What A Day - Americans Should Be Happy, But They're Not

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

It's rather obvious Americans have not exactly been … cheerful for the last few years. And it's showing up in the data – the General Social Survey, the Consumer Sentiment Survey from the University of Michigan, the World Happiness Report, and even the Federal Reserve all report that Americans are less happy than they were a decade ago. Whether that's with their jobs, the economy, the state of the world – no matter the metric, Americans are not having it. To find out why we're feeling down, we spoke with Derek Thompson. He's the co-author of the book "Abundance," and he writes a popular Substack called, well, Derek Thompson.And in headlines, President Donald Trump is once again threatening Iran via Truth Social, House Speaker Mike Johnson talks about the administration's priorities, and Taiwan's president stresses the importance of arms purchases from the United States.Show Notes: Check out Derek's piece –https://tinyurl.com/zzsjpf7a Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Monday, May 18th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day. A show enjoying this response from former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's corporate road trip reality show adventure. Here is Buttigieg on CNN Sunday discussing the time he too took a road trip. I love road trips. I love America. I actually took a taxpayer-funded road trip lasting about seven months. It was in Afghanistan. Sean Duffy, of course, never went to Afghanistan, but he did spend time as a lumberjack before going on the real world Boston, where he compared a black woman to Hitler.

On today's show, President Donald Trump continues to threaten Iran via social media. How presidential. And Trump debuts a new superlative for one of his critics. The worst Republican congressman in history. Place your bets on who that might be in the comments. But let's start with happiness, or a lack of their own. of. It's easy to say that Americans have not exactly been cheerful for the last few years. It's even showing up in the data. The general social survey, the consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan, the World Happiness Report, and even the Federal Reserve all say that Americans are less happy than they were a decade ago. Whether that's about their jobs,

the economy, the state of the world, no matter the metric, Americans are not having it. The question is, why? Why, after roughly 50 years of being, a relatively happy country, have we collectively fallen into a happiness ditch? I'm sure you've got receipts as to why you're not thrilled about the state of things right now. Like, the president of the United States wants taxpayers to fund a fancy White House ballroom while we're at war with a country for reasons that keep changing. But this trap in unhappiness has lasted through both the Biden and Trump administrations. So, what's going on?

To find out, I spoke to Derek Thompson. He's host of the podcast, Plain English, an author of a self-titled substack, where he wrote about America's record-breaking sadness. Derek, welcome back to Waday. Great to be here. Thank you. So let's start out with the focus of your piece. Americans are unhappy and have been for several years. Why? This is a great question. This is kind of the mystery that I was setting out to investigate. I'm not entirely sure why. And the title of the piece is if America is so rich, you know, how it get so sad. And the reason why I wanted to frame its wealth and its sadness, is that typically when you look at surveys, people are happier when they're richer. Countries are

happier when they're richer. Countries get happier over time as they get richer. America in the 2020s is a pretty rich country. We've done much better than Europe in terms of keeping up with GDP growth after the pandemic. There are more people moving into the upper middle class. This old, like, economists saw that, oh, the richer you get, the happy you are. It doesn't seem to explain this particular mystery. And so that rules in other suspects, I suppose. I mean, I sort of thought about this a little bit like a murder mystery. Like here we have the dead body. The dead body is the fact that Americans have been historically, historically sad in the 2020s. And, you know, like I guess I suppose, like a sort of criminal investigator, I wanted to find culprits that fit the crime. And most importantly,

that means fitting the timing of the crime. So what has happened in the last five or six years in America that could possibly explain this? I believe there was a pandemic of some kind. Indeed. I think we do have to begin with the fact that there was a pandemic, a very bad one, 1.5 million people died, and I think it's important to begin with the biological fact that not only are lots of people, missing people in their family, missing their children, their parents, their loved ones, their friends, but also this biological force still lives with us. Long COVID is real. I am quite certain that it is real, and so maybe long COVID is a part of this. I just don't think that it explains everything. I think that America is much healthier today than it was in 2020,

2020, and yet we have in some cases gotten considerably less happy over time. So that leads me to thinking about the sort of second chapter of the pandemic. If the first chapter was a biological crisis, the coronavirus itself, I think of the second chapter of the pandemic, which was practically as global as the biological chapter itself, is the economic chapter. And as you saw both rising costs for things like homes or groceries, plus rising interest rates for things like loans and mortgages, it just makes it much more expensive to live. And so the second thing you have to look at is the fact that maybe Americans are so upset about the 2020s

because they've spent the last few decades expecting really low, quite tame inflation. And by my calculation, some math that I did for this story, so I encourage people who actually understand math to maybe double-check my work, the consumer price index has basically tripled in the rate of price growth in the 2020s compared to the last few decades, which basically means, I don't over-complicate this, prices have risen for everyday items and for homes two to three times as quickly this decade as they did in previous decades. And this basically made a lot of Americans feel really unhappy. Derek, I have to ask because we're talking about a pretty amorphous subject, which is happiness. When we measure happiness, when we look at these surveys of

happiness, and you should know that I am a World Happiness Index truther, what are we talking about? What does happiness actually mean? Because I feel like if you ask people, are you happy, you're going to get an answer that's actually more about stuff they have going on than some sort of like objective like, well, yes, here and here and here, and here. So what are we talking about? We're talking about subjective well-being. And maybe the most important word in the concept of subjective well-being is that it's subjective, right? Different people are going to have different definitions of happiness.

