Sign up for my new newsletter! (Link below) Also: Co-author of Abundance, host of Plain English, and contributing writer at The Atlantic.
Joined May 2009
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20 Jun 2025
Some personal news.
Today, I’m leaving The Atlantic after almost 17 years and moving my writing to Substack.
It would be convenient, for the purposes of crafting an exciting departure announcement, to have a dramatic exit story: a fight, a grievance, a shouting match with an editor that ended with me hurling a bunch of leather-backed Thoreau volumes across the open-plan office. That is not the case here.
I love The Atlantic, and I'll remain a contributing writer there. But after almost two decades at one publication, I wanted to write for myself. The things I've published that I'm most proud of—whether it was the original abundance agenda essay, or my piece on workism—emerged from a very personal expression of frustration, or confusion, or curiosity. I want to know what my thinking and writing is like if I lean into a more independent and personal writing life.
That's brought me to Substack, which is already home to an astonishing share of my overall reading. I'm excited to join their community and excited to build my own. The name of the newsletter should be easy to remember: Derek Thompson.
The newsletter will have three main pillars
1. Abundance
2. The frontier of science and technology—GLP1s, AI, biotech, energy breakthroughs—covered in a way that’s both curious and skeptical
3. The anti-social century & the social crises of anxiety and aloneness
Thanks to The Atlantic for 16.8 incredible years and thanks to everybody who follows me across the river.
- dt
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Derek Thompson retweeted
Was a nice surprise to see my work on fatherhood with @DKThomp cited in this weekend’s @nytimes @FrankBruni
nytimes.com/2026/06/15/opini…
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New pod: INSIDE THE MOST MIRACULOUS MONTH OF MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS IN ... YEARS? DECADES?
The two leading causes of death in America are heart disease and cancer. Nothing else comes close.
And in the last 4 weeks, we've gotten sensational news on unprecedented therapies that fight (even "cure") cardiovascular disease and take on previously "undruggable" cancers
I went deep with @matthewherper on:
- why the latest GLP1, retatrutide, works so well
- is ~everybody is going to be taking low-dose GLP1s in the next 10-20 years because of the side-effect profile?
- new evidence that GLP1s might significantly reduce some cancers
- daraxonrasib, the miraculous new pancreatic cancer vaccine, and why it seems to do the impossible
- promising, if experimental, new results for a one-and-done gene therapy to wipe out vast swaths of heart disease risk
- where is AI in all of this?
youtube.com/watch?v=Hwq6XM6o…
May 31
This has quietly been a miracle month in medicine.
In the last 5 weeks we’ve got news on:
- retatrutide, the triple agonist GLP-1 from Lilly, basically melting fat and body-wide inflammation at record levels
- RevMed’s new pancreatic cancer drug showing unprecedented abilities to extend life
- small trial of a one-and-done PCSK9 gene editing therapy for slashing LDL cholesterol
- Mayo’s AI-assisted radiology showing vastly improved cancer detection
- this new therapy for metastatic solid tumors
This stuff is at varying levels of evidence. Retatrutide is ~100% on its way, other stuff needs more clinical trial data. But put it together and we’re maybe on the verge of majorly reducing the mortality of heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in America.
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May 31
This has quietly been a miracle month in medicine.
In the last 5 weeks we’ve got news on:
- retatrutide, the triple agonist GLP-1 from Lilly, basically melting fat and body-wide inflammation at record levels
- RevMed’s new pancreatic cancer drug showing unprecedented abilities to extend life
- small trial of a one-and-done PCSK9 gene editing therapy for slashing LDL cholesterol
- Mayo’s AI-assisted radiology showing vastly improved cancer detection
- this new therapy for metastatic solid tumors
This stuff is at varying levels of evidence. Retatrutide is ~100% on its way, other stuff needs more clinical trial data. But put it together and we’re maybe on the verge of majorly reducing the mortality of heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in America.
May 31
This is actually insane.
97% of people taking the standard of care for metastatic solid tumor got worse by seven years.
But with lorlatinib, that number was only 45% in the same time!
This is an ENORMOUS jump in the quality of cancer care.
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New pod: INSIDE THE MOST MIRACULOUS MONTH OF MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS IN ... YEARS? DECADES?
The leading causes of death in America are heart disease and cancer. Nothing else comes close. And in the last 4 weeks, we've gotten sensational news on unprecedented therapies that fight cardiovascular disease and take on previously "undruggable" cancers.
I went deep with @matthewherper on:
- why retatrutide works so well and whether ~everybody is going to be taking GLP1s in the next 10-20 years
- new evidence that GLP1s might significantly reduce some cancers
- daraxonrasib, the miraculous new pancreatic cancer vaccine, and why it seems to do the impossible
- promising, if experimental, new results for a one-and-done gene therapy to wipe out vast swaths of heart disease risk
youtube.com/watch?v=Hwq6XM6o…
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The lore around Epstein's death is so reminiscent of the JFK assassination, in that, among other things:
a) the official story initially seems implausible (JE suicide/Oswald shot)
b) the fires of conspiracy are fanned by reports of bungled post-mortem procedure that makes it look like somebody is trying to hide something
c) exhaustive follow-up research seems to corroborate the initial story, satisfying exactly nobody
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"Every conspiracy theory is wrong" is not a fun way to go through life, nor is it 100% accurate, but to the extent that everybody needs a short-cut heuristic to make it through the news cycle, it's probably better than any other five-word bias
x.com/DKThomp/status/2064027…
Jun 8
If you want to have a good time in life, I think you should believe in some conspiracy theories. They're fun. Life is about having fun.
But if you want to be right, you should probably have a reflexive aversion to every conspiracy theory you hear. It's not that they're all wrong. It's more that the vast vast vast majority of them are incredibly stupid and don't really survive three seconds' thought (see post below for why it makes no sense for Karen Bass to rig an election to help a stronger candidate against her). More broadly, conspiracy theories almost always assume the extraordinary competency of a shadowy group of elites who are very good at keeping a secret. Haven't the last few decades proved that elites aren't that competent? Everybody accusing Karen Bass of expertly rigging the LA election on Twitter right now also thinks she sucks as mayor. What are the odds that the politician you hate, who you think sucks at everything, is exclusively good at rigging electoral outcomes to make you personally upset?
There's more to life than being right, so feel free to ignore the second paragraph. But people interested in being right should be much more reflexively judgmental of conspiracy theories.
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Derek Thompson retweeted
it's maybe(?) also obvious in hindsight that gpt-4o was uniquely problematic -- sycophantic etc -- but I think it's pretty wild that there’s such a marked increase in posts about therapy, companionship, & others that begins *almost immediately after the 4o release* in may 2024
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Very interesting Joseph Heath essay on the counter-intuitive—and counter-Yuval Harari, and counter-Sapiens—theory of human evolution
josephheath.substack.com/p/h…
Basically, Harari in Sapiens claims that intelligence (big brains) led to language, which led to cooperation and culture (myths, etc). So: big brains -> language -> cooperation, culture, and myth-making.
Heath points out that the opposite is more likely. For example, complex language isn't very useful without cooperation or culture. (What's the point of talking, if everybody is lying?)
Instead, he offers a nice summary of the Henrich thesis. Social learning and imitation likely came first. Then cultural imitation and cooperativeness became embedded in human nature. Groups with more prosocial norms norms dominate others, and human culture becomes more cooperative over time.
Then you get some runaway process—akin to the crazy growth of elk antlers, or long giraffe necks—where strong selection of the above leads to insane levels of complex, and even abstract, language and unrivaled animal intelligence.
I don't think this theory is necessarily settled science. But it generates a fun question for ppl interested in why humans are the way they are, which is something like: What would have to already be true for a group of animals, for complex language and intelligence to be useful, adaptive, and selected for, in that species?
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Derek Thompson retweeted
Jun 15
I'm hiring a Chief of Staff for @TheArgumentMag
I'm looking for a real partner to help me run a fast-growing magazine and build something brand new: a live events business that takes our fight for liberalism off the page and into rooms full of people.
The Argument is a media start-up dedicated to revitalizing liberalism through public debate.
The Argument is a full-time, in-person workplace based in Washington, DC. (Details at the link)
Join us. We're libbing out!
theargumentmag.com/p/were-hi…
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Derek Thompson retweeted
Jun 15
After US science funding cuts young biomedical scientists are
- less likely to remain in academia
(-22 percentage points)
- less likely to stay in the United States (-21 percentage points)
- less satisfied having pursued a PhD in science (-16 percentage points)
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A lot of the cultural cynicism about the US and international views of the US heading into the World Cup look really dumb right now.
The Scots took over Boston bars and sang "Take Me Home, Country Roads"
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Jun 13
Pretty neat
Jun 11
Together with UC Berkeley we are announcing the laser phase plate - a breakthrough in atomic resolution imaging. This is the brightest continuous wave laser in the world, 100 million times the intensity of the surface of the sun.
