Have smartphones destroyed a generation?

That was the title of a viral essay by Dr. Jean Twenge in The Atlantic in 2017, which first catapulted her work into the spotlight. For years before The Anxious Generation, Dr. Twenge (who now collaborates with Jonathan Haidt) was raising the alarm about social media use and teen mental health. Now, Dr. Twenge has released clear guidelines for parents on how to manage the technology in their kids’ lives. In this episode, we interrogate the evidence linking anxiety and depression to social media use and hear about the non-negotiable solutions Dr. Twenge lays out in her new book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. 

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Roughly 20 years ago, Digg was known as the homepage of the internet. The social and news platform was so big that Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit, referred to it as “the enemy.” But things have changed, and this year, the site's original founder Kevin Rose teamed up with Ohanian to revamp and relaunch Digg.

Now, in this age of AI, the new Digg is betting on the long-term value of real human connection. Kevin Rose tells Henry his plans to make a social platform that might actually be good for humanity: from how Digg will authenticate a "heartbeat" behind its users, to its ambitions to pay moderators and become a “living breathing social Substack.” 

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Certain personality traits can determine how happy you are, sometimes more than income and IQ. That’s according to author and journalist Olga Khazan. Hoping to shed some of her more neurotic personality traits, Khazan recently set out to change her personality for the better… and succeeded. Today, Khazan tells us how. Plus: we hear about another recent discovery — why Khazan thinks she might be “doomed to be a tradwife.” 

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Anne Applebaum is an award-winning historian and journalist who studies democracy and dictatorship. Her latest book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, explores how autocracies are working together to undermine democracy across the globe. Fortunately, Applebaum also considers how democracies can maintain their power against the siege of authoritarianism. Today, why is democracy worth fighting for and how can it be protected in the U.S? Plus: Poland as a guide for how to reverse years of democratic backsliding.

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Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has set out to fix the broken U.S. healthcare system, and he’s starting with drug prices. In 2022, Cuban launched the online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, which aims to sell generic drugs at huge discounts. He explains the business, how it’s going, and why expensive hospital visits are next on his list. Plus, we get his takes on sports gambling, Silicon Valley’s turn to the right, and AI. 

Note: this episode was recorded before President Trump announced TrumpRx. On X, Cuban gave it a B.

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Arthur Brooks has spent years studying the exact components of a happy life. And now, the bestselling author and Harvard professor has collected his top findings into a new book: The Happiness Files. This week, we ask him how to worry less about money, find your calling, and what research tells us all happy people have in common. 

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Dr. Jessica Knurick is a rare kind of academic: she's also very good at social media, and has recently gone viral for her criticisms of the MAHA movement. A registered dietitian with a PhD in nutrition science, Dr. Knurick says MAHA is right that Americans are notoriously unhealthy, but the movement has the solutions all wrong. This week, we turn to Dr. Knurick for the facts: what do we know about what is good for us, what small things can we do to be healthier every day, and how do we start improving the health of all Americans?

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According to a recent report from data collected in August, when prompted on divisive topics in the news, the top 10 AI chatbots spread false information 35% of the time — and even spread fake stories intentionally planted by Russian disinformation campaigns.

So why are LLMs vulnerable to disinformation and how have Russian operatives have learned to exploit them?

This week, an explanation and solution from the co-founders of NewsGuard, which tracks disinformation online and issued this startling report: Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Steve Brill, the founder of Court TV and the American Lawyer magazine.

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Confidence comes easy for Kara Swisher. It’s one of the reasons she walked out of class in second grade (she knew everything), and later built a career as one of Silicon Valley’s most feared and respected journalists.

Kara tells us her secrets to success, why she’s optimistic about the future of media vs. AI, and why so many powerful figures in tech still manage to maintain a victim mentality. Plus: how Steve Jobs would have handled President Donald Trump.

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When will it be relatively normal to request a ride from a flying taxi? Within the next decade, at least according to our guests today: Stuart Simpson, CEO of Vertical Aerospace, and Jason Mudrick, the company’s largest shareholder and founder of Mudrick Capital Management. Vertical Aerospace is one of three companies trying to make flying taxis a reality now. This week, Stuart and Mudrick tell Henry about the aircraft the company is already flying and what it will take to bring it to market. 

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