The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Episodes
Dadding out with Mike Birbiglia
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Birbiglia is one of my favorite comedians. He’s behind the specials. “Thank God for Jokes” and “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” the movie...
A rabbi explains how to make sense of suffering
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this special crossover episode of Vox's Future Perfect series, The Way Through, Co-host Sean Illing talks to David Wolpe, senior rabbi at Sinai Tem...
The crisis in the news
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There’s been a lot of discussion lately — including on this show — of the problems facing national news. Cries of fake news, illiberalism in the...
Bryan Stevenson on how America can heal
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What would it take for America to heal? To be the country it claims to be? This is the question that animates Bryan Stevenson’s career. Stevenson i...
What a post-Trump Republican Party might look like
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Five years ago, Oren Cass sat at the center of the Republican Party. Cass is a former management consultant who served as the domestic policy director...
Free speech, safety, and ‘the letter’
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Harper’s published an open letter arguing that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is dail...
The frightening fragility of America's political institutions
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Masha Gessen grew up in the Soviet Union and spent two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, before being driven from the coun...
Can artificial intelligence be emotionally intelligent?
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we talk about AI, we’re often talking about a very particular, narrow form of intelligence — the sort of analytical competence that can win y...
Danielle Allen on the radicalism of the American revolution — and its lessons for today
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
My first conversation with Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen in fall 2019 was one of my all-time favorites. I didn’t expect to have Allen on...
Land of the Giants: The Netflix Effect
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Land of the Giants is a podcast from our friends at Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network that examines the most powerful tech companies of our ti...
Nicholas Carr on deep reading and digital thinking
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1964, the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan wrote his opus Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In it, he writes, “In the long run, a ...
Your questions, answered
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Believe it or not, we’re already halfway through 2020. What a great year so far, huh? Just a delight. That means it’s time for an AMA. Among the q...
Which country has the world's best healthcare system?
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I got my start as a blogger. But more specifically, I got my start as a health policy blogger. My first piece of writing I remember people really cari...
The transformative power of restorative justice
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The criminal justice system asks three questions: What law was broken? Who broke it? And what should the punishment be? Upon that edifice — and chan...
Ross Douthat and I debate American decadence
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Decadent Society, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat diagnoses America’s core problems as decadence: “a situation in which...
A serious conversation about UFOs
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You may have been following — I hope you are following — the New York Times's recent UFO reporting. Videos that the Navy confirms are real show pi...
A former prosecutor's case for prison abolition
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, Paul Butler published the book Chokehold: Policing Black Men. For Butler the chokehold is much more than a barbaric police tactic; it is also...
Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The first question I asked Ta-Nehisi Coates, in this episode, was broad: What does he see right now, as he looks out at the country? “I can't believ...
Are humans fundamentally good? (with Rutger Bregman)
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dutch historian and De Correspondent writer Rutger Bregman got famous for the lashings he gave Tucker Carlson and the assembled plutocrats of Davos. B...
From politician to priest
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I first met Cyrus Habib at a conference a few years ago. You don't forget him. He's a Rhodes scholar. Iranian-America. As lieutenant governor of Washi...
Robert Frank's radical idea
25 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve known Cornell economist Robert Frank for almost 15 years. And for as long as I’ve known him, Frank has been trying to convince his fellow eco...
Why “essential” workers are treated as disposable
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Grocery store clerks. Fast food cashiers. Hospice care workers. Bus drivers. Farm workers. Along with doctors and nurses, these are the people who are...
"The world’s scariest economist” on coronavirus, innovation, and purpose
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Times of London called Mariana Mazzucato “the world’s scariest economist.” Quartz describes her as “on a mission to save capitalism from i...
A mind-bending conversation about quantum mechanics and parallel worlds
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While you read these words, the universe is splitting into countless copies. New realities, all with a version of you, exactly like you are now, but j...
Why the coronavirus is so deadly for black America
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Michigan, African Americans represent 14 percent of the population, 33 percent of infections, and 40 percent of deaths. In Mississippi they represe...
