While the broader economy is almost certainly not in a recession, the U.S. housing market is facing a painful reset. As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to reduce inflation, the most rate-sensitive sector of the economy—which is housing—is taking it on the chin. Today's guest, Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, breaks down the queasy state of the U.S. housing market, the prospect of a correction, what nationwide falling housing prices will mean for the broader economy...
Sep 15, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 93
In 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to 17 ambitious goals to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change by 2030. Seven years in, the world is on track to achieve almost none of those goals, according to a new report from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But the world really is getting better, the founder and philanthropist Bill Gates tells Derek in this episode. Around the globe, poverty, hunger, and child mortality rates are falling. Income, health care coverage, and lifespans a...
Sep 13, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 92
We're in a new phase of the Ukraine-Russia war. Paul Poast of the University of Chicago returns to the podcast to break down Ukraine's extraordinary counteroffensive. He explains why this counterattack is reminiscent of D-Day, why President Vladimir Putin continues to struggle to achieve his objectives, and whether the end of the war could be within sight. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. You can find us on TikTok at www.tik...
Sep 12, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 91
Hours before the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Derek talked to Duncan Weldon, the Britain economics correspondent at The Economist, about the UK's political and economic challenge. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent energy prices soaring across Europe, but few countries have it worse than the UK, where inflation skyrocketed past 10 percent and the Bank of England projects a deep and lasting recession. This comes after a 15-year period of utter economic stagnation, Brexit, and the clown show of...
Sep 08, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 90
Students are going back to school this month. But according to many news sources, there won't be nearly enough teachers to greet them. The Washington Post has warned of a “catastrophic teacher shortage.” ABC World News Tonight called it a new “growing crisis,” and the Wall Street Journal warned of a “dog-eat-dog” scramble to hire underqualified instructors. Heather Schwartz, a senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation, explains why she thinks the "national teacher shortage" narrative is o...
Sep 06, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 89
Earlier this year, it appeared that Democrats were going to get destroyed in the midterms. Joe Biden's approval rating was in the toilet, inflation was raging, and everything was going wrong. It wouldn't have been historically shocking if Democrats lost seats in November. The party in power typically loses seats in midterm elections, thanks in part to the electorate's preference for balance. But then something weird happened. Joe Biden's polls went up. And up. And up. Republican Senate nominees ...
Sep 02, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 88
The level of student debt in this country represents a massive policy error. But is forgiving up to $20,000 of student debt really the best way to help low-income Americans, or fix the nation's education-financing problems? The Atlantic's Jerusalem Demsas joins Derek to discuss the student loan forgiveness debate and weigh the positives and negatives of Biden's controversial new policy. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. You c...
Aug 30, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 87
Today’s episode is about the entertainment and media industry’s tumultuous summer, the streaming wars, a come-to-Jesus moment for movie theaters, and a dramatic revamp at CNN—which tells a lot about the state of the news industry. My guest is Matt Belloni, host of the Ringer podcast 'The Town' and a founding partner at Puck News. He tells us what he’s hearing from his deep industry sources about the future of the blockbuster, the demise of the romantic comedy, the purge at HBO Max, and the murky...
Aug 26, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 86
The economist Raj Chetty has spent much of the last decade trying to answer a very big question: What happened to the American Dream? In 1940, a child born into the average American household had a 92 percent chance of making more money than his or her parents. But in the last half century, something has gone wrong. A child born in 1980 had just a 50 percent chance of surpassing her parents’ income. So, in 40 years, earning more than your parents went from being a near certainty to no better tha...
Aug 23, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 85
Bestselling author Chuck Klosterman talks to Derek about the death of the monoculture, how the internet creates cults of fans and anti-fans, and how “hating things” became a mainstream personality trait and a political position. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Chuck Klosterman Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
Aug 19, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 84
I've never before recorded an episode specifically about Donald Trump. I guess I’ve been holding out for the chaos that typically swirls around him to exceed an extremely high bar of freaky nonsense. This week, I am forced to conclude that the bar has been surpassed. The January 6 investigations in D.C. and the New York state business investigation are newsworthy on their own. But last week, federal agents descended on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and Florida home, and came away with a trove...
Aug 16, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 83
Several years ago, the writer, researcher, and policy advocate Heather McGhee traveled around the country to report on how racism in America holds us back from policies that would benefit everybody. In her book The Sum of Us, she explained how racist fears have made us all worse off. For decades, many voters and politicians have fought against policies that would have gotten them better jobs, better benefits, and more upward mobility—because they were afraid that those policies might also help n...
Aug 12, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 82
Last year, somebody explained the problem of climate change to me with a metaphor that I’ve never been able to forget. They said: Imagine a bathtub. The bathtub is the planet’s atmosphere. The faucet is on full blast and it’s quickly filling with water. The gushing faucet represents every source of global carbon emissions, from "Big Agriculture" and energy companies to cars and cow farts. The water is carbon itself. The challenge of climate change mitigation is straightforward: Stop the water fr...
Aug 09, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 81
In our second "Curiosity Corner" mailbag, Derek takes your burning questions. He breaks down the myths around how monkeypox spreads, and blasts public health officials for not being more specific about who is most affected. He explains how, while millennials face an affordability crisis in developed countries, they might not want to trade their global generation for any previous period in history. And he answers a listener who asks whether we should fear population collapse more than we fear ove...
Aug 05, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Why does it seem like the old is eating the new in pop culture? This year, the song of the summer is arguably Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”—which was released in 1985. It was launched by the most-watched global TV show of the summer, 'Stranger Things'—an homage to the 1980s. In movies, the biggest hit of the season is 'Top Gun: Maverick'—a sequel to the 1986 film. The '80s was four decades ago! The triumph of nostalgia and familiarity in culture is deeper than one summer. The five biggest m...
Aug 03, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 79
“Every few years, American politics astonishes you.” That’s how The Atlantic journalist Robinson Meyer began his report on the Democrats' new climate deal, which would invest record-breaking sums in clean energy infrastructure. Yes, this is still just a bill. It could be revised. But in a summer of climate doom—record breaking heat, droughts, fires in Europe—we are looking at an extraordinary leap forward. So what’s in the deal? What would it actually do? And how could it realistically transform...
Aug 01, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 78
On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that GDP dropped for the second consecutive quarter, fueling fears that the economy is in a recession. Today's guest is Austan Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama. In today’s episode, we talk about the most important details from the GDP report, investigate the curious case of America’s plummeting productivity, ...
Jul 29, 2022•42 min•Season 1Ep. 77
Today is the second half of our special two-parter on the state of crypto. Yesterday’s theme was the case against. Today we debate the case for. In the last few weeks, use-cases have become a popular trope in the big crypto debate. Crypto has tens of thousands of people working with dozens of billions of dollars on building new technology. And I think it’s fair to ask: What have they built that is better than the status quo? What, as Monty Python might ask, has blockchain ever done for us? Today...
Jul 26, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 76
Today, we have the first in a two-part series on lessons from the crypto crash. Crypto, also known as Web3, also known as blockchain-based technologies, remains the weirdest space I’ve ever reported on. I’ve never learned so much about a topic where there were people I trusted roughly equally, whose intelligence I trusted roughly equally, coming to completely opposite opinions. People I consider brilliant think this is the wave of the future. Others are fairly positive that the bulk of this worl...
Jul 25, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 75
The world is kind of a mess right now. There is a big, bloody, awful war between Russia and Ukraine, which has hugely disrupted global trade, especially in commodities like oil, wheat, and natural gas. Europe is on fire, and the euro is crashing. Boris Johnson is out as the U.K.’s prime minister, and Mario Draghi has resigned as Italy’s prime minister. There are tremors in China, as the world’s second-largest economy fumbles through a ridiculous COVID-Zero policy. In Sri Lanka, crowds stormed th...
