Plain English with Derek Thompson

What is Donald Trump good at? In his second administration, he promised lower prices, stronger manufacturing, and an end to foreign conflicts. Instead, inflation has risen, blue-collar job growth has ...

19 Juni 1h 8min

For years, scientists worried that medical progress was slowing down. Drug development became more expensive than ever with more complex clinical trials, and even then, many new treatments offered onl...

16 Juni 59min

Prior to the 1930s, old age in America often meant poverty. But thanks to Social Security, Medicare, medical advances, and rising asset prices, over the past 90 years, older Americans have become one ...

12 Juni 1h 1min

Humans are unusual dads. Across the animal kingdom, dads are often absent from child-rearing altogether. But among humans, fatherhood takes many forms, and in the last half century, it has changed dra...

9 Juni 1h 4min

For generations, we've defined creativity by its products: the novel, the painting, the song, the breakthrough idea. We look at the work, and from the work we see the creator as “creative.” But AI is ...

5 Juni 56min

Modern loneliness is often treated as a simple problem: People are simply spending more time alone. But what if that's not the whole story? Over the last several years, Derek has written about workism...

2 Juni 58min

The NBA’s vibes have been unusually awful recently. There has been widespread hand-wringing about the homogenization of modern offenses and the league’s notoriously weak regular-season TV ratings. A t...

29 Maj 57min

Over the past century, attitudes about gender roles have become one of the clearest dividing lines in the country. Many Republicans, both men and women, say men are getting a raw deal in modern Americ...

22 Maj 59min