Speaker 1: Welcome to had to Money. I'm Joel and I am
Speaker 1: Matt and today we're talking the future of work with
Speaker 1: Derek Thompson.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, So we are undoubtedly going to have
Speaker 2: a wide ranging conversation with our guest today, Derek Thompson.
Speaker 2: We are big fans of his work. It hardly seems
Speaker 2: necessary to introduce him, but he is a senior editor
Speaker 2: over at The Atlantic. I think he's been there for
Speaker 2: around fifteen years now and has since been recognized for
Speaker 2: his work his narratives on topic like the future of
Speaker 2: work and the science of popularity. His notable book, Hit
Speaker 2: Makers that was a bestseller that delves into the secret
Speaker 2: histories of pop culture, hits and the dynamics of what
Speaker 2: makes something popular. But Derek also hosts the podcast Plain English,
Speaker 2: which I rarely missed an episode of personally, where he
Speaker 2: offers weekly insights into the latest news things he's most
Speaker 2: interested in, as well as important issues that our society
Speaker 2: faces today, like the changing views of what work should
Speaker 2: and shouldn't be. So that's what we'll be talking about today.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll touch on the Vibe session. Plenty more to
Speaker 2: cover today with you, Derek. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Great to be here, Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah. Okay. First question we ask anybody who
Speaker 1: comes on the show, Derek, is what do they like
Speaker 1: to splurge on? Because Matt and I we drink craft beer.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a little expensive and people might say, wait,
Speaker 1: but you guys are supposed to be frugal. Why are
Speaker 1: you spending so much on beer? And it's because that's
Speaker 1: our craft beer equivalent. Everybody has one something they splourage
Speaker 1: on while they're being smart, they're saving and investing for
Speaker 1: the future. So what's yours?
Speaker 3: Mine is wine. There's absolu no question that mine. That
Speaker 3: wine is my luxury item. When my wife or anybody
Speaker 3: else asks me what do I want for my birthday?
Speaker 3: I say, please, don't get me anything that I can't
Speaker 3: finish in one night. Make it a bottle of wine,
Speaker 3: or make it a bottle of ribon, which I tend
Speaker 3: not to finish in one night because that would be
Speaker 3: extremely dangerous. But I suppose if you invite enough people
Speaker 3: over to your house to share in the bottle of
Speaker 3: burb and it's possible. But seriously, the only thing I
Speaker 3: spend money on our liquids, essentially alcoholic liquids. I love wine.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly important to me. My dad, my late dad
Speaker 3: had passed away a few years ago, was a wine
Speaker 3: critic for the Washington Post. That was his side job
Speaker 3: to being a lawyer in Washington, d C. Got introduced
Speaker 3: to wine when I was a really young kid, and
Speaker 3: I wish I could tell you that I liked all
Speaker 3: different kinds of wine and you know, could totally drink
Speaker 3: the cheap stuff and enjoy it. I have an incredibly
Speaker 3: annoying palette, as they say, I think even describing saying
Speaker 3: the word palce probably annoying itself. I really like fancy wine,
Speaker 3: and I love spending money on it. And you know,
Speaker 3: my wife and I this is maybe a longer ranch
Speaker 3: than you were prepared for, because wine is such an
Speaker 3: important indulgence.
Speaker 4: MA go them.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: My wife and I have a saying in our household
Speaker 3: that you know, sometimes it'll be like a Tuesday or Wednesday,
Speaker 3: nothing in particular will be important happening, there's no birthday,
Speaker 3: no anniversary, but we'll just feel like really great it
Speaker 3: will have had like maybe just like a great day,
Speaker 3: or just be in a particularly good mood, and we'll
Speaker 3: really want to open up a bottle of really nice wine.
Speaker 3: And we used to sometimes think, oh, you know, like
Speaker 3: opening up, like, you know, a fifty to sixty seventy
Speaker 3: dollars bottle of wine on a Tuesday makes no sense
Speaker 3: because they need to finish the whole thing. That's like
Speaker 3: so much money to spend on, you know, for nothing.
Speaker 3: But now we have a saying in our household, which is,
Speaker 3: drink the wine. Whenever we feel excited and giddy about
Speaker 3: the world, even if it's a Tuesday or Wednesday of
Speaker 3: no import we say, what the heck, drink the wine.
Speaker 3: And yeah, Wine's incredibly important to me, and I love
Speaker 3: spending too much money on it.
Speaker 4: I love it?
Speaker 1: Okay. Two followup questions on that. If I came over
Speaker 1: to your house and I brought over a bottle of
Speaker 1: Kirkland's signature wine, Yeah, how would you feel about that?
Speaker 1: Would you automatically turn me away? And two? Is it
Speaker 1: possible to get good wine in the twenty dollars bottle range?
Speaker 3: Number two, I'll answer them in the opposite door of
Speaker 3: the usk them. Absolutely as possible to get great bottles
Speaker 3: of wine in the twenty dollar range. I think it's
Speaker 3: easier for whites I think it's easier for you know,
Speaker 3: whites like Shin and Blae that aren't like you know, Chardonnay,
Speaker 3: things that go up to the moon in terms of
Speaker 3: price because they tend to be grown really highly out
Speaker 3: and app and Sonoma. But absolutely it's easy to get good,
Speaker 3: often great twenty dollar bottles of wine. You just have
Speaker 3: to work in varietals that aren't you know, the biggies.
Speaker 3: You're probably not going to get a fantastic twenty dollars
Speaker 3: cab from California. But if you're talking about something like granache,
Speaker 3: or you're talking about maybe a Spanish wine, Italian wine,
Speaker 3: absolutely you can get fantastic stuff from the twenty dollars range.
Speaker 3: And then first, what would happen if you brought over
Speaker 3: Kirkland Select or something. Well, look, I remember I once
Speaker 3: with my grandmother. To give you a sense of how
Speaker 3: much I drink and how much my family drinks, we
Speaker 3: want sa a vodka test. My grandmother loves vodka. She's
Speaker 3: ninety six years old, and we did a vodka test
Speaker 3: with us. She had some Belvitere and some Gray Goose
Speaker 3: and some Kirkland Select and some regular Kirkland and we
Speaker 3: tried all the various vodkas and she, like Kirkland, select
Speaker 3: the best that was for vodka. As for wine, I
Speaker 3: think I would smile politely and say thank you if
Speaker 3: I thought that maybe you didn't realize what you had bought.
Speaker 3: But if I knew you better, I'd think you're probably
Speaker 3: probably playing a prank on me, and I would laugh
Speaker 3: and ask you to jrug the whole thing before you
Speaker 3: stepped into my house.
Speaker 2: What's funny is like you mentioned the kirk Sig vodka
Speaker 2: and the rumor is is that it's great. Curious is
Speaker 2: the maker of the French vodka. So yeah, good to
Speaker 2: know that Joel can't bring over a bottle of.
Speaker 1: Josh over to Derek's house.
Speaker 2: Derek, you're your writing it tends to operate in a
Speaker 2: bunch of different topics, like across a broad spectrum, but
Speaker 2: like it also kind of feels like there is a
Speaker 2: common thread in all of your work. Like when I
Speaker 2: think about your writing, it seems like like we live
Speaker 2: in a disorderly kind of chaotic world, and I feel
Speaker 2: like a lot of your writing it tries to bring
Speaker 2: some sort of order to the world that we live in.
Speaker 2: Like I guess what I'm asking is, do you have
Speaker 2: like a mission statement behind your writing or are you
Speaker 2: more or less just sort of following your curiosities.
Speaker 3: I'm absolutely glad about my curiosity, and if you can
Speaker 3: see a thread that connects my work, that makes one
Speaker 3: of us. I'm not entirely sure that I operate within
Speaker 3: anything like the strictures of a beat. I'm very, very
Speaker 3: very lucky in both my writing life at The Atlantic
Speaker 3: and my podcasting life at The Ringer that I can
Speaker 3: pretty much write whatever I want, and I do write
Speaker 3: just about whatever I want. Working on an article right
Speaker 3: now for The Atlantic about the history of work, working
Speaker 3: on a podcast right now about NYU psychologists research into
Speaker 3: how social media warps our brains and our sense of reality.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in doing future podcasts right now on the
Speaker 3: future of cancer research and health fads. I'm sort of
Speaker 3: interested in the world, and I like the concept of
Speaker 3: sense making, as you put it. I like the idea
Speaker 3: that my job is to investigate mysteries in the world,
Speaker 3: and that's pretty much what I see my job as
Speaker 3: being to find important mysteries that affect a lot of
Speaker 3: people in the world and to do my best to
Speaker 3: make sense of them.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing you talk about getting the job offer
Speaker 1: at the Atlantic and the kind of convoluted the way
Speaker 1: that went down, and you ended up getting at least
Speaker 1: to start out with. I know you've branched out since then,
Speaker 1: but you ended up getting the economics speak and it
Speaker 1: was like what you most didn't want to write about?
