Derek Thompson

Some personal news. Today, I’m leaving The Atlantic after almost 17 years and moving my writing to Substack. It would be convenient, for the purposes of crafting an exciting departure announcement, to have a dramatic exit story: a fight, a grievance, a shouting match with an editor that ended with me hurling a bunch of leather-backed Thoreau volumes across the open-plan office. That is not the case here. I love The Atlantic, and I'll remain a contributing writer there. But after almost two decades at one publication, I wanted to write for myself. The things I've published that I'm most proud of—whether it was the original abundance agenda essay, or my piece on workism—emerged from a very personal expression of frustration, or confusion, or curiosity. I want to know what my thinking and writing is like if I lean into a more independent and personal writing life. That's brought me to Substack, which is already home to an astonishing share of my overall reading. I'm excited to join their community and excited to build my own. The name of the newsletter should be easy to remember: Derek Thompson. The newsletter will have three main pillars 1. Abundance 2. The frontier of science and technology—GLP1s, AI, biotech, energy breakthroughs—covered in a way that’s both curious and skeptical 3. The anti-social century & the social crises of anxiety and aloneness Thanks to The Atlantic for 16.8 incredible years and thanks to everybody who follows me across the river. - dt

@ReubenR80027912 what is "it"? the poem is largely about greek gods!

@DKThomp You need to get “Troy VI” & “Troy VIIa” pilled. It actually might have happened!!

it's a poem about a thing that never happened, credited to an author who probably never existed, and helen is introduced within the mythology as the daughter of ZEUS, a figure literally nobody in this country even believes in, if you're emotionally invested in the historicity of her pigmentation you need a life and also medication, not necessarily in that order

@extramsg i have an idea how about we stop being fucking crazy and blaming it on the fact that, some time ago, someone else went fucking crazy in the opposite direction

@DKThomp But people on the left often complain about that. And a lot more so now than when Charleston Heston was playing Moses and Edward G Robinson an Egyptian. If Nolan did an adaptation of the Bhagavad Gita with 60% white actors, progressives would be apoplectic.

AI being booed in commencement addresses seems pretty natural to me. It's really, really unusual for the people building and selling a new technology to promise that it will destroy people's livelihoods. Whether you consider this to be "horrendous marketing," or "actually, a craven justification for VC investment" or "really, just honest communication" or "rationally over-emphasizing the probability of a long-tail catatrophic outcome" or whatever else, the point is ... it's very unusual. I think today's 22yos should probably familiarize themselves with Claude and ChatGPT, but I don't entirely blame them for booing a technology whose architects have said, this will destroy your jobs.

I like @JesusFerna7026’s observation that you can have 1. one set of explanations for why fertility declined toward 2 in practically every industrialized, service-sector economy, esp those with liberalizing attitudes toward women’s role in home and labor force and contraception, in the last 100 years (Image 1) 2. An additional set of explanations for why the birth rate has fallen toward 1 and below in so many places in the last 20 years (Image 2) and this is where phones, anti-social century, decline of coupling really comes into play

At the FT today, John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) has an excellent article describing how fertility is declining everywhere at the same time: ft.com/content/fba35e… He quotes me and, even better, draws the reader’s attention to my work with Gustavo Ventura, @King_ofSweden, and Wen Yao on “The Wealth of Working Nations.” If I may suggest, reading the article alongside the podcast I did with Derek Thompson, @DKThomp, will give you a good overview of the issue. BTW, I have decided to write something longer about all this over the summer with Nezih Guner, @NezihGuner. Hopefully, the gods of productivity smile on us, and we can have a draft by early fall.

This interview of @JesusFerna7026 by @DKThomp is absolutely fantastic Well done both!

cc @DKThomp

This was a really fun interview with Derek Thimpson. We explored a lot of topics that hadn’t come up on other podcasts yet 😇 Definitely one of my favorite conversations in a while.

@StefanFSchubert jesus, verbatim: "I'm going to make a crazy forecast." commenters: bro that's just a forecast, you can't do that

@DKThomp Yes, and he was clear it's a hypothetical calculation. Good podcast.

"I don't think we appreciate how big of a change [low fertility] is. I'm going to make a crazy forecast. Let's suppose Thailand keeps its current fertility rate of 0.8 ... for 200 years. Thailand right now has 63 million people. At the end of 200 years, it will be around two million people." "I'm sorry. Two million?" "Two million. How do you wind down a society of 63 million people into two million?" youtu.be/5F7_qa-XLBg?si…

you will both really like @JesusFerna7026 on today's Plain English! We talk about how we at least need one set of explanations (explanations, plural) to explain why a country would go from TFR of 7 to 2 ... and another set of explanations that explain why some places go from replacement rate to 1 and below bc while economic growth and feminism and contraception can surely explain the first, they don't explain why Korea has gone from 2 to <1 long after it modernized and made contraception easy. for that you need to bring it social and technological phenomena that might be more recent. start here youtu.be/5F7_qa-XLBg?si…

I am once again asking everyone to please adhere to the Alice Evans Rule ( @_alice_evans ) of marriage and fertility discourse — if your pet explanation can’t explain why rates are cratering everywhere from rich democracies to oppressive regimes to rural poor areas, it’s limited.

Narrative violation: for the first time ever, African-Americans in the U.S. have a lower fertility rate than non-Hispanic whites. Great podcast ep by @DKThomp podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pla…

New pod: WHY THE WORLD REALLY STOPPED HAVING BABIES This is just a really amazing overview of a topic I thought I understood deeply. "Only two things are important right now in life: fertility and deep learning," the economist @JesusFerna7026 said. "Everything else is noise. Once you start thinking about these things, it's hard to start thinking about anything else." Some unbelievable, big-picture stats from the show: - 'Peak child' is world history is very likely in the rear-view mirror—likely around 2013 - 2023 was the first year in human history that global fertility rate likely fell below the replacement rate, and it's still going down - The world population is on pace to peak in the 2050s and then fall with accelerating speed every decade after - The compounding effects of sub-replacement level fertility are hard to fathom in the long run. If Thailand keeps its current fertility rate of 0.8 for the next 200 years without immigration, its population will decline from 63 million to 2 million. Yes, two million—the current population of Houston. Fertility's compounding effects over decades are like a tectonic plate—slow moving, but carrying the entire world. "Once you start thinking about it, it's hard to start thinking about anything else." youtube.com/watch?v=5F7_qa…

i saw it 2 years ago and the whole movie holds up much better than i remembered, with the important caveats that orlando bloom, playing one of history's great punchable weenies, overshoots the mark and enters a zone of uncomfortable punchability and brad pitt's accent is, actually, illegal

@MikeIsaac Holds up better than you think. But the manufactured outrage over the odyssey is very dumb.

it is so funny how people are pining for “Troy” era casting i saw this movie in theaters. it sucked shit! i don’t even care about nolan’s odyssey, just get history right!!

The "anti-social century" — America's quiet collapse in dating, friendship, parties, and group time — sitting next to GLP-1s that now appear to cut heavy drinking, ease depression, and slash liver fat 80%. 2 trends. 1 country trying to figure out what to do with itself. Read @DKThomp's 6 megatrends of 2026 derekthompson.org/p/the-6-megatr…