Podcasts · News

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

300 episodes

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 plainenglish@spotify.com! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. What Does Effective Altruism Really Believe?

    · 1 h 07 min

    What exactly is effective altruism? Beginning in the early 2010s as a nerdy way to rethink the most cost-effective charity, the movement has since grown into a broader philosophy for thinking about just about…

  2. The AI Story Wall Street Doesn't Want to Hear

    · 47 min

    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 more for AI every year, the debt is…

  3. AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution?

    · 1 h 08 min

    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. Derek Thompson explores the…

  4. How Abundance Has Failed and Succeeded

    · 1 h 03 min

    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 commentators declare the abundance agenda dead.…

  5. America’s Crisis of Social Connection, With Adam Grant

    · 1 h 03 min

    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 it easier than ever to fill our free…

  6. Russia’s Plague Mystery and the Coming Age of Bioweapons

    · 1 h 06 min

    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, sparking rumors of biowarfare and fears of…

  7. The Bitter Rivalries Behind the Race to Build Superintelligence

    · 1 h 06 min

    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 should become and what it could mean…

  8. Why the Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans

    · 1 h 01 min

    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 race. Today, Nate Silver joins Derek…

  9. Why Things Become Popular, with Chuck Klosterman

    · 1 h 29 min · Explicit

    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 explore why some things become popular…

  10. The Single Smartest Case Against AI Doom

    · 1 h 01 min

    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 be about it all? Derek talks with…

  11. The Truth About Mississippi's Education "Miracle"

    · 57 min

    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 decades. But, why does Mississippi look so…

  12. Why Experts Keep Getting the Economy So Wrong

    · 59 min

    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 recession, inflation, tariffs, wars, deficits,…

  13. What’s the Point of College?

    · 57 min

    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 market. Simultaneously, AI is…

  14. The New Book That Scares Big Tech

    · 59 min

    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. Sound kind of familiar? In today’s…

  15. AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet. Can We Save It?

    · 56 min

    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 might actually be simpler than we…

  16. Why Everything Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive

    · 42 min

    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 time, the federal government is running…

  17. Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’

    · 1 h 03 min

    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, like diversity politics. Today, Derek…

  18. It May Be Time to Freak Out About AI

    · 1 h 18 min

    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 will start doing things we didn’t ask…

  19. Why Americans Hate Data Centers

    · 1 h 03 min

    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 American politics. Nowhere is that tension…

  20. Why America Is Switching From Booze to Weed

    · 1 h 10 min

    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 record low since Gallup started…

  21. "The End of Reading Is Here"

    · 54 min

    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 fewer books than ever and struggling more…

  22. What Translator Emily Wilson Thinks of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey'

    · 59 min

    Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' has brought one of history's oldest stories back into the spotlight. It’s also sparked a fresh debate about what it means to adapt a classic. Today, Derek is joined by acclaimed…

  23. Why 'The Odyssey' Is the West’s Greatest Story

    · 1 h 04 min

    Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' is finally here, but how exactly has a 3,000-year-old story endured long enough to become the foundation of Western storytelling? Derek is joined by Karen Ní Mheallaigh, chair of…

  24. A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory for Why the World Feels So Weird

    · 58 min

    Why does it feel like everything is more divided and exhausting than it used to be? Philosopher Agnes Callard has a surprisingly simple answer: the unicontext. It's her term for what happens when billions of people are…

  25. How Israel Is Transforming American Politics

    · 1 h 05 min

    Peter Beinart joins Derek to unpack a major shift inside the Democratic Party. As Democratic Socialist-backed candidates notch a string of surprising primary victories, one issue has emerged as a defining political…

  26. MEGAPOD: The Most Overrated American Who Ever Lived

    · 1 h 10 min

    To celebrate America's 250th birthday, Derek is joined for a history draft by three of the country's leading historians: Beverly Gage, H.W. (Bill) Brands, and Richard White. The goal isn't to revisit the familiar…

  27. A Surprising Theory About the Future of War

    · 56 min

    From the bombing campaigns of World War II to the precision strikes of the modern era, for 80 years air power has defined modern warfare. But today, a new technology is changing the battlefield: drones. From Ukraine…

  28. SpaceX, AI Bubble Fears, and The Age of the Trillion-Dollar, Zero-Profit Company

    · 54 min

    For decades, investors valued companies based on a familiar formula: Grow revenue, earn profits, and reward shareholders. But a new era may be beginning - one where trillion-dollar companies can lose billions of…

  29. The Iran War Is Ending. Everybody Lost.

    · 57 min

    Four months ago, the U.S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran. Supporters predicted a decisive victory that would curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and reshape the balance of power in the Middle East. Instead,…

  30. The Donald Trump Corruption Scandal Draft

    · 1 h 08 min · Explicit

    What is Donald Trump good at? In his second administration, he promised lower prices, stronger manufacturing, and an end to foreign conflicts. Instead, inflation has risen, blue-collar job growth has slowed, and the…

