The other day, I read a statistic about my hometown of Washington D.C. that knocked my socks off. In D.C. high schools, 60 percent of students were chronically absent in the last school year. That means they missed one day of school every two weeks. Among ninth graders, it’s even worse: One-third of D.C. freshmen were absent for the equivalent of six weeks of school. The New York Times reported that, nationwide, one quarter of public school students are now chronically absent. That figure has pr...
Apr 05, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 22
What can the science of ancient humans and the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers teach us about how to be healthy today? Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman joins the show to talk about his provocative “mismatch theory,” why humans are dysevolved for the modern world, and why exercise is the ultimate miracle drug. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Daniel Lieberman Producer: Devon Renaldo Links: Exercised, by Dan Lieberman https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082H3ZH44?ref=KC_GS_GB_US The Story of the Hu...
Apr 02, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Today, the media vibes around electric vehicles are all bad. But if you lift up and take in the big picture, electric vehicles and hybrids are taking over the market. Gas-powered cars are as much in structural decline right now as the cable bundle in TV. Today’s guest, Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of the climate media company Heatmap, says that while EV sales are much stronger than the media doom-and-gloom narratives, something else is happening that deserves our attention. Amer...
Mar 26, 2024•50 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Derek shares his thoughts on the question of the moment in tech and tech politics. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mar 19, 2024•34 min•Season 3Ep. 19
Today, we’re talking about movies, the philosophy of hits in Hollywood, and why we might be at a fascinating inflection point in how the entertainment industry thinks about popularity and prestige. We start by thinking about the big Oscar win for 'Oppenheimer' in the historical context. For much of the past 10 or 15 years, popularity and prestige have come apart in Hollywood. The biggest movies have almost exclusively been comic book franchises, sequels, and adaptations, while the Best Picture w...
Mar 12, 2024•51 min•Season 3Ep. 18
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2024 was to do more episodes with people who think I'm wrong about something. For example, I've done several episodes about how the U.S. economy is doing much better than most Americans think. Today’s guest says my analysis (and that of many economists and economic commentators) is missing something big. Official inflation measures do a poor job of capturing the effect of higher interest rates. When a home goes from $200k to $220k, that’s a 10 percent increas...
Mar 05, 2024•30 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Today’s episode is about one of the most interesting pieces of research I’ve read in the past year. It's an idea called "need for chaos," and the truth is that I literally cannot stop thinking about it as I follow American culture, politics, and media. Very briefly, it is the observation that many Americans today embrace conspiracy theories and nihilistic burn-it-all-down messages, not because they are partisans of the left or right, but rather because they've become hopelessly cynical (sometime...
Mar 01, 2024•36 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Today’s episode is about the extraordinary decline in face-to-face socializing in America—and the real stakes of the country’s hanging-out crisis. From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Eric Klinenberg is a sociologist and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the ...
Feb 27, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Today’s episode is about arguably the most important economic statistic out there: real (or inflation-adjusted) wage growth. For much of the last few years, many people's real wages have declined. But for the last few quarters, real wages have been growing. In fact, they've grown so much for the poorest workers that several key measures of inequality are falling, and the Black-white wage gap is shrinking. But many Americans still don't seem to buy the idea that things are getting better. Today's...
Feb 23, 2024•39 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Life is a series of conversations. Our relationships, friendships, marriages, breakups, makeups, hirings, promotions, and firings are mostly the story of two people talking. And many of these conversations are hard or uncomfortable. Sometimes we spend years refusing to be honest with the people we know the best because we’re afraid of telling them how we feel. What if we all had such confidence in our own powers of communication and understanding that we didn’t fear these hard conversations at a...
Feb 20, 2024•41 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Today’s episode is about the science of slowing down the aging process … and why one biotech company has found some success with dogs. Last November, the New York Times reported that a company called Loyal had reached a milestone in the development of safe life extension drugs for our pets. This drug, which is called LOY-1, works to slow the aging process in large breeds. But Loyal's work holds major promise for helping all dogs live longer. It could even crack open some of the mysteries of mamm...
Feb 16, 2024•54 min•Season 3Ep. 12
We’ve done several shows on America’s anxiety crisis. This one asks several questions that might get me in trouble. Have we overcorrected from an era when mental health was shameful to talk about to an era where people talk about anxiety so much online that it’s worsening our mental health crisis? Is the very design of algorithmic media engineered to increase rumination and mental distress? Is there a dark side to all this media about trauma, anxiety, and depression? (Yes, the irony of us asking...
Feb 13, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 11
You could make the argument that last year was the worst year in human history for climate change. The Earth experienced its hottest day on record over and over and over again. Air surface temperature anomalies set a record in September. Ocean heat set a record too. The number of wildfires in Canada? Another record high. But you don’t have to squint too hard to see the good news. U.S. and European carbon emissions have actually declined this century. The rate of global deforestation is going dow...
Feb 09, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Something mysterious is happening in the politics of young men and women. Gen Z women—those in their 20s and younger—have become sharply more liberal in the past few years, while young men are shifting subtly to the right. This gender schism isn't just happening in the U.S. It's happening in Europe, northern Africa, and eastern Asia. Why? And what are the implications of sharply diverging politics between men and women in our lifetime? Alice Evans, a visiting fellow at Stanford University and a ...
Feb 06, 2024•56 min•Season 3Ep. 9
If you love food and also consider yourself a good person, you probably care about where your food comes from, how it’s grown, and whether it's part of a system that is destroying the planet. After all, if you study just about any problem related to the environment, sooner or later your study will make solid contact with our food systems. Our food is responsible for 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But not everybody who claims to care about the environment knows what they’re t...
Jan 30, 2024•59 min•Season 3Ep. 8
It's just a steel tumbler with a straw and side handle. But the Stanley cup is a social media phenomenon and an incredible business success story. How did this thing come out of nowhere? What lessons can we learn about its success? And, more broadly, what do cultural phenomena like this say about marketing trends, social media tastes, and the role of randomness in our life and economy? Joining the show are Amanda Mull, staff writer at The Atlantic, and Brian Klaas, author of the new book ‘Fluke:...
Jan 26, 2024•38 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Sports Illustrated layoffs. The demise of independent Pitchfork. Hundreds of millions of dollars in losses at major newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The state of the U.S. news industry is dire. How did we get here? Who knows the way out? The Ringer's Bryan Curtis joins the show, with contributions from an interview with NPR's David Folkenflik. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompso...
Jan 23, 2024•42 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Today is the third and final episode in our miniseries on this unique moment in global war and conflict. In the first episode, we looked at the turmoil in the Middle East. In the second episode, we offered explanations for the historic rise in global conflict between states and within states, from Eastern Europe to Central America. Now, we come home to the U.S. By just about any measure, the U.S. southern border is facing a historic crisis. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported ...
Jan 19, 2024•50 min•Season 3Ep. 5
This is the second episode in "World on Fire," a series on the historic levels of global violence and conflict in the Middle East, the Americas, and beyond. Listen to Part 1 here: "World on Fire, Part 1: The Houthis, Israel's Impossible War, and Worsening Middle East Chaos." You and I are living through an extraordinary period of global conflict. In Europe, Russia, and Ukraine are engaged in one of the continent's deadliest hot wars since 1945. In Africa, the last few years have seen devastating...
Jan 16, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 4
The chaos in the Middle East is getting worse. It’s not just in Gaza. It’s not the spasms of violence in the West Bank. It’s not just the northern border with Lebanon, where Israel is braced for the possibility of a new war. It’s not the Houthis in Yemen, disrupting Red Sea trade. It's not just Iran urging on these groups. It's all of it, all at once. Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, joins to break this all down and offer several big-picture explanations f...
