The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Latest Episodes:

Do you have moral ambition? May 12, 2025

Show notes

We’re told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades. Get into a good school. Get a good job. Be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high-status position.

Some of us love this endless climb. But lots of us, at least once in our lives, find ourselves asking, "What’s the point of all this ambition?"Historian and author Rutger Bregman doesn’t think there is a point to that kind of ambition. Instead, he wants us to be morally ambitious, to measure the value of our achievements based on how much good we do, by how much we improve the world.

In this episode, Bregman speaks with guest host Sigal Samuel about how to know if you’re morally ambitious, the value of surrounding yourself with like-minded people, and how to make moral ambition fashionable.

Host: Sigal Samuel, Vox senior reporter

Guest: Rutger Bregman, historian, author of Moral Ambition, and co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition

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Show Notes

Vox’s Good Robot series can be found here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3 (discusses the "drowning child thought experiment" and effective altruism)

Episode 4

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The science of ideology May 05, 2025

Show notes

What do you do when you’re faced with evidence that challenges your ideology? Do you engage with that new information? Are you willing to change your mind about your most deeply held beliefs? Are you pre-disposed to be more rigid or more flexible in your thinking?

That’s what political psychologist and neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod wants to know. In her new book, The Ideological Brain, she examines the connection between our biology, our psychology, and our political beliefs.

In today’s episode, Leor speaks with Sean about rigid vs. flexible thinking, how our biology and ideology influence each other, and the conditions under which our ideology is more likely to become extreme.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Leor Zmigrod, political psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of The Ideological Brain

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A new analysis of the pandemic Apr 28, 2025

Show notes

There are lots of stories to tell about the Covid pandemic. Most of them, on some level, are about politics, about decisions that affected people’s lives in different — and very unequal — ways.

Covid hasn’t disappeared, but the crisis has subsided. So do we have enough distance from it to reflect on what we got right, what we got wrong, and what we can do differently when the next crisis strikes?

Professor Frances E. Lee — co-author of In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us — thinks we do. In this episode, she speaks with Sean about how our politics, our assumptions, and our biases affected decision-making and outcomes during the pandemic.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Frances E. Lee, professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton and co-author of In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

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Halfway there: a philosopher’s guide to midlife crises Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

Philosophy often feels like a disconnected discipline, obsessed with tedious and abstract problems. But MIT professor Kieran Setiya believes philosophical inquiry has a practical purpose outside the classroom — to help guide us through life’s most challenging circumstances. He joins Sean to talk about self-help, FOMO, and midlife crises.

This episode originally aired in April 2024.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Kieran Setiya, author of Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way and Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.

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Whatever this is, it isn’t liberalism Apr 14, 2025

Show notes

What exactly is the basis for democracy?

Arguably Iiberalism, the belief that the government serves the people, is the stone on which modern democracy was founded. That notion is so ingrained in the US that we often forget that America could be governed any other way. But political philosopher John Gray believes that liberalism has been waning for a long, long time.

He joins Sean to discuss the great liberal thinker Thomas Hobbes and America’s decades-long transition away from liberalism.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: John Gray, political philosopher and author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism

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A new way to listen Apr 11, 2025

Show notes

We have an exciting announcement! Vox Members now get access to ad-free podcasts. If you sign up, you’ll get unlimited access to reporting on vox.com, exclusive newsletters, and all of our podcasts — including The Gray Area — ad-free. Plus, you’ll play a crucial role in helping our show get made.

Check it out at vox.com/members.

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The beliefs AI is built on Apr 07, 2025

Show notes

There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to artificial intelligence. Technologists love to talk about all the good these tools can do in the world, all the problems they might solve. Yet, many of those same technologists are also warning us about all the ways AI might upend society, how it might even destroy humanity.

Julia Longoria, Vox host and editorial director, spent a year trying to understand that dichotomy. The result is a four-part podcast series — called Good Robot — that explores the ideologies of the people funding, building, and driving the conversation about AI.

Today Julia speaks with Sean about how the hopes and fears of these individuals are influencing the technology that will change all of our lives.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Vox Host and Editorial Director Julia Longoria

Good Robot is available in the Vox Unexplainable feed.

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Stop comparing yourself to AI Mar 31, 2025

Show notes

Why do we keep comparing AI to humans?

Jaron Lanier — virtual reality pioneer, digital philosopher, and the author of several best-selling books on technology — thinks that we should stop. In his view, technology is only valuable if it has beneficiaries. So instead of asking "What can AI do?," we should be asking, "What can AI do for us?"

In today’s episode, Jaron and Sean discuss a humanist approach to AI and how changing our understanding of AI tools could change how we use, develop, and improve them.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, artist, and writer.

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Democrats need to do something Mar 24, 2025

Show notes

American government has a speed issue. Both parties are slow to solve problems. Slow to build new things. Slow to make any change at all.

Until now. The Trump administration is pushing through sweeping changes as fast as possible, completely changing the dynamic. And the Democrats? They’ve been slow to respond. Slow to mount a defense. Slow to change tactics. Still.

Ezra Klein — writer, co-founder of Vox, and host of The Ezra Klein Show for the New York Times — would like to offer a course correction.

In a new book, Abundance, Klein and co-author Derek Thompson, argue that the way to make a better, brighter future, is to build and invent the things we need. To do that, liberals need to push past hyper-coalitional and bureaucratic ways of getting things done.

In this episode, Ezra speaks with Sean about the policy decisions that have rendered government inert and how we can make it easier to build the things we want and need.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Ezra Klein, co-author of Abundanceand host of The Ezra Klein Show

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How to live in uncertain times Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

Humans hate uncertainty. It makes us feel unsafe and uneasy. We often organize our lives to avoid it. When it's foisted upon us, we don’t always know how to act.

But writer and journalist Maggie Jackson argues that uncertainty can actually be good for us, and that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by avoiding it.

She tells Sean that embracing uncertainty can spark creativity, improve problem solving skills, and help us lead better, more hopeful lives.

This episode originally aired in January 2024.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Maggie Jackson, author of Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure

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