The Ringer
407 episodes listed below
Derek Thompson interviews one expert per episode to test big claims against the data.
Plain English with Derek Thompson treats the news as a set of connected forces, not a pile of daily updates. Recent episodes move from AI and energy to religion, taxes, gambling, war, and young workers with a steady appetite for causal explanation.
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Plain English with Derek Thompson is a twice-weekly interview show from The Ringer, hosted solely by Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson. Each episode opens with Thompson laying out a headline claim or puzzle before bringing on a single guest to work through it in depth, rather than using a panel or rotating co-host format. Guests tend to be subject-matter specialists rather than celebrities: journalists and authors (Julia Belluz on ultra-processed food policy, Ryan Burge on religious-affiliation data), industry executives (Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks on GLP-1 drug development), and practitioners (Broadway producer John Johnson). Recurring subject areas include labor markets and economics, energy policy and its ties to AI infrastructure and geopolitics, pharmaceutical and nutrition science, and the entertainment business (Broadway, Hollywood). The show also covers neuroscience and aging, and occasionally turns to self-improvement and the philosophy of achievement. Conversations are grounded in cited studies, historical regulation, and named statistics, with Thompson frequently complicating a simple explanation into a more tangled one. Episodes typically run 45 to 70 minutes. The show periodically reruns past interviews under a 'Best Of' label. It suits listeners who want explainer-style journalism applied to current headlines rather than punditry or debate. Production is a straightforward two-person conversation with Thompson's framing at the open and close of each episode.
Made for: Listeners who want data-driven explainer journalism on economics, health, energy, and culture trends, delivered through one-on-one expert interviews rather than punditry.
What sets it apart: Unlike entertainment- or sports-commentary shows in The Ringer's network, Plain English applies Atlantic-style explanatory reporting and cited data to one topic per episode through a single-guest interview format.
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
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Derek Thompson turns big public questions into careful tests of evidence, mechanisms, and the explanations competing for attention.
Derek Thompson builds episodes around a claim that sounds settled, then tests how well it survives contact with evidence and a guest's reasoning. Religious revival becomes a question about affiliation data and institutional durability.
Derek Thompson turns headline certainty into a cross-examination, then lets you keep the useful doubt.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp energy-first read on Iran, AI, Taiwan, and the pressure behind the headlines.
Derek Thompson makes energy the through-line between the Iran crisis and the AI boom, arguing that oil, gas, electricity, and industrial capacity are now part of the same fight over scarce inputs.
A sharp, unsettled look at why young workers feel stuck in a job market nobody can quite diagnose.
Derek Thompson frames the brutal job market for young people as a mystery that keeps resisting a clean diagnosis. The episode opens with the obvious question, whether AI is replacing entry-level workers, but it does not pretend the answer is settled.
A sharp look at why America's religious revival story is more complicated than the headlines suggest.
America's supposed religious revival gets treated here as a trend line with a catch: the long rise of Americans with no religious affiliation may be pausing, but Ryan Burge argues the picture is stranger than a clean return to church.
A sharp, supply-chain-minded look at how the Iran war could leave China stronger in energy, manufacturing, and AI.
Derek Thompson uses the Iran war to look past the immediate battlefield and into the machinery underneath global power: oil routes, solar supply chains, nuclear restarts, critical commodities, and AI infrastructure.
A sharp conversation about metrics, ambition, and why satisfaction may hold up better than happiness.
Modern life becomes a scoreboard in this episode, and the argument works best when it stays close to recognizable pressures: academic rankings, status metrics, wearable tracking, social media counts, and the broader lure of make-number-go-up thinking.
A sharp GLP-1 conversation on cost, chronic disease, side effects, and AI medicine's unfinished biology problem.
Derek Thompson uses GLP-1 drugs to ask where medicine goes after the long decline of smallpox and bacterial infection. In conversation with Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks, the focus is less hype than public consequence: drugs that can change weight and chronic disease risk are…
A sharp policy-first look at why America's food problem cannot be solved by willpower or wellness tech alone.
Plain English turns America's food debate away from willpower and wellness hacks and toward policy. Derek Thompson frames obesity, GLP-1 drugs, additives, and ultra-processed foods around a blunt problem: the country built rules for acute food dangers, then struggled to adapt…
A clear, useful conversation about super-agers, memory testing, and what unusually healthy aging might teach scientists.
