Plain English with Derek Thompson
About
Available on
Community
257 episodes
In the last decade, several major findings in social psychology have turned out to be hogwash—or, worse, even fraud. This has become widely known as psychology's "replication crisis." Perhaps you have heard of power poses—based on a study finding that subjects reported stronger “feelings of power” after they posed, say, with their hands on their hips for several minutes. But that finding did not replicate. Or perhaps you have heard of ego depletion—the more famous assertion that, when people make a bunch of decisions, it exhausts their ability to make future decisions. Again: did not replicate. “There’s a thought that’s haunted me for years,” social psychologist Adam Mastroianni has written. “We’re doing all this research in psychology, but are we learning anything? We run these studies and publish these papers, and then what? The stack of papers just gets taller? I’ve never come up with satisfying answers. But now I finally understand why.” Today’s episode features two interviews. First, I talk to Adam about his big-picture critique of his own field: how psychology too often fails as a science, and what it can do better. Second, we speak with journalist Dan Engber from The Atlantic, who has been reporting on a billowing scandal in psychology that has enveloped several business school stars—and raised important questions about the field. What is psychology for? What would progress in psychology mean? And how can this field—which might be the discipline I follow than any other in academia—become more of a science? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Engber Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: “Is psychology going to Cincinnati?” by Adam Mastroianni https://www.experimental-history.com/p/is-psychology-going-to-cincinnati "I’m so sorry for psychology’s loss, whatever it is" by Adam Mastroianni https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-loss#footnote-anchor-3-136506668 “The Business-School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger” by Daniel Engber https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/01/business-school-fraud-research/680669/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Emily Oster, professor of economics at Brown University, joins the show to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his theories about fluoride and vaccines, and how the media and science community should treat the most controversial topics. This is a new age of science and information, where trust seems to be shifting from institutions like the FDA and CDC to individuals like RFK Jr. and Oster, and I consider her a model of public health communication. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Emily Oster Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What would a world of self-driven cars look like? How would it change shopping, transportation, and life, more broadly? A decade ago, many people were asking these questions, as it looked like a boom in autonomous vehicles was imminent. But in the last few years, other technologies—crypto, the metaverse, AI—have stolen the spotlight. Meanwhile, self-driving cars have quietly become a huge deal in the U.S. Waymo One, a commercial ride-hailing service that spun off from Google, has been rolled out in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin. Every week, Waymo makes 150,000 autonomous rides. Tesla is also competing to build a robo-taxi service and to develop self-driving capabilities. There are two reasons why I’ve always been fascinated by self-driving cars: The first is safety. There are roughly 40,000 vehicular deaths in America every year and 6 million accidents. It’s appropriate to be concerned about the safety of computer-driven vehicles. But what about the safety of human-driven vehicles? A technology with the potential to save thousands of lives and prevent millions of accidents is a huge deal. Second, the automobile was arguably the most important technology of the 20th century. The invention of the internal combustion engine transformed agriculture, personal transportation, and supply chains. It made the suburbs possible. It changed the spatial geometry of the city. It expanded demand for fossil fuels and created some of the most valuable companies in the world. The reinvention of last century’s most important technology is a massive, massive story. And the truth is, I’m not sure that today’s news media—a category in which I include myself—has done an adequate job representing just how game-changing self-driving technology at scale could be. Today’s guest is Timothy Lee, author of the Substack publication Understanding AI. Today I asked him to help me understand self-driving cars—their technology, their industry, their possibility, and their implications. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Timothy Lee Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Derek shares his big-picture theory for Trump's victory. Then, Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson explains how Trump shifted practically the entire electorate to the right. Links: Derek's article that inspired his open: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/donald-trump-covid-election/680559/ The Washington Post voter shift map: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2024/11/05/compare-2020-2024-presidential-results/ The graveyard of the incumbents: https://www.ft.com/content/e8ac09ea-c300-4249-af7d-109003afb893 Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kristen Soltis Anderson Producer: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today’s guest (our final preelection guest) is David Wasserman, political analyst with the Cook Political Report, who also helps out with the NBC decision desk. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people whose job on election night is to help Americans understand when we can safely call specific districts and states for Congress, Senate, or the presidency. However, I truly don’t think I know anybody whose calls I trust more than David's. And the even deeper compliment is that David is perhaps the most trusted election night consigliere among all the other people I trust. So, when I wanted to put together a show on how to watch election night like a pro, I’m grateful that the pro of pros said yes. With a week to go, this election has attracted several theories about which trends will determine the outcome. We’ve done shows on the rightward shift among men, especially young men; the politics of working class decline; the possibility that we’ll see non-white voters move into the Trump column while college-educated white voters move into the Harris column. But these are all theories. It’s going to take a while to know if they’re actually true. When polls close at 7 p.m., you’re going to see some people dive into exit polls and incomplete county-by-county returns, claiming that they can see trends and predict the outcome. But as Wasserman tells us, this is not wise. Exit polls aren’t special. They’re just another poll. And their non-specialness is important to note in an age when so many people are voting early and therefore aren’t counted among surveys of election-day voters. Meanwhile, different states have different rules for when they can start counting early and mailed ballots. These rules dramatically and sometimes confusingly shift our understanding of election night. Pennsylvania cannot start counting mail-in or early votes until Election Day morning. This often leads to slower reporting of mail-in results, while Election Day votes are usually counted and reported first. Last election Republicans were more likely to vote on Election Day while Democrats were more likely to vote by mail. If the same thing happens in 2024, what we should expect to see is a red mirage followed by a blue wave—as right-leaning ballots are counted first and left-leaning ballots are counted second. This is not a conspiracy. It’s just state law. In the state of Georgia, it’s the opposite. Georgia and other Sunbelt states can begin processing and counting mail-in and early votes before Election Day, which means what you might see a blue mirage followed by a red wave. One conspiracy theory that’s already starting to attract attention is that any state that looks like it’s voting for Trump that sees a blue wave is a sign of voter fraud. But there’s nothing fraudulent about the state laws that determine the orders in which votes are counted. For this reason, Wasserman says, it’s tantalizing but misleading to draw strong conclusions about the election from incomplete county results. If you want to understand where the election is going, if you want to watch the returns, like a good faith pro, the better solution is to wait for full county results in key bellwether counties like Nash County, North Carolina. Understanding what those key, predictive, canary-in-a-coalmine counties are is the focus of this show. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: David Wasserman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today, a close look at the history of a Pennsylvania town and how that history contains within it the story of the 2024 election. In September, Donald Trump claimed that the city of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, was being overrun by immigrants who brought violence, gangs, and economic destruction. Last month, The Atlantic's George Packer went to Charleroi to report on what's actually going on there, and how the issues most important to Charleroi—nativism, immigration, change, working-class decline, and corporate greed—are also the deciding issues of the 2024 election. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: George Packer Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
My favorite sort of social phenomenon is something that seems normal to modern eyes that is actually incredibly unusual. We take it for granted that every presidential election is a nail-biter these days. But this era of close elections is deeply strange. We used to have blowouts all the time. In 1964, 1972, and 1984, LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan, respectively, won by more than 15 points. This never happens anymore. Since the hanging-ballot mess of 2000, we’ve had historically close contests again and again: in 2004, 2012, 2016, and 2020. This year seems almost certain to continue the trend. National polls have almost never been this tight in the closing days of a presidential contest. In an era of shifting coalitions and weak parties, why is every modern presidential election so close? Today’s guest is Matt Yglesias, the author of the ‘Slow Boring’ newsletter, and a return guest on this show. We talk about how the era of close elections has, importantly, coincided with an era of racial realignment. We propose several theories for why every election is a nail-biter in the 21st century. And we explain why “it’s the internet, stupid” doesn’t work to explain this particular trend. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Matthew Yglesias Producer: Devon Baroldi LINKS: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-era-of-close-elections https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-electorate-is-becoming-less-racially Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In 1900, the average US life expectancy was 47 years old. That's the current age of Tom Brady, Ryan Reynolds, and Shakira. But extraordinary advances in medicine and public health have surged lifespans in the US and throughout the world. The average American currently lives to about 79 years old. How long can this progress continue? As we have gotten so much better at allowing people to live to old age, how much progress have we made at confronting this ultimate boss of longevity? Today’s guest is Professor S. Jay Olshansky, from the school of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We talk about progress and stasis in the most important science project in human history: how to increase human life. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: S. Jay Olshansky Producer: Devon Baroldi LINKS: "Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century" [link] "If Humans Were Built to Last," an illustration of what people would look like if they were optimally designed to live to 100 [link] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today: the state of men and what's really happening in the gender divide in politics. Many young men are falling behind economically and socially at the same time that men and women are coming apart politically. What's really happening here? Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, joins the show to talk about the state of men, young men, working class men, the gender divide in the electorate, why Democrats seem to have a guy problem, and why Republicans seem to have a message that is resonating, especially for young men who are falling behind. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Richard Reeves Producer: Devon Baroldi LINKS: - “America’s Young Men Are Falling Even Further Behind" - The Tenuous Attachments of Working Class Men Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Since October 7, 2023, many have feared that the conflict between Israel and Hamas would bloom into a wider war that would consume the Middle East. Today, we are dangerously close to that reality. In just the last month, Israel carried out several attacks against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. Israel is widely believed to be behind the remote detonation of pagers and communications devices that were implanted with explosives, killing and injuring scores of Hezbollah members. Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and systematically killed much of its other leadership. It has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon—its first in nearly 20 years. It has bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. Iran retaliated this week by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel. In the Middle East, no stranger to warfare, this may be the most treacherous moment for interstate conflict since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, is today's guest. We begin by visiting each theater of the Middle East conflict: Lebanon, Gaza, Iran. We talk about Israel’s strategy, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, and Iran’s next steps. We talk about the odds that today’s conflict will tip over into a full-blown regional war—and what that war might look like. And we talk about the United States, what the Biden White House is trying to achieve through private and public channels, and what levers Biden has left to influence the Middle East in his final weeks in office. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Natan Sachs Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Derek shares his biggest frustrations about the 2024 election, like the lack of a policy debate and blind spots in news coverage and polling analysis. Then he welcomes Jamil Zaki to the show: a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Zaki is the author of ‘Hope for Cynics,’ a new book that explores tension at the heart of human affairs. On one hand, social cooperation is the basis of human civilization. And yet cynicism—a baseline aversion to social cooperation and assumption that most people are greedy, selfish, and dishonest—is also core to the human experience. We are constantly violating the secret of our own success by assuming the worst in others, and Professor Zaki explains why. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jamil Zaki Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today, a mystery about what some people consider the most important position in sports: What the hell is going on with the NFL quarterback? We are two weeks into the 2024 football season. And as several commentators have pointed out, the quarterback position just doesn’t look right. Passing yards per game are lower than any other year in the 21st century. Passing touchdowns have fallen off a cliff. The average completed pass is shorter than any other year in the recorded history of the sport. Today’s guest is Robert Mays, the host of 'The Athletic Football Show.' We talk about the evolution of the quarterback position, why NFL passing is down, how NFL defense got so smart, and where this is all headed. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Robert Mays Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: Pro Football Reference NFL History Page https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/index.htm Mike Sando: QBs Are Younger Than Any Time in 60 Years: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4880988/2023/09/21/justin-fields-nfl-young-quarterbacks-trend/ Bill Barnwell on the evolution of the QB: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41217438/how-running-qbs-changed-nfl-dual-threat-history-value-scramble-stats-future Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
