Derek Thompson

Or: A comprehensive explanation for why it’s time for everybody to clean up their password game, immediately

American sports laws amount to a kind of out-in-the-open conspiracy to help a lucky few billionaires get much, much richer

Americans hate data centers. But most of AI's builders are clueless about why.

Why are socialism, marijuana, and original blockbusters ascendant? Where do "Western values" come from? Why do modern people torture ourselves with comparison and guilt?

The smartest reasons to worry about the state of AI in an age of intense volatility—and my best attempt to explain why each of those worries might be wrong.

If we want AI to solve every disease in our lifetime, super-intelligence is not enough. We need an equally ingenious policy to guide the discovery of new drugs.

Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' is an extraordinary, modern epic. Homer's Odyssey is an even more extraordinarily strange one.

Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you won't stop seeing it everywhere

The turn against moderate drinking has been sudden and sharp. But it's not often based in science.

America in 1926 was obsessed with technology, immigration, women, work, and money. Sound familiar?

There are more—and richer—tiny companies. AI could be playing a big role.

Trump lost the country. The U.S. lost a half-hearted war. Israel lost an ally. The Middle East lost the illusion of security. Asia lost growth. Global trade lost a dependable artery.

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Americans have never been healthier, or more alone. These things might be related.

What do Marcus Aurelius, Bob Iger, Bill Belichick, and William Shawn have in common? Succession failure.

There are two problems with the famous “male loneliness crisis”—the loneliness part and the male thing.

The great AI cost panic of 2026 is upon us

Donald Trump did not invent political corruption. But he may be accelerating something more dangerous: the collapse of universal moral standards into a culture of endless special exceptions.

Everybody knows about the decline in birthrates. Fewer people understand why—or just how significantly it could transform society in the next few decades.

Every week, I save dozens of screenshots of charts, essay passages, science and economics papers, and tweets.