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 transcribedEarlier this year, it appeared that Democrats were going to get destroyed in the midterms. Joe Biden's approval rating was in the toilet, inflation wa...
The level of student debt in this country represents a massive policy error. But is forgiving up to $20,000 of student debt really the best way to hel...
Today’s episode is about the entertainment and media industry’s tumultuous summer, the streaming wars, a come-to-Jesus moment for movie theaters, and...
The economist Raj Chetty has spent much of the last decade trying to answer a very big question: What happened to the American Dream? In 1940, a child...
Bestselling author Chuck Klosterman talks to Derek about the death of the monoculture, how the internet creates cults of fans and anti-fans, and how “...
I've never before recorded an episode specifically about Donald Trump. I guess I’ve been holding out for the chaos that typically swirls around him to...
Several years ago, the writer, researcher, and policy advocate Heather McGhee traveled around the country to report on how racism in America holds us...
Last year, somebody explained the problem of climate change to me with a metaphor that I’ve never been able to forget. They said: Imagine a bathtub. T...
In our second "Curiosity Corner" mailbag, Derek takes your burning questions. He breaks down the myths around how monkeypox spreads, and blasts public...
Why does it seem like the old is eating the new in pop culture? This year, the song of the summer is arguably Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”—which...
“Every few years, American politics astonishes you.” That’s how The Atlantic journalist Robinson Meyer began his report on the Democrats' new climate...
On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that GDP dropped for the second consecutive quarter, fueling fears that the economy is in a rec...
Today is the second half of our special two-parter on the state of crypto. Yesterday’s theme was the case against. Today we debate the case for. In th...
Today, we have the first in a two-part series on lessons from the crypto crash. Crypto, also known as Web3, also known as blockchain-based technologie...
The world is kind of a mess right now. There is a big, bloody, awful war between Russia and Ukraine, which has hugely disrupted global trade, especial...
The world is on fire. In southern Europe, wildfires are streaking from Portugal to Greece. In the U.K., airport runways melted as temperatures exceede...
Well, that escalated quickly. Let's review, shall we? In January, Elon Musk started buying a bunch of Twitter stock. In February, he kept buying. In M...
Will Netflix be the king of streaming in five years? What's the biggest threat to dethrone it: Apple, Disney, or HBO? Are movie theaters back for real...
Derek has so many thoughts on Elon Musk's bizarre attempted breakup with Twitter—and what comes next—that he has to enumerate them. In this episode, h...
The question everybody's asking on cable news right now is whether we're in a recession. I think there's an even more important question to ask: Are w...
