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- [00:01]
Dennis Black
Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of rough greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the Ruffgreens 90 Day Challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code, Try rough. That's T R Y R U F F. Go to try rough greens.com use promo code, Try rough. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Discover the life changing benefits of meow greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add meow greens to your cat's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings. I'm naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of meow greens, and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90 day challenge. It's in the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free Jumpstart trial bag for your cat today. Go to trymeow greens.com use promo code try meow. That's try meow. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of meow greens.
- [02:13]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to have back my man, Derek Thompson. Last week he left the Atlantic as a staff writer and moved his writing to Substack. Water's warm over here on Substack. He also hosts the podcast Plain English and his latest book, you might have heard of, it's called Abundance, co written with some guy named Ezra Klein. How are you doing, Derek?
- [02:33]
Derek Thompson
I'm doing great, man. Before we go on, I just want people to know the reason that I'm standing in an entirely vacant room with nothing on the shelves is that the movers are here. And I am moving from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Washington, D.C. in approximately four and a half hours. So that is why it looks like I'm speaking to you from the least abundantly outfitted room in America.
- [02:57]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's a very unabundant room, but I thought maybe that was intentional, right? Like there's a contrast in your life. You know, kind of bring a yin and yang.
- [03:05]
Derek Thompson
I'm going in the opposite direction. I feel like, you know, Ezra's on Abundance right now. I'm just like, where can I carve out a niche here? Like, let's just swing in the entire opposite direction. Like monkish living, totally stoic Steve jobs in the 1970s. Just like an open room, a lamp, a chair. That's gonna be a substack.
- [03:23]
Tim Miller
Well, we have an abundant amount of topics to get to, but I do have to pay. Why are you moving to Washington, dc? What a horrible life choice for you.
- [03:30]
Derek Thompson
I loved dc.
- [03:30]
Tim Miller
You were like, I need to be around the most annoying people in the earth. I wanna be on the side of the soccer field with my children and have people be asking me about what's happening in the reconciliation bill. What was it about D.C. that was appealing to you?
- [03:46]
Derek Thompson
I'm from McLean, Virginia. D.C. is home. I've got a ton of friends who live in Washington, D.C. and have for the last 35, 39 years of my life. So I got a lot of people there. My wife, wonderful wife. I was down here in North Carolina because she was finishing up her PhD in clinical psychology. Now she's doing a postdoc at Children's National Hospital in Washington, dc. And look, I like it when people come up to me in the playground and ask about the reconciliation bill. You know, you and I just might be built different when it comes to our appetite for Ways and Means Committee conversations.
- [04:17]
Tim Miller
We are definitely built different. We're also built different on, you know, desire to go to Bullfeathers as a hanging out spot. Anyway, there are a couple of good things about D.C. i do miss all my 9:30 club anthem type vibes, but, boy, anyway, I think it's gonna be a negative life choice for you. You can report back, we'll come back, we'll do A pod next summer. And you can report back on one year in Washington.
- [04:41]
Derek Thompson
Great. We'll do the one year retrospective. I love North Carolina. The truth is, I love cities. I mean, I don't know if you live in a downtown urban area.
- [04:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I'm like, in New Orleans. New Orleans, okay.
- [04:52]
Derek Thompson
Yeah. I love being somewhere where I can walk out of my door and actually walk somewhere. And Chapel Hill is fantastic in a lot of ways, but it's very difficult to walk outside of your sort of suburban complex and just, like, traipse to the coffee shop. And I'm a traipser. I want to leave that front door and be able to have a coffee in my hand in 10 minutes and walk around.
- [05:13]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I hear you. I mean, I can walk to bars, lunch, a grocery store, even. That's good living.
- [05:18]
Derek Thompson
Okay, great.
- [05:18]
Tim Miller
You know, I can traipse right on, right on down the street. So I can do so without, you know, having any lobbyists in my way. Anybody in pleated khakis and a blue blazer. All right, let's get down to business. Zoran Mamdani, who recently did interviews with both of us, looks pretty well situated to likely be the next mayor of New York. He's going to have to run against the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, running as an independent in the general election. There's also the guy with the beret will be running on the Republican ballot line. So I guess it's possible that he could lose. Pretty surprising how handily he beat Andrew Cuomo. Last night, I think when I had him on, I said it was about a coin flip race, which I thought was actually a little kind to Zoran. At the time, I thought maybe it was kind of 60, 40 in favor of Andrew. And so the fact that he won isn't as surprising as, like, the degree to which he won. I mean, Cuomo basically only won in, you know, the precincts that have the highest percentage of working class black folks. The Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in the Upper east side. Like, that was basically the only parts of New York that Cuomo won in. I know it was pretty much a sweep for Zoran. So, anyway, what are your political takeaways? And then I want to talk about kind of the substantive policy side of Zoran.
- [06:29]
Derek Thompson
Well, let's start with the political media takeaways. I think that this guy did have a 30, 40% chance of winning. And then he appeared in the Bulwark podcast, and then he became the presumptive mayor of New York City. So clearly, the Bulwark Bump TM here is something to take into, is it not?
- [06:44]
Tim Miller
Plain English Bump. Why not the Plain English Bump?
- [06:47]
Derek Thompson
Hey, I'll talk about the Plain English Bump too. Let's first talk about the Bulwark Bump. I mean, I do think it's important to say, like, I bring up the podcast appearances now not just to be funny, but to point out that, like, I remember a couple years ago, remember when, like, Pete Buttigieg came on the scene and similarly started from like 0.5% total approval rating and then went up and up and up. And a part of that was his mere interest in being everywhere. He would talk to anybody. He would do any podcast, he would do any television show. He trusted in his articulateness and his ability to take on any question in any environment. And he also had something to say and, you know, say what you want about Zoran's policies. And I have a lot to say about Zorin's policies, as I know you do as well. This is someone who's running for something. He believes clearly in a criticism of the Democratic Party and he wants to talk about it to anyone who will speak to him. It's difficult sometimes to get someone on the phone when they're mere hours away from a primary or election contest. We were supposed to talk on Wednesday, then it was bumped to Thursday, bumped to Friday. We ended up talking at 4, 5:35pm on a Saturday after he'd spent hours hanging out with people at various election parties or various pre election parties. You know, I do think that before we get to the substance here, it speaks to what I think should be a model for politicians in the modern age, which is that, like, this isn't an age of like enormous monolithic broadcasts anymore, where you just do this one CBS hit and then you're done. You have to piece together the fragmentation of media and make yourself available everywhere and talk to everybody and in order to get the message out. And he clearly, he clearly tried to do that. The other lesson that I'm taking from this, and I'm really interested to know frankly, what your takeaways are here, because I don't think you want to be too rash about scaling a lesson from a Democratic primary in New York City to be like the guiding lesson for Democrats running everywhere across the country. The country is not New York City, only New York City is. But one lesson I take here is that we're in an anti institutional, anti establishment, anti status quo age. And I think that if you're going to run for the Democratic Party, you have to find some way to run against the Democratic Party. And that I think is true in Georgia and Maine and Ohio and New York City. Right. Andrew Cuomo, representing the establishment, gave him money, but it didn't give him a message. It gave him something like the opposite of a clear message that voters want to hear when they're upset, when they no longer trust what the party stands for, when they want to hear a new articulation of its brand. And so while I don't think that an event like this, as shocking as it is, and maybe just because it's shocking, because it's such a surprise, you don't want to jump to any kind of national conclusions. But if I had to draw one out to, like, make it my Monday morning quarterbacking tweet, it would be Democrats around the country to run for the party, run against the party, find the way that your heresy, your heresy is authentic and clear and communicable to the public, because that's what a lot of people are looking for right now.
