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Plain English with Derek Thompson

#185
Language: en News
Last Checked: 2025-08-02 10:46:17
Showing episodes 1 to 100 of 316 total
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The New Geography of Housing in America

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Derek’s new Substack. In 1991, the median age of first-time homebuyers was 28. Now ...

The Demise of Late-Night TV Is an Omen for American Culture

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Even before the cancellation of 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,' the business of comedy was cha...

If Trump’s Economic Ideas Are So Bad, Why Isn’t the U.S. Economy Doing Much Worse?

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sign up for Derek's Substack here. Harvard economist Jason Furman returns to the show to answer two...

Fertility Needs a Scientific Revolution

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Couples are having kids much later in their lives. As young people spend more of their 20s and 30s g...

The Mysterious Rise of Major Injuries in Professional Sports

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sign up for the Derek Thompson newsletter. In Game 7 of this year's NBA Finals, Indiana Pacers guar...

How Abundance Won in California

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The California housing crisis is a disaster and an emergency. Housing construction per capita has st...

What's Next for the Middle East: War, Peace, or Revolution?

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sign up for Derek Thompson's Substack here! Donald Trump rose to power in the Republican Party as a...

NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani on Abundance, Socialism, and How to Change a Mind

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Before today’s show, a personal announcement. After almost 17 years at The Atlantic, I have just o...

A Grand, Unified Theory of Why Americans Are So Unhealthy

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Americans are unusually overweight and chronically ill compared to similarly rich countries. This ep...

Why Are Americans So Unhealthy? Part I: Is Ultra-Processed Food Killing Us?

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Americans die younger and faster than the residents of almost every other rich country. Why? There's...

What Experts Really Think About Smartphones and Mental Health

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I'm very concerned about the relationship between smartphone use and America's mental health crisis....

Plain History: How Adolf Hitler Destroyed German Democracy in Six Months

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1932, Germany was a republic. By the spring of 1933, it was a dictatorship. How did it a...

Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Is Great for the "Stealthy Wealthy"

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The tax and spending bill passed by House Republicans last week is the sort of bill that does so m...

The Gene-Editing Breakthrough That Saved a Baby’s Life

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, Kyle and Nicole Muldoon welcomed their baby KJ into the world. Almost immediately, doctor...

The Rules of Attraction and the Psychology of Romance

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Psychology is hard, even when you’re just trying to understand what’s going on with one impossib...

Plain History: How Norman Borlaug Stopped the Apocalypse

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In every generation, important people predict that the end is near and the apocalypse is coming. In ...

Why Do Americans Pay So Much for Drugs?

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order telling drugmakers to slash the price...

Is Pop Culture Worse Than Ever?

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In music, billion-dollar investments in old catalogues are squeezing out new music. In film, Hollywo...

The Job Market for Young Grads Is Flashing Red

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, the unemployment rate for recent college grads surged to nearly 6 percent. Compared to t...

Megapod: The Crisis in American Science

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we are witnessing an unprecedented assault on American science. Thousands of workers have bee...

Is This the Chinese Century?

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the last few weeks, for the first time in my life, I’ve seriously thought about the 21st centur...

What Americans Get Wrong About ADHD

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1937, a Rhode Island psychiatrist named Charles Bradley ran an experiment on 30 child patients wh...

An Astrophysicist Explains the "Strongest Evidence Yet" of Alien Life

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, a team of astrophysicists from the University of Cambridge announced that they had discov...

A Toy Manufacturer Explains How Trump’s Tariffs Could Crush His Industry

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the past three weeks, we've spoken to economists about the tariffs. We’ve spoken to a historian...

Why America Will Lose Its Trade War With China

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The U.S. is in the opening innings of a full-blown trade war with China. What does that actually mea...

Plain History: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Great Depression

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 1920s and the 2020s share a special kinship. One hundred years ago, the U.S. was grappling with ...

Trump’s Trade War Is Like Nothing America’s Ever Seen

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump's tariff plan has set global markets on fire. What are they for? What are they trying t...

Trump’s Plan to Smash the Global Economic Order

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump's second term has been a breakneck whirlwind: tariffs announced, tariffs unannounced, t...

Plain History: The Gilded Age

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Corruption. Class wars. Technological splendor. The dawn of a new age of business and government. Ro...

ABUNDANCE! With Ezra Klein

Mon, 17 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Donald Trump is serving up a scarcity agenda to America. He and the White House say we don’t have ...

ABUNDANCE! With Ezra Klein

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is serving up a scarcity agenda to America. He and the White House say we don’t have ...

How Gen Z Sees the World

Wed, 12 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Generation Z, which was born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, has a unique economic, poli...

How Gen Z Sees the World

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Generation Z, which was born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, has a unique economic, poli...

Can a Vaccine Cure the World’s Deadliest Cancer?

Fri, 07 Mar

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Cancer is not a singular disease but a category of hundreds, even thousands, of rare diseases with d...

