Today’s episode is about guns, drugs, cars, and a big question: Why do Americans die so much younger than people in any other rich country?

Before the 1990s, average life expectancy in the U.S. was not much different than it was in western Europe: Germany, France, the U.K. But since the 1990s, something very strange and clearly bad has happened. Americans got much richer than Europeans. But American life spans have fallen behind those of Europeans so dramatically that today, the typical American has the same healthy life expectancy as someone in the poorest town in England.

So what's going on? To unravel this mystery, today’s guest is John Burn-Murdoch, a data journalist at the Financial Times, who recently published a magisterial investigation of the American death gap.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: John Burn-Murdoch

Producer: Devon Manze

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