- [10:04]
Tim Miller
Yeah, we largely agree on all that, which I guess isn't surprising. I did 42 minutes with Bill Kristol last night of a deep dive. So if people want my long form takes, they can go listen to that.
- [10:12]
Derek Thompson
Well, give me your short form. I would love to know what you think about this.
- [10:16]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure. My short form is similar to your anti establishment point. I think that Democrats need to be much more willing to just try different shit and be. And offer types of candidates that are heterodox in different. In different places. And that's going to look differently in Nebraska than it does in New York City for sure. But I just think that, like, the Democratic candidates lately, they're cookie cutter. And I could do the ads myself. And AI literally is going to be able to do the ads this fall of, like, oh, I'm a fighter. Here's my family picture and here. And I care about kitchen table issues and. And Donald Trump is terrible. Right. It's just like you can tune it out and it becomes like the, you know, peanuts, like, wa.
- [10:57]
Dennis Black
Wa.
- [10:58]
Tim Miller
The Democratic ads. And so I think Zoran tried something. He ran a campaign that was authentic to him. I think he ran a really great campaign. In addition to what you're saying about how he went everywhere, like, he benefited from Cuomo, just like being a caricature of the worst type of Democratic campaign. Right. And Cuomo went nowhere. We asked Cuomo to come on the bulwark. He didn't get on. He didn't get the bulwark bump. He didn't want to come. I saw that Cuomo took a black car five blocks from where he was staying to where he was voting yesterday. You know, and it's just like, this isn't it is what people want in 2025. So I do think, I worry that, like, the DSA folks will take from this, that the DSA model works everywhere. And I don't think that is the takeaway. And like, I worry that the establishment folks just kind of say, well, you know, Andrew Cuomo is such a bad candidate and this is kind of a one off fluky thing and I don't actually have to learn anything from this. And I think that both of those would be the wrong takeaways. Like, I think that there's a way to kind of channel the Zoran model tactically for different types of candidates. And I think that you got to recruit candidates that are. Say what you want about Zoran. He was authentically Zoron, you know, And I think the Democrats need different types of candidates too, in different types of places. You need somebody that is authentically Texas, authentically Georgia. Right. And I feel like the Democrats have been recruiting a lot of people that are like, I grew up in suburban Atlanta and then I moved and I went to, you know, I went to an Ivy League school and then I went to McKinsey or I became a JAG officer. You know, I did the check mark box of my career and then I moved home and now and I was valedictorian and now I'm running back at home. Like, there's a lot of the same types of people running. So that's my main takeaway from the campaign. And, you know, I don't know. I think it's possible that Zoran in various ways could, could drag down other Democrats as he becomes kind of a boogeyman, like in an AOC type sense. But I thought he was very. And despite the goof, or maybe not a goof, despite, I think, his poor answer to my question about globalizing the intifada. I thought in both of our interviews he's smart and adaptable in a way that some of the other DSA types aren't. Right. I think that he was very, I think, in tune with trying to appeal to a broader demographic than his core demographic. I don't know if you felt that way when you talked to him.
- [13:17]
Derek Thompson
Yeah. As you were talking, a couple thoughts came to mind. Two or three. One is that I think it's really notable that the substance of his campaign wasn't what some political science nerds Call post material. It wasn't about identity. It wasn't focused on who we are. It was focused on what we need. It was focused on materialism, on prices and groceries and the cost of housing.
- [13:39]
Tim Miller
I mean, just look at his poster was for New York you can afford. I think this is another lesson for.
- [13:44]
Derek Thompson
New York you can afford. And if you look at why Democrats shifted to the Republican column in 2024, I think I was talking to. It was either David Shore or some other pollster about this. They said the top four reasons why people at the Democratic Party were cost of living, economy, inflation, and housing. Which is another way of basically saying cost of living. Cost of living, cost of living, cost of living. We're in a cost of living moment right now. That is the character of the dissatisfaction that people have about the status quo. That there's an establishment that is interested in having fights over here about identity and not interested in having fights here in the center of what Americans need, which is for life to feel cheaper. And that's one reason why I think Mamdani and I got along on our call. And I say got along with big quotation marks. I don't like rent freezes as a policy. I don't like his municipal grocery store plan as a policy. I have major doubts about or questions certainly about his ability to be an executive, a manager. How good is this guy at running something? This is a massive unknown. It's actually very hard to tease out in an interview. How would I assess the managerial skills of a 33 year old charismatic Democratic socialist? Very, very hard to do. But the focus of materialism was something we could get along with because fundamentally, what I care about, what abundance is about and what Mamdani is about are about outcomes that make life more affordable for New Yorkers and for Americans. And so there was something there that I think was very interesting and successful. Another thing that your point raised for me is that there's this big question of like, should Democrats run as socialists or as left populists or as abundance y folks or as whatever, something else. And my answer to that question, and it's so unsatisfying on like a conference stage or on a podcast, is people vote for people, not just for messages themselves. And so there were a bunch of folks I saw responding to abundance when it first came out in March and April saying, these dweebs, these nerds want us to run on regulatory changes and zoning reform. But look at Bernie Sanders. What Americans really want is just an angry guy saying, fuck all this.
- [16:09]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [16:10]
Derek Thompson
And now we have Mamdani, who's not angry at all. Like, he's almost buoyant. Like he's almost so happy that it's a little cheesy. But I, as a former musical theater nerd, do not find cheesy at all. I'm like, I know you. I spent a lot of time with people who have exactly this energy. I know it and I like it.
- [16:29]
Tim Miller
The musical theater nerd who went to a liberal arts college, who ran for student government. I got it.
- [16:35]
Derek Thompson
That's an archetype I'm a little bit familiar with.
- [16:37]
Tim Miller
Got the title.
- [16:38]
Derek Thompson
But it goes to show that there was this certainty that the model to be most successful in American politics today was to run with anger. And now the rising star on the left could not be a worse demonstration of that, that principle. He's unbelievably optimistic and non stop smiley on these social media videos, even as he's talking straight to camera about the situation in New York affordability being completely fucked. He's very good at doing something there that blends the message of, I think materialism with a style of like, optimism is almost too thin a word here. But a style of this doesn't have to be an angry critique. There's room in this party for us. I'm someone who you would see an open door into a party and say, I want to be in a room with that guy. And so I think it does go to show that like poll testing issues isn't worthless, but it doesn't capture the degree to which people vote for people. And I do think we're often surprised by the kind of people who end up being most compelling. The Sanders model and the Mamdani model could not be any more different, I think, from a sort of dispositional standpoint. But the fact that they're both working.