Different people are going to define their happiness differently. Like if I'm having a bad day and my mood is bad, and, you know, Gallup or the general social survey calls me and says, are you happy? Maybe I'll think about my mood, in which case I'll say I'm unhappy, or maybe I'll think about like the fact that I like my job, the fact that I think I have a beautiful family, and I'll sort of rise above my mood and answer questions about sort of my station in life. So it's absolutely possible that this is a squishy subject. But when you're dealing with a squishy subject, what you want is data that goes back a long, long time. The general social survey goes back decades. The Consumer Sentiment Survey by the University of Michigan goes back

60, 70 years. So we can compare the way that Americans today are describing their happiness to the way they were describing it in the 2010s, 2000s, 1980s, 1950s. And here we really do see in practically every single survey a consistent downturn in all the surveys. And so that leads me to believe that, yes, we are asking about something subjective. But we're also looking at a range of objective declines in well-being. So I do think there is a there there, you could say. You were talking about prices. And I was interested because you make the point, as you have done, that the U.S. economy has actually been pretty solid post-COVID. You argue that American unhappiness is not because of income inequality. And I'm sure if you put that on Twitter or blue sky,

you get a lot of people and perhaps people who are listening to this who would disagree with you on that front. So if the issue, isn't income inequality. And you also mentioned in the piece, which I highly recommend everyone reads, it's probably not smartphones. There are a host of other issues that it could be. And I think the real question, because this isn't a murder mystery, we're still alive, thank God, what do you think would make Americans happy? Well, I think Americans want a combination of affordability and aspiration. they want to feel like the life that they lived yesterday is still affordable. And they want to feel like the life they hope to live tomorrow next year, next decade, is attainable.

And I think inflation crushes both affordability and aspiration. And that only makes it feel like the life you're used to living is getting more and affordable. But it also makes a lot of people, especially young people, feel like the life they hope to live in 10 years is unattainable. That's what we're seeing, for example, in the housing market. What do high interest rates do? Well, they don't just increase the cost of money. That's a dry, cold, clinical economy's description of what's going on. They simply make it three times more expensive to buy a home and afford that mortgage. If interest rates triple, then the interest rate on the same mortgage is going to triple. And so you have a lot of young people who feel like that home they wanted to buy, that they were

hanging some vision of their future on, they were hanging their marriage on, their future of a family, on, well, if that becomes less affordable, then that can absolutely, I think, lead to feelings of sadness. The way I describe this phenomenon in the piece is I say, I call sort of my group of explanations the permademic because I feel like so many aspects for the pandemic simply did not end. And the first one is the sheer shittiness that is inflation. The second is that I do think that in times of crisis, it's helpful to believe in something bigger than you, that's external to you, that is protecting you. In a way, that's what religion

can offer, something bigger than you, something that can protect you. In a way, that's what institutions have historically offered, this idea that someone's holding the reins, someone understands how to fix this. But we live in a period, and I think this is especially true in the last six years, where faith in institutions is plummeting, while faith in individualism is rising. And that faith in individualism doesn't just mean that people are like self-confident. It often means, I think, that people cherish their individualism by removing themselves from society. I've written a lot about the fact that there's this phenomenon that I call the antisocial century, that people spend a historic amount of time by themselves, an historically low amount

of time socializing with other people. And so this decline in faith in institutions has coincided with this kind of toxic individualism that I think makes people less resilient to the bad things in their life. And then the last thing that I would say that I think is important is that, like, it really has been like one shitty decade of one crisis after another. Like it's been one war after another. We get out of Afghanistan. We get into Ukraine. There's Gaza.

There's Iran. It's been one existential crisis after another. There's a pandemic. It's climate change. No, it's AI. It's going to take all of our jobs. And so on top of the fact that there's inflation. And on top of the fact that the home isn't affordable.

And on top of the fact that they don't trust institutions and spend more time by themselves. Every time they pick up their phone, what do they see that's happening in the world? One thing that sucks after another. And so I think that all of the fact that's, of these things together is sort of like the stew in which American unhappiness is brewing. Derek, as always, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. That was my conversation with Derek Thompson, host of Plain English, an author of the

Derek Thompson substack. We'll link to his piece in the show notes. I'm actually really happy to get to do the show and hear from you. So leave us some comments, and if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. more to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by bookshop.org.

