Plain English with Derek Thompson

Latest Episodes:

Anthropic Thinks AI Might Destroy the Economy. It's Building It Anyway. Mar 27, 2026

Show notes

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 intelligent take on one side of this issue, the next episode they’ll hear a countervailing take. Two weeks ago, you heard the investor and writer Paul Kedrosky argue that AI was an economic bubble.

But if any single data point pierces that narrative, it’s this. From December 2025 to this month, March 2026, Anthropic has more than doubled its annual recurring revenue, from $9 billion to nearly $20 billion. According to several analysts, there is no record of any company growing this fast at this scale.

Now, I don’t need Jack Clark or anybody at Anthropic to read me a corporate statement about the company’s revenue growth. I can read that myself. What I wanted to do today is ask questions that only someone in Jack’s position can answer.

If Anthropic’s executives believe that AI might be as dangerous as nuclear weapons, what right does any private business have to build this sort of thing for profit?

How does the company balance its reputation as the industry leader in caution and safety with its other reputation as one of the fastest developers of this technology?

And if artificial intelligence has the capacity to produce a country of geniuses in a data center—as Anthropic’s CEO insists—why do Americans overall say they disapprove of artificial intelligence more than just about every other institution and individual in the world?

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If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Jack Clark

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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America's Tax System Is Broken Mar 24, 2026

Show notes

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 less, as a share of income, than what a middle-class American pays. He's advised Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on wealth tax proposals and recently published sweeping new research showing that the problem is global. Today, we get into the mechanics of billionaire tax avoidance, the history of failed wealth taxes, and whether the AI era is about to make all of this dramatically worse.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Gabriel Zucman

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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The Casino-ification of America Mar 20, 2026

Show notes

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 gambling in the U.S. It’s another to watch the warp-speed casino-ification of American life and not think, “Something has gone badly wrong here!” McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins the show to discuss his new cover story on how gambling conquered sports … and everything else.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: McKay Coppins

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Links: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/

Source for all photos: Getty Images

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"Yes, AI Is a Bubble. There Is No Question." Mar 17, 2026

Show notes

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 capitalism’s history. But the torpid rise of AI agents is starting to change his mind. So he wanted to bring someone on to test his evolving theory.

The investor and writer Paul Kedrosky returns to the show to make his own case even more firmly: AI is a bubble, and the evidence is all around us.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Check out Paul's podcast 'The Nick, Dick and Paul Show'on YouTube and Spotify: https://www.youtube.com/@nickdickpaul

https://open.spotify.com/show/6mxUS2hFE2hdaNx1sjhdYu?si=67add32695c546bf

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Paul Kedrosky

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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The Pill That Works Even When You Know It's Fake Mar 13, 2026

Show notes

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 the show to talk about the research behind how our beliefs shape our lives.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Nir Eyal

Producer: Devon Baroldi

Today’s open is adapted from Derek’s Substack essay “If Placebos Work So Well, Why Not Prescribe Sugar Pills For Everything?”

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The Economic Crisis of the Iran War Goes Far Beyond Oil Mar 10, 2026

Show notes

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: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Rachel Ziemba

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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"American Democracy as We Know It Might Not Survive This Technology" Mar 09, 2026

Show notes

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 this announcement jarring. The technology writer Dean Ball—who served as Senior Policy Advisor for AI at the White House as recently as last summer—said the decision amounted to a nearly tyrannical attack on private property. (After all, if the government can walk up to your company, make you a deal, and destroy your company if you say no, that certainly sounds like a world in which the state can destroy whatever it trains its eyes on.)

So, I wanted to talk to Dean about what he sees—and why he thinks this episode is so important, and so terrifying. Today, we talk about the difference between Biden and Trump’s approach to artificial intelligence before diving into the Anthropic mess, and pulling out of it the bigger story, according to Dean: that Trump’s scattershot AI policy is just the latest sign that AI’s capabilities are growing faster than many people want to admit—this technology is going somewhere fast, and the the American government simply is not prepared for where it’s taking us.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Dean Ball

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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Trump Is Doubling Down on Iran. How Should Democrats Respond? Mar 06, 2026

Show notes

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 “brand” (sorry), is an opportunity for young Democrats to define themselves as individuals. Rather than act like a congregation all singing from the same hymnal, they can experiment, disagree, and adapt their message to their electorate. And that might ultimately prove to be a strength of the party heading into the 2026 midterms rather than a weakness.

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) joins the show to talk about the Iran war, immigration, affordability vs. aspiration, and the future of the Democratic Party.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Ruben Gallego
Producer: Devon Baroldi

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The Four Ways That the Iran War Could End Mar 03, 2026

Show notes

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 PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Karim Sadjadpour
Producer: Devon Baroldi

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How Metrics Make Us Miserable Feb 27, 2026

Show notes

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 Playing Somebody Else's Game. We talk about metrics, the games of life, and how to listen to the parts of ourselves that cannot be reduced to numbers.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: C. Thi Nguyen

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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