- [17:51]
Tim Miller
Now, the lefties would say to you, Derek, that's because you misunderstand this. Like the lefties on the social media would say you misunderstand politics altogether and that your model is flawed. The neoliberal kind of capitalist model. And the reason that both Bernie and Zoran resonated had nothing to do with their personalities. It had to do with this deep well of interest in overthrowing the capitalist system and putting your finger in the eyes of the corporate elites and giving people free buses, et cetera. Maybe, I mean, I don't think that that's probably true in Texas, but like, maybe that is true and it wasn't about personality at all. What would you say to that?
- [18:27]
Derek Thompson
Maybe they're Right. I don't think they're right. But, like, you know, politics is like science. You have a hypothesis, you throw it out there, you see what happens. My guess is that someone running with Mamdani's politics is going to be most successful in a congressional district that's approximately plus 50 Democrats, which is what, you know, Brooklyn and Manhattan are. There's a lot of districts where Democrats have to win that aren't plus 50 Democrats. They're plus one, they're negative two, they're negative five.
- [18:54]
Tim Miller
These are Democrats. He ran up a 68% victory over Cuomo and Greenpoint. I think.
- [19:03]
Derek Thompson
Green Point, as much as.
- [19:04]
Tim Miller
Anything, I love Bushwick. Yeah, there's not a lot of those.
- [19:07]
Derek Thompson
America isn't Greenpoint. But this goes. Again, this isn't my sort of sly dig at the dsa. It's just a fact that, as you said at the beginning, different people are going to be successful in different contexts. You know, a Democratic socialist running to represent one of the most liberal cities in America at a time of deep dissatisfaction with both the Democratic Party and with affordability is going to have a certain level of success that that same DSA candidate is not going to have running to be the senator from Ohio or Maine or Georgia. You know, just really different places. And so that's one place where it's one reason why I'm trying to keep saying we need to be humble about the degree to which we can scale the lessons of an incredible story, an extraordinary story from New York. We have to be humble about the degree to which this is a lesson that spreads across the country like peanut butter.
- [19:59]
Dennis Black
Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of ruffgreens here, and I invite you to give your pup the Ruffgreens 90 Day Challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code try rough. That's T R Y R U F F. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code Try rough. You discover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Discover the life changing benefits of Meow Greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add Meow Greens to your cat's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings. I'm naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of Meow Greens, and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free Jumpstart trial bag for your cat today. Go to try Meow Greens.com use promo code try meow. That's Try Meow. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of Meow Greens.
- [21:59]
Tim Miller
I have two more things I want to talk to you about regarding Zoran, and I guess we'll do the substantive one first. You know, we won't. We won't do meta Twitter commentary. First, my main takeaway from our interview was I think he was listening to the critiques that comes from Abundance book that comes from the center left, and at least wanted to engage with them. I thought that his engagement was kind of limited and to me, his poor answer when it came to my question about whether the phrase globalized intifada makes him uncomfortable, my reaction to it was less like, oh, this guy's an anti Semite that hates Jews. And my reaction to it was more like, this guy doesn't want to pick a fight with kind of a core demographic base that he has. And essentially his core base were folks that were protesting and that were activists on the left. He doesn't want to do something that unnecessarily rankles those folks. And to me, that would be the concerning thing about him as a mayor of New York. Right in your interview. Similarly, you asked him if the costs being high on the subway were related to public sector union costs, and he wouldn't really even broach the possibility. He had some Other, I think, accurate assessments for why costs are too high, consultants and various red tape. But he didn't want to do anything that was critical of the public sector unions. That would be my substantive concern for him, that he's going to be tied to whatever the group interests on the progressive side. What do you make of that critique?
- [23:32]
Derek Thompson
New York City spends more per capita than any city in America. So the degree to which New York City's problems are fundamentally a function of its inability to spend enough money strikes me as not a very sound argument. Right. I think that what ails New York is that in many cases they are spending too much money in the wrong ways. And fixing those procedural bureaucratic problems requires making enemies. Because every single time you amend a process or you cut funding from some area, you're angering a constituency. And if you're running as the DSA candidate, you're very likely set up to anger a left wing or liberal constituency that you're going to rely on for the next election.
- [24:25]
Tim Miller
You can't just tax the bankers more.
- [24:27]
Derek Thompson
You can try. There's certainly no law against trying to raise taxes on the rich in New York even further. To take New York from being the most high tax place in America or the most high spending place in America on a per capita basis to even the higher per capita spending place in America. But that doesn't seem to me to be the thing that actually ails New York. What ails New York to me is that many of the processes there, many of the procedures there are just obviously broken in part because of allies of the Democrats. So the point that I made to him, and I'm really glad that you teed this up, is that he seems to care a lot about transit construction costs. And in 2017, the New York Times wrote the story called something like the Most Expensive Subway Mile in the World. It was a long, two, three thousand word story. And a part of this reporting which has been confirmed in other places is that New York City underground construction tends to have staffing levels that are four times higher than the international average. Four times higher. You simply cannot, as a company or an organization, produce things in a cost efficient way. If you are legally required to have 4x the standard staffing level, that's not possible. So at some point, I think that fixing problems with affordability in New York is going to require angering some of the constituencies that are responsible for lifting Zoran Mandani to power. And I don't know the degree to which he can do that. And I absolutely see, I think it's really astute of you to point out the degree to which your question about globalizing Intifada and my question about public sector unions in New York, while at one level seem to have nothing to do with one another, are in fact versions of the same underlying question. Do you have. Will you have the power and the courage to upset people who are on your side in order to achieve the outcomes that you tell folks like me you want? That, like the managerial competency question is a question that you just. I just don't know the answer to. And I still harbor major doubts about because I do think that in order to fix New York's problems, he's going to have to piss off some people that are onside. That's really, really hard to do. Especially. Last point. Especially if you have a personality type that is as agreeable as his is. Right. I'm not trying to, like, psychoanalyze him from afar, but like, as a sort of like toxically, like, pathologically agreeable person myself, nothing makes me more uncomfortable than angering someone I recognize to be my friend. And if you put someone like me in government, you're going to. It's going to be tough because I'm going to have a really, really hard time making decisions. It's easy to tweet about pissing people off. It's harder to actually do it. And I would say that's a really, really smart reason to be skeptical about Mamdani actually achieving the things he says he wants to achieve.
