Plain English with Derek Thompson

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. The reason might actually be simpler than we think: People don't like AI because it is so often used to make things that are fake. From sham biographies and bogus social media posts to AI-generated journalism, the internet has become inundated with “AI slop.” So how do we begin to clean up the mess? That’s where AI detection company Pangram comes in. Derek talks with Pangram founder and CEO Max Spero about the seduction of AI writing, how his program detects it, and the moral implications of publicly calling out those who use it. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Max Spero Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the same time, the federal government is running huge deficits while governments and companies around the world are taking on enormous amounts of debt. Derek talks with returning guest Conor Sen, author of the Housing Frame newsletter, about why interest rates have climbed, what’s driving this new age of debt, and how it could change the economy for years to come. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Conor Sen Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Visit uber.com/safety to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 own making, like diversity politics. Today, Derek talks with Tyler Austin Harper, author of the viral essay “Confessions of a Token Black Professor,” about his critique of DEI and “wokeism” from the left. They discuss how good intentions and institutional self-interest led universities astray, and what it means for academic freedom, economic justice, and the future of higher education. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Tyler Austin Harper Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 machines will start doing things we didn’t ask them to do. This summer, that fear started to feel a little less like science fiction, as some of the world’s most advanced AI models went off script, broke through security barriers, and found ways to get around the humans overseeing them. Derek and Alex discuss why AI is so good at hacking, what happens when bad actors have their own AI hackers, and what governments, companies, and the rest of us can do to protect ourselves. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Alex StamosProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 causes in American politics. Nowhere is that tension more obvious than in the fight over data centers. Across the country, communities are organizing to stop the massive facilities that power artificial intelligence from being built in their backyards. In today’s episode, Derek talks with writer Jasmine Sun, who traveled through the Midwest to investigate the growing animosity towards AI infrastructure. Why do Americans hate data centers? Plus, if this trend continues, what happens when one of the most important forces in the U.S. economy runs headfirst into local politics? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jasmine Sun Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two extraordinary trends are happening in the United States simultaneously. One is that alcohol consumption is declining precipitously. The share of Americans who drink has hit a record low since Gallup started tracking it in the 1930s. In 2004, fewer than 30 percent of Americans under 35 said moderate drinking was bad for your health; now it’s 66 percent. The second trend is that marijuana usage has skyrocketed. Per researchers, cannabis has overtaken alcohol and cigarettes as the nation’s most popular daily drug. And the impact of that shift has been profound. Today, Derek is joined by Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, and Beau Kilmer, the codirector of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. They discuss what is gained and lost in the switch from booze to weed, the ripple effects of marijuana’s surge in popularity, and what the legalization of cannabis is doing to America. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Jonathan Caulkins and Beau Kilmer Producer: Victoria Valencia Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 reading fewer books than ever and struggling more with complex texts and what that means for education, work, politics, and culture. Together, they discuss this phenomenon’s effects on literacy and attention as they examine the surprising consequences of living in an increasingly post-literate world. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Rose HorowitchProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 classic. Today, Derek is joined by acclaimed classicist and translator Emily Wilson, whose celebrated translation of 'The Odyssey' helped inspire Nolan's film. They explore why Homer's epic has remained the foundation of so much Western storytelling and what gets lost and gained in the act of translating. Thenm Wilson gives her take on Nolan's adaptation. She lets us know what it captures brilliantly, where it departs from Homer, and what those changes reveal about both the ancient world and our own. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:  https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Emily Wilson Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 is joined by Karen Ní Mheallaigh, chair of Classics at Johns Hopkins University, to explore the mysterious origins of Homer's epic and the timeless themes that have captivated audiences for millennia. They discuss how 'The Odyssey' outlived thousands of other ancient poems, how its story of homecoming and hospitality shaped Western literature, and why filmmakers and creatives like Christopher Nolan keep returning to its core ideas. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Karen Ní MheallaighProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 term for what happens when billions of people are all forced to inhabit the same global conversation through the internet and social media. In this episode, Derek talks with Callard about how the unicontext has reshaped the way we experience time, attention, and morality. They explore why online life feels overwhelmingly negative and why public discourse has become so focused on outrage and identity. It's a conversation that connects philosophy with the modern experience of living online, ultimately offering a framework for understanding why our world just feels so weird. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Agnes CallardProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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, one issue has emerged as a defining political litmus test: Israel and the war in Gaza. But it's difficult to hold two ideas at once … that the war in Gaza is a moral catastrophe, and that antisemitism is rising in some of the spaces where that catastrophe is being debated. Derek and Peter discuss why the conflict has become so central to Democratic primaries, how debates over anti-Zionism and antisemitism are reshaping public life, and what it all means for the future of the Democratic coalition. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Peter BeinartProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 White. The goal isn't to revisit the familiar stories everyone learned in school. It's to uncover the people, events, and ideas that deserve far more attention. The historians make their picks for the most underrated president, the most overrated American, the historical figure who ought to be a textbook star, and the dark-horse event that changed the course of the country. Along the way, they debate what we get wrong about the American story, why some figures become legends while others are forgotten, and history’s most overlooked chapters. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuests: Beverly Gage, H.W. Brands, and Richard WhiteProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 changing the battlefield: drones. From Ukraine to the Middle East, cheap drones are transforming how wars are fought, giving countries and even small groups capabilities that once belonged only to the world's most powerful militaries. They’re changing not just how wars are fought, but who can fight them. Today, Derek is joined by Erik Lin-Greenberg, an MIT professor and author of 'The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft,' to explore how drones are reshaping modern warfare and what this new era could mean for the future of conflict. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Erik Lin-Greenberg Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 trillion-dollar companies can lose billions of dollars a year and still command enormous valuations. SpaceX recently became one of the world's most valuable public companies despite reporting multibillion-dollar losses. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic are also racing toward public markets with sky-high valuations and no expectation of near-term profitability. These companies are spending staggering sums on chips, data centers, and AI infrastructure, as they bet that today's losses will create tomorrow's economic winners. Today, Derek is joined by Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson of Ritholtz Wealth Management and the Animal Spirits podcast to explore the rise of the trillion-dollar, zero-profit company and what it says about the future of technology, investing, and the American economy. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ben Carlson and Michael Batnick Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 balance of power in the Middle East. Instead, the war became a costly stalemate. Iran's power continued, the conflict dragged on, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted global energy markets, sending economic shockwaves around the world. Now, a ceasefire has ended the fighting. But critics argue that the agreement gives Iran major concessions in exchange for empty promises about its nuclear program that prove difficult to enforce. Today, Karim Sadjadpour returns to the podcast to examine the end of the Iran war. Why did the Trump administration agree to this deal, and will history remember it as a necessary compromise or a strategic failure? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Karim SadjadpourProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is Donald Trump good at? In his second administration, he promised lower prices, stronger manufacturing, and an end to foreign conflicts. Instead, inflation has risen, blue-collar job growth has slowed, and the U.S. finds itself involved in another war in the Middle East. But there is one area where Trump has undeniably succeeded: increasing the wealth of the Trump family. Even as his approval ratings have fallen, Trump and his businesses have reportedly received billions of dollars in new investments and deals, raising questions about presidential ethics and conflicts of interest. Today, Derek is joined by Isaac Saul of Tangle to draft the most striking examples of alleged corruption and ethical controversies in the second Trump administration and ask a simple question: Are we witnessing an unprecedented era of presidential profiteering? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Isaac SaulProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman LINKS: https://www.readtangle.com/the-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-corruption-story/ This episode is brought to you by Accenture. https://Accenture.com/Spotify All Matches Streaming Live. Watch 3 Days Free. Offers are subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For years, scientists worried that medical progress was slowing down. Drug development became more expensive than ever with more complex clinical trials, and even then, many new treatments offered only modest gains. But over the past month, a series of breakthroughs has raised hopes that medicine may be entering a new era. Researchers unveiled a massively promising new therapy for pancreatic cancer, a gene-editing treatment that could dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease, and an experimental obesity drug that not only produces unprecedented weight loss but also improves a huge range of related conditions. Cancer and heart disease are America’s two biggest killers, but if these treatments fulfill their promise, they could transform public health and extend millions of lives. Today’s guest is Matthew Herper, senior writer at STAT News. We discuss this remarkable month in medicine, why so many advances are arriving at once, and what they could mean for the future of human health. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Matthew HerperProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman All Matches Streaming Live. Watch 3 Days Free. Offers are subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Prior to the 1930s, old age in America often meant poverty. But thanks to Social Security, Medicare, medical advances, and rising asset prices, over the past 90 years, older Americans have become one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful groups in the country. In his new book, 'Gerontocracy in America,' Samuel Moyn argues that this success has created a dangerous imbalance. He says America isn't just facing oligarchy, or rule by the rich, but "Old-igarchy": a system in which wealth and power are increasingly concentrated among older generations, often at the expense of younger Americans. Today, Derek talks with Moyn about the rise of gerontocracy in America, whether elderly power has become a problem, what reforms could rebalance the scales between generations, and whether this argument is a serious critique of American politics or simply ageist nonsense. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Samuel MoynProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Humans are unusual dads. Across the animal kingdom, dads are often absent from child-rearing altogether. But among humans, fatherhood takes many forms, and in the last half century, it has changed dramatically. College-educated American fathers now spend nearly four times as much time caring for their children as they did in the 1960s. And according to new research, this new type of fatherhood doesn't just change a man's schedule or priorities—it can literally change his brain. Today, Derek talks with USC psychologist Darby Saxbe, author of 'Dad Brain,' about the science of modern fatherhood. They discuss how active parenting affects men's psychology and how changing expectations around fatherhood are reshaping families and men themselves. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Darby SaxbeProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For generations, we've defined creativity by its products: the novel, the painting, the song, the breakthrough idea. We look at the work, and from the work we see the creator as “creative.” But AI is getting remarkably good at producing creative work. In some cases, experts now prefer AI-generated writing to work created by humans and can't reliably tell the difference between the two. In fact, a major literary prize even recently honored a work that was largely written by AI. It all raises a deeper question than whether or not AI can write well. It forces us to reconsider what creativity actually is. Today, neuroscientist Adam Green joins the show to discuss how AI is changing the way we write, think, and generate ideas. His research finds that while AI can make our language more polished and sophisticated, it may also make our thinking more uniform. The sentences get sharper. The ideas get more predictable. And If creativity is no longer something we can recognize from the final product alone, we may need a new, more human definition. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Dr. Adam GreenProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Modern loneliness is often treated as a simple problem: People are simply spending more time alone. But what if that's not the whole story? Over the last several years, Derek has written about workism, the rise of a culture that puts work at the center of our lives, and the "antisocial century," in which technology has made it easier than ever to avoid spending time with other people. The result is a world where many of us trade deep connection for convenience, productivity, and fleeting hits of entertainment. Today, Derek talks with Yale psychology professor and Happiness Lab host Laurie Santos about the science of friendship, connection, and loneliness. What do we misunderstand about being alone? Why are male friendships harder to maintain? And how can we build stronger relationships in a world that seems designed to pull us apart? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Laurie Santos Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NBA’s vibes have been unusually awful recently. There has been widespread hand-wringing about the homogenization of modern offenses and the league’s notoriously weak regular-season TV ratings. A tanking crisis saw about a third of teams purposely try to lose games in a race to secure the top pick in the 2026 draft. A barrage of gambling scandals took out a head coach and several players. And the playoffs have brought relentless complaining from fans about foul-baiting and flopping, tactics that have often been rewarded by the referees.At the center of this is Adam Silver, who was once the most popular and celebrated commissioner in all of sports. In recent years, though, his reputation has soured. Fans have begun to wonder: Why isn’t he addressing the problems that everyone else seems to see? Is the right guy running the league?In a profile of Silver for The Atlantic, the journalist Tim Alberta wrote, “Companies take on the personality of their leader.” Today, Alberta joins Derek to talk about the state of the modern NBA, whether the league has optimized the fun out of basketball, and what the impact is when a sport stops being treated like a game that exists to remind people that there is more to life than work and money. Visit https://www.uber.com/safety to learn more. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Tim AlbertaProducer: Chris SuttonAdditional Production Support: Ben GlicksmanLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past century, attitudes about gender roles have become one of the clearest dividing lines in the country. Many Republicans, both men and women, say men are getting a raw deal in modern America. Many Democrats see that claim as completely off base. So where does that split come from, and why has it become so central to politics? Journalist Helen Lewis calls this emerging worldview “masculinism,” an ideology that pushes back against feminism and reflects a broader nostalgia for traditional gender roles. Today, Lewis joins Derek to talk about the rise of this phenomenon and what it reveals about the growing schism in American politics. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:  https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Helen Lewis Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On his 40th birthday, Derek Thompson takes a step back and looks at how his thinking on the national debt has changed. Back when he first covered fiscal policy, concern about government borrowing was mostly a conservative position, with many liberals arguing it was overblown. That’s starting to shift. The U.S. now spends far more than it brings in, and the gap is still growing. For the first time, interest payments on the debt have surpassed military spending. And deficits that once rose during crises like the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic haven’t really come back down. So what changed, and how worried should we be? Derek is joined by economist Justin Wolfers to walk through the basics of the federal budget, the evolving debate around the national debt, and why more economists are starting to take persistent deficits seriously. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Justin Wolfers Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Visit https://www.uber.com/safety to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fertility rates are collapsing around the world. In rich countries and poor ones, in secular societies and religious ones, people are having fewer children than ever before. Some explanations focus on economic factors like housing costs, childcare costs, and student debt. Others point to a harder-to-measure, broader sense of uncertainty about the future. At the same time, economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde thinks we are underestimating how big a deal this really is. In his view, only two forces will truly shape the future of human history in this century: artificial intelligence and fertility, and changes are already underway. Today, Fernández-Villaverde joins Derek to talk about the global fertility decline, why it is happening across so many different societies, and why he believes this shift could reshape economics, culture, and the future of civilization. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jesús Fernández-Villaverde Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the past few years, Silicon Valley executives and economists have warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out millions of jobs. Some companies have even blamed AI for layoffs. But what if the AI job apocalypse isn’t actually happening? Today, Derek talks to economist Alex Imas about the growing gap between the rhetoric around AI-related job loss and the facts. Despite widespread fears of mass unemployment, surveys show most executives expect AI to create jobs or have little impact on hiring. Even employment in software engineering (one of the fields thought to be most vulnerable to AI) continues to grow. Derek and Alex discuss why automation fears persist despite contradictory evidence, the history of technological disruption, and why AI may not be destroying work as much as it is simply redirecting us toward entirely new industries and opportunities. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Alex Imas Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Visit https://www.uber.com/safety to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

America is richer than ever. Unemployment is low. Wages are high. According to traditional metrics, the economy looks strong. So why are Americans feeling so bad? Today, Derek talks with bestselling author Morgan Housel and journalist David Wallace-Wells about what Derek calls the “Tragic Twenties”: the strange and sudden collapse in American happiness that began during COVID and never really stopped. What's behind the country’s emotional downturn? Inflation and the lingering psychological effects of the pandemic are certainly part of the story. But so are collapsing trust in institutions, rising social isolation, the negativity feedback loop of social media, and the feeling that we’re living through one crisis after another. Derek, Morgan, and David unpack why the wealthiest society in history still feels deeply adrift and what this happiness recession says about the future of American life. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuests: Morgan Housel and Derek Wallace-WellsProducer: Devon BaroldiAdditional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Links: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/if-americas-so-rich-howd-it-get-so Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hard to detect and almost impossible to treat, pancreatic cancer has long been one of medicine’s most ruthless killers. For decades, it’s been the cancer that science couldn’t crack. But that might be starting to change. Recently, cancer researchers have announced a series of breakthroughs that, taken together, sound almost too good to be true: a drug that targets the “undruggable” gene behind most pancreatic tumors, a personalized mRNA vaccine that teaches the immune system to recognize pancreatic cancer as an enemy, and, now, an AI program that can spot the elusive disease years before doctors typically find it. So is this breakthrough a real turning point? Or another case of medical hype outrunning reality? On today’s episode, Dr. Ajit Goenka of the Mayo Clinic joins Derek to walk through the science behind the latest advances in cancer detection and what they could mean for the future of health care. They discuss Dr. Goenka’s new research using artificial intelligence to detect pancreatic cancer earlier than ever before … and whether machines might soon see what doctors can’t. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dr. Ajit Goenka Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Freedom is one of the few ideas everyone agrees on. Surely more choice and autonomy is a good thing, right? But what if our endless pursuit of freedom is actually making us more anxious, less creative, and holding us back from reaching our full potential?Today, Derek Thompson talks with bestselling author David Epstein about the surprising upside of constraints. After arguing for breadth in 'Range,' Epstein’s new book, 'Inside the Box,' makes the opposite case: that limits and rules can actually unlock creativity and satisfaction. They explore why more options don’t always make us happier, and how too many possibilities can lead to paralysis.As Søren Kierkegaard warned, anxiety may be the price of too much freedom. It’s the dizziness that comes from keeping every option open. So in a world obsessed with maximizing choice and opening doors, this episode makes the case for something radical: closing some. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: Plain English with Derek Thompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: David Epstein Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For nearly a decade, critics have predicted that this would be the moment Trumpism finally fractures - January 6, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, endless internal feuds, even Trump’s online beef with Pope Leo. And yet the movement endures. Derek is joined by Ross Douthat to unpack the contradictory coalition Trump has built: Christian conservatives who overlook increasingly pagan behavior, anti-establishment populists who embrace strongman bullying, MAHA health obsessives that ignore their leader's diet of exclusively processed food … What holds this movement together and could the Iran War finally tear it apart? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ross Douthat Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hollywood is in the middle of a triple crisis. You can measure it in tickets, jobs, and ideas. Start with tickets. The best year for the movie business this century was 2002, when Americans and Canadians bought 1.6 billion tickets, or about five per person. Last year, Americans bought half that number. Eighty years ago, the typical American went to the movies twice a month. Now they go about twice a year. Then there are the jobs. Studios are making fewer movies and shows than they did just a few years ago, and the projects they green-light are increasingly shot overseas, where governments hand out generous subsidies. According to The Wall Street Journal, employment in Hollywood has fallen 30 percent since 2022 across the hundreds of trades—actors, carpenters—that make film and television possible. And then there's the creativity problem. It's not just that studios keep reheating 20th-century IP. The stars are getting older, too. Among the 14 most important movie stars of this decade, the average age is 57. Half are over 60. None is under 45. Even many of Gen Z's favorite movie stars—the Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington—had hit films before Gen Z was born. Today's guest is Sean Fennessey, host of The Ringer's The Big Picture and author of the new Substack Projections. In an essay published this week, Sean argues that all the gloom is missing something real: Attendance is perking up, young stars are breaking through, and the auteurs we've followed for 20 years are ascending to the center of the culture. Today, Sean and Derek talk about the new rules of Hollywood and what they tell us about the changing winds of American culture. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Sean Fennessey Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two weeks ago, Anthropic announced an AI model so capable and so dangerous that it decided not to release it to the public. The model, codenamed Mythos, could autonomously infiltrate computer systems around the world, exploit security vulnerabilities, conceal its own reasoning, and fabricate false explanations for what it was doing. Anthropic instead shared it with a small consortium of companies to help them find their own cybersecurity flaws. You could be forgiven for some skepticism. Is this a genuine safety call, or Anthropic’s way of marketing its own power? But independent benchmarks suggest Mythos is real: On the Epoch Capabilities Index, which aggregates 40 separate AI evaluations, it represents the biggest single leap in model performance in three years. That story is one of two major phase shifts happening simultaneously in AI right now. The first: from racing to release, to treating your own product as too dangerous to publish. The second: from a story about demand scarcity—is anyone actually paying for this stuff?—to supply scarcity, where companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on AI agents and the hyperscalers still can’t keep up. Today’s guest is New York Times columnist and Hard Fork co-host Kevin Roose. We talk about Mythos, China, the road to AGI, and why the last few weeks might be the most consequential month in AI since the release of ChatGPT. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kevin Roose Producer: Devon Baroldi Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The two biggest stories in the world right now—the war involving Iran and the rise of artificial intelligence—are, at their core, the same story: energy. The Iran conflict has become a war of competing energy blockades, with Iran squeezing American allies and America squeezing Iran. And AI is its own energy arms race, with tech companies scrambling not just for customers but for supply—chips, electricity, and data center capacity. What does it mean when every major story leads back to energy? Derek talks with energy analyst Nat Bullard about a world where power, in every sense of the word, is the thing everyone is fighting over. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Nat Bullard Producer: Devon Baroldi Link: https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Something weird is going on with the elevated unemployment rate for young people today, but no one knows what exactly it is. For the last year, as the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has crept up ominously, one of the questions I’ve reported more deeply than any other is: Is AI replacing young workers’ jobs? To make a long story short: I initially thought yes, then some economists convinced me the answer was no, then some other economists convinced me the answer was yes, then some other people convinced me the answer was no. Clear as mud. Today’s guest is Rogé Karma. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics. We talk about the labor market for new hires, why young college graduates are so miserable, and why economic vibes are worth paying attention to, even if the official statistics are pointing in another direction. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Rogé Karma Producer: Devon Baroldi Links:https://www.theatlantic.com/category/work-progress/ https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/04/job-market-artificial-intelligence/686659/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Perhaps you’ve heard the news: The U.S. is experiencing a religious revival, and it’s concentrated among young people, who are flocking back to the fold. The Economist announced that “the West has stopped losing its religion.” The Washington Post declared that “Catholicism is drawing in Gen Z men.” This is shocking news. Since the 1990s, the share of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation has been skyrocketing. A reversal would be historic. But today’s guest, Ryan Burge, tells us that the secular pause in America is much stranger than it looks. Ryan is the author of the sensational Substack Graphs About Religion, which is full of beautiful graphs about religion. So today’s episode will be a little special for folks on YouTube and Spotify. You’ll be able to see the beautiful graphs that Ryan makes that really hammer home his deepest conclusions. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ryan Burge Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: Practically this entire episode is inspired by the work on Ryan’s amazing Substack. You can subscribe here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The 1970s oil crisis changed the world in ways that many people forget today, from the transformation of American politics to the rise of the Japanese electronics industry. The Iran war of 2026 could have similarly global consequences, from the rise of China to changes in the future of war to the acceleration of the global renewables transition. Today, Australian investor and writer Alex Turnbull joins the show to discuss the most important and most surprising second-order effects of the war. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Alex Turnbull Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the themes we’ve circled in the last few weeks is the way that the modern world can hijack our values. This principle was recently articulated by the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen in an episode called "How Metrics Make Us Miserable." Thi told us that he became a philosopher to answer the biggest questions in life but discovered, in grad school, that everybody around him mostly cared about numbers. Journals were ranked by status: numbers. The university departments were ranked by status: more numbers. Individual researchers had their own h-scores and other public quantifications of prestige: numbers, numbers, and numbers. And this cult of quantification completely took over his life. The internal value of “I want to answer the world’s deepest questions” becomes replaced by the external value of “make number go up.” What do we call this extraordinary force for bulldozing our values, and replacing them with something outside of us—synthetic, bureaucratic, inauthentic? Let’s call it the machine. If you become a philosopher to discover the meaning of life but only work on the papers that you think will end up in journals scored highly by a bureaucracy you’ll never see … that’s the machine. If you’re a podcaster who wants to answer the most compelling questions in the world but ends up just focusing on rage-bait political news because that’s what YouTube fingers are clicking on, that’s the machine. What’s the opposite of the machine? It’s something a little different than success. It’s success plus the ability to hold our values in the face of external systems that try to crush them. Today’s guest Brad Stulberg calls it: excellence. Today's podcast is about excellence. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Brad Stulberg Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: The Way of Excellence by Brad Stulberg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s podcast is an interview with one of the cofounders of the AI company Anthropic, Jack Clark. One thing I’m trying to do with the subject of artificial intelligence is offer a balance of perspectives on an issue that tends to receive mostly one-sided coverage. Some people are certain that AI is a bubble; some are certain it is not. Some are certain that AI will destroy millions of jobs; some are certain that it will not. I want listeners of this show to feel like every time they hear an intelligent take on one side of this issue, the next episode they’ll hear a countervailing take. Two weeks ago, you heard the investor and writer Paul Kedrosky argue that AI was an economic bubble. But if any single data point pierces that narrative, it’s this. From December 2025 to this month, March 2026, Anthropic has more than doubled its annual recurring revenue, from $9 billion to nearly $20 billion. According to several analysts, there is no record of any company growing this fast at this scale. Now, I don’t need Jack Clark or anybody at Anthropic to read me a corporate statement about the company’s revenue growth. I can read that myself. What I wanted to do today is ask questions that only someone in Jack’s position can answer. If Anthropic’s executives believe that AI might be as dangerous as nuclear weapons, what right does any private business have to build this sort of thing for profit? How does the company balance its reputation as the industry leader in caution and safety with its other reputation as one of the fastest developers of this technology? And if artificial intelligence has the capacity to produce a country of geniuses in a data center—as Anthropic’s CEO insists—why do Americans overall say they disapprove of artificial intelligence more than just about every other institution and individual in the world? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jack Clark Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a typical worker with a salary, you have almost no control over how much tax you owe. But if you own a company worth billions of dollars, the income tax is, in the words of my guest today, "largely optional." Countries around the world struggle to get billionaires to pay a higher tax rate than middle-income families. Gabriel Zucman is one of the world's leading experts on tax inequality, the economist who first rigorously measured what U.S. billionaires actually pay—and he found that it's less, as a share of income, than what a middle-class American pays. He's advised Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on wealth tax proposals and recently published sweeping new research showing that the problem is global. Today, we get into the mechanics of billionaire tax avoidance, the history of failed wealth taxes, and whether the AI era is about to make all of this dramatically worse. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Gabriel Zucman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2017, Americans legally bet about $5 billion on sports. Last year, that number rose to $160 billion. Gambling hasn’t just taken over sports. It’s invaded culture, politics, and even international warfare. Bettors have already made millions of dollars wagering on the precise dates and locations of bombing campaigns in Iran, and journalists have been hounded for reporting on events that can lose bettors money. It’s one thing to believe, as I do, that it would be foolish to entirely ban sports gambling in the U.S. It’s another to watch the warp-speed casino-ification of American life and not think, “Something has gone badly wrong here!” McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins the show to discuss his new cover story on how gambling conquered sports … and everything else. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: McKay Coppins Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/ Source for all photos: Getty Images Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The AI buildout continues to break records, as the hyperscalers pour hundreds of billions of dollars into chips and data centers, even as investors punish their stock prices. But the revenue side of the ledger is showing signs of takeoff. In the last few weeks, OpenAI and Anthropic have added billions of dollars of cash, on their way to becoming two of the fastest growing companies in history. Last year, Derek was convinced that AI was on its way to being one of the biggest bubbles in modern capitalism’s history. But the torpid rise of AI agents is starting to change his mind. So he wanted to bring someone on to test his evolving theory. The investor and writer Paul Kedrosky returns to the show to make his own case even more firmly: AI is a bubble, and the evidence is all around us. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Check out Paul's podcast 'The Nick, Dick and Paul Show' on YouTube and Spotify: https://www.youtube.com/@nickdickpaul https://open.spotify.com/show/6mxUS2hFE2hdaNx1sjhdYu?si=67add32695c546bf Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Paul Kedrosky Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why do placebo effects work, even when patients know that they're taking a sugar pill? How do "nocebo" effects work, and why do some people hold onto beliefs that they suspect might bring them pain and suffering? What do the major world religions have to teach secular athletes and workers about the power of belief, and what does the psychological research tell us about the benefits of prayer, even for those who don't believe in God? Nir Eyal, bestselling author of the new book Beyond Belief, joins the show to talk about the research behind how our beliefs shape our lives. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Nir Eyal Producer: Devon Baroldi Today’s open is adapted from Derek’s Substack essay “If Placebos Work So Well, Why Not Prescribe Sugar Pills For Everything?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Strait of Hormuz is the tiny bottleneck that could destabilize the global economy. As a critical passageway for crude oil, natural gas, and critical inputs for fertilizer, computer chips, and plastic, this small stretch of water is a tiny chokepoint for global trade, and the war in Iran has all but shut it down. What does this mean for the U.S. economy and other countries around the world?  Geopolitical analyst Rachel Ziemba joins the show to discuss. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Rachel Ziemba Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when the two biggest stories in the world—the Trump White House and the development of advanced artificial intelligence—collide? Well, nothing good, apparently. When contract negotiations broke down between the Pentagon and Anthropic, a leading AI lab, the Department of War took the extraordinary step of labeling Anthropic a "supply chain risk," a designation typically reserved for Chinese companies suspected of spying on American technology. It’s not just liberals like me that found this announcement jarring. The technology writer Dean Ball—who served as Senior Policy Advisor for AI at the White House as recently as last summer—said the decision amounted to a nearly tyrannical attack on private property. (After all, if the government can walk up to your company, make you a deal, and destroy your company if you say no, that certainly sounds like a world in which the state can destroy whatever it trains its eyes on.) So, I wanted to talk to Dean about what he sees—and why he thinks this episode is so important, and so terrifying. Today, we talk about the difference between Biden and Trump’s approach to artificial intelligence before diving into the Anthropic mess, and pulling out of it the bigger story, according to Dean: that Trump’s scattershot AI policy is just the latest sign that AI’s capabilities are growing faster than many people want to admit—this technology is going somewhere fast, and the the American government simply is not prepared for where it’s taking us. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dean Ball Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump’s polling has continued to edge down week after week. And yet approval of the Democratic Party is still stuck near its all-time low, according to Gallup and other surveys. One interpretation of these polls is that the deep unpopularity of the party is an albatross around the neck of Democratic candidates. But there’s another interpretation that I think is more interesting—and perhaps more true. The fact that the party has no clearly defined national leader, and no clearly defined “brand” (sorry), is an opportunity for young Democrats to define themselves as individuals. Rather than act like a congregation all singing from the same hymnal, they can experiment, disagree, and adapt their message to their electorate. And that might ultimately prove to be a strength of the party heading into the 2026 midterms rather than a weakness. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) joins the show to talk about the Iran war, immigration, affordability vs. aspiration, and the future of the Democratic Party. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Ruben GallegoProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dramatic regime change. Moderate regime evolution. A calamitous regional conflict. Or … no change at all. Today we consider how the Iran conflict might evolve following the killing of Supreme Leader Khamenei with Karim Sadjadpour, an American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Karim SadjadpourProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The modern world swims in numbers: work metrics, fitness metrics, health metrics, social media metrics. Sometimes the quantification of life can make things better. But very often, I think they force us to play the games we can measure rather than the games we value. The quantified life has become a modern religion: a system of values that takes us over and keeps us from living the life we want. Today’s guest is the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen. He is the author of the book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. We talk about metrics, the games of life, and how to listen to the parts of ourselves that cannot be reduced to numbers. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: C. Thi Nguyen Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The GLP-1 drug revolution has taken the medicine world by storm. I’ve done several episodes on the science of GLP-1s. But we’ve never done an episode like this before, where we talk to one of the most important people in charge of guiding the GLP-1 drug revolution. Our guest is Dave Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. First we talk about what makes the GLP-1 drug category special and the science that Lilly is doing to improve these drugs. Then, we talk about the pharmaceutical industry more broadly. How it works. How it could work better. And I don’t shy away from the question that I think Pharma CEOs need to take much more seriously: If the pharmaceutical industry is theoretically more devoted than any other economic category to saving people’s lives, why do Americans distrust it more than any other industry in the entire economy? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: David RicksProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump suffered a huge blow Friday when the Supreme Court struck down the centerpiece of his economic policy: his vast system of tariffs. So, what happens now? Harvard’s Jason Furman explains the implications for the U.S. economy, consumers, global trade, and Trump’s strategy of centralizing power in the executive branch and using trade policy as a means of wringing concessions out of other counties. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Jason FurmanProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the mid-20th century, a group of media and communications scholars proposed that the shift from spoken to written language—from orality to literacy—transformed our politics, our media, our social relations, and even our sense of consciousness. Today we’re undergoing another shift: from a literate culture to something stranger—a post-literate world awash in social media and digital communications in which oral traditions are making a comeback. Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal, the cohost of the Odd Lots podcast, has called this one of the most important trends in the world. Today he explains how he got hooked on orality theory and why it’s the skeleton key that unlocks so many oddities of the modern world. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Joe Weisenthal Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In his epic cover story for The Atlantic this month, staff writer Josh Tyrangiel spoke to dozens of economists, workers, tech CEOs, and AI experts about the danger that artificial intelligence might pose to the labor force. Is AI developing the capacity to automate and even replace millions of white-collar jobs, as many technologists and some economists predict? Or is this a normal technology that, like previous generations of technology, will have a much slower effect on the workforce? We cover several scenarios before asking: Why does it seem like nobody in politics is paying close enough attention to this story? Links: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/ai-economy-labor-market-transformation/685731/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Josh Tyrangiel Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello! I’m back from paternity leave just in time to talk about the biggest media earthquake of the year (so far): the Washington Post meltdown. For decades, the Post was a journalistic gem with superior coverage of politics. Last week, billionaire owner Jeff Bezos decided to gut roughly a third of the staff after the paper lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few years. Today’s guest is Jim VandeHei, the cofounder of Politico and Axios and a former Post reporter. We talk about the decades-long rise and fall of the Post before zooming out to talk about the most important changes in news media over the past 20 years, the secret of 21st-century media success, and the coming storm of AI. To read more about Derek’s opening comments on how the future of the news industry is going back to past, check out his Atlantic article on the subject here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/post-advertising-future-media/578917/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jim VandeHei Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’ve been re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond, and today's episode marks the end of our "best of" series for this year! This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one!“What’s the Matter With America’s Food?” originally aired September 26, 2025.If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.Host: Derek ThompsonGuests: Julia Belluz and Kevin HallProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “This Is How the AI Bubble Could Burst” originally aired September 23, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Paul KedroskyProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “The Healthiest "Super-Agers" Have One Thing in Common, According to a 25-Year Study” originally aired August 27th, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Dr. Sandra WeintraubProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse” originally aired August 13, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: John Burn-MurdochProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good for Everything, Should We All Be on Them?” originally aired September 16, 2025.If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuests: David D’Alessio and Randy SeeleyProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “What Experts Really Think About Smartphones and Mental Health” originally aired June 4th, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Jay Van BavelProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “How Gen Z Sees the World” originally aired March 12, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Kyla ScanlonProducer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “A Grand, Unified Theory of Why Americans Are So Unhealthy” originally aired June 18, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: David Kessler and Eric Topol Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “The Antisocial Century” originally aired January 10, 2025. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Nick Epley Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout December and January, we’re going to be re-airing some of our favorite episodes of the past year and beyond. This list includes interviews that really stuck with me and some others that you guys had tons of feedback and thoughts on … including this one! “How to Be Happy and the Science of Cognitive Time Travel” originally aired August 9, 2024. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Laurie Santos Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of my favorite theories about the modern world is the idea that culture is "stuck." Whether the decline of ornamentation in modern architecture, or the fact that every corporate logo looks the same now, or the fact that Gen Z's favorite television was all made in the 1990s and 2000s, or the sequel fetish in Hollywood, or the theory that old music is eating new music on Spotify, the evidence of cultural stagnation abounds. But is there one grand theory that explains all of it? The psychologist and writer Adam Mastroianni thinks so. He joins Derek to discuss. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Adam Mastroianni Producers: Devon Baroldi Links:https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-hidden-cause-of-cultural-stagnationhttps://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-decline-of-deviancehttps://www.astralcodexten.com/p/whither-tartariahttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/america-innovation-film-science-business/620858/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/america-really-running-out-original-ideas/621055/https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025/11/blank-space-book-excerpt-culture/685037/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The University of California San Diego is one of the best public colleges in America. So it was fairly shocking when the school released a report on the steep decline in academic preparedness of its freshman. The number of incoming students in need of remedial math has surged in the past few years. These students did not fail high school math. Many of them got straight A's. Other colleges have seen similar trends: declining mathematical ability from students who aced their high school tests. I think that there are several ways to frame the problem we’re looking at here. One is that American kids can’t do math: That’s the headline of a recent Atlantic article by Rose Horowitch. Another frame, as Kelsey Piper writes in the online magazine The Argument, is that grades have stopped meaning anything. I think that the full story is somewhere in between. The age of grade inflation is also the age of achievement deflation. We are giving more and more A's to students who are learning less and less. There is a lot of talk these days about America moving into a postliterate future. One piece of evidence for this is declining test scores for literacy among students and adults. Fewer people talk about a post-numerate future. The problem here is bigger than UC San Diego. National assessments in the U.S. and even throughout the developed world show that people are getting worse at math. But why? Today we have three guests to help us answer these questions. Rose Horowitch of The Atlantic, Kelsey Piper of The Argument, and Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University. We talk about plummeting math scores for American students, why it’s happening, and why it matters at a moment when carbon-based humans seem to be getting dumber at the very moment that silicon-based machines are getting smarter. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Rose Horowitch, Kelsey Piper and Joshua Goodman Producers: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many AI experts believe that some time in the next few years, we will build something close to artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that can do nearly all valuable cognitive work as well as or better than humans. What happens to jobs, wages, prices, and politics in that world? To explore that question, Derek is joined by Anton Korinek, an economist at the University of Virginia and one of the leading thinkers on the economics of transformative AI. Before he focused on superintelligence, Anton studied financial crises and speculative booms, so he brings a rare mix of macroeconomic skepticism and technological optimism. They talk about quiet AGI versus loud AGI, Baumol’s cost disease, robots, mass unemployment, and what kinds of policies might prevent an “AGI Great Depression” and keep no American left behind. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Anton Korinek Producers: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sometimes, the perfect guest to discuss your own writing is ... you. On this special crossover episode, I am interviewed by Ben Smith and Max Tani of Semafor's Mixed Signals podcast about my recent essay, "Everything Is Television." During our conversation, which you can also find on the Mixed Signals feed, we discuss TV, politics, the definition of charisma, and much more. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Hosts: Ben Smith and Max Tani Guest: Derek Thompson Listen to my episode on the Mixed Signals feed HERE. You can find my essay "Everything is Television" HERE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Youth unemployment is rising. Hiring is freezing up. The housing market is a mess. How did things get so bad for young people in the economy? And are things as bad as they seem? Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson of the Animal Spirits podcast join the show to discuss. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson Producers: Devon Baroldi Links: Is this the scariest chart in the world? https://www.derekthompson.org/p/is-this-the-new-scariest-chart-in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week was a straight flush for Democrats. Zohran Mamdani completed his heroic arc to become mayor of the world’s most important city. Democrats ran up huge margins in the big governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, where Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, respectively, won by double digits. What unified the three victories was the Democratic candidate’s ability to turn the affordability curse against the sitting president, transforming Republicans’ 2024 advantage into a 2025 albatross. Affordability is the Democrats’ new watchword. And it’s a good one. It speaks to Americans' direct concerns. It’s a big-tent subject, allowing a democratic socialist to offer one message in South Brooklyn and a moderate Democrat to offer another message in southern Virginia. Today’s guest is Matthew Yglesias, a writer whose site, Slow Boring, is a must-read for me and many others who follow politics and policy. We talk about the affordability theory of everything and its weaknesses, the Democrats’ big night, the lessons of Mamdani, persuasion, moderation, and much more. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Matthew Yglesias Producers: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ken Burns—the award-winning filmmaker whose documentary films and television series on American history include 'The Civil War' (1990), 'Baseball' (1994), 'Jazz' (2001), and 'Country Music' (2019)—joins the show to talk about the American Revolution and the art of storytelling. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ken Burns Producers: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, an FBI investigation into gambling led to the arrest of several prominent basketball stars, raising questions about the state of legalized sports betting, which has enriched professional sports and sports media. The problems with sports gambling extend far beyond the integrity of the game. A 2024 working paper from economists at UCLA, Harvard, and USC found that states that legalized sports gambling after the 2018 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court saw “a substantial increase in average bankruptcy rates, debt sent to collections, use of debt consolidation loans, and auto loan delinquencies. We also find that financial institutions respond to the reduced creditworthiness of consumers by restricting access to credit.” A separate analysis found that nearly one in five men aged 18-24 is on the spectrum of having a gambling problem. There’s no question that sports betting has taken over sports. It’s all over ESPN, all over my favorite sports podcasts. This podcast is a part of The Ringer Podcast Network, which has close relationships with the sports book FanDuel and has several shows devoted to gambling. I listen to them. Quite a lot, actually. It would be easier for me as the host of this episode if my position on gambling had the clarity of pure outrage. If I thought that gambling was a pure vice, a mere nuisance, and a total drag, I would say: Let’s just be done with it. On the opposite end, if I thought that legalized sports gambling posed no risk to bettors, didn’t threaten the integrity of professional sports, and represented an obvious improvement to the previous regime of black-market betting, I’d say: Ignore these moralizing bozos and place your 15-part parlay. The trouble is that I don’t have the advantage of clear outrage on this issue. I think that sports gambling is fun. And I think that it threatens the integrity of professional sports. And I think that it ruins some people’s lives. Today’s guest is Jonathan Cohen, the author of 'Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling.' Like me, Jon is worried about the effect that legal sports gambling is having. Also like me, he sometimes bets on sports. Also like me, he listens to Ringer podcasts. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jonathan Cohen Producers: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bestselling author Michael Lewis joins the show to talk about how bubbles happen, the legacy of 'The Big Short' and the global financial crisis, 'Moneyball' and how the data analytics revolution conquered sports and entertainment, the difference between being a good investor and being a good investigative journalist, and the craft of writing. Listen to the new audiobook of Michael's hit 'The Big Short' ⁠HERE⁠! If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Michael Lewis Producers: Devon Baroldi and Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s guest is Ethan Mollick. Ethan is a professor of management at Wharton, where he specializes in entrepreneurship and innovation. He is the author of the book 'Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI,' and his Substack, One Useful Thing, is the single most useful guide I have ever found to make sense of these tools and use them productively. But he’s also a deep thinker of the Alfred Chandler school of big ideas who wants to not only help individuals use the technology more efficiently but also understand what happens as tens of millions and billions of people use the technology to make themselves more productive or even, at times, obsolete. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Ethan MollickProducers: Devon Baroldi and Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By some measures, the Democratic Party has never been so unpopular as a political brand. While this fact obviously reflects some difficult realities for the party, it also creates an opportunity for Democrats to redefine what the party stands for. Derek talks to Massachusetts Congressman Jake Auchincloss about his idea for a digital dopamine tax, the art of politics in an attention economy, why moderate Democrats don't have big bold ideas, Derek's two-party theory for political success in America, and more. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Jake AuchinclossProducers: Devon Baroldi and Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two weeks ago, in one of our most popular podcasts of the year, the investor and author Paul Kedrosky explained why he thinks AI is a bubble. In the last few days, practically everybody seems to agree.I hate this. I don’t like feeling like my position is the same position as everybody else’s. Conventional wisdoms are often more conventional than wise, and I’ve started to wonder: Is there a bubble of people calling AI a bubble?Today’s guest says yes. Azeem Azhar is an investor and the author of the blog Exponential View. Like Paul, Azeem is a fantastic explainer and storyteller, and I’m satisfied that Plain English has now presented the strongest possible arguments for and against AI being a bubble. If you want to know where I land, you’ll just have to listen to the end of the show. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: Azeem AzharProducers: Devon Baroldi and Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the second episode of our two-part miniseries on the future of entertainment, Derek goes from Hollywood to NYC to understand why Broadway musicals are in trouble. "With the cost of staging song-and-dance spectacles skyrocketing and audiences drawn to older hits, none of the musicals that opened last season have made a profit," The New York Times recently reported. John Johnson, a major theater producer behind hits like 'Stereophonic' (the most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history) and George Clooney's 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' joins the show to discuss the future of live theater, the death of the middle in American entertainment, and how to cultivate good "taste" in popular art. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek ThompsonGuest: John JohnsonProducers: Devon Baroldi and Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The film and TV business has quietly—or, if you work in the industry, not so quietly—been in a depression for the past few years. Original TV work has plummeted. In 2024, Americans bought about 40 percent fewer movie tickets than they did in 2019, the year before the pandemic. The number of people employed in the motion picture industry in L.A. County has also declined by 40 percent. Those are catastrophic figures. Few people have done more to shape my understanding of these developments than Ben Fritz, an entertainment industry reporter at The Wall Street Journal. We talk about what’s happened to the TV and film business in the past few years. What would it take to reverse this trend? And why are some people seeing this reversal as a positive sign for high-quality filmmaking? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ben Fritz Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America is sicker than ever. That’s what the data says, anyway. Psychological and psychiatric diagnoses have soared. Between the 1990s and the mid-2000s, bipolar disorder among American youth grew by a factor of 40, while the number of children diagnosed with ADHD increased by a factor of 7. Rates of PTSD, anxiety, and depression have soared, too. Perhaps in previous decades doctors missed millions of cases of illness that we’re now catching. Or perhaps, as the New York Times writer David Wallace Wells has written, “we are not getting sicker—we are attributing more to sickness.” We used to be merely forgetful. Now we have ADHD. We used to lack motivation. Now we’re depressed. We used to be introverted. Now we experience social anxiety. Today’s guest is Suzanne O’Sullivan, a neurologist and the author of 'The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker'. O’Sullivan argues that too many doctors today are pathologizing common symptoms in a way that’s changing the experience of the body for the worse. When doctors turn healthy people into patients, it’s not always clear if they’re reducing the risk of future disease or introducing anxiety and potentially harmful treatments to a patient who's basically fine. Rather than see the age of diagnosis as something all good or all bad—a mitzvah or a disease—I want to see it as a social phenomenon, something that is good and bad and all around us. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Suzanne O’Sullivan Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the second of our two-episode series on Donald Trump, economics, and power, we talk to Henry Farrell, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins. Farrell has written extensively on how the United States has in the last few years weaponized its economic power to force other countries to do its bidding, through sanctions or the freezing of bank accounts. Today, we consider the many ways that Trump has weaponized the office of the presidency against American interests and how his authoritarian style matches up against China as both countries race toward superintelligence. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Henry Farrell Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today is the first of two interviews this week trying to answer this question: What is Trumponomics? From the 1980s to the 2010s, it was generally assumed that Republicans and Democrats had settled differences in economic policy. Republicans wanted lower taxes and less spending on welfare. Democrats wanted higher taxes and more social spending. Reality didn’t always conform to those differences. George H.W. Bush famously raised some taxes, and Bill Clinton famously reduced some welfare spending. But generally speaking, the socialists voted for Democrats and the corporate libertarians and free-market folks found their home in the GOP. What’s interesting about Trump's theory of power and economics is that he doesn’t just scramble this divide. He obliterates it. Some of Trump’s measures are so classically Republican, you could imagine the ghost of Ronald Reagan signing off on them. After all, his signature legislative accomplishment in both terms are two huge corporate income tax cuts. But when Trump announced that the government was taking a stake in Intel, Bernie Sanders cheered the news and Gavin Newsom called him a socialist. Trump has single-handedly instituted the biggest tariffs in 100 years—tariffs that are so unusual and extralegal that a federal court just ruled that most of them are, in fact, against the law. He’s waging war on the Federal Reserve, grabbing at an institution that has historically enjoyed independence when it comes to setting interest rates and managing monetary policy. Trumponomics is capitalist and socialist; it’s obsessed with defeating China and also obsessive about copying China; it’s sometimes focused on keeping America from getting ripped off and sometimes focused on issues so personal they have nothing to do with the national interest at all. Today’s guest is Greg Ip, the chief economics commentator at The Wall Street Journal. According to Greg, the best way to see clearly what Trump is up to is to see his economic policy as what he calls “state capitalism.” If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Greg Ip Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Memory is the glue of life. Without it, our focus softens, our experience of the world blurs, and our identities melt away. But as people age, their memory declines. Many billions of dollars have been spent to understand the biological basis of dementia and to devise a cure. In most cases, they have failed spectacularly. But what if, rather than study the brains of people with advanced memory loss, we instead studied the brains of people with the opposite condition: extraordinary memory and brain health in old age? For the past few decades, Sandra Weintraub, a scientist at Northwestern University, has been part of a team studying the brains of "super-agers," people 80 and older who have the memory ability of people in their 50s. In a new paper published this year to considerable fanfare, she found that super-agers didn't have much in common. They didn't share a diet, or an exercise regimen, or a set of maladies or medications. One thing, however, united them: their social relationships. Today's guest is Sandra Weintraub. We talk about the science of memory and the brain and the protective benefit of social connection for our minds and ourselves. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Dr. Sandra Weintraub Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s pod is about the economic story of the moment. It’s about new technology that supporters claim will transform the U.S. economy, an infrastructure build-out unlike anything in living memory that demands enormous natural resources, fears that corporate giants are overbuilding something that can never return its investment, an uncomfortable closeness between corporations and the state, fears that oligarchs are screwing the public to generate unheard-of levels of private wealth. Just a small catch. This show isn’t about the present or AI in 2025. It’s about the railroads and the late 1800s. To be sure, everything I just said could plausibly be the introduction to a podcast about artificial intelligence. Last quarter, the growth of AI infrastructure spending—on chips, data centers, and electricity—exceeded the growth of consumer spending. The economic researcher and writer Paul Kedrosky has written that as a share of GDP, AI is consuming more than any new technology since the railroads in the late 1800s. There is no question that the transcontinentals transformed America. They populated the West; practically invented California; turned America into a coast-to-coast dual-ocean superpower; revolutionized finance; made possible the creation of a new kind of corporation; launched what the historian Alfred Chandler called the managerial revolution in American business; forged a new relationship between the state and private enterprise; minted a generation of plutocrats, from Jay Gould to Leland Stanford of Stanford University; galvanized the anti-monopoly movement; and completely reoriented the way Americans thought about time and space. “The transcontinentals ... came to epitomize progress, nationalism, and civilization itself,” the historian Richard White wrote in his epic history of the transcontinentals, 'Railroaded.' But he continued: “They created modernity as much by their failure as their success.” Today’s return guest is Richard White. Our acute subject is the transcontinental railroads and the 19th century. But our deeper subject is the nature of transformative technology and the messy business of building it. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Richard White Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to analysis by Financial Times writer John Burn-Murdoch, something extraordinary has happened to Americans’ personalities in the last decade. Longitudinal tests indicate that we’ve collectively become less extroverted, less agreeable, and more neurotic. The most significant thing Burn-Murdoch found is that measures of conscientiousness among young Americans appears to be in a kind of free fall. Today, John and I talk about his research. We discuss personality tests, the value of conscientiousness, and how the modern world might be scrambling our personalities by making us less interested in other people and more consumed with our own neurotic interiority. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: John Burn-Murdoch Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis published the latest GDP report. It contained a startling detail. Spending on artificial intelligence added more to the U.S. economy than consumer spending last quarter. This is very quickly becoming an AI economy. I’m interested in how AI will change our jobs. But I’m just as curious about how it will change our minds. We’re already seeing that students in high school and college are using AI to write most of their essays. What do we lose in a world where students sacrifice the ability to do deep writing? Today’s guest is Cal Newport, the author of several bestsellers on the way we work, including 'Deep Work.' He is also a professor of computer science at Georgetown. One of the questions I get the most by email, in talks, in conversations with people about the news is: If these tools can read faster than us, synthesize better than us, remember better than us, and write faster than us, what’s our place in the loop? What skills should we value in the age of AI? Or, more pointedly: What should we teach our children in the age of AI? How do we ride this train without getting run over by it? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Calvin Newport Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Subscribe to Derek’s new Substack. In 1991, the median age of first-time homebuyers was 28. Now it’s 38, an all-time high. In 1981, the median age of all homebuyers was 36. Today, it’s 56—another all-time high. This is the hardest time for young people (defined, generously, up to 40!) to buy their first home in modern history. Derek talks about the history of how we got here and then brings on Bloomberg columnist Conor Sen to talk about the state of American housing today and how the national housing market has broken into “two Americas.” If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Conor Sen Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even before the cancellation of 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,' the business of comedy was changing rapidly. Twenty years ago, comedians aspired to be late-night hosts, or to star in movies, or to have their own sitcoms. But in 2025, late-night shows are going extinct, adult comedies in Hollywood are a thing of the past, and popular sitcoms are so rare these days that Gen Z viewers are still watching 'The Office' and 'Friends.' Instead, many comedians rightly recognize that they can make more money as solo acts. In comedy, as in much of our culture, the age of institutions is giving way to an age of individuals talking to individuals. Lucas Shaw, a reporter for Bloomberg and frequent commentator on the Town podcast, joins the show to talk about the cancellation of 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' and what it says about the history and the future of comedy and media. We also talk about the death of adult comedies, the retreat of sitcoms on TV, why comedy as a field is becoming more of a solo business—and what that says about entertainment culture more broadly. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Lucas Shaw Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sign up for Derek's Substack here. Harvard economist Jason Furman returns to the show to answer two big, burning questions. First, if Trump's economic ideas are as bad as most economists say, why isn't the U.S. economy doing much worse? Second, if Trump fires Jerome Powell, would it be the final blow that finally pushes the economy into a recession? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jason Furman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Couples are having kids much later in their lives. As young people spend more of their 20s and 30s getting established in their careers, and marriage is delayed, and home buying is delayed, the unstoppable force of delay runs up against the immovable object of human anatomy. It is harder for a 40-year-old to get pregnant than for a 20-year-old to do so. The best solution we have for the fertility dilemma of the modern age is in vitro fertilization. IVF is a decades-long practice based on science, so you might think that the procedure is highly predictable, something close to an act of precision engineering. But people who have gone through the process know it can be messy, painful, frustrating, and expensive. So, what would a real scientific revolution in fertility look like? How close are we to a game-changing invention in this space? Today’s guest is Ruxandra Teslo, a scientist and writer. We talk about the fertility dilemma that exists, the fertility technology that doesn’t exist, and how a revolution in egg science could produce a second baby boom. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Ruxandra Teslo Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sign up for the Derek Thompson newsletter. In Game 7 of this year's NBA Finals, Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in the first quarter while attempting to drive to the basket on an injured calf. It was the third major Achilles injury of the 2025 NBA playoffs. Curiously, Achilles tears are typically an older-dude injury, as they're most common in middle-aged men, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Biomechanics. So the sudden clustering of this injury among star athletes in their prime has inspired a lot of head-scratching among NBA fans and even the league itself. “We had already convened a panel of experts before Tyrese’s most recent Achilles rupture,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. When you zoom out from basketball and consider the broader landscape of sports, the injury surge seems quite real. In baseball, we’ve seen a huge increase in the so-called "Tommy John surgery," which repairs a torn UCL in a pitcher’s elbow. In soccer, ACL injuries have been rising, particularly in women's soccer. And that's before we get to the huge amount of media attention that’s been paid to concussions in football. What's going on here? Vern Gambetta, a conditioning coach, trainer, and adviser to professional soccer, baseball, basketball, and Olympics teams, explains why major injuries might be surging across sports—and what it tells us about the risks of pushing the human body to its physical limit. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Vern Gambetta Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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

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