Plain English with Derek Thompson

Well, it’s midterm day in America, and on my mind are three huge questions for tonight. Number 1: How much water is in the blue wave? Number 2: Everyone’s talking about the cost of living, inflation, and affordability, but who actually wants to do something about it? And number 3: Will this election finally be the beginning of the end of Boomer politics?

To answer these questions and more, Derek joins forces with political journalist and podcaster Saagar Enjeti. Together they break down potential midterm outcomes, the state of the GOP, ethics in Washington, and the future of millennial politics in America.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Saagar Enjeti

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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No matter how you look at it, Netflix is having a pretty bad year. Stock is down, growth has slowed, the company recently laid off roughly 1,000 people, and it dismissed its chief content officer and its head of film. After a decade of explosive growth and dominance over traditional entertainment, the company’s biggest challenge now may have less to do with its competitors in Hollywood than with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

Derek Thompson welcomes Matt Belloni onto the show to discuss Netflix's shortcomings. The break down what’s eating Netflix, why every form of media seems to be converging on short-form video, and what Netflix’s struggles reveal about the future of entertainment.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Matt Belloni

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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What exactly is effective altruism? Beginning in the early 2010s as a nerdy way to rethink the most cost-effective charity, the movement has since grown into a broader philosophy for thinking about just about everything in our lives, from the careers we choose to the technologies we build.

Today, Derek Thompson talks with Will MacAskill, one of the movement’s founders, about the origins and ideas behind effective altruism, its blind spots and controversies, the downfall of major funder Sam Bankman-Fried, and what it can tell us about this moment in history.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Will MacAskill

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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The answer to whether AI is a bubble comes down to supply and demand. Is there enough demand to justify the enormous investment in chips and data centers? If businesses keep paying more for AI every year, the debt is manageable and the buildout will look visionary. If they don't, today's AI chips could be like trains built to serve towns that never materialized.

In a follow-up to Tuesday's episode, Derek Thompson talks with economist Ara Kharazian about who's actually paying for AI, why spending may be slowing, and what that could mean for the broader economy.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Ara Kharazian

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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

Derek Thompson explores the paradoxes of AI with Ethan Mollick, whose new book, 'Co-Existence,' examines how AI is changing the way we learn and work. They discuss how AI makes experts more powerful while automating the junior work that creates them in the first place, why students perform better via AI but learn less, and whether some friction may actually be worth preserving.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Ethan Mollick

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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A year and a half after 'Abundance,' Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s book about why America has become so bad at building things, the time has come for reflection. Some commentators declare the abundance agenda dead. If you know where to look, however, you might see a different picture.

Today, Derek is joined by Representative Josh Harder (D-California) to examine the surprising ways abundance-style ideas are gaining ground, from bipartisan permitting reform in Washington to new efforts to build housing and clean energy in states and cities across the country. Politicians from both parties increasingly agree that America is still making it too hard to build. So what would it take to turn these scattered victories into a new kind of liberalism that prioritizes outcomes over process?

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Josh Harder

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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Americans spend more time alone than ever, as parties, nights out with friends, and dinner gatherings become less common. Cellphones, social media, TV, and the internet have made it easier than ever to fill our free time without other people.

Research suggests friendship is less about instant chemistry than repeated time together. It takes roughly 50 hours to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend and more than 200 to build a close one. School makes those hours easy to accumulate but adult life doesn’t.

Today, Derek talks with psychologist Adam Grant, author of Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, about what we misunderstand about chemistry and closeness and how we might get people to start hosting a damn dinner party again.

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Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Adam Grant
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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AI apocalypse, recession fears, sky-high mortgage rates, and now, the plague? Last week, a researcher at a plague institute in Siberia died after developing severe pneumonia, sparking rumors of biowarfare and fears of a new epidemic. How much of the story is fact vs. fiction, and what does it tell us about the growing threat of biological weapons?

Today, Derek is joined by physician and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha to make sense of the story. They discuss what’s really happening in Russia, the current state of bioweapons research around the world, how AI could make biological weapons more accessible, and what families, governments, and societies can do to prepare.

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Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Ashish Jha
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis are three of the most important figures in AI superintelligence, but each of them have very different ideas about what this technology should become and what it could mean for the future.

Kevin Roose, author of 'The AGI Chronicles,' joins Derek to explain the people behind the AI race: the books and ideas that shaped them, what they want for the future, and how their rivalries helped drive the industry to its current moment.

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

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Last year, Republicans were the heavy favorites to hold the Senate in the following years midterms. Now, however, prediction markets and political forecasters see a very different race. Today, Nate Silver joins Derek to explain what’s behind Donald Trump’s plummeting approval ratings, and how the atmosphere around the midterms has changed so drastically, so quickly.

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Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Nate Silver
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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What makes a hit a hit? Why do some bands make it while others fade into obscurity? Chuck Klosterman’s new book imagines an alternate history of 20th century music and uses it to explore why some things become popular and just how much culture depends on chance.

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Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Chuck Klosterman
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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

Derek talks with researchers Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, authors of the “AI as a Normal Technology” framework, about a simple question: Is AI actually just a normal technology? And if today’s AI is as powerful as it seems, why does the world still look so normal?

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guests: Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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

But, why does Mississippi look so different?

Mississippi education reformer Rachel Canter has been at the forefront of the state’s dramatic improvement in reading and math over the past few decades. Today, Derek is joined by Rachel to discuss the so-called “Mississippi miracle” (a name she says misses the mark!). Together they break down how years of policy changes and implementation transformed the state’s schools and how other states can replicate their success.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Rachel Canter

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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Expert economists keep making predictions about America’s financial future, and those predictions keep being … wrong. Over the past few years, we’ve heard warnings about a recession, inflation, tariffs, wars, deficits, and an AI bubble, yet the economy continues chugging along. Today, Derek talks with economist Jason Furman about what economists and commentators might be missing and why exactly the U.S. economy has been so much more resilient than many expected.
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Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Jason Furman
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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Trust in American higher education is near a historic low. Tuition has soared, and the payoff for a college degree is now in question as graduates face a weird and challenging job market. Simultaneously, AI is transforming everything around them, from academic fraud to job applications. It all raises the question: What role does college play in the year 2026?

Harvard is tackling this question by trying something … different. Instead of shunning new tech, Dean David Deming recently told students that the university would embrace a controversial policy of AI “encouragement,” which many saw as an attack on academic integrity itself.

Today, Derek talks with Deming about why exactly Harvard is embracing AI, what college is supposed to teach students in the first place, and how higher ed can preserve the value of deep thinking when modern technology can do so much of the thinking for us.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: David Deming

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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

In today’s episode, Derek talks with author Liaquat Ahamed about his new book, '1873,' and the similarities between the railroad mania of the 19th century and today’s AI boom. They discuss America’s first venture capitalists and the role of the Rothschild family, how manias inevitably create bubbles, and what the Panic of 1873 can teach us about the huge debts now financing artificial intelligence.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Liaquat Ahamed

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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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.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Max Spero

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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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.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Conor Sen

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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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.

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Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Tyler Austin Harper

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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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.

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Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Alex Stamos
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Additional Production Support: Ben Glicksman

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