- [27:13]
Tim Miller
It's been the biggest cultural shift for me, moving from being in Republican politics to now, you know, being in opposition to the Republicans, as everybody around me is agreeable except for the far left types like the main dala, the main Democratic base. It's like a very agreeable group that creates an unusual social dynamic at times. And Zoran was so agreeable, so affable, so friendly, and you can, I can understand what the appeal is of them, even though we have some ideological disagreements.
- [27:40]
Dennis Black
Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of rough greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the Ruff Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function. All due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free jumpstart trial bag today. Go to try roughgreens.com use promo code try rough. That's T R Y R U F f. Go to try rough green greens.com use promo code try rough. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Discover the life changing benefits of meow greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add meow greens to your cat's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings. I'm naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of meow greens, and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free jump start trial bag for your cat today. Go to trymeowgreens.com use promo code TRY MEOW. That's TRY M E O w you discover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of meow greens.
- [29:40]
Tim Miller
I have a few like abundance random policy notes around the country that you're seeing. New York, also New York state is going to try to build a nuclear plant. Kathy Hochul made that announcement. This feels like kind of a random niche issue. Like with all the crazy things going on in the world, why would I want to talk about this right now? But it also feels like kind of an inflection point and kind of important that a Democratic state actually is going to try to and a Democratic politician is actually going to try to push this through. I don't know what you make of the nuclear story.
- [30:09]
Derek Thompson
Let me give you my big thoughts on nuclear. Number one, I think nuclear power is awesome. I Wish we built 70 more nuclear power plants. The 1950s, 1960s. It would make climate change easier. It would make energy abundance easier. It would have been a pure and absolute Mitzvah for the country. But it's not 1961, it's 2025. Nuclear power plants are the most expensive construction project in the world. I was talking to one energy analyst who said that the Votal power plant in Georgia costs something like 8 to 10 Burj Khalifas. Right? Imagine, in a way, hearing Kathy Hochul say, what we're going to do in New York is build 8 to 10 Burj Khalifas. It'd be like, wow, that's. It's certainly $10 billion, certainly very expensive. Nuclear power is incredibly expensive to build, and it takes a long time to build for a variety of regulatory and site construction reasons. So my enthusiasm here, my optimism here is tempered. I'm an energy abundance guy, and I'm an all of the above energy abundance guy. Solar, wind, geothermal. Absolutely. Nuclear. I think we're going to have to rely on natural gas for a long time to keep. To keep energy prices low as we make this clean energy transition. So I want to be really enthusiastic about any governor, especially a blue state governor, saying we're going to build nuclear power. But I'm also interested in outcomes, the outcome of actually getting affordable power from a nuclear power plant that's already built. And if it's going to take an average of 10 to 15 years and 10 to $15 billion to build a nuclear power plant, it just makes me a little bit concerned about the degree to which my enthusiasm for this announcement should actually translate into hope that this announcement becomes energy that folks in Albany and New York City can use. So that's. That's general outlook. But look, Spencer Cox in the governor of Utah also made an announcement about energy abundance and a kind of like race to the top of energy construction and permitting acceleration among Democratic and Republican governors around energy and housing. You know, these are the kind of vibe shifts that ultimately I would want abundance to have.
- [32:08]
Tim Miller
Okay, I'm glad you're tempered. But I don't know, like, the sclerotic Albany Democratic establishment being like, this is bad that we can't build nuclear. We should do it faster. That's something. That's something. I guess you just want more. You want more.
- [32:20]
Derek Thompson
It's good. Of course it's good. It's a step in the right direction. You hear what I'm saying? Like, of course it's good for them to go from, we don't want to build nuclear. We want to shut nuclear power plants down, which is where we've been to. We want to build nuclear power plants because we recognize that nuclear power is going to be a critical part of our energy future. That transition is nothing but good, right? That said, I think it's worth being realistic about how difficult it is to build nuclear power and how long it takes to build it. And so I want us to sort of like temper our enthusiasm and our pride in this announcement with a recognition that like, doing this stuff is very hard and, and the announcement itself is not the end of the journey. That said, I want to talk to Kathy Hochul about this. I would love to learn more about the details of this plan, especially to learn if she has some ideas for really accelerating the typical timeline of nuclear construction.
- [33:11]
Tim Miller
We'll see if you're see how tempered your excitement is about this other one. California is passing a budget today with some housing reforms. It includes. Just prepare yourself, listeners. There are going to be a couple of wonky terms here in this list. So just, you know, you can chatgpt and ask about them. We're not going to explain what every word means. Infill housing projects are now exempt from ceqa. That's the environmental regulation in California that prevents anything from being built. And now it must be approved or denied in four to six months. A buy right development must be improved. In 90 days, there's an update to the Permit Streamlining Act. This is good. This is good.
- [33:48]
Derek Thompson
It's amazing. It's awesome. It's awesome, right? I don't know that there's a single silver bullet that's going to fix California's issues, But if there's 10 silver bullets, this is absolutely one of the silver bullets in still housing. We're talking about dense urban housing making it easier to build that kind of housing, which is close to the best jobs. Not only is it good for the middle class that wants to live in downtown areas, it's also frankly good for the environment because sprawl is worse than density for the environment. Speeding up ceqa, basically meaning that you can build this infill housing without going through an environmental review process. That's sensational. Accelerated permitting. I think that's awesome. Look, this is what the kind of like technocratic achievements of an abundance movement will have to look like. It's not going to be incredibly easy things that you can immediately throw a mission accomplished banner on. It's going to be stuff like amending a CEQA law here, amending an environmental review here, making it easier to build here, faster to permit here, reform zoning there. This package of policies which I've been following for a while out of California, when Ezra and I were out doing our book tour, Scott, Wiener and Wicks were just beginning to put this package together. So the fact that a version of it seems to be nearing the finish line, I think this is purely wonderful. And it's exactly the sort of stuff that Ezra and I were rather explicitly calling for in the book.
- [35:10]
Tim Miller
As somebody that is, you know, ideologically more than sympathetic to everything that you're writing about all this going back to the political side of it, we're just talking about all this right now. The thing that strikes me is it does feel a little bit like a weakness. Like I was making a joke last night where you're watching on social media the positive reaction to Zoran from kind of the DSA left types. And it was like, abundance in shambles. Free buses for all. I'm going to drink Ezra Klein's perfect bearded tears and like bad Iglesias hardest hit. Like, they're like all so excited. And I get it. And there's something to be excited about. About, about. I understand why young folks in particular are excited about Zoran who haven't had a lot of Democratic candidates to be excited about, but his messaging, like the shorthand of it is, is easy to grasp onto. Like the, you know, whether it's the free buses, whether it's, you know, the grocery stores, it's hard to kind of imagine an inverse. Like, how do you build excitement in the inverse? What we're just talking about in sequel. Like, it's hard to imagine Derek Thompson like TW after the Mikey Sherrill victory. You know, something like come down in shambles, like permitting reform momentum. You know, it's like it's permitting reform summer. You know, it's hard to meme ify do you think about that at all. Do you care about that?
