The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Carol Anderson on the myth of American democracy

24 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The president of the United States was the runner-up in the popular vote. The majority in the US Senate got fewer votes than the minority. And even if...

Martha C. Nussbaum on how fear deforms our politics

17 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book Monarchy of Fear, famed philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum identifies fear as the oldest and deepest of our emotions. Fear takes hold in o...

David French on “The Great White Culture War"

10 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

David French is a senior writer for National Review and one of the conservatives I read most closely. About a month ago, he published an interesting c...

Your attention is being hijacked. Chris Bailey can help.

04 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Life is the sum focus of what you pay attention to. You hear that a lot. But look at the verb there: “pay” attention to. As if attention is someth...

Anand Giridharadas on the elite charade of changing the world

30 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“How can there be anything wrong with trying to do good?” asks Anand Giridharadas in his new book, Winners Take All. “The answer may be: when th...

I build a world with fantasy master N.K. Jemisin

27 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

I’m just going to say it. This may be the most fun I’ve ever had on a podcast. Nora Jemisin — better known by her pen name, N.K. Jemisin — jus...

Reup: Zephyr Teachout vs. Corruption

24 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham University and one of the nation’s foremost experts on political corruption. She’s also, after a glo...

Is our economy totally screwed? Andrew Yang and I debate.

20 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

"The future without jobs will come to resemble either the cultivated benevolence of Star Trek or the desperate scramble for resources of Mad Max,” w...

Chef Marcus Samuelsson on immigration, creativity, and Anthony Bourdain

13 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Marcus Samuelsson is the Michelin-starred chef behind Harlem’s The Red Rooster an award-winning cookbook author,the winner of the first season of To...

Why online politics gets so extreme so fast

06 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

During the 2016 campaign, Zeynep Tufekci was watching videos of Donald Trump rallies on YouTube. But then, she writes, she "noticed something peculiar...

Taking Trump’s corruption seriously

02 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The question of whether President Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election has consumed Washington since the Justice Department appointed R...

The surprising story of how American politics polarized

30 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We talk a lot on this podcast about the epic levels of political polarization and how much of our ongoing breakdown they explain. But what was America...

The most important idea for understanding American politics in 2018

23 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

America is changing. A majority of infants are, for the first time in US history, nonwhite — and the rest of the population is expected to follow su...

What economists and politicians get wrong about trade

19 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, Harvard’s Dani Rodrik has been a lonely voice in the economics profession warning that the academics were getting this one wrong. Trade...

How to disagree better

16 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Arthur Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of Washington’s most respected and powerful conservative think tanks. He’...

Jaron Lanier’s case for deleting social media right now

09 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

During my book leave, I took a social media sabbatical. No reading Facebook. No reading Twitter. And you know what? It was great. I felt able to think...

The most clarifying conversation I’ve had about Trump and Russia (part 2)

05 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What have we actually learned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, and his administration’s efforts to cover those ties up? What role did Russia r...

The Supreme Court vs. Democracy

02 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

If 75,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had tipped the other way, President Hillary Clinton would’ve named both Antonin Scalia and ...

Eric Garcetti on the lessons of Los Angeles

25 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

There’s been a lot of talk about the coming of majority-minority America — the point, projected for roughly 2045, when there will no longer be any...

What Ellen Pao saw coming

18 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ellen Pao had a rough 2015. She lost her high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest and mos...

The Green Pill

11 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What accounts for the way most of us eat? What’s the ideology, the theory, behind our diets? And what happens when you stop believing in it? Over th...

How Jane Mayer exposed Eric Schneiderman, Bush’s torture program, and the Kochs

04 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On May 7, Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow published a story in the New Yorker detailing New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s alleged history of...

Political power and the racial wealth gap

28 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The racial wealth gap is where past injustice compounds into present inequality. When I asked Ta-Nehisi Coates, on this show, what would prove to him ...

Tyler Cowen on the painful end of American complacency

21 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Headlining any conversation with Tyler Cowen is difficult. This one, for instance, covers how to write a book, single-payer health care, political cor...

A mind-expanding conversation with Michael Pollan

14 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This is perhaps the most literal title I’ve given a conversation on this podcast. This is a discussion about how to expand your mind — how to expa...

Optimism about America

07 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In a February 2017 column, David Brooks wrote about "the Fallows Question, which I unfurl at dinner parties: If you could move to the place on earth w...

