Given the reception to yesterday's podcast and post, I’m publishing the transcript of my 37-minute weekend conversation with Zohran Mamdani.

What I liked: He’s a charismatic person who handles criticism well and insists that, in his words, “I care most about outcomes,” not ideology—which demonstrates, if nothing else, exquisitely well-targeted political rhetoric.

What I didn’t quite like: Mamdani’s views on housing and policing have moderated in the last few years, but I think his policy instinct to solve every problem with costly state price regulation (rent freezes, $60 million public grocery stores) is a bad fit for a high-tax city that already spends more per capita than anywhere else in America

What I don’t know: Is he a good executive? Can he manage people and systems? Will he surround himself with smart ppl who check his worst instincts (every problem —> price regulation, costly new state initiative) and feed his best ones (charisma, curiosity, commitment to public excellence)? The full transcript is here:

derekthompson.substack.com/p/what-speaks-…

The share of elite MBA grads still looking for work 3+ months after graduation is up sharply at practically every high-ranking school.

The traditional elite-MBA absorption process—1) Get degree; 2) Glide path to Big Tech/Consulting—seems disrupted. This is such a narrow and specific statistic that I don't think it's wise to draw confident big-picture conclusions from it, but ...

My not-so-confident big-picture conclusion is that the combination of GenAI (both its absurd capex costs and its facility with amplifying white-collar work) and a wildly uncertain policy environment heading into Trump Era 2.0 is pinching hiring at big white-collar firms mindful of their profit margins

I wrote the cover story of the February issue of The Atlantic. It builds on a lot of reporting I did throughout 2024, and I'm really proud of it.

It’s called: THE ANTI-SOCIAL CENTURY

The thesis: Rising solitude is the most important social fact in American life today. The historic amounts of time that Americans spend alone and in their homes is reshaping the consumer economy—from dining to entertainment to delivery—warping our politics, alienating us from the realities of our neighbors and villages, and changing our very personalities.

Here are the basic facts:

1. In the last few years, in-person socialization has declined, for every demographic group, to its lowest point on record

2. The typical American is now alone more than in any period where we have decent data, going back to at least 1965

3. Americans now spend an extra 99 minutes in their homes compared to 2003—a trend that crept up slowly before the pandemic, before exploding and remaining at a seriously elevated level. As Princeton’s Patrick Sharkey wrote in a 2024 paper, the homebound trend isn't just about remote work. Homebound life has “risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities” from eating to praying.

4. America's social depression is far-reaching. The share of adults having dinner or drinks with friends on any given night has declined by more than 30% in the past 20 years. The share of boys and girls who say they meet up with friends almost daily outside school hours has declined by nearly 50%.

I don’t think these trends are simple. In many cases, they’re not even simply bad. (Ordering delivery: totally fine! Eating more meals alone, year after year after year: not so great!) But to see these trends—and their effects on American society—more clearly, I thought this phenomenon needed an anchoring, a naming, a media artifact for people to talk about, even if only to point out that I’m wrong. So, I wrote this.


And here is “The Anti-Social Century,” in full. Gift link! Read and share (and go outside!).

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

I wrote about the rise of ANTI-ELITE ELITISM and how Trump 2.0 represents a coalition of power, wealth, and fame that has successfully framed its political movement as a populist rebellion

"Populism"—the rhetoric vibe that says the people are good and the elites are bad—is not a set of ideas so much as a costume that any ideology can wear.

And I am very interested in the way that folks like RFK Jr, Musk, Ackman, and Trump—some of the richest and most famous ppl in America, or the world—have demonstrarted the effectiveness of anti-elite frames, even when the speakers themselves are highly elite themselves. More broadly, I think RFK Jr is just an absolutely fascinating Rosetta Stone for the most important trends in American politics.

1. His vaccine views perfectly represent the fusion of hippie naturalism and anti-govt attitudes that have pushed vaccine skepticism to the right after COVID

For the first time since WWII, every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, via @jburnmurdoch

2024 Democrats are the red dot.

Absolutely critical context to any postmortem. “This has been a year of global anti-incumbency within a century of American anti-incumbency.”

My big-picture explanation for Trump’s crushing victory is this:

This wasn’t the 1st post-pandemic election. It was the 2nd COVID presidential election.

You can’t explain Trump’s across-the-board romp without seeing the ways—obvious and subtle—that the pandemic haunted 2024 1. Inflation was *a part of* the pandemic.

That is, the economic emergency was as global as the health emergency, and nearly as contagious. But while many voters forgave their leaders for COVID, they blamed their leaders for inflation, making this a horrendous year for incumbents worldwide.

Did Harris underperform. I don't think so. Her performance was total normal, adjusted for Biden’s popularity in a year of global anti-incumbency.

I wrote about the urban family exodus.

America's biggest and richest cities are losing children at an alarming rate.

From 2020 to 2023, the number of kids under 5 declined by
- almost 20% in NYC
- about 15% in LA, SF, Chicago, and St Louis
- >10% in NoLA, Philly, Honolulu This exodus is not merely the result of past COVID waves.

Even at the slower rate of out-migration since 2021, several counties—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—are on pace to lose 50% of their under-5 child population by the mid-2040s. Insane.

All optimism is local.

1. New Fed survey: 72% of Americans say their own finances are "doing at least okay" ... but just 22% say the national economy is good

2. In all 7 swing states, majority say (a) their state’s economy is good, and (b) the nat'l economy is bad

"Everything is terrible but I'm fine" has a lot of parts to it.

But one part of it is ppl have direct experience of their own life but draw impressions of the world from media, which is negative-biased and getting more negative over time.

https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1744856462571053203

Homicides are plummeting.

