WEBVTT - The Future of Work w/ Derek Thompson #818 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.880 Welcome to had to Money. I'm Joel and I am 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.000 Matt and today we're talking the future of work with 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:06.800 Derek Thompson. 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:27.720 That's right, Yeah, So we are undoubtedly going to have 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.480 a wide ranging conversation with our guest today, Derek Thompson. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.160 We are big fans of his work. It hardly seems 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.880 necessary to introduce him, but he is a senior editor 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:38.960 over at The Atlantic. I think he's been there for 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.440 around fifteen years now and has since been recognized for 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.839 his work his narratives on topic like the future of 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.440 work and the science of popularity. His notable book, Hit 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.400 Makers that was a bestseller that delves into the secret 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.240 histories of pop culture, hits and the dynamics of what 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.320 makes something popular. But Derek also hosts the podcast Plain English, 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.279 which I rarely missed an episode of personally, where he 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:05.920 offers weekly insights into the latest news things he's most 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:09.319 interested in, as well as important issues that our society 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:12.920 faces today, like the changing views of what work should 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:15.800 and shouldn't be. So that's what we'll be talking about today. 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:18.920 Maybe we'll touch on the Vibe session. Plenty more to 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.200 cover today with you, Derek. Thank you for joining us. 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:22.800 Great to be here, Thank you guys. 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.000 Of course. Yeah. Okay. First question we ask anybody who 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:26.920 comes on the show, Derek, is what do they like 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.440 to splurge on? Because Matt and I we drink craft beer. 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.600 Sometimes it's a little expensive and people might say, wait, 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:33.959 but you guys are supposed to be frugal. Why are 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.520 you spending so much on beer? And it's because that's 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.160 our craft beer equivalent. Everybody has one something they splourage 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:41.399 on while they're being smart, they're saving and investing for 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:42.400 the future. So what's yours? 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:46.040 Mine is wine. There's absolu no question that mine. That 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:49.680 wine is my luxury item. When my wife or anybody 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.400 else asks me what do I want for my birthday? 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:55.160 I say, please, don't get me anything that I can't 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:57.240 finish in one night. Make it a bottle of wine, 0:01:57.680 --> 0:01:59.720 or make it a bottle of ribon, which I tend 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:01.120 not to finish in one night because that would be 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:03.680 extremely dangerous. But I suppose if you invite enough people 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:05.120 over to your house to share in the bottle of 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.400 burb and it's possible. But seriously, the only thing I 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:12.239 spend money on our liquids, essentially alcoholic liquids. I love wine. 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:15.800 It's incredibly important to me. My dad, my late dad 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:17.440 had passed away a few years ago, was a wine 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:19.959 critic for the Washington Post. That was his side job 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.000 to being a lawyer in Washington, d C. Got introduced 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.440 to wine when I was a really young kid, and 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:27.600 I wish I could tell you that I liked all 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:31.000 different kinds of wine and you know, could totally drink 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.959 the cheap stuff and enjoy it. I have an incredibly 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:38.160 annoying palette, as they say, I think even describing saying 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:42.240 the word palce probably annoying itself. I really like fancy wine, 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:44.520 and I love spending money on it. And you know, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.359 my wife and I this is maybe a longer ranch 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:48.600 than you were prepared for, because wine is such an 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:49.440 important indulgence. 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:50.359 MA go them. 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:50.840 I love it. 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.480 My wife and I have a saying in our household 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.240 that you know, sometimes it'll be like a Tuesday or Wednesday, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.440 nothing in particular will be important happening, there's no birthday, 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.280 no anniversary, but we'll just feel like really great it 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:04.200 will have had like maybe just like a great day, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.200 or just be in a particularly good mood, and we'll 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:08.560 really want to open up a bottle of really nice wine. 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:10.400 And we used to sometimes think, oh, you know, like 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.320 opening up, like, you know, a fifty to sixty seventy 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.919 dollars bottle of wine on a Tuesday makes no sense 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:16.560 because they need to finish the whole thing. That's like 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:18.519 so much money to spend on, you know, for nothing. 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.200 But now we have a saying in our household, which is, 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:25.680 drink the wine. Whenever we feel excited and giddy about 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.480 the world, even if it's a Tuesday or Wednesday of 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.079 no import we say, what the heck, drink the wine. 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.000 And yeah, Wine's incredibly important to me, and I love 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:37.000 spending too much money on it. 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:37.560 I love it? 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:39.640 Okay. Two followup questions on that. If I came over 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:41.040 to your house and I brought over a bottle of 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:43.600 Kirkland's signature wine, Yeah, how would you feel about that? 