Plain English with Derek Thompson

Updated: 30 May 2025 • 298 episodes
www.theringer.com

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. Hear 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! You can also find us on tiktok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_

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In November 1932, Germany was a republic. By the spring of 1933, it was a dictatorship. How did it all happen so quickly? Fascination with Adolf Hitler requires no news peg, but I’ve been particularly interested in understanding the story of Hitler's rise, because in the past few months, several prominent podcast hosts

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The tax and spending bill passed by House Republicans last week is the sort of bill that does so many different things that even budget experts could be forgiven for not realizing just how many different parts of the economy it will change. In the realm of workers' comp, the bill would eliminate taxes on overtime pay a

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Last year, Kyle and Nicole Muldoon welcomed their baby KJ into the world. Almost immediately, doctors realized something was wrong. KJ had been born with a genetic mutation that made it impossible to regulate the amount of ammonia in his system. The rare disease had the potential to kill him or cause severe brain damag

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Psychology is hard, even when you’re just trying to understand what’s going on with one impossibly complex person. Romance psychology is particularly hard because you’re trying to understand what’s going on between two impossibly complex people. Eli Finkel is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. Paul E

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In every generation, important people predict that the end is near and the apocalypse is coming. In the 1960s, the fear was that population growth would destroy the planet—that fertility would outrun the food supply, and hundreds of millions of people would starve to death. The most famous warning was 'The Population B

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On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order telling drugmakers to slash the prices of their medicines. Once again, the president showed an amazing nose for interesting questions. Statistically, the U.S. accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population but nearly 50 percent of global pharmaceutical spend

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