Jenny Odell on nature, art, and burnout in quarantine
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of my favorite episodes of this show was my conversation with Jenny Odell, just under a year ago. Odell, a visual artist, writer, and Stanford lec...
An unusually honest conversation about wielding political power
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) is the co-chair of the 95-member House Progressive Caucus. That means, in the aftermath of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s preside...
What should the media learn from coronavirus?
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus is “a nightmare scenario” for media, wrote New York Times columnist Charlie Warzel. “It is stealthy, resilient and confounding t...
Bill Gates’s vision for life beyond coronavirus
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, I asked Bill Gates a simple question: What are you most afraid of? He replied by telling me about the death chart of the 20th century. Ther...
An epic conversation with Madeline Miller
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to introduce a conversation on this show as fun. But this one was. I needed it. Maybe you do, too. Madeline...
The loneliness pandemic/Betraying “essential workers”
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We have something a bit different today. Two episodes from our extraordinary colleagues at Today, Explained, both of them close to my heart. The fir...
Why Bernie Sanders lost and how progressives can still win
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Democratic presidential primary is over. Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee heading into the fall. And this week, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth W...
Scott Gottlieb on how, and when, to end social distancing
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When will social distancing end? When will life return to “normal”? And what will it take to get there? Scott Gottlieb is a physician and public...
Toby Ord on existential risk, Donald Trump, and thinking in probabilities
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Oxford philosopher Toby Ord spent the early part of his career spearheading the effective altruism movement, founding Giving What We Can, and focusing...
Elizabeth Warren has a plan for this, too
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In January, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the first presidential candidate to release a plan for combatting coronavirus. In March, she released a second p...
What social solidarity demands of us in a pandemic
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is no doubt that social distancing is the best way to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But the efficacy of social distancing (or really any o...
Coronavirus has pushed US-China relations to their worst point since Mao
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 pandemic is a grim reminder that the worst really can happen. Tail risk is real risk. Political leaders fumble, miscalculate, and bluster...
Is the cure worse than the disease?
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself!" That was President Donald Trump, this week, explaining why he was thinking about lifting co...
An economic crisis like we’ve never seen
23 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“What is happening,” writes Annie Lowrey, “is a shock to the American economy more sudden and severe than anyone alive has ever experienced.” ...
"The virus is more patient than people are"
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ron Klain served as the chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden. In 2014, President Barack Obama tapped him to lead the administration...
A master class in organizing
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Bernie Sanders campaign is an organizing tour-de-force relative to the Joe Biden campaign; yet the latter has won primary after primary — with e...
Weeds 2020: The coronavirus election
14 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week, President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders each gave separate speeches in response to a rap...
Dan Pfeiffer on Joe Biden, beating Trump, and saving democracy
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before becoming the co-host of Pod Save America, Dan Pfeiffer spent most of his adult life in Democratic Party politics, which included serving as Whi...
Are you a "political hobbyist?" If so, you're the problem.
09 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Obsessively following the daily political news feels like an act of politics, or at least an act of civics. But what if, for many of us, it’s a repl...
What would a Sanders or Biden presidency look like?
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Super Tuesday winnowed the 2020 Democratic primary race down to two candidates: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. So how would their presidencies actually...
Rebecca Solnit on Harvey Weinstein, feminism, and social change
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Solnit is one of the great activist-essayists of our age. Her books and writing cover a vast amount of human existence, but a common thread in...
Weeds 2020: The Bernie electability debate
29 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Weeds 2020! Every other Saturday Ezra and Matt will be exploring a wide range of topics related to the 2020 race. Since the Nevada caucus...
Tracy K. Smith changed how I read poetry
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the rare podcast conversation where, as it’s happening, I’m making notes to go back and listen again so I can fully absorb what I heard. Bu...
Barbara Ehrenreich on UBI, class conflict, and collective joy
24 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 90s Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover as a waitress to discover how people with minimum wage full-time jobs were making ends meet. It tur...
What Donald Trump got right about white America
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hello! I’m Jane Coaston, filling in for Ezra. My guest today is Tim Carney, a commentary editor at the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at ...
