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 transcribedWhat do most people not understand about the news media? I would say two things. First: The most important bias in news media is not left or right. It...
Plastic is a life-saving technology. Plastic medical equipment like disposable syringes and IV bags reduce deaths in hospitals. Plastic packaging keep...
In an age of cults, sports are the last gasp of the monoculture—the last remnant of the 20th century mainstream still standing. Even so, the new NBA m...
The news media is very good at focusing on points of disagreement in our politics. Wherever Democrats and Republicans are butting heads, that's where...
The game of basketball has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. In the early 1990s, Michael Jordan said that 3-point shooting was "something I d...
Today—a closer critical look at the relationship between smartphones and mental health. One of the themes we’ve touched on more than any other on this...
For decades, flying cars have been a symbol of collective disappointment—of a technologically splendid future that was promised but never delivered. W...
Several years ago, I told some friends that I had an idea for a second book. It would be called ‘Everything Is a Cult.’ I’d noticed that in an age of...
Today, with Gaza protests spreading across the country and around the world, we dive deep into what’s actually happening on the ground in the war betw...
In the last week, hundreds of protests across college campuses and American cities have taken place in response to the war in Gaza. Campus life has sh...
Today’s episode is all about India.You don’t have to believe that demography is pure destiny to appreciate the fact that the future of India is the fu...
Today's show is a critical look at some of the most popular health fads of the moment, with return guests Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg, from the Gr...
Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard, returns to the show to discuss the biggest economic questions of the moment, including: - Why have...
"This presidential election is not very interesting, but it is important," the political commentator Josh Barro wrote in his newsletter, 'Very Serious...
Jay Van Bavel is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. His lab has published papers on how the internet became a fun-ho...
The other day, I read a statistic about my hometown of Washington D.C. that knocked my socks off. In D.C. high schools, 60 percent of students were ch...
What can the science of ancient humans and the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers teach us about how to be healthy today? Harvard evolutionary biologist Da...
Today, the media vibes around electric vehicles are all bad. But if you lift up and take in the big picture, electric vehicles and hybrids are taking...
Derek shares his thoughts on the question of the moment in tech and tech politics. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes,...
Today, we’re talking about movies, the philosophy of hits in Hollywood, and why we might be at a fascinating inflection point in how the entertainment...
