The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Latest Episodes:

Sarah Kliff and Ezra Interview Obama About Obamacare Jan 06, 2017

Show notes

Two weeks before he leaves office, President Obama sits down for a lengthy conversation about the lessons of the Affordable Care Act and the law's uncertain future.

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You Ask, Ezra Answers Jan 03, 2017

Show notes

At long last, here’s the Ask Ezra Anything episode. You sent in great questions, and I answered as many as I could. To keep me honest — and to make sure I didn’t just talk to myself for two hours — I invited friend-of-the-show Grant Gordon back to the program to help out. We covered a lot of ground. Topics included:- Immortality - The best concerts I’ve been to- Why I think culture is the biggest impediment to a universal basic income- Three lessons this podcast has taught me- Three lessons the 2016 election taught me- Three lessons running Vox has taught me- Why my interview questions are so annoyingly long and rambling- How explanatory reporting differs from other kinds of reporting- The best advice I’ve been given about interviewing- My favorite books- Why the idea that this reality is a computer simulation reflects a failure of imaginationAnd much, much more. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and apologies for all the ones we didn’t get to. This was a lot of fun. We’ll definitely do it again soon.

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Evelyn Farkas explains the crisis in Syria and the threat of Russia Dec 27, 2016

Show notes

From 2012 to 2015, Evelyn Farkas served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, where she was responsible for policy toward Russia, the Black Sea, the Balkans, and Caucasus regions and conventional arms control.Farkas is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and I asked her on the show to explain two of the issues that worry me most right now: the horror that has befallen Syria, and the risky belligerence that has overtaken Russia. If this sounds like a tough episode to you, give it a chance. This conversation doesn’t presuppose deep — or really any — knowledge of either conflict. Farkas is clear, thoughtful, and insightful, and at a moment when Syria is destabilizing Europe and Russia is destabilizing the United States, it’s more than worth taking the time to dig into both.Along the way, we talk about Farkas’s time in Bosnia, her frustrations with President Obama’s hands-off approach to the Syria conflict, why she’s sick of “slippery slope” arguments in foreign policy, the ways in which the lessons of Yugoslavia and Bosnia collided with the lessons Iraq and Afghanistan, and what to make of Russia’s hack of the US election.Also, a number of you have asked me to start putting book recommendations in the show notes, so here they are:-David Rhode’s "Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II” -Peter Pomerantsev’s "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” In the days since our interview, I picked up “ Nothing is True,” and Farkas is right: it’s amazing.

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Tim Wu's interesting, unusual, fascinating life Dec 20, 2016

Show notes

Columbia law professor Tim Wu makes me feel boring and underaccomplished. He’s been a Supreme Court clerk, a Silicon Valley startup employee, a bestselling author, and a star academic. He coined the term "network neutrality," wrote the superb book The Master Switch, and was dubbed "Genius Wu" by Richard Posner — a man many consider to be our smartest living judge. And this is to say nothing of Wu's award-winning side-gig as a — yes — travel writer.Anyway, screw that guy. Wu's new book is The Attention Merchants, and it's a history of how the advertising business has shaped the information we consume, the products we crave, and the way we think. We talk about that book, but we also talk about Wu's approach to life. He explains why his great strength is his ability to ignore inconsistency, how Larry Lessig shaped his career and his marriage, why working in Silicon Valley left him skeptical of markets, and Marshall McLuhan and Timothy Leary’s advertising jingle for acid (really).We also go deep into antitrust law, the inner workings of the Supreme Court, whether Google and Facebook are monopolies, and what a world without advertising in media might look like. So this conversation covers a lot of ground. Enjoy!

