Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Six Lessons of the 2026 Midterms

Ten years after Donald Trump stunned the world by winning the 2016 election, his political movement may be approaching its end. Tuesday’s midterms delivered a historic re

The Midterms and the End of the Boomer Political Era

Well, it’s midterm day in America, and on my mind are three huge questions for tonight. Number 1: How much water is in the blue wave? Number 2: Everyone’s talking about t

The Netflix Crisis Isn’t What It Seems

No matter how you look at it, Netflix is having a pretty bad year. Stock is down, growth has slowed, the company recently laid off roughly 1,000 people, and it dismissed

What Does Effective Altruism Really Believe?

What exactly is effective altruism? Beginning in the early 2010s as a nerdy way to rethink the most cost-effective charity, the movement has since grown into a broader ph

The AI Story Wall Street Doesn't Want to Hear

The answer to whether AI is a bubble comes down to supply and demand. Is there enough demand to justify the enormous investment in chips and data centers? If businesses k

AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution?

AI can analyze anything, write anything, solve almost any puzzle. But struggle strengthens our brains and sharpens our minds ... and removing it entirely may come with a

How Abundance Has Failed and Succeeded

A year and a half after 'Abundance,' Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s book about why America has become so bad at building things, the time has come for reflection. Some c

America’s Crisis of Social Connection, With Adam Grant

Americans spend more time alone than ever, as parties, nights out with friends, and dinner gatherings become less common. Cellphones, social media, TV, and the internet h

Russia’s Plague Mystery and the Coming Age of Bioweapons

AI apocalypse, recession fears, sky-high mortgage rates, and now, the plague? Last week, a researcher at a plague institute in Siberia died after developing severe pneumo

The Bitter Rivalries Behind the Race to Build Superintelligence

Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis are three of the most important figures in AI superintelligence, but each of them have very different ideas about what this t

Why the Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans

Last year, Republicans were the heavy favorites to hold the Senate in the following years midterms. Now, however, prediction markets and political forecasters see a very

Why Things Become Popular, with Chuck Klosterman

What makes a hit a hit? Why do some bands make it while others fade into obscurity? Chuck Klosterman’s new book imagines an alternate history of 20th century music and us

The Single Smartest Case Against AI Doom

With new breakthroughs in math and biology alongside reports of AI agents escaping and hacking systems, suffice it to say AI has had an interesting few weeks. How worried

The Truth About Mississippi's Education "Miracle"

Education outcomes have been getting worse across much of the world, with reading and math scores falling to historic lows. The U.S. has seen some of the steepest decline

Why Experts Keep Getting the Economy So Wrong

Expert economists keep making predictions about America’s financial future, and those predictions keep being … wrong. Over the past few years, we’ve heard warnings about

What’s the Point of College?

Trust in American higher education is near a historic low. Tuition has soared, and the payoff for a college degree is now in question as graduates face a weird and challe

The New Book That Scares Big Tech

In the late 19th century, a railroad boom fueled by easy money, speculative investment, and new technology helped kick off one of the worst financial crises in American h

AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet. Can We Save It?

So many people seem to hate AI, and it’s not just because it might displace millions of jobs, destroy the world, or deepen distrust in big corporations and government. Th

Why Everything Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive

For much of the 21st century, the U.S. economy was built around cheap money. Today, though, interest rates are rising, and borrowing is getting much more expensive. At th

Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’

It would be an understatement to say that higher education is in crisis, as it faces attacks from both the current presidential administration as well as issues of its ow