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
405 episodes transcribedWith new breakthroughs in math and biology alongside reports of AI agents escaping and hacking systems, suffice it to say AI has had an interesting fe...
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...
Expert economists keep making predictions about America’s financial future, and those predictions keep being … wrong. Over the past few years, we’ve h...
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 fac...
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...
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 corporation...
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 m...
Higher Education’s Age of "Insufferable Hypocrisy" It would be an understatement to say that higher education is in crisis, as it faces attacks fro...
Today, Derek talks with cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos about a recent wave of alarming AI cyberattacks. For decades, one of the biggest fears about...
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 m...
Two extraordinary trends are happening in the United States simultaneously. One is that alcohol consumption is declining precipitously. The share of A...
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...
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...
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...
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 un...
Peter Beinart joins Derek to unpack a major shift inside the Democratic Party. As Democratic Socialist-backed candidates notch a string of surprising...
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) Bra...
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...
For decades, investors valued companies based on a familiar formula: Grow revenue, earn profits, and reward shareholders. But a new era may be beginni...
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 ambiti...
