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
369 episodes transcribedWe’ve got a double-barrelled podcast for you. Jeanna Smialek, economics reporter for the ‘New York Times,’ joins us to break down the debt-ceiling sho...
"Productivity is a trap. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved work-life balance. The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real prob...
“The story of 2022 was the emergence of AI," wrote Ben Thompson, the author of the Stratechery newsletter and podcast. "It seems clear to me that this...
Derek breaks down the biggest economic mystery of the moment: Why are the most successful tech companies collectively laying off more than 130,000 peo...
We have historically thought about weight as the mere outcome of our deliberate choices about diet and exercise. We have not typically thought about w...
Today’s episode is about what Americans don’t get about food—and the historical origins of our diet delusions. Our guest is Dr. David Ludwig, an endoc...
Last year was a bloodbath for media of all stripes. Netflix crashed, the advertising market cratered, Disney fired a CEOBob and replaced him with a CE...
We should be living in a golden age of creativity in science and technology. We know more about the universe and ourselves than we did in any other pe...
Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson of Ritholtz Wealth Management rejoin the pod to talk about what they learned from the topsy-turvy 2022 economy and mak...
This has been an amazing year for the show, and I’m so grateful for everybody who has listened. I’m off the last two weeks of the year but I wanted to...
This has been an amazing year for the show, and I’m so grateful for everybody who has listened. I’m off the last two weeks, but I wanted to keep somet...
Derek talks to economist and writer Eli Dourado about the most exciting scientific and technological discoveries of the year, from the AI toys that ev...
In the last 50 years, average sperm counts have fallen by 50 percent. This isn’t just happening in the U.S. or Europe or Asia. It seems to be happenin...
4 Day Week Global is a nonprofit organization that recently conducted a trial with 33 companies and 900 workers that replaced the typical five-day wee...
One year ago, we had Anne Applebaum on the podcast to talk about her essay, "The Bad Guys Are Winning." And I think you could have made an argument th...
Americans have never spent so much time alone. And alone time is rising sharply for every demographic—young and old, male and female, white and non-wh...
Today’s episode is a Thanksgiving feast of corporate scandal and media gossip. Derek kicks things off with a big-picture theory for why everything in...
Today’s episode is about China’s turn toward authoritarianism—and why it might be one of the most important stories in the world. If you don’t know a...
Derek shares his thoughts on the meltdown of crypto exchange FTX and the disgrace of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, before welcoming veteran finance...
The polls were right; the vibes were wrong. Democrats seem to have blocked the Republican wave by riding “Dobbs and democracy.” Trump lost, and extrem...
