Endless Slop, Cancer Cures, or Robot Apocalypse? Derek Thompson on Our AI Future

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau – Episode Summary

Podcast: Offline with Jon Favreau
Episode: "Endless Slop, Cancer Cures, or Robot Apocalypse? Derek Thompson on Our AI Future"
Date: March 7, 2026
Guest: Derek Thompson

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Overview

This thought-provoking episode features Jon Favreau in conversation with Derek Thompson – acclaimed journalist at The Atlantic and host of Plain English – exploring the sweeping social, political, and cultural implications of artificial intelligence. Their wide-ranging discussion covers the ambiguity and hype around AI’s economic impact, its distortion of labor markets, the collective anxiety and hope associated with technological change, and how the internet’s relentless evolution into "just television" is shaping our democracy and personal lives. The episode closes with a deeply personal reflection on parenting in the digital age.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Current State of AI: Bubble, Revolution, or Unknown?

[06:01] – [10:13]

• Disjointed Discourse: Derek describes being misunderstood as either an “AI booster” or a skeptic, highlighting widespread confusion:

  "I don't know. I don't know where I am on AI right now. And I find that it's very difficult to talk about this subject without making people upset." – Derek Thompson (06:37)

• Too Broad to Grasp: AI spans from generative video slop on TikTok to powerful workplace tools.
• Unprecedented Uncertainty: Unlike issues with clear data (like oil prices), no one can agree what AI is actually doing in the macroeconomy – neither economists nor executives have hard answers.
• Speculation Drives Markets: The recent viral Citrini Research memo—a fictional scenario about AI causing economic crisis—resulted in real stock losses, underscoring how starved for factual clarity investors are:

  "When on earth have you heard of a sci-fi story moving markets to the tune of a trillion dollars?" – Derek Thompson (09:54)

2. Investment, Hype, and the "Bubble" Debate

[13:12] – [21:16]

• Massive Investment: The “hyperscalers” (Amazon, Alphabet, OpenAI, etc.) are spending an estimated $600–$700B on AI infrastructure annually—more than the equivalent of an Apollo program every six months.

  "Nothing like this has ever happened before." – Derek Thompson (14:13)

• Bubble Argument:
  1. New technologies (canals, railroads, internet) are always overbuilt due to lack of coordination.
  2. Cost structures/investments may not match up with potential revenues.
  3. Growing use of debt and leverage is always a warning sign.
• Counter for Real Value: AI has extraordinary adoption and revenue growth (OpenAI and Anthropic projected to reach $30–$40B soon), suggesting revenue may catch up.

3. Labor Market Effects – Slow Burn, Not Lightning Strike

[24:18] – [32:51]

• Why Haven’t We Seen Massive Job Loss?

  • The timing of ChatGPT’s release coincided with rapidly rising Fed interest rates and hiring slowdowns—so teasing out AI’s effect is tricky.
  • Early adopters are experimenting, but the “disruption” is still mostly potential.

• Personal Anecdotes on AI Competence: Thompson’s own research, using Claude for government data analysis, was nearly as accurate and lightning-fast compared to professional economists, prompting real concern about white-collar job security:

  "Five hours of an expert’s time could be done by a novice in two and a half minutes." – Derek Thompson (30:37)

• Horse vs. Spreadsheet Model:

  • Either AI is like the combustion engine that rendered horses obsolete, or like Excel which empowered millions to work differently.
  • Thompson's optimistic bet is that AI will augment rather than displace most knowledge work, but worries about widespread “cognitive atrophy”:

    “A lot of people, I think, are going to outsource their brains to these machines and suffer cognitive atrophy." – Derek Thompson (32:47)

4. AI in Medicine: Help or Harm?

[33:11] – [36:23]

• AI Equals or Outperforms Doctors in Analysis: Favreau and Thompson both recount receiving more helpful, readable test interpretations from ChatGPT than human physicians.
• Will AI Replace Doctors? Probably not, but it will heavily augment them, reducing clerical drudgery and freeing doctors to spend more time with patients.
• Optimistic Take:

  "There are just absolutely going to be use cases in which it just saves time so that we find more human-to-human applications of the workday." – Derek Thompson (36:18)

5. Regulation, Geopolitics & Existential Risks

[36:26] – [43:55]

• National/Global Cooperation Is Crucial:
  • Urgency for trustworthy, competent government engagement is clear—no scenario where "no guardrails" ends well.
• Anthropic’s Pentagon Dispute: Outrage over the US government using 'supply chain risk' as a cudgel when Anthropic wouldn’t sign a defense contract.

  "That seems...very close to the end of private property rights in America." – Derek Thompson (38:26)

• Superweapon Fears vs. Health Hopes:
  • AI as a dual-use technology with potential for both unprecedented harm (autonomous weapons, sabotage) and hope (curing cancer).
  • Echoes of the nuclear era:

    "What these companies are building might not be so distinct from an advanced weapon…if these technologies are building what they sometimes claim, something about their work shouldn’t be nationalized?" – Derek Thompson (39:21)

• Why the AI Backlash Keeps Growing:
  • CEOs alternately sell AI as pull-up boosters or job-destroying end-times; “advertisements are like, it'll help you cook a better pasta and do more pull-ups…and then the CEOs are like, it's going to displace 30 million jobs and totally transform the US economy." – Derek Thompson (42:37)
  • The general public receives little clarity or agency: longing for a time machine back to pre-AI days.

6. Everything Is Television – Internet’s Devolution Into Video Slop

[46:50] – [54:03]

• From Social to Sitcom:
  • Social networks are now mostly “television” networks, with 93% of Instagram time spent watching video from strangers, not friends.

    "Instagram is television. Meta is television. These are not social networks. These are the television networks of the 21st century." – Derek Thompson (47:59)

  • Podcasts, AI, everything is trending toward becoming endless video streams.
• Short Video Is the Default Attractor State:
  • All media, regardless of origin, gravitates toward flowing video (e.g., Sora AI), leading to widespread “slop.”
• Netflix and the Dumbing Down of TV:
  • Netflix instructs screenwriters to simplify plots for distracted, dual-screen viewers; even AI could create this sort of “mediocre” content.
• Why People Still Crave Human Artistry:
  • Embarrassment/shame keeps people from sharing AI-generated art or music, despite industry adoption.

7. Short-Form Video’s Distortion of Politics and Democracy

[54:10] – [66:50]

• Neil Postman's Prescient Warning:
  • When all communication adopts TV’s values – urgency, spectacle, brevity – politics devolves into theater, science into storytelling, news into performance, and news consumption into cortisol-inducing “scenes.”

    "The result, Postman warned, is a society that forgets to think in paragraphs and learns instead to think in scenes." – Jon Favreau quoting from Thompson’s piece (54:56)

• Is There Room for Depth?
  • Challenge for oratorical, “long form” politicians like Obama is adapting to the new media – but long-form podcasts persist as a counter-trend.
• Short-Form: A Populist Advantage?
  • Short-form media environment favors emotional, simplistic, and often divisive presentations—advantageous for populists and demagogues versus democratic values of nuance and empathy.
• Agency and Optimism:
  • Politicians like Zoran Mamdani prove “nice, cheerful” style can succeed within new media genres without sacrificing ideological edge.

  • "There's a way to be charismatic in a very 21st-century way while also retaining some base level of human decency. And my hope is...Democratic Party gets very good at braiding those two skills." – Derek Thompson (63:30)

  • Success lies in combining optimism, aspiration, and a direct, engaging style.

8. Parenting in the Age of Instinct (and Information Overload)

[66:50] – [71:45]

• The Emotional Ride:
  • Thompson reflects on parenthood:

    "Being a parent is falling in love with a thousand beautiful strangers that evolve behind a single face." – Derek Thompson (68:39)

  • Parenting feels fundamentally different; it’s one of the few life domains where instinct trumps research and tech.
• Ride the Ride:
  • Thompson likens parenting, and life’s big experiences, to “rides” in an amusement park:

    "It is there. It is built for you, and you were built for it. And if you are only going to be in this amusement park once, you might as well ride the rides." – Derek Thompson (70:50)

• Gradual Realizations: Even uncertain, anxious parents find themselves rising to the challenge – “I did not think I would be built for this. But, like, I am.” – Jon Favreau (71:42)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Market Uncertainty:

  "If you're starved for nonfiction, then science fiction moves markets." – Derek Thompson (09:54)

• On Hyperscalers’ Expenditure:

  "We're spending $300 billion every five and a half months. Right? It's an Apollo program every six months, except it's not funded by the government, it's funded by private companies." – Derek Thompson (14:04)

• On AI’s Real-World Impacts:

  "Five hours of an expert’s time could be done by a novice in two and a half minutes." – Derek Thompson (30:37)

• On Regulating AI:

  "I don't see a scenario where this ends well [without regulation]...There also has to be, like, some serious international agreement treaty, whatever. And it just feels like we're so far from building the legal framework to give ourselves a chance here." – Jon Favreau (41:22)

• On Media Devolution:

  "If you're in the media ecosystem, the attractor is television. You will become television." – Derek Thompson (49:42)

• On Thinking in Scenes:

  "The result, Postman warned, is a society that forgets how to think in paragraphs and learns instead to think in scenes." – Jon Favreau (54:56)

• On Parenting’s Wonders:

  "Being a parent is falling in love with a thousand beautiful strangers that evolve behind a single face." – Derek Thompson (68:39)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• AI Hype, Ambiguity, and Markets: [06:01] – [13:18]
• Bubble Arguments & Growth Projections: [13:12] – [21:16]
• AI and Labor Market Effects: [24:18] – [34:03]
• AI in Medicine: [33:11] – [36:23]
• Regulation, Risks, and AI as Superweapon: [36:26] – [43:55]
• Everything is Television Thesis: [46:50] – [54:03]
• Media, Politics, and Democracy: [54:10] – [66:50]
• Parenting Reflections: [66:50] – [71:45]

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Episode Tone

Conversational, witty, neurotic (in a good way); Derek Thompson is self-effacing, agile, and both skeptical and hopeful. Jon Favreau brings his trademark mix of earnestness, political insight, and humor. The discussion is data-driven yet deeply personal, always circling back to the core question: How do we stay human in a world increasingly run by algorithms?