Can a Vaccine Cure the World’s Deadliest Cancer?

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cancer is not a singular disease but a category of hundreds, even thousands, of rare diseases with d...

How AI Could Change the Future of Music

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Artificial intelligence tools for musicians are getting eerily good, very fast. Their work can be ma...

How AI Could Change the Future of Music

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence tools for musicians are getting eerily good, very fast. Their work can be ma...

The End of Reading

Fri, 28 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Something alarming is happening with reading in America. Leisure reading by some accounts has declin...

The End of Reading

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Something alarming is happening with reading in America. Leisure reading by some accounts has declin...

'How Progressives Froze the American Dream' (Live)

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you had to describe the U.S. economy at the moment, I think you could do worse than the word stu...

Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk

Fri, 21 Feb

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

Who is the most successful president in American history? George Washington secured American indepen...

Plain History: The Astonishingly Successful Presidency of James K. Polk

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who is the most successful president in American history? George Washington secured American indepen...

The Trump-Musk Doctrine: F-ck Around and Find Out

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Contributed by Lukas • Default Dataset

For the past month, chaos and confusion have gripped Washington and the federal government. Elon Mus...

The Trump-Musk Doctrine: F-ck Around and Find Out

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For the past month, chaos and confusion have gripped Washington and the federal government. Elon Mus...

Is There a Scientific Case for Believing in God?

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is a conversation I've wanted to have for a long time. It's about the decline of religion in Am...

Fraud, Scandal, and Failure in the Fight Against Alzheimer's Disease

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why is it so hard to find a cure for Alzheimer’s? A simple answer is that the brain and its disord...

The Energy Story of the Moment: The Unstoppable Rise of Solar Vs. the Unmovable Demand for Global Fossil Fuels

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fans of green energy like me face some inconvenient truths about the global energy picture. First, c...

The 5 Types of Wealth

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wealth isn’t just about financial security, according to today’s guest, Sahil Bloom. It’s abou...

Are GLP-1 Drugs "the Greatest Medical Breakthrough of the 21st Century"?

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the past few years, we've learned that GLP-1 drugs don’t just help with diabetes or increase pe...

Tech Talk: AI Supremacy, TikTok’s Fate, and Crypto Decadence

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, tech talk with an old friend of the pod, Kevin Roose of The New York Times, who is also host ...

Plain History Volume 1: Who Killed President James Garfield?

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is the first episode of a little experiment we’re trying this year, a podcast within a podcas...

What's the Truth About Alcohol, Cancer, and Your Health?

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode has been a long time coming. For years, more scientists and health influencers have ...

The L.A. Fires: How They Happened, Climate Change’s Role, and What the City Must Do Now

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With so many confusing narratives unfolding around a fire that is still raging out of control, I wan...

‘The Anti-Social Century’: America’s Epidemic of Solitude—and How to Fix It

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My new feature for The Atlantic magazine is called "The Anti-Social Century." It's a long articl...

The Big 2025 Economy Forecast: AI and Big Tech, Nuclear’s Renaissance, Trump vs. China, and What’s Eating Europe?

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Happy new year! And what better way to celebrate the freshly torn calendar page than by welcoming on...

The Year's Biggest Breakthroughs in Science and Tech (Feat.: OK, But Seriously, What Is Quantum Computing?)

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our final episode of the year is also my favorite annual tradition: conversations with scientists ab...

A Mysterious Health Wave Is Breaking Out Across the U.S.

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do Americans die younger than citizens of other rich countries? The most important reason is tha...

The Productivity Paradox: Why Less Is More With Oliver Burkeman

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

So, here’s a scenario: It’s Monday. And you open up whatever calendar or planner or to-do list y...

Why American Health Care Is a "Broken System"

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death outside a hotel in Manhattan by a y...

Is Crypto Entering a New Golden Age—or Just a New Era of Failed Promises?

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The crypto industry seems poised for a new golden age. But what exactly does that mean? Who would be...

Megapod: Why Is There So Much BS in Psychology?

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the last decade, several major findings in social psychology have turned out to be hogwash—or, ...

Vaccine Conspiracies, Fluoride Myths, and America’s Broken Public-Health Discourse

22 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Oster, professor of economics at Brown University, joins the show to talk about Robert F. Kenn...

The Self-Driving Revolution Is Real—and It Could Be Spectacular

15 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What would a world of self-driven cars look like? How would it change shopping, transportation, and ...

How Trump Won: Young Men’s Red Wave, the Blue-City Flop, and the Incumbency Graveyard

08 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Derek shares his big-picture theory for Trump's victory. Then, Republican pollster Kristen Soltis An...

How to Watch Election Night Without Falling for Conspiracy Theories or False Hope

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest (our final preelection guest) is David Wasserman, political analyst with the Cook Po...

This Small Pennsylvania Town Explains the 2024 Election

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, a close look at the history of a Pennsylvania town and how that history contains within it th...