- [36:32]
Derek Thompson
I care about it. I do. But also, look, the first post that I wrote on Substack was about this phenomenon that I call the poster politician divide on the left. If your way of engaging with left abundance discourse is to dunk your head into Twitter and allow your cerebrum to just marinate in Twitter conflict, you will think that abundance and the left are enemies. That will be the only conclusion that you can possibly draw. But then if you have a phone or a Twitter account and you call up or follow some of the texts or DMs of progressive and left wing politicians, they're much more pro abundance. Ro Khanna is one of the most pro Medicare for all congressmen in Washington. He has tweeted several times about how pro abundance he is and how many parts of this book he think are necessary components of the Democratic Party. You look at Zoran Mamdani comes on my show and I have conversations with people on his campaign about how enthusiastic they are for him to talk to me about this book that he really enjoyed and that sort of changed his mind about several ways and reintroduced some ideas about government efficiency, making government work, the fact that outcomes are more important sometimes than processes. Learning from the mistakes of other leftists like Brendan Johnson in Chicago. How to not just do Chicago redux. As a left wing mayor of New York City, there's a lot of positivity about abundance principles in our 30, 37 minute conversation. And there's been a ton of conversations that I've had off the record on background with progressive and left wing politicians across the country, not just at like a national level, like representatives. I'm talking about like people running for local office in Texas, in California, in Florida. And again and again, the message is like this book and its theme that we as Democrats cannot ask the public to allow us to add more government functions unless we prove that government can function in the first place. Totally resonated with us. You know, one of my favorite ways of sort of synthesizing the book was Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, who said America has to move. The Democratic Party, he said, has to move from being a party of no and slow to a party of yes. And now like, what a great sort of campaign poetry synthesis of like the 230 page book of abundance. So I do think that it is of course worth paying attention to, like what the left is saying on Twitter or Blue sky or Instagram or whatever else. It's not that the discourse doesn't matter, is that the discourse is not the world. The discourse isn't actually politics. What's politics to me is. Or what politicians are saying and thinking and doing. And if you follow what politicians are saying and thinking and doing, both publicly, like Kathy Hochul and the forthcoming law in California, and privately the way that politicians on the left, progressive politicians are talking to their own staff about the lessons they take from this book. It's really important to me that you have again, this poster politician divide where the posters are against the book and saying, you know, whatever, drink the lib's tears. The politicians aren't saying that at all. And so ultimately, if what I want is for this book to have power and influence, I'm not going to judge it by the number of retweets on a Wednesday morning in June of some post that shit Posting the book, that's in some ways the worst way to judge the influence of the book. The way to judge the influence of the book is to call up a politician who's trying to do something and say, were you influenced? Do we change your mind?
- [40:17]
Tim Miller
I like that answer. I worry a little bit that it's cope as somebody that wants the amount of decide to win. I worry about that because I do worry that you can't market your way out towards energy. Really popular energy just kind of exists. And I remember thinking back to being with Jeb on a plane and him being frustrated about why he wasn't resonating with the Republican base. And we'd had a couple scotches and I said to him, honestly, man, like, you can say fuck more. You can take off your glasses or put them back on. Like, we can, you know, change the slogan, but, like, the energy is with Trump. And I worry that, like, you know, I saw a social media post of an of abundance meetup group, and I would love everybody at that meetup. It'd be very nice. But it just looked like a dorky Derek and a dorky Matt iglesias, just like 10 years younger than the two of you, you know. And then like last night, Zoran's party is like, it's like, you know, it's bumping. They're doing. They're, you know, everybody's vibing. I don't know. That part of it is tough to figure out how to channel all that. And I'm not really even looking for you to answer it. It's just something I'm thinking through.
- [41:25]
Derek Thompson
Sure. Was my previous answer Cope? I don't think so. But if someone's interested in putting together a marketing deck for a politician in 2027, 2028, of course, I don't think that the first thing they should run on or the message that they should set the bumper sticker printers to running on is something like, you know, unleash nuclear abundance, exempt infill, ceqa. Like, that's not the bumper sticker. Of course, I get that. But what I keep saying is the following two things when people ask me versions of this question, which I want to be clear. It's a perfectly fair question. It's a perfectly fair. It's an important question. Number one, the book's three months old. It's three months old. Like, we're going to learn about, like, how, like, what messages connect with people and what messages come out of the book. We're going to learn. There are years to figure out ways that this book clicks into a message that people care about. One message is the way that Wes Moore is talking, right? That the Democratic Party can't be the party of no and slow. It has to be the party of fast. And now another way, frankly, of making the messages of the book stick is that this is a book that's fundamentally about how do we fucking solve people's problems. How do we go from like a Republican Party that just breaks shit and a Democratic Party that doesn't do shit to a government that gets shit done, Right? There are versions of. And again, I'm not trying to take the sort of old Jeb Bush advice of just throw a four letter word on it, but there are ways, I think, of taking a book that was me and Ezra trying to say true things about American politics and policy and turning it into a message that works. But the most important reaction I have to the question like this, the most important reaction to this question is people don't vote for books, they vote for people. And we don't know yet the kind of individuals that are going to take up this message and run on it in 2027. We don't know their charisma. We don't know their willingness to go on every single show. We don't know if they're funny, if they're agreeable. Like, Mamdani understands something that exists at a level that isn't captured by abundance versus left populism. I think he understands something that's true about attention. He understands that to get people's attention, to hold it, to take it away from somebody else, requires that you present a version of yourself to people on social media and on podcasts that other people want to be with. People want to be at the party with you. They want to be. You know, we used to say before, like, you want to grab a beer with this person? I think it's more complicated now. It's like, do you want to listen to this person talk for three hours on Joe Rogan on a phone while you're watching Love island in the background? A different kind of like, general, like vibe of hang. Those are elements that cannot be predicted or prescribed by a book that's about the right housing policy and the right way to think about government efficiency. Like, these are different problems to solve for and people will try to solve for them. It's really, it's like almost like not my job to like perfectly anticipate and describe the kind of person who will have like this ability to grab and hold attention while also running on ideas from the book that I think would dramatically improve people's lives.
- [44:52]
Tim Miller
Next time you get asked that question, you can just quote from RuPaul and you can just say you need somebody that has charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.
- [44:58]
Derek Thompson
Charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.
- [45:00]
Tim Miller
Because Zoran had it.
- [45:01]
Derek Thompson
Yeah, all right.
- [45:01]
Tim Miller
Zoran had it.
- [45:02]
Derek Thompson
He had all of it. I had a feeling that might be an acronym.
- [45:07]
Tim Miller
You got it.
- [45:08]
Derek Thompson
And then it was.
- [45:12]
Tim Miller
Speaking of people with no charisma, neekness, nerve or talent, John Thune and Mike Johnson, what do you make of what's happening with the whatever tax and budget bill over on the Hill? It feels anti abundance to me. I would just like to hear you cook on their, you know, their legislative plans.