Speaker 1: Why was that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I was given right. So I'm twenty two years old
Speaker 3: to twenty three years old at the Atlantic and I'm
Speaker 3: basically an intern at the time, and they come up
Speaker 3: to me in the eighth floor, which is where the
Speaker 3: sort of communications interns sat, and they said, hey, do
Speaker 3: you want to write for the Atlantic dot com for
Speaker 3: the economics desk? And my first answer was absolutely not.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about economics. I grew up in
Speaker 3: the Washington, DC area, and when we got the Washington
Speaker 3: Post every single week, the only section of that newspaper
Speaker 3: that I would throw in the trash was the business section.
Speaker 3: I was interested in everything in the world except for
Speaker 3: business and economics. And so I told them no, like,
Speaker 3: please don't make me do this. I'll embarrass you and
Speaker 3: I won't have a good time doing it. And they
Speaker 3: were great about it. They said, look, we think you
Speaker 3: can do it. And the truth is, if you're bad
Speaker 3: at this will just fire you back to your old job.
Speaker 3: So the opportunity cost of taking this position is absolutely zero.
Speaker 3: So I gave it a shot and ended up realizing,
Speaker 3: you know, to my own surprise, that economics was for
Speaker 3: me a really useful lens through which to see the world.
Speaker 3: I write about macroeconomics quite a bit, and podcasts about
Speaker 3: macroeconomics quite a bit. I'd say that my interests are
Speaker 3: more wide ranging than simply economic, But there's ways in
Speaker 3: which economics. I think it's provided a useful lens because it,
Speaker 3: at least in the way that I looked at it,
Speaker 3: economics was the study of how people live and how
Speaker 3: the incentives of their life influenced their life. And when
Speaker 3: you think about economics from a really abstract level like that,
Speaker 3: well it opens up a lot of fields of interests
Speaker 3: that have nothing to do with specific businesses.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I saw that you are like a triple
Speaker 2: major in Northwestern and economics wasn't one of them.
Speaker 3: So I should say the triple major thing is a
Speaker 3: little bit BS, so I would Yeah, I got it,
Speaker 3: I got it. Yeah. First off, it was a Quinn
Speaker 3: double major. How So I went to the journalism school,
Speaker 3: the Middle School of Journalism, and they encourage everybody, just
Speaker 3: for everybody, to get a double major. So I double
Speaker 3: majored in political science. I should hasten to say, I
Speaker 3: don't think political science it is a very useful major.
Speaker 3: I've joked before that practically all the classes that I
Speaker 3: took seemed to be about why World War One happened,
Speaker 3: and the answer to all those classes is we don't know.
Speaker 3: So I didn't get a whole lot out of my
Speaker 3: political science major. And towards the end of my four
Speaker 3: years at Northwestern, which I overall loved, I thought that
Speaker 3: I might want to be a lawyer, and so I
Speaker 3: picked up legal studies as a third major. And it
Speaker 3: was one of these majors where you can take a
Speaker 3: few seminars and write a thesis, then double count a
Speaker 3: lot of other classes, then get credit for a third major.
Speaker 3: This is probably not the you know, disquisition you wanted
Speaker 3: on triple major. But basically I thought I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a lawyer because I thought that being a lawyer
Speaker 3: meant acting like Lieutenant Danny Caffey and a few good
Speaker 3: men as played by Tom Cruise.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it's like, right.
Speaker 3: A lawyer's job is just to scream at Jack Nicholson
Speaker 3: and then get clapped at. And it turned out very
Speaker 3: quickly that that was not what a lawyer's job was,
Speaker 3: and so I decided to sort of abandon the lawyer
Speaker 3: path and stuck with journalism.
Speaker 2: Well again, it makes sense you growing up there in DC.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it sounds like, do you ever play man?
Speaker 2: This is such a tangent, but do you ever play
Speaker 2: a Ticket to Ride board game?
Speaker 3: Oh? Hell yeah, I love Ticket to Ride?
Speaker 2: Okay, So Derek, this is you getting that legal studies agree?
Speaker 2: Was you drawing other routes and realizing that all you
Speaker 2: had to do is build one more train segment and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you have like at coast kind
Speaker 2: of yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know if you guys have played Ticket to Ride the
Speaker 3: European version, but all you really have to do is
Speaker 3: just build through like sort of modern Siberia Poland, Like
Speaker 3: you have to dominate in the northeast, right, The Northeast
Speaker 3: essentially was my journal was was my journalism. I realized
Speaker 3: that's where I really needed to extend my train line,
Speaker 3: and all those tiny little rails in the center of
Speaker 3: you know, Western Europe, where you know it's it's big cities,
Speaker 3: it's attractive, but you realize you're not getting a lot
Speaker 3: of points from them. That was legal studies, major.
Speaker 2: Just stay away from London, no matter better. Okay, let's
Speaker 2: talk about money finally and not board games. But what
Speaker 2: is your take on where the economy stands right now?
Speaker 2: Because it seems like a lot might depend on your
Speaker 2: stage of life, Because if you purchased a car, if
Speaker 2: you purchased a home, say five years ago, you're thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: the economies, it's great, everything's firing on all cylinder.
Speaker 1: Lot equity and low interest rate.
Speaker 2: But if you missed out, like that period of time
Speaker 2: was such like a golden window for folks to enter
Speaker 2: into adulthood. So I'm curious of your overall thoughts on
Speaker 2: sort of I guess the vibe session and how folks
Speaker 2: are feeling about the economy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me try to do a really quick summary
Speaker 3: on how I see the economy right now. And we
Speaker 3: can do bad news first and good news second. So
Speaker 3: bad news inflation is coming down, but it's still positive.
Speaker 3: And inflation describes the rate of change in prices. So
Speaker 3: when the rate of changing prices goes from a really
Speaker 3: high number to a less high number, that means that
Speaker 3: prices are still getting higher, and prices still are really
Speaker 3: very much above where they were four years ago. In
Speaker 3: things like groceries. Also, interest rates are elevated, and so
Speaker 3: if you are a addle class person buying a lot
Speaker 3: of groceries, and especially if you are looking to buy
Speaker 3: a new car, lease a new car, buy a new house, well,
Speaker 3: then the economy is really tough for you right now.
Speaker 4: Because lots of prices in the.
Speaker 3: Economy are high. Your wage might not have grown very much.
Speaker 3: We'll talk a little bit more about the stratification of
Speaker 3: wage growth by inflation in just a second. But if
Speaker 3: you're trying to buy a house, you're trying to buy
Speaker 3: a bit ticket item like a house or a car,
Speaker 3: interest rates are high enough that that's a really really
Speaker 3: expensive thing, and so you're going to kind of feel
Speaker 3: locked out of that part of the economy because of
Speaker 3: higher interest rates. Now, here's the good thing. Wages overall
Speaker 3: are growing faster than inflation, and they have been for
Speaker 3: just about a year. They're growing fastest at the bottom,
Speaker 3: and they're growing slowest toward the top. So this is
Speaker 3: a pretty good economy if you are a lower income
Speaker 3: worker who does not necessarily need to find a new apartment,
Speaker 3: find a new home. Your wages have been growing, you've
Speaker 3: been able to trade up for a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: trade out, maybe from a low paying service sector job
Speaker 3: to a higher paying service sector job. And if you
Speaker 3: don't have to find a new apartment, you can stay
Speaker 3: and the department that you have, and you haven't had
Speaker 3: to suffer the same kind of retinflation. We've seen wage
Speaker 3: growth be positive compared to inflation. Unemployment is unbelievably low.
