China’s Spy Balloon Is Down. Cold War 2.0 Risks Are Rising.
If we’re being honest, the whole thing is kind of funny. A Chinese spy balloon floated across the U.S. Nobody died, unless we count the balloon itself. In a saner age, this story would be over. But ba...
7 Feb 202343min
Econ Megapod: The Debt Ceiling Is Dumb, and the Inflation “Crisis” Might Be Over
We’ve got a double-barrelled podcast for you. Jeanna Smialek, economics reporter for the ‘New York Times,’ joins us to break down the debt-ceiling showdown that’s enveloping Washington. Plus, economis...
3 Feb 202357min
The Dark Side of Being Obsessed With Productivity
"Productivity is a trap. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved work-life balance. The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem—or so I hope to convince you—is that we’ve unw...
31 Jan 202348min
How AI Could Change Apple and Google, Writing and Music, and Everything Else
“The story of 2022 was the emergence of AI," wrote Ben Thompson, the author of the Stratechery newsletter and podcast. "It seems clear to me that this is a new epoch in technology.” Ben and Derek talk...
27 Jan 20231h 1min
Why Big Tech's Jobs Bubble Burst. Plus, SBF's Scandal Deepens.
Derek breaks down the biggest economic mystery of the moment: Why are the most successful tech companies collectively laying off more than 130,000 people if the overall unemployment rate is still hist...
24 Jan 202347min
America Isn’t Ready for the Weight-Loss-Drug Revolution That’s Coming
We have historically thought about weight as the mere outcome of our deliberate choices about diet and exercise. We have not typically thought about weight like a disease. But in the past 18 months, t...
20 Jan 202353min
How Americans Got Everything About Food—Fat, Sugar, and Obesity—‘Entirely Backwards’
Today’s episode is about what Americans don’t get about food—and the historical origins of our diet delusions. Our guest is Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist who has researched and written on obesi...
17 Jan 202347min
True or False: 10 Controversial Predictions About the Future of Streaming, Tech, and Media
Last year was a bloodbath for media of all stripes. Netflix crashed, the advertising market cratered, Disney fired a CEOBob and replaced him with a CEOBob, and meanwhile, the domestic box office for f...
13 Jan 202340min
