The Gray Area with Sean Illing

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Your identity is a story you tell yourself Nov 17, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with neuroscientist Gregory Berns, author of The Self Delusion. Berns claims that the idea of a unified, persistent self is a kind of illusion, and that we are better understood as multiple selves at different moments in time, tied together by a story — which is what we call our identity. Sean and Greg also talk about whether the brain is a computer, how perception works, the limits of thinking too much about thinking, and what psychedelics can do to disrupt and change the stories we tell about ourselves.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Gregory Berns (@gberns), author; professor of psychology and distinguished professor of neuroeconomics, Emory University

References:

The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent — and Reinvent — Our Identitiesby Gregory Berns (Basic; 2022)
More on the "Ship of Theseus" by Noah Levin
"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" by David Chalmers (Journal of Consciousness Studies 2; 1995)
More on "The Hard Problem of Consciousness" by Josh Weisberg (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
"The extraordinary therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, explained" by Sean Illing (Vox; Mar. 8, 2019)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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James Carville unpacks the midterms Nov 14, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with veteran political strategist James Carville about the U.S. midterm elections — and the surprising success for Democrats that was a far cry from the "red wave" of Republican victories widely predicted by pundits. They talk about why the results differed so vastly from these expectations, what lessons both parties should be drawing from the outcomes, and whether or not the Democratic party, despite their victories, still have a systematic problem with political messaging.

This conversation took place mid-day on Wednesday, November 9th.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: James Carville (@JamesCarville), political strategist; co-host, Politics War Room podcast

References:

Fall 2022 Harvard Youth Poll (Oct. 27)
Exit poll data from ABC News and CNN
"'Wokeness is a problem and we all know it': James Carville on the state of Democratic politics" by Sean Illing (Vox; Apr. 27, 2021)
"GOP to use debt limit to force spending cuts, McCarthy says" by Eugene Robinson (Washington Post; Oct. 18)
2022 abortion-related ballot measures (Ballotpedia)
"Democrats' Long Goodbye to the Working Class" by Ruy Teixeira (The Atlantic; Nov. 6)
"Is John Fetterman the Future of the Democratic Party?" by Michael Sokolove (New York Times; May 18)
On Carville's role in the abortion referendum campaign in Kansas: "The Most Consequential Vote in Recent American History is Happening Today and the News Media Is Ignoring It" by Colby Hall (Mediaite; Aug. 2nd)
"How a 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Who Traveled for an Abortion Became Part of a Political Firestorm" by Solcyre Burga (Time; July 15)
"Democrats still have a path to keep the House — but it's tough" by Andrew Prokop (Vox; Nov. 10)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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Why are billionaires prepping for the apocalypse? Nov 10, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with technologist, media theorist, and author Douglas Rushkoff, whose new book Survival of the Richest explains how the ultra-wealthy are obsessed with preparing for the end of the world — and the troubling mindset that leads many rich and powerful people down this road. They discuss the blend of tech utopianism and fatalism behind this doomsday prepping, how Silicon Valley and "tech bro" culture have incentivized a kind of misanthropy, and why the world's billionaire class can't see that the catastrophes they fear are of their own making.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff), author; professor, media studies, CUNY Queens College

References:

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton; 2022)
"Epson boobytrapped its printers" by Cory Doctorow (Medium; Aug. 7)
"Cosmism: Russia's religion for the rocket age" by Benjamin Ramm (BBC; Apr. 20, 2021)
The Selfish Gene (1976) and The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins
Francis Bacon, Redargutio Philosophiarum (1608), tr. by Benjamin Farrington in The Philosophy of Francis Bacon (1964): "Nature must be taken by the forelock . . . lay hold of her and capture her" (p. 130).
"Power changes how the brain responds to others" by Jeremy Hogeveen, et al., Journal of Experiential Psychology (Apr. 2014)
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill (Basic Books; 2022)
Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton; 2021)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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Today's Republicans were made in the 1990s Nov 07, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with Nicole Hemmer, history professor and author of the new book Partisans. In it, she gives a reinterpretation of the Reagan presidency and what followed, and shows how the conservative political movement entangled with media figures and became what it is in the 1990s. They discuss the doomed but influential presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan, the rise to dominance of conservative talk radio, and the enduring dangers of political violence.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry), author; professor, Vanderbilt University

References:

Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s by Nicole Hemmer (Basic; 2022)
"The Man Who Won the Republican Party Before Trump Did" by Nicole Hemmer (New York Times; Sept. 8)
Talk Radio's America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United Statesby Brian Rosenwald (Harvard; 2019)
On the Fairness Doctrine (First Amendment Center; MTSU)
GOP Reagan Library Debate (CNN; Sept. 16, 2015)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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Yuval Noah Harari thinks humans are unstoppable Nov 03, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with Yuval Noah Harari, historian and bestselling author, about how humanity came to be the dominant species on earth, and what our future might hold. Sean and Yuval discuss mankind's imaginative "superpower," the threats to democracy across the globe, the future of artificial intelligence — and plenty more.