Speaker 3: Inequality is falling because low wage workers are getting raises
Speaker 3: faster than high wage workers, and productivity is growing. Plus
Speaker 3: you have the strong equity growth over the last few
Speaker 3: years if you do own, so you know, in a way,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like there's you know, obviously, the economy
Speaker 3: is not just one thing. It's three hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: million people's experience of an environment and of different prices
Speaker 3: in different states, in different places. If you own, if
Speaker 3: you are a highest income worker, this is a pretty
Speaker 3: good economy for you. But if you're trying to break
Speaker 3: into the housing market and you're still relying and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of not making as much money as you want to,
Speaker 3: and you're suffering from grocery inflation. It's a much harder economy,
Speaker 3: very good in some ways, not as good a oothers.
Speaker 1: You said we're gonna start with bad news, and then
Speaker 1: pretty quickly we got into good news, and you had
Speaker 1: a litany of good news. And it feels like the
Speaker 1: difference between perception and reality, at least from where I'm sitting,
Speaker 1: have never been farther apart. And the doumeristic tendencies right like,
Speaker 1: they are just significant right now. There was some new
Speaker 1: recent study in Nature magazine saying like that the most
Speaker 1: dumeristic headlines with the pessimistic outlook got more clicks. There's
Speaker 1: like this incentive too, I think, from the media to
Speaker 1: talk about what's bad sometimes even when things are overwhelmingly good.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe that colors how we perceive things
Speaker 1: and maybe how we even think about our own lives.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, do you think that's true? And
Speaker 1: how do you square the actual reality on the ground,
Speaker 1: the largely positive economic numbers, with how people are feeling
Speaker 1: about things.
Speaker 3: It's a great question, and it's one that I've wrestled
Speaker 3: with quite a bit. I don't think there's any value
Speaker 3: to or, let me put a bit differently, I think
Speaker 3: there is limited value to telling people who are having
Speaker 3: a negative experience in the economy that they're wrong. People's
Speaker 3: experience is their life, and if they're experiencing hardship, then
Speaker 3: there's no point in saying, well, you're not actually experiencing
Speaker 3: hardship because look at these productivity numbers. You're not actually
Speaker 3: experiencing hardship, because look at this unemployment rate. Parts of
Speaker 3: his hardship. That said, I do think that a lot
Speaker 3: of the general pessimism of the economy is what my
Speaker 3: friend kylela Scanlon calls a vibe session rather than something
Speaker 3: that is like a recession. While Street Journal recently had
Speaker 3: a study where they ask people in swing states to
Speaker 3: estimate the or excuse me to express their sentiment of
Speaker 3: the quality of the economy where they lived in their
Speaker 3: state and the equality of the national economy. In every
Speaker 3: single state, their assessment of the economy was positive, and
Speaker 3: in every single state their assessment of the national economy
Speaker 3: was negative. And this feeds into a phenomenon that I
Speaker 3: have just described in a previous essay as everything's terrible,
Speaker 3: but I'm fine. That is, there seems to be some
Speaker 3: psychology at work whereby our attitude or sentiment gets more
Speaker 3: negative the more national or universal we're asked to reflect
Speaker 3: on the world.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how we hate Congress but love
Speaker 1: our own congress.
Speaker 3: Person absolutely, Or we think America's school system is going
Speaker 3: to hell in a handbasket, but how's your own school? Oh,
Speaker 3: we quite love it for young Tommy. I think there's
Speaker 3: a lot of ways in which our assessment of our
Speaker 3: own lives tends to be more positive because of resilience
Speaker 3: and because of experience, and our assessment of the world
Speaker 3: is mediated by the news media, and as you pointed out,
Speaker 3: there's some NYU research that suggests that the news media
Speaker 3: has a negativity bias in parts, by the way, because
Speaker 3: news audiences have a negativity bias, and so as news
Speaker 3: media is clamoring to get attention, they realize that the
Speaker 3: cliche is true. If it bleeds, it leads, or more precisely,
Speaker 3: I suppose I don't know how to make this rhyme,
Speaker 3: but if it.
Speaker 4: Bleeds, she will clip.
Speaker 3: People tend to when they see a five alarm fire
Speaker 3: feel their attention gravitate toward it, And in a way,
Speaker 3: I don't want to sort of open up too many
Speaker 3: tabs here, but in a way, I think that this
Speaker 3: goes to the fact that I think we are, or
Speaker 3: our attention is dis evolved for the world we live in.
Speaker 3: I think that we're probably evolved to have our attention
Speaker 3: gravitate to bad news. After all, if you're a hunter
Speaker 3: gatherer on the savannah, and you see a bunch of
Speaker 3: things that look fine, and then one thing that looks
Speaker 3: like it's really not fine, right, like maybe the head
Speaker 3: of a panther or tiger that's about to kill you, Okay,
Speaker 3: we should clearly pay attention to the danger in your environment.
Speaker 3: And I think in the same way, readers on the
Speaker 3: internet are attuned to negativity for the same evolutionary impulse,
Speaker 3: and news media have queued into this negative impulse and
Speaker 3: just flooded the scene with negative news stories. And that's why,
Speaker 3: to go to the first question that you asked, I
Speaker 3: think our impression of our own lives, which is mediated
Speaker 3: only by our own experience, has been more positive, while
Speaker 3: our impression of the country, which is mediated by actual
Speaker 3: news media can's been more negative.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how it's something that is programmed into our mind.
Speaker 2: It's essentially being used against us in order to generate
Speaker 2: clicks and to generate ad revenue. But you're saying that
Speaker 2: it's being decided upon by media or legacy media. But
Speaker 2: also not to go down another tangent here, but social
Speaker 2: media and you kind of touched on this how it's
Speaker 2: warping our view, but the actual algorithms and what it
Speaker 2: is that we're being fed. It continues to polarize individuals,
Speaker 2: whether I think it's negative, maybe sometimes in positive ways what.
Speaker 1: They choose to amplify as often the angriest was it's
Speaker 1: the angriest, it's the most violent. It's the things.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I constantly I still get fed a
Speaker 2: bunch of like car wreck videos, and I'm like, what
Speaker 2: is it that the algorithm thinks about me?
Speaker 1: That I want to see this?
Speaker 2: But it's hard for me to look away because who
Speaker 2: gets It's difficult.
Speaker 3: And it's also difficult, you know, not that everyone should
Speaker 3: cry for news media editors, but it is difficult for
Speaker 3: us to resist that impulse. Right, Like every day journalists
Speaker 3: across the country, around the world obviously wake up and
Speaker 3: think not only what stories will I pay attention to,
Speaker 3: but also how will I present the truth or at
Speaker 3: least my reporting of those stories. And if every single
Speaker 3: day journalists operating in a scarce and declining industry are
Speaker 3: fearful for their own jobs and their organization's ability to
Speaker 3: eke out an existence an incredibly competitive ecosystem, if every
Speaker 3: day they think, well, we're going to get more clicks
Speaker 3: and more attention and more subscribers if we frame the
Speaker 3: world negatively, what you're going to get is news media
Speaker 3: that over time optimizes towards negativity. And I mean that
Speaker 3: very literally optimizes towards negativity, because I think that sometimes
Speaker 3: there's this mis understanding that negativity in news is a mistake.
Speaker 3: Of course, in a way, I think that negativity bias
Speaker 3: is bad for accurate representations of reality. But in many
Speaker 3: ways it represents a kind of optimization of engagement. And
Speaker 3: that's really that's the issue here. In a way, the
Speaker 3: best way to represent the world clearly and honestly is
Speaker 3: to resist that kind of optimization. It's to be suboptimal
Speaker 3: in terms of getting people's attention. That's very, very difficult
Speaker 3: to ask any one news organization to do. To essentially
Speaker 3: embrace what they understand to be a suboptimal strategy.
Speaker 1: How do you think the fracturing of the media space
Speaker 1: is impacting how we encounter news and kind of the
Speaker 1: world around us because the substatification of everything, the podcastification
Speaker 1: of everything, is really changing where we go to get
Speaker 1: access to the things that we then we need to know,
Speaker 1: And in some ways maybe we're entering into more of
Speaker 1: an echo chamber, but in other ways it's also I
Speaker 1: think allowing for certain news organizations to flourish in a
Speaker 1: way that they weren't able to before. Some of the
Speaker 1: individuals or small organizations that create, you know, newsletters that
Speaker 1: are reaching hundreds of thousands of people even at this
Speaker 1: point and are kind of taking a different tact, Like
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, what's your take on that.