- [45:27]
Derek Thompson
I like it. Yes. It's one of the fucking worst bills I've ever seen in my life. It's a debt bomb. It lowers taxes on people who do not need a tax cut in order to cut services for people who need those services. The idea that at this point in the economy, with inequality what it is with the needs of the poor, especially in an affordability crisis, what they are, the fact that we're going to give million dollar tax cuts to folks that run used car lots so that we can take Medicaid away from poor people in Alabama and Louisiana is absurd and disgusting. And I cannot believe they're actually going through with this. I do think they're going to go through with it. I'm not sure the Republican Party can take a vacancy spot here. I think they have to pass some version of the big and beautiful bill is going to include an enormous amount of tax cuts that weight overwhelmingly toward the richest 1%. And the only way to make the numbers work is to cut government spending. And government spending tends to be much more progressive, which means you're taking money away from low income people who need food stamps and SNAP and health care. I think this is the sort of thing that Republicans today feel like is an expression of their values and an expression of their donor interests. And I also hope, and maybe this is just a bit of projection, but I certainly hope that it's the sort of thing that come mid end of 2026, Democrats are going to be able to very successfully pin this and the behavior of Donald Trump together to create an incredibly compelling argument for throwing a lot of bums out of office. So I think it's a pretty horrendously depressing bill. And the silver lining, as a sort of pathologically optimistic person, the silver lining to me is That a bill this horrendous cannot help but be an albatross around the neck of the people who vote for it.
- [47:18]
Tim Miller
And when you combine it with the rest of the agenda, it's pretty astonishing how anti cost cutting, their entire, anti affordability, the entire agenda is this bill. And the tax cut for rich folks combined with making health care more expensive, getting rid of health care for poor people, getting rid of SNAP benefits for poor people. On top of that aggressive tariff tax increase on everybody that's buying goods. On top of that, we're going to mass deport the people that are making and building things which are going to make those things more expensive. I mean, like the whole economic agenda, it's significantly worse than the Trump 1.0 agenda. And it is particularly ill suited for the economic moment I think we're in. Do you agree with that?
- [48:03]
Derek Thompson
It is so shockingly out of step with this economic moment that I honestly sometimes just can't believe they're going through with it. I mean, Donald Trump won, as I said, an affordability election. He won because enough Americans either went to the polls for the first time and voted for a Republican because they felt like life was unaffordable, or they shifted from the Democratic to the Republican column because they felt like life was unaffordable. And like, how do you make life affordable? You make it cheaper to build houses, you make energy cheaper, you make life cheaper. You make things like health care and education cheaper. And what are they doing? Right. One of the first things that he did in office is to announce a tariff on Canadian lumber and Mexican drywall that's like immediately threatening to rise the costs of home construction. Right. What does he do on something like manufacturing, which we would want to be more efficient in this country? He creates a trade war which raises the input costs for things that we build in this country, which means it's harder to build anything in this country. What does he do for energy? Well, the big beautiful bill and a bunch of other Trump policies not only hurt solar and wind construction, they also raise energy costs across the board. Energy costs are looking to double in some places in this country in the next year. This is one of the more important, I think, stories to emerge from the economy in the next few months. And then finally on health care, I mean, we're going to give again, we're going to give like sole proprietors of S Corps million dollar tax cuts that they do not need. Like that used car salesman is going to vote for you, a Republican, no matter what you do in the next six months. We're still gonna give you a 700 or give you and your. A $700 billion tax cut that requires us to cut Medicaid by $700 billion. It's completely insane to me. And it's one place where, as I've gone around the country, as Ezra and I have done this book tour, it's almost been too easy for us to make the point that a message of abundance stands up poetically against a scarcity agenda from the Trump administration that we're not even beginning to talk about. Things that I care a ton about and. And initially came on the show a lot to talk about things like science policy. We're cutting the NIH by $18 billion, by 40%. Why? We could amend the big beautiful bill. We could reduce the corporate income tax cut by about 0.7% to save that $18 billion. Instead, we're gonna take it away from Harvard scientists studying the molecular basis of Alzheimer's and infectious disease. What the fuck are you doing? It's so astonishing to me that they're running on this explicit agenda of scarcity. And unfortunately for the country, and narrowly, usefully for my ability to talk about it on podcasts, it could not be more anti abundance.
- [50:40]
Tim Miller
I'm giving you snaps because we're both sickos and just can't help but do discourse. We went too long. We went longer than I meant to on Sauron and the Meta Jones discourse around Zoran. So I have a few other notes of things I want to talk to you about. We're not going to get to all of them. I wanted you to reply to Mark Cuban's bull pitch on this podcast for AI, which I found completely uncompelling. You had two recent podcasts I like. One on the unifying theory of America being unhealthy and one on smartphones and mental health. Which one of those are you hottest to trot on right now? Those three topics. You get to be the host.
- [51:16]
Derek Thompson
I saw the clip of Cuban telling you that he wasn't going to run for president, which. Which I think is a lie. I think you think it's a lie. Tell me what he said about AI so I can respond to that, because I'd love to talk about AI.
- [51:25]
Tim Miller
It went on for a while. The short original part of the clip he talked about, and I think, which is something that is true, that I agree with, is just the entrepreneurial opportunities for AI for somebody that's a young person that's upstarting, that's to learn about a topic he's just like it's going to be unimaginable compared to the past. I agree with that part. Here is the second part of his bull pitch I was a little less compelled by. I'd like for you to listen to.
- [51:47]
Mark Cuban
It's going to be really tough to know what's real and what's not real. And you may not need real people to create entertainment. Which means that, no, don't, don't do that. Because that, in my mind, I think it's going to force more face to face communication.
- [52:01]
Tim Miller
I just love that in your pro pitch, it's like it's going to be hard to tell what's real and what's not real. And that's in the positive pitch.
- [52:07]
Mark Cuban
Well, yeah, but. But that is positive in some respects, right? Because it becomes so easy to overwhelm, to flood the zone, if you will, with stuff that isn't real. People are going to want stuff that is real. And we'll want more face to face communications in business as well. When you get all these fake voices calling you as a sales, it's like if you're the company that has a salesperson at least knocks on your door or shows up face to face, you're going to appreciate that if you don't know what's real or not, you're going to want somebody telling it to your face so you know it's real and that you can trust it.
- [52:43]
Derek Thompson
That's insane. Mark Cuban's really smart. I don't dislike him at all. This is not coming from a place of like, I couldn't wait to call some opinion of Mark Cuban's insane. That's just a bad take. I have an article going up in my substack in about 10 minutes.
- [52:57]
Tim Miller
Great.