Why Is Every Recent Presidential Election So Close?

25 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

My favorite sort of social phenomenon is something that seems normal to modern eyes that is actually...

Is Radical Human Life Extension Possible?

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1900, the average US life expectancy was 47 years old. That's the current age of Tom Brady, Ryan ...

America's Young Men Are Falling Behind—and Shifting Right

11 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today: the state of men and what's really happening in the gender divide in politics. Many young men...

Is the Middle East on the Verge of All-Out War?

04 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since October 7, 2023, many have feared that the conflict between Israel and Hamas would bloom into ...

The Surprising Science of Cynicism (Plus: The Policy Paradox of the 2024 Election)

27 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Derek shares his biggest frustrations about the 2024 election, like the lack of a policy debate an...

A Sports Mystery: What Happened to the NFL Quarterback?

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, a mystery about what some people consider the most important position in sports: What the hel...

How AI Could Help Us Discover Miracle Drugs

13 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We may be on the cusp of a revolution in medicine, thanks to tools like AlphaFold, the technology fo...

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

06 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Are conspiracy theories more popular than ever? Are Americans more conspiratorial than ever? Are con...

"Exercise May Be the Single Most Potent Medical Intervention Ever Known"

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Exercise is a conundrum. On the one hand, physical activity is clearly one of the best interventions...

Democrats Are Euphoric. But This Election Is Much Closer Than They Think.

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Derek offers a short but sweet review of the Democratic National Convention, the science of post-con...

The Four Biggest Myths About Political Persuasion

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode is about how we change our minds—and what political science tells us about the bes...

How to Be Happy and the Science of Cognitive Time Travel

09 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Laurie Santos is a superstar in the crowded field of happiness research. She is a cognitive scientis...

Market Meltdown FAQ: Recession Fears, Global Stock Wipeout, and the Case for Calm

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a special emergency-ish episode, Bloomberg's Conor Sen joins the show to discuss a buffet of econ...

Why Are Robocalls So Hard to Stop? (Plus: Kamala and the Gender Wars.)

02 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Derek offers his thoughts on Kamala Harris, the new 2024 reality, and gender polarization in the "bo...

Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Progressives?

26 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is a general rule of thumb that richer societies are happier societies. This is true across count...

Harsh Truths About 2024 and the Future of the U.S. Economy

19 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On today's episode: the state of American politics and the future of America's economy. Derek discus...

"The Weirdest Housing Market in Recent History"

12 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Skyrocketing rates, shrinking affordability: The U.S. housing market is a mess. It's also a bit of a...

"People Feel Lied To": The White House, the Media, and the Joe Biden Blame Game

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance has created a crisis for the Democratic Party and a set of...

Whatever Happened to Serial Killers?

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the first five decades of the 20th century, the number of serial killers in the U.S. remained at ...

The Radical Cultural Shift Behind America's Declining Birth Rate

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We've done several podcasts on America's declining fertility rate, and why South Korea has the lowes...

Breathing Is Easy. But We’re Doing It Wrong.

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode is about the science of breathing—from the evolution of our sinuses and palate, ...

The News Media’s Dangerous Addiction to ‘Fake Facts’

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What do most people not understand about the news media? I would say two things. First: The most imp...

Microplastics Are Everywhere. How Dangerous Are They?

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Plastic is a life-saving technology. Plastic medical equipment like disposable syringes and IV bags ...

Why the New NBA Deal Is So Weird. Plus, How Sports Rights Actually Work.

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In an age of cults, sports are the last gasp of the monoculture—the last remnant of the 20th centu...

What America’s Bold New Economic Experiment Is Missing

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The news media is very good at focusing on points of disagreement in our politics. Wherever Democrat...

The Five Superstars Who Invented the Modern NBA

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The game of basketball has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. In the early 1990s, Michael Jo...

Are Smartphones Really Driving the Rise in Teenage Depression?

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today—a closer critical look at the relationship between smartphones and mental health. One of the...

Are Flying Cars Finally Here?

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, flying cars have been a symbol of collective disappointment—of a technologically sple...

How the Logic of Cults Is Taking Over Modern Life

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Several years ago, I told some friends that I had an idea for a second book. It would be called ‘E...

How Will the Gaza War Finally End?

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, with Gaza protests spreading across the country and around the world, we dive deep into what’...

A Political Scientist on How Protests Can Change Minds or Backfire

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the last week, hundreds of protests across college campuses and American cities have taken place ...

What Kind of a Superpower Is India Becoming?

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode is all about India.You don’t have to believe that demography is pure destiny to ...

Health Fads and Fictions: VO2 Max, Supplement Mania, Sunlight, and Immortality

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's show is a critical look at some of the most popular health fads of the moment, with return g...

U.S. Economy FAQ: Skyrocketing Insurance Prices, Stuck Inflation, Higher Rates, and Wrong Experts

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jason Furman, a professor of economics at Harvard, returns to the show to discuss the biggest econom...

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