Plain History Volume 1: Who Killed President James Garfield?

Today, a mystery about what some people consider the most important position in sports: What the hell is going on with the NFL quarterback? We are two weeks into the 2024 football season. And as several commentators have pointed out, the quarterback position just doesn’t look right. Passing yards per game are lower than any other year in the 21st century. Passing touchdowns have fallen off a cliff. The average completed pass is shorter than any other year in the recorded history of the sport. Today’s guest is Robert Mays, the host of 'The Athletic Football Show.' We talk about the evolution of the quarterback position, why NFL passing is down, how NFL defense got so smart, and where this is all headed. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Robert Mays Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: Pro Football Reference NFL History Page https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/index.htm Mike Sando: QBs Are Younger Than Any Time in 60 Years: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4880988/2023/09/21/justin-fields-nfl-young-quarterbacks-trend/ Bill Barnwell on the evolution of the QB: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41217438/how-running-qbs-changed-nfl-dual-threat-history-value-scramble-stats-future Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

20 Sep 202445min

We may be on the cusp of a revolution in medicine, thanks to tools like AlphaFold, the technology for Google DeepMind, which helps scientists predict and see the shapes of thousands of proteins. How does AlphaFold work, what difference is it actually making in science, and what kinds of mysteries could it unlock? Today’s guest is Pushmeet Kohli. He is the head of AI for science at DeepMind. We talk about proteins, why they matter, why they’re challenging, how AlphaFold could accelerate and expand the hunt for miracle drugs, and what tools like AlphaFold tell us about the mystery of the cosmos and our efforts to understand it. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Pushmeet Kohli Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

13 Sep 202452min

Are conspiracy theories more popular than ever? Are Americans more conspiratorial than ever? Are conservatives more conspiratorial than liberals? Joseph Uscinski is a political scientist at the University of Miami and one of the nation's preeminent experts on the psychology of conspiratorial thinking and the history of conspiracy theories in America. He has some counterintuitive and surprising answers to these questions. Today, he and Derek discuss—and debate—the psychology and politics of modern conspiratorial thinking. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Joseph Uscinski Producer: Devon Baroldi Links Uscinski's research page: https://people.miami.edu/profile/60b5fb062f4f266afb6739ec21657c74 "The psychological and political correlates of conspiracy theory beliefs" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25617-0 "Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30679368/ "Right and left, partisanship predicts (asymmetric) vulnerability to misinformation" https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/right-and-left-partisanship-predicts-asymmetric-vulnerability-to-misinformation/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

6 Sep 20241h 18min

Exercise is a conundrum. On the one hand, physical activity is clearly one of the best interventions for preventing physical disease and mental suffering. On the other hand, scientists don't really understand how it works inside the body or what exactly running, jumping, lifting, and squatting do to our tissues and organs. That's finally changing. Euan Ashley, a professor of genomics and cardiovascular medicine and the chair of the Stanford Department of Medicine, is a member of a new research consortium that studies rats and humans to understand the molecular changes induced by exercise. Today we talk about the earliest findings from this new consortium, how exercise might have disparate effects in men versus women, why nature’s most effective cardiovascular intervention also seems to be nature’s most effective mental health intervention, as well as whether it will one day be possible to identify the molecular basis of exercise precisely enough to develop exercise pills that give us the benefits of working out without the sweat. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Euan Ashley Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

30 Aug 202457min

Derek offers a short but sweet review of the Democratic National Convention, the science of post-convention bounces, and the reality of the 2024 polling: It's still a toss-up. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

23 Aug 202411min

Today's episode is about how we change our minds—and what political science tells us about the best ways to change the minds of voters. Our guest is David Broockman, a political scientist at the University of California Berkeley, and the coauthor, with Josh Kalla, of a new essay in Slow Boring on Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the most persuasive arguments and messages to decide this election. Today, David and I talk about the four biggest myths of political persuasion—and in the process, David will attempt to do something that I’m not entirely sure is possible: He’ll try to change my mind about how persuasion works. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: David Broockman Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: "What's Better Than Calling Donald Trump 'Weird'?" https://www.slowboring.com/p/whats-better-than-calling-trump-weird "Consuming cross-cutting media causes learning and moderates attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers" https://osf.io/preprints/osf/jrw26 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

16 Aug 202444min

Laurie Santos is a superstar in the crowded field of happiness research. She is a cognitive scientist at Yale University whose course on the psychology of happiness was the most popular class in the school's history. She is the host of the immensely popular ‘Happiness Lab’ podcast. Today, she and Derek talk about her favorite lessons from modern happiness research, lessons on striving and anxiety from existential philosophy, our relationship to time, the science of cognitive time travel, temporal mind tricks to reduce anxiety like "psychological distancing," and more. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dr. Laurie Santos Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

9 Aug 20241h 5min

In a special emergency-ish episode, Bloomberg's Conor Sen joins the show to discuss a buffet of economic and financial fears, including a disappointing jobs report, a meltdown in global stocks, the "carry trade" heard round the world, the smartest criticisms of (and smartest defense of) the Federal Reserve's decision not to raise interest rates, and more. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Conor Sen Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

5 Aug 202426min