The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

Inside the Anti-Social Century — with Derek Thompson

July 23, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Inside the Anti-Social Century — with Derek Thompson

The average American now spends 25 percent less time socializing in person than they did just two decades ago. Americans under 25 spend 70 percent less time at parties than they did in 1998, the year Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone. "It's like we've had a socializing recession on top of a socializing recession," Derek Thompson says. His argument, developed in a cover story for The Atlantic and expanded in conversation with Scott Galloway, is that the problem isn't simply loneliness. It's that solitude has become comfortable, cheap, and abundant — and that we may not feel lonely enough to do anything about it.

The mechanism: over-demanding solitude

Thompson frames the last century in two halves. For the first 60 years, every indicator of social belonging rose: people spent more time together, joined more clubs, hosted more parties, wrote more greeting cards. Then, starting in the 1960s, all of those indicators began declining simultaneously. The internet was supposed to reverse this — a new revolution in socializing that would replace lost real-world connection. Instead, it accelerated the decline.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (05:27) **The Core Thesis: The Antisocial Century** - Derek Thompson introduces the idea that the crisis isn't loneliness, but that solitude has become too comfortable, cheap, and abundant.
  • 2 (09:40) **The Downsides: Individual Happiness and Political Chaos** - Thompson explains why the shift matters, on both a personal and societal level.
  • 3 (14:00) **Isolation as a Driver of "Going Crazy"** - Scott Galloway posits that isolation removes the guardrails that relationships provide, expanding the Overton window toward unhealthy beliefs.
  • 4 (18:56) **The Economic Forces: Baumol's Cost Disease** - Thompson explains why the physical world has become relatively expensive compared to the digital world.
  • 5 (22:45) **Young Men as "Monks in the Casino"** - Thompson describes the strange inversion of risk where young men take fewer social/offline risks but more financial/online risks.
  • 6 (25:58) **The Transference of Risk** - Galloway and Thompson discuss how the risk impulse has been cleanly transferred from offline to online.
  • 7 (31:42) **Solves: Public Awareness and Physical Infrastructure** - Thompson outlines two primary solutions to the antisocial century.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Derek Thompson Scott Galloway

Show Notes

In a conversation recorded live on Substack, Scott Galloway and Derek Thompson discuss the rise of the “antisocial century” — and what our growing isolation is doing to our happiness, relationships, and politics. 


They also explore the optimization of everyday life, young men’s retreat into the digital world, AI’s economic bubble, and whether moderate drinking has been unfairly caught in the wellness backlash. Plus, Derek explains the rise of democratic socialism and offers three simple rules for dating in the antisocial century.


Subscribe to Prof G+ to join our next livestream at profgmedia.com. And if you're not already reading Derek’s work, check out his Substack.

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