Plain English with Derek Thompson The Ringer

It is a general rule of thumb that richer societies are happier societies. This is true across countries, as GDP and life satisfaction are highly correlated. And it is true across time. Countries get happier as they get richer. But there is a caveat to this general principle. Which is that the United States is not nearly as contented as its gross national income would predict.

In fact, the U.S. is, as we’ve covered on this show, in a bit of a gloom rut. It has now been nearly two decades since a majority of Americans have told pollsters at NBC that they’re satisfied with the way things are going. This hope drought has no precedent in modern polling. NBC itself reported that “We have never before seen this level of sustained pessimism in the 30-year-plus history of the poll.”

Polls show that faith in government, business, and other institutions is in free fall—especially among conservatives. But they also show that conservatives are generally happy with their life and in their relationships. If conservatives have happiness without trust, American progressives seem to have trust without happiness.

In a recent paper called “The Politics of Depression,” published by the journal Social Science & Medicine–Mental Health, the epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and several coauthors showed that young progressives are significantly more depressed than conservatives, have been for years, and the gap is growing over time. Other studies, including the General Social Survey, show the same.

Why are young progressives so sad? Today’s guest is Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and coauthor of ‘The Coddling of the American Mind.’ He has written intelligently, critically, and emotionally about happiness, depression, politics, and progressivism.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Greg Lukianoff
Producer: Devon Baroldi

Links:
"People in Richer Countries Tend to Be Happier" https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction
"The Politics of Depression" by Catherine Gimbrone et al https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560321000438
"How to Understand the Well-Being Gap Between Liberals and Conservatives" by Musa al-Gharbi https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/
"The Coddling of the American Mind" The Atlantic essay by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ [book] https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224897
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On today's episode: the state of American politics and the future of America's economy. Derek discusses a media myth in the aftermath of the failed Trump assassination attempt and reviews three basic truths about Joe Biden's doomed presidential bid. Then, Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee joins the show to answer Derek's blunt question, "Are you going to cut rates next month?" Plus, they discuss the Federal Reserve, how it works, how he sees the economy, whether high rates are constraining housing production, and whether Trump's signature economic policy idea—high tariffs in an age of global inflation—would help the U.S. economy. (TLDR: No.)
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Austan Goolsbee
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Links:
“Stop Pretending You Know How This Will End,” Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
“Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” by Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken
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Skyrocketing rates, shrinking affordability: The U.S. housing market is a mess. It's also a bit of a mystery. Why are prices still sky-high, even though many measures of demand are weak? If the supply of new homes is nearing a historic high, how come the inventory for existing homes is close to a historic low? Today's guests agree that this is one of the weirdest housing markets in recent history. Mike Simonsen, president founder of Altos Research, and Lance Lambert, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Residential Club, join to talk about the state of the U.S. housing market—what makes it ugly, what makes it weird, and what would have to happen to make it better.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guests: Mike Simonsen & Lance Lambert
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance has created a crisis for the Democratic Party and a set of interlocking debates about whether the White House—or the White House media—covered up his cognitive decline. The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich, who first wrote that Biden should drop out of the race two years ago, joins to discuss Biden campaign strategy and the hypocrisy of many Democrats who refused to state publicly what they knew privately: that Biden's age-related blunders were getting more serious. Then we are joined by the busiest man in media, Alex Thompson, political correspondent of Axios, who has absolutely dominated this story in the past week. As a group, we talk about Biden’s age, the Democratic campaign strategy—Project "Bubble Wrap"—that is blowing up in their faces, the failures of the political press and Democratic operatives to see what’s in front of their noses, and the chances that Kamala Harris will imminently replace Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guests: Mark Leibovich & Alex Thompson
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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In the first five decades of the 20th century, the number of serial killers in the U.S. remained at a very low level. But between the 1950s and 1960s, the number of serial killers tripled. Between the 1960s and 1970s, they tripled again. In the 1980s and 1990s, they kept rising. And then, just as suddenly as the serial killer emerged as an American phenomenon, he (and it really is mostly a he) nearly disappeared. What happened to the American serial killers? And what does this phenomenon say about American society, criminology, and technology?
Today's guest is James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University. The author of 18 books, he has been publishing on this subject since before 1974, the year that the FBI coined the term "serial killer."
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: James Alan Fox
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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We've done several podcasts on America's declining fertility rate, and why South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world. But we've never done an episode on the subject quite like this one.
Today we go deep on the psychology of having children and not having children, and the cultural revolution behind the decline in birthrates in America and the rest of the world. The way we think about dating, marriage, kids, and family is changing radically in a very short period of time. And we are just beginning to reckon with the causes and consequences of that shift. In the new book, 'What Are Children For,' Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman say a new "parenthood ambivalence" is sweeping the world. In today's show, they persuade Derek that this issue is about more than the economic trends he tends to focus on when he discusses this issue.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guests: Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman
Producer: Devon Baroldi
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