The New York Times’s lead Clinton reporter reflects on her coverage

03 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s time to talk about the damn emails — and the way the media covered them. Amy Chozick reported on Hillary Clinton for a decade. She was there ...

The age of "mega-identity" politics

30 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Poli...

Is American democracy really in decline? A debate.

23 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Yascha Mounk’s new book, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, is perhaps the year’s scariest read. In it, Mo...

Special episode: The Syrian conflict, explained by a UN diplomat who saw it start

20 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Many of you will remember the interview I did with Grant Gordon, who works on humanitarian policy innovation at the International Rescue Committee. Th...

Is modern society making us depressed?

16 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief — for our own lives not being as they should?” asks Johann Hari. “What if it is a form of gri...

Carol Anderson on White Rage and Donald Trump

12 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Carol Anderson is a professor of African-American studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. A...

The Sam Harris Debate

09 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

There’s a lot of backstory to this podcast, most of which is covered in this piece. The short version is that Sam Harris, the host of the Waking Up ...

Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hardest year, and what comes next

02 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been a tough year for Facebook. The social networking juggernaut found itself engulfed by controversies over fake news, electoral interference,...

Is Mitch Landrieu the "White, Southern Anti-Trump"?

26 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Mitch Landrieu is the white mayor of New Orleans, and he wants America to talk about race. Landrieu is the author of the new book, In The Shadow of St...

Melinda Gates (live!) on stopping climate change, ending malaria, and the problems money can’t solve

19 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Melinda Gates is the co-founder and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest private foundation in the United States. With more ...

A better conversation on guns

12 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Want to know why we can’t make any progress on the guns debate? Because this isn’t a debate over policy. It’s a debate over identity. After last...

This isn’t Joe Kennedy’s grandfather’s Democratic Party, and he knows it

05 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When you’re sitting in front of Rep. Joe Kennedy, it’s clear that you’re sitting in front of a Kennedy. The face, the jawline — it’s all unc...

Amy Chua on how tribalism is tearing America apart

26 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Human beings are tribal creatures, particularly when they feel threatened. And the reality of living in America in 2018, at a time of massive demograp...

How technology brings out the worst in us, with Tristan Harris

19 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 2011, Tristan Harris’s company, Apture, was acquired by Google. Inside Google, he became unnerved by how the company worked. There was all this e...

Steven Pinker: enlightenment values made this the best moment in human history

12 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Does the daily news feel depressing? Does the world feel grim? It’s not, says Harvard professor Steven Pinker. This is, in fact, the best moment in ...

Why my politics are bad with Bhaskar Sunkara

05 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founder and publisher of Jacobin, a journal of “socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.” He launched th...

How Democracies Die

29 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The year is young, but Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is going to be one of its most important books. It will be read as a...

How to oppose Trump without becoming more like him

22 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Krista Tippett is the host of the award-winning radio show and podcast On Being. In 2014, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President B...

You will love this conversation with Jaron Lanier, but I can’t describe it

15 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Oftentimes it’s easy for me to describe these conversations. This one is on Trump and Russia. That one is on health care. But not this time. I want ...

The most clarifying conversation I’ve had on Trump and Russia

08 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What really happened between the Trump campaign and the Russian government? The investigation into that question has rocked American politics. The FBI...

Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau on Trump’s first year, the GOP’s “rot,” and the left’s failures

02 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jon Favreau was President Obama’s chief speechwriter. In those days, he was a frequent critic of the political media, frustrated, as many in the Oba...

The inside story of Doug Jones’s win in Alabama

25 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

“The day before the Washington Post story came out, we were behind by one point, 46 to 45,” says Joe Trippi. “And the day before the election, w...

What life is like in North Korea

18 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The most important story in the world right now is how real the chance of war with North Korea is — and how cataclysmic such a war would be. Part of...

"An orgy of serious policy discussion" with Paul Krugman

11 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

On October 24, 2016, in the final days of the presidential election, Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, twe...

The case for impeachment

04 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

I have grown obsessed with a seemingly simple question: Does the American political system have a remedy if we elect the wrong person to be president?...

What Buddhism got right about the human brain

27 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

I wanted to take a post-Thanksgiving break from politics and current events this week to talk to Robert Wright. He's written some of the best books on...

Rebecca Traister on #MeToo, female rage, and Anita Hill’s legacy

20 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We’re living through an upheaval. The #MeToo moment has engulfed some of the most powerful men in politics, entertainment, and media. It has also fo...

