Plain English with Derek Thompson

Latest Episodes:

The Healthiest "Super-Agers" Have One Thing in Common, According to a 25-Year Study Aug 27, 2025

Show notes

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

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Plain History: How the Transcontinental Railroads Built the Modern World Aug 20, 2025

Show notes

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

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The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality For the Worse Aug 13, 2025

Show notes

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

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Will AI Usher In the End of Deep Thinking? Aug 06, 2025

Show notes

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

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The New Geography of Housing in America Jul 30, 2025

Show notes

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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

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The Demise of Late-Night TV Is an Omen for American Culture Jul 23, 2025

Show notes

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

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If Trump’s Economic Ideas Are So Bad, Why Isn’t the U.S. Economy Doing Much Worse? Jul 17, 2025

Show notes

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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

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Fertility Needs a Scientific Revolution Jul 16, 2025

Show notes

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

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The Mysterious Rise of Major Injuries in Professional Sports Jul 09, 2025

Show notes

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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

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How Abundance Won in California Jul 03, 2025

Show notes

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

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