Derek Thompson

Substack author. Plain English podcast host. Abundance co-author. Contributing writer at The Atlantic.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

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

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

No joke, this is what Trump took from us. I miss the shouting about whether arugula is a communist salad leaf

[Huzzah @huzzahmpls]

@DKThomp Dijon mustard! [Passion Pit starts playing] Arugula! [Chairlift's Bruises starts playing]

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

The whole Cheesecake Factory thing is such a pre-2016 nostalgia trip. I almost forgot this is what political discourse was for years, manufactured rage about beige suits and Obama maybe being too fancy. The whole thing might as well be scored by MGMT.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Your boss Obama’s joke is Cheesecake Factory has a cheap & garish design. Most normal Americans consider Cheesecake to be a high end, expensive place to eat reserved for special occasions. You guys are tone deaf. And, yes, I’m clearly too dumb to comprehend your brilliance too.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

@huzzahmpls Exactly this.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

@lionel_trolling Neurodivergent people can be psychotic ofc but also yes

[Sonny Bunch @SonnyBunch]

Two things I think happened around the same time: 1.) RT made a concerted effort to increase the number of accredited critics and 2.) 2014/2015 marks the moment where poptimsm more or less took over as the reigning critical ethos.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

@CentralUnplan “Presented as if she were a genius”

She is never humbly revealing the limits of her technology’s potential!

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

At the very very least:

If you think she didn’t get the joke…

Isn’t it remarkable that Holmes presented as a genius in every high-stakes encounter in which counterparties needed to believe in her genius … and then, after being caught, presented as an idiot in every context in which pretending to be an idiot would be convenient?

Isn’t that kind of interesting?

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

It’s a very good movie but if your takeaway is that Elizabeth Holmes might be a neurodivergent victim I think you have forcibly disconnected yourself from reality.

More specifically, she *obviously* gets The Who’s on First joke—and is profoundly motivated to pretend she doesn’t.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

https://t.co/WnmQht8opa

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

@deepfates Thank you!!

[Benjamin Todd @ben_j_todd]

this would be the first significant empirical data showing AI is reducing employment, will be keen to see what economists make of it

[Josh Barro @jbarro]

I had forgotten about these texts (and also how Sunny Balwani’s response to a long string of them was just “OK”)

[Sar Haribhakti @sarthakgh]

"You Can See Everything is a film about the tension between two modes of deception. Holmes uses deceit to tell big lies, and Fielder uses conceit to tell strange truths. The film ends with a strangely moving shot of them playing together in the ocean. Maybe this is just another joke, with the documentarian drowning the last morsels of his reliability as a narrator. Or maybe, in the end, there’s something honest happening in the water, as two masters of artifice see in each other that rarest thing: an unerring commitment to the bit."

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

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.

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Two and a half years from this.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

i dont think they fell in love, but clearly the goodbye scene at the car is played to make it seem like they have some kind of bond

the final shot, to me, is doing several things. it's revealing an intimacy we didnt see before, it's relaying his unreliability/his being enmeshed in the subject of his investigation. the context seems important: Amanda has just said his views of elizabeth are complicated and maybe he's protecting her

[SemiAnalysis @SemiAnalysis_]

The most mind blowing stat we've seen so far is this:

"As of June 30, 2026, we had raised an aggregate of $141.1 billion of capital and had cash and cash equivalents of $112.4 billion and short-term investments of $19.3 billion."

That means to date, they have burned 9.7b, they are growing at a rapid pace, and are profitable on an operating income basis as of the June quarter! This is likely the most efficient scaling of a business in the history of capitalism.
https://t.co/bWYbqKOMDN

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

OMFG

[Rai ⏹️ @rai_sur11]

This post radicalized me into hosting a dinner party.

[Jason Furman @jasonfurman]

I'm thrilled to be launching Econvitals today. It's been the main way in which I have been tracking and understanding the economy over the last several months. And I decided I might as well share it with all of you--for free.

Has a combo of website, email lists & social media.

[Ara Kharazian @arakharazian]

The best part of my job is working with writers I've admired for years. Thank you @DKThomp for having me!

Listen for our conversation about cracks in the AI thesis.