Plain English uses a holiday best-of to revisit a sharp question in aging science: what can researchers learn by studying people whose memories hold up unusually well late in life?
Dan Carlin's solo essays connecting executive power, historical collapse, and American democracy.
Atlantic staff writers and host Hannah Rosen unpack Trump-era foreign policy, economics, and democracy.
Two hosts and a correspondent unpack one Latin America story a week, from Chile's election to Iran's war.
Andrew Sullivan's one-on-one interviews on pardons, Israel, Christianity, and political journalism.
Ryan Evans interviews defense and intelligence insiders, from Ukraine's front lines to Marine marksmanship doctrine.
Lawfare's weekly panel turns Supreme Court rulings and war-powers fights into legal debate.
AI, Iran, and energy are tangled up in the same power problem.
Something weird is going on.
Big if true.
The Iran war exposes brittle energy chokepoints.
Make the number bigger.
This episode features an interview with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, exploring balanced perspectives on AI's economic impact while highlighting the company's unprecedented revenue growth.
This episode examines how America's tax system allows the ultra-wealthy to pay lower tax rates than middle-class workers, questioning both the fairness and practicality of this wealth inequality during the current AI-driven economic boom.
This episode explores how gambling and prediction markets are influencing major events like warfare through three stories, starting with a suspicious $32,000 bet on a US bombing of Iran that paid out $553,000.
Derek Thompson analyzes whether the massive AI spending bubble will lead to a golden age, drawing parallels to historical tech revolutions.
Derek Thompson explores the placebo and nocebo effects, explaining how expectation can create real physiological responses.
Derek Thompson discusses the fog of war concept and its relevance to the Iran conflict's impact on global oil markets.
Derek Thompson analyzes the clash between AI company Anthropic and the Pentagon over military use of AI, exploring who should control AI and its implications for national security.
Derek Thompson discusses the Democratic Party's unpopularity and interviews Senator Ruben Gallego about party strategy and current events.
Derek Thompson analyzes the bombing of Iran and the killing of its leadership, contrasting hopes for regime change with fears of repeating historical mistakes.
Derek Thompson introduces the concept of finite and infinite games, arguing that modern society excels at winning finite games at the expense of infinite ones.
Human history can be read through death.
Derek Thompson discusses Trump's chaotic policy reversals and a Supreme Court ruling striking down his tariffs.
This episode explores Ted Chiang's science fiction story about how technologies like perfect memory recording and literacy reshape human thought, truth, and social dynamics.
Derek Thompson introduces the deep divide in opinions about artificial intelligence, from enthusiastic believers to hardened skeptics.
Derek Thompson introduces the show's transition to video podcasting and discusses the trend of media evolving toward video.
America built a food system for the last crisis.
This episode explores whether the massive spending by American tech companies on artificial intelligence is creating an economic bubble, examining both critical and booster perspectives.
The excerpt argues that memory can start getting patchy earlier than the usual 65-and-up story implies.
Derek Thompson announces a best-of compilation episode while on paternity leave, featuring past interviews that resonated with listeners.
Derek Thompson discusses the surprising versatility of GLP-1 drugs and their potential wide-ranging health benefits.
Derek Thompson discusses the expert consensus on the effects of smartphones and social media on mental health, referencing Jonathan Haidt's book.
Derek Thompson discusses a Wall Street Journal article about how Gen Z and millennials are delaying traditional adulthood milestones like dating, marriage, and homeownership.
Derek Thompson merges interviews with two doctors to explore how Western diets lead to chronic disease through toxic fat and inflammation.
Derek Thompson re-airs a favorite episode from the past year, featuring interviews and analysis on news and culture.
Derek Thompson discusses the myths surrounding the iconic painting 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' and the true story of the American Revolution.
Derek Thompson discusses recent NBA gambling scandals, including arrests and accusations involving players and coaches, and reflects on the league's changing stance on sports betting.
Derek Thompson opens with a New York Times claim that the Broadway musical is in trouble because last season's openings made no profit, then brings on producer John Johnson of Wagner Johnson Productions.
This episode explores how American food policies, rather than just individual willpower or food quality, contribute to health issues like obesity, featuring discussions on additives, supplements, and political influences.
Derek Thompson discusses how AI spending is driving current U.S.
Derek Thompson analyzes the historical and policy-driven reasons behind the rising age of first-time homebuyers and the housing affordability crisis.