- [52:57]
Derek Thompson
Which is called Young People Face a Hiring Crisis. AI is making it worse. And let me try to do this essay really quickly because it clicks exactly into the point that Mark Cuban's making. There's a lot of conversation around the fear that AI is taking entry level jobs from young people graduating from college. And in fact, you can see the unemployment rate for young college graduates begin to tick up much faster than the overall unemployment rate. That's scary. The macroeconomic data here is not entirely conclusive. So I went and called up a bunch of college career office directors to ask, what are you seeing in the entry level labor market? What are your students saying about their job applications? And they said something that totally stunned me. They said that today it is not uncommon for young people to use artificial intelligence to apply to 300 jobs, 500 jobs, even 1,000 jobs in a matter of months. It's not uncommon. And as a result, a lot of employers, in response to this AI barrage are putting up their own ay bulwark, so to speak. They are using AI to conduct early round interviews, to surveil early round interviews, to look at body language and facial expressions. They're sometimes using AI to filter for these job applications so that a young person applies to a job and five seconds later they're getting a no from some AI that's doing a bunch of keyword searches. And what I heard from these college career counselors is that it is making the job search process so unbelievably anxiety producing for young people because they are often not talking to potential employers at all. They're talking to chatbots created by these employers to handle the barrage of AI enabled job applications. The process of looking for a job is becoming so fundamentally inhuman that like the economic anxiety that people feel about the labor market right now is being layered with this enormous like dystopian psychological anxiety about like, who the hell am I even talking to when I apply to work? I'm not against AI. I think AI is like really interesting technology in so many ways. But one thing that we've seen from technology like smartphones and even things like Netflix, sometimes when a technology is super convenient and creates a kind of frictionlessness to our lives, it removes the human experience. And it's exactly what's happening to job hunts across the country. And it's going to make, it's going to create a scenario, I think, where young people especially are going to feel like AI is not just an economic technology, it's a social technology. Young people are going to use it to replace therapists, they're going to use it to replace friends, as weird as that sounds. They're absolutely going to find ways to take questions that are for friends and redirect it toward AI chatbots. It's already happening. There's a company called Character AI that has tens of millions of unique users a month. And it's going to happen in these sort of historically interpersonal exchanges like the job hunt, which are going to become more automated in ways that are going to feel weird and berserk and dystopian and fundamentally antisocial. And that's why, like, as much as I care about abundance, and it's absolutely the most important project that I'm working on right now, the other theme that I am most interested in talking about on this substack and Just in podcasts generally is this idea I have about the antisocial century that in so many ways not only are we empirically talking to each other less, having fewer face to face interactions, but also this AI wave that is coming is going to not just change the way we work, it's going to change the way that we engage with other people. It's going to. It's going to deform social relations in ways we're not going to understand until it's already happening. So right now my big thesis is the transition line. The pipeline between college and the workforce is drenched in AI. Right now. Young people are cheating on tests. GPAs barely mean anything anymore because like, what's the value of a college assessment if you don't know if the underlying assessment is like how good were you at looking up chatgpting like history of the Habsburg Empire or actually understanding the Habsburg Empire? The job application process is enabled by AI. The human resources process is now automated by AI. And now entry level jobs themselves I think are being replaced at some level by AI. If we want to understand what's happening with this technology in the world, we should study this pipeline from college to the labor force. Like hell. And I would be shocked if the near term outcome was anything like Mark Cuban predicted.
- [57:30]
Tim Miller
I'm glad you picked that topic because I'm obsessed with this. I'm going to keep talking about it even though this is ostensibly a never Trumper politics pod because we have to fight against it. There's a dehumanization element to this, like must be fought. I'm not a Luddite. There's a lot of cool stuff happening with AI, but this notion that we're going to go through this period where the slop gets so bad and the dehumanization is so intense that folks will crave human contact. That's not a bet that I want to make actually.
- [57:59]
Derek Thompson
Is the following a fair analysis. The last 70 years of television technology, that television is so good at allowing people to watch human relationship that it's created a renaissance of people hanging out in the physical world.
- [58:12]
Tim Miller
No, don't say no.
- [58:13]
Derek Thompson
The exact fucking opposite. Television is so unbelievably entertaining. It's so good at just getting our little dopamine to slew us through our brains that we sit on the couch and we watch it for five, six, seven hours a day, especially if you're an American senior. And it reduces the amount of face to face socializing. Face to face socializing has declined by 20% in the last 20 years. That's after Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam came out. Looking at the decline of socializing in the previous 50 years. These technologies aren't evil. I don't think Netflix is evil or HBO is evil. I think that technologies that make life frictionless have a side effect of often removing frictions. We didn't know we needed to be healthy and happy. It's taken us a while to discover that with tv. It'll take us a while to really see it, maybe in some ways with AI, but it's a thesis I hold to very, very strongly.
- [59:10]
Tim Miller
All right, we're going to challenge you right now, Derek. This is going to be personal growth. I have a series of rapid fire questions. You only get two sentences to answer each of them. On the topic of smartphones and mental health. We're not going to get to that. You should go listen to Derek's podcast, Plain English. It's really great. And sign up for his new substack, Rapid Fire. That's your fault. You titled it your unifying theory of America being Unhealthy. So if it's a unifying theory, you should be able to offer it in two sentences. Why is America unhealthy?
- [59:36]
Derek Thompson
Americans eat too much. Caloric surplus is probably the most parsimonious explanation for the rise in obesity. It leads to not just subcutaneous fat, the fat that we can see, but something called visceral fat that's deeper under our skins and around our organs. Visceral fat, along with other effects of, of eating too much caloric surplus, releases toxins into the blood, that raises chronic inflammation. And chronic inflammation is the sort of fountain spring from which so many long term diseases like cancer, cardiometabolic disease, heart attacks and Alzheimer's become more likely.
- [60:10]
Tim Miller
So we intervene on that. How? How do you stop that process of those various subterranean fats that you went to?
- [60:18]
Derek Thompson
Look, here's a metaphor. The human being is a car. The modern world is a brick dropped on the accelerator. And as a result, we are accelerating the degree to which we consume, consume, consume. We are putting ourselves in a state of permanent caloric surplus and this is leading to record high levels of obesity. I wish there were some obvious, easily scaled, non medical solution to this problem. Eat less and exercise more. Of course one should do that. It's really, really hard for a variety of reasons. The reason to be optimistic here is that glucagon, like peptide 1 receptor agonists, otherwise known as GLP1 drugs, otherwise known as Ozempic and Zepbound, seem to be sensational. At taking the brick from the accelerator and placing it on the brake. And one of the next pieces that I'm writing right now, the first piece I'm going to write next week, is about how these GLP1 drugs are among the most astonishing medical breakthroughs of the last 100 years, and maybe one of the most astonishing medical breakthroughs of the last several hundred years. For reasons we don't quite understand, they seem to be good at everything. They don't just help us lose weight. They don't just reduce chronic inflammation. They don't just reduce levels of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, where that's being studied right now. They seem to be good at just about every single bodily system that we've measured, and a ton of money is going into making them better. So I am not optimistic about a sudden, spontaneous renaissance of Americans working out more and eating more broccoli. I am optimistic, though, that GLP1 drugs could be, like, one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century.
