The average adult in the U.S. sees more than 4,000 ads a day. In a city, that number climbs closer to 10,000. Add in roughly 7 hours of screen time a day, outside of work and school, and it's no wonder we're exhausted. We are surrounded by voices competing for our attention, all day, every day. American podcast listeners rack up over 800 million hours of content a week. Globally, we watch more than 650 billion hours of YouTube every year, about a billion hours a day. We fill every quiet...

There's a saying in our culture: "Not my circus, not my monkeys." It's a helpful reminder that we aren't the authority in every situation. If someone else's kids are acting up, it's not my job to discipline them. If store employees aren't doing their jobs, it's not up to me to manage them, since I'm not their boss. If there's small-town drama I'm not part of, I might grab the popcorn, but I won't interfere. Not my circus, not my monkeys. But what if it is my circus? What if these are my...

The Teacher looks at two options and tells us which one wins. And by the end of the chapter, those four observations add up to something much bigger: a diagnosis of exactly how a society falls apart, and a map for how to walk it back.