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internationally. Be smart. Get Wise. My husband and I have used Wise when we've traveled out of the country and it's been a total game changer. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. Terms the conditions apply. Here's what else we're following today. because he tried to destroy Trump. Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary race on Saturday. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC's meet the press Sunday that the lesson from Cassidy's loss was clear. Never, ever, oppose Trump on anything. Massey's going to lose because he's trying to destroy the agenda.

You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him, you're going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump. Ew. Cassidy finished behind state representatives. Representative Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump. Cassidy, who was a doctor, had lost favor with Trump back in 2021, when he voted to convict the then-president of insurrection for fomenting the January 6th riots. Cassidy had also opposed the administration's decision-making on vaccines. On true social, Trump celebrated because, of course he did,

writing that Cassidy's, quote, "'Disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it's nice to see that his political career is over.'" Trump is also hoping to oust Kentucky Republican representative and frequent adversary Thomas Massey in his Tuesday primary. Massey is facing Ed Galrine, a former Navy seal endorsed by the president. Their race has become the most expensive primary in history, with more than $25 million in ad spending. On Sunday morning, Trump called Massey, quote, the worst Republican congressman in history on true social and told Kentucky to, quote,

vote the bum out on Tuesday. Someone needs to Google, Jesse Hale. But Nazi hopes he can survive Trump's ire. Here he is speaking to CNN's Manu Raju on the steps of the Capitol on Thursday. What message would it send the country if you won on Tuesday? If I win, that you can come up here and you can vote for your constituents instead of for your party all the time. And if you lose, what message would that send? If I lose, I think it's going to disenfranchise a large part of the coalition that was formed to give us the majority here and to give us the White House.

Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, all the United, Oregon, all the United States, all of the United States. and Pennsylvania all have primaries on Tuesday. President Trump returned from a summit in Beijing with China's President Xi Jinping on Friday with a clear edict. Don't support Taiwan. Trump had already approved a record-breaking $11 billion arms package to Taiwan in December, including missiles, drones, artillery systems, and military software. Taiwan's president stressed the importance of arms purchases from the United States on Sunday.

This comes after Trump's interview with Brett Beyer on Fox News Friday. He said he has yet to greenlight a new $14 billion arms package to Taiwan and that it, quote, depends on China. But you're waiting on approving billions of dollars of weapons for Taiwan. Is that moving forward? Well, I haven't approved it yet. We're going to see what happens. What are you looking for?

I may do it. I may not do it. Yeah, what's your hinge point? Well, I'm not going to say that, but I may do it. I may not do it. Trump also called the potential arms sale, quote, a very good negotiating chip for us. A negotiating chip.

For what? President Trump, or at least his fingers, must be tired. The leader of the free world used his sausages to type on true social Sunday, quote, For Iran, the clock is ticking, and they better get moving fast, or there won't be anything left of them. Time is of the essence. Trump's ominous threats to Iran aren't new, but they are exasperating. The ceasefire remains tenuous as diplomatic efforts for a more durable peace to faltered. Again, this war was supposed to last four weeks. House Speaker Mike Johnson aired a lot of opinions on Sunday ahead of the prayer event on the National Mall.

Here he is speaking with Fox News host, Shannon Bream. You know that generally the incumbent is punished in the midterms, and people are feeling very uncertain about how they're doing personally. How do you campaign against that? Well, this relates to the last segment. We're talking about the street of Hormuz. Really, all points lead back to that. Gas prices are too high because of that,

and then that has an effect on how goods are transported to the grocery store and all the rest. So as soon as we get that straightened out, we will get back to the kitchen table issues. So what I'm hearing is the Trump administration needs to fix the problem it created abroad before it can address problems for Americans here at home. Hoping Mike Johnson prayed about that. And that's the news. Before we go, today's most obnoxious political media figures don't appear out of nowhere. In the latest episode of This Fucking Guy,

hysterie hosts Erin Ryan and Alyssa Master Monaco take on anti-woke crusader turned CBS News editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss. They trace how someone with zero reporting background, built a career on grievance, bad faith, culture war commentary, and playing the victim while insisting everyone else is too sensitive. Watch the new episode of This Fucking Guy on YouTube Now. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, pour one out for the most annoying jingle known to Woman and tell your friends to listen. And if you're in a reading, and not just about how a judge ruled the Cars for Kids ads, you know the ones, can no longer air in the state of California.

because they violate the state's false advertisement law, like me, What Today is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and let this be a reminder to think twice before donating your car to support a kid just because a nonprofit with a horrendous jingle asked you to. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond.

Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.