Plain English with Derek Thompson

• The Healthiest "Super-Agers" Have One Thing in Common, According to a 25-Year Study

  Memory is the glue of life. Without it, our focus softens, our experience of the world blurs, and our identities melt away. But as people age, their memory declines. Many billions of dollars have been spent to understand the biological basis of dementia and to devise a cure. In most cases, they have failed spectacularly. But what if, rather than study the brains of people with advanced memory loss, we instead studied the brains of people with the opposite condition: extraordinary memory and brain health in old age? For the past few decades, Sandra Weintraub, a scientist at Northwestern University, has been part of a team studying the brains of "super-agers," people 80 and older who have the memory ability of people in their 50s. In a new paper published this year to considerable fanfare, she found that super-agers didn't have much in common. They didn't share a diet, or an exercise regimen, or a set of maladies or medications. One thing, however, united them: their social relationships. Today's guest is Sandra Weintraub. We talk about the science of memory and the brain and the protective benefit of social connection for our minds and ourselves. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dr. Sandra Weintraub Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• Plain History: How the Transcontinental Railroads Built the Modern World

  Today’s pod is about the economic story of the moment. It’s about new technology that supporters claim will transform the U.S. economy, an infrastructure build-out unlike anything in living memory that demands enormous natural resources, fears that corporate giants are overbuilding something that can never return its investment, an uncomfortable closeness between corporations and the state, fears that oligarchs are screwing the public to generate unheard-of levels of private wealth. Just a small catch. This show isn’t about the present or AI in 2025. It’s about the railroads and the late 1800s. To be sure, everything I just said could plausibly be the introduction to a podcast about artificial intelligence. Last quarter, the growth of AI infrastructure spending—on chips, data centers, and electricity—exceeded the growth of consumer spending. The economic researcher and writer Paul Kedrosky has written that as a share of GDP, AI is consuming more than any new technology since the railroads in the late 1800s. There is no question that the transcontinentals transformed America. They populated the West; practically invented California; turned America into a coast-to-coast dual-ocean superpower; revolutionized finance; made possible the creation of a new kind of corporation; launched what the historian Alfred Chandler called the managerial revolution in American business; forged a new relationship between the state and private enterprise; minted a generation of plutocrats, from Jay Gould to Leland Stanford of Stanford University; galvanized the anti-monopoly movement; and completely reoriented the way Americans thought about time and space. “The transcontinentals ... came to epitomize progress, nationalism, and civilization itself,” the historian Richard White wrote in his epic history of the transcontinentals, 'Railroaded.' But he continued: “They created modernity as much by their failure as their success.” Today’s return guest is Richard White. Our acute subject is the transcontinental railroads and the 19th century. But our deeper subject is the nature of transformative technology and the messy business of building it. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Richard White Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality For the Worse

  According to analysis by Financial Times writer John Burn-Murdoch, something extraordinary has happened to Americans’ personalities in the last decade. Longitudinal tests indicate that we’ve collectively become less extroverted, less agreeable, and more neurotic. The most significant thing Burn-Murdoch found is that measures of conscientiousness among young Americans appears to be in a kind of free fall. Today, John and I talk about his research. We discuss personality tests, the value of conscientiousness, and how the modern world might be scrambling our personalities by making us less interested in other people and more consumed with our own neurotic interiority. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: John Burn-Murdoch Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• Will AI Usher In the End of Deep Thinking?

  Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis published the latest GDP report. It contained a startling detail. Spending on artificial intelligence added more to the U.S. economy than consumer spending last quarter. This is very quickly becoming an AI economy. I’m interested in how AI will change our jobs. But I’m just as curious about how it will change our minds. We’re already seeing that students in high school and college are using AI to write most of their essays. What do we lose in a world where students sacrifice the ability to do deep writing? Today’s guest is Cal Newport, the author of several bestsellers on the way we work, including 'Deep Work.' He is also a professor of computer science at Georgetown. One of the questions I get the most by email, in talks, in conversations with people about the news is: If these tools can read faster than us, synthesize better than us, remember better than us, and write faster than us, what’s our place in the loop? What skills should we value in the age of AI? Or, more pointedly: What should we teach our children in the age of AI? How do we ride this train without getting run over by it? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Calvin Newport Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• The New Geography of Housing in America

  Subscribe to Derek’s new Substack. In 1991, the median age of first-time homebuyers was 28. Now it’s 38, an all-time high. In 1981, the median age of all homebuyers was 36. Today, it’s 56—another all-time high. This is the hardest time for young people (defined, generously, up to 40!) to buy their first home in modern history. Derek talks about the history of how we got here and then brings on Bloomberg columnist Conor Sen to talk about the state of American housing today and how the national housing market has broken into “two Americas.” If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Conor Sen Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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