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That's macwellden.com promo code recode. This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That's me. It's powered by digital media. That is a real company with a funny name. I'm talking to the normally named Derek Thompson, who's written in an awesome book called Hitmakers. Hello, Derek. Hey, Peter. You've got a day job, too, right? I do, yes. You're a senior editor at The Atlantic? I'm a senior editor at The Atlantic. The title doesn't mean a whole lot. I don't consider myself terrifically senior, and I actually don't edit anything, but I do write from the Atlantic. You work at the Atlantic, a very fancy publication. You read very smart, brainy stuff, and you're kind of the person who terrifies me because you're like 14 years old? 30. Just 30? Yeah. I feel so much better. I think you were 25. But still, intimidatingly, bright. Many of you know Derek stuff. He writes stuff about media and many other interesting topics. He gets passed around on Twitter a lot. Rainy people that I talk to cite him as someone they read. So I thought you guys should hear from him as well. And he's got a book to talk about. Let's talk about the book, Hit Makers. You are going to explain to me and everyone else who listens and reads you how to become instantly

popular. You're going to make this enormously popular podcast even more popular if I just read the book.

Yes. Yes. The Magic Sprinkled Bus is going to be sprinkled on this podcast in particular,

and it's going to go absolutely wild online, I predict. So let's tease this out a bit before you tell

us the secret to making things viral and popular instant hits. Why did you decide to write about this? It's a great question. By day, I'm really

a macroeconomics and labor markets writer. I am fascinated by, you know, welfare states and the

direction of the economy. And, you know, I became an economics writer in 2009, which was a terrible time for the economy, but a great time. Because you're like just out of college. Just, yeah, right, just out of Northwest. I'm going to be an economics writer. That seems like a good idea. Well, I was really a generalist, and but the economy was falling apart. And so there was this massive need for people to explain what the heck was going on. And, you know, a terrible time for the country,

a great time to be an economics writer. And as the economy recovered and got a little bit sort of

homeostatic, I went sort of looking around for other things that I could write about with the same

sort of formula of you do a little bit of reporting, you throw in a little bit of historical context,

and then maybe you add a bit of psychological theory to explain why things happen. Sure, super

easy. That's why everyone does this right out of college. But it's just, it's the, it was the

most fun way for me to explain all the weird things that were happening. And so I gradually realized

that media and entertainment and cultural products were a great place to hop to with that same formula, dash reporting, a little bit of history, a little bit of psychology. So unlike a lot of other people who write about media like myself, you didn't harbor, you didn't say, oh, I want to be on SNL or I didn't want to be an SNL, but you didn't think, oh, I want to create this stuff and instead I'll end up writing about it. You sort of backed into it a different way. You thought, I want to write about economics because I'm that kind of person. Here's one way I can do it. Yeah, in an interesting way, it's a return to what I wanted to do at the very beginning. Before, I wanted to be a writer. I really wanted to be an actor. I loved acting. I loved musical theater. I loved doing all the nerdy stuff. And it just became clear to me that even as much as I adored acting and singing that writing was the job more likely to pay the bills. And so I went into writing. I, you know, studied politics and economics and college. And being an economics writer was what paid the bills at 23, 24.

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