The Gray Area with Sean Illing

  • A veteran reporter on how to fix the news

    Sean Illing talks with James Fallows, veteran reporter and editor at The Atlantic, about the state of political journalism in America. Fallows has been covering the relationship between media and democracy since the mid-nineties, when…


  • The end of social media

    Sean Illing talks with technology writer and philosopher Ian Bogost about the state of social media — especially in the wake of Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter. They discuss the recent but surprising history…


  • If society is making us sick, how can we heal?

    Sean Illing talks with Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician, speaker, and bestselling author who has written on subjects like addiction, stress, and attention deficit disorder. In Maté’s new book, The Myth of Normal, he argues…


  • The free-market century is over

    Sean Illing talks with economic historian Brad DeLong about his new book Slouching Towards Utopia. In it, DeLong claims that the “long twentieth century” was the most consequential period in human history, during which the…


  • Your identity is a story you tell yourself

    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…


  • James Carville unpacks the midterms

    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…


  • Why are billionaires prepping for the apocalypse?

    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…


  • Today’s Republicans were made in the 1990s

    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…


  • Yuval Noah Harari thinks humans are unstoppable

    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,”…


  • Dying with dignity

    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…