in this talk we will discuss a new approach to understanding eigenfunction concentration. we characterize the features that cause an eigenfunction to saturate the standard supremum bounds in terms of the distribution of $l^2$ mass along geodesic tubes emanating from a point. we also show that the phenomena behind extreme supremum norm growth is identical to that underlying extreme growth of eigenfunctions when averaged along submanifolds. finally, we use these ideas to understand a variety of measures of concentration including high $l^p$ norms and weyl laws; in each case obtaining quantitative improvements over the known bounds.