Ai-jen Poo: the future of work isn’t robots. It’s caring humans.

13 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

When we talk about the future of work, we usually focus on artificial intelligence, robotics, driverless cars. The future of work, we’re told, is a ...

Evan Osnos on the North Korea crisis, Trump’s mental health, and China's rise

06 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Evan Osnos is the author of the National Book Award-winning The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, as well as a staf...

Why politics needs more conflict, not less

30 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Here’s a counterintuitive thought: maybe Congress in particular, and politics in general, has too little conflict, not too much. That’s James Wall...

Why the Weinstein scandal gives Tig Notaro hope about Hollywood

23 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Tig Notaro dropped out of high school. She drifted between odd jobs for a long time and eventually found her way to Colorado, where she discovered ope...

What happens when human beings take control of their own evolution?

16 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decade, scientists have developed what was once just the subject of dystopian fiction: gene editing technology. It's known as CRISPR. Je...

Ta-Nehisi Coates is not here to comfort you

09 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

“It’s important to remember the inconsequence of one’s talent and hard work and the incredible and unmatched sway of luck and fate,” writes Ta...

How the Republican Party created Donald Trump

02 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have studied American politics for more than three decades. They are the town’s go-to experts on the workings of Con...

Reihan Salam wants to remake the Republican Party -- again

25 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In 2008, Reihan Salam co-wrote Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream with his frequent collaborator R...

David Remnick on journalism in the Trump era and why he hires obsessives

19 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

For the past 19 years, David Remnick has been the editor of the New Yorker, perhaps the greatest magazine in the English language. Under his leadershi...

What Hillary Clinton really thinks

12 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

On page 239 of What Happened, Hillary Clinton reveals that she almost ran a very different campaign in 2016. Before announcing for president, she read...

Dan Rather thought he'd seen it all. But then came President Trump.

05 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Dan Rather has covered the most momentous events of the modern era. He was in Dallas, Texas, during President Kennedy's assassination. He was in Vietn...

From 4Chan to Charlottesville: where the alt-right came from, and where it's going

29 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Angela Nagle spent the better part of the past decade in the darkest corners of the internet, learning how online subcultures emerge and thrive on for...

Why prosecutors, not cops, are the keys to criminal justice reform

22 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Angela J. Davis is the former director of the DC public defender service, a professor of law at American University, and editor of a remarkable new bo...

Chris Hayes on whether Trump should be removed from office

15 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In the aftermath of Trump’s bizarre, dangerous North Korea tweets, I’ve been fixated on a question: Should Trump be removed from office? The mech...

Sen. Michael Bennet on why this is a dismal, sociopathic era in Congress

08 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Bennet is an accidental senator. He was unexpectedly appointed to fill an open seat after Ken Salazar joined the Obama administration. He had ...

What’s scary isn’t Trump’s illiberalism but America's acceptance of it

01 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Yascha Mounk is a lecturer at Harvard, a columnist at Slate, and the host of The Good Fight podcast. He’s also an expert on how democracies backslid...

Julia Galef on how to argue better and change your mind more

25 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

At least in politics, this is an era of awful arguments. Arguments made in bad faith. Arguments in which no one, on either side, is willing to change ...

Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, the first psychologist to run a jail

18 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart calls the 8,000-person Cook County Jail the largest mental health institution in the country. Thirty percent of its in...

Eddie Izzard on World War I, cake or death, and marathoning

11 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Now that I've gotten Eddie Izzard to re-derive his famed "cake or death?" routine in real time, I'm ending this podcast. Always good to go out on top....

Avik Roy and Ezra debate the Senate GOP's health bill

03 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate GOP’s health care bill — officially known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act — will ...

danah boyd on why fake news is so easy to believe

27 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

danah boyd is an anthropologist and computer scientist who studies the way people actually use technology. Not the way we wish we used technology, or ...

Al Franken on learning to be a politician

20 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Sen. Al Franken’s new book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, is the rare politician memoir that’s actually interesting. And note that I said inter...

Zephyr Teachout on suing Trump, fighting corruption, and breaking monopolies

13 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham University, the author of Corruption in America, one of the lead lawyers in the emoluments case that’s...

Masha Gessen offers a plausible Trump-Russia theory

06 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and the author of, among other books, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Since...

