The Gray Area with Sean Illing

  • E.O. Wilson’s plan to save the world

    Vox’s Benji Jones talks with the celebrated entomologist, biologist, and naturalist E.O. Wilson. They talk about Wilson’s sixty-plus years as a leading thinker in his field, how his expeditions studying ant species around the world…


  • Workers of the world, stay home!

    Sean Illing talks with Anne Helen Petersen and her partner Charlie Warzel about their new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. They talk about a new model…


  • How progressives get back in the game

    Sean Illing talks with Briahna Joy Gray, the former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 Presidential campaign, and current host of the Bad Faith podcast. They discuss the practical challenges facing the Left…


  • The highs and lows of the “creator economy”

    Vox’s Rebecca Jennings talks with Taylor Lorenz, tech culture reporter for the New York Times, about the creator economy: what it is, who’s in it, and why more people are paying attention to it. They…


  • Why Chris Hayes thinks we’re all famous now

    Sean Illing talks with Chris Hayes, author, commentator, and host of All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC. They discuss his recent essay in the New Yorker about fame and the internet, why we seek…


  • The stories soul food tells

    Vox’s Jamil Smith talks with Caroline Randall Williams, academic, poet, and co-author (with her mother, Alice Randall) of Soul Food Love. They discuss the ways in which the African American culinary tradition is interpreted, how…


  • The paradox of American freedom

    Sean Illing talks with Sebastian Junger, journalist, filmmaker, and author of the recent book Freedom. Informed by his experience hiking (and trespassing) along America’s rail lines, Junger discusses the paradoxes of a “free” society, his…


  • Nonbinary parenