Derek Thompson
speaker
564 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 24 Jul
Derek Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
There's some really interesting studies, for example, that have asked people in commutes in Chicago and New York,
They've said, do you think you want to talk to a stranger during a commute?
And pretty much everyone says, fuck no.
Like, please don't make me talk to a stranger on my commute.
That sounds like something close to hell.
But then they incentivize it.
They offer some people some money to participate in a trial, and they randomize some people to talk to strangers.
At the end of this train ride, they ask people, the ones who talked to strangers and the ones who didn't talk to strangers, how do you feel right now?
How happy do you feel?
And the people who have been, in some cases, forced, a little bit maybe against their will, to socialize just a little bit more than they might have initially demanded are consistently happier than those who spent time just locked in to themselves.
And so one conclusion from this, I think, is that we over-demand solitude.
In one day, that's not particularly significant.
But over time, it adds up.
Because if I told you that there was like a pill that would make you 10% happier for the next 15 minutes to hour, I think a lot of people would take that pill.
That pill is social connection.
It makes us feel better to be around other people and to feel connected to other people.
And so what I say toward the end of the initial cover story is, yeah, you could argue that this experiment on the Chicago commuter rail, on the L, it only increased someone's happiness for one 15-minute period of time.
But life is just one 15-minute period of time after another, after another, after another.
That's what life is.
And so I feel like we are disconnecting ourselves from happiness when we disconnect ourselves from other people.
Showing 121–140 of 564 · page 7 of 29
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