Jul 22, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 74
The world is on fire. In southern Europe, wildfires are streaking from Portugal to Greece. In the U.K., airport runways melted as temperatures exceeded 103 degrees for the first time on record. In the U.S. this week, about one in five Americans are living in a place that will be even hotter than the U.K.’s historic mark. And what is our government doing about it? Pretty close to nothing. But if you look behind these headlines, there’s something very interesting happening. In the past decade, the...
Jul 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 73
Well, that escalated quickly. Let's review, shall we? In January, Elon Musk started buying a bunch of Twitter stock. In February, he kept buying. In March, he owned about 5 percent of the company. In April, he offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion. In May, he tweeted a poop emoji. In June, his net worth crashed. In July, he tried to back out of the deal—and Twitter countersued. It seems very clear from the company's lawsuit that Twitter is prepared to take this all the way, possibly to even for...
Jul 14, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 72
Will Netflix be the king of streaming in five years? What's the biggest threat to dethrone it: Apple, Disney, or HBO? Are movie theaters back for real? How has the pandemic changed the film industry? Is TikTok the biggest arch-villain in entertainment? Where do hits come from? What is the metaverse, and will I like living in it? Derek has a lot of questions. His guests—Bloomberg entertainment reporter Lucas Shaw, and author of 'THE METAVERSE' Matthew Ball—have many answers. Host: Derek Thompson ...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 71
Derek has so many thoughts on Elon Musk's bizarre attempted breakup with Twitter—and what comes next—that he has to enumerate them. In this episode, he goes through five reasons Elon is trying to wriggle out of this deal and three ways this saga will end. Host: Derek Thompson Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jul 10, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 70
The question everybody's asking on cable news right now is whether we're in a recession. I think there's an even more important question to ask: Are we at peak inflation? If inflation U-turns, it means the Fed won’t have to keep jacking up interest rates, won’t have to keep destroying demand, and won’t have to indefinitely pump the U.S. economy with tranquilizing drugs to break the fever. I believe peak inflation is right here, right now. In retail, Target and Gap are slashing prices on inventor...
Jul 08, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 69
Today’s episode is about the story of the moment—gun violence. There’s been a surge of violent shootings, mass shootings, and gun-related murders in the last few years. Today, Derek investigates a mystery behind this surge of violence: Why are the police so bad at solving murders? According to FBI statistics, in the 1960s nearly 100 percent of all murders were "cleared" by police, typically by arrest. In 2020, the clearance rate hit an all-time low of nearly 50 percent. Today, half of the murder...
Jul 06, 2022•49 min•Season 1Ep. 68
In last week's instant reaction pod, Derek said he thought abortion pills were one of the most fascinating and important aspects of the end of the era of Roe. In this episode, he goes deeper into how this new technology could change the abortion debate and national politics. Abortion pills that weren't in use 50 years ago are popular, common, safe, hard to track, and legal in more than half the country. Dozens of conservative states are moving to outlaw most abortions, including medication abort...
Jul 01, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 67
I feel like the theme of this podcast recently has been that everything is going off the rails: the Supreme Court, inflation, oil prices, air travel snafus. Take the economy, for example. My theory for the past few months has been that the odds of a recession are nervously high. But when I start feeling myself become a bit ideological, it’s always worth asking: What if I’m wrong? So what I want to execute in this episode is a bit of a zag. Today's guest, Conor Sen, an economic columnist for Bloo...
Jun 28, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 66
We react to the landmark Supreme Court decision and explain how it could affect the future of the court, national politics, fertility and family planning, state law, corporate policy, and more. To further explain the implications of this decision we re-air an interview we did seven weeks ago with Margot Sanger-Katz when news of the Supreme Court leak first broke. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Margot Sanger-Katz Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoi...
Jun 24, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 65
Lately, it feels like we’re surrounded by systems and industries that aren’t working the way they should. There's an oil shortage, and a baby formula shortage, and a used car shortage, and a microchip shortage. Now, here comes the airline industry shortage. This past weekend, thousands of flights were cancelled because airlines didn't have enough pilots, grounds crew, or planes. People were stranded in airports for eight hours or longer. JetBlue, American, and Delta collectively canceled about 9...
Jun 24, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 64