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:45.880 Would you automatically turn me away? And two? Is it 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.360 possible to get good wine in the twenty dollars bottle range? 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:50.880 Number two, I'll answer them in the opposite door of 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.280 the usk them. Absolutely as possible to get great bottles 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:55.760 of wine in the twenty dollar range. I think it's 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.960 easier for whites I think it's easier for you know, 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.600 whites like Shin and Blae that aren't like you know, Chardonnay, 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:03.960 things that go up to the moon in terms of 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:06.240 price because they tend to be grown really highly out 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.880 and app and Sonoma. But absolutely it's easy to get good, 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.320 often great twenty dollar bottles of wine. You just have 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.760 to work in varietals that aren't you know, the biggies. 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:19.160 You're probably not going to get a fantastic twenty dollars 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:23.440 cab from California. But if you're talking about something like granache, 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:25.960 or you're talking about maybe a Spanish wine, Italian wine, 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:28.520 absolutely you can get fantastic stuff from the twenty dollars range. 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.520 And then first, what would happen if you brought over 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.960 Kirkland Select or something. Well, look, I remember I once 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:37.840 with my grandmother. To give you a sense of how 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:39.640 much I drink and how much my family drinks, we 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.640 want sa a vodka test. My grandmother loves vodka. She's 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:44.840 ninety six years old, and we did a vodka test 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:46.919 with us. She had some Belvitere and some Gray Goose 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:49.719 and some Kirkland Select and some regular Kirkland and we 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.599 tried all the various vodkas and she, like Kirkland, select 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:57.479 the best that was for vodka. As for wine, I 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:01.560 think I would smile politely and say thank you if 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:04.799 I thought that maybe you didn't realize what you had bought. 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:06.960 But if I knew you better, I'd think you're probably 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.440 probably playing a prank on me, and I would laugh 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:12.160 and ask you to jrug the whole thing before you 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:13.000 stepped into my house. 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.520 What's funny is like you mentioned the kirk Sig vodka 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:19.599 and the rumor is is that it's great. Curious is 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.760 the maker of the French vodka. So yeah, good to 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:24.279 know that Joel can't bring over a bottle of. 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:26.240 Josh over to Derek's house. 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:29.880 Derek, you're your writing it tends to operate in a 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:33.120 bunch of different topics, like across a broad spectrum, but 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:35.200 like it also kind of feels like there is a 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:37.480 common thread in all of your work. Like when I 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.680 think about your writing, it seems like like we live 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:41.920 in a disorderly kind of chaotic world, and I feel 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:43.600 like a lot of your writing it tries to bring 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:46.200 some sort of order to the world that we live in. 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:48.080 Like I guess what I'm asking is, do you have 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.279 like a mission statement behind your writing or are you 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:54.839 more or less just sort of following your curiosities. 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.440 I'm absolutely glad about my curiosity, and if you can 0:05:57.440 --> 0:05:59.760 see a thread that connects my work, that makes one 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:03.880 of us. I'm not entirely sure that I operate within 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:08.039 anything like the strictures of a beat. I'm very, very 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:11.600 very lucky in both my writing life at The Atlantic 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.240 and my podcasting life at The Ringer that I can 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.640 pretty much write whatever I want, and I do write 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:21.040 just about whatever I want. Working on an article right 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.320 now for The Atlantic about the history of work, working 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:28.080 on a podcast right now about NYU psychologists research into 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.279 how social media warps our brains and our sense of reality. 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.200 I'm interested in doing future podcasts right now on the 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:40.080 future of cancer research and health fads. I'm sort of 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:42.320 interested in the world, and I like the concept of 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:44.440 sense making, as you put it. I like the idea 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.960 that my job is to investigate mysteries in the world, 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:51.200 and that's pretty much what I see my job as 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.320 being to find important mysteries that affect a lot of 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:58.960 people in the world and to do my best to 0:06:59.040 --> 0:06:59.680 make sense of them. 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.560 I remember hearing you talk about getting the job offer 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.120 at the Atlantic and the kind of convoluted the way 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.039 that went down, and you ended up getting at least 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:09.880 to start out with. I know you've branched out since then, 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:11.880 but you ended up getting the economics speak and it 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.240 was like what you most didn't want to write about? 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:14.800 Why was that? 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:15.280 Well? 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:17.560 I was given right. So I'm twenty two years old 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.040 to twenty three years old at the Atlantic and I'm 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.680 basically an intern at the time, and they come up 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:24.360 to me in the eighth floor, which is where the 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.600 sort of communications interns sat, and they said, hey, do 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:30.240 you want to write for the Atlantic dot com for 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.680 the economics desk? And my first answer was absolutely not. 