Speaker 3: Abuttons of media is good in so many ways. I
Speaker 3: think in the nineteen sixties, nineteen fifties, when news media
Speaker 3: was much more scarce, when uncle when you know, Uncle
Speaker 3: Walter Kronkite reached whatever it was, sixty seventy million Americans
Speaker 3: a single night. We think that as the golden age
Speaker 3: of media, but in many ways, it was a dark
Speaker 3: age of media. It was an age where only a
Speaker 3: handful of voices commanded our understanding of reality and truth.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's optimal. I think as a news consumer,
Speaker 3: I would much prefer a world that is like the
Speaker 3: world that I live in, where I can listen to
Speaker 3: a podcast the morning from some of the smartest, funniest
Speaker 3: commentators on sports, and then read an article by a
Speaker 3: brilliant foreign policy analyst. I mean, nothing like that riotous
Speaker 3: abundance of expertise was available before the advent of the
Speaker 3: Internet sort of created this Cambrian explosion of news outlets.
Speaker 3: But that riotous abundance I think has costs, And one
Speaker 3: of the costs is this that competition is antagonistic. And
Speaker 3: by that I mean if you have a news environment
Speaker 3: with ten thousand economic business and finance podcasts and you're
Speaker 3: trying to break in to this field, the best way
Speaker 3: to break in really is to be antagonistic. Is to say,
Speaker 3: these big guys who've been in this business for a while,
Speaker 3: they're wrong. You know, this person that you listen to
Speaker 3: for finance, and this person you listen to for economic news,
Speaker 3: they don't know what they're talking about. I'll tell you
Speaker 3: the truth, right, that's the way to break in is
Speaker 3: to be antagonistic. But if everyone does this, what it
Speaker 3: does on net is create extraordinary everyone loves. It's a
Speaker 3: little bit like everything's terrible, but I'm fine. Everyone loves
Speaker 3: their own news source but believes that quote the media
Speaker 3: capital T capital M is always lying to them. And
Speaker 3: so I do think that there's a way in which
Speaker 3: the abundance of media might lead somewhat linearly to an
Speaker 3: increase in distrust and increase in conspiracy theorizing, and a
Speaker 3: decrease in a shared sense of reality. And I'm not
Speaker 3: entirely sure that that's good for us. And so this
Speaker 3: is why I just sort of round out the answer.
Speaker 3: I think that the evolution of news toward abundance has
Speaker 3: been very complicated in terms of netting out whether it's
Speaker 3: good or bad. On the one hand, we have more
Speaker 3: direct access to expertise than we've ever had before, and
Speaker 3: that's awesome for a diletan dish news consumer like me.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I think we have to
Speaker 3: utterly give up on the idea that we're ever going
Speaker 3: to have something like shared reality in America. It's just
Speaker 3: not going to happen again.
Speaker 2: No more wanting for what used to exist, because yeah,
Speaker 2: there's no going back, no putting the genie back in
Speaker 2: that bottle. Derek, Okay, we're not only going to talk
Speaker 2: about media. We are actually going to talk about the
Speaker 2: future of work and talk about labor markets. We'll get
Speaker 2: to that more right after the break.
Speaker 1: Our we're back to the break still talking with Derek Thompson.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the future of work. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: work now, because that is a topic, Derek, that you
Speaker 1: focus on regularly. I'm curious, I want to kind of
Speaker 1: start this off. Maybe can you talk about the uniqueness
Speaker 1: of Americans and our country and how we view and
Speaker 1: think about work. It seems like our approach to work
Speaker 1: differs largely from so much of the rest of the world.
Speaker 3: There's absolute no question that Americans are the worker bees
Speaker 3: of the Western world. There's really no other country in
Speaker 3: the West that is as rich as the US that
Speaker 3: works more than the US. It should be said that
Speaker 3: over time, Americans have worked less and less. The typical
Speaker 3: American worker in the late nineteenth century three thousand hours
Speaker 3: a year. Today he or she works closer to seventeen
Speaker 3: hundred eighteen hundred hours a year, and that difference, right,
Speaker 3: working thirteen hundred hours less a year, that's the equivalent
Speaker 3: of like one hundred and fifty vacation days the typical
Speaker 3: nine to five worker. So we don't work like we
Speaker 3: did during the Second Industrial Revolution, but nonetheless we do
Speaker 3: work a lot more than other countries. And I think
Speaker 3: you hear this experience sometimes when you talk to immigrants
Speaker 3: when they come from Europe to the they say that
Speaker 3: there really isn't the same cultural centering of work in
Speaker 3: Europe that there is in America. And I think that
Speaker 3: this is a complicated blessing. On the one hand, I
Speaker 3: think that the centrality of work in America is one
Speaker 3: reason why we tend to have so many of the
Speaker 3: largest companies in the world. Like, if you look at
Speaker 3: the biggest companies in the US, their average age is
Speaker 3: like forty fifty years. It's a lot of companies that
Speaker 3: were built in nineteen seventies, eighties, two thousands, you know,
Speaker 3: Apple and Microsoft and Meta. If you look at the
Speaker 3: biggest countries in Europe, a lot of them are from
Speaker 3: like the early twentieth, late nineteenth century. They're really really old.
Speaker 3: And so I think that this love of work feeds
Speaker 3: into and maybe it's intertwined with its entrepreneurial spirit that
Speaker 3: I think is quite lovely. But I also think that
Speaker 3: over work, or what I sometimes call workism, which is
Speaker 3: sort of the you know, centering of work in one's
Speaker 3: life and treating one's career like it's a religion, also
Speaker 3: has a lot of downsides. So, you know, I think
Speaker 3: all the time about, like you know, is American's relationship
Speaker 3: with work good or bad for us? And like so
Speaker 3: many things that I report on, it is complicated and
Speaker 3: there are a lot of goods with the bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that perception towards work is changing?
Speaker 2: Like you mentioned workism, right, it makes me think of
Speaker 2: younger generations view towards work. It makes me think of
Speaker 2: the bill that Bertie Sanders proposed, the thirty two hour
Speaker 2: work week, where that's going to be something that's mandated.
Speaker 2: It seems like that there is this cultural shift that's
Speaker 2: taking place. So like, yeah, it's a double edged sword.
Speaker 2: It's being wielded as something that is good but also
Speaker 2: something that's negative.
Speaker 3: I think that's good to it. I think that there's
Speaker 3: negative to it, And I also think to the first
Speaker 3: thing you said, it's true that it's possible that attitudes
Speaker 3: toward work are changing across generations. Right when I wrote
Speaker 3: my initial essay on the phenomenon that I called workism,
Speaker 3: I was looking at a lot of data that centered
Speaker 3: on workers between the nineteen eighties and the two thousands,
Speaker 3: And essentially what the data I was looking at found
Speaker 3: was that while you know throughout the world and throughout
Speaker 3: history which people have tended to work less.
Speaker 4: Instead, in the late.
Speaker 3: Twentieth century in the US and early twenty first century
Speaker 3: in the US it was only the rich who are
Speaker 3: working more. And I asked it, why would rich people
Speaker 3: who can do anything with their money choose to work more. Well,
Speaker 3: maybe it's because work is what they wanted to do
Speaker 3: with their free time, that work had become so central
Speaker 3: to their life and to their identity that they were
Speaker 3: choosing to work more and creating cultures where over work
Speaker 3: was being valued. I think that may have been true
Speaker 3: for older workers, but it might be changing among young
Speaker 3: millennials and gen z. I do think that, you know,
Speaker 3: fear of overwork movements like anti work and the anti
Speaker 3: work subreddit. Not that that's like it's just a subreddit
Speaker 3: on the one hand, but I think it reflects an
Speaker 3: evolution and thought. And I also think that that gen
Speaker 3: Z with the rise of hybrid work, also someone has
Speaker 3: a different attitude toward work and they're centering new things
Speaker 3: in their life. What exactly it is, I'm not sure what,
Speaker 3: but I do think it's possible that workism is on
Speaker 3: the decline. But again, this might just be a seesaw.
Speaker 3: It might be that gen Z that you know that
Speaker 3: the Boomers were work as gen Z is pulling back
Speaker 3: from it a bit because they don't want to be
Speaker 3: just like their parents. But maybe you know the next
Speaker 3: generation is going to throw itself into work even more.
