Plain English with Derek Thompson Podcast Transcripts
The Ringer · 410 episodes with transcripts
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.
Spoken has transcripts of 410 Plain English with Derek Thompson episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from October 20, 2026.
Every Plain English with Derek Thompson transcript in one script
410 episodes of Plain English with Derek Thompson have transcripts. Fetch them all as speaker-labeled Markdown in one script — 1 credit each, and re-fetching one you already have is free:
curl -s -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
https://spoken.md/podcasts/1594471023/episodes \
| jq -r '.episodes[] | "\(.id) \(.title)"' \
| while IFS=' ' read -r id title; do
slug=$(echo "$title" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -cs 'a-z0-9' '-' | sed 's/-*$//')
[ -f "${id}-${slug}.md" ] && continue
curl -sf -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
-o "${id}-${slug}.md" \
https://spoken.md/transcripts/$id || rm -f "${id}-${slug}.md"
sleep 0.34
doneAlready-saved files are skipped — safe to re-run after a top-up.
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Latest Plain English with Derek Thompson transcripts
AI Is Smarter Than Ever. So Where’s the Revolution?
October 20, 2026
Derek Thompson (0:06)
So, let's say you're in high school. Your parents come home one day and they say, we've decided to get you a private tutor. And boy, do we have the perfect guy for the job. He knows everything. He has literally memorized every fact and finding in every discipline. He can explain every concept to you with whatever…
Sounds pretty good to you. And so one day, this tutor comes by the house and you ask him, is it true? Can you really memorize every fact, teach me every single subject with Harry Potter analogies? Of course, the tutor says. And there's something else I can do for you as well. In fact, I've done it for most of my…
- 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
- 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 Truth About Mississippi's Education "Miracle"
- Why Experts Keep Getting the Economy So Wrong
- What’s the Point of College?
- The New Book That Scares Big Tech
- AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet. Can We Save It?
- Why Everything Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive
- Higher Education’s Age of ‘Insufferable Hypocrisy’
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Any Plain English with Derek Thompson episode comes back as Markdown with the speakers named, one credit each.
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