Kwame Anthony Appiah on cosmopolitanism

30 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Few words are as reviled in American politics as “cosmopolitan.” The term invokes sneering, urban, elite condescension. It’s those smug cosmopol...

Yascha Mounk: Is Trump’s incompetence saving us from his illiberalism?

23 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Yascha Mounk is a Lecturer on Government at Harvard University, a Fellow in the Political Reform Program at New America, and host of the podcast, The ...

Bryan Stevenson on why the opposite of poverty isn’t wealth, but justice

16 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release for mor...

Death, Sex, and Money’s Anna Sale on bringing empathy to politics

09 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

There’s much talk of “empathy” in today’s politics, but it’s a cramped, weaponized form of empathy — an empathy designed to force us to gr...

Cory Booker returns, live, to talk trust, Trump, and basic incomes

04 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Senator Cory Booker is back! In this special live episode of The Ezra Klein Show — taped at Vox Conversations — Booker and I dig into America’s ...

VC Bill Gurley on transforming health care

02 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Washington has been gripped of late by the world’s most depressing, least imaginative, debate over health care. The question, as it stands, is wheth...

Elizabeth Warren on what Barack Obama got wrong

25 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Warren is the founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the senior senator from Massachusetts, and the author of the new book, “...

Cal Newport on doing Deep Work and escaping social media

18 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

I was asked recently to name a book that changed my life. The book I chose was Cal Newport’s “Deep Work,” and for the most literal of reasons: i...

G. Willow Wilson on religion, comics, and modern myths

11 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

This is a podcast about topics we don’t always cover on this show. Religion. Spirituality. Gender roles. Traditionalist societies. Comic books.G. Wi...

Chris Hayes on the crisis of elites and the politics of order

04 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

I could describe this podcast, and I will. But the tl;dr is this is one of my favorite conversations so far, and you’re going to enjoy it. So just g...

Tyler Cowen explains it all

28 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

I have never come across a mind quite like Tyler Cowen’s. The George Mason economist, and Marginal Revolution blogger, has an interesting opinion on...

Molly Ball on whether facts matter in politics

21 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

You may remember the Atlantic's Molly Ball from the fantastic pre-election conversation we had on this podcast. She's back this week to talk about an ...

Denis McDonough on how to run the White House

14 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

How do you actually run a White House? What is the president’s actual job? What is the chief of staff’s role? What happens if you screw up? These ...

Cecile Richards on Planned Parenthood, labor organizing, and the Supreme Court

07 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Before Cecile Richards was president of Planned Parenthood, she was a labor organizer working with garment workers in El Paso, Texas. The experience t...

Tim Ferriss on suffering, psychedelics, and spirituality

02 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Ferriss is the author of the 4-Hour Workweek, as well as the new book, Tools of Titans. He’s also the host of The Tim Ferriss Show, which is one...

Yuval Harari, author of “Sapiens,” on AI, religion, and 60-day meditation retreats

28 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Yuval Noah Harari’s first book, “Sapiens,” was an international sensation. The Israeli historian’s mind-bending tour through the trump of Homo...

Elizabeth Drew covered Watergate. Here's what she thinks of Trump.

21 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth Drew is the author of Washington Journal, one of my favorite books about Watergate. Drew covered the story as a reporter for the New Yorker,...

Avik Roy on why conservatives need to embrace diversity

14 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Avik Roy advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign on health care, ran the policy shop on Rick Perry’s 2016 campaign, and then worked for Marco Rubio af...

Kara Swisher gives a master class on reporting and interviewing

07 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Before I launched this podcast, I asked Kara Swisher to coffee. Swisher founded the technology news site Recode, hosts the excellent Recode Decode pod...

David Miliband explains the global refugee crisis

02 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning Muslim refugees from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, and indefinitely banning them fr...

Jennifer Lawless on why you — yes, you — should run for office

31 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

There are 500,000 elected positions in the United States. I'll say that again: 500,000. And that's no accident. "Our political system is built on the ...

JD Vance: the reluctant interpreter of Trumpism

24 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy has been adopted as the book that explains Trumpism. It's the book that both Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rob Port...

Keith Ellison: The Democratic National Committee has become the Democratic Presidential Committee, and that needs to end

17 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Congressman Keith Ellison is the frontrunner to lead the Democratic National Committee in the Trump era. Ellison has a fascinating backstory: he's the...