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.080 I don't know anything about economics. I grew up in 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.480 the Washington, DC area, and when we got the Washington 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.520 Post every single week, the only section of that newspaper 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:45.160 that I would throw in the trash was the business section. 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:47.840 I was interested in everything in the world except for 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.720 business and economics. And so I told them no, like, 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.080 please don't make me do this. I'll embarrass you and 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.240 I won't have a good time doing it. And they 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.520 were great about it. They said, look, we think you 0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.600 can do it. And the truth is, if you're bad 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.080 at this will just fire you back to your old job. 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:04.960 So the opportunity cost of taking this position is absolutely zero. 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.080 So I gave it a shot and ended up realizing, 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:10.400 you know, to my own surprise, that economics was for 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.600 me a really useful lens through which to see the world. 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:17.920 I write about macroeconomics quite a bit, and podcasts about 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:20.440 macroeconomics quite a bit. I'd say that my interests are 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:24.720 more wide ranging than simply economic, But there's ways in 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.800 which economics. I think it's provided a useful lens because it, 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:31.680 at least in the way that I looked at it, 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:36.520 economics was the study of how people live and how 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:40.839 the incentives of their life influenced their life. And when 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.480 you think about economics from a really abstract level like that, 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.520 well it opens up a lot of fields of interests 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.520 that have nothing to do with specific businesses. 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:49.880 Yeah. 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:51.800 I think I saw that you are like a triple 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.840 major in Northwestern and economics wasn't one of them. 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.880 So I should say the triple major thing is a 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.480 little bit BS, so I would Yeah, I got it, 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:04.840 I got it. Yeah. First off, it was a Quinn 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.480 double major. How So I went to the journalism school, 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.520 the Middle School of Journalism, and they encourage everybody, just 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.440 for everybody, to get a double major. So I double 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.120 majored in political science. I should hasten to say, I 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:19.760 don't think political science it is a very useful major. 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.800 I've joked before that practically all the classes that I 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.240 took seemed to be about why World War One happened, 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.360 and the answer to all those classes is we don't know. 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:29.240 So I didn't get a whole lot out of my 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.280 political science major. And towards the end of my four 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:34.959 years at Northwestern, which I overall loved, I thought that 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:36.400 I might want to be a lawyer, and so I 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.160 picked up legal studies as a third major. And it 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.480 was one of these majors where you can take a 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.560 few seminars and write a thesis, then double count a 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.360 lot of other classes, then get credit for a third major. 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:49.440 This is probably not the you know, disquisition you wanted 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.079 on triple major. But basically I thought I wanted to 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.120 be a lawyer because I thought that being a lawyer 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.440 meant acting like Lieutenant Danny Caffey and a few good 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:00.240 men as played by Tom Cruise. 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:01.320 That's exactly what it's like, right. 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:04.079 A lawyer's job is just to scream at Jack Nicholson 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.040 and then get clapped at. And it turned out very 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:09.160 quickly that that was not what a lawyer's job was, 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:11.480 and so I decided to sort of abandon the lawyer 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:13.000 path and stuck with journalism. 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:15.360 Well again, it makes sense you growing up there in DC. 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:17.559 But yeah, it sounds like, do you ever play man? 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:19.720 This is such a tangent, but do you ever play 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:21.160 a Ticket to Ride board game? 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:22.880 Oh? Hell yeah, I love Ticket to Ride? 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.080 Okay, So Derek, this is you getting that legal studies agree? 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.440 Was you drawing other routes and realizing that all you 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:29.920 had to do is build one more train segment and 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:32.000 all of a sudden you have like at coast kind 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:32.840 of yeah, I don't. 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:34.120 Know if you guys have played Ticket to Ride the 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.200 European version, but all you really have to do is 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.160 just build through like sort of modern Siberia Poland, Like 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:43.480 you have to dominate in the northeast, right, The Northeast 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.040 essentially was my journal was was my journalism. I realized 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.440 that's where I really needed to extend my train line, 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.520 and all those tiny little rails in the center of 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.720 you know, Western Europe, where you know it's it's big cities, 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:56.440 it's attractive, but you realize you're not getting a lot 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:57.880 of points from them. That was legal studies, major. 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.160 Just stay away from London, no matter better. Okay, let's 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.480 talk about money finally and not board games. But what 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.480 is your take on where the economy stands right now? 