Climate change has become synonymous with doomsday, as though everyone is waiting for the worst to happen. But what is this mindset doing to us? Is climate ...

Humans are good learners and teachers, constantly gathering information, archiving, and sharing knowledge. So why, after building the most sophisticated ...

There’s a certain glamor to cynicism. As a culture, we’ve turned cynicism into a symbol of hard-earned wisdom, assuming that those who are cynical are the only ...

Sean Illing speaks with poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, whose book The Wonder Paradox asks: If we don’t have God or religion, what — if ...

How is the origin of our universe like an improvised saxophone solo? This week, Sean Illing talks to Stephon Alexander, a theoretical physicist and world-class ...

Sean Illing talks with Glory Liu, the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism. Smith is most ...

Sean Illing speaks with marriage and family therapist Vienna Pharaon, whose book ‘The Origins of You’ aims to help us identify and heal the wounds ...

In an Orwellian twist, the word “Orwellian” has been misused so much over the decades that it’s essentially lost its meaning. But George Orwell, author of the ...

The US Constitution is a brilliant political document, but it’s far from perfect. This week’s guest, Erwin Chemerinsky, argues that many of today’s threats to ...

You can’t drop an f-bomb on the radio, but fortunately for our guest, you can say anything you want in a podcast. This week, host Sean Illing talks to ...

Sean Illing talks with political science professor Matt McManus about the political thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher with a ...

Authoritarian tendencies have been on the rise globally and the liberal world order is on the decline. One hotspot of this tension lies in India, where Prime ...

We’re living in an era of extreme partisan politics, rising resentment, and fractured news media. Writer John Ganz believes that we can trace the dysfunction ...

Nathalie Etoke joins The Gray Area to talk about existentialism, the Black experience, and the legacy of dehumanization. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, ...

A mile of pure fire. A flash that melts everything — titanium, steel, lead, people. A blast that mows down every structure in its path, 3 miles out in every ...

Albert Camus was a Nobel-winning French writer and public intellectual. During Algeria’s bloody war for independence in the 1950s, Camus took a measured ...

Old people have always worried about young people. But psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes something genuinely different and troubling is happening right now. ...

Sebastian Junger came as close as you possibly can to dying. While his doctors struggled to revive him, the veteran reporter and avowed rationalist experienced ...

Ozempic and other new weight loss drugs are being touted as potential miracle cures for diabetes and obesity. Journalist Johann Hari experimented with the drug ...

Religious studies professor Diana Pasulka was a total nonbeliever in alien life, but she began to question this after speaking with many people who claim to ...