Plain English with Derek Thompson

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Plain English with Derek Thompson

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. 5D AGO

    How Abundance Won in California

    The California housing crisis is a disaster and an emergency. Housing construction per capita has steadily fallen in the last few decades, while home prices, rent, and homeless rates have all soared. By some estimates, the state is three million units short of housing demand—the equivalent of seven San Franciscos. One of the major barriers to building more housing has for decades been provisions in the California Environmental Quality Act. Signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan in the 1970s, the CEQA has been called "the law that ate California." It essentially allows anybody with a lawyer to stop any project they don’t like, for any reason. But this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills to defang the CEQA. Housing reform advocates are calling it one of the most important legislative breakthroughs in modern state history. It could make it easier to build downtown housing and other urban development projects such as health clinics and childcare facilities. As Newsom wrote, “I just enacted the most game-changing housing reforms in recent California history. We're urgently embracing an abundance agenda by tearing down the barriers that have delayed new affordable housing and infrastructure for decades." Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks wrote the bill to encourage more high-density housing projects, while State Senator Scott Wiener wrote the bill to exempt several types of projects from environmental review. Wicks and Wiener are today’s guests. We talk about the long road to breakthrough, the art of political persuasion, and the future of abundance in California. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Buffy Wicks and Scott Weiner Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    1h 1m

  2. JUN 25

    What's Next for the Middle East: War, Peace, or Revolution?

    Sign up for Derek Thompson's Substack here! Donald Trump rose to power in the Republican Party as a critic of the neoconservative tradition and was opposed to war in the Middle East. But after weeks of Israel’s aerial attacks of Iran, Trump shocked the world with targeted strikes of several Iranian nuclear facilities, including Natanz and Fordo. Suddenly, it seemed like President Trump was getting the U.S. involved in another Middle East conflict. And then, just as suddenly, he declared a ceasefire. (Which was immediately violated, and then agreed on, and perhaps re-violated by the time you read these words.) There are several questions to ask here. How did  Trump, noted enemy of international entanglement, become the first U.S. president to ever bomb Iran? What is the U.S. trying to accomplish here? Is regime change in Iran something to hope for or a fast track to chaos? Ray Takeyh is an Iranian-born scholar and researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations. We talk about what just happened, how we got here, and the ways it could play out. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ray Takeyh Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: "The Right Path to Regime Change in Iran" by Ray Takeyh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    49 min

  3. JUN 23

    NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani on Abundance, Socialism, and How to Change a Mind

    Before today’s show, a personal announcement. After almost 17 years at The Atlantic, I have just officially moved my writing full time to Substack, the newsletter platform. If you like this show, if you’re a fan of my work, I think you’ll love what I’m trying to build. Sign up here. 'Abundance,' the book I cowrote with Ezra Klein, has received sharp pushback from left-wing commentators. But the response among left-wing politicians has been strikingly different. While Bernie Sanders devotees have repeatedly bashed the book, Representative Ro Khanna (D-California), an outspoken advocate of Bernie’s signature policy proposal, Medicare for All, has announced his support for abundance on several occasions. While several people have accused the book of ignoring policies to increase welfare, Wes Moore, the progressive Maryland governor whose private-sector career was devoted to reducing poverty, said in a recent speech that Democrats have to change from being the party of “no” and “slow” to the party of “yes” and “now.” Then there is Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist candidate for mayor of New York City. Mamdani and I have very different politics on a range of issues: housing, affordability, education, levels of taxation, and spending. But Mamdani has in the last few weeks embraced what he calls an agenda of abundance. He’s told podcasts like Pod Save America that he thinks leftist critics of abundance have oversimplified the book and that our approach to making government work better is exactly what the left needs. I saw some people point to Mamdani’s name-checks of 'Abundance' and say, "This is great!" while others warned, "It’s a ruse! Stay away!" I wanted to talk to the man himself. So I was very gratified that Mamdani and I found 30 minutes to sit down Saturday and talk calmly about abundance and the left, how we agree, how we disagree, why government efficiency ought to be a virtue of all leaders (especially those on the left who want government to do much more), and, finally, how to change our minds. On this point, Mamdani and I are in full agreement: To see the errors in our own thinking requires that we have the courage to talk to people we do not agree with. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Zohran Mamdani Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    43 min

  4. JUN 18

    A Grand, Unified Theory of Why Americans Are So Unhealthy

    Americans are unusually overweight and chronically ill compared to similarly rich countries. This episode presents a grand, unified theory for why that's the case. Our food environment has become significantly more calorie-rich and industrialized in the past few decades, sending our obesity rates soaring, our visceral fat levels rising, and our chronic inflammation surging. The result is an astonishing rise in chronic illness in America. That's the bad news. The good news is that GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic and Zepbound, seem to be astonishingly successful at reversing many of these trends. This episode blends two interviews with Dr. David Kessler and Dr. Eric Topol. Kessler was the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under the Bush and Clinton administrations, from 1990 to 1997. He helped lead Operation Warp Speed in its final months. He is the author of the book 'Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine.' Topol is a cardiologist and the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. He is the author of the book 'Super Agers.' If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Dr. David Kessler and Dr. Eric Topol Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    40 min

  5. JUN 11

    Why Are Americans So Unhealthy? Part I: Is Ultra-Processed Food Killing Us?

