Plain English with Derek Thompson The Ringer

In an age of cults, sports are the last gasp of the monoculture—the last remnant of the 20th century mainstream still standing. Even so, the new NBA media rights deal is astonishing. At a time when basketball ratings are in steady decline, the NBA is on the verge of signing a $70-plus billion sports rights deal that would grow its annual media rights revenue by almost 3x. How does that make any sense? (Try asking your boss for a tripled raise when your performance declines 2 percent a year and tell us how that goes.) And what does this madness tell us about the state of sports and TV economics in the age of cults and cord-cutting? John Ourand, sports correspondent with Puck News, explains.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: John Ourand
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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The news media is very good at focusing on points of disagreement in our politics. Wherever Democrats and Republicans are butting heads, that's where we reliably find news coverage. When right and left disagree about trans rights, or the immigration border bill, or abortion, or January 6, or the indictments over January 6, you can bet that news coverage will be ample. But journalists like me sometimes have a harder time seeing through the lurid partisanship to focus on where both sides agree. It's these places, these subtle areas of agreements, these points of quiet fusion, where policy is actually made, where things actually happen.
I’m offering you that wind up because I think something extraordinary is happening in American economics today. Something deeper than the headlines about lingering inflation. High grocery prices. Prohibitive interest rates. Stalled out housing markets.
Quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, a new consensus is building in Washington concerning technology, and trade, and growth. It has three main parts: first, there is a newly aggressive approach to subsidizing the construction of new infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced computer chips that are integral to AI and military; second, there are new tariffs, or new taxes on certain imports, especially from China to protect US companies in these industries; and third, there are restrictions on Chinese technologies in the U.S., like Huawei and TikTok. Subsidies, tariffs, and restrictions are the new rage in Washington.
Today’s guest is David Leonhardt, a longtime writer, columnist, and editor at The New York Times who currently runs their morning newsletter, The Morning. he is the author of the book Ours Was the Shining Future.
We talk about the history of the old economic consensus, the death of Reaganism, the demise of the free trade standard, the strengths and weaknesses of the new economic consensus, what could go right in this new paradigm, and what could go horribly wrong.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: David Leonhardt
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Links:
David Leonhardt on neopopulism: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/19/briefing/centrism-washington-neopopulism.html
Greg Ip on the three-legged stool of new industrial policy: https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-u-s-finally-has-a-strategy-to-compete-with-china-will-it-work-ce4ea6cf
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The game of basketball has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. In the early 1990s, Michael Jordan said that 3-point shooting was "something I don’t want to excel at," because he thought it might make him a less effective scorer. 20 years later, 3-point shots have taken over basketball. The NBA has even changed dramatically in the last decade. In the 2010s, it briefly seemed as if sharp-shooting guards would drive the center position out of existence. But the last four MVP awards have all gone to centers.
In his new book, ‘Hoop Atlas,’ author Kirk Goldsberry explains how new star players have continually revolutionized the game. Goldsberry traces the evolution of basketball from the midrange mastery of peak Jordan in the 1990s, to the offensive dark ages of the early 2000s, to the rise of sprawl ball and "heliocentrism," and finally to emergence of a new apex predator in the game: the do-it-all big man.
Today, we talk about the history of paradigm shifts in basketball strategy and how several key superstars in particular—Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Manu Ginóbili, Steph Curry, and Nikola Jokic—have served as tactical entrepreneurs, introducing new plays and skills that transform the way basketball is played.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Kirk Goldsberry
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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Today—a closer critical look at the relationship between smartphones and mental health. One of the themes we’ve touched on more than any other on this show is that American teenagers—especially girls—appear to be “engulfed” in historic rates of anxiety and sadness. The numbers are undeniable. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that from 2011 to 2021, the share of teenage girls who say they experience “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” increased by 50 percent.
But there is a fierce debate about why this is happening. The most popular explanation on offer today in the media says: It’s the smartphones, stupid. Teen anxiety increased during a period when smartphones and social media colonized the youth social experience. This is a story I’ve shared on this very show, including with Jonathan Haidt, the author of the new bestselling book 'The Anxious Generation_.'_
But this interpretation is not dogma in scientific circles. In fact, it’s quite hotly debated. In 2019, an Oxford University study titled "The Association Between Adolescent Well-Being and Digital Technology Use" found that the effect size of screen time on reduced mental health was roughly the same as the association with “eating potatoes.”
Today, I want to give more space to the argument that it's not just the phones. Our guest is David Wallace-Wells, bestselling science writer and a columnist for The New York Times.  He says something more complicated is happening. In particular, the rise in teen distress seems concentrated in a handful of high-income and often English-speaking countries. So what is it about the interaction between smartphones, social media, and an emerging Anglophonic culture of mental health that seems to be driving this increase in teen distress?
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: David Wallace-Wells
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Links
My original essay on the teen anxiety phenomenon
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/american-teens-sadness-depression-anxiety/629524/
"Are Smartphones Driving Our Teens to Depression?" by David Wallace-Wells
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/smartphones-social-media-mental-health-teens.html
'The Anxious Generation,' by Jonathan Haidt
https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book
Haidt responds to his critics
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic
Our original episode with Haidt
https://www.theringer.com/2022/4/22/23036468/why-are-american-teenagers-so-sad-and-anxious
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For decades, flying cars have been a symbol of collective disappointment—of a technologically splendid future that was promised but never delivered. Whose fault is that?
Gideon Lewis-Kraus, a staff writer at The New Yorker who has spent 18 months researching the history, present, and future of flying car technology, joins the show. We talk about why flying cars don't exist—and why they might be much closer to reality than most people think.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. 
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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Several years ago, I told some friends that I had an idea for a second book. It would be called ‘Everything Is a Cult.’ I’d noticed that in an age of declining religiosity, capitalism was filling the god-shaped hole left by the demise of organized religion with companies and services and products that were amassing a cult-like following in media, entertainment, and marketing. I never ended up writing the book. But last week, Sean Illing of ‘The Gray Area’ podcast with Vox asked me to come on his show to talk about my thinking on cults, identity, and the history of news media. Today, we're running that conversation on this feed in a rare example of me getting interviewed on my own show. Enjoy!
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Sean Illing
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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