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For First-Time Listeners

This episode is vital for anyone anxious or curious about the AI future—the hype, the fear, the politics, and the unpredictability. It’s equally resonant for those interested in digital culture’s ongoing TV-ification and for parents navigating both wonder and overwhelm in a hyper-connected age.

Transcript

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[Jon Favreau]

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[Derek Thompson]

it's not like the AI CEOs are

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

giving us a whole lot to root for.

[Derek Thompson]

The advertisements are like, it'll help you do more pull ups. That's cool. Like, you know, I wish I could do like three more pull ups in a set. So the advertisements are like, this is good because it'll help you cook like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a better pasta and do more pull ups.

[Derek Thompson]

And then the CEOs are like, it's going to displace 30 million jobs and totally transform the US economy so that we're going to need a universal basic income because you're so not going to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

recognize the labor market that follows AI.

[Derek Thompson]

And also, we might be building something like a nuclear bomb and God, we would really like to be regulated because we don't know how to solve these problems.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Foreign.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I'm Jon Favreau and you just heard from today's guest, Derek Thompson. I love talking to Derek.

[Jon Favreau]

He's one of those people who will stop by to offer a thoughtful, fresh take on just about anything. The loneliness epidemic, crypto fraud, zoning reform. Today I wanted to talk to him about three AI television and parenting AI

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

because he's been writing a lot about

[Jon Favreau]

the effect of AI on jobs and the economy, most notably why we haven't

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

seen more of an effect on the

[Jon Favreau]

labor market just yet and whether this whole thing is just a bubble.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I wanted to talk television because of

[Jon Favreau]

his excellent piece from last fall called Everything Is Television, where Derek argues that

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

everything online, podcasts, social media, even AI, are slowly evolving into something that looks

[Jon Favreau]

a lot like tv, specifically, an endless flow of episodic video. And what happens when everything becomes television? As Derek points out, borrowing from Neil

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Postman, the way we communicate begins to

[Jon Favreau]

reflect television's immediacy, emotion, spectacle, brevity. When everything is urgent, nothing is truly important.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Politics becomes theater, science becomes storytelling. News becomes performance.

[Jon Favreau]

This, of course, almost perfectly describes the

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

hell that we're currently living in.

[Jon Favreau]

So we talked about what effect it's

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

having on our politics. Finally, Derek and his wife recently had

[Jon Favreau]

a second child, so I asked him

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

about a beautiful essay he just wrote

[Jon Favreau]

about being a parent and why it's so special. It was a great conversation and we'll get to it in a moment.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Before we do, you can get this episode and more of your favorite crooked media podcasts ad free by subscribing to Friends of the Pod, our subscriber only community. Friends of the Pod get access to ad free episodes of all your favorite

[Jon Favreau]

crooked shows as well as episodes of

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

our subscriber only shows terminally online, Dan Pfeiffer's Polar Coaster, and our new extra episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only friends.

[Jon Favreau]

Plus, you get to feel good about

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

supporting independent, pro democracy media at a

[Jon Favreau]

time when we could really use it.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

So subscribe today by heading on over to cricket.com friends now here's my conversation with Derek Thompson.

[Jon Favreau]

Derek, welcome back to the show.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Great to be here. Thank you.

[Jon Favreau]

Welcome back from parental leave.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Whew.

[Derek Thompson]

Thank you very much.

[Jon Favreau]

How's the baby?

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Oh, she's great.

[Derek Thompson]

She's great. She's beautiful. Chunky face.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

She's really lovely.

[Derek Thompson]

We're at three months now and so we're just starting to get those, those

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

kind of like lopsided smiles.

[Derek Thompson]

And it's amazing when a child who's,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

you know, two years or older smiles at you. It's beautiful.

[Derek Thompson]

But, you know, hopefully if you have

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a good relationship, smiles are common.

[Derek Thompson]

It's unbelievable how magical it is to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

see the very first smile from a person.

[Derek Thompson]

I smile that you get from a

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

person is just such a special thing.

[Derek Thompson]

And it's, I think, an indelible part

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of parenting is that the most. And this is why I won't Continue going on about this for 60 seconds.

[Derek Thompson]

For the podcast audience, the most banal,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

cliche things are the most heart wrenching.

[Jon Favreau]

It's true.

[Derek Thompson]

The first smile, the first laugh, it's really special. So it's a joyous time at home,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

but also, as you know, so much free time.

[Derek Thompson]

I mean, when you're a dad of

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

two, two years and three months old,

[Derek Thompson]

just so much free time, such abundant

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

amounts of free time, you know?

[Jon Favreau]

You know what happens though, is that, like, at some point when you get an hour of free time, it feels like you had a week of free time. And so that changes, which is nice.

[Derek Thompson]

I was traveling recently and I was in a hotel. It was like a nice hotel. And I had breakfast alone. And I swear to God, it was

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

like touching the face of God.

[Derek Thompson]

It was like, it's amazing. It's like eggs and bacon and like a little bit of potato with ketchup and hot chocolate. Alone.

[Jon Favreau]

And my phone, and my phone just.

[Derek Thompson]

Just doom scrolling on Twitter. I was like, I've never been happy.

[Jon Favreau]

This is the life. This is what it's all for.

[Derek Thompson]

It's incredible.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

So since before you went on leave,

[Jon Favreau]

I've wanted to talk to you about your excellent piece, Everything Is Television. I still want to dive into that. But before we do, there's been what feels like a year's worth of news about AI, which is a topic I know you think and write about quite a bit, so I would love to start there. You have written that there's a divide in the discourse around AI that you have experienced yourself. You worry that some journalists think you've become a big AI booster, but you've also gotten shit from people in the AI industry for suggesting that it might be a bubble. How would you describe where you are on AI right now?

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I don't know. I don't know where I am on AI right now.

[Derek Thompson]

And I find that it's very difficult

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to talk about this subject without making people upset.

[Derek Thompson]

AI is. I almost like I'm worried about, like. Like when I. When I jump off of this cliff,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

where do I go with, like, the first comment? There's a lot of phenomena that you and I talk about where everyone can

[Derek Thompson]

kind of agree on what the thing

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

is that we're talking about.

[Derek Thompson]

If you had started this conversation by saying, derek, what's going on with gas

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

prices as a result of Donald Trump's war on Iran?

[Derek Thompson]

We've got one number to start with, which is that oil futures, I think,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

top $90 for the first time today.

[Derek Thompson]

And we can start with one number that everyone can agree on. AI is almost too many things to start with. AI is the video slop that people

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

see when they open TikTok.

[Derek Thompson]

AI is the janky generative summaries you get at the top of a Google search that sometimes are correct and sometimes

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

are annoying and sometimes simply stealing information from journalist articles.

[Derek Thompson]

AI is something that you hear your

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

boss wants you to try out when you don't want to try out.

[Derek Thompson]

Or maybe it's something that you're trying when your boss is actually the one who's afraid of it. The metaphor that I've used before is that because artificial intelligence in the workplace is exquisitely dependent on the prompt that you use and the technology that you're using that prompt for. I mean, the most important part of the large language model, Claude Opus 4.6, might be the term 0.6. That's how many different AIs there are. You have to get to the first decimal to be specific about what technology you're using. There's some things that are, like I said this before, but it's like a light bulb. You turn on a light bulb, that's 100 lumen, and it's the same hundred lumen for everybody. AI is like a light bulb where some people turn it on or try

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to, and it produces 0 watts, and

[Derek Thompson]

some people turn it on and it's

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a million lumen or watts.

[Derek Thompson]

And it's almost too capacious to nail down. But what I find most interesting as an economics writer, and so I'll start with the big picture of who the hell knows what AI is. But to answer your question in a

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

concrete way, I'm interested in macroeconomic questions. When it comes to AI, I want

[Derek Thompson]

to know what it's doing to unemployment.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I want to know what it's doing to hiring.

[Derek Thompson]

I want to know what it's doing to the economy and to productivity growth, which is so incredibly important. And the really frustrating thing about all this, John, is that we just don't have great information about AI, any of it. Like, you can get a bunch of really smart economists in the room and you can lock the door and you can say, you guys don't get out of this room until you come to an agreement on what AI is doing for all that things. All those things I just said employment and GDP growth and productivity. They can't agree. They don't know yet. The picture is too confusing. And so I'll round out my answer here by saying that I think people listening might be familiar with a few

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

days or weeks ago. I guess. Now time when you're the parent of three month old passes at a strange pace.

[Derek Thompson]

I guess a week or two ago where there was this famous Citrini essay

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that came out that predicted AI was going to crash the economy.

[Derek Thompson]

And you can ask a follow up

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

in just a second, but like it didn't crash the economy. It took a trillion dollars off of stocks. It did nothing to the economy. But what's interesting about it is that typically what moves equity values are pieces of information.

[Derek Thompson]

This was not information. This was a sci fi story. When on earth have you heard of a sci fi story? Moving markets the tune of a trillion dollars. That only makes sense if investors are starved for nonfiction. If you're starved for nonfiction, then science fiction moves markets.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

That's where we are with AI and the economy.

[Derek Thompson]

The picture is so murky that science fiction stories are moving hundreds of billions

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of dollars worth of equity value. That's how strange the situation is.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I was going to ask you about this because I thought the same. I thought it was wild that this memo, right from Citrini Research, this is an investment research firm and basically like you said, the memo just lays out a completely imaginary but plausible sounding scenario where this massive AI induced economic crisis hits in 2028 and it goes viral, it's all over social media. Like you said, it clearly scared all the right people just enough that all the companies mentioned in the memo, the imaginary scenario, all those companies in real life actually lost stock market value because of the memo.

[Derek Thompson]

And that's unbelievable. Like again, this is not a memo of someone who saw the future, came back in a time machine and was like, I saw 2028.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

You guys won't believe what the hell just happened.

[Derek Thompson]

He's just, he's. I don't want to say making stuff up because there's thought and care in it, but it's a science fiction story about the future and it caused some companies to move by like 10, 15% in stock price. This just doesn't happen. And it speaks to how strange a

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

moment we're in right now with this tech.

[Jon Favreau]

It also speaks to how little confidence so many people who are in these

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

companies or experts or building AI have

[Jon Favreau]

in the product what they're doing. The technology, the future. Like it just, it's a very, I don't know that I've seen any equivalent in any other period of time that I've been alive in. It wasn't like this around the various dot com booms and the advent of the Internet and social Media, right?

[Derek Thompson]

There's all the uncertainty that I tried

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to describe in my first answer. Uncertainty about what this technology is for different people. Uncertainty about what it can do, uncertainty about what it is doing to the macroeconomy.

[Derek Thompson]

But there's also the way that it's

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

talked about that's very unusual. Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, who

[Derek Thompson]

I think made a very moral decision

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

in refusing to come to terms with the Pentagon and their recent contract negotiations that ended in Anthropic being designated as supply chain risk.

[Derek Thompson]

He describes this technology as something that if it works, if they build what they say they're trying to build, tens of millions of white collar workers could

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

be displaced in the economy, especially entry level white collar workers. I'm like, I'm so workshopping this idea.

[Derek Thompson]

But one point that I have is like no one's ever talked about their

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

product like this before, right?

[Derek Thompson]

No one making television was like, you know, if this thing takes off, grown men are going to spend seven hours a day gluing their butt to the seat watching this thing in a way that could really like lead to mass obesity. Like what? Like no one.

[Jon Favreau]

And also buy my television.

[Derek Thompson]

Invest and also buy my television. Right. If I succeed, the consequences could be horrendous. Like I understand to a certain extent what he's trying to do. I think one thing he's trying to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

do maybe is raise alarms for how powerful he thinks this technology is. Maybe he's right about it, maybe he's not.

[Derek Thompson]

I think he's also trying to, as

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

other CEOs have in this space, dramatize

[Derek Thompson]

the power of this technology in order

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to justify the amount of capital expenditure

[Derek Thompson]

going into this tech.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I mean, just by the numbers here,

[Derek Thompson]

and this is something we do have

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

good data on, the so called hyperscalers,

[Derek Thompson]

the companies that are spending the most on AI.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

So Amazon, Alphabet, Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, those kind of guys, Oracle, they're going to spend $600 to $700 billion this year on AI infrastructure.

[Derek Thompson]

How much is $600 to $700 billion? One way to frame it is that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the Apollo program, which landed a man

[Derek Thompson]

on the moon, spent $300 billion in

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

inflation adjusted dollars between the early 1960s and early 1970s.

[Derek Thompson]

We're spending $300 billion every five and a half months.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Right? It's an Apollo program every six months,

[Derek Thompson]

except it's not funded by the government,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

it's funded by private companies.

[Derek Thompson]

Nothing like this has ever happened before. And maybe one reason why these CEOs, you could say, are using such sort

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of confusingly apocalyptic terminology when describing the impact of this technology is that they're trying to justify an infrastructure project that is simply unlike anything in modern capitalist

[Derek Thompson]

history and might very well turn out

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to be a bubble, which I've written about as well.

[Jon Favreau]

I was going to ask, I mean, stipulating that there's so much that we don't know that no one knows about AI. I know you've written about this, like, maybe we can do the strongest case that AI is a bubble, and then maybe we can do the bull case for AI.

[Derek Thompson]

One thing I've realized after doing some

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

interviews on AI and sort of listening back and thinking like, I think I

[Derek Thompson]

was kind of like overconfident in representing

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

some of these points because I my am just always changing my mind.

[Derek Thompson]

I love the opportunity to just play, act, just be like Derek, play this character and then play that character. So this is actually, this is a

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

fun exercise that I think I can get behind. All right.

[Derek Thompson]

The case it's a bubble is threefold. Part one is history.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

There's a theory, Carlotta Perez, who's an economist, who's written about this a lot,

[Derek Thompson]

there's a theory that general purpose technologies are always overbuilt.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Always, always, always.

[Derek Thompson]

And a simple reason why is that different actors, different companies can't coordinate on the ideal amount of spending in order to, say, build the perfect amount of canals in the 1820s, build the perfect amount of transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, 1870s, build the perfect amount of fiber optic cable in the 1990s, they always overbuild it. And so the canals were a bubble

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and the railroads were a bubble and

[Derek Thompson]

rural electricity was a bubble, and fiber

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

optic cable, the Internet boom, the dot com bubble, was of course, a bubble.

[Derek Thompson]

Every time this happens, every time there's

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

an infrastructure build out like this, we always overbuild.

[Derek Thompson]

So that's the first reason to think

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that it's a bubble.

[Derek Thompson]

We still live in history.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And every time this has happened historically,

[Derek Thompson]

it's been a bubble.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

That's part one.

[Derek Thompson]

Part two has to do with something a little bit more technical, which is these companies are spending an enormous amount

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of money on chips on GPUs often made by Nvidia.

[Derek Thompson]

And there's a thinking that they're going to have to keep spending on these chips, going to have to re up

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

their spending year after year after year.

[Derek Thompson]

But according to their earnings statements, these chips have a depreciation schedule of like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

five to six years, which essentially implies

[Derek Thompson]

that they're going to be used for

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

five to six years.

[Derek Thompson]

And there's a lot of analysts who say if you have to essentially replenish this investment every two years, but you're depreciating the chips over five to six years, after a few years you, your operating income, your actual profit is going to be decimated. You just don't have enough money to keep up this level of investment. And if you don't have enough money to keep up the level of investment,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

then ipso facto the investment can't continue. And we're again in an industrial bubble.

[Derek Thompson]

And then reason number three, I think, is that really every bubble pops because of leverage, because of debt. And in the last few months we've started to see, especially with OpenAI and Oracle, some of the big boys start

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to get into debt, start to finance this, build out with debt.

[Derek Thompson]

And that's the part where a lot

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of folks are a little concerned that

[Derek Thompson]

we could see the beginning of a real leverage bubble. So that's why I think we might

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

be in a bubble essentially.

[Derek Thompson]

And I guess the final thing that I said is that the amount of money coming into AI from folks like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

me paying for Claude or folks at crooked paying for ChatGPT is, I've seen estimates around 30 to $50 billion is sort of the size of that economy. $700 billion are being spent every year to build out this technology.

[Derek Thompson]

The difference between, let's say $50 billion and $700 billion is a lot. Depending on exactly what it is, it'll

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

probably be between 600 and 700 billion is the gap.

[Derek Thompson]

So that's just. You're talking about the difference between the

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

economies of Sweden and Somalia. And so you might look at that

[Derek Thompson]

and say, of course we're in a bubble.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

The revenue will never catch up.

[Derek Thompson]

This has become a long answer.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

That's why we're in a bubble.

[Derek Thompson]

The short answer for why we're not

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

in a bubble I can make very, very quickly. The revenue is going to catch up.

[Derek Thompson]

And the reason I think the revenue is going to catch up is that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

this is already the fastest adopted technology in modern history. And the growth rate of revenue for the frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI is already at a near record pace. Those companies had a combined ARR. So an annualized revenue projection of about

[Derek Thompson]

$6 billion, I believe in early 2025,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

2026, I think the revenue projections are 30 to $40 billion.

[Derek Thompson]

So that's just an enormous growth. No company this big has grown that fast. And even if you look at sort of third parties like Stripe, which just

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

has this God's eye view over like 1.5% of the entire global GDP.

[Derek Thompson]

They have said that companies that Self

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

describe as AI companies are growing faster than any generation of company they've ever seen in terms of revenue.

[Derek Thompson]

So the answer there is just it's not a bubble because bubbles require that revenue doesn't follow. Why was pets.com a bubble? Because they didn't have any goddamn revenue. Anthropic is going to make 15, 20

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

billion dollars a year this year. OpenAI is going to make 30 billion dollars a year this year.

[Derek Thompson]

They're spending a lot more than that, but the revenue is growing quickly.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And so that would, why it's not a bubble is that the revenue is going to show up.

[Jon Favreau]

But to your point about the gap between revenue projections and the amount that they're investing every year and the amount they have to spend on chips and et cetera, like, are all of their revenue projections coming from people like us and businesses and individuals, like signing up for Cloud and ChatGPT? Are there other sources of revenue that they're imagining as the technology advances or is it more like. Well, you know, there's other, it's not just LLMs, there's other forms of AI that businesses are going to need. And like, I just don't know where you close that gap.

[Derek Thompson]

I gotta be honest, this is a gap in my understanding as well. Right. So right now the companies make money off of what is technically known as inference or tokens, and I think what is more commonly known as subscriptions. Right.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Like you subscribe, let's say, to ChatGPT, I subscribe to anthropics, Claude. I'm paying them $20 a month. That's the most straightforward business model that they have. OpenAI is now talking, however, about advertising. And Anthropic ran those famous or infamous ads during the Super Bowl. They were making fun of the fact that OpenAI is now strongly planning on running ads.

[Derek Thompson]

So there you have advertising plus subscriptions. Sounds like a. Sounds like a media business. Right, right, right. I don't know for sure what comes next. I mean, the other business model that's

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

been very much in the news is Anthropic. As many people listening know, had this little run in with the war.

[Derek Thompson]

Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the Pentagon last year to provide clawed services for various military purposes.

[Derek Thompson]

$200 million is a nice chunk of change. It's not $700 billion. So I don't want to pretend like, oh, it's not a bubble because they have government contracts.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

But that's another model you can imagine, right? A combination of private sector contracts, public sector contracts and advertising revenue is certainly where we are right now.

[Derek Thompson]

Where it goes the next five years.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I truly can't Pre.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

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[Jon Favreau]

You point out that economists have struggled so far to see any significant effects of AI on the job market, at least yet. I guess that doesn't totally surprise me. Only because it still feels like we're early in the process of, like, mass adoption of AI by employers. Or are we all the job market stuff. I'm like, well, yeah, it's, it's still early, so why would it show up right now? Because just so many people are like, oh, it's a cool chat bot that I'm using. But like the more advanced cases of how AI could displace employment, I feel like it's a small sliver of companies that are using that now.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, that question prompted two things for me. So number one, it's a weird paradox that the technology is moving quickly and we're early. And sometimes, like, I find myself in

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

debates where it's like, we're early.

[Derek Thompson]

No, it's moving quickly.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

No, we're early.

[Derek Thompson]

But this, both things are true at the same time. Like, it's spreading quickly. And ChatGPT came out in 2022, November. Like, it's been three years and five months. A child who's three years and five months old is very much a toddler. Like, this is a really and In a way, I think you're right that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

it would be strange to be overconfident about something like its macroeconomic effect in the labor market.

[Derek Thompson]

The other thing that's like a complexifier here, it's really rough for people like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

me who love to be able to

[Derek Thompson]

explain things, is that a lot of

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

things were happening around November 2022.

[Derek Thompson]

Number one, ChatGPT debuted and kicked off

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

this sort of age of generative AI.

[Derek Thompson]

Number two, that's right after the Federal Reserve started jacking up interest rates faster

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

than any period in modern history.

[Derek Thompson]

And what's the point of jacking up interest rates?

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

It's to raise the cost of money.

[Derek Thompson]

It's to reduce demand for, among other things, labor. So if you look at a graph of hiring rates in America, it looks like hiring rates have this inflection point right as ChatGPT comes out and just sort of like an innocent observer, they can look at this graph and be like, oh my God, ChatGPT destroyed the labor market. No, it didn't. Not necessarily. The Federal Reserve was trying to cool off hiring. That's one of the best ways to cool down inflation.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

That's why hiring declined.

[Derek Thompson]

And the other thing that happened right around this period is that there was

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

related to the raising of interest rates, this huge inflection point in tech hiring where all these companies, you know, Block, Jack Dorsey just laid off like 40% of his workforce. Block and Meta and Alphabet, all these

[Derek Thompson]

companies hired so many people between like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

2018, surging into 2021, right after the pandemic, they hired so many people and then they really, really pushed on the brakes around 2022. And so you've seen hiring at the big tech companies and medium sized tech companies really fall off.

[Derek Thompson]

So you have three things that happen

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

around the same time.

[Derek Thompson]

This sort of tech U turn, raising of interest rates and the debut of AI. And it all seems to coincide with

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

this inflection point in hiring.

[Derek Thompson]

It's hard for economists to say, oh, that inflection point is because of only

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

one of those three variables.

[Derek Thompson]

My guess is that it has much

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

more to do with tech and the Fed than it has to do with AI for now. But as for what AI does to the labor force the near future, I

[Derek Thompson]

do think that's a big, open, murky

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

picture and it's precisely why a science fiction story had the ability to move markets by a trillion dollars.

[Jon Favreau]

I guess as I have continued to use AI and have gone from like ChatGPT to Claude, and I'm still not like I'm not great at prompts. I didn't use it for everything. A little research here and there, use it as Google. But as I have started to glimpse how advanced it's getting and how much it can do, I've started to think, I don't know how it doesn't displace a ton of labor. And even people said, well, it's going to make. It could just make workers more productive. Yes. But that could. Then, you know, tell an employer, well, I'm not going to hire more people. I'm not going to lay out the people I have, but I'm not going to hire more people because now they're more productive with AI. Like, I'm struggling to imagine the scenario where it doesn't just wipe out a ton of white collar jobs.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. Let me tell you what scares me

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and then I'll tell you why I think I've landed in a more optimistic position when it comes to more people keeping their jobs and what scares me. So Claude Code comes out while I'm on parental leave. And during the precious moments where you get the baby to sleep, I start to play around with it and I

[Derek Thompson]

realize it's really, really good with government data. You can download big, big tranches of

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

government data, say, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and ask Claude Code to go through it.

[Derek Thompson]

And it can do really, really good

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

statistical analysis and make beautiful graphs and you can tell it exactly what color and font you want the graph to be in.

[Derek Thompson]

So I do a lot of work on this data set called the American

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Time Use Survey, which is basically a government survey of how people spend their time. Every year they ask thousands of people, how much time do you spend eating? How much time do you spend, you know, recording podcasts? And people say, you know, I spend three hours a week eating and this amount of hours doing this other thing.

[Derek Thompson]

So I love this data set. I used it for this big piece

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that I wrote called the Antisocial Century,

[Derek Thompson]

on how much time people spend socializing versus being alone. And I was like, I want to do a story on being a dad and the change in time that fathers

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

spend with their children, especially young children.

[Derek Thompson]

And I just asked, in plain language, Claude, come up with 10 graphs about

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

how the time use experience of being a dad has changed in the last 20 years.

[Derek Thompson]

Don't ask me any more questions, just go do it now. Maybe Claude's gonna make a bunch of mistakes, right? I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, derek, you're a journalist. What are you doing turning over your research Projects to an AI.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I'm never going to publish that straight to my substack or talk about it on a podcast. I took all of it and I

[Derek Thompson]

sent it to an economist at the

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Aspen Institute who I've relied on for American time use survey data.

[Derek Thompson]

And I said, check it out.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

You know, fact check this research.

[Derek Thompson]

And his work came back, and it was within like 1 or 2% of

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

what Claude had done. And he was like, I'm terrified because this took me five hours, and I'll bet it took you three and a half minutes.

[Derek Thompson]

And I said, not only did it

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

take me two and a half minutes, but also, I don't know what the f I'm doing with any of these data sets in terms of manipulating them the way you are.

[Derek Thompson]

So that's crazy that the five hours

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of an expert's time could be done by a novice in two and a half minutes.

[Derek Thompson]

That I think if you multiply it

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

out over the economy, you could begin to wonder, where are some of these sort of knowledge economy jobs going to go?

[Derek Thompson]

Here's why I'm more optimistic.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I have this model in my head of, like, is this technology a horse technology or a spreadsheet technology?

[Derek Thompson]

So with the horses, famously, horse labor

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

is a huge part of human history.

[Derek Thompson]

There are millions of horses working on

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

farms and, you know, carrying people throughout the streets in the early 1900s. But the internal combustion engine is invented, and it basically wipes out the working horse population by 99 point. The internal combustion engine, famously between tractors and cars, just completely displaces horses.

[Derek Thompson]

So some people basically are like, humans are horses, but humans aren't horses, and,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

you know, they're not horses because look

[Derek Thompson]

what happened to spreadsheets. The 1960s, 1970s, there were a handful

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of people who were working in spreadsheets who were, you know, accountants or working with taxes.

[Derek Thompson]

And then products like Excel are invented. And you'd think innocently if all you knew about economic history was the horse, you'd be like, oh, my God, all of these spreadsheet workers can be put out of business. And instead, the number of people working with spreadsheets didn't go to zero, it went to infinity. Everybody works with Excel. Or like, everybody, everybody in, like, you know, marketing and pr, et cetera. There are tens of millions of workers who, for better or worse, I'm sure many of them would say for worse,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

lived without Excel, like, attached to them like a barnacle. And so Excel did not displace work. Excel just became the universal working companion. My current hope, and maybe this is just motivated reasoning. My current bet is that generative AI is going to be more like Excel spreadsheets than like, internal combustion engines and horses. I think it's just going to be like a home screen for a lot of knowledge workers, whether they're in marketing or PR. It's going to make graphs for them in PowerPoints. It's going to write memos. And the downside of that is that a lot of people, I think, are going to outsource their brains to these machines and suffer, like, cognitive atrophy and

[Derek Thompson]

get dumber over time.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

That's going to happen.

[Derek Thompson]

But the bright side is I think

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

they're going to continue to get a wage. I don't think this is going to drive unemployment to 20%.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I do feel like it's going to create an economy that prioritizes creativity, judgment, all of these skills that are a little tougher to, like, wrap your arms around.

[Derek Thompson]

I hope so.

[Jon Favreau]

So I had my annual physical and I get blood work done. And, you know, because I'm fucking 44 now, they of course, like, test for everything and they, you know, my doctor sells me on all this stuff. So anyway, I get all the results back before the doctor calls me because

[Derek Thompson]

it just likes to. Wow, that's so funny.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

So.

[Jon Favreau]

Cause it's just like you get the email from the lab, right?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. With a lot of total nonsense. Little, like, bars where it's like, nonsense. Here's your line between, like, within the bar. And it's like your GXK9 is 44.4.

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Derek Thompson]

And it's just for that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's just enough to freak you out if you're a little. If you have a little hypochondria like me. And, you know, then there's like, it's all black and then there's a little red. And the red means that it's like, out of the range, you know? So I was like, you know what? Doctor's busy, whatever. I'm just gonna throw it in just to see in ChatGPT, right? This ChatGPT at the time, and they spits out a whole analysis about every single thing. Very easy to understand. And I'm like, well, this will be interesting when I finally talk to my doctor and my doctor calls. And it was exactly right. In fact, it was more helpful than my doctor.

[Derek Thompson]

So I had literally the exact same experience. There's no point in me recapitulating it

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

because it was word for word what you experienced. The question, to our purposes is, and we don't need to belabor it. But like, whose job does that actually replace?

[Jon Favreau]

Right.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Well, I was gonna say.

[Jon Favreau]

Cause like, that example can go both ways. Cause I'm like, oh, instead of the

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

doctor having to call me or all

[Jon Favreau]

the other patients to explain this shit to us because we don't know what he knows now the AI can do

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that and he can go see other patients.

[Derek Thompson]

Exactly, exactly.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I mean, there's a sort of a C plot line on the show the Pit this year. I don't know if you watch the Pit.

[Jon Favreau]

Maybe some of your listeners do too. Intense.

[Derek Thompson]

I get it, I get it.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

There's like a subplot line about the introduction of generative AI to hospitals. And I've spoken to folks, to doctors and to people who've spoken to doctors about how they're using tools where essentially,

[Derek Thompson]

as they go about treating a patient,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

they'll verbalize more than they're used to

[Derek Thompson]

so that the AI can process everything

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that they're hearing and observing and thinking during the intake, during the exam.

[Derek Thompson]

And then it'll just write up its report.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And the doctor doesn't have to spend

[Derek Thompson]

hours and hours a day, certainly many hours a week, writing up all these reports by hand, because the generative AI does it. And the doctor can look at it

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to make sure that it's right, of course.

[Derek Thompson]

And then they have more time to actually spend with patients. And how common an experience is it as a patient to have the doctor come into your room 25 minutes late when you're in the middle of a busy day and the doctor's like, I'm sorry, I got held up doing X. Well, if I can find a technology or if we can make a technology that reduces that X so that they

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

can meet their patients on time and

[Derek Thompson]

maybe even see more patients. That seems like a mitzvah for everybody. So again, I'm being optimistic here, and I don't want to represent the idea

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that, like, I can't imagine really bad scenarios for the rollout of AI, but

[Derek Thompson]

they're just absolutely going to be use

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

cases in which it just saves time

[Derek Thompson]

so that we find more human to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

human applications of the workday.

[Derek Thompson]

That's my deep Pollyannish hope.

[Jon Favreau]

The one thing I also feel relatively certain about is we are going to need a government that we can trust that is functioning not only here, but probably in other places around the world. And we'll need some kind of like global cooperation here in order to put some guardrails around this. Because I think if there are no guardrails around it, I Don't see a scenario where this ends well. And, you know, you mentioned Anthropic and the Pentagon a few times, but I'm interested in, like, how big of a deal do you think what Hegseth did to Anthropic and whether it's going to be something that's repeated.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Oh, it's completely outrageous. I haven't heard a real defense of the supply chain designation which essentially said that we're going to treat Anthropic as if it's a Chinese Communist Party agent, like it's Huawei, like it's a saboteur.

[Derek Thompson]

I have heard good arguments for why Anthropic has no business doing contracts with the US Government.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Right.

[Derek Thompson]

That if Anthropic is going to have guardrails that the Pentagon doesn't agree with and wants to be in the loop

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

for decisions that the Pentagon wants to have sole ownership over and that the

[Derek Thompson]

Pentagon might have the right to request

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

sole control over decisions that are made in the interest of national security, then

[Derek Thompson]

yeah, I mean, Anthropic's a private company that can come to a free decision

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to not sign a contract with the federal government.

[Derek Thompson]

What I have a huge problem with is the federal government pointing at a company and saying, you, I just wrote

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a contract for you.

[Derek Thompson]

Sign this contract, including every single detail in the contract, price, what's ruled in, what's ruled out, use cases, guardrails. Sign this contract or I'm either going

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to have a Defense Production act, either

[Derek Thompson]

going to have a DPA designation, that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

means that I'm going to force you

[Derek Thompson]

to sign this contract, or if we don't do Defense Production Act, I'm going

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to label you a supply chain risk and ether your company, nuke you from outer space.

[Derek Thompson]

That seems to me to come very

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

close to the end of private property rights in America. Right?

[Derek Thompson]

I mean, not to be hyperbolic, but like, if the government can point at

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

you and say, sign this contract, and

[Derek Thompson]

if you say no, they can destroy you. That really doesn't sound like something that's

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

too distinct from just straightforward Maoism. And so I'm concerned about this thing on two levels. I'm really concerned about the supply chain designation, which I think is completely egregious.

[Derek Thompson]

But also there's a story behind the story here. And it's like there's a world in

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

which what OpenAI and Anthropic are building plateaus before it becomes genuinely dangerous.

[Derek Thompson]

There's a world in which it doesn't. There's a world in which these technologies

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

could be like, really useful for hacking into the federal government, for violating private property, for operating drones that, like, a household buys, for hacking into energy grids and bringing them down.

[Derek Thompson]

What these companies are building might not

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

be so distinct from an advanced weapon.

[Derek Thompson]

And in the 1940s, we didn't ask

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

private companies to build the nuclear bomb.

[Derek Thompson]

We didn't say, hey, Ford, gm, like, go, like, see if you can, like, get all the uranium and build an atomic bomb. And just like, give us a call if you think you built it.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

No, we had that shit under lockdown.

[Derek Thompson]

And so if these technologies are building what they sometimes claim to be building, it's not entirely clear to me that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

something about their work shouldn't be nationalized, because work like that has always been nationalized.

[Derek Thompson]

So I think what Hegseth did is indefensible. But I think if you scope up and sort of see the broader contours

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

here, the next few years are going to be really weird from an AI versus USG US Government perspective. If the technology continues to improve.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and good for Anthropic for trying to be the white knight here, if they are right. But the challenge here in a competitive global economy with no rules when it comes to AI is that even if Anthropic does everything to make sure that they are building a safe, ethical AI, there are competitors. There's going to be the XAI that run by Elon Musk, you know, or. Or Sam Altman and OpenAI jumping in to do what Hegseth wants them to at the last minute. Like, and that's just in the United States. Like, we're not even talking about what's going on with China, right? And so, like, yes, we have to have, like, rules and guardrails here in the United States. There also has to be, like, some serious international agreement treaty, whatever. And it just feels like we're so far from building the legal framework to give ourselves a chance here if in fact this technology is going to develop as fast as some of these people think it is.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Everything you just said, I totally agree with.

[Derek Thompson]

There's one answer I could give that's

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

just like, I recapitulate everything you just said. I just. I agree with all of it. I'm very scared about the fact that

[Derek Thompson]

even if we get some, like, philosopher

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

king government of the United states through the 2000 and 30s, right? Okay. A lot of other countries exist, and China isn't 20 years behind in AI development.

[Derek Thompson]

They're like 9 months, 14 months. It's a blink of an eye.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

In the course of history. If what we're talking about is something

[Derek Thompson]

akin to a modern superweapon, it's incredibly scary. And it scopes up to this broader

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

idea that I don't judge people who just want this whole thing to go away.

[Derek Thompson]

What if we just stopped tech in like 2011? It's like, what if we were just like, I'm good. We have Uber and Google Maps.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I'm done.

[Derek Thompson]

We have private chauffeur services for me that I can hail on my phone.

[Jon Favreau]

Don't need the autonomous weapons.

[Derek Thompson]

I think I'm good. It's like, I have some sympathy for that point. Like, I want AI to solve cancers too, but my guess is that we're

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

gonna end up building superweapons before we solve cancers.

[Derek Thompson]

And so it's not as if it's a point that I was circling with

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a conversation with Pablo Torre and Mina Kimes on their podcast a few days ago.

[Derek Thompson]

It's not like the AI CEOs are

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

giving us a whole lot to root for.

[Derek Thompson]

The advertisements are like, it'll help you do more pull ups. That's cool. Like, you know, I wish I could do like three more pull ups in a set. So the advertisements are like, this is good because it'll help you cook like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a better pasta and do more pull ups.

[Derek Thompson]

And then the CEOs are like, it's gonna displace 30 million jobs and totally transform the US economy so that we're gonna need a universal basic income because you're so not going to recog the

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

labor market that follows AI.

[Derek Thompson]

And also, we might be rolled into something like a nuclear bomb. And God, we would really like to be regulated because we don't know how to solve these problems. We're not being given as citizens a whole lot to root for. And when people feel like their experience with AI is like, I open TikTok and it's slop.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And then I watch Dario or Sam talk about this technology and it's dystopia.

[Derek Thompson]

I hate this. I want to go away. Bring me back in a time machine to 2011, please. I get it. I'm not saying that I think everyone

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

in the space is like the same level of morality. I think there's gradations.

[Derek Thompson]

But like, I, I absolutely get the

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

popular backlash and we won't necessarily go into this, but like, you should do

[Derek Thompson]

a thousand shows on it.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

You know, it's going to be just a huge issue. 2026 maybe, but like 2028, especially if it seems like a bit of a

[Derek Thompson]

bubble, like these presidential candidates better get

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

their message straight on AI because it's already the biggest story in the world potentially, and God only knows what it's going to look like in two and a half years.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, and so far the most they'll say is because it's really important. It's the issue of our time and we need some regulations and it's like an inch inch deep. A lot of the knowledge or at least what they're saying.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

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[Dan Pfeiffer]

If you love positive America and want more of my political analysis, you should subscribe to my newsletter, the Message Box. I'm Dan Pfeiffer, former Senior advisor to Barack Obama and in Messagebox I break down what's actually happening in politics and what it's going to take to beat Donald Trump. Maga if you follow every poll and every twist and turn in the campaign message box is for you. This isn't just hot takes, every additional delivers clear analysis, behind the scenes insight and practical strategy you can actually use. Whether you're working on a race, organizing your community or just trying to win the argument in your group chat. So if you're listening to this, hit pause, go to your browser, and head to crooked.com yeswedan because I have a special offer for crooked media Fans. You'll get 20% off a message box for an entire year. So go to crooked.com yeswedan.

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[Jon Favreau]

Let's talk about Everything is television, which is a piece. A piece where you argue that everything is becoming television. Social media, podcasts, the AI generated slot videos we were just talking about. And by television you mean video on a screen, particularly the endless flow of videos on a screen. Can you talk about this convergence over the last few years of how in different sectors, everything is becoming television?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. So this idea first occurred to me

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

because I was reading an FTC report where Facebook meta was trying to argue that it wasn't a monopoly.

[Derek Thompson]

And in the process of filing a

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

report with the federal government arguing that

[Derek Thompson]

they're not a monopoly, they made this really interesting confession where they said that only a tiny fraction of time spent

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

on meta services, I think 7% on

[Derek Thompson]

Instagram, are spent consuming content from friends. 93% of the time spent on Instagram is consuming content from people you don't

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

know, video content, often from people you don't know.

[Derek Thompson]

And I read that and like just the thought that just poop popped into my head was, oh yes, of course, Instagram is television. Meta is television. These are not social networks.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

These are the television networks of the 21st century.

[Derek Thompson]

And then what that immediately clicked into is that I had been talking to some of my friends and employers at the Ringer Podcast network where I record my podcast plain English. And they've been urging me to turn

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

my podcast, which was audio only, into

[Derek Thompson]

a video podcast just like this one

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and just like all the ones that Crooked does.

[Derek Thompson]

And initially I was very foot draggy on this because I like to make the kind of content that I consume

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and all the podcasts that I consume are just in my ears while I'm making Coffee in the morning. And so I liked an audio only

[Derek Thompson]

product, but they show me the data and it's like completely obvious that video

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

podcasts are going like 5 to 10 faster than audio only podcasts.

[Derek Thompson]

And you are leaving so much listenership

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

on the floor, or dollars on the

[Derek Thompson]

floor, influence on the floor. Whatever you want to call it, whatever noun you want to use, whatever it is, you're leaving it on the floor if you make it an audio only

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

product rather than a video product.

[Derek Thompson]

And then I thought again, oh yeah, that's it.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Podcasts are also becoming television.

[Derek Thompson]

And in that very same week that I read the FTC report, Sora 2,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the sort of weird AI video social network that OpenAI was experimenting with came out and I was like, Jesus Christ.

[Derek Thompson]

AI is trying to become television as well. They're trying to like make their product which could theoretically do anything. Like it's going to solve cancer. It's what they always say. They're trying to turn it into short

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

form video into TikTok television as well.

[Derek Thompson]

And so it just, it occurred to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

me that like television and short form

[Derek Thompson]

video in particular, flowing video, it was like the attractor state of all media. It's like it doesn't matter where you start in the media ecosystem.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

You can start as radio, you can

[Derek Thompson]

start as an online yearbook for Harvard students, you can start as a company

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

trying to build superintelligence.

[Derek Thompson]

It doesn't matter where you start. If you're in the media ecosystem, the attractor is television. You will become television.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And so I thought I should write that. So I wrote the piece. It's called Everything is Television. And it's just this idea that there might be some interesting consequences of living in this age of just non stop short form video flow that like the grammar of our media, the grammar of our politics of our life is just so monopolized by the logic of if you're making media, it has to be tv.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And I love the piece because the consequences of this are really fascinating to me and especially the consequences of how the short term video has now affected what used to be traditional television. And you used the point that Netflix telling screenwriters to make plots as obvious as possible for all the people who are half watching and half scrolling on their phones. And I will just say you can tell.

[Derek Thompson]

Both you can tell and I am guilty.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Right?

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

But I was thinking about this the

[Jon Favreau]

last couple years and I'm like, like, why does Netflix churn out these movies with like A and B list actors? And they look great and the production is great. And like there is just a hole in the film, in the plot and in the writing and in the dialogue. And I'm like, I know there are wonderful writers out there.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

What is happening and it's intentional.

[Jon Favreau]

Like it's not just like all the great writers have disappeared.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And it also makes me think that

[Jon Favreau]

when everyone's like, well, AI will never be able to replace human creativity. And I'm like, that's true with prestige television, which like a small slice of liberals are basically into. But for most of the country, most

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of the world, I actually think what

[Jon Favreau]

AI will be able to create, eh, probably gonna do it for. Do it for them.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, it very well might.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I don't have like a moral position

[Derek Thompson]

on TikTok and Instagram. Really?

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

This isn't like a vegan talking about cow meat.

[Derek Thompson]

But I'm not on Instagram or TikTok. So when I write about Instagram and TikTok, it's like a cultural anthropologist, like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

visiting a foreign country a little bit,

[Derek Thompson]

which maybe that kind of social distance is useful, maybe it's not.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

But I agree. I don't think these short form videos that often go viral are like so inspiring that I'm like, oh my God, no one with an AI tool could possibly make something as diverting.

[Derek Thompson]

It's like, I'll bet they can.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I bet they will.

[Derek Thompson]

I do think that, and I want to be clear about this because I don't know that AI slop will entirely

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

take over social media.

[Derek Thompson]

I do think that there is a level at which people like, knowing that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

they're listening to or watching people.

[Derek Thompson]

Like, there's a reason why, as Matt

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Bellamy and my colleague at the Ringers

[Derek Thompson]

report it, there's a reason why Hollywood is a little sketchy and a little

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

surreptitious about how much they let on they're using AI.

[Derek Thompson]

His point is they use a lot

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

more AI than they actually admit.

[Derek Thompson]

And that's because I do think there's like a little bit of this like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

embarrassment quotient, which is good to have.

[Derek Thompson]

Like, I want to keep it.

[Jon Favreau]

Keep the shame.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Keep the shame.

[Derek Thompson]

Like, it's like people should want to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

read and watch and listen to stuff made by people. I've had a really busy day today. We're talking on Friday.

[Derek Thompson]

And so I haven't had an opportunity

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to listen to the Harry Styles album that I understand came out this morning,

[Derek Thompson]

both for personal purposes and to be

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

able to have any conversation with my wife when I get home from work, because I know that's going to be top of her list.

[Derek Thompson]

I enjoy listening to Harry Styles. It has never occurred to me to put a song I know to be

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

an AI song on a playlist.

[Derek Thompson]

And God, I hope that my child, who's two years or three months old

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

feels the same way and isn't putting some AI slop on her future robot

[Derek Thompson]

Spotify playlist in the 2000s, whatever that's going to be. I really, really hope so. I don't know, but I can definitely tell you right now it's not remotely interesting to me to either consume most AI content or, and this might be

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

just as important, or just share it.

[Derek Thompson]

If I did accidentally watch an AI video that wasn't obviously an AI video

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

where the fun of it isn't that it's stupid AI, I think I'd be too ashamed to share it. And I hope that that shame still exists for a lot of people.

[Jon Favreau]

And I also think pointed this out like on the entertainment side. I am not passing judgment on anyone. I like all kinds of shit. The effect on politics and democracy is what really worries me in the short term video. And you get to this a little bit. I just want to read your take on Neil Postman's very old warning about a society that watches too much television. Quote, every form of communication starts to adopt television's values. Immediacy, emotion, spectacle, brevity. In the glow of a local news program or an outrage newsfeed, the viewer bathes in a vat of their own cortisol. When everything is urgent, nothing is truly important.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Politics becomes theater.

[Jon Favreau]

Science becomes storytelling. News becomes performance. The result, Postman Warned, is a society

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that forgets how to think in paragraphs

[Jon Favreau]

and learns instead to think in scenes. I mean, that is politics today, right?

[Derek Thompson]

I wrote that, but I also didn't write that. And that's not me being like Claude wrote it. I mean like Neil Postman wrote that, right?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, yeah, that is a.

[Derek Thompson]

It's incredible how much he saw 50 years ago. Amusing Ourselves to Death is like one

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of the most prescient books written in the last half century.

[Derek Thompson]

It's genuinely remarkable and it's really interesting to me.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Who succeeds in today's politics?

[Derek Thompson]

There are people who I think use

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

straight to camera short form video in a rather brilliant way that I think

[Derek Thompson]

represents like the light side of the

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

force, not the dark side of the force.

[Derek Thompson]

Like I think Zoran Mamdani, while I

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

disagree with some of his policies, is an absolute savant. I think his level of charisma and

[Derek Thompson]

cheer, good cheer and specificity is remarkable. Like he's not doing straight to camera,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

short form video slop.

[Derek Thompson]

He's doing, here's a halal cart.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And they used to serve food that was $8 and now it's $10. Because the cost of permitting went up from 15,000 to $20,000. And I want to reduce the cost of permitting. Let's come together and pass this new law because you deserve cheaper lunches.

[Derek Thompson]

It's wonderful, it's brilliant and I love that. I wonder if Barack Obama came on

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the political scene today not some Barack

[Derek Thompson]

Obama who was coached in the ways

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

of short form video, but the actual Barack Obama that exists.

[Derek Thompson]

How confident are we that there's space

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

for a figure like that, for an

[Derek Thompson]

orator like throwback style orator, versus someone whose success is their ability to like

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

be snappy, snappy, snappy and straight to camera. Like I say, thinking in scenes and

[Derek Thompson]

news becoming this kind of short form performance. Is there a way in which like that style of politics is like, isn't

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

conceivable anymore in the 2000s?

[Jon Favreau]

I obviously have thought about this quite a bit. Few things. One, even back then, when Barack Obama was running for president, it was a challenge that he had to adapt to, to learn to communicate in that era. Cause he is like, he is first and foremost before he was a speaker as a writer and he would write in long paragraphs. Didn't really like periods that much, a lot of semicolons. And just to get him to go from writer to speake and a speech that's not like, you know, 12 pages long but five pages long took some adaptation. So like perhaps he could adapt the argument for that. There's still a demand for sort of long form content. Right. Is of course the like people who are listening to the fucking three hours of Joe Rogan or some of these like long.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

So the attention span.

[Derek Thompson]

No, I'm glad you mentioned that because that's a really important, that's a really important pushback on my thesis is like, how the fuck do you explain Joe

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Rogan and Lex Friedman and whoever, Dwarkesh,

[Derek Thompson]

and all these podcasts that are super popular and they're three and four hours long if everything's moving to short form video. I've thought about that. It's a really, really good and smart

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

objection to my thesis. So I want you to finish on the Obama thought, but I'm gonna pick that up in a second.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

No, so there is that. There's also though we tend to think

[Jon Favreau]

about this in terms of like, is this candidate good at this form of video. And, you know, Zoran Mamdani's good direct to camera and he's specific. And Barack Obama was good here. But like what you were writing, what Postman has been warning about for 50 years is more about like participating in a larger system. Right. And I do think that an environment where the communication adopts television's values, immediacy, emotion, spectacle, brevity, everything's urgent, nothing is truly important. And I think it makes the playing field between sort of right wing populists and authoritarians and liberal democracies uneven. Like, I have always thought that it gives the right wing populace an advantage because all of those emotions, all of those values are very much the values of people who are just looking to tear shit down, whip people up and take power. And I think that, that the values required for a functioning democracy, which is, you know, viewing things as not binary, but complicated, nuanced, taking the time to understand one another, empathy, like looking towards the future and doing something that's not going to pay off for another five to 10 years. Like it is swimming upstream to try to be good in short form video. If you are sort of fighting against these larger forces in our politics that prioritize, you know, shitposting and everything that

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

we see from Donald Trump.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but like, this is what always sort of challenges me with like a Gavin Newsom. Right? Like, so everyone can look at Gavin's last year and be like, he's really good at getting attention and he figured out how to do what Trump's doing, get attention. It's like, like, yes. But I can also tell, and I can even tell this from talking to Newsom, that like, he knows that it was a short term sugar high and that what he's doing is sort of empty calories and that there needs to be something truer and deeper to his political agenda and philosophy if he wants to succeed. And I think that, I'm sure Mamdani believes that as well, but I think that, like, I think we're just in a, in a tougher environment now where if we are all just scrolling through our phones, watching short form video nonstop, then the values required to participate in

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a functioning democracy are just going to

[Jon Favreau]

be that much harder to live by.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah, I think political success requires that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

candidates lean into the technologies of the moment rather than lean away from them. I mean, this goes back over a century. This is FDR and the fireside chats on the radio. Eisenhower was considered like the first, if not television president Then the television primary, I think was 1956 was the first television primary. JFK was maybe the first true television candidate. And it's lore now that the difference between his cool appearance on television versus Richard Nixon's sweaty appearance on television meant that people who watched that debate leaned heavily toward Kennedy, while people who listened

[Derek Thompson]

to it on the old technology, the

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

radio, lean toward Nixon, who obviously lost.

[Derek Thompson]

So I have one thesis or one

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

belief that it's important for candidates to lean into modern technology.

[Derek Thompson]

I also have this thing where like, I hate the values that are often

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

inculcated with this modern technology, which is why I'm looking for folks who are

[Derek Thompson]

able to ingeniously braid a loving or optimistic or cheerful or productive mode of politics into a mode of media that is often whatever the antonym of all those words is, like, uncheerful, unproductive. I've now forgotten what half of them are. I'll blame my children. And like, I do think that again, I think Mamdani's good at it. A point that I think is worth reflecting on here is that, you know, one might naively or innocently assume that like, given the mode of this technology

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and the popularity of far right populism around the world during this age of short form video taking over media, that the most successful politicians would be those that are mean or angry or vengeful

[Derek Thompson]

or populist in the mode of screaming about the group to blame, whether that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

group is immigrants or billionaires, whatever.

[Derek Thompson]

And it's just important to remember that two of the most significant upwardly mobile politicians of this moment, the Democratic Party, are Zoramdani and James Tallarico, who are schoolboy cheerful and just seem really damn nice. And I've only met each of them

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

very briefly, either on zoom or in person.

[Derek Thompson]

I think they seem really nice to me. You've probably spent more time with them, but they seem really nice. And it's just, it's interesting to reflect on the fact that like, yes, McLuhan said the medium is the message.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And yes, theories of media often suggest that there's like a deterministic quality of

[Derek Thompson]

media that we become the media that we consume. But I want to maybe give like a cheer here for human agency. Like we can choose to not be as angry as our media might seem

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to want to make us.

[Derek Thompson]

And I think Talariko Mohamdani suggests that

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

there's like, there's a way to be charismatic in a very 21st century way while also retaining some base level of human decency. And my hope is that whoever picks up the baton for the Democratic Party writ large gets very good at braiding those two skills, because I think they're gonna be necessary.

[Jon Favreau]

And Mamdani proves that being nice or cheerful or, you know, you don't have to be like a squishy moderate right. Like, it just doesn't actually have to do with ideology. I think there's sometimes, and you see this from folks on the left, whenever you say something like AOC is an incredible speaker, or Mamdani's so charismatic, and they'll be like, oh, you think civility is the answer?

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And you're trying.

[Jon Favreau]

And it's like, no, no, no. It's not about civility. And it's not about just. It's. You can have a very, very populist agenda, an ideological left agenda, or center.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Center left, whatever it may be.

[Jon Favreau]

It is about the style. And I do think that after we have all lived through this last decade, I think there is more of a hunger out there for someone who is going to speak to people's aspirations

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and

[Jon Favreau]

hopes for the country than we might imagine, given that we are, you know, just drowning in all this vitriol all the time.

[Derek Thompson]

I think it's funny that you landed there.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

So the podcast that I released this morning is with Senator Ruben Gallego, and we talked about the Iran war, and we talked about his ideas for Democratic messaging.

[Derek Thompson]

And I didn't expect to end in

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the place that we ended, but the

[Derek Thompson]

place that we ended was his case

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

for how Democrats need to match their affordability rhetoric with an aspiration rhetoric.

[Derek Thompson]

That affordability is really important. Like raising the floor of, like bringing up Americans experience of daily life to some minimum viable level of middle class comfort is really important. And at the same time, I think there's a lot of voters that are

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

like Democratic Party adjacent.

[Derek Thompson]

Like, we could get them. They're not. They're not deep maga. We could get them. Especially young voters who hate Trump right now, and especially, especially young male voters

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

who are really pissed at Trump right now.

[Derek Thompson]

I think these guys want to get rich now. I don't want them to get rich

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

by breaking the law.

[Derek Thompson]

I don't want them to get rich

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

by trying to bet on cryptocurrencies that are going to be up 1000% tomorrow and down 2000% the next day.

[Derek Thompson]

But I want them to see in

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the Democratic Party

[Derek Thompson]

a group of people who believe that they can stand for

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

rights and decency and affordability and also

[Derek Thompson]

celebrate aspirations and success. I think that sometimes there's a way that Democrats can talk that treats success as something not to punish. That's too strong a word. Something to tax, something that could become problematic. There's like a tall poppy syndrome, I think, in Democratic party language sometimes, and sometimes that's appropriate. This is not my all anti billionaire

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

messaging is bad soapbox.

[Derek Thompson]

But I think we need to find

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

a way to celebrate aspiration and success.

[Derek Thompson]

And maybe that's another challenge for someone

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

to combine with straight to camera presentation and a bit of cheer. Is this like, how do you make people feel a little bit optimistic and not just feel like you're trying to be like a sort of cold problem solver?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Last question before I let you go. You wrote a beautiful essay last week or this week, I can't remember which week on being a dad. And the one part that really stuck with me is you talk about the reasons to become a parent. And you mentioned that a reason to become a parent is that we're built for it and it's built for us. Which is something that is really hard to understand before you become a parent. I found that even when I became a parent, it's not automatic. Like you kind of have to just let go at some point and embrace the new experience. The chaos, the joy, all of it.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Or the crying.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, the crying. Or as you put it, ride the ride. You talk about. You liken it to like an amusement park ride. And it really is. You have to get on and not

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

just get on and then be nervous

[Jon Favreau]

the whole time, but get on and be like, all right, hands up, let's just see how it goes.

[Derek Thompson]

Yeah. I loved writing this piece. And this is one of those essays

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

where people out there who write might have this experience where sometimes if you ask how long did it take to write that essay or write that article?

[Derek Thompson]

It's like it either took six months

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

or it took six hours.

[Derek Thompson]

It's like it was gestating for so

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

long and then actually putting it together was so easy because I've been thinking about it a lot.

[Derek Thompson]

There were a couple ideas I really

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

wanted to get out there.

[Derek Thompson]

One is that I feel really strongly

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

that being a parent isn't like parenting a baby. It's like parenting this sequence of babies

[Derek Thompson]

because the baby keeps changing day after

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

day while retaining her basic facial structure. Like, she sleeps, then she doesn't sleep, sleep, then she nurses, then she doesn't

[Derek Thompson]

nurse, then she smiles, then she stops smiling, then like, it's always changing. And there's something really lovely about this idea to me that like, being a

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

parent is falling in Love with a thousand beautiful strangers that evolve behind a single face. And I was drawn to write this essay initially by having that feeling.

[Derek Thompson]

But the next feeling that I had was, like, really trying to think about,

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

like, the experience of being a parent

[Derek Thompson]

and, like, how it felt different than

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

the rest of life. I am a wire cutter guy, if that makes sense.

[Derek Thompson]

Like, if I need to know, like, what mic to buy, I go to Wirecutter.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

What pants should I buy? I go to Wirecutter. What helmet should I buy for my electric bike? And what electric bike should I buy? I go to Wirecutter.

[Derek Thompson]

I outsource so many decisions in my life, and in many ways, I'm, like, the worst creature of instinct. Like, I'm not consulting myself for any of these decisions. I'm not doing any of my own research.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I'm letting the New York Times Wirecutter make this. All my decisions for me.

[Derek Thompson]

And then there's parenting. And in parenting, I just, like, felt, like, really connected to my instinct.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

And in wondering, like, what is that? Like, why do I feel this, like, surge of instinct when it comes to being a dad?

[Derek Thompson]

I thought, you know, maybe people are just, like, honed by natural selection or whatever to do, like, a very finite number of things. Like, of course, eat and sleep and

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

move around and procreate and have sex.

[Derek Thompson]

But also, like, how does the species

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

survive if we aren't at some level, made to parent?

[Derek Thompson]

And therefore, how does the species survive

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

if we're not at some level made to, like, fall deeply in love with those thousand beautiful strangers evolving behind a single face?

[Derek Thompson]

And so that led me to this

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

idea that, like, you know, life is like this amusement park where you're locked in it, and the park has no clear purpose, and there's just a lot of rides that are there. And falling in love is a ride, and making deep friendships is a ride, and sex is a ride.

[Derek Thompson]

And these are all experiences that you

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

can choose, and they were all built for you. And in a way, you were built for them. And parenting, I think,

[Derek Thompson]

is as profound and unprofound as this.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

It's just another ride in the park.

[Derek Thompson]

If you choose not to do it, that's fine. It's just another ride in the park. But it is there. It is built for you, and you were built for it. And if you are only going to

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

be in this amusement park once, you might as well ride the rides. And so that was sort of the second idea that I had, is that my case for becoming a dad is three words. Long ride the rides, ride the rides well.

[Jon Favreau]

And I'm someone who wasn't sure that I was built for parenting or parenting was built for me. Like, I just, I don't know why. I was just very, very nervous about it. And I guess I thought for a while because someone would be like, well, there's like a biochemical connection when the baby's born and all that. And I was. And it happened. And I was like, well, I don't necessarily feel that yet. I thought it was like a switch. But it's like everything else in life where it just. It gradually dawns over time. And I just remember, I remember having this moment. I don't know if it was a year into when, after Charlie was born, but I just like, like, I put him to bed and then I was like, oh, I'm good at this.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

I think I'm good at this. Like, I did not think I would be good at this.

[Jon Favreau]

I did not think I would be built for this. But, like, I am.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

How did that happen?

[Jon Favreau]

It is exactly what you articulated in that essay, that we are. We're just. We're built for it as, as humans.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Amen, brother.

[Jon Favreau]

Thank you so much for, for joining

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

and it's good to have you back

[Jon Favreau]

from leave and thinking and writing about

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

all these, all these very important topics.

[Jon Favreau]

So good to see.

[Derek Thompson (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

Thank you, man.

[Derek Thompson]

Good to see you

[Jon Favreau]

as always.

[Jon Favreau (alternate tag for dialogue continuation)]

If you have comments, questions or guest ideas, email [e-mail] and if you're as opinionated as we are, please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. For ad free episodes of Offline and Pod Save America, exclusive content and more, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. If you like watching your podcast, subscribe to the Offline with Jon Favreau YouTube channel channel. Don't forget to follow Crooked media on Instagram, TikTok and the other ones for original content, community events and more. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Emma Ilic Frank Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Adrian Hill Hill is our head of news and politics. Jarek Centeno is our sound editor and engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Delon Villanueva and our digital team who film and share our episodes as videos every week. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America.

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