Speaker 1: You you've mentioned that we're not as unhappy in our
Speaker 1: work as a nation as some folks might lead us
Speaker 1: to believe, and that because there's so many headlines I mean,
Speaker 1: and especially in the COVID area of people like the
Speaker 1: quiet quitting, people abandoning their jobs and saying screw this,
Speaker 1: I hate work, I'm going to go hike for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life or something like that, which I
Speaker 1: and now we see more people re entering the workforce,
Speaker 1: But like, why do you think we're not as unhappy
Speaker 1: as some people might lead us to believe. I saw
Speaker 1: the stat from Monster the other day, ninety five percent
Speaker 1: of US workers are planning to apply or at least
Speaker 1: look for a new job this year. So that's a
Speaker 1: ton of people in one year who are playing That's
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people.
Speaker 4: Where was that survey?
Speaker 1: Monster?
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you think they maybe have an ulterior motive
Speaker 3: to make people think that people want to pick the job.
Speaker 1: That totally could be the case, right, for sure, But
Speaker 1: it's just interesting that you might we would say people
Speaker 1: are actually less unhappy that we might think in work.
Speaker 1: But that also so many people, there's all these headlines
Speaker 1: and the other stats that people are saying, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look for something else or I just want to work less.
Speaker 1: All together, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's totally fine and predictable that most people would
Speaker 3: be somewhat ambivalent about their job. Most people would say,
Speaker 3: I like my job just fine, and I absolutely hope
Speaker 3: that next year I have either a better job or
Speaker 3: a similar job with more pey. I mean, that's just
Speaker 3: human nature. What I find very interesting is that there
Speaker 3: are a lot of mainstream media outlets in the general
Speaker 3: business and economic space, your Wall Street journals and Fortunes
Speaker 3: and Bloomberg's who run lots of stories every single year
Speaker 3: pointing out how miserable they think or want us to
Speaker 3: think the workforce is. Again, you have to go back
Speaker 3: to the most fundamental bias of news media, which is
Speaker 3: not a bias toward the left or the right. It's
Speaker 3: a bias toward bad news. It's a bias toward negativity.
Speaker 3: Americans are miserable at their jobs. Is a negative headline
Speaker 3: that's going to cue the amigdala to look at it
Speaker 3: and say, oh, that's a five alarm fire. People are
Speaker 3: miserable somewhere in the world. I have to figure out
Speaker 3: why and then click on it. A headline that says
Speaker 3: most Americans are more or less fine in their jobs
Speaker 3: offers no equivalent five alarm fire to the mind, and
Speaker 3: therefore people aren't going to click on it. But if
Speaker 3: you look at studies like Gallop or Pew or the
Speaker 3: Conference Board, who ask Americans every single year, how do
Speaker 3: you feel about your job? How do you feel about
Speaker 3: your job? How do you feel about your job? Not
Speaker 3: only are people steadily positive about their work, but at
Speaker 3: least according to the Conference Board, I think every year
Speaker 3: for the last decade more people have said if they're
Speaker 3: happy at work. I think this is generally a good thing.
Speaker 3: I think that it's a good thing that people are
Speaker 3: generally happy at work, even though media headlines are consistently
Speaker 3: trying to tell us that people are miserable. The last
Speaker 3: thing I guess I would say about the phenomenon of
Speaker 3: the media reporting on workplace misery is that it's just
Speaker 3: way more fun to read about other people hating their
Speaker 3: job than it is to read about other people liking
Speaker 3: their job. I don't want to read about other people
Speaker 3: liking their job. That's just gonna make me feel bad.
Speaker 3: I want to read about how other people are miserable.
Speaker 3: It works that I can feel the same way I
Speaker 3: feel when I know that, Like you know, celebrities that
Speaker 3: are incredibly beautiful hate each other and are breaking up
Speaker 3: and are cheating on each other, Like I want to
Speaker 3: feel like other people are miserable. That's a totally human instinct,
Speaker 3: and I think that's also why you see news media
Speaker 3: gravitating toward these negative headlines abou people's appreciation of their jobs.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what would you say then to folks? I
Speaker 2: feel like there's been a swing from some folks saying
Speaker 2: that like, and we've actually had Simon a on the
Speaker 2: podcast talking about work and the role of work, stoles off.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: On one hand, you've got somebody who sees their work
Speaker 2: as something that Okay, I'm I'm ambivalent, I'm indifferent. It
Speaker 2: allows me to pay the bills. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: you've got the school of thought that says, oh no,
Speaker 2: it needs to be the fulfilling thing where you find
Speaker 2: meaning and satisfaction on multiple levels. It doesn't just provide
Speaker 2: for you financially, but it checks all these other boxes
Speaker 2: as well. Do you have an opinion on where an
Speaker 2: individual should essentially find themselves on that spectrum.
Speaker 3: I think we live in an age of impossible expectations,
Speaker 3: and that's true for so many things. You can start
Speaker 3: with a category that has nothing to do with work.
Speaker 3: In fact, in many ways, is the opposite, you know, marriage.
Speaker 3: There's lots of really interesting research pointing out how our
Speaker 3: expectations of our romantic partners are really unlike historical expectations
Speaker 3: of a spouse. You know, today we expect our wife
Speaker 3: or our husband, you know, maybe our partner, girlfriend, boyfriend,
Speaker 3: to be sexy, to be our best friend, to be able,
Speaker 3: to be our intellectual equal, to be stimulating, in conversation,
Speaker 3: to be the perfect mother or father, to be the
Speaker 3: perfect you know, person to clean up the house, the
Speaker 3: person you want to follow a stately. We have all
Speaker 3: of these expectations for a modern partner that I think
Speaker 3: are somewhat disconnected from historical expectations of a partner. Right, So,
Speaker 3: in romance, it is the age of impossible expectations. I
Speaker 3: think it is also true in work that we expect
Speaker 3: our jobs and our companies to be much more than
Speaker 3: just a job or just a company. Not only do
Speaker 3: we want our jobs more than just a job, the
Speaker 3: whole concept of workism, which Simone picked up on in
Speaker 3: this book is that a lot of people expect that
Speaker 3: their jobs, through their careers, do the so called work
Speaker 3: of religion. That it should provide meaning and a possibility
Speaker 3: of transcendence, It should provide a community, It should provide
Speaker 3: for self actualization. That you know, having a job. According
Speaker 3: to Pew, having a job that you love is now
Speaker 3: more important to Americans than religion or marriage is.
Speaker 4: So obviously, we.
Speaker 3: Have really high expectations of our jobs, and I would
Speaker 3: add conclusion that we also have really high expectations of
Speaker 3: our companies, the organizations that we work for. This is
Speaker 3: not going to turn into any kind of political point,
Speaker 3: but you see a lot more employees demanding that their
Speaker 3: companies make political statements when the news cycle turns toward
Speaker 3: that political topic. Whether it's the.
Speaker 4: War in Gaza or.
Speaker 3: That don't say gay law in Florida, or the bathroom
Speaker 3: law in North Carolina, or some other political crisis of
Speaker 3: the day, there's an expectation that certain companies and organizations
Speaker 3: comment on that news in a way that I don't
Speaker 3: think they were pressured on to comment on that news
Speaker 3: twenty thirty years ago. Now what does this have to
Speaker 3: do with wives and jobs? Well, I think we expect
Speaker 3: that our companies, our in a way, do much more
Speaker 3: than just be a company. We ask that our companies
Speaker 3: reflect our values in the public square, so across the board.
Speaker 3: I think in romance and in work and in politics,
Speaker 3: I think we live in an age possible expectations, and
Speaker 3: it just happens to also be true for our careers.
Speaker 1: Totally agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like someone's probably thinking, I just we just want
Speaker 2: to make tires, Like you don't necessarily need to make
Speaker 2: a statement when it comes to.
Speaker 1: Israel and wa sir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But to play Devil's advocate, though, I do think
Speaker 2: because you recently, like I guess a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: ago at this point, you wrote about just the decline
Speaker 2: in religion and like, essentially it's an institution, and to
Speaker 2: a certain extent, like I think our workplace can provide
Speaker 2: a sense of community and the sense of belonging that
Speaker 2: I think a lot of folks are missing out on,
Speaker 2: especially like in earlier you mentioned hybrid work, and just
Speaker 2: as more folks are shifting to working from home full time,
Speaker 2: I do think that there is a sense of identity
Speaker 2: that folks are missing out on that in the past,
Speaker 2: they had some sort of shared reality that you talked about,
Speaker 2: right how there's no longer going to be that sort
Speaker 2: of shared reality. But I think it's because of this
Speaker 2: atomization that's taking place of individuals as they stepped away
Speaker 2: from different institutions.