Phase contrast plays an important role in microscopy, but it was thought close to impossible for electron microscopy, where it would require interfering with an electron beam. Holger Mueller and Robert Glaeser proposed exactly this using a standing wave laser. It has taken over 15 years to make this a reality. Biohub partnered with UC Berkeley and Mueller to support this work and to engineer and build the technology.
Contrast has been the critical barrier to achieving atomic resolution imaging of the cell. In cryo-electron tomography, a cellular imaging technology that uses electron microscopy, the low contrast makes it impossible to resolve anything but the largest proteins within their cellular context. The laser phase plate removes that barrier.
With advances in AI this breakthrough in contrast will start to open up a new frontier in structural biology, that will allow us to see the molecular machines of the cell, and how they assemble into far more complex and dynamic systems, and understand how they work.
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Derek Thompson retweeted
Jun 13
Why do the best leaders fail at the most important job?
What do Marcus Aurelius, Bob Iger, Bill Belichick, and William Shawn have in common? Succession failure.
via @DKThomp
open.substack.com/pub/derekt…
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Jun 13
The Trump admin continues to treat AI like a screwdriver that is also enriched uranium:
That is, apparently advanced AI is such a normal technology that it’s crazy to limit chip exports to China but also such an abnormal technology that we can’t let British employees of NYC banks access it
Jun 13
Oh whoa, this Anthropic news is insane. The Commerce Department is placing both Mythos 5 and Fable 5 under the guise of US export controls, blocking access outside the US and foreign persons in the US.
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Derek Thompson retweeted
NEWS: US Justice Dept OKs $111B Paramount/Warner Bros Discovery deal, saying "the transaction is not likely to to result in harm to competition or American consumer"
would unite Paramount , HBO, Paramount Pix, Warner Bros, CBS & CNN
State AGs may sue to block
Text to follow:
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Derek Thompson retweeted
Jun 12
More people need to realize that 80-year-old Senators just PRETEND to run America. In actuality, they're full-time fundraisers. America is actually run by 30-year-old staffers who mainline X, TikTok, and Bluesky all day.
Jun 12
New pod: OLD-IGARCHY
I talked to @samuelmoyn about his new book GERONTOCRACY IN AMERICA and whether it is extremely and unforgivably ageist to be alarmed about several facts about the state of America, including but not limited to:
1. Boomers have so dominated American politics that we've had more presidents born in the summer of 1946 (three: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump) than born in all years after 1946 (one: Barack Obama, 1961).
2. In the S&P 500, chief executives are ten-times more likely to be over 70 years old than under 40.
3. Since 2000, households headed by adults older than 65 improved their median net worth by 42 percent, while older workers have increased their wages relative to younger workers by about 60% in that period
4. Today more than 50% of all federal spending -- through social security, medicare, and parts of medicaid -- is for the elderly, about 7x more than federal spending on Americans under 18
5. In many cases, NIMBY is frequently GNIMBY with a silent G for gerontocratic, given how frequently the loudest opposition to new housing comes from elderly homeowners blocking development that would make it easier to younger people to move
youtube.com/watch?v=l8Gvc9IA…
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Jun 12
New pod: OLD-IGARCHY
I talked to @samuelmoyn about his new book GERONTOCRACY IN AMERICA and whether it is extremely and unforgivably ageist to be alarmed about several facts about the state of America, including but not limited to:
1. Boomers have so dominated American politics that we've had more presidents born in the summer of 1946 (three: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump) than born in all years after 1946 (one: Barack Obama, 1961).
2. In the S&P 500, chief executives are ten-times more likely to be over 70 years old than under 40.
3. Since 2000, households headed by adults older than 65 improved their median net worth by 42 percent, while older workers have increased their wages relative to younger workers by about 60% in that period
4. Today more than 50% of all federal spending -- through social security, medicare, and parts of medicaid -- is for the elderly, about 7x more than federal spending on Americans under 18
5. In many cases, NIMBY is frequently GNIMBY with a silent G for gerontocratic, given how frequently the loudest opposition to new housing comes from elderly homeowners blocking development that would make it easier to younger people to move
youtube.com/watch?v=l8Gvc9IA…
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Derek Thompson retweeted
Jun 11
I don't know what Piketty, Stiglitz, and co. are smoking. Global poverty rates have never been lower. Progress on basic global health and wellbeing measures has been amazing over the past few decades. "End of the road"?!? Come again!?!
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
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