Plain English with Derek Thompson

Today, we go wading in the murky waters of 2023 wellness trends. We’re talking cold plunges, fitness trackers, and recovery scores. And on the more prosaic side, the real science of coffee and alcohol.

Today’s guests are Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. They are the cofounders of The Growth Equation, a multimedia platform dedicated to health, excellence, and well-being. They are authors of ‘Peak Performance,’ ‘Do Hard Things,’ and ‘The Practice of Groundedness.’ And for quite a while I have considered them to be ideal guides in this hype-filled world of biomarkers, biohacks, and fitness.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_

Host: Derek Thompson

Guests: Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness

Producer: Devon Manze

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Today's show is a critical look at some of the most popular health fads of the moment, with return guests Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg, from the Growth Equation and the ‘FAREWELL’ podcast. We’re talking VO2 max, the benefits of sunlight, so-called morning and nighttime “stacks” (complex multivitamin routines for optimizing your energy and sleep), and Silicon Valley dreams of immortality. Plus, a rant from Derek about the supplement mania of independent media.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guests: Steve Magness & Brad Stulberg

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Links:

The ‘FAREWELL’ podcast: https://thegrowtheq.com/farewell-podcast/

The FDA's note on dietary supplement regulation: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/rumor-control/facts-about-dietary-supplements

Joe Rogan's supplement stack: https://jrelibrary.com/articles/joe-rogans-supplement-stack/

Huberman's sleep stack: https://www.nsdr.co/post/andrew-hubermans-sleep-cocktail

The Mayo Clinic on creatine: https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-creatine/art-20347591

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What do most people not understand about the news media? I would say two things. First: The most important bias in news media is not left or right. It’s a bias toward negativity and catastrophe. Second: That while it would be convenient to blame the news media exclusively for this bad-news bias, the truth is that the audience is just about equally to blame. The news has never had better tools for understanding exactly what gets people to click on stories. That means what people see in the news is more responsive than ever to aggregate audience behavior. If you hate the news, what you are hating is in part a collective reflection in the mirror. If you put these two facts together, you get something like this: The most important bias in the news media is the bias that news makers and news audiences share toward negativity and catastrophe. Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the host of the podcast Good on Paper, joins to discuss a prominent fake fact in the news — and the psychological and media forces that promote fake facts and catastrophic negativity in the press.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Jerusalem Demsas

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Links:

"The Maternal-Mortality Crisis That Didn’t Happen" by Jerusalem Demsas https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/no-more-women-arent-dying-in-childbirth/678486/

The 2001 paper "Bad Is Stronger Than Good" https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf

Derek on the complex science of masks and mask mandates https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/covid-lab-leak-mask-mandates-science-media-information/673263/

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Exercise is a conundrum. On the one hand, physical activity is clearly one of the best interventions for preventing physical disease and mental suffering. On the other hand, scientists don't really understand how it works inside the body or what exactly running, jumping, lifting, and squatting do to our tissues and organs. That's finally changing. Euan Ashley, a professor of genomics and cardiovascular medicine and the chair of the Stanford Department of Medicine, is a member of a new research consortium that studies rats and humans to understand the molecular changes induced by exercise. Today we talk about the earliest findings from this new consortium, how exercise might have disparate effects in men versus women, why nature’s most effective cardiovascular intervention also seems to be nature’s most effective mental health intervention, as well as whether it will one day be possible to identify the molecular basis of exercise precisely enough to develop exercise pills that give us the benefits of working out without the sweat.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Euan Ashley

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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Today’s episode is about the extraordinary decline in face-to-face socializing in America—and the real stakes of the country’s hanging-out crisis.

From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent.

Eric Klinenberg is a sociologist and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of several books on the rise of living alone and the decline of social infrastructure. His latest is _'_2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed.' And he's not afraid to challenge the popular notion of an epidemic of loneliness in America. “There is no good evidence that Americans are lonelier than ever," he has written. Today, Eric and I talk about teens and parenting, the decline of hanging out, why America sucks at building social infrastructure, and why aloneness isn’t always loneliness.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Eric Klinenberg

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/

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