    Americans die younger and faster than the residents of almost every other rich country. Why? There's gun violence, drug overdoses, and car crashes. Young people are much more likely to die from these accidents than those in other countries. Just as importantly, Americans are more likely to die from chronic illness, especially heart disease and metabolic diseases. We eat more and worse food. We're arguably exposed to more environmental toxins. We move around less, too. Kevin Klatt, a research scientist at UC Berkeley and a nutritionist, joins us in the first episode of our new miniseries on health. We take on the hottest topic in the diet world today: ultra-processed foods. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kevin Klatt Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    54 min

  6. JUN 4

    What Experts Really Think About Smartphones and Mental Health

    I'm very concerned about the relationship between smartphone use and America's mental health crisis. But many researchers don't see things my way. They insist that there is little to no empirical data showing that smartphone and social media use drives up anxiety or depression. So what’s the truth about smartphones, social media, and mental health? That’s the question that the NYU researcher Jay Van Bavel set out to answer with his collaborator Valerio Capraro. They took dozens of claims about smartphones, sent them to hundreds of experts in the field, and asked them if these claims were probably true, probably false, or unknown—and why. The result was a massive survey, one of the largest of its kind in the history of psychology. Today, Van Bavel joins the show to tell us what he found, what surprised him, and why his consensus survey made so many researchers so angry. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jay Van Bavel Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    1h 9m

  7. MAY 30

    Plain History: How Adolf Hitler Destroyed German Democracy in Six Months

    In November 1932, Germany was a republic. By the spring of 1933, it was a dictatorship. How did it all happen so quickly? Fascination with Adolf Hitler requires no news peg, but I’ve been particularly interested in understanding the story of Hitler's rise, because in the past few months, several prominent podcast hosts—including Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson—have mainstreamed revisionist histories of the Nazi regime and WWII. These new histories often soften Hitler’s antisemitism and treat him as a man of limited ambition; a guy who just wanted to give Germans a bit more living room, who was pulled into a continental war by Winston Churchill. The best book that I’ve read that makes use of the trove of documentation on the subject is 'Hitler’s People,' by the historian Richard Evans, who is today's guest. Evans is the author of a famous three-volume history of Hitler—'The Coming of the Third Reich,' 'The Third Reich in Power,' and 'The Third Reich at War'_—_and he is widely considered the most comprehensive historian of Nazi Germany in the world. His new book distills his multi-thousand-page history into an elegant 100-page synthesis of Hitler’s life, followed by profiles of his most important advisers. The end of the book is particularly interesting, as it profiles ordinary Germans of the time, for the purpose of explaining how normal, non-psychopathic people found themselves involved in a regime so brutal that it’s become a synonym for evil. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Richard Evans Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    1h 4m

  8. MAY 28

    Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Is Great for the "Stealthy Wealthy"

    The tax and spending bill passed by House Republicans last week is the sort of bill that does so many different things that even budget experts could be forgiven for not realizing just how many different parts of the economy it will change. In the realm of workers' comp, the bill would eliminate taxes on overtime pay and tips. In terms of families, it would create new $1,000 savings accounts for children and give parents an extra $500 per year per child, in the form of an expanded child tax credit. In the realm of health and the culture wars, it would ban the use of Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care and cut funding for Planned Parenthood. In the realm of climate, it would claw back half a trillion dollars of investments in wind, solar, geothermal, batteries, nuclear power, clean hydrogen, and electric vehicle purchases. In the realm of defense, it would increase spending by over $100 billion on shipbuilding, air and missile defense, immigration enforcement, and border security. But judging strictly by the sheer dollar amount of the provision, this bill is really about three big things. Number one, it extends a multitrillion-dollar tax cut on corporate and individual income. Number two, it reduces federal spending on two major government programs by a combined $1 trillion: Medicaid, the government health-care program for those with low income, and SNAP, or federal spending on food stamps. And number three, because of the mismatch I just told you about, between the tax cuts and the spending cuts, it will increase the national debt by several trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Today, we have two guests. First, the University of Chicago economist Eric Zwick joins to talk about the corporate tax cut. And second, to understand how to think about the debt picture, I talk to Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Eric Zwick and Maya MacGuineas Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    1h 8m
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About

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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