The Gray Area with Sean Illing
The Gray Area with Sean Illing takes a philosophy-minded look at culture, technology, politics, and the world of ideas. Each week, we invite a guest to explore a question or topic that matters. From the the state of democracy, to the struggle with depression and anxiety, to the nature of identity in the digital age, each episode looks for nuance and honesty in the most important conversations of our time. New episodes drop every Monday.
76
The chemistry of connection
Sean talks with a psychiatrist about how our brain chemistry — and psychedelics — can help take on the "loneliness epidemic"
49 min
77
What a slow civil war looks like
What if January 6th was only the beginning?
52 min
78
How to listen
The essential art of listening and how it’s different from simply hearing.
51 min
79
Why we can't give up on persuasion
Democracy depends on persuasion
50 min
80
Rep. Katie Porter's working-class politics
Why Rep. Katie Porter thinks we need fewer millionaires in Congress
41 min
81
The climate apocalypse will be televised
A writer/producer of Apple TV+'s "Extrapolations" on the challenges and imperatives of dramatizing the climate crisis, and imagining a bleak future
55 min
82
A philosopher takes on religious life
A philosophy professor gave up her career and all her possessions to join a religious community, and her new book explores the value of living a life of faith
48 min
83
Your brain isn't so private anymore
Brain-scanning technology is here, and already available to consumers. This law professor says we're not ready for the consequences.
59 min
84
Brian Stelter thinks the news has a reliability...
Examining the relationship between news, entertainment, and politics with media reporter Brian Stelter.
51 min
85
How corporations got all your data
Sean talks with a Columbia professor whose new book tells the history of how corporations and governments became so interested in collecting our personal data — and how they got away with it
49 min
86
The case for failure
How to embrace failure and gain humility
43 min
87
Poetry as religion
The paradoxes of living a meaningful life are worth exploring... even if there's no God
51 min
88
Revisiting the American Dream
“Going it alone” has run its course
37 min
89
The cost of saving pandas
We protected pandas as the rest of nature collapsed
40 min
90
Breaking our family patterns
How our "origin wounds" from childhood hold us back, according to an acclaimed marriage and family therapist
58 min
91
For Black horror fans, fact is scarier than fic...
Black horror and the roots of social inequity in Hollywood
45 min
92
Taking Nietzsche seriously
The 19th-century German philosopher has a history of being misread, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. And yet his insights can still have resonance today — but we have to grapple with the unsettling things in his work.
59 min
93
The dark history of Silicon Valley
How Palo Alto influenced capitalism within Silicon Valley, the US, and around the world
54 min
94
The value of being a "hater"
There's power in the subversive, reactionary act of spreading a little targeted negativity on the internet
49 min
95
Behind the blue wall
A former cop on how to fix policing in America
56 min
96
Best of: Imagine a future with no police
Vox's Fabiola Cineas speaks with author and activist Derecka Purnell about a radical new vision of policing in America
58 min
97
Is America broken?
An exploration of our deepest political divide.
45 min
98
The creator of Fargo is done with good guys vs....
Noah Hawley, novelist and showrunner of Fargo on FX, talks with Sean Illing about the enduring power of old American myths
49 min
99
Revisiting the "father of capitalism"
What we get wrong about moral philosopher Adam Smith
48 min
100
Can effective altruism be redeemed?
How trying to do the most good went wrong
58 min