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.160 Because it seems like a lot might depend on your 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.280 stage of life, Because if you purchased a car, if 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.359 you purchased a home, say five years ago, you're thinking, oh, 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.840 the economies, it's great, everything's firing on all cylinder. 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:19.320 Lot equity and low interest rate. 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.120 But if you missed out, like that period of time 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.719 was such like a golden window for folks to enter 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:27.760 into adulthood. So I'm curious of your overall thoughts on 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.080 sort of I guess the vibe session and how folks 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:31.400 are feeling about the economy. 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:33.240 Yeah, let me try to do a really quick summary 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:34.840 on how I see the economy right now. And we 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.320 can do bad news first and good news second. So 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:42.040 bad news inflation is coming down, but it's still positive. 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.440 And inflation describes the rate of change in prices. So 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:46.199 when the rate of changing prices goes from a really 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.040 high number to a less high number, that means that 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.400 prices are still getting higher, and prices still are really 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.000 very much above where they were four years ago. In 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.800 things like groceries. Also, interest rates are elevated, and so 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.640 if you are a addle class person buying a lot 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.720 of groceries, and especially if you are looking to buy 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.640 a new car, lease a new car, buy a new house, well, 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:09.440 then the economy is really tough for you right now. 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:11.040 Because lots of prices in the. 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.960 Economy are high. Your wage might not have grown very much. 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.000 We'll talk a little bit more about the stratification of 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:20.200 wage growth by inflation in just a second. But if 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:21.480 you're trying to buy a house, you're trying to buy 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:22.839 a bit ticket item like a house or a car, 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:24.560 interest rates are high enough that that's a really really 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:26.319 expensive thing, and so you're going to kind of feel 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:28.960 locked out of that part of the economy because of 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.600 higher interest rates. Now, here's the good thing. Wages overall 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.080 are growing faster than inflation, and they have been for 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.760 just about a year. They're growing fastest at the bottom, 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.319 and they're growing slowest toward the top. So this is 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.000 a pretty good economy if you are a lower income 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:47.440 worker who does not necessarily need to find a new apartment, 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:51.319 find a new home. Your wages have been growing, you've 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.560 been able to trade up for a lot of you know, 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:56.760 trade out, maybe from a low paying service sector job 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:58.360 to a higher paying service sector job. And if you 0:12:58.360 --> 0:12:59.959 don't have to find a new apartment, you can stay 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:01.679 and the department that you have, and you haven't had 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.800 to suffer the same kind of retinflation. We've seen wage 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:11.040 growth be positive compared to inflation. Unemployment is unbelievably low. 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:16.720 Inequality is falling because low wage workers are getting raises 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.520 faster than high wage workers, and productivity is growing. Plus 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:23.280 you have the strong equity growth over the last few 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.199 years if you do own, so you know, in a way, 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.000 it's kind of like there's you know, obviously, the economy 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:31.880 is not just one thing. It's three hundred and thirty 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:36.960 million people's experience of an environment and of different prices 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:41.319 in different states, in different places. If you own, if 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.640 you are a highest income worker, this is a pretty 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.960 good economy for you. But if you're trying to break 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:53.360 into the housing market and you're still relying and you know, 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:55.920 sort of not making as much money as you want to, 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:59.760 and you're suffering from grocery inflation. It's a much harder economy, 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:02.320 very good in some ways, not as good a oothers. 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:03.640 You said we're gonna start with bad news, and then 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:05.320 pretty quickly we got into good news, and you had 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:07.520 a litany of good news. And it feels like the 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.720 difference between perception and reality, at least from where I'm sitting, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:16.440 have never been farther apart. And the doumeristic tendencies right like, 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.160 they are just significant right now. There was some new 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.800 recent study in Nature magazine saying like that the most 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.400 dumeristic headlines with the pessimistic outlook got more clicks. There's 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:29.960 like this incentive too, I think, from the media to 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:34.920 talk about what's bad sometimes even when things are overwhelmingly good. 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.960 And I think maybe that colors how we perceive things 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:41.680 and maybe how we even think about our own lives. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:43.920 So I don't know, do you think that's true? And 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.640 how do you square the actual reality on the ground, 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:51.280 the largely positive economic numbers, with how people are feeling 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:51.800 about things. 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.000 It's a great question, and it's one that I've wrestled 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.520 with quite a bit. I don't think there's any value 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.320 to or, let me put a bit differently, I think 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:05.240 there is limited value to telling people who are having 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:10.520 a negative experience in the economy that they're wrong. People's 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.840 experience is their life, and if they're experiencing hardship, then 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.480 there's no point in saying, well, you're not actually experiencing 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.000 hardship because look at these productivity numbers. You're not actually 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.440 experiencing hardship, because look at this unemployment rate. Parts of 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.400 his hardship. That said, I do think that a lot 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.640 of the general pessimism of the economy is what my 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:33.600 friend kylela Scanlon calls a vibe session rather than something 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.200 that is like a recession. While Street Journal recently had 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:38.800 a study where they ask people in swing states to 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:43.480 estimate the or excuse me to express their sentiment of 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.760 the quality of the economy where they lived in their 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:49.640 state and the equality of the national economy. In every 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.880 single state, their assessment of the economy was positive, and 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:55.840 in every single state their assessment of the national economy 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:59.680 was negative. And this feeds into a phenomenon that I 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.760 have just described in a previous essay as everything's terrible, 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:06.840 but I'm fine. That is, there seems to be some 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:14.520 psychology at work whereby our attitude or sentiment gets more 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:20.640 negative the more national or universal we're asked to reflect 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:21.160 on the world. 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:23.440 It's kind of like how we hate Congress but love 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:24.400 our own congress. 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.360 Person absolutely, Or we think America's school system is going 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.640 to hell in a handbasket, but how's your own school? Oh, 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.120 we quite love it for young Tommy. I think there's 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.280 a lot of ways in which our assessment of our 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:39.680 own lives tends to be more positive because of resilience 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:45.240 and because of experience, and our assessment of the world 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:50.160 is mediated by the news media, and as you pointed out, 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:53.280 there's some NYU research that suggests that the news media 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.200 has a negativity bias in parts, by the way, because 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:01.000 news audiences have a negativity bias, and so as news 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:05.199 media is clamoring to get attention, they realize that the 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.640 cliche is true. If it bleeds, it leads, or more precisely, 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:11.200 I suppose I don't know how to make this rhyme, 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:11.720 but if it. 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:13.200 Bleeds, she will clip. 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:17.600 People tend to when they see a five alarm fire 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.520 feel their attention gravitate toward it, And in a way, 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:23.640 I don't want to sort of open up too many 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:25.399 tabs here, but in a way, I think that this 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:28.199 goes to the fact that I think we are, or 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.240 our attention is dis evolved for the world we live in. 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.479 I think that we're probably evolved to have our attention 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:38.400 gravitate to bad news. After all, if you're a hunter 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.360 gatherer on the savannah, and you see a bunch of 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:44.240 things that look fine, and then one thing that looks 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.359 like it's really not fine, right, like maybe the head 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.080 of a panther or tiger that's about to kill you, Okay, 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.200 we should clearly pay attention to the danger in your environment. 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.720 And I think in the same way, readers on the 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:03.520 internet are attuned to negativity for the same evolutionary impulse, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:09.560 and news media have queued into this negative impulse and 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:15.280 just flooded the scene with negative news stories. And that's why, 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:17.520 to go to the first question that you asked, I 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.680 think our impression of our own lives, which is mediated 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.080 only by our own experience, has been more positive, while 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.640 our impression of the country, which is mediated by actual 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:28.720 news media can's been more negative. 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.640 It's interesting how it's something that is programmed into our mind. 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.479 It's essentially being used against us in order to generate 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:39.199 clicks and to generate ad revenue. But you're saying that 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.639 it's being decided upon by media or legacy media. But 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:46.760 also not to go down another tangent here, but social 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:48.239 media and you kind of touched on this how it's 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.040 warping our view, but the actual algorithms and what it 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.760 is that we're being fed. It continues to polarize individuals, 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:59.040 whether I think it's negative, maybe sometimes in positive ways what. 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.600 They choose to amplify as often the angriest was it's 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:03.720 the angriest, it's the most violent. It's the things. 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:06.639 I mean, like I constantly I still get fed a 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:10.400 bunch of like car wreck videos, and I'm like, what 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:11.960 is it that the algorithm thinks about me? 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:12.639 That I want to see this? 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:14.840