- [61:55]
Tim Miller
All right, that was very challenging, and you did fail the test. But the question didn't really call. The question didn't really call for.
- [62:03]
Derek Thompson
Those are all semi phones.
- [62:04]
Tim Miller
This could maybe be two words. Person in the public life that drives you the most insane right now. Who's annoying you the most in all of public life?
- [62:12]
Derek Thompson
J.D.
- [62:13]
Tim Miller
It'S the same. See? We're so aligned. Derek, maybe we should merge our podcasts. The Atlantic writer. You're gonna miss the most. You left the Atlantic. This is the unofficial podcast of the Atlantic since we have so many Atlantic guests.
- [62:25]
Derek Thompson
Am I gonna get in trouble if I don't say Jeff Goldberg?
- [62:27]
Tim Miller
If you said Jeff Goldberg, I would be offended.
- [62:30]
Derek Thompson
I'm saved. Jeff Goldberg. Because that's the answer least likely to get me in trouble. But I have so. I have so many friends. That is Atlantic answer. I love Jeff, too.
- [62:37]
Tim Miller
That is a pathetic answer. You began this podcast by extolling the virtues of Democratic candidates who were candid, who went on podcasts and took tough questions, and here you are copping out.
- [62:48]
Derek Thompson
When I run for mayor of Washington, D.C. maybe I'll give you more honest interpersonal answers.
- [62:54]
Tim Miller
All right. Ezra Klein's most annoying tick on the Abundance tour.
- [62:58]
Derek Thompson
Most annoying tick Tick.
- [62:59]
Tim Miller
Yeah, you had to do joint interviews with him. What was the most annoying tick?
- [63:03]
Derek Thompson
Certainly, I don't find Ezra particularly annoying. I'd love to know what he thinks. I'll say this. It's interesting when you're on the row with someone, when you're just around someone talking for Just like fucking hundreds of hours. You pick up these little things that they say and you start using them. My favorite thing that he does is he has this line where he says, I'd like to make a cut here. It's a way for him to answer a difficult. I think it's a way to answer a difficult question in two different ways. So if you ask me, who are you going to miss the most at the Atlantic, I could say, I'm going to make a cut here. There are people who I appreciate the most at the Atlantic and there are people who I love texting with and slacking with the most at the Atlantic. So I'd like to make a cut.
- [63:43]
Tim Miller
This is a horrible tick. This is extremely annoying. I'm glad that it says something about your partnership that this doesn't annoy you.
- [63:50]
Derek Thompson
Ezra. I don't think it's annoying. I think it's magnificently useful. And I'm sorry for the way that Tim is bastardizing my answer to this question.
- [63:56]
Tim Miller
Okay, finally, we need to fix the NBA injury problem. I saw you posted about this.
- [64:01]
Derek Thompson
Yeah.
- [64:02]
Tim Miller
It's unbelievable that like so many of the last few years of playoffs have been ruined by injuries and the tragedy and the drama and kind of the operatic nature of Game seven and having the Pacers as unlikely underdog, having it be stripped away from them by Tyrese Halliburton, their star player, getting injured in the first five minutes with an Achilles tendon tear. At some level I feel horrible for Tyrese, but it did make for good drama. But over the course of years now there are just so many more injuries than when we were growing up. How do we fix it?
- [64:33]
Derek Thompson
I'm not sure how easily this is fixable. I think the reasons for this go to the fact that these players are unbelievably athletic and the style of play involves a lot more play from behind the three point line. So that there's more sort of start stop drives and start stop defenses where if there's more three point shots and you're say a wing defender on the Denver Nuggets and you're playing, you know, I'm the Boston Celtics, I knew nothing but take threes. You're constantly going from a stop position or sort of flow position near the basket to sprinting out to three point line because Jaylen Brown is taking his 173 of the game. And a game I think that has more of this like, of these like sudden accelerations from incredibly athletic people is going to have more injuries. That said, the season is way too long and the consequences of its too long ness are legion. I mean, not only is so much of the regular season just completely worthless, two thirds of the teams make the playoffs or the play in. So why do I give a fuck about a game in the middle of January if it has no bearing on the outcome of the season? Like, the Indiana Pacers started this season, what, like 14 and 19? And they were, like, maybe one Achilles away from winning the championship. So why am I watching any basketball in November at all? So I think the season itself needs to be shrunk in order to make the games matter more. And I do think that allowing more time between the games might reduce strain on people's tendons and ligaments, which might cash out, and fewer injuries toward the end of the season. But the most important thing about your question is that it's just exactly right. I mean, it's difficult to think of a playoff in the last few years that wasn't, like, defined by, or potentially defined by a major injury. Whether it's like Jamal Murray getting injured in the middle of Jokic's prime.
- [66:21]
Tim Miller
Right?
- [66:21]
Derek Thompson
Whether it's Giannis getting injured or Embiid never being able to play in the postseason, or Tatum getting injured, or Halliburton getting injured, or even seasons where, like, in the West, Curry, when the warriors made that, won the championship, like, hats off to Seth Curry. That was a magical year. But if I recall, like, it was like four of the top 10 or five of the top 10 players in the Western Conference were, like, injured by the end of that playoffs. Like, Kawhi wasn't playing. Paul George was, like, you know, barely holding it together. All these other players, like, who you would want to compete in the Western Conference championship?
- [66:55]
Tim Miller
Jamal, they played against us that year, right?
- [66:57]
Derek Thompson
Yeah. Maybe Chris Paul. So I think that we're reaching a point where the product, which is already bad during the regular season because the games kind of don't matter, is also getting diminished in the postseason because you're basically flipping a coin on the Achilles and knee tendons of every star player by the middle of June. And that's a huge problem, I think, for the league.
- [67:22]
Tim Miller
All right, I'm going to let you get to your move. I have a little self criticism. We're going to do less social media discourse, and I'm going to endeavor to find an area of disagreement the next time you come on, if that sounds good.
- [67:31]
Derek Thompson
Okay, cool. All right, great. Let's disagree about something.
- [67:33]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And I think really the only one is that you decide to move to Washington. So I guess that's one topic, but I'll try to find a substantive area of disagreement the next time we get together. That's Derek Thompson. Go subscribe to a substack. Appreciate you coming on on a moving day, and we'll talk to you soon, brother.
- [67:47]
Derek Thompson
Thanks, my friend.
- [67:48]
Tim Miller
All right, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate you. Everybody else, come back tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. We'll see y' all then. Peace.
- [67:56]
Ezra Klein
Take a bite of the Big Apple oh, God feel so free Feel so free Feel so free it's my religious out of control Time's moving slow.
- [68:23]
Tim Miller
LA.
- [68:24]
Ezra Klein
Is home but I'm ready to go Black car, pick me up from the airport Drop my bags at the Bowie Hotel Next stop to the club I'm a dance kick, drum juke oh, God so pick me up from the airport Drop my bags at the F Hotel Next up to the club, drum too.
- [70:27]
Tim Miller
The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.