The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Into It is a new podcast from Vulture and New York Magazine hosted by Sam Sanders. Each week, Sam and his Vulture colleagues break down the pop culture they can’t stop thinking about and help us all obsess . . . better. In this segment, Sam talks to New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom … Read more

Vox’s Emily St. James talks with the celebrated author and trans activist Julia Serano about her new book, Sexed Up. They talk about what “sexualization” really means, and why sexualizing behaviors are so pervasive and widespread throughout society. They also discuss why we’re so prone to classify and categorize people, how patterns of what Julia … Read more

Sean Illing talks with Nate Hilger, economist, data scientist, and author of the new book The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis. The book explores what is expected of parents, and how a larger public investment in families and children beyond K-12 education could address inequality in America. Sean … Read more

What good are piecemeal reparations? From Georgetown University, where school leadership once sold enslaved people, to Evanston, Illinois, where redlining kept Black residents out of homeownership, institutions and local governments are attempting to take reparations into their own hands. But do these small-scale efforts detract from the broader call for reparations from the federal government? … Read more

Why slavery? Marxist scholar Adolph Reed argues that Jim Crow — not enslavement — is the defining experience for Black Americans today. Reed recounts his childhood in the segregation-era South in his book The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives. Fabiola speaks with Reed about his experience, his argument that reparations aren’t necessarily a healing … Read more

Paying the price. One of the typical questions asked during conversations about reparations is how to pay for them. Fabiola talks with economist William “Sandy” Darity and folklorist Kirsten Mullen about how reparations could be executed. The husband-and-wife team lays out a comprehensive framework in their book, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans … Read more

Fabiola Cineas talks with Nkechi Taifa, the founder and director of the Reparation Education Project, about the history of the fight for reparations in America. Though they came to the forefront during the 2020 election in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, activists have been fighting for repayment for slavery since the practice was abolished. … Read more

Sean Illing talks with Corey Robin, author of a recent article — as well as a 2019 book — about the life and thought of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Robin discusses how Thomas, whose concurring opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade garnered recent attention, developed the ideological basis of his extremist … Read more

Sean Illing talks with Skye Cleary, philosopher and author of the new book How to Be Authentic. The book is an examination of how to live an authentic life through the lens of the life and thought of the great French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986). Sean and Skye discuss what authenticity really means — … Read more