  31. The Most Exciting Month of Medical Breakthroughs in Years

    · 59 min

    For years, scientists worried that medical progress was slowing down. Drug development became more expensive than ever with more complex clinical trials, and even then, many new treatments offered only modest gains.…

  32. Old-igarchy: How the Elderly Conquered American Power

    · 1 h 02 min

    Prior to the 1930s, old age in America often meant poverty. But thanks to Social Security, Medicare, medical advances, and rising asset prices, over the past 90 years, older Americans have become one of the wealthiest…

  33. How Modern Fatherhood Is Changing Men’s Brains

    · 1 h 04 min · Explicit

    Humans are unusual dads. Across the animal kingdom, dads are often absent from child-rearing altogether. But among humans, fatherhood takes many forms, and in the last half century, it has changed dramatically.…

  34. What 400,000 Essays Reveal About AI and Creativity

    · 56 min

    For generations, we've defined creativity by its products: the novel, the painting, the song, the breakthrough idea. We look at the work, and from the work we see the creator as “creative.” But AI is getting remarkably…

  35. The Surprising Truth About America's Friendship Crisis

    · 59 min

    Modern loneliness is often treated as a simple problem: People are simply spending more time alone. But what if that's not the whole story? Over the last several years, Derek has written about workism, the rise of a…

  36. Why the NBA Feels Broken—and Why the League Can’t Fix It

    · 58 min

    The NBA’s vibes have been unusually awful recently. There has been widespread hand-wringing about the homogenization of modern offenses and the league’s notoriously weak regular-season TV ratings. A tanking crisis saw…

  37. The Men Who Think Toxic Feminism Destroyed America

    · 59 min · Explicit

    Over the past century, attitudes about gender roles have become one of the clearest dividing lines in the country. Many Republicans, both men and women, say men are getting a raw deal in modern America. Many Democrats…

  38. Does Anybody Know How to Solve an American Debt Crisis?

    · 1 h 02 min

    On his 40th birthday, Derek Thompson takes a step back and looks at how his thinking on the national debt has changed. Back when he first covered fiscal policy, concern about government borrowing was mostly a…

  39. The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Think

    · 1 h 01 min

    Fertility rates are collapsing around the world. In rich countries and poor ones, in secular societies and religious ones, people are having fewer children than ever before. Some explanations focus on economic factors…

  40. The Case Against the AI Job Apocalypse

    · 54 min

    For the past few years, Silicon Valley executives and economists have warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out millions of jobs. Some companies have even blamed AI for layoffs. But what if the AI job…

  41. Why American Happiness Just Fell Off a Cliff

    · 1 h 01 min

    America is richer than ever. Unemployment is low. Wages are high. According to traditional metrics, the economy looks strong. So why are Americans feeling so bad? Today, Derek talks with bestselling author Morgan…

  42. One of the Deadliest Cancers in America May Have Met Its Match

    · 45 min

    Hard to detect and almost impossible to treat, pancreatic cancer has long been one of medicine’s most ruthless killers. For decades, it’s been the cancer that science couldn’t crack. But that might be starting to…

  43. Why Too Much Freedom Is the Enemy of Success

    · 50 min

    Freedom is one of the few ideas everyone agrees on. Surely more choice and autonomy is a good thing, right? But what if our endless pursuit of freedom is actually making us more anxious, less creative, and holding us…

  44. Why the Iran War Is Tearing MAGA Apart

    · 58 min

    For nearly a decade, critics have predicted that this would be the moment Trumpism finally fractures - January 6, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, endless internal feuds, even Trump’s online beef with Pope Leo. And yet…

  45. The Triple Crisis That’s Breaking Hollywood—and Changing the Future of Movies

    · 1 h 11 min

    Hollywood is in the middle of a triple crisis. You can measure it in tickets, jobs, and ideas. Start with tickets. The best year for the movie business this century was 2002, when Americans and Canadians bought 1.6…

  46. The Most Powerful and Dangerous AI Model Yet

    · 1 h 02 min

    Two weeks ago, Anthropic announced an AI model so capable and so dangerous that it decided not to release it to the public. The model, codenamed Mythos, could autonomously infiltrate computer systems around the world,…

  47. The Whole World Is Fighting About Energy

    · 1 h 04 min

    The two biggest stories in the world right now—the war involving Iran and the rise of artificial intelligence—are, at their core, the same story: energy. The Iran conflict has become a war of competing energy…

  48. ‘The Job Market for Young People Is Brutal’

    · 1 h 07 min

    Something weird is going on with the elevated unemployment rate for young people today, but no one knows what exactly it is. For the last year, as the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has crept up…

  49. America's Religious Revival Is a Mirage

    · 1 h 09 min

    Perhaps you’ve heard the news: The U.S. is experiencing a religious revival, and it’s concentrated among young people, who are flocking back to the fold. The Economist announced that “the West has stopped losing its…

  50. Is China the Winner of the Iran War?

    · 52 min

    The 1970s oil crisis changed the world in ways that many people forget today, from the transformation of American politics to the rise of the Japanese electronics industry. The Iran war of 2026 could have similarly…

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