Speaker 1: Are you what are your thoughts there?
Speaker 3: You're talking about community and community is a hard thing
Speaker 3: to define. But the best way it was ever defined
Speaker 3: to me is that community is where you keep showing up.
Speaker 3: And you think, where do Americans keep showing up these days?
Speaker 3: Is it a church?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Last year, for the first time in American history, if
Speaker 3: here than half the Americans said they go to a
Speaker 3: house of worship regularly. Okay, so it's not church anymore.
Speaker 3: Is it the bowlding leagues? Well, no, Robert Putnam talked
Speaker 3: about the demise of bowling leagues and various organizations and
Speaker 3: associations the nineteen nineties. Is it a school Well, Interestingly,
Speaker 3: school absences have doubled since COVID. It seems like, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of both parents and students feel like school
Speaker 3: isn't a place where kids necessarily need to show up
Speaker 3: the same at the same rate that they previously showed up.
Speaker 3: You know, what is the last community standing? Well, for
Speaker 3: a lot of people, the last community standing is the office.
Speaker 3: And by community again, I just mean where people keep
Speaker 3: showing up. So in many ways, I think the office
Speaker 3: was not necessarily built, or our work, our company is
Speaker 3: not necessarily built to be the last community standing. They
Speaker 3: just happen to become the last community standing because every
Speaker 3: other community pretty much has wilted away in the last
Speaker 3: thirty years. But that's not a defense of the workplace community.
Speaker 3: That is an acknowledgment that work, for many people has
Speaker 3: just become maybe the last community that exists for them,
Speaker 3: and I see that maybe, as you know, for some people, wonderful,
Speaker 3: I loved the people that I've worked with, and I've
Speaker 3: definitely made a community, But for a lot of other people,
Speaker 3: I think that that's sort of a sad thing to
Speaker 3: fall into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think you're right. One of the things
Speaker 1: you're pointing to as well is maybe, in some ways,
Speaker 1: at least in the previous answer, we're talking about how
Speaker 1: we're putting more of our eggs in the work basket.
Speaker 1: We're like giving it more credence, more say over our
Speaker 1: lives and how we feel, and that is maybe the
Speaker 1: last baschon of the community that so many people have,
Speaker 1: and they're losing that too as they're working from home more.
Speaker 1: You've talked you've kind of like talked about that as
Speaker 1: the worship of work, and you've talked to negatively about that,
Speaker 1: but you've also admitted that you engage in it. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you reconcile kind of that reality, that duality,
Speaker 1: and if you've changed your approach to work after all
Speaker 1: the thought you've given to this subject, plus the fact
Speaker 1: that you're a dad now that changes everything, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know I'm completely rethinking how much of my efforts,
Speaker 1: my time, my mental faculties go to my work versus
Speaker 1: to my family. What does that look like for you?
Speaker 3: So I wrote this essay on the religion of workism
Speaker 3: several years ago, and I'm proud of it, but I
Speaker 3: also think I mildly disagree with it for the following reason.
Speaker 3: I think I came down very, very hard on the
Speaker 3: idea that workism was mostly making people miserable, and now
Speaker 3: I feel more ambivalent, ambivalently about the possibility that work
Speaker 3: provides a really important ballast for lots of people, and
Speaker 3: that in the absence of work, lots of people can
Speaker 3: really struggle to find something else to fill their life. Now,
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that work is the best thing to
Speaker 3: put at the center of your life. It's rather to
Speaker 3: acknowledge that in a country where community is generally in
Speaker 3: decline and association is generally in decline, we need something
Speaker 3: to keep us together. We need some kind of organizing
Speaker 3: principle to consistently connect us to people. And if we're
Speaker 3: gonna have fewer book clubs, and we're gonna have fewer churches,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna have fewer unions, and we're gonna have
Speaker 3: fewer neighborhood associations, Well, then what's gonna be that binding principle?
Speaker 3: And if for some people that thing turns out to
Speaker 3: be work and they like their job, and I should
Speaker 3: point out that, you know, jobs in general are a
Speaker 3: lot more fun certainly than they were like one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty years ago, you know, when you know, common
Speaker 3: jobs were like, you know, going out on the sea
Speaker 3: to kill a sperm whale and then crack open its
Speaker 3: skull and climb inside and get the pus you need
Speaker 3: to you know, light lamps in the street.
Speaker 1: At least in theory, that sounds awesome, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to really actually do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, and it does reading about it is awesome, right,
Speaker 3: So yeah, we can have comfy jobs where we talk
Speaker 3: on podcasts and then read Moby Dick in an air
Speaker 3: condition room rather than actually have to go out and
Speaker 3: get our boat.
Speaker 4: Crushed by a huge spirm whale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I think I think that's there's lots
Speaker 3: of ways in which I think the phenomenon of centering
Speaker 3: work can for some people be really important. I'll say,
Speaker 3: as a personal note, you know, I lost both my
Speaker 3: parents to cancer in my twenties, and you know, one
Speaker 3: of the difficult things about grief is that it so
Speaker 3: utterly discombobulates your life. And one of the things that
Speaker 3: I found most helpful. I think a lot of things
Speaker 3: people find most helpful about getting over a major loss
Speaker 3: in their life is returning to some kind of regular routine,
Speaker 3: and having work be the anchor of that routine actually,
Speaker 3: in many ways made me happier. I think it's pretty rare.
Speaker 3: I think to hear that having a job helped you
Speaker 3: get over but there's no question that having a routine
Speaker 3: helps people get over grief, and work is an important
Speaker 3: routine that helps to anchor people's lives. So that's a
Speaker 3: long winded and somewhat personal way of saying that I
Speaker 3: think I might have gotten aspect of the work is
Speaker 3: a thesis a little bit too negative that I do
Speaker 3: think that a religion that centers work is probably not
Speaker 3: good for people's souls. But having work be a really
Speaker 3: important core part of your life can absolutely be part
Speaker 3: of a of a balanced and wonderful and rich life,
Speaker 3: even when, as I do, even when you become a
Speaker 3: father and just want to spend all your time, you know,
Speaker 3: snuggling with your adorable, chubby eight.
Speaker 1: Month old and sometimes that's fun and then you want
Speaker 1: to get back to work too, so you.
Speaker 3: Know what, yes, yeah, I mean right, like five hours
Speaker 3: of snuggling an a month old who can't talk is like,
Speaker 3: you know, thirty minutes is really fun, and it's twenty
Speaker 3: five minutes. You know, you have three hours, three and
Speaker 3: a half hours. Sometimes you're like, okay, I'd like to
Speaker 3: sort of diversify my day a little bit, you know,
Speaker 3: refresh the joy of you know, squeezing this little baby.
Speaker 3: You go to work and then come.
Speaker 1: Ver I speak, you appreciate it all that much more.
Speaker 1: Twenty four to seven cuddles sounds like over yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: Recently, Jill and now we're talking about let's too just rhythms,
Speaker 2: like you're saying, and you're talking about with the rhythm
Speaker 2: of work, but even just the rhythms of movement and
Speaker 2: coming back from spring break. We were both sharing how
Speaker 2: you know, it's good, but it's also really good to
Speaker 2: be woken up by your alarm at five forty five, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and to kind of get on with your day and
Speaker 2: doing the things not only that you love, but the
Speaker 2: things that also bring you health. But Derek We've got
Speaker 2: just a couple more questions that we want to get to. Specifically,
Speaker 2: we're gonna touch on AI. We'll get to that and more.
Speaker 2: Right after this, we're back still talking with Derek Thompson.
Speaker 2: We're talking about work and Derek, thanks, thank you for
Speaker 2: just kind of getting personal with in that response to
Speaker 2: that last question.
Speaker 1: That totally. I think there's a lot of truth that
Speaker 1: people feel to that that sometimes even there's a maybe
Speaker 1: a negative attachment to some parts of work, but there's
Speaker 1: a positive attachment in other ways. And I think we
Speaker 1: all feel that. But let's talk about the future of
Speaker 1: work real quick. Like everyone is asking the question about AI.
Speaker 1: How's AI going to change the way we work? This
Speaker 1: is something that you have dedicated some of your thinking
Speaker 1: and writing to as well. I guess I'm curious where
Speaker 1: do you think things stand right now? It feels like
Speaker 1: actually things have calmed down for a second, because maybe,
Speaker 1: like a year and a half ago, a lot of
Speaker 1: freak out about AI and how it's going to impact
Speaker 1: all of us, Maybe people aren't as worried right now,
Speaker 1: Like where do things stand on that front?
Speaker 3: Before I went on book leave, I wrote a piece
Speaker 3: that at the time I thought might not hold up
Speaker 3: very well, but in retrospect, I think has held up
Speaker 3: pretty well. Which the headline of which was AI as
Speaker 3: a waste of time, And what I meant was not
Speaker 3: that AI is the genitive AI at Chatchabt and Claude
Speaker 3: three from Anthropic, not that they are a waste of
Speaker 3: time for everybody, but that one way to understand the
Speaker 3: majority of use of these genitive AI tools for people
Speaker 3: that maybe don't work in computer programming, where I think
Speaker 3: it's just become a kind of permanent copilot. He said,
Speaker 3: a lot of people are just sort of playing around
Speaker 3: with this thing, and that's fine. You know, lots of
Speaker 3: important products. The computer, for example, starts off as a
Speaker 3: kind of toy and then evolves to become something that
Speaker 3: is central to our working lives. But the truth is
Speaker 3: that I don't think I think it is still too
Speaker 3: early to say exactly how and where artificial intelligence is
Speaker 3: going to change the world. Just two specific thoughts that
Speaker 3: I have about that sort of that frontier, maybe like
Speaker 3: the edge of the present. One is I am really
Speaker 3: curious about AI and medicine. There are lots of scientists
Speaker 3: that are using protein folding tools and large language model
Speaker 3: tools to essentially speed run the search for molecules that
Speaker 3: can bind with certain proteins do certain things in our
Speaker 3: bodies that can make us healthier, or fight diseases or
Speaker 3: cure cancer. And I'm really interested in at least trying
Speaker 3: to stay at that frontier to understand how we're using
Speaker 3: these tools to discover new medicines. The second thing that
Speaker 3: I read recently, and this came from Ethan Mallick, who's
Speaker 3: a really brilliant AI writer, has a substack I leave
Speaker 3: called one Useful Thing, and just wrote a book called
Speaker 3: co Intelligence, and he has a section in that book
Speaker 3: about cointelligence where he talks about how AI might change
Speaker 3: the career pathway. He says that, you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of young people start off learning skills that are very
Speaker 3: very basic, and they move from those basic skills sort
Speaker 3: of the one oh one skills to the one O
Speaker 3: two skills, to the two oh one skills, the three
Speaker 3: on one skills. But one way to think about what
Speaker 3: chat GPT is good at is that it's good at
Speaker 3: being like one hundred entry level employees at once. Right.
Speaker 3: It does the work essentially of like one hundred entry
Speaker 3: level employees. It's not a great CEO, but it's a
Speaker 3: really great research assistant. Well, what happens to the career
Speaker 3: path as lots of the work previously assigned to twenty
Speaker 3: two and twenty three year olds turns out to be
Speaker 3: more efficiently done by having maybe just one twenty three
Speaker 3: year old or maybe just one twenty five year old
Speaker 3: working with CHATGBT, Right, maybe rather than hire ten twenty
Speaker 3: two year olds, you hire one twenty four year old
Speaker 3: and give them genitive AI and that's and that does
Speaker 3: the same work. That really changes the entry level path
Speaker 3: for a lot of different companies. And so I'm interested
Speaker 3: both both sector by sector with the changes, but also
Speaker 3: a cross sectors maybe how it changes career development.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you kind of refer to it as
Speaker 2: a tool. It makes me think of like when personal
Speaker 2: computers first came out, and so it seems to reason
Speaker 2: that a good takeaway would be to play with these
Speaker 2: tools in a way that maybe you are intentionally wasting
Speaker 2: time because you're playing with it's sort of like I
Speaker 2: did with like an Apple two whatever back in the day,
Speaker 2: like back in the eighties, where you're just playing these
Speaker 2: alphabet games with a snake and you have to cob.
Speaker 1: The letters in order.
Speaker 2: But it seems like you said that that over time
Speaker 2: it will have an impact on the career path of folks,
Speaker 2: not just for individuals who are like medical researchers, but
Speaker 2: the ability to slowly, over time adopt to whatever it
Speaker 2: is that AI is is going to lead different industries towards.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're.
Speaker 4: Saying, Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 3: Well, I think about it for my own in my
Speaker 3: own industry, right, I'm I'm I pretend to be an
Speaker 3: expert about many things, but I'm only really an expert
Speaker 3: in my own life. And you know, one of my
Speaker 3: jobs is to explain new ideas to people in ways
Speaker 3: that they can remember and understand and then communicate again
Speaker 3: to other people, right to get mice the software of
Speaker 3: my ideas running on as many pieces of hardware as possible.
Speaker 3: And jenetai is really brilliant at doing a lot of
Speaker 3: the work that I think of as quite essential to
Speaker 3: my job. You know, I'm interested in a lot of
Speaker 3: different things, work in macroeconomics and the frontier of you know,
Speaker 3: cancer research, and these tools are really really good at
Speaker 3: explaining novel concepts. So like, if I don't understand what,
Speaker 3: like you know Carti Therapy does. I can just plug
Speaker 3: that right in to chat GBT and it can explain
Speaker 3: to me what this how to you know, engineer T
Speaker 3: cells in order to fight cancers. I'm like, oh my god, wow,
Speaker 3: Like that's that's what Carti's cell therapy is. That's really important.
Speaker 3: Unders and I can do the same thing for you know,
Speaker 3: economic concepts, and so I find it very useful to
Speaker 3: allow me to surf the world as a dileton with
Speaker 3: this little thing in my pocket that will explain certain
Speaker 3: key concepts I don't understand. Right. It's a little bit like,
Speaker 3: you know, how if you're traveling in a foreign country
Speaker 3: and you don't understand the language and a certain sign,
Speaker 3: you can, you know, hold out your phone and maybe
Speaker 3: open up like the Google app and just point it
Speaker 3: at the sign and then it translates the Danish word
Speaker 3: for stop into the English word stop and you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: great stop.
Speaker 4: Imagine that.
Speaker 3: But for all linguistic mysteries, for all things that you
Speaker 3: don't understand in the world, right, to have essentially a
Speaker 3: travel assistant that can translate the world. That's sort of
Speaker 3: how I use these tools right now. It's a kind
Speaker 3: of universal translator of important ideas and concepts that I
Speaker 3: don't understand.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, last question for you. So when we're talking
Speaker 1: about something like the ATM, there were all these beliefs,
Speaker 1: beliefs that it was just going to get rid of
Speaker 1: the need for real humans at bank locations, or like
Speaker 1: when you talk about kind of what like kiosks, or
Speaker 1: are we actually going to need physical employees at fast
Speaker 1: food restaurants anywhere now? And it seems like every time,
Speaker 1: at every turn, there are all these new jobs that
Speaker 1: open up. When when new forms of technology come into being,
Speaker 1: do you think that's going to be the case with
Speaker 1: AI or do you think it is going to kind
Speaker 1: of eradicate eradicate a bunch of jobs that it won't
Speaker 1: like that won't pop up in other places.
Speaker 3: One thing that humankind seems to be very good at
Speaker 3: doing is thinking of new ways to spend money, which
Speaker 3: means thinking of new ways to employ people. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: in it was any category in which you spend money,
Speaker 3: someone accepting that money has money to hire people to
Speaker 3: go their business. So you know, in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 3: the economy was fifty sixty percent farm workers. In the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties, the economy was thirty forty percent many fashion workers. Today,
Speaker 3: if you add all the many facts ushing workers with
Speaker 3: to all the farmers in America, you get less than
Speaker 3: ten percent of the labor force. So we found a
Speaker 3: way to take that ninety percent and turn it into
Speaker 3: ten percent, And now the other ninety percent of the
Speaker 3: labor force is doing stuff that we couldn't have even
Speaker 3: imagined in the nineteenth century. I mean, how do you
Speaker 3: explain the concept of computer programming, which now is the
Speaker 3: most popular major at most of America's elite universities. How
Speaker 3: do you explain that to someone in like eighteen sixties,
Speaker 3: You'd be like, okay, imagine a computer. Oh okay, well,
Speaker 3: imagine like an abacus that can do a lot of
Speaker 3: other stuff. It's like, very very hard to do. And
Speaker 3: we were very very good to think of new ways
Speaker 3: to spend money. We're pretty good at inventing stuff, although
Speaker 3: I wish that we were better, And so I could
Speaker 3: always choose to say history for the next one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty years will be like history for the last
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty years, and we'll just find new
Speaker 3: ways to reemploy people. It's always possible, however, that AI
Speaker 3: will do for humans what essentially the automobile did for horses.
