Episode 572: Derek Thompson

Longform

Education, Arts, Books, News

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Derek Thompson is a staff writer for The Atlantic and host of the podcast Plain English. “I am an inveterate dilettante. I lose interest in subjects all the time. Because what I find interesting about my job is the invitation to solve mysteries. And once you solve one, two, three mysteries in a space, then the meta-mystery of that space begins to dim. And all these other subjects—that's the new unlit space that needs the flashlight. And that's the part of the job that I love the most: that there are so many dark corners in the world. And I've just got this flashlight, and I can just shine it wherever the hell I want.” Show notes: @DKThomp Thompson's Atlantic archive 00:00 Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (Penguin • 2018) 00:00 Plain English with Derek Thompson (The Ringer) 05:00 "Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 18:00 "The Americans Who Need Chaos" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 23:00 "America’s Loneliness Epidemic Comes for the Restaurant" (The Atlantic • Mar 2024) 35:00 "Stop Trying to Ask 'Smart Questions'" (The Atlantic • Jan 2023) 39:00 "The Future of Everything With Derek Thompson" (The Bill Simmons Podcast • Feb 2024) 40:00 "What Many Economists (and I) Got Wrong About This Economy" (Plain English • Mar 2024) 43:00 "How Hollywood’s Hit Formula Flopped—and What Could Come Next" (Plain English • Mar 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:59.4	Terms apply. Bye. Hello, welcome to the long form podcast. I'm Max Lindeammer, Evan Ratliff.
1:14.8	Gentlemen, hello.
1:15.8	Hey guys. Hey Max, what do you have on the show on this rainy spring day?
1:21.1	On this rainy spring day, I talked to Derek Thompson. Derek Thompson is a staff writer at the Atlantic.
1:28.0	He has been there for a long time. He's covered many things. He was a at first a sort of macroeconomics reporter in like 2008 2009. We talked about that and then he started covering media and then he started covering science and medicine and now he sort of writes about as we talked about
1:46.4	Whatever he wants he also wrote a book a couple years ago. It's called hitmakers how things become popular.
1:52.6	We also talked about how your own writing gets popular.
	...

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