PE Plain English with Derek Thompson

Podcast

Plain English with Derek Thompson

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

Website ↗ Last published 30 October 2026 415 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on Plain English with Derek Thompson

“It used to be that you were paid for what you do in Hollywood in success. You had a piece of a show or a movie financially. And if it was a hit, you and the studio would benefit. Netflix changed that by paying everybody upfront for what they do and taking away the upside… 10 years later, that guy who did a show 10 years ago is not being paid on that show, even though it's a gigantic hit for Netflix.” — Matt Belloni, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Matt Belloni · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Imagine in the 1950s, you'd realized that fossil fuels produce climate change via carbon dioxide emissions. And so you thought, okay, well, the thing we've got to do then is build oil companies, build coal companies, so that we can steer this in a positive direction and accelerate the clean energy transition. And, you know, maybe that argument works, but it's certainly a weird move.” — Will MacAskill, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Will MacAskill · 27 Oct 2026 Listen →
“And so despite this model being so powerful, it had to be restricted, businesses didn't really end up using Fable. I think it topped out at like 5% to 10% of business spend at its peak in that period. … We kind of figured out that, oh, there is a limit in terms of whether or not businesses are willing to pay or use the frontier model.” — Ara Kharazian, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Ara Kharazian · 23 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Letters of recommendation are valuable because they're setting time on fire as a recommendation for somebody. And the quality of the letter often matters less than the fact that the person agreed to write it.” — Ethan Mollick, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Ethan Mollick · 20 Oct 2026 Listen →
“It's really important for the entire U.S. financial system that it is not easy for you to transfer money from low interest savings accounts to higher interest savings accounts, because low interest savings accounts is where banks make all their money. ... It's important for customer service organizations that it is hard to get customer service calls answered because otherwise everyone would ask for refunds.” — Ethan Mollick, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Ethan Mollick · 20 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Junior people are much worse than AI, which means that junior people would be better off having AI do the work and they don't have the expertise to assess whether it's good or bad. ... So nobody learns anything anymore. The learning was incidental to the process, even if it was the point in the long term.” — Ethan Mollick, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Ethan Mollick · 20 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Imagine if we learned that the American academic community developed a disease such that they had a chronic fatigue disorder and had to sleep for 30% of the year. … We'd say, well, God, we have to cure this disease. In this case, we made the disease. The disease is the paperwork that we're forcing these scientists to fill out.” — Derek Thompson, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson · 16 Oct 2026 Listen →
“PG&E, our utility in Northern California, has doubled its rates over the last decade while service has only gotten worse. Why? Well, because they haven't been able to actually build that transmission and that generation to lower prices for everybody. And that's all because it can take three to four times longer to plan and permit a project as it actually takes to build it. That's bonkers.” — Josh Harder, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Josh Harder · 16 Oct 2026 Listen →
“If there's one thing that we could all do that will both strengthen our bonds, build better communities, and boost happiness, it's introducing our friends to each other. It turns out that building bridges is actually more rewarding than deepening bonds.” — Adam Grant, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Adam Grant · 13 Oct 2026 Listen →
“I worry a lot that increasingly people are defaulting to AI companions, which I actually think is an oxymoron. I don't think a chatbot can be a companion because by definition, companionship is a two-way street. You could receive simulated emotional support… But guess what? You can't give it back.” — Adam Grant, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Adam Grant · 13 Oct 2026 Listen →
“It would be a historical anomaly if we did not see the use of bioweapons in the upcoming years, not decades, but years. That is what history has taught us: that engineering of natural sciences inevitably leads to the use of weapons.” — Ashish Jha, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Ashish Jha · 9 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Belief is an active ingredient in AI success. You have to believe that the scaling laws will continue, that putting billions or trillions of dollars into building data centers and acquiring compute will pay off. … The belief is the enabling force that allows you to win. And if you don't have it, no amount of technical expertise can save you.” — Kevin Roose, Plain English with Derek Thompson
Kevin Roose · 6 Oct 2026 Listen →

Hosts

Plain English with Derek Thompson is hosted by Derek Thompson , Devon Manze and Max Tani .

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