How We Got Here with NLW

For people who want to understand everything. Every week, NLW takes something about right now that doesn’t seem to make sense and explains, in about an hour, how we got here. Why tech went from America’s most trusted industry to one of its least. Why every phone has a sportsbook on it. Why so many people you know are on GLP-1s. Why we’ve been scared of AI for as long as we’ve had computers. The answers run through economics, politics, culture and technology, and they’re almost always more interesting than the version you’ve been told.

Latest Episodes:

How We Made the Wrong Things Cheap Nov 02, 2026

Show notes

Since 2000, TVs have gotten 98% cheaper while hospital stays, college tuition and child care have more than doubled. Here's how that happened, and why so many Americans now think the economy is rigged against them.

Read the Companion Essay - https://howwegothere.com/episodes/the-wrong-abundance/

Listen to Ep. 1: How Tech Lost America - https://howwegothere.com/episodes/how-tech-lost-america/

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How We Got Here with NLW is the deep-dive story of how today's most important trends, events, and phenomena came to be. New episodes every Monday.

Think I missed something? Tell me: ⁠https://howwegothere.com/counterpoint - ⁠The best responses become a Counterpoint follow-up episode.

Follow, rate, and review the show:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-we-got-here-with-nlw/id6822359990⁠

Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/7h55KSq0XwIjdWzwF2zgNV⁠

Connect with How We Got Here:

YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@HWGHpodcast⁠

X: ⁠https://x.com/hwghshow⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/howwegothere/⁠

Also from NLW: The AI Daily Brief, the daily AI news podcast: ⁠https://aidailybrief.ai

How Tech Lost America Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

In just over a year, opposition to local data centers went from an even split to 75 percent, and much of that anger was inherited. This is the story of how tech went from America's most trusted industry to a symbol of people's anxieties about wealth and power, and where we go from here.

How We Got Here with NLW is the deep-dive story of how today's most important trends, events, and phenomena came to be. New episodes every Monday.

Read the companion essay: https://howwegothere.com

Think I missed something? Tell me: https://howwegothere.com/counterpoint - The best responses become a Counterpoint follow-up episode.

Follow, rate, and review the show:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-we-got-here-with-nlw/id6822359990

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7h55KSq0XwIjdWzwF2zgNV

Connect with How We Got Here:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HWGHpodcast

X: https://x.com/hwghshow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/howwegothere/

Also from NLW: The AI Daily Brief, the daily AI news podcast: https://aidailybrief.ai

Introducing How We Got Here Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

Introducing How We Got Here, a new show from AI Daily Brief host Nathaniel Whittemore (NLW). It's a show for people who want to understand everything.

How We Got Here explains the present by telling the full story of how it got this way. Each episode takes one important current trend or phenomenon and in about an hour, traces it back through the economics, politics, technology and culture that produced it.

It starts October 26 with How Tech Lost America, a deep dive on how tech went from the most trusted industry in the USA to something that everyone is mad at for some reason or another.

New episodes every Monday.