The Gray Area with Sean Illing

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Martha C. Nussbaum on how fear deforms our politics Sep 17, 2018

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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 our earliest infancy, when we can experience need but we can’t act. And it lurks underneath our psyches, communities, and polities forever after that. This is a conversation about what fear is and how it shapes our worldviews and our politics. It’s also a conversation about what hope is, and whether embracing it is a choice we can, and should, make. Nussbaum is one of our greatest living philosophers. The way she thinks about politics, and her effort to recenter emotions at the core of both political and philosophical inquiry, is worth hearing. The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela by Sahm Venter To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics by John Hickenlooper

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David French on “The Great White Culture War" Sep 10, 2018

Show notes

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 column responding to some things I had said, and to the broader currents cutting through our politics. “Conservative white Americans look at urban multicultural liberalism and notice an important fact,” he wrote. "Its white elite remains, and continues to enjoy staggering amounts of power and privilege. So when that same white elite applauds the decline of 'white America,' what conservatives often hear isn’t a cheer for racial justice but another salvo in our ongoing cultural grudge match, with the victors seeking to elevate black and brown voices while remaining on top themselves." I asked French to come on the podcast to discuss this idea — and the controversies that motivated it — more deeply, and he quickly accepted. The result is a tricky conversation about very sensitive territory in our politics. It’s about how we talk about race and class and status and gender and sexuality and religion, how we understand and misunderstand each other, how our political identities turn conflicts about one thing into conflicts about all things, why groups that are objectively powerful feel so powerless, and much more. I always appreciate the grace, openness, and intelligence French brings to his writing, and all of that is on full display here too. Recommended books: The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt Coming Apart by Charles Murray The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey

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Your attention is being hijacked. Chris Bailey can help. Sep 04, 2018

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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 something we consciously spend out. As if it’s something we control. But do we? Not these days. There’s a war on for our attention, and we’re often losing it. Chris Bailey’s Hyperfocus looks, from the outside, like a book about productivity. But it’s really one of the best books I’ve read about attention: what it is, how much it can hold, how we lose track of it, and how to get it back. This is a conversation about paying attention to your attention, making sure you’re controlling it rather than accidentally letting it — and all the multibillion-dollar companies working to hijack it — control you. This is one of those conversations that, if you can apply it, will actually make your life a bit better, a bit more your own. Recommended books: Getting Things Done by David Allen Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana How Not to Die by Michael Greger

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Anand Giridharadas on the elite charade of changing the world Aug 30, 2018

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“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 the good is an accomplice to even greater, if more invisible, harm.” Giridharadas has done his time in elite circles. His education took him through Oxford and Harvard, he spent years as a New York Times columnist, he's a regular on Morning Joe, he’s a TED talker. And so when he mounted the stage at the Aspen Institute and told his fellow fellows that their pretensions of doing good were just that — pretensions — and that they were more the problem than the solution, it caused some controversy. Giridharadas’s new book will make a lot of people angry. It’s about the difference between generosity and justice, the problems with only looking for win-win solutions, the ways the corporate world has come to dominate the discourse of change, and the fact that elite networks change the people who are part of them. But for all the power of Giridharadas’s critique of elite do-goodery, does he have better answers to the problems they’re trying to solve? And what of the very real problems that have left so many disillusioned with government, or the very real accomplishments that exist in the systems we’ve built? If we are pursuing change wrong, then what needs to be changed to pursue it better? Recommended books: There Will Be No Miracles Here by Casey Gerald (forthcoming) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment by Francis Fukuyama

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I build a world with fantasy master N.K. Jemisin Aug 27, 2018

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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 — just won the Hugo Award for best novel for the third year in a row. No one had ever done that before. Jemisin is also the first author to have every book in a single series win the Hugo for best novel, and the first black author to win a Hugo for best novel. She’s a badass. What makes Jemisin’s work so remarkable is the power and detail of the worlds she builds for her characters, and her readers, to inhabit. In this podcast, she shows us how she does it: Jemisin teaches a world-building seminar for sci-fi and fantasy authors, and here, she leads me through that exercise live. It’s a master class not only in building a new world but in understanding our own. You don’t want to miss this. Recommended books: The Murderbot Diaries series from Martha Wells Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler

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Reup: Zephyr Teachout vs. Corruption Aug 24, 2018

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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 glowing New York Times endorsement this week, arguably the frontrunner in the race to replace Eric Schneiderman as New York’s attorney general. The Democratic primary, which will likely decide the race, is on September 13. The NY AG position is unusually important right now. President Trump’s businesses are in New York, his family works in New York, his associates worked in New York. When special counsel Robert Mueller referred Michael Cohen for prosecution, it was to New York prosecutors. And for all the talk of Trump’s pardon power, he can pardon against federal prosecution, not state prosecution. All that means that the New York attorney general is uniquely situated to investigate, and prosecute, the corruption swirling around Trumpworld. I had Teachout on this podcast in June 2017. We talked about how political corruption was defined by the Founding Fathers, and why, during the Constitutional Convention, they discussed the threat posed by corruption more than they discussed the threat posed by foreign invasion. And we talked about the way today’s Supreme Court — in the Citizens United and related decisions — has narrowed the definition to be almost meaningless. We also discussed an emoluments lawsuit Teachout was involved in against Trump, as well as the power of corporate monopolies in American life. It was a great conversation then, and it’s all the more relevant now. Enjoy!

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Is our economy totally screwed? Andrew Yang and I debate. Aug 20, 2018

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"The future without jobs will come to resemble either the cultivated benevolence of Star Trek or the desperate scramble for resources of Mad Max,” writes Andrew Yang. Well then. Yang is the founder of Venture for America, the author of The War on Normal People, and an outsider candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2020. His campaign is based on a grim view of the economy he sees coming: AI, automation, and globalization leading to mass joblessness. The only things that can save us, he says, are a universal basic income (UBI), a redefinition of what work is and how it’s compensated, and a redefinition of how we measure economic and social progress. I’ll be honest. I’m skeptical of the robots-will-take-all-the-jobs thesis that’s took Silicon Valley, and much of the punditariat, by storm. Yang and I debate those doubts, as well as the different arguments for a UBI (and the various ways to finance it). You want big ideas? Here they are. Recommended Books: Give People Money by Annie Lowrey (I promise I did not push Andrew to recommend this!) AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee Squeezed by Alissa Quart

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Chef Marcus Samuelsson on immigration, creativity, and Anthony Bourdain Aug 13, 2018

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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 Top Chef: Masters, ;nd the host of No Passport Required, a new food and travel show from Eater and PBS. Samuelsson’s story is remarkable. He was born in Ethiopia to a mother who carried him and his sister 75 miles on foot to a hospital when all three of them were suffering from tuberculosis. Samuelsson’s mother died, but he and his sister survived and were adopted by a Swedish family, which is where he grew up. He’s lived and cooked all over the world — Japan, France, Austria, Switzerland — and has a pile of Michelin stars as a testament to his ability to see how the culinary traditions of one place can be informed by another, or introduced to another. This is a conversation about creativity and how diversity powers it. It’s a conversation about what immigration adds to communities, rather than just the role it plays in politics. And it’s a conversation — an emotional one — about what Samuelsson learned from his friend Anthony Bourdain, whose show No Reservations set the template in this space, and whose loss continues to be

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Why online politics gets so extreme so fast Aug 06, 2018

Show notes

During the 2016 campaign, Zeynep Tufekci was watching videos of Donald Trump rallies on YouTube. But then, she writes, she "noticed something peculiar. YouTube started to recommend and ‘autoplay' videos for me that featured white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content.” And it wasn’t just Trump videos. Watching Hillary Clinton rallies got her "arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11.” Nor was it just politics. "Videos about vegetarianism led to videos about veganism. Videos about jogging led to videos about running ultramarathons." Tufekci is a New York Times columnist and a professor at the University of North Carolina. She’s also one of the clearest thinkers around on how digital platforms work, how their algorithms understand and shape our preferences, and what the consequences are for society. So as we learn that Facebook is detecting new efforts at electoral manipulation and as we watch online politics become ever more bitter and divisive, I wanted to talk with Tufekci about how digital platforms have become engines of radicalization, and what we can do about it. Recommended books: The Control Revolution by James Beniger Ruling the Waves by Debora Spar Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong

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Taking Trump’s corruption seriously Aug 02, 2018

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The question of whether President Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election has consumed Washington since the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller special counsel in March 2017. But there's another question worth considering: the financial corruption swirling around Trump’s businesses, and now his administration. In any other White House, this would be the ongoing, constant story — the site of endless investigations and inquiries. And it still might be. We know Mueller is looking into the web of financial ties between Trump’s businesses and the post-Soviet bloc, and we know that part of the Mueller investigation gets Trump particularly outraged. Plus, we still don’t know what’s on Trump’s tax returns, or what could be discovered if Democrats take back a chamber of Congress and get subpoena power. Here’s my bet: If there is some scandal lurking that’s going to derail the Trump administration, I think it’s going to be found by following the money, not by following the Russian bots. Adam Davidson has been investigating this since Trump's election. If you're an avid podcast listener, you probably know Adam from his days at Planet Money. He's now at the New Yorker, doing some of the best investigative work on the Trump Organization. You’ll want to hear what he’s found.

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