Longtime Atlantic tech, culture and political writer Derek Thompson cuts through all the noise surrounding the big questions and headlines that matter to you in his new podcast Plain English. Watch Derek and guests engage the news with clear viewpoints and memorable takeaways. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday, and if you've got a topic you want discussed, shoot us an email at [email protected]! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson
Latest episodes
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47 min
The AI Story Wall Street Doesn't Want to Hear
The answer to whether AI is a bubble comes down to supply and demand. Is there enough demand to justify the enormous investment in chips and data centers? If businesses keep paying…
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1 h 07
AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution?
AI can analyze anything, write anything, solve almost any puzzle. But struggle strengthens our brains and sharpens our minds ... and removing it entirely may come with a dire cost.…
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1 h 02
How Abundance Has Failed and Succeeded
A year and a half after 'Abundance,' Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s book about why America has become so bad at building things, the time has come for reflection. Some commentator…
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1 h 03
America’s Crisis of Social Connection, With Adam Grant
Americans spend more time alone than ever, as parties, nights out with friends, and dinner gatherings become less common. Cellphones, social media, TV, and the internet have made i…
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1 h 05
Russia’s Plague Mystery and the Coming Age of Bioweapons
AI apocalypse, recession fears, sky-high mortgage rates, and now, the plague? Last week, a researcher at a plague institute in Siberia died after developing severe pneumonia, spark…
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1 h 06
The Bitter Rivalries Behind the Race to Build Superintelligence
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis are three of the most important figures in AI superintelligence, but each of them have very different ideas about what this technology…
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1 h 01
Why the Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans
Last year, Republicans were the heavy favorites to hold the Senate in the following years midterms. Now, however, prediction markets and political forecasters see a very different…
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1 h 28
Why Things Become Popular, with Chuck Klosterman
What makes a hit a hit? Why do some bands make it while others fade into obscurity? Chuck Klosterman’s new book imagines an alternate history of 20th century music and uses it to e…
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1 h 01
The Single Smartest Case Against AI Doom
With new breakthroughs in math and biology alongside reports of AI agents escaping and hacking systems, suffice it to say AI has had an interesting few weeks. How worried should we…
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57 min
The Truth About Mississippi's Education "Miracle"
Education outcomes have been getting worse across much of the world, with reading and math scores falling to historic lows. The U.S. has seen some of the steepest declines in decad…
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59 min
Why Experts Keep Getting the Economy So Wrong
Expert economists keep making predictions about America’s financial future, and those predictions keep being … wrong. Over the past few years, we’ve heard warnings about a recessio…
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57 min
What’s the Point of College?
Trust in American higher education is near a historic low. Tuition has soared, and the payoff for a college degree is now in question as graduates face a weird and challenging job…
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59 min
The New Book That Scares Big Tech
In the late 19th century, a railroad boom fueled by easy money, speculative investment, and new technology helped kick off one of the worst financial crises in American history. So…
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56 min
AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet. Can We Save It?
So many people seem to hate AI, and it’s not just because it might displace millions of jobs, destroy the world, or deepen distrust in big corporations and government. The reason m…
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42 min
Why Everything Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive
For much of the 21st century, the U.S. economy was built around cheap money. Today, though, interest rates are rising, and borrowing is getting much more expensive. At the same tim…
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1 h 02
Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’
It would be an understatement to say that higher education is in crisis, as it faces attacks from both the current presidential administration as well as issues of its own making,…
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1 h 17
It May Be Time to Freak Out About AI
Today, Derek talks with cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos about a recent wave of alarming AI cyberattacks. For decades, one of the biggest fears about AI has been that the machines…
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1 h 03
Why Americans Hate Data Centers
It seems a universal fact that AI has become an indispensable part of the American economy. At the same time, opposing AI has also become one of the most influential causes in Amer…
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1 h 09
Why America Is Switching From Booze to Weed
Two extraordinary trends are happening in the United States simultaneously. One is that alcohol consumption is declining precipitously. The share of Americans who drink has hit a r…
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54 min
"The End of Reading Is Here"
There’s no doubt that reading is in decline. But what is that decline doing to the way we think? Derek talks with The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch about why Americans are reading fewe…