Jan 12, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 3
The 'New York Times' bestselling author and contrarian self-help writer Oliver Burkeman joins the show to talk about his new audio essay series on work, focus, and interruptions—and how, too often, our emphasis on eliminating distractions ironically takes us away from the most important things in life. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Oliver Burkeman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your a...
Jan 09, 2024•48 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Derek shares what he considers the most important narratives of the moment, including the return of normalcy in economics, a big shift in sports media, Big Tech's 1890 moment, and ... aliens. Host: Derek Thompson Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jan 03, 2024•32 min•Season 3Ep. 1
If you're looking for a hopeful and mind-expanding conversation to round out the year, this one is for you. It's our breakthroughs of the year episode, covering 2023's biggest achievements in science and tech, including space technology, life extension, fusion, gene editing, vaccines, and, of course, GLP-1s. It has become a 'Plain English' tradition—after weeks of stories that often take us into sad areas, like anxiety, depression, and war—to close the year with a nerdy conversation about the mo...
Dec 27, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 71
One week ago, Matthew Perry’s autopsy report came back, finding that the ‘Friends’ actor died from the acute effects of ketamine overdose. His death has sharpened focus on the popular and controversial drug. Ketamine has been hailed as a miracle cure for depression and anxiety, criticized as a VC-fueled fad, and investigated as a placebo. But what is ketamine, what is its history, what do we know about how and why it works, and how could it help hundreds of millions of people with depression and...
Dec 22, 2023•44 min•Season 2Ep. 70
Today’s episode is about 2023 in media—from TV to film, from the miracle of Barbenheimer’s to the superhero drought, from Netflix’s show of strength to Taylor Swift’s invincibility, from the podcast purge to so much more. Our guest is Matt Belloni, the host of Ringer podcast ‘The Town’ and a writer with Puck. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Matthew Belloni Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about...
Dec 19, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 70
Today’s episode is our second in a series on the weight-loss drug revolution of the last two years. On Tuesday, we talked to endocrinologist Beverly Tchang about the science of glucagon like peptide 1 receptor agonists—also known as GLP1s, also known as Ozempic, Wegovy, Moujargo, and Zepbound. If you haven’t listened to that show, I think you’ll feel safe and entertained within the bounds of this episode. But if you want to know more about how these drugs work, their effect on insulin and glucos...
Dec 15, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 2Ep. 69
Today’s podcast is about the weight-loss drug revolution—which I believe might be one of the most important stories in the world right now. Despite all the attention weight-loss drugs are receiving, it’s possible that they might soon affect the world even more than we realize as they teach us about the science of human metabolism, decision-making, and even free will. Beverly Tchang, an endocrinologist at Weill Cornell, explains how these drugs work, what they mean for people with diabetes and ob...
Dec 12, 2023•51 min•Season 2Ep. 68
Today, we’re examining the U.S. housing market, starting with a specific question: Should you look to rent or buy your next home? By some metrics, this is the worst time to buy a house in 40 years. Housing prices are near record highs, especially compared to local rents. For many young people, the dream of homeownership might seem completely impossible right now, thanks to huge national demand colliding with short supply, especially in high-income areas. Meanwhile, high mortgage interest rates h...
Dec 08, 2023•46 min•Season 2Ep. 67
Today’s episode is about the controversial life and legacy of Henry Kissinger, who died last week at the age of 100. First as Nixon’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and then as an author and diplomacy whisperer in almost every subsequent administration, Kissinger's life is overstuffed with achievements and disasters and breakthroughs and catastrophes—many of which continue to shape the world we live in. Today’s guest is George Packer, an Atlantic staff writer and the author of...
Dec 05, 2023•55 min•Season 2Ep. 66
Today’s episode is a wide-ranging one, from breaking news in tech to the philosophy of social media. The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel joins to discuss Elon Musk's bizarre and crude comments at The New York Times DealBook Summit, the corporate meltdown of X, whether its demise would make the world better off, the fragmentation of the social media landscape, and its implications for audiences and news-makers everywhere. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at Pl...
Dec 01, 2023•56 min•Season 2Ep. 65
