Plain English with Derek Thompson — Podcast Ad Analysis
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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 [email protected]! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson
PodSkip has analyzed 1 episode of Plain English with Derek Thompson, averaging 4.0 ads per episode (7% of runtime).
Why 'The Odyssey' Is the West’s Greatest Story
Jul 17, 2026
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…
A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory for Why the World Feels So Weird
Jul 14, 2026
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…
How Israel Is Transforming American Politics
Jul 07, 2026
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…
MEGAPOD: The Most Overrated American Who Ever Lived
Jul 03, 2026
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…
A Surprising Theory About the Future of War
Jun 30, 2026
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…
SpaceX, AI Bubble Fears, and The Age of the Trillion-Dollar, Zero-Profit Company
Jun 26, 2026
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…
The Iran War Is Ending. Everybody Lost.
Jun 23, 2026
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…
The Donald Trump Corruption Scandal Draft
Jun 19, 2026
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…
The Most Exciting Month of Medical Breakthroughs in Years
Jun 16, 2026
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…
Old-igarchy: How the Elderly Conquered American Power
Jun 12, 2026
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…
How Modern Fatherhood Is Changing Men’s Brains
Jun 09, 2026
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…
What 400,000 Essays Reveal About AI and Creativity
Jun 05, 2026
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…
The Surprising Truth About America's Friendship Crisis
Jun 02, 2026
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…
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Why the NBA Feels Broken—and Why the League Can’t Fix It
May 29, 2026
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…
The Men Who Think Toxic Feminism Destroyed America
May 22, 2026
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…
Does Anybody Know How to Solve an American Debt Crisis?
May 19, 2026
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…
The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Think
May 15, 2026
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…
The Case Against the AI Job Apocalypse
May 12, 2026
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…
Why American Happiness Just Fell Off a Cliff
May 08, 2026
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…
One of the Deadliest Cancers in America May Have Met Its Match
May 05, 2026
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…
Why Too Much Freedom Is the Enemy of Success
May 01, 2026
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…
Why the Iran War Is Tearing MAGA Apart
Apr 28, 2026
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…
The Triple Crisis That’s Breaking Hollywood—and Changing the Future of Movies
Apr 24, 2026
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…
The Most Powerful and Dangerous AI Model Yet
Apr 21, 2026
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…
The Whole World Is Fighting About Energy
Apr 14, 2026
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…
‘The Job Market for Young People Is Brutal’
Apr 10, 2026
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…
America's Religious Revival Is a Mirage
Apr 08, 2026
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…
Is China the Winner of the Iran War?
Apr 03, 2026
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…
Why We're Addicted to ‘Sh*tty Flow’
Mar 31, 2026
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…
Anthropic Thinks AI Might Destroy the Economy. It's Building It Anyway.
Mar 27, 2026
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…