Yuval's new book Unstoppable Us adapts many of his macro-historical insights from Sapiens for younger readers, and is the first in a planned four-volume series.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Yuval Noah Harari (@harari_yuval), author; professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

References:

Unstoppable Us, Volume 1: How Humans Took Over the Worldby Yuval Noah Harari; illustrated by Ricard Zaplana Ruiz (Bright Matter; 2022)
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrowby Yuval Noah Harari (Harper; 2017)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Harper; 2015)
"Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide | Yuval Noah Harari" (TED; YouTube)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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Dying with dignity Oct 31, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with reporter Katie Engelhart, whose book The Inevitable is an up-close look at physician-assisted dying. This is the practice of receiving state-sanctioned medical aid to end one's life — a practice now legal in 10 U.S. states, Canada, and elsewhere around the world. They discuss the details of the procedure — including why people fight for this right and exercise it — as well as many of the moral and legal questions that it raises.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Katie Engelhart (@katieengelhart), journalist; author

References:

The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die by Katie Engelhart (St. Martin's; 2021)
Brittany Maynard's legislative testimony

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineers: Patrick Boyd, Paul Robert Mounsey
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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Finding hope in a world on the brink Oct 27, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with Jonathan Lear, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, about his new book Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life. How can we continue to live a good life in a world beset by catastrophe, crisis, and chaos? Sean and Jonathan discuss the role of imagination and culture in the ways we make meaning in the world, the idea of mourning as a confrontation with our uniquely human ability to love, and how to turn away from the path of despair, towards hope — and to what Lear calls "committed living towards the future."

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Jonathan Lear, author; professor, Committee on Social Thought & Dept. of Philosophy, University of Chicago

References:

Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life by Jonathan Lear (Harvard; Nov. 15, 2022)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (1849; published under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus)
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia (1917)
"The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy" by Cora Diamond (2003)
Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation by Jonathan Lear (Harvard; 2008)
"Envy and Gratitude" by Melanie Klein (1957; published in The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume III, Hogarth Press; 1975)
"A Lecture on Ethics" by Ludwig Wittgenstein (lecture notes from 1929-1930, published in The Philosophical Review v. 74 no. 1, 1965)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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The new American Reconstruction Oct 24, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with historian and author Peniel Joseph about his new book The Third Reconstruction, which argues that the time we're currently living in can be understood as on a continuum with the civil rights era of the '50s and '60s. and the original American Reconstruction following the Civil War. Sean and Peniel discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, the Obama presidency — and important differences between the two — as well as the dangers of American exceptionalism and the importance of maintaining hope in the ongoing fight for racial justice.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Peniel Joseph (@PenielJoseph), author; founding director, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

References:

The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century by Peniel E. Joseph (Basic; 2022)
"DeSantis claims it was only the American Revolution that caused people to question slavery" by Graig Graziosi (The Independent; Sept. 23)
Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois (1935)
"The Undoing of Reconstruction" by W. Archibald Dunning (The Atlantic; Oct. 1901)
Barack Obama's Speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (C-SPAN; YouTube)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (New Press; 2010, updated 2020)
Shelby County v. Holder (570 US 529; 2013), in which the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
"Harming Our Common Future: America's Segregated Schools 65 Years after Brown" by Gary Orfield, et al. (Civil Rights Project; 2019)
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (551 US 701; 2007)
"A North Carolina city begins to reckon with the massacre in its white supremacist past" by Scott Neuman (NPR; Nov. 10, 2021)
How to Be an Antiracistby Ibram X. Kendi (One World; 2019)
White Fragilityby Robin DiAngelo (Beacon; 2018)
"Why I hope 2022 will be another 1866" by Manisha Sinha (CNN; Oct. 12)
President Kennedy's Televised Address to the Nation on Civil Rights (June 11, 1963)

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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Is America losing its religion? Oct 20, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with Reza Aslan, scholar of religions and author of multiple bestselling nonfiction works, to discuss the state of religion in America today. Sean and Reza discuss the relationship between politics and religion, why it can be hard to separate the emotional experiences of faith from the symbolic language of organized religion, and how new religious identities are being forged along principles of Christian nationalism.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan), author

References:

An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskervilleby Reza Aslan (Norton; 2022)
The Leftovers TV series (HBO; 2014–2017)
"Can Religion & Reason Be Reconciled? | Reza Aslan & Sam Harris debate" (Jan. 25, 2007; C-SPAN YouTube)
Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study (Jan. 14, 2021)
The 2020 Census of American Religion (PRRI; July 8, 2021)
"'Pro-Life' Herschel Walker Paid for Girlfriend's Abortion" by Roger Sollenberger (The Daily Beast; Oct. 4)
President George W. Bush's remarks on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001: "This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail."

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This episode was made by:

Producer: Erikk Geannikis
Editor: Amy Drozdowska
Engineer: Patrick Boyd
Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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How we got to January 6th Oct 17, 2022

Show notes

Sean Illing talks with war reporter and New Yorker contributing writer Luke Mogelson about his new book The Storm Is Here. In it, Luke shares his on-the-ground reporting across America — from anti-lockdown protests in Lansing, Michigan, to the uprising in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd — to explain how the forces that animated the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 came to gather strength. In this discussion, Sean and Luke talk about what happened, how it happened, and how Luke's experience at the Capitol on the 6th shaped his view of what's coming next.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Luke Mogelson, author; contributing writer, The New Yorker

References: