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Derek Thompson

derekthompson.org

A newsletter about abundance and building a better world. Click to read Derek Thompson, a Substack publication.

Society / politics / economyAI / MLEssays / personal

’25’26
Posts
110 from 20 Jun 2025 to 27 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (65 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
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https://www.derekthompson.org/feed

2026 57

  1. What Is 'You Can See Everything' Really About?
  2. The AI Story Wall Street Doesn’t Want to Hear
  3. Everything Is Changing, and Nothing Is Changing
  4. I Know Why the Mathematicians Weep
  5. Why Americans Stopped Falling in Love
  6. The 26 Most Important Facts About AI and the Economy
  7. We’re Missing a Key Reason Why Americans Hate AI
  8. You Are No Longer Invited to Dinner
  9. How China Thinks About AI
  10. Bad Feelings
  11. Why Harvard's Dean 'Encourages' Students to Use AI
  12. AI Safety Is Having a Moment
  13. We Can't Let AI Writing Take Over the Internet
  14. How to Survive the AI Cyberpocalypse
  15. The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit
  16. The Great American AI Rebellion
  17. The 9 Questions I’m Obsessed With Right Now: AI, Politics, Movies, Drugs, and Western Civilization
  18. The Four Horsemen of the AI Bubble Apocalypse
  19. The Next Miracle Drug Might Already Be in Your Medicine Cabinet
  20. What Is Lost When We Make 'The Odyssey' Modern
  21. A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
  22. Is This the End of Booze?
  23. America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are
  24. It’s the Best Time Ever to Become a Millionaire by Working Alone
  25. The U.S. Went to War to Take Away Iran's Superweapon. It Gave Iran a New One.
  26. The Derek Thompson Substack Turns 1! Here's How the Newsletter Is Doing
  27. The Cult of the Enhanced Self
  28. Why Do the Best Leaders Fail at the Most Important Job?
  29. Why Are Men So Bad at Making—and Keeping—Friends?
  30. The AI Boom Has Entered Its 'Wait, Is This Worth It?' Era
  31. Can America Escape the Cycle of Vicemaxxing?
  32. The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think
  33. The Six Megatrends That Define 2026
  34. How AI Could Help Cure Pancreatic Cancer
  35. The Big Question Lurking Beneath the AI Debate
  36. Why Your Best Ideas Aren’t Original
  37. How American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were
  38. If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad?
  39. The AI Vibe Shift Has Officially Arrived
  40. How ‘Zombie Flow’ Took Over Culture
  41. The Substack-ification of American Religion
  42. Why 'Cost Disease' Is the Secret Force Behind America's Toxic Solitude
  43. Is the Smartphone Theory of Everything Wrong? A Comprehensive Investigation
  44. What Is Anthropic Thinking?
  45. We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America
  46. ‘Yes, AI Is a Bubble. There Is No Question.’
  47. The Most Important Chart in AI Is Also the Most Misunderstood
  48. Why Can't People Agree on a Shared Set of Facts?
  49. This War's Economic Crisis Could Get Much Worse—For the U.S. and the Whole World
  50. The Economic Crisis of the Iran War Could Get Very Bad, Very Fast
  51. On Being a Dad
  52. How Metrics Make Us Miserable
  53. Why AI Is 'Not Particularly Good' at Curing Disease (Plus: The Next GLP-1 Boom and Why America Hates Big Pharma)
  54. Nobody Knows Anything
  55. The Obscure Media Theory That Explains '99% of Everything'
  56. The Doomsday Scenario for AI and Jobs
  57. The 11 Most Interesting Ideas I Read on Paternity Leave

2025 53

  1. The Case For Prayer, Even If You're an Atheist
  2. The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026
  3. How to Sound Like an Expert in Any AI Bubble Debate
  4. Trump's AI Policy Is Indefensible
  5. Are Young People Screwed?
  6. The Monks in the Casino
  7. The Democrats Have a New Winning Formula
  8. AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21st Century. Brace Yourself.
  9. How the Earth Invented Sleep
  10. Is This the New ‘Scariest Chart in the World’?
  11. Whose Cup Are You Filling?
  12. Why AI Is Not a Bubble*
  13. Everything Is Television
  14. Self-Driving Cars Are Miracle Drugs. (Plus: Is the Youth Cancer Epidemic a Myth?)
  15. This Is How the AI Bubble Will Pop
  16. Why Are Liberals More Depressed?
  17. TSMP: If Placebos Work So Well, Why Not Prescribe Sugar Pills For Everything?
  18. The End of Thinking
  19. The 25 Most Interesting Ideas I've Found in 2025 (So Far)
  20. All the Sad Young Terminally Online Men
  21. The Age of Diagnosis: How the Over-Medicalization Of Everything Makes Us Sick, Anxious, and Lost
  22. Trump’s Formula to Conquer the Economy, the Colleges, and Everything Else
  23. What’s Happening to the Economy Is Obvious to Anyone Paying Attention
  24. The Boring Truth About Why America Got Fat
  25. The US Population Could Shrink in 2025, For the First Time Ever
  26. TSMP: How Mornings Can Save Your Life
  27. The Evidence That AI Is Destroying Jobs For Young People Just Got Stronger
  28. How Pickleball Explains American Culture
  29. The Great American Fitness Boom
  30. The Looming Social Crisis of AI Friends and Chatbot Therapists
  31. 1910: The Year the Modern World Lost Its Mind
  32. How AI Conquered the US Economy: A Visual FAQ
  33. Trump, the BLS, and Our Age of Choose-Your-Own-Reality Governance
  34. What’s the Matter With Dallas?
  35. The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong
  36. Why Are Americans So Scared of Talking to Each Other?
  37. The Sunday Morning Post: Whatever Happened to Serial Killers?
  38. The US Economy Was Supposed to Be in a Recession By Now. What Happened?
  39. If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good For Everything, Should We All Be on Them?
  40. The Sunday Morning Post: ‘Science Is the Belief in the Ignorance of Experts’
  41. How the Housing Market For Young People Became ‘A Total Disaster’
  42. What Caused the 'Baby Boom’? What Would It Take to Have Another?
  43. The Sunday Morning Post: Why Exercise Is a Miracle Drug
  44. The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters
  45. The Sunday Morning Post: What Was It Like to Live in 1776?
  46. What's the Worst Part of the GOP Bill? Let's Get Specific.
  47. The Future of the Democratic Party, with Nate Silver
  48. American Energy Policy Cannot Afford to Be This Dumb
  49. The Sunday Morning Post: GLP1s Do Everything, How to Find Aliens, and the End of the World
  50. Young People Face a Hiring Crisis. AI Is Making It Worse.
  51. 'What Speaks to Me About Abundance': My Full Interview With Zohran Mamdani
  52. The Future of Abundance and the Left
  53. Why I'm Joining Substack