Business Insider recently told its reporters they could use AI to write first drafts of their stories. It was a notable decision by editor-in-chief Jamie Heller, and made BI one of the first mainstream media outlets to embrace AI. We ask Heller what exactly AI is being used for in the BI newsroom. Plus: what skillsets still feel way out of ChatGPT’s reach, and why this is still a good time to get into journalism.

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John Harris, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Politico, is a short-term pessimist and long-term optimist. In this episode, we appeal to his optimism and ask how the US can recover from its current politics of contempt. Harris shares his analysis of President Trump as the most successful third-party candidate in American history, casts doubt on the fantasy of the “rational center” candidate, and considers what it might take for both parties to present a strong vision for the future.

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In the 1990s, Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler did something her colleagues at Harvard called “crazy:” she decided to work with a senator named Bernie Sanders on healthcare reform. Dr. Woolhandler had already founded an advocacy group called Physicians for a National Health Program, which declared the for-profit healthcare system broken and proposed one solution: single-payer national health insurance. (Or, as Sanders calls it, Medicare for all.) 

Dr. Woolhandler, now a distinguished professor at Hunter College, says this solution is more urgent than ever. Our healthcare costs are soaring and people are only getting sicker. Today we ask Dr. Woolhandler: how did we get here, why is a single-payer system the only answer, and how can it be feasibly implemented?

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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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