# What happens when we pay attention?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/two-inconvenient-women-7014979/what-happens-when-we-pay-attention
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/two-inconvenient-women-7014979/what-happens-when-we-pay-attention.md
Podcast: [Two Inconvenient Women](https://stenobird.com/podcast/two-inconvenient-women-7014979)
Published: 2026-07-24T08:38:18+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/two-inconvenient-women/episodes/6a61d3c144c9eabf3c83ef23
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/66e198347fb05edbd0d09ae1/e/6a61d3c144c9eabf3c83ef23/media.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/two-inconvenient-women-7014979/episodes/what-happens-when-we-pay-attention
Duration seconds: 3574

## Resource

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity"(Simone Weil) and holds the power to radically and deeply shift how we think, feel and act in the world. Many people are now pointing to a shift of attention as key to unlocking humans from being stuck within so many negative behavioural patterns; inviting us to pay closer attention to what we are actually doing, why that might be and whether our thoughts, feelings and actions are serving us or future generations of life on this planet. But what does it mean to pay attention? And why is this so hard these days? In this week's podcast we dive into the complexities of staying present and alert in a culture dominated by fractured attention; reflecting on how hard it feels to be consciously alert when our attention is being grabbed and actively manipulated by social media algorithms and quick dopamine hits. We explore the pressures of staying present in an overwhelmingly complex culture, and talk about some of the practices for coming back into the 'now'; thinking about the different ways of paying closer attention to ourselves, to each other and to the wider world we are part of. In this conversation, we reference the following: The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle (Book) Cosmic Eye (short video) Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (book) The Master and his Emissary - Iain McGilchrist (book) Why our attention spans are shrinking - Gloria Mark (PDF) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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## Transcript

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