We may be on the cusp of a revolution in medicine, thanks to tools like AlphaFold, the technology for Google DeepMind, which helps scientists predict and see the shapes of thousands of proteins. How does AlphaFold work, what difference is it actually making in science, and what kinds of mysteries could it unlock? Today’s guest is Pushmeet Kohli. He is the head of AI for science at DeepMind. We talk about proteins, why they matter, why they’re challenging, how AlphaFold could accelerate and expand the hunt for miracle drugs, and what tools like AlphaFold tell us about the mystery of the cosmos and our efforts to understand it. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Pushmeet Kohli Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Are conspiracy theories more popular than ever? Are Americans more conspiratorial than ever? Are conservatives more conspiratorial than liberals? Joseph Uscinski is a political scientist at the University of Miami and one of the nation's preeminent experts on the psychology of conspiratorial thinking and the history of conspiracy theories in America. He has some counterintuitive and surprising answers to these questions. Today, he and Derek discuss—and debate—the psychology and politics of modern conspiratorial thinking. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Joseph Uscinski Producer: Devon Baroldi Links Uscinski's research page: https://people.miami.edu/profile/60b5fb062f4f266afb6739ec21657c74 "The psychological and political correlates of conspiracy theory beliefs" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25617-0 "Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30679368/ "Right and left, partisanship predicts (asymmetric) vulnerability to misinformation" https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left-partisanship-predicts-asymmetric-vulnerability-to-misinformation/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Exercise is a conundrum. On the one hand, physical activity is clearly one of the best interventions for preventing physical disease and mental suffering. On the other hand, scientists don't really understand how it works inside the body or what exactly running, jumping, lifting, and squatting do to our tissues and organs. That's finally changing. Euan Ashley, a professor of genomics and cardiovascular medicine and the chair of the Stanford Department of Medicine, is a member of a new research consortium that studies rats and humans to understand the molecular changes induced by exercise. Today we talk about the earliest findings from this new consortium, how exercise might have disparate effects in men versus women, why nature’s most effective cardiovascular intervention also seems to be nature’s most effective mental health intervention, as well as whether it will one day be possible to identify the molecular basis of exercise precisely enough to develop exercise pills that give us the benefits of working out without the sweat. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Euan Ashley Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Derek offers a short but sweet review of the Democratic National Convention, the science of post-convention bounces, and the reality of the 2024 polling: It's still a toss-up. 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's episode is about how we change our minds—and what political science tells us about the best ways to change the minds of voters. Our guest is David Broockman, a political scientist at the University of California Berkeley, and the coauthor, with Josh Kalla, of a new essay in Slow Boring on Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the most persuasive arguments and messages to decide this election. Today, David and I talk about the four biggest myths of political persuasion—and in the process, David will attempt to do something that I’m not entirely sure is possible: He’ll try to change my mind about how persuasion works. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: David Broockman Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: "What's Better Than Calling Donald Trump 'Weird'?" https://www.slowboring.com/p/whats-better-than-calling-trump-weird "Consuming cross-cutting media causes learning and moderates attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers" https://osf.io/preprints/osf/jrw26 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Laurie Santos is a superstar in the crowded field of happiness research. She is a cognitive scientist at Yale University whose course on the psychology of happiness was the most popular class in the school's history. She is the host of the immensely popular ‘Happiness Lab’ podcast. Today, she and Derek talk about her favorite lessons from modern happiness research, lessons on striving and anxiety from existential philosophy, our relationship to time, the science of cognitive time travel, temporal mind tricks to reduce anxiety like "psychological distancing," and more. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dr. Laurie Santos Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In a special emergency-ish episode, Bloomberg's Conor Sen joins the show to discuss a buffet of economic and financial fears, including a disappointing jobs report, a meltdown in global stocks, the "carry trade" heard round the world, the smartest criticisms of (and smartest defense of) the Federal Reserve's decision not to raise interest rates, and more. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Conor Sen Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Derek offers his thoughts on Kamala Harris, the new 2024 reality, and gender polarization in the "boys vs. girls" election. Then we talk about the spam apocalypse. The average American receives one spam call or text every single day, adding up to tens of billions of robocalls and texts per year. Derek welcomes Joshua Bercu, the executive director of Industry Traceback Group, to talk about the history and technology behind robocalls and texts, why it’s been so hard to hold robocallers accountable, how spammers do that thing where they make a call look like it’s coming from a local friend, how we've managed to crush certain kinds of robocalls, and what it would take to finally win the war on spam. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Joshua Bercu Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
It is a general rule of thumb that richer societies are happier societies. This is true across countries, as GDP and life satisfaction are highly correlated. And it is true across time. Countries get happier as they get richer. But there is a caveat to this general principle. Which is that the United States is not nearly as contented as its gross national income would predict. In fact, the U.S. is, as we’ve covered on this show, in a bit of a gloom rut. It has now been nearly two decades since a majority of Americans have told pollsters at NBC that they’re satisfied with the way things are going. This hope drought has no precedent in modern polling. NBC itself reported that “We have never before seen this level of sustained pessimism in the 30-year-plus history of the poll.” Polls show that faith in government, business, and other institutions is in free fall—especially among conservatives. But they also show that conservatives are generally happy with their life and in their relationships. If conservatives have happiness without trust, American progressives seem to have trust without happiness. In a recent paper called “The Politics of Depression,” published by the journal Social Science & Medicine–Mental Health, the epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and several coauthors showed that young progressives are significantly more depressed than conservatives, have been for years, and the gap is growing over time. Other studies, including the General Social Survey, show the same. Why are young progressives so sad? Today’s guest is Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and coauthor of ‘The Coddling of the American Mind.’ He has written intelligently, critically, and emotionally about happiness, depression, politics, and progressivism. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Greg Lukianoff Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: "People in Richer Countries Tend to Be Happier" https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction "The Politics of Depression" by Catherine Gimbrone et al https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560321000438 "How to Understand the Well-Being Gap Between Liberals and Conservatives" by Musa al-Gharbi https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/ "The Coddling of the American Mind" The Atlantic essay by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ [book] https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224897 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On today's episode: the state of American politics and the future of America's economy. Derek discusses a media myth in the aftermath of the failed Trump assassination attempt and reviews three basic truths about Joe Biden's doomed presidential bid. Then, Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee joins the show to answer Derek's blunt question, "Are you going to cut rates next month?" Plus, they discuss the Federal Reserve, how it works, how he sees the economy, whether high rates are constraining housing production, and whether Trump's signature economic policy idea—high tariffs in an age of global inflation—would help the U.S. economy. (TLDR: No.) If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Austan Goolsbee Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: “Stop Pretending You Know How This Will End,” Derek Thompson, The Atlantic “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” by Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Skyrocketing rates, shrinking affordability: The U.S. housing market is a mess. It's also a bit of a mystery. Why are prices still sky-high, even though many measures of demand are weak? If the supply of new homes is nearing a historic high, how come the inventory for existing homes is close to a historic low? Today's guests agree that this is one of the weirdest housing markets in recent history. Mike Simonsen, president founder of Altos Research, and Lance Lambert, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Residential Club, join to talk about the state of the U.S. housing market—what makes it ugly, what makes it weird, and what would have to happen to make it better. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Mike Simonsen & Lance Lambert Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance has created a crisis for the Democratic Party and a set of interlocking debates about whether the White House—or the White House media—covered up his cognitive decline. The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich, who first wrote that Biden should drop out of the race two years ago, joins to discuss Biden campaign strategy and the hypocrisy of many Democrats who refused to state publicly what they knew privately: that Biden's age-related blunders were getting more serious. Then we are joined by the busiest man in media, Alex Thompson, political correspondent of Axios, who has absolutely dominated this story in the past week. As a group, we talk about Biden’s age, the Democratic campaign strategy—Project "Bubble Wrap"—that is blowing up in their faces, the failures of the political press and Democratic operatives to see what’s in front of their noses, and the chances that Kamala Harris will imminently replace Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Mark Leibovich & Alex Thompson Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In the first five decades of the 20th century, the number of serial killers in the U.S. remained at a very low level. But between the 1950s and 1960s, the number of serial killers tripled. Between the 1960s and 1970s, they tripled again. In the 1980s and 1990s, they kept rising. And then, just as suddenly as the serial killer emerged as an American phenomenon, he (and it really is mostly a he) nearly disappeared. What happened to the American serial killers? And what does this phenomenon say about American society, criminology, and technology? Today's guest is James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University. The author of 18 books, he has been publishing on this subject since before 1974, the year that the FBI coined the term "serial killer." If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: James Alan Fox Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
We've done several podcasts on America's declining fertility rate, and why South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world. But we've never done an episode on the subject quite like this one. Today we go deep on the psychology of having children and not having children, and the cultural revolution behind the decline in birthrates in America and the rest of the world. The way we think about dating, marriage, kids, and family is changing radically in a very short period of time. And we are just beginning to reckon with the causes and consequences of that shift. In the new book, 'What Are Children For,' Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman say a new "parenthood ambivalence" is sweeping the world. In today's show, they persuade Derek that this issue is about more than the economic trends he tends to focus on when he discusses this issue. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Today’s episode is about the science of breathing—from the evolution of our sinuses and palate, to the downsides of mouth breathing and the upsides of nasal breathing, to specific breath techniques that you can use to reduce stress and fall asleep fast. Our guest is James Nestor, the author of the bestselling book 'Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.' If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: James Nestor Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What do most people not understand about the news media? I would say two things. First: The most important bias in news media is not left or right. It’s a bias toward negativity and catastrophe. Second: That while it would be convenient to blame the news media exclusively for this bad-news bias, the truth is that the audience is just about equally to blame. The news has never had better tools for understanding exactly what gets people to click on stories. That means what people see in the news is more responsive than ever to aggregate audience behavior. If you hate the news, what you are hating is in part a collective reflection in the mirror. If you put these two facts together, you get something like this: The most important bias in the news media is the bias that news makers and news audiences share toward negativity and catastrophe. Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the host of the podcast Good on Paper, joins to discuss a prominent fake fact in the news — and the psychological and media forces that promote fake facts and catastrophic negativity in the press. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jerusalem Demsas Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: "The Maternal-Mortality Crisis That Didn’t Happen" by Jerusalem Demsas https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/no-more-women-arent-dying-in-childbirth/678486/ The 2001 paper "Bad Is Stronger Than Good" https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf Derek on the complex science of masks and mask mandates https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/covid-lab-leak-mask-mandates-science-media-information/673263/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Plastic is a life-saving technology. Plastic medical equipment like disposable syringes and IV bags reduce deaths in hospitals. Plastic packaging keeps food fresh longer. Plastic parts in cars make cars lighter, which could make them less deadly in accidents. My bike helmet is plastic. My smoke detector is plastic. Safety gates for babies: plastic. But in the last few months, several studies have demonstrated the astonishing ubiquity of microplastics and the potential danger they pose to our bodies—especially our endocrine and cardiovascular systems. Today’s guest is Philip Landrigan, an epidemiologist and pediatrician, and a professor in the biology department of Boston College. We start with the basics: What is plastic? How does plastic become microplastic or nanoplastic? How do these things get into our bodies? Once they’re in our bodies what do they do? How sure are we that they’re a contributor to disease? What do the latest studies tell us—and what should we ask of future research? Along the way we discuss why plastic recycling doesn’t actually work, the small steps we can take to limit our exposure, and the big steps that governments can take to limit our risk. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Philip Landrigan Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: "Plastics, Fossil Carbon, and the Heart" by Philip J. Landrigan in NEJM https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2400683 "Tiny plastic shards found in human testicles, study says" https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/health/microplastics-testicles-study-wellness/index.html Consumer Reports: "The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food" https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/the-plastic-chemicals-hiding-in-your-food-a7358224781/#:~:text=BEVERAGES,in%20this%20chart Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In an age of cults, sports are the last gasp of the monoculture—the last remnant of the 20th century mainstream still standing. Even so, the new NBA media rights deal is astonishing. At a time when basketball ratings are in steady decline, the NBA is on the verge of signing a $70-plus billion sports rights deal that would grow its annual media rights revenue by almost 3x. How does that make any sense? (Try asking your boss for a tripled raise when your performance declines 2 percent a year and tell us how that goes.) And what does this madness tell us about the state of sports and TV economics in the age of cults and cord-cutting? John Ourand, sports correspondent with Puck News, explains. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: John Ourand Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