Speaker 3: You know, one way to tell the story of horses
Speaker 3: in horse history is to say that for thousands of years,
Speaker 3: we came up with new technology that made horses more
Speaker 3: powerful with each you know, every millennium, right that we
Speaker 3: invented stirrups, and we invented horseshoes, and we invented saddles,
Speaker 3: and we invented armor in all these different ways and plows,
Speaker 3: you know, to make horses more and more and more productive.
Speaker 3: And then finally we invented the machine that was just
Speaker 3: better at horses, at everything, and we replaced them with
Speaker 3: tractors and cars.
Speaker 4: It's conceivable that.
Speaker 3: Agi artificial general intelligence will do for the human mind
Speaker 3: what the internal combustion engine did for the horse, but
Speaker 3: that would truly be an unprecedented thing in human history,
Speaker 3: and it's always very risky to make strong predictions about
Speaker 3: utterly imprecedented things.
Speaker 2: Like Yeah, and what you're referring to as well, is
Speaker 2: you're talking about like moving the goalposts, which we have
Speaker 2: a love hate relationship with because on the personal level,
Speaker 2: it's a terrible thing because it means we're never satisfied
Speaker 2: but collectively, when you're talking about a general population, that
Speaker 2: is what continues to that's progress, that's progress and innovation
Speaker 2: and technology, and so.
Speaker 1: That's the part that I love. Derek.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate you taking the time to speak with
Speaker 2: us today. Working folks. Find all of your different writings
Speaker 2: of what you're up to these days.
Speaker 3: You can find my writing at The Atlantic. You can
Speaker 3: listen to my podcast Plain English with Derek Thompson with
Speaker 3: the Renuer podcast Network, and I guess you can follow
Speaker 3: me on Twitter at dk thomp.
Speaker 1: There you go. All right, Derek, thanks again for joining us, man,
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it that pleasure. Thanks us all right,
Speaker 1: mat what a great conversation with somebody who just an
Speaker 1: incredible thinker. And we've been reading this stuff for many,
Speaker 1: many years. And I could have just honestly, I could
Speaker 1: ask Derek a million questions, but if only he had
Speaker 1: the time, right, It's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like we talked a lot about media,
Speaker 2: So hopefully folks stuck around.
Speaker 1: But what's your big takeaway? Is it more personal finance related?
Speaker 2: Is it going to be more media technology?
Speaker 4: AI?
Speaker 1: I think when he said we live in an age
Speaker 1: of impossible expectations, I thought that was just to me
Speaker 1: that like boom, that struck me like a ton of bricks,
Speaker 1: And I think it's spot on. I think it really
Speaker 1: goes to a million different things, the expectations we place
Speaker 1: on what our job should be for us, how it
Speaker 1: should make us feel, and the sort of way like
Speaker 1: we expect it to place replace religion and marriage at
Speaker 1: the same time, all of these things that have been
Speaker 1: foundational to kind of how we go through life in
Speaker 1: the past. Now work has become is taken top billing
Speaker 1: in our lives and we expect a lot from it
Speaker 1: and guess.
Speaker 2: What wasn't necessarily designed for that. It's shouldering a massive
Speaker 2: load right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it's not that work is bad, Like
Speaker 1: I love how he touched on like some of those
Speaker 1: great things that work can provide too. But that is
Speaker 1: so true that we live in an age of impossible expectations,
Speaker 1: and I think it's the same is true for us
Speaker 1: on a consumption standpoint. We just think that we need
Speaker 1: to keep moving up the ladder, and we're very rarely
Speaker 1: content kind of with the way things currently stand. It's
Speaker 1: always got to be the next thing, and we all Matt,
Speaker 1: you and I included to find ourselves in that camp
Speaker 1: at different points in time, like oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: this house? Is it big enough? Like do I need
Speaker 1: to move on up the property ladder? There's all of
Speaker 1: these ways that we think about our lives content in
Speaker 1: this is a hard thing for us to feel for
Speaker 1: very long, I think as humans, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: Derek eloquently discussed that when you mentioned that totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think maybe related to that somewhat is my
Speaker 2: big takeaway, which is going to be that he said
Speaker 2: it's hard to be suboptimal. And this is back when
Speaker 2: we're talking about media specifically, and how he said that
Speaker 2: media companies or publishers or individuals have to choose to
Speaker 2: not be the most antagonistic. And we have seen that,
Speaker 2: Like let me just look at our political discourse over
Speaker 2: the past four to eight years specifically, I think it
Speaker 2: was mostly nice and friendly. I think the thing could
Speaker 2: be true though, when it comes to what it is
Speaker 2: that we are pursuing, because yes, to be more successful
Speaker 2: quoe unquote successful in the eyes of the world is
Speaker 2: going to lead you down a path that maybe you
Speaker 2: don't necessarily want to go down, but to live a
Speaker 2: life that you want to lead that that is more
Speaker 2: important than being fully optimized essentially, and so you.
Speaker 1: Might have to give up to a certain degree some
Speaker 1: of the ways you want others to perceive you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess what we're pointing out here is the
Speaker 2: fact that there's like a there's a conscious choice that
Speaker 2: we have to make in order to live by the
Speaker 2: ideals that we think are most important to us as individuals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're not necessarily the ideals that our society
Speaker 1: and our workism culture are proliferating, right, And so I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm thinking about that a lot right now,
Speaker 1: just reading some books kind of on that very topic,
Speaker 1: The Second Mountain by David Brooks, highly recommend it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to live a life that is deep
Speaker 1: with meaning, work is going to be a part of
Speaker 1: that puzzle, I think. But you might want to find
Speaker 1: community and meaning in other parts of your life too,
Speaker 1: and in fact, yeah, you're going to need to if
Speaker 1: you want to live that kind of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about it somewhat through
Speaker 2: the lens of work, but just all the other things
Speaker 2: we do too. How it is that we consume, how
Speaker 2: does we spend our money that we spend our time.
Speaker 2: The things that we find interest in aren't only a
Speaker 2: reflection of like our natural interests, but also the things
Speaker 2: that we are intentionally placing value upon. But all right, man,
Speaker 2: let's quickly cover the beer you and I enjoyed Long Haul.
Speaker 2: This is a beer by creature comforts. This is a Doppelbock.
Speaker 1: Did you dig it? Yeah, found a lot of comfort
Speaker 1: in this beer. In fact, it was delicious. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say I had like brown bread vibes going on
Speaker 1: for sure. Takes it like a fresh loaf coming out
Speaker 1: of the oven. And it's also it's something I feel
Speaker 1: like if I were to do this, which I would
Speaker 1: go to an abbey and drink beer with monks, this
Speaker 1: is the beer they would serve me.
Speaker 2: So on the label here it literally says something that
Speaker 2: we have said before when drinking Brown Ales and Popple
Speaker 2: Box in particular are daily bread in liquid form. And
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. It's the kind of beer that
Speaker 2: I would expect to drink fireside in an abbey because
Speaker 2: you know, there's not there's not like central heat or
Speaker 2: anything like that.
Speaker 1: Right, So you got it?
Speaker 2: You need to have a rage in fire going it's right,
Speaker 2: but uh yeah, glad, you know. I got to enjoy
Speaker 2: this one. Will make sure to link to some of
Speaker 2: the different how about some of the different articles that
Speaker 2: we referenced that we spoke about today with Derek and
Speaker 2: we'll link to his profile over at The Atlantic as
Speaker 2: well as his podcast as well, because it's fantastic. Yep,
Speaker 2: but that's gonna be it for this episode until next time, Buddy,
Speaker 2: best Friends Out and best Friends Out the fo