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75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Plain English with Derek Thompson

Longtime Atlantic tech, culture and political writer Derek Thompson cuts through all the noise surrounding the big questions and headlines that matter to you in his new podcast Plain English. Watch Derek and guests engage the news with clear viewpoints and memorable takeaways. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday, and if you"ve got a topic you want discussed, shoot us an email at plainenglish@spotify.com! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here:

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All Episodes

64:08

The Whole World Is Fighting About Energy

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/04/14

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

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67:11

‘The Job Market for Young People Is Brutal’

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/04/10

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

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68:53

America's Religious Revival Is a Mirage

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/04/08

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

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52:14

Is China the Winner of the Iran War?

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/04/03

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

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48:38

Why We're Addicted to ‘Sh*tty Flow’

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/31

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

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62:34

Anthropic Thinks AI Might Destroy the Economy. It's...

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/27

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

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64:50

America's Tax System Is Broken

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/24

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

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71:46

The Casino-ification of America

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/20

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

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69:45

"Yes, AI Is a Bubble. There Is No Question."

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/17

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

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71:50

The Pill That Works Even When You Know It's Fake

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/13

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

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55:49

The Economic Crisis of the Iran War Goes Far Beyond Oil

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/10

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:

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64:16

"American Democracy as We Know It Might Not Survive...

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/09

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

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42:18

Trump Is Doubling Down on Iran. How Should Democrats...

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/06

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

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55:52

The Four Ways That the Iran War Could End

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/03/03

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

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63:49

How Metrics Make Us Miserable

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/02/27

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

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67:53

The Future of GLP-1 Drugs and AI Medicine, With Eli...

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/02/24

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

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41:58

The Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Tariffs. Now...

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/02/21

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:

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63:29

The Media Theory That Explains “99% of Everything”

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/02/17

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

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66:42

"America Isn’t Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs"

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/02/13

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

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71:12

The Meltdown at The Washington Post—and the Crisis in...

Plain English with Derek Thompson ·

2026/02/11

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

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