Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

Episode: Derek Thompson on Why Everything Is Becoming Television, and Whether Democracy Can Survive It

Date: November 14, 2025
Host(s): Max Tani (A), Ben Smith (B)
Guest: Derek Thompson (C)

Episode Overview

This episode features journalist and author Derek Thompson, co-host of the Plain English podcast and co-author of the best-selling book Abundance. The conversation centers on Thompson’s provocative thesis: “everything is becoming television.” The hosts and Thompson explore what this means for media, politics, attention spans, democracy, and careers in media—a discussion that ranges from nostalgia for longform to anxieties about the TikTok-ification of public discourse.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Central Thesis: Everything Is Becoming Television

• Origin of the Idea ([03:51]):
  Thompson explains that podcasting, social media, and even AI are succumbing to video and video-like engagement:

  “There’s this attractor state in media where everything, no matter where it starts off, ends up as TV.” (C, [06:51])

• Meta’s FTC Filing ([04:09]):
  He cites Meta’s own admission that most of its engagement is video-based, AI-recommended, and not social:

  “Social media isn’t about being social with our friends. It’s about watching short-form video from people who aren’t your friends.” (C)

• The “Attractor State” Metaphor ([07:02]):
  The comparison is to a marble in a bowl or water circling a drain—no matter where media starts, it ends up moving toward visual, continuous, TV-like formats.

2. Television as the Infinite Medium

• The Flow State ([08:43]):
  Borrowing from Raymond Williams, Thompson notes TV was the first infinite medium:

  “TV was the first medium that was just on constantly...you could consume content seemingly, if you wanted to, forever, and never stop.” (A, [07:51])

• TikTok as “More TV Than TV” ([10:28]):

  “Who opens up TikTok or Instagram in order to see a particular video? That’s crazy. You open up TikTok to get lost in the flow without knowing what you’re going to see.” (C)

3. Societal Effects: “Brainrot,” Reading Decline & Orality

• Attention Deficit & Declining Literacy ([11:05]):

  • Media overload is thinning attention spans, making complex thought harder.

  • Cites:

    “Societies that write have many times the number of words as oral tribes. If literacy thickens the complexity of thought, a return to orality would amount to the great cortical thinning of society. Truth in such a civilization would be more about mnemonics, what is emotionally memorable, than empirics, what is true.” (C, quoting his own essay; B, [10:28])

  • Reports real-world data:

    • U.S. average reading scores hitting a 32-year low ([15:30])
    • Global declines in reasoning and problem-solving tests since the smartphone era ([15:30])

    “Every generation worries that young people are getting dumber, but we actually have evidence that students today score worse… The Flynn effect...is starting to invert.” (C)

• Rise of the Short-form Video Performer as Cultural Archetype ([14:24]):

  “Success in American life right now is increasingly tied to one’s capacity to be a high quality short form video performer…even Gen Z’s theory of economic success…is becoming associated with essentially being good at TV. And that strikes me as mildly dystopian and also just, you know, important.” (C)

4. Counterpoints: The Case Against Media Panic

• Ken Burns’s Skepticism ([14:24]):

  “He’s been hearing this exact strain of moral panic from middle aged guys freaking out about their mortality for his entire career… Book sales remain pretty constant. I’m not sure society’s actually dumber and more violent than it was… Are we sure this isn’t just…people our age freaking out about what 20-year-olds are doing with media?” (B, [14:24])

• Thompson’s Response ([15:30]):
  “There is a constant of people our age freaking out...But at the end of that story, a wolf arrives. And my thesis is that there’s a wolf here.”

5. Longform Exception & the 'Barbell' Effect

• Rise of Extremes ([18:43]):

  “What we’re seeing now in media is almost like a barbell effect—the geniuses of short form video are having extraordinary success and then there are folks...making four hour content about the exquisite details [of a topic]. Both those things are succeeding… It’s the middle that’s being eroded.” (C)

• Memorable Example:
  “Sometimes the thing that goes most viral from a Joe Rogan conversation that’s four hours long is a 15 second moment.” (C)

6. Media Skills & Political Charisma

• The Nature of On-Camera Talent ([25:00]):

  “There’s something that exists beyond easy description that we sometimes shorthand as authenticity, which is a word I fucking hate… It’s about transmitting a sense of understanding an audience that the individual can’t see because they’re looking directly in a fucking camera.” (C)

• Room Charisma vs. TV Charisma ([27:33]):

  “There’s something that one could call television charisma. And there’s something you could call room charisma. And they’re different. And that’s interesting… Some politicians are absolutely dreadful on camera…but in a room…they’re luminous.” (C)

• Specificity as a Political Superpower ([30:32]):

  “When you know what you want to say, you will go anywhere…Bernie Sanders has had one message for…35 years. So he’s not afraid to go on Joe Rogan or wherever.” (C)

7. Thompson’s Generalism & Writing Approach

• Why Write About Everything? ([31:33])

  “I just write about what I find interesting and…trust in my ability to make the mechanics of what I find interesting interesting to other people. If there’s a formula for interestingness, to me, it’s novelty plus importance.” (C)

  • Usefulness of covering politics via economics, housing, or culture rather than polling “the sun directly” ([33:44]).

  “To understand any one thing, you have to look at the things around it…My attention can never be fully sunk into one subject.” (C)

8. Abundance: Its Reception, Impact & Media Lessons

• Unexpected Bestseller ([35:14]):

  “This was a 99.999 percentile outcome for what we optimistically discussed as being a possibility for the book… the reception of the book was in part about the book itself, but I would argue the response…had more to do with the environment in which the book landed.” (C)

• Criticism Helped More Than Hurt ([37:00]):

  “The book was so heavily criticized…I think objectively helped the book, which is kind of an unfortunate thing. Cause I don’t want to think that the success of any culture product…was helped by its negative reaction. But I think it probably was.” (C)

• The Ripple Effect of Books vs. Other Media ([38:52]):

  “Books are a really weird cultural product. I’ve said this before. They’re a boulder dropped in a lake. And the product is not the boulder. The product is the ripples created by the boulder… Ultimately, many more people consume the content about the book than the book itself.”

• What Actually Sells Books? ([40:54]):

  “If you want to sell books…nothing came close to Fareed Zakaria’s show when it came to immediately moving the sales. My theory is that podcasts, in a weird way, are too successful at unpacking books… Whereas TV is an amuse bouche.”

9. Leaving The Atlantic for Substack: New Independence

• Motivation to Go Independent ([43:00]):

  “This really was more a sense of like, I know how to write an Atlantic column. Do I know how to do anything else? I’m never going to know if I don’t take this jump. And so I jumped.” (C)

• Benefits of Substack:

  “I've been really impressed...how quickly the audience for the average Substack article...has approached and surpassed in some ways the average audience for the Atlantic article... Substack has built this...incredible self-recommending way.” (C)

Notable Quotes

• "There’s this attractor state in media where everything, no matter where it starts off, ends up as TV." — Derek Thompson (C), [06:51]
• “Societies that write have many times the number of words as oral tribes. If literacy thickens the complexity of thought, a return to orality would amount to the great cortical thinning of society.”— Derek Thompson (C), quoting himself, [10:28]
• “[Gen Z] say influencer, they say essentially a short form video performer. So...political success is becoming television. And even Gen Z’s theory of economic success...is becoming associated with essentially being good at TV.” — Derek Thompson (C), [14:24]
• "Every generation worries that young people are getting dumber, but we actually have evidence that students today score worse..." — Derek Thompson (C), [15:30]
• “To your point, clearly not the case that everything is just getting dumber. I think that would be actually a quite simplistic and maybe even ironically like post literate analysis…” — Derek Thompson (C), [21:30]
• “There’s something that exists beyond easy description that we sometimes shorthand as authenticity, which is a word I fucking hate...it’s always a performance...” — Derek Thompson (C), [25:00]
• “When you know what you want to say, you will go anywhere.” — Derek Thompson (C), [30:32]
• “I just write about what I find interesting and…trust in my ability to make the mechanics of what I find interesting interesting to other people. If there’s a formula for interestingness, to me, it’s novelty plus importance.” — Derek Thompson (C), [31:33]
• “Books are not books. The ultimate product of the book is the conversation around the book.” — Derek Thompson (C), [39:20]
• “This really was more a sense of like, I know how to write an Atlantic column. Do I know how to do anything else?... I’m never going to know if I don’t take this jump.” — Derek Thompson (C), [43:00]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 03:51 — Derek explains genesis of “everything is TV” theory
• 04:09 — Meta’s own data shows social media has become TV
• 07:02 — Mathematical “attractor state” and its media analogy
• 08:43 — TV as the first infinite medium, origins of “the flow”
• 10:28 — Social consequences: brainrot, reading decline, orality
• 14:24 — Counterpoints: Ken Burns and the recurring media panic
• 18:43 — Barbell effect in media: extremes of short and long-form
• 25:00 — The ineffable charisma of on-camera political figures
• 31:33 — Derek’s approach to generalist reporting
• 35:14 — Abundance’s runaway success and the politics context
• 38:52 — How books spread influence via “ripples” not sales
• 40:54 — Podcasts vs TV for book sales
• 43:00 — Motivation for leaving The Atlantic for Substack

Summary for Non-Listeners

Derek Thompson’s conversation with Max Tani and Ben Smith offers a sweeping, nuanced take on how television, as a sensory and psychological mode, has colonized every other media format—from podcasting to social media to even AI-generated content. The discussion is not just theoretical or nostalgic—it robustly weighs evidence of declining literacy and attentional decay against enduring appetite for long-form work and generational panics that may or may not be justified.

Throughout, Thompson resists both simplistic doom and rose-tinted optimism, instead tracing a complex “barbell effect” where both minute-long viral videos and hours-long podcasts thrive—but the middle is hollowing out. He also articulates how political, economic, and cultural success today increasingly depends on “TV charisma”—an ability to project narrative authority straight to camera.

Listeners gain insight into not just media trends, but what new forms of charisma, attention, and “interestingness” count in the media economy, as well as the shifting realities for journalists in a Substack-ified future. The episode is rich with historical references, vivid metaphors, and a willingness to engage with both data and the lived experience of making (and consuming) media in 2025.