Plain English with Derek Thompson

The AI Story Wall Street Doesn't Want to Hear

AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution?

How Abundance Has Failed and Succeeded

America’s Crisis of Social Connection, With Adam Grant

Social connection in the 21st century is in a state of sharp decline, driven by the rise of solitary, screen-based leisure and the erosion of "thick" community structures. Modern life often traps individuals in "bicycle wheel" social networks, where separate friends lack collective cohesion, unlike the "web" networks o...

Russia’s Plague Mystery and the Coming Age of Bioweapons

The Bitter Rivalries Behind the Race to Build Superintelligence

Why the Midterms Suddenly Look So Bad for Republicans

Why Things Become Popular, with Chuck Klosterman

The Single Smartest Case Against AI Doom

The "AI as a Normal Technology" framework challenges the prevailing narrative of impending artificial superintelligence and existential doom. Instead of viewing AI as an autonomous, god-like entity, this perspective categorizes it as a general-purpose technology—similar to electricity—that faces significant economic an...

The Truth About Mississippi's Education "Miracle"

Why Experts Keep Getting the Economy So Wrong

What’s the Point of College?

Higher education faces a critical inflection point as artificial intelligence challenges traditional models of learning and expertise. The evolution of the university has transitioned from an era of information scarcity to an era of deep expertise, and now requires a shift toward a third era centered on community-based...

The New Book That Scares Big Tech

AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet. Can We Save It?

The proliferation of AI-generated content, or "AI slop," threatens the integrity of the internet, pushing digital spaces toward a state of bot-driven echo chambers. Pangram, an AI detection tool founded by Max Spero, addresses this by classifying text based on patterns that distinguish machine-generated output from hum...

Why Everything Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive

Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’

It May Be Time to Freak Out About AI

Why Americans Hate Data Centers

The rapid expansion of AI data centers across the U.S. faces significant local backlash, driven less by ideological opposition to artificial intelligence and more by deep-seated distrust of corporate-government partnerships. Reporting from the Midwest, writer Jasmine Sun highlights how residents view these projects thr...

Why America Is Switching From Booze to Weed

"The End of Reading Is Here"