Plain English with Derek Thompson

Today's show is a critical look at some of the most popular health fads of the moment, with return guests Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg, from the Growth Equation and the ‘FAREWELL’ podcast. We’re talking VO2 max, the benefits of sunlight, so-called morning and nighttime “stacks” (complex multivitamin routines for optimizing your energy and sleep), and Silicon Valley dreams of immortality. Plus, a rant from Derek about the supplement mania of independent media. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Steve Magness & Brad Stulberg Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: The ‘FAREWELL’ podcast: https://thegrowtheq.com/farewell-podcast/ The FDA's note on dietary supplement regulation: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/rumor-control/facts-about-dietary-supplements Joe Rogan's supplement stack: https://jrelibrary.com/articles/joe-rogans-supplement-stack/ Huberman's sleep stack: https://www.nsdr.co/post/andrew-hubermans-sleep-cocktail The Mayo Clinic on creatine: https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-creatine/art-20347591 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard, returns to the show to discuss the biggest economic questions of the moment, including: - Why have home and auto insurance prices skyrocketed? - Why did inflation stop falling in 2024? - How did economic experts get their disinflation forecasts so wrong? - What sticky-high prices are preventing further disinflation? - Are interest rates going to be higher for years? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.  Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jason Furman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"This presidential election is not very interesting, but it is important," the political commentator Josh Barro wrote in his newsletter, 'Very Serious.' Americans certainly seem to agree with the first part. Engagement with political news has been in the dumps, and many Americans seem to be tuning out the Biden-Trump II rematch. But the conundrum of this election is that it is both numbingly overfamiliar for many voters and also profoundly important for America and the world. The differences between a Biden and a Trump presidency for America’s domestic and foreign policy are huge. Too often, these differences are ignored in horse-race coverage—and, sometimes, they even go underemphasized by the campaigns and their own advocates. If you turn on a news segment or read a long article, you’ll probably hear about the dangers that Trump poses to democracy, or the rule of law, or the administrative state. All worthy concerns. But what is at stake for our most basic bread-and-butter issues: abortion, inflation, economic growth, government spending, entitlements, immigration, and foreign policy? Josh and Derek talk about the roots of voter ambivalence, what Trump's second administration could look like, and the biggest differences between a Biden and Trump White House. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.  Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Josh Barro Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jay Van Bavel is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. His lab has published papers on how the internet became a fun-house mirror of extreme political opinions, why the news media has a strong negativity bias, why certain emotions go viral online, why tribalism is inflamed by online activity, and how the internet can make us seem like the worst versions of ourselves. At the same time, Van Bavel emphasizes that many of the group psychology dynamics that can make social media seem like a dumpster fire are also core to what makes humankind such a special and ingenious species. We discuss the four dark laws of online engagement and the basics of group psychology. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jay Van Bavel Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 practically doubled since before the pandemic. And it’s doubled across all sorts of districts—rich and poor, liberal and conservative. Today’s guest is Nat Malkus, a former teacher who is the deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute. We talk about why school absences have exploded across the country; why some people think this just doesn’t matter; why we think it might matter quite a bit; and what teachers, parents, and lawmakers should do about it. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Nat Malkus Producer: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Human Body, by Dan Lieberman https://www.amazon.com/Story-Human-Body-Evolution-Disease/dp/030774180X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. America’s Big Three automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (which owns Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep)—are in big trouble. China’s electric vehicles are going to hit Detroit "like a wrecking ball," he says. Joe Biden wants America’s green electric future to be made in America. But right now, the future of EVs is being made in China. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at http://www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Robinson Meyer Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.  Host: Derek Thompson Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 winners have often been small films, like 'CODA' or 'Moonlight.' But in the past 18 months, two things have changed. First, the old franchise model is showing some wear and tear, as Marvel movies consistently underperform their expectations. Second, original and often daring films—'Barbie,' 'Oppenheimer,' 'Dune: Part 2'—are dominating at the box office. Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw joins to explain how the franchise formula was born, why it's showing its age, and what might come next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 increase in the value of the home. But, with higher rates, the monthly cost of living in that house with a mortgage might go up 300 percent. The same is true for financing a new car with higher interest rates. Or paying credit card debt. Judd Cramer, an economist who teaches at Harvard University, is the coauthor of a new paper on how our inflation data doesn't properly account for skyrocketing interest rates—and why the so-called "vibecession" isn’t as much of a mystery as we think. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.  Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Judd Cramer Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 (sometimes for very good reason!) about all elite and all major institutions of power. Today’s guest is the Danish political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who coauthored the paper that introduced this idea. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Michael Bang Petersen Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://politicalsciencenow.com/the-need-for-chaos-and-motivations-to-share-hostile-political-rumors/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/need-for-chaos-political-science-concept/677536/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 author of several books on the rise of living alone and the decline of social infrastructure. His latest is _'_2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed.' And he's not afraid to challenge the popular notion of an epidemic of loneliness in America. “There is no good evidence that Americans are lonelier than ever," he has written. Today, Eric and I talk about teens and parenting, the decline of hanging out, why America sucks at building social infrastructure, and why aloneness isn’t always loneliness. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Eric Klinenberg Producer: Devon Baroldi Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 guest is Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst—one of the world’s top researchers on minimum wage policies and pay. He says things are happening in this economy that we haven't seen since the 1950s or 1960s. "We're seeing a fundamental reorganization of work in America," Dube said. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dr. Arindrajit Dube Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 all? What if we welcomed them? Charles Duhigg, the author of 'The Power of Habit,' has a new book out this week. It’s called 'Supercommunicators.' Duhigg’s book is about how to talk when talking is hard. Today we talk about the art and science of difficult conversations, from romantic relationships to political persuasion, and what he discovered to be the most important principles of having a great and emotionally resonant discussion. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.  Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Charles Duhigg Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 mammalian aging, which could lead to discoveries that extend the lives of humans. Today's guest is the CEO and founder of Loyal, Celine Halioua. We talk about her experience as a female biotech founder, the weird economics of pharma, the ethics of life extension, the science of why big dogs die young, her theories for how to slow down the aging process in dogs big and small, and the possibility spillover benefits for humans who would like a few more years with their family and friends. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Celine Halioua Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 this question is not lost on us.) Today’s guest is Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Southern California. We talk about anxiety as identity, why talking about anxiety on the Internet is such a mess today, how the architecture of the internet unhelpfully shapes our discussions of mental health, and what a better conversation about mental health online might look like. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Darby Saxbe Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 down. And investment in clean energy technology—particularly solar and batteries—is smashing records and changing the world. Those glimmers of hope come from an epic annual report from Nat Bullard, an independent, Singapore-based climate researcher who spent several years at Bloomberg. In today’s episode, Nat and I discuss the twin pillars of the global clean energy revolution (solar and storage), how these two technologies have consistently beat expert predictions, how they’re reshaping energy generation around the world, and what stands in the way of a clean energy future based around sunshine and batteries. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.  Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Nathaniel Bullard Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: Nat's presentation on the clean energy revolution: https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 researcher of gender, equality, and inequality around the world, joins the show to discuss. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Alice Evans Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998 https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-gender-gap-young-men-women-dont-agree-politics-2024-1 https://www.ggd.world/p/what-prevents-and-what-drives-gendered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 talking about. Eating local? Eating organic? Counterintuitively, these behaviors aren't as ecologically beneficial as many people claim. These facts and more come from Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist, the deputy editor of Our World in Data, and the author of a new book 'Not the End of the World.' As Ritchie argues at length in her book, a lot of liberals assume that anything that sounds like pastoralism and natural living is better for the planet. But in fact, it is technological progress that allows for highly efficient farming, high-quality foods with less land consumed by agriculture, less water wasted, and more forests spared. Many times, our pastoralist instincts to appear virtuous when it comes to food and the planet don’t actually achieve virtuous outcomes. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Hannah Ritchie Producer: Devon Baroldi Links mentioned: "Environmental Impacts of Food Production," Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters.’ If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Amanda Mull & Brian Klaas Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices