Plain English with Derek Thompson The Ringer

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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Today, with Gaza protests spreading across the country and around the world, we dive deep into what’s actually happening on the ground in the war between Israel and Hamas—and how this war might actually end, or lead to a broader conflict.
The status quo in Gaza is horrendous in every conceivable way. Following an attack that killed more than a thousand Israelis on October 7, Israel has retaliated with a bombing campaign more destructive than the most aggressive World War II fire-bombings in Germany. 80 percent of buildings in north Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Tens of thousands of Gaza civilians have been killed, according to various estimates. Millions are displaced and hungry, and many are camped near Rafah, where Israel is considering a new military campaign to root out Hamas leaders.
Today’s guest is Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. I asked Natan to come back on the show because, while the entire media is covering the campus protests in excruciating detail, I felt like the news cycle was losing its grip on the actual war itself. Today, I asked Natan my biggest questions about the war as it stands, including whether Israel’s military strategy has already failed; whether Hamas’s top leadership actually wants the kind of ceasefire that campus protesters are calling for; and whether anything about this war would actually change if the U.S. immediately halted military aid to Israel.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Natan Sachs
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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In the last week, hundreds of protests across college campuses and American cities have taken place in response to the war in Gaza. Campus life has shut down at Columbia University in NYC. The news is strewn with images of police confrontations on campuses, from Texas to California. Hundreds of demonstrators across the country have been taken into police custody. And many people now anticipate that, without a major course correction in the war in Gaza, demonstrators will converge on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in a replay of the infamous 1968 anti-war protests and police riots that defined that national convention. Next week, we’re going to have a full episode on the war itself. Today, I want to talk about the nature of protest itself. Omar Wasow, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley, is the author of an influential paper about the history of 1960s protests. Today we talk about what made the 1960s protests different, how protests succeed, how protests backfire, and how his research applies to today.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Omar Wasow
Producer: Devon Baroldi
LINKS: "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion, and Voting" [link]
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