STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World

Bold is the author/narrator who starts an audiobook by explaining how overstimulated people are by sound and media and how they need more silence. Listeners who stick with this audiobook will learn how hard it was for journalist Lyons (Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us), a self-proclaimed talkaholic, to keep his desire to talk under control. He is honest about the problems overtalking has caused. Social media, screens everywhere, and even background music contribute to sensory overload. His prescription is to not only speak less but listen more. Lyons’s research covers mansplaining, personal relationships, and work. Concrete suggestions for turning down the noise in people’s lives are helpful. It is difficult to choose silence in a world where people value getting the last word and where two million podcasts have produced 48 million episodes. And yet, as Lyons points out, many hugely successful people have managed to shut up. Lyons is an able narrator who brings self-deprecation and humor to parts that may lose their impact in print. His emphatic delivery is dynamic, and listeners may find themselves nodding along in agreement.