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Ta-Nehisi Coates: "There’s not gonna be a happy ending to this story" Dec 14, 2016

Show notes

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author at the Atlantic. His book, Between the World and Me, won the National Book Award, and was spoofed on SNL. He's writing the (awesome) Black Panther series for Marvel. He's a certified MacArthur Genius. And he just released a blockbuster story based on hours of interviews with President Obama about the role race played in Obama's upbringing, his presidency, and the 2016 campaign.Coates is also one of my favorite people to talk to, and I think this conversation shows why.The first half of our conversation is political: it's about Coates's conversations with Obama, his impressions of the president, his perspective on American politics, the way his atheism informs his worldview, why he thinks a tragic outlook is important for finding the truth but — at least for nonwhite politicians — a hindrance for winning political power. The second half is much more personal: it's about his frustrations as a writer, his discomfort with the way "Between the World and Me" was adopted by white audiences, how he learns, his surprising advice for young writers, his belief that personal stability enables professional wildness, his past as a blogger, his desire to return to school, his favorite books. I loved this interview. I think you will, too.

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Stripe CEO Patrick Collison on management, rationalism, and the enlightenment Dec 06, 2016

Show notes

Patrick Collison is the 28-year-old CEO of Stripe, the online payments company that was just valued at $9 billion.Haven't heard of Stripe? You've probably used it. Last year, 40 percent of people who bought something online used Stripe's payment systems. The company has become an integral part of the internet's financial plumbing. And Collison has become one of Silicon Valley's leading lights — he made the cover of Forbes last year, where one venture capitalist described him as "the LeBron James of entrepreneurs."Collison is also one of the few people I've met who is a genuine polymath. He seems to know everything about everything, and his recall — particularly his ability to live-footnote his own comments — is something to behold. We talk about how he and his brother conceived of, and launched, Stripe, and then we go much deeper. Among the topics we discussed: -Why there was a market opportunity for Stripe in a world that had PayPal-Why people are often wrong when they look at a market and think an incumbent has dominated it-What he thinks is untrue about the stereotypes of how Silicon Valley handles regulation-How we might be able to tell whether a buildup of regulations are preventing new companies from emerging-Why jobs like home healthcare and childcare are becoming tension points in our national immigration discussion-The difference in the way politicians and tech leaders approach problem-solving-How he tries to shape culture within his company to help it become, in his words, more like itself-What he admires about CEOs like Jeff Bezos and Jim Simons-The culture of "rationalist” bloggers, and why he reads them-How we underestimate the importance of the Enlightenment periodEnjoy!

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Award-winning chef José Andrés on cooking, creativity, and learning from the best Nov 29, 2016

Show notes

José Andrés isn't just a chef. He's a force. All that talk of how DC is now a hot dining scene? Andrés deserves more than a bit of the credit. He's popularized Spanish tapas through Jaleo, brought El Bulli-style molecular gastronomy to America through MiniBar, and racked up some Michelin stars and James Beard awards along the way.Andrés has hosted television shows, taught courses on the science of cooking at Harvard, extended his restaurant empire to Las Vegas and South Beach, set up a nonprofit in Haiti, and launched a fast-casual chain focused on vegetables. He's been named "Man of the Year" by GQ and one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time. I've known Andrés for a couple of years, and I've never met a better storyteller, or seen anyone who thinks harder about the component parts of creativity. We talk about that, as well as:-What Andrés learned from his father-Why the most important job when making paella is tending the fire-Why cooking at home is important but not essential-What he makes of Americans eating out of the house more than ever before-Why we need to be pragmatic about sourcing food-How he applies what he learned in the Spanish navy to his restaurants-What he learned from Ferran Adrià, the founder of molecular gastronomy-How he takes ideas from other disciplines and applies them in his kitchens-How important hiring is to him and why immigration policy is so crucial to the American restaurant business-Why his fast-casual restaurants called Beefsteak are nearly meatless-How he's managed to run an empire while remaining focused on the creative side-What he thinks we might lose by eating synthetic food or soylent-The one dish he thinks people should learn to cookDo you eat? Do you think? Then listen to this.