In all 10 cities with the most 2023 homicides—for which we have data—homicides are falling. The pandemic crime wave is crashing hard.

If these percentage decline numbers were percentage growth numbers, it would be the lede of every cable news show—> Link: wsj.com/us-news/murder…

New pod: The 4 dark laws of online engagement, according to psychologist @jayvanbavel

1. Negativity bias drives headline clicks
2. Extreme opinions drive in-group sharing
3. Out-group animosity drives engagement
4. "Moral-emotional" language goes viral

open.spotify.com/episode/5axHxi… 1. Negativity bias drives headline clicks

The most fundamental bias in news is not left, right, pro-corporate, or anti-tech. It's a bad toward catastrophic frames. An analysis of 105,000 different variations of news stories generating 5.7 million clicks found that "for a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%"

In the last 25 years:

1. The U.S. had the fastest decline in church attendance in history

2. Socializing time fell for all groups—but declined the most for those whose religiosity fell the most

I wrote about what America loses when it loses religion

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… One myth of religion in America is that, since secularism in the west is old, the great dechurching is an old phenomenon, too.

That's not quite right.

Church attendance was remarkably steady in the 20th century. This wave of religious un-affiliation is only 30 years old.

Austin is building housing like crazy.

Rents are down 7%.

But rather than frame this achievement as a win for renters—or for the arg that housing prices respond to supply growth—WSJ frames it pretty clearly as bad news across the board. Seems important to arguments about supply side growth and prices that Austin

(a) leads the nation is apartment construction as a share of supply, and
(b) rent prices have meaningfully declined

Political scientists recently coined the phrase "Need for Chaos."

Trust me that when you learn what the term means, you’ll see it everywhere: in polls, in Trump speeches, on Twitter, in Rogan clips.

Today I wrote about the new American nihilism.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Need for Chaos is a politics that transcends partisanship and polarization, as we understand it.

It's not about being a Republican. It's not about hating Democrats. It's about hating *both* parties, distrusting *every* institution, despising *any* individual branded The Elite.

I wrote about the collapse of face-to-face socializing in in the 21st century.

From 2003-2022, American adults reduced socializing by 30%. For teens, the decline was nearly 50%. There is no record of any period in history when ppl spent more time alone.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… In the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time with the American Time Use Survey to understand how socialization has declined and for whom it's fallen fastest. 5 points.

1) Socialization is falling—and loneliness rising—more for teens than other age groups (ht @jean_twenge)

For a few years, I've said education polarization is the most powerful force in politics.

I might need to amend that.

Gender polarization in Gen-Z is seismic and global. And these are sensitive years for political ideology, where ppl's views harden.

via @jburnmurdoch The gender polarization gap—young women becoming much more liberal; young men becoming a little more conservative—is also about education polarization.

American colleges now enroll roughly 6 women for every 4 men—the largest gender gap in history. And it's widening.

Every year, I ask some of the smartest scientists and tech ppl I know what they consider the most important, amazing, or merely interesting breakthroughs of last 365 days.

It's one of my favorite pieces to write all year.

Here is 2023's list:
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… The no.1 breakthrough of the year—the top choice from several ppl—is the new gene-editing therapy for sickle-cell disease.

It is the first FDA-approved CRISPR therapy in history, a landmark moment for a technology that could reshape medicine in the next few decades.

New pod: The biggest questions about ketamine sparked by Matthew Perry's overdose
- a brief history of the k-boom
- the amazing effects it (+ psilocybin & MDMA) have on depression
- the unsolved mystery of why it works
- the science of placebo and belief

open.spotify.com/episode/73kCbJ… This year, the @TheBorisLab published a much-discussed double-blind study where they gave ketamine or placebo to ppl under anesthesia.

The big surprise: A huge anti-depressant result in both groups

https://twitter.com/TheBorisLab/status/1654916428011798528

Thread: It sure looks like phones are making students around the world dumber

I wrote about the new PISA report on student test scores, which have been falling steadily in OECD countries since 2012 —>

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
It's not just that student scores have been declining in almost every western country since smartphone-social media penetration passed 50%.

It's also that the OECD finds a dramatic correlation between "leisure" phone use in school and *much* lower test scores.

“Marriage is the single most important differentiator when it comes to happiness.”

Good piece by Olga Khazan on the biggest lesson of 50 years of U.S. data ->

Some further thoughts about what this conclusion does and doesn't tell us ... theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…


Look hard at this chart.

Overall happiness has *clearly* declined since the 1970s.

But, as groups, both married people and unmarried people are happier than they were 50 years ago.

.... huh?

We're looking at a *massive* composition effect.

Degrowth, in brief.

What do we want? An abundance of high-quality housing, internet, green energy, excellent education, great jobs, and good wages.

How do we get it? Forcible reductions in the economic activity required to do basically any of that.

noahpinion.blog/p/degrowth-we-… The irony of degrowth emerging from the UK as a "radical" ideology is that there's nothing radical about British stagnation in the 21st century.

Degrowth has been the status quo for the UK for years. And it's sucked!

Keep your inability to raise living standards to yourself!

Elon's Blue Check experiment is amazing. Truly hilarious. Dude's conducting a berserk French Revolution—inviting his favorite royals back to the palace like five seconds after storming the Bastille I think there's a widespread misconception that most journalists deeply care about the status-optics of "Blue Checks" (it's actually a white check surrounded by blue, but anyway). The vast majority just want a way to reach ppl and filter out crazies.

https://twitter.com/chucknisga/status/1649203466622103552?s=20