Derek Thompson

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

Sneaky big winner of the 2026 midterms could be Obama. Won a whole news cycle with a joke. Made Republicans look like fools acting like Cheesecake Factory foyers are as sacred as an American flag. Ossoff is crushing with a Millennial Obama act, El Sayed has mended bridges, and here’s Talarico updating the 2004 DNC speech vibes for 2026.

I mean look, AI is hard. I’ve been wrong about many aspects of it and most of the smartest people I follow have been wrong about *something.* But Ed has been claiming peak AI for more than two years. This is almost literally like covering the Intel IPO in 1971 by bringing on somebody who claimed that Moore’s Law (written in 1965) had peaked in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970. It’s not illegal to do this, but your source is confidently commenting on a phenomenon his previous commentary considered impossible.

“They mobilized a whole of government response to my joke. Not to inflation. To a joke.”

it's important to reject the belief that mass behavior can be understood. it cannot. for example, liberty mutual ran "Limu Emu and Doug" commercials for 7 years bc analyses presumably showed that there exists a significant number of people who bought LiMu insurance *on the basis of that ad campaign.* and that's not something that anybody will ever be able to explain

There's a leftist/academic thing to constantly emphasize both the moral brutality of capitalist growth in the US and the surprising growth under brutal communism in China. I think it's good to see the full picture of reality, but the emphasis is …. notable. Leftists/academics are never tweeting about how “did you know America’s economic growth was surprisingly robust when child labor was legal?”

If your political movement depends on millionaires pretending they are offended by the suggestion that the Cheesecake Factory is chintzy, you’re cooked. Like, that is the literal death rattle.