Plain English with Derek Thompson

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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. Hear 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! You can also find us on tiktok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_

  1. 2 DAYS AGO

    Why Money Doesn't Buy Happiness in America

    America is rich—richer than ever. Yet Americans are more anxious, lonelier, and less satisfied than people in many poorer nations. The 2025 World Happiness Report ranked the U.S. 24th in life satisfaction, its lowest on record. Maybe, as social scientists say, we’ve traded community for consumption. Today’s guest, Morgan Housel, thinks there’s a deeper reason money hasn’t bought us happiness. America, he says, is world-class at making money, but bad at spending it wisely. In his new book, The Art of Spending Money, Housel argues that we’re burdened not only by visible debt—mortgages, credit cards, loans—but also by invisible debt: desire. In this episode, Derek talks with Morgan—the author of The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever—about how money, comparison, and human nature shape happiness. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Morgan Housel Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    49 min

  2. 6 DAYS AGO

    Is AI Really About to Solve Human Disease?

    I’ve had the privilege of talking to many brilliant people about artificial intelligence. And when you ask them to imagine the most beneficial consequences of this technology, they almost always give the same answer: medicine. The dream is dazzling. Superintelligent AI will cure stubborn diseases and disorders—cancer, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s. It will diagnose all our illnesses, design new lifesaving drugs, accelerate clinical trials, and pair with wearables to fight chronic illness and extend our health spans. But which of these promises are realistic? Which are outlandish hype? And what, exactly, can AI do for us in medicine right now? To separate fact from fantasy, I talk with Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Lloyd Minor Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/29/if-ai-can-diagnose-patients-what-are-doctors-for https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-ai-isnt-replacing-radiologists?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    54 min

  3. 30 SEPT

    How America Became a Nation of "Free Speech Hypocrites"

    The past few weeks have marked a low point for free speech principles in America. The head of the FCC openly threatened ABC for the language of a comedian. The president told a reporter that networks that are "against" him should have their licenses revoked. The vice president went on TV and told Americans to turn in their colleagues if they spoke ill of Charlie Kirk. And many have. After Kirk was killed, Suzanne Swierc, an employee at Ball State University, posted that “if you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Within hours, Libs of TikTok, a social media account, posted her message publicly, Elon Musk retweeted it, and, with the approval of the White House, she was fired. Conservatives claim that Democrats fired first. They say it was the campus left that got "cancel culture" rolling. It was Joe Biden who pressured—or jawboned—the social media companies to take down misinformation, in violation of free expression. It was Democrats who suppressed information on the Hunter Biden laptop. So what can we say fairly and honestly about the state of the First Amendment? Is the Trump administration uniquely perverse? Are we all hypocrites? And why does it seem like so many members of each party can’t wait to use the machinery of the state to limit the speech of their political opponent? Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, joins the show to discuss. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Greg Lukianoff Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    52 min

  4. 26 SEPT

    What’s the Matter With America’s Food?

    In the past few weeks, we’ve done several episodes on obesity, GLP-1 drugs, and nutrition science. What we haven’t talked about as much is the politics of food. And today’s guests say: If you really want to understand why Americans are so unhealthy, you have to see that the problem is not just our willpower, and it’s not just our food itself. It’s our food policies. Kevin Hall was a former top nutrition researcher at the NIH who retired after accusing RFK Jr. and the Department of Health and Human Services of censoring a report that questioned their description of ultra-processed foods. Julia Belluz is a longtime nutrition and health journalist. Together, they’ve written a new book, 'Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us.' If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    53 min

  5. 23 SEPT

    This Is How the AI Bubble Could Burst

    This year, American tech companies will spend $300 billion to $400 billion on artificial intelligence, which is in nominal dollars more than any group of companies have ever spent to do anything. Notably, these companies are not remotely close to earning $400 billion on artificial intelligence. That's why you’re starting to hear some people wonder if the AI build-out is turning into the mother of all economic bubbles. The prospect of an AI bubble should scare us. Roughly half of last quarter's GDP growth came from infrastructure spending on AI, and more than half of stock market appreciation in the last few years has come from companies associated with AI. If the AI spending project blows up in the next few years, as our next guest says it might, the implications for technology, the economy, and politics would be immense. Paul Kedrosky is an investor and writer. Today we talk about the AI capex boom: how it works, who’s financing it, how its financing works. We put the AI build-out in historical context. And then we spend a great deal of time walking through what could go wrong and when it might go wrong. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Paul Kedrosky Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    59 min

  6. 19 SEPT

    The Jimmy Kimmel Saga and America's Free-Speech Crisis

    Matt Belloni, the host of the Town podcast and the author of Puck’s 'What I’m Hearing' newsletter, joins the show to talk about Jimmy Kimmel's punishment, what happened behind the scenes at ABC and Disney, Bob Iger's legacy, and what this means at a moment when media companies are bending the knee to the Trump administration, which is clearly using its position to punish free speech despite rising to power by promising to do the opposite. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Matt Belloni Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    41 min

  7. 16 SEPT

    If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good for Everything, Should We All Be on Them?

    To read more of Derek's reporting on GLP-1 drugs, you can subscribe to his Substack here. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound don't just help with Type 2 diabetes and weight loss. They seem to curb alcohol, cocaine, and tobacco use among addicts. In some studies, they prevent strokes, heart attacks, chronic kidney disease, sleep apnea, and Parkinson's disease. They’re associated with a lower risk of several cancers, including pancreatic cancer and multiple myeloma. Arthritic patients on the drugs experienced relief from knee pain that was “on par with opioid drugs.” A small study found that they reduce migraine headaches by 50 percent. And emerging research suggests they might even slow the rate of memory loss among people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Is all of this real? And if it’s real, how is one drug doing so many different things? And if it is doing all those things, why shouldn’t we be developing versions of the drug for just about everyone? Today we have two guests: David D’Alessio, chief of endocrinology and metabolism at the Duke University School of Medicine; and Randy Seeley, a professor of surgery, internal medicine, and nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan. We talk about how these drugs work—why they seem to do everything—and how our understanding of them could make them better, more effective, more broadly useful. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: David D’Alessio and Randy Seeley Producer: Devon Baroldi Disclosure: Dr. Seeley has received research support from several pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, Diasome, and Amgen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    54 min

  8. 12 SEPT

    Charlie Kirk's Killing and America's Age of "Salad-Bar Extremism"

    In the past few years, we have witnessed a frightening spiral of political violence. We’ve seen the killing of Charlie Kirk; the killing of Brian Thompson, the health insurance executive; the assassination of a Minnesota House Speaker and her husband; the shooting of a Minnesota state senator and his wife; several attempted assassinations of Donald Trump; an attack on Nancy Pelosi’s home and husband; a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer; and calls to lynch Vice President Mike Pence on January 6. As The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance writes, this is looking to be "an age of assassinations." LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic, has written tens of thousands of words, including cover stories for the magazine, on the history of political violence in the U.S. Today, we talk about media coverage of political violence before getting to the hardest question: How can America survive a period of mass delusion, deep division, and political violence without seeing the permanent dissolution of the ties that bind us? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Adrienne LaFrance Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    52 min
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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. Hear 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! You can also find us on tiktok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_

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