Plain English with Derek Thompson
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Who Will Emerge as the New Face of the GOP?
Who Will Emerge as the New Face of the GOP?
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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
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- Who Will Emerge as the New Face of the GOP? · 1 t. 5 min.The 2026 midterms have left Republicans reeling and Democrats riding a historic wave after a series of missteps by the president and his administration. The last time we saw a…
- The Six Lessons of the 2026 Midterms · 1 t. 9 min.Ten years after Donald Trump stunned the world by winning the 2016 election, his political movement may be approaching its end. Tuesday’s midterms delivered a historic rebuke to…
- The Midterms and the End of the Boomer Political Era · 1 t. 13 min.Well, it’s midterm day in America, and on my mind are three huge questions for tonight. Number 1: How much water is in the blue wave? Number 2: Everyone’s talking about the cost…
- The Netflix Crisis Isn’t What It Seems · 54 min.No matter how you look at it, Netflix is having a pretty bad year. Stock is down, growth has slowed, the company recently laid off roughly 1,000 people, and it dismissed its…
- What Does Effective Altruism Really Believe? · 1 t. 7 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…
- 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…
- AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution? · 1 t. 7 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…
- How Abundance Has Failed and Succeeded · 1 t. 2 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…
- America’s Crisis of Social Connection, With Adam Grant · 1 t. 3 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…
- Russia’s Plague Mystery and the Coming Age of Bioweapons · 1 t. 5 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…
- The Bitter Rivalries Behind the Race to Build Superintelligence · 1 t. 6 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…
- Why the Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans · 1 t. 1 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…
- Why Things Become Popular, with Chuck Klosterman · 1 t. 28 min.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…
- The Single Smartest Case Against AI Doom · 1 t. 1 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’ · 1 t. 2 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…
- It May Be Time to Freak Out About AI · 1 t. 17 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…
- Why Americans Hate Data Centers · 1 t. 3 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…
- Why America Is Switching From Booze to Weed · 1 t. 9 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…
- "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…
- 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…
- Why 'The Odyssey' Is the West’s Greatest Story · 1 t. 3 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…
- 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…
- How Israel Is Transforming American Politics · 1 t. 4 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…
- MEGAPOD: The Most Overrated American Who Ever Lived · 1 t. 9 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- The Donald Trump Corruption Scandal Draft · 1 t. 8 min.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…
- 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…
- Old-igarchy: How the Elderly Conquered American Power · 1 t. 1 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…
- How Modern Fatherhood Is Changing Men’s Brains · 1 t. 4 min.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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- The Men Who Think Toxic Feminism Destroyed America · 59 min.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…
- Does Anybody Know How to Solve an American Debt Crisis? · 1 t. 1 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…
- The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Think · 1 t. 1 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…
- 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…
- Why American Happiness Just Fell Off a Cliff · 1 t. 0 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- The Triple Crisis That’s Breaking Hollywood—and Changing the Future of Movies · 1 t. 10 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…
- The Most Powerful and Dangerous AI Model Yet · 1 t. 2 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…