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Heather McGhee returns to talk Trump, race, and empathy Nov 22, 2016

Show notes

There are few episodes of this show that people loved as much as my conversation with Heather McGhee, president of the think tank Demos. Our first discussion focused on race, class, populism, and the sometimes toxic ways the three interact. It's a topic I wanted to revisit in the aftermath of Trump's election, and so I asked Heather back to the show. After this conversation, I'm very, very glad I did. Among other things, we discussed:-The three factors that explain the election results-Why race is a more complex force in politics than either liberals or conservatives assume-The dangers of Democrats convincing themselves that populism and racial justice are either/or-Her experience talking with a white man who realized he was prejudiced, and asked her help in changing-Why Clinton lost states Obama won-Why Clinton didn't outperform Obama among nonwhite voters-Why the core of modern racism is seeing some races as made of individuals and others as collectives-Whether the very language around race and racism makes empathy more difficult-How Democrats should think about cooperating — and not cooperating — with TrumpAnd, as always, much more. Heather is brilliant on these topics, and this is worth listening to.Also, a lot of you have asked for an episode where I answer your questions, and we're going to make it happen. So send your questions for me to ezrakleinshow@vox.com.

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Ron Brownstein: Clinton didn’t lose because of the white working class Nov 15, 2016

Show notes

Why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? Why did Donald Trump win it? And why was the polling so completely wrong?No one digs deeper into the demographics, polls, and trends of modern American politics than the Atlantic's Ron Brownstein. Though he didn't predict Trump's win, his pre-election writing explained exactly how it could — and eventually did — happen. And it's a more complicated story than you've heard.In the week since the election, much has been made of Trump's strength among white working class voters — and properly so, as they were core to his victory. But the white working class wasn't the primary cause of Clinton's loss. Her real problem were groups that didn't turn out for her in the numbers her campaign expected — college-educated whites, African-Americans, and millennials. And that suggests a very different future for the Democrats. In this conversation, Brownstein goes through the math of the election in detail. We also talk about:-What Clinton’s campaign assumed, wrongly, about winning the middle of the country.-The two quotes that Brownstein thinks explain the entire election-How much James Comey influenced the election’s outcome-Why Trump was able to win the support of voters who thought him unqualified-What might have happened if Democrats had chosen Bernie Sanders as their nominee.-Whether the next Democratic nominee should be focused on winning back working-class whites or energizing the Obama coalition-The worrying signs the Republican Party will see if it compares Trump's win to Reagan's wins-Why Brownstein sees Trump as a political independent candidate who happened to run under the Republican banner (and why Ezra disagrees)-What will be hard and easy for a Trump administration to do while working with a Republican Congress.And much more. There's a lot of confusion about this election. Brownstein is here to clear it up.

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David Frum on the 2016 election, and the long decline of the GOP Nov 06, 2016

Show notes

We’re bringing the Ezra Klein Show to you a little early this week because, well, there's an election coming in a few days. And we wanted to talk about it. The 2016 election is the product of profound failures on the part of different institutions in American life: the Republican Party, the media, the financial system. And few have tracked those failures as clearly, or closely, as David Frum.Frum is Canadian by birth — a perspective, he says, that helps him see American politics as the product of institutions, rather than just personalities. Since moving to the US in the 80s and finding himself inspired by Ronald Reagan, he's chronicled and commentated on conservatism in America. His book, Dead Right, is one of the key documents for understanding the Republican Party of the 1990s. He then did a stint as speechwriter in George W. Bush's White House, where he wrote the famous "Axis of Evil" line in Bush's 2002 State of the Union. More recently, he's written for the Atlantic, where he's been unsparing — and largely proven right — in his assessment of the Republican Party's institutional collapse.This conversation is an exploration of what has happened to the Republican Party — what it was, what it's become, and why. We talk about:-Why journalists need to account for governing institutions before turning to cultural explanations-How he thinks diversity and inequality are linked-How Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump differ-What he learned about inequality while working for the Wall Street Journal editorial page-The best-titled speech Newt Gingrich probably ever gave-His critique of the 1994 Republican Revolution and Newt Gingrich’s consolidation of the Speaker’s power-How Fox News and conservative talk radio echo chamber have harmed the Republican Party-The apocalyptic attitude conservatives rely on while campaigning -Why Trump was so successful running against the Bush family legacy-The role white nationalism plays in Trump's rise (This is an argument I found particularly valuable)-How Canada avoided the nationalist backlash that plagues the US-His best and worst-case scenarios for a Hillary Clinton presidencyEnjoy! And then go vote.

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