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. From the Vox Media Podcast Network.
101
Should we press pause on AI?
A discussion about AI and the issue of control.
53 min
102
Democracy’s existential crisis
A case for connecting democracy and the human condition.
47 min
103
Conservative socialism?
A conservative makes the case for democratic socialism.
52 min
104
The benefits of utopian thinking
Why it’s not unreasonable to imagine a better future.
50 min
105
What Clarence Thomas really thinks
And why he's the most misunderstood Supreme Court justice, according to the author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas.
60 min
106
The new crisis of masculinity
How to redefine what it means to be a man.
58 min
107
How we all became a brand
A brief history of how self-invention became personal branding.
49 min
108
The therapeutic potential of MDMA
How did MDMA go from club drug to breakthrough therapy?
44 min
109
Is the journey to self-discovery pointless?
What does it mean to know ourselves, and are modern methods like personality tests helping?
49 min
110
Parenting through the climate crisis
If we owe our children a safe and healthy future, what are parents supposed to do about our rapidly warming world?
43 min
111
Seeing ourselves through darkness
A philosopher's new book on dark moods aims to help us escape the damage of our culture's most pervasive metaphor
52 min
112
Best of: A new philosophy of love
55 min
113
The future of tribalism
An evolutionary anthropologist's new book aims to explore mankind's tribal past — and foresee our tribal future
49 min
114
When you can't separate art from artist
How to reckon with consuming the art of someone who’s done something terrible.
49 min
115
The case for not killing yourself
Clancy Martin's new book is a portrait of the suicidal mind — his own
54 min
116
What comes after Black Lives Matter?
Three summers after the death of George Floyd, what is the future of the racial justice movement in America?
54 min
117
Clickbait’s destructive legacy
How the media’s pursuit of traffic dented democracy.
49 min
118
Simone Weil’s radical philosophy of love and at...
How 20th-century philosopher Simone Weil built a legacy of caring for others.
53 min
119
Peter Singer on his ethical legacy
The world's most famous utilitarian talks about the state of animal liberation and effective altruism — two movements he helped found
61 min
120
Why the poor in America stay poor
We’ve built a society that shields us from a lot of the cruelties we participate in. Here’s what we can do to change that.
51 min
121
The spiritual roots of our strange relationship...
Revisiting the German thinker whose narrative of the origin of capitalism explains some of the weird ways we think about jobs
49 min
122
Mysteries of the mind
Do you understand your own mind? Does anybody?
49 min
123
Why we can’t just blame capitalism for everything
Exploring the big divide on the American left
45 min
124
Being human in the age of AI
As machines start to get more intelligent, do we need to rethink what it means to be human?
49 min
125
A philosopher's psychedelic encounter with reality
Justin Smith-Ruiu's experimentation with psychedelic drugs led him to fundamentally reevaluate his understanding of time, death, his job — and the nature of reality.
48 min