Derek Thompson

Every week, I save dozens of screenshots of charts, essay passages, science and economics papers, and tweets.

Everybody knows about the decline in birthrates. Fewer people understand why—or just how significantly it could transform society in the next few decades.

Donald Trump did not invent political corruption. But he may be accelerating something more dangerous: the collapse of universal moral standards into a culture of endless special exceptions.

Why is the birthrate declining in every country on Earth? Why has the number of births declined everywhere, all at once?

Suddenly everybody is freaking out about the cost of AI. Might they have a point?

The great AI cost panic of 2026 is upon us

Republicans never defend Trump's corruption on the merits. Their lot in life is just to serve up anti-moral excuses for his repeated acts of immorality.

There are two problems with the famous “male loneliness crisis”—the loneliness part and the male thing.

Raider star Maxx Crosby says he's moved on from a long-stalled deal that would have sent him to the Ravens, insisting he wants to be in Las Vegas as he rehabs a knee injury and prepares for a new coaching staff under Klint Kubiak.

I think the best way to describe the problem of value capture is that when you're value captured, you're outsourcing your values. Instead of developing your values on your own, you are taking them off the rack. You're taking them in a particular formulation that comes from somewhere else, that has other people's interests embedded in it.”