Ta-Nehisi Coates on my “cold, atheist book”
17 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This one was a pleasure. Ta-Nehisi Coates joined me in Brooklyn for part of the “Why We’re Polarized” tour. His description of the book may be m...
If God is dead, then … socialism?
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hello! I’m Sean Illing, Vox’s interviews writer filling in for Ezra while he’s on book tour. My guest today is Martin Hägglund, a philosopher ...
Tim Urban on humanity’s wild future
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve been a fan of Tim Urban and his site Wait But Why for a long time. Urban uses whimsical illustrations, infographics, and friendly, nontechnic...
Jill Lepore on what I get wrong
06 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian, a New Yorker contributor, the author of These Truths, and one of my favorite past guests on this show. But in this...
Is Tom Steyer the solution to our dysfunctional politics?
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Steyer has worked for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He made his billions running a hedge fund for decades before moving into progressive activ...
Why We're Polarized, with Jamelle Bouie (live!)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Why We’re Polarized book tour kicked off this week with a wonderful event at Sixth and I in Washington, DC. My conversation partner for this o...
Antisemitism now, antisemitism then
27 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“The bad days are back” wrote Batya Ungar-Sargon in the Forward in December, “Orthodox Jews are living through a new age of pogroms. This week, ...
Book excerpt: A better theory of identity politics
23 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a podcast episode literally years in the making. It’s an excerpt — the first anywhere — from my book Why We’re Polarized. A core argum...
The war on Muslims (with Mehdi Hasan)
20 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With “reeducation" camps in China, religious disenfranchisement in India, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, street violence in Sri Lanka, mass shootings ...
Post-debate special!
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Vox's Matt Yglesias and I unpack the debate that did, and didn't, happen. Related reading: "Joe Biden will never give up on the system" by Ezra Klein ...
An “uncomfortable” conversation with Cory Booker
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is a moral radicalism to the way Cory Booker lives out his politics. He lived for years in a housing project. He leads hunger strikes. He challe...
The conservative mind of Yuval Levin
09 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first i...
How an epidemic begins and ends
08 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing season 3 of The Impact! The 2020 candidates have some bold ideas to tackle some of our country's biggest problems, like climate change, th...
Nathan Robinson’s case for socialism
06 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Socialism” is simultaneously one of the most commonly used and most confusing terms in American politics. Does being a socialist mean advocating ...
How to topple dictators and transform society (with Erica Chenoweth)
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 2010s witnessed a sharp uptick in nonviolent resistance movements all across the globe. Over the course of the last decade we’ve seen record num...
Ask Ezra Anything
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s here. The final AMA of 2019. Among the questions you asked: - If you believe that changing someone's mind about a topic, any topic is difficult...
Best of: Work as identity, burnout as lifestyle
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Here, at the end of the year, I wanted to share one of my favorite episodes of 2019 with you. Earlier this year, two essays on America’s changing re...
Republicans vs. the planet
23 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Roberts is an energy and climate writer at Vox and a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. H...
The geoengineering question
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Most analyses of how to “solve” climate change start from a single, crucial assumption: that carbon emissions and global warming are inextricably ...
How to solve climate change and make life more awesome
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The climate series is back! The reason for the delay is that I wanted to make sure that this episode was next up in the series. Once you start listeni...
Paul Krugman on climate, robots, single-payer, and so much more
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s cliché to call podcasts wide-ranging. But this conversation, with Nobel-prize winning economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, really is...
The moral philosophy of The Good Place (with Mike Schur and Pamela Hieronymi)
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After creating and running Parks and Recreation and writing for The Office, Michael Schur decided he wanted to create a sitcom about one of the most f...
When doing the right thing makes you a criminal
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For most of his life, Wayne Hsiung was a typical overachiever. He attended the University of Chicago, started his PhD in Economics, became a law profe...
Peter Singer on the lives you can save
02 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine you’re walking to work. You see a child drowning in a lake. You’re about to jump in and save her when you realize you’re wearing your be...
