Is AI Really About to Solve Human Disease?

We’re coming down to the wire, and Democrats' hopes of holding onto the Senate and the House are fading fast. Two months ago, the story was that Democrats seemed poised to pull off an upset and hold onto the Senate despite the fact that the party in power almost always loses seats in the midterm election. But now, the Senate looks like a toss-up. It’s not just Democrats who are facing challenges this year—pollsters are too. Error margins are rising as fewer people are responding to survey calls. That means we’re flying half-blind out there: Political campaigns, commentators, and voters can’t be sure that the polling averages that they’re seeing in the news are an accurate reflection of reality. Today's guest is Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and the co-founder of Echelon Insights. We discuss the closest races in Georgia and Pennsylvania, whether Donald Trump is an overall help or hindrance to the GOP, and why the golden age of polling is over. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kristen Soltis Anderson Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

25 Loka 202244min

For years, liberals have deluded themselves into thinking that Donald Trump was always on the verge of some calamitous legal defeat. Robert Mueller was made into an icon of the left. But no charges were filed. The Russiagate theory had a lot of smoke, and even some fire, but it failed to put Trump in a courtroom. At this point, you could be forgiven for checking out entirely on the efforts to charge Trump with crimes, since they all seem to end the same way. Without an indictment. If that’s going to change, it will largely rest on the decision making of one man: Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States. In a recent essay for The Atlantic, staff writer Frank Foer spent hours talking to Garland to understand who he is, how he thinks, and how his approach to law could help us predict the next chapter of the Trump legal saga. Foer comes away with a big prediction: The indictment of Trump is now "inevitable." And he’s here to tell us why. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Frank Foer Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

18 Loka 202245min

Stanford University professor Nicholas Bloom joins the show to talk about how the hybrid work revolution is going, and how the weakened connection between work and home continues to change where Americans live, how they travel, how they spend their time, how they raise their kids, and even how much time they spend combing their hair (survey says: less!). If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Nicholas Bloom Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

14 Loka 202246min

This is the 100th episode of Plain English! I don’t know how that’s possible. Thanks to all of you who have listened. This has been a ton of work and a ton of fun. I’m still figuring out what this show is; how to balance news and tech gossip and big society questions and war coverage. There are days I think I know exactly what I’m doing and days I think I know even less than when I started out. And I just want to say to all the folks who have, on any medium, offered negative feedback or positive feedback: I’m reading it. Today, we're joined again by our first-ever guest, Kevin Roose from the 'New York Times,' to talk about Elon vs. Twitter and the deep implications of the year's astonishing breakthroughs in AI. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kevin Roose Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

11 Loka 20221h

This week, the Yankees' Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run of the season, and it’s triggered a ferocious debate that has a lot of people very worked up over a deceptively simple question: Who is baseball’s home run king? In 2001, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs. In 2022, Judge hit 62 home runs. Seventy-three is more than 62. Those are facts. But Barry Bonds used steroids. Other sports, like cycling, have stripped athletes of records and championships if they’re caught doping. Lance Armstrong won seven Tour de France titles but was stripped of all of them. So, what do we do about Bonds and his fellow dopers, like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa? Do we consider their records illegitimate? If so, Aaron Judge is the single-season home run king. Or do we say, you can’t just selectively erase history? In which case, Judge doesn’t have any major record. He’s just a big, tall guy who had a very nice season. You might think: OK, who cares what words we use to talk about baseball? The answer is: I care! There was a period in my life when debating baseball stats and baseball history was literally my favorite activity in the world. My identity as a fifth grader was being the baseball stats guy. And also, a lot of people care. This debate over who is the legitimate single-season home run king has been hands down the most fun baseball discourse I can remember in maybe 20 years. Today’s guest is Bill Simmons. We talk about MLB history, the joy of debating records, how baseball ruined itself, and who is really baseball’s home run king. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Bill Simmons Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

6 Loka 20221h 7min

What if, in trying to fix the hangover of domestic inflation, the Federal Reserve is accidentally triggering a series of diabolical domino effects that could screw up the global economy? Joining the show today to walk us piece by piece through those dominos is Kyla Scanlon, a writer and brilliant economic explainer on TikTok and YouTube. Kyla is an expert at what I try to do with this show, which is to explain complicated ideas in simple ways without losing the nuance that makes them complicated in the first place. I’ve learned a lot from her. And I hope you do, too. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kyla Scanlon Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

4 Loka 202241min

A wide-ranging conversation with speaker and star podcaster Scott Galloway ('The Prof G Pod,' 'Pivot') on his new book 'Adrift,' why being a pundit means being a talented “catastrophist,” the struggles of broke and lonely men, the upside of crypto, and the dark side of the metaverse. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Scott Galloway Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

29 Syys 202257min

Last week the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points, continuing one of the fastest escalations of the benchmark rate in history. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, warned that more pain was to come as the central bank fixes its eye on Sauron on our core inflation. But the theme of this episode is that U.S. interest rate policy does not stop at the U.S. border. Our monetary policy is a lever that moves the world. Soon after the Fed’s announcement last week, the British pound crashed, oil prices fell, currencies (crypto- and otherwise) fell, and the possibility of a global downturn came ever slightly into greater focus. Today’s guest is Jason Furman, the Harvard economist and former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama. We talk about the state of the U.S. economy, why the Fed is doing what it’s doing, the best arguments against rising interest rates, the global fallout of U.S. monetary policy, and the possibility that the world economy is headed for a dark, dark winter. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. You can find us on TikTok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_ Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jason Furman Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

27 Syys 202236min