Plain English with Derek Thompson

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

It May Be Time to Freak Out About AI

Today, Derek talks with cybersecurity expert Alex Stamos about a recent wave of alarming AI cyberattacks. For decades, one of the biggest fears about AI has been that the

Why Americans Hate Data Centers

It seems a universal fact that AI has become an indispensable part of the American economy. At the same time, opposing AI has also become one of the most influential caus

Why America Is Switching From Booze to Weed

Two extraordinary trends are happening in the United States simultaneously. One is that alcohol consumption is declining precipitously. The share of Americans who drink h

"The End of Reading Is Here"

There’s no doubt that reading is in decline. But what is that decline doing to the way we think? Derek talks with The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch about why Americans are re

What Translator Emily Wilson Thinks of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey'

Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' has brought one of history's oldest stories back into the spotlight. It’s also sparked a fresh debate about what it means to adapt a cla

Why 'The Odyssey' Is the West’s Greatest Story

Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' is finally here, but how exactly has a 3,000-year-old story endured long enough to become the foundation of Western storytelling? Derek

A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory for Why the World Feels So Weird

Why does it feel like everything is more divided and exhausting than it used to be? Philosopher Agnes Callard has a surprisingly simple answer: the unicontext. It's her t

How Israel Is Transforming American Politics

Peter Beinart joins Derek to unpack a major shift inside the Democratic Party. As Democratic Socialist-backed candidates notch a string of surprising primary victories, o

MEGAPOD: The Most Overrated American Who Ever Lived

To celebrate America's 250th birthday, Derek is joined for a history draft by three of the country's leading historians: Beverly Gage, H.W. (Bill) Brands, and Richard Whi

A Surprising Theory About the Future of War

From the bombing campaigns of World War II to the precision strikes of the modern era, for 80 years air power has defined modern warfare. But today, a new technology is c

SpaceX, AI Bubble Fears, and The Age of the Trillion-Dollar, Zero-Profit Company

For decades, investors valued companies based on a familiar formula: Grow revenue, earn profits, and reward shareholders. But a new era may be beginning - one where trill

The Iran War Is Ending. Everybody Lost.

Four months ago, the U.S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran. Supporters predicted a decisive victory that would curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and reshape the