WHO AM I?
I’m a writer, podcaster, and author. Abundance, the book I wrote with Ezra Klein, is a #1 New York Times bestseller on American politics and liberalism. After 17 years as a staff writer at The Atlantic, I left to start my own thing here on Substack in the summer of 2025. (I’m still a contributing writer at the magazine.) I’m the founder and host of the “Plain English”podcast with the Ringer Podcast Network. My previous books are Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (2017), a national bestseller on the psychology of pop culture, and Derek Thompson On Work (2023), an anthology of my essays on the past and future of labor and technology. I live in Washington, D.C., with my wife, daughter, and dog Albie.
WHAT’S THIS NEWSLETTER ABOUT?
Abundance!
“To have the future we want, we have to build and invent more of what we need.” That’s the thesis of the book Abundance. In this newsletter, I want to deepen our reporting in the book—for example, on housing in America—and also extend the abundance ethos to other areas, such as health care, education, and welfare.
The frontier of science and technology
The world is filled with problems we cannot solve without more science and technology. We don’t know how to cure most cancers. We don’t understand the basis of common diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. We don’t know how to efficiently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
I don’t think you can really trace the most important stories in the next decade without being utterly fascinated by the frontiers of science and technology, especially artificial intelligence, GLP-1 drugs, clean energy abundance, and biotech. I have sources across all these fields, and I’ll do my best to balance my profound enthusiasm for these topics with my skeptical assumption that tech boosterism is easy but progress is hard.
The “anti-social century”
Americans spend more time alone than any period in recorded history. Face-to-face socializing has plunged more than 20 percent in the last 20 years. Coupling rates—that is, the share of folks in long-term relationships—are collapsing in the U.S. and around the world.
These trends aren’t just increasing loneliness. They’re rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity, with far-reaching consequences for our politics, our economy, our happiness, our communities, and even our understanding of reality.
WHY SHOULD I SUBSCRIBE?
Free subscribers will receive:
Essays on abundance, science, technology, media, and more
Videos with my favorite people thinking about these topics
If you become a paid subscriber, you can:
Read subscriber-only essays, where I’ll share more personal thoughts on abundance, the news, sports, fatherhood, or whatever else I’m thinking about
Talk to me! Write comments (that I really do promise to read) and send me questions about my work, which I’ll answer in subscriber-only AMA articles
Support my investigation of the ideas that matter most
Thanks for reading!
DT
