentionAlyssa Loh, filmmaker, writer, and faculty member at the Strother School of Radical AttentionPeter Schmidt, programme director at the Strother School of Radical AttentionJamie Kreiner, historian of the early Middle Ages at UCLATim Wu, professor of law at Columbia University  Topics covered: The attention economy The history of attentionBig tech Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+ For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Music by bluedot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. This podcast transcript is generated by third-party AI. It has not been reviewed prior to publication. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the transcript, its accuracy or its completeness, and we disclaim all liability regarding its receipt, content and use. If you have any concerns about the transcript, please email us at podcasts@economist.com. Read more about how we are using AI.
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  • The Economist

  • I don't know about you, but for much of my waking life, my attention is divided.

  • No, not divided.

  • It's fragmented, fragile and fractured.

  • I grab hold of a little piece of it, but then I've let go of a few others.

  • Part of it is the job.

  • Being a news hound was never going to be anything other than attentionally whiplashy.

  • And I'm not even on Instagram or TikTok or even Twitter since it became X.

  • Because I know how profligate I can be with my little pieces of attention

  • and I don't want to part with any more of them.

  • As protective of it as I try to be, I'm probably not thinking about attention the right way.

  • And you probably aren't either.

  • I'm Jason Palmer.

  • This is The Weekend Intelligence and what was I saying?

  • My colleague Barclay Bram has been looking into how we're all economic actors in the attention economy.

  • To be a rational actor, you've got to know what the medium of exchange is

  • and what exactly you're exchanging.

  • And if you can put your phone down for just one hot second

  • and think about it, those are actually hard questions to answer.

  • Hey, you.