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Plain English with Derek Thompson

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Plain English with Derek Thompson
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  • Is AI Really About to Solve Human Disease?
    I’ve had the privilege of talking to many brilliant people about artificial intelligence. And when you ask them to imagine the most beneficial consequences of this technology, they almost always give the same answer: medicine. The dream is dazzling. Superintelligent AI will cure stubborn diseases and disorders—cancer, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s. It will diagnose all our illnesses, design new lifesaving drugs, accelerate clinical trials, and pair with wearables to fight chronic illness and extend our health spans. But which of these promises are realistic? Which are outlandish hype? And what, exactly, can AI do for us in medicine right now? To separate fact from fantasy, I talk with Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Lloyd Minor Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/29/if-ai-can-diagnose-patients-what-are-doctors-for https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-ai-isnt-replacing-radiologists?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  • How America Became a Nation of "Free Speech Hypocrites"
    The past few weeks have marked a low point for free speech principles in America. The head of the FCC openly threatened ABC for the language of a comedian. The president told a reporter that networks that are "against" him should have their licenses revoked. The vice president went on TV and told Americans to turn in their colleagues if they spoke ill of Charlie Kirk. And many have. After Kirk was killed, Suzanne Swierc, an employee at Ball State University, posted that “if you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Within hours, Libs of TikTok, a social media account, posted her message publicly, Elon Musk retweeted it, and, with the approval of the White House, she was fired. Conservatives claim that Democrats fired first. They say it was the campus left that got "cancel culture" rolling. It was Joe Biden who pressured—or jawboned—the social media companies to take down misinformation, in violation of free expression. It was Democrats who suppressed information on the Hunter Biden laptop. So what can we say fairly and honestly about the state of the First Amendment? Is the Trump administration uniquely perverse? Are we all hypocrites? And why does it seem like so many members of each party can’t wait to use the machinery of the state to limit the speech of their political opponent? Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, joins the show to discuss. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Greg Lukianoff Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  • What’s the Matter With America’s Food?
    In the past few weeks, we’ve done several episodes on obesity, GLP-1 drugs, and nutrition science. What we haven’t talked about as much is the politics of food. And today’s guests say: If you really want to understand why Americans are so unhealthy, you have to see that the problem is not just our willpower, and it’s not just our food itself. It’s our food policies. Kevin Hall was a former top nutrition researcher at the NIH who retired after accusing RFK Jr. and the Department of Health and Human Services of censoring a report that questioned their description of ultra-processed foods. Julia Belluz is a longtime nutrition and health journalist. Together, they’ve written a new book, 'Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us.' If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  • This Is How the AI Bubble Could Burst
    This year, American tech companies will spend $300 billion to $400 billion on artificial intelligence, which is in nominal dollars more than any group of companies have ever spent to do anything. Notably, these companies are not remotely close to earning $400 billion on artificial intelligence. That's why you’re starting to hear some people wonder if the AI build-out is turning into the mother of all economic bubbles. The prospect of an AI bubble should scare us. Roughly half of last quarter's GDP growth came from infrastructure spending on AI, and more than half of stock market appreciation in the last few years has come from companies associated with AI. If the AI spending project blows up in the next few years, as our next guest says it might, the implications for technology, the economy, and politics would be immense. Paul Kedrosky is an investor and writer. Today we talk about the AI capex boom: how it works, who’s financing it, how its financing works. We put the AI build-out in historical context. And then we spend a great deal of time walking through what could go wrong and when it might go wrong. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Paul Kedrosky Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  • The Jimmy Kimmel Saga and America's Free-Speech Crisis
    Matt Belloni, the host of the Town podcast and the author of Puck’s 'What I’m Hearing' newsletter, joins the show to talk about Jimmy Kimmel's punishment, what happened behind the scenes at ABC and Disney, Bob Iger's legacy, and what this means at a moment when media companies are bending the knee to the Trump administration, which is clearly using its position to punish free speech despite rising to power by promising to do the opposite. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Matt Belloni Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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About 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. 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 [email protected]! You can also find us on tiktok at www.tiktok.com/@plainenglish_
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