Derek Thompson
@DKThomp
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Sign up for my new newsletter! (Link below) Also: Co-author of Abundance, host of Plain English, and contributing writer at The Atlantic.
Washington, D.C.
Joined May 2009
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.
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Generate videos in just a few seconds. Try Grok Imagine, free for a limited time.
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From today’s newsletter on fads, fashions, and pickleball .
derekthompson.org
In 2019, pickleball was half as popular as badminton. Last year, it was more popular than baseball. What does its rise tell us about fads, fitness, and culture?
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The law of familiar surprises is the internal mechanism that drives most culture. Baby names are infinite, free, and have little corporate advertising. But they follow fashion cycles just like everything else bc the general preference for optimal novelty drives change.
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Today’s post: The science of fashion and cultural change, starting with an analysis of the fastest growing sport in modern US history: pickleball. In 2019, pickleball was half as popular as badminton. In 2024, it was more popular than baseball.
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RT @ProfileBooks: We're so proud to see #Abundance: How We Build a Better Future longlisted for the @FT and @Schroders Business Book of the….
ft.com
Tales of geopolitics and growth — plus a rare novel — are among this year’s contenders
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RT @FareedZakaria: On GPS, @ 10am & 1pm ET today on @CNN: I’ll discuss the Trump–Putin summit w/ fmr Biden Nat’l Security Advisor Jake Sull….
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trending impressively toward a future where everybody is super hot, and nobody is having sex
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Gilded Socialism.
Trump is doing the part of socialism where you destroy the economy's long-term potential with central planning, but skipping the part where you take care of the poor and the sick.
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RT @Birdyword: BIG NEWS: My book, The Land Trap, is coming out on Nov 4! I've been fascinated by this topic for years. The book tells the s….
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So, two thirds of Americans under 35 now say that moderate drinking is bad for their health. In a vacuum, there's nothing here to get mad at. Not drinking alcohol is, clearly, good for your liver. But this is really important to say: The evidence that moderate drinking—say, ~1
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RT @sarthakgh: .@DKThomp: "Americans are working out and playing sports more than any period for which we have good data. The surge in fitn….
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The bad news is . deep Medicaid cuts and declines in childhood vaccine uptake are not exactly optimistic predictors of American health.
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The better news is that this is happening at a time when exercise seems to be increasing for many groups, especially the young and old .
derekthompson.org
Pilates is surging. Gyms are packed. Americans are working out more than ever. A graph-by-graph guide to the fitness revolution sweeping the country
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Good news is in short supply, but I think this is the right answer to the Q: What's the best news in America right now?. This seems to be the first period on record when every major cause of premature death—overdose, auto accident, homicide, obesity—is falling *at the same time*
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i have no idea if this post is sincere or satirical, but if you were trying to mock the fainting-couch vibes of online taylor swift fandom, i don't think you could do better than this
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3. The Pilates takeover. America's fitness habits have changed significantly since the pandemic. COVID decimated sweaty group-exercise classes, such as SoulCylcle and CrossFit, and Pilates and yoga have surged in their place.
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2. The 20-year surge in American fitness is being led by two groups: Gen Z and seniors, especially older women. For young ppl, the fitness boom has coincided with—I would hesitate to say "caused"—their retreat from real-world connection. Wild graph -->
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