Best of: The age of "mega-identity" politics
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Happy Thanksgiving! Please enjoy a re-air episode from April 2018 with Lilliana Mason. Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not...
Because podcast
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Gretchen McCulloch is a self-described “internet linguist,” host of the podcast Lingthusiasm, and author of the recent book Because Internet: Unde...
There’s more to life than profit
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and he’s just released a new book, This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a Mor...
Having a bad day? Dave Eggers can help.
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve wanted to have Dave Eggers on the show for a while now. Eggers has not only written a vast range of books (a deeply ironic personal memoir, a h...
How Whole Foods, yoga, and NPR became the hallmarks of the elite
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you're anything like me, this episode will make you think about the way you shop, learn, eat, parent, and exercise in a whole new way. My guest tod...
How social media makes us antisocial
11 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Marantz is a writer at the New Yorker who, for years, has been deeply immersed in the world of conservative trolls, alt-right social media pers...
ICYMI: Edward Norton’s theory of mind, movies, and power
08 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Due to a technical glitch this interview with Edward Norton did not find it’s way into most people’s feeds. If you were able to download the firs...
Introducing Reset
08 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks for listening to Reset from Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's episodes were Can A.I. Tech You To Write Better and Quantum Su...
What a smarter Trumpism would sound like
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Lind is a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the co-founder of the New America Foundation, and an important contributor ...
The climate crisis is an oceans crisis
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to episode 2 of our climate cluster. The more I prepared for this series, the more I realize there was a big blue gap in my understanding of c...
We live in The Good Place. And we’re screwing it up.
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the first episode of our climate cluster. This isn’t a series about whether “the science is real” on climate change. This is a series...
Neoliberalism and its discontents
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Neoliberalism” is one of the most confusing phrases in political discourse today. The term is often used to describe the market fundamentalism of...
The four words that will decide impeachment
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hey EK Show listeners! Something different today. The first episode of my new podcast: Impeachment, Explained. This was the week of confessions. Actin...
We don’t just feel emotions. We make them.
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How do you feel right now? Excited to listen to your favorite podcast? Anxious about the state of American politics? Annoyed by my use of rhetorical q...
How politics became a war against reality
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his brilliant 2014 book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Soviet-born TV producer turned journalist Peter Pomerantsev described 21st-cent...
The loneliness epidemic
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As US surgeon general from 2014 to 2017, Vivek Murthy visited communities across the United States to talk about issues like addiction, obesity, and m...
Ibram X. Kendi wants to redefine racism
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Racism is one of the most morally charged words in the English language. It is typically understood as a form of deep inner prejudice — something th...
Malcolm Gladwell’s Stranger Things
03 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Malcolm Gladwell’s work is nothing short of an intellectual adventure. Sometimes, as in his podcast Revisionist History, he takes something small a...
An inspiring conversation about democracy
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Danielle Allen directs Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She’s a political theorist, and a philosopher, and the principal investigator ...
Samantha Power’s journey from foreign policy critic to UN ambassador
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Samantha Power reported from the killing fields of Bosnia. She watched a genocide that could’ve been stopped years earlier grind on amidst internati...
When meritocracy wins, everybody loses
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits argues that meritocracy — a system set-up to expand opportunity, reduce inequality and end aristocracy —...
Nikole Hannah-Jones on the 1619 project, choosing schools, and Cuba
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today” writes Nikole Hannah-Jones “it has been borne on the backs of black resistance.”...
Randall Munroe, the genius behind XKCD
16 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I’m not usually a fanboy on this podcast, but this episode is the exception. I love the web-comic XKCD. I’ve had prints of it hanging in my house ...
Julián Castro's quiet moral radicalism
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I’m careful about inviting politicians onto this podcast. Too often, questions go unanswered, and frustrated emails flood my inbox. So I only bring ...
Political animals (with Leah Garcés)
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to be an animal rights activist. Tens of billions of animals are being tortured and slaughtered every year. It...
John McWhorter thinks we're getting racism wrong
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hello everyone. I'm Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter at Vox with a focus on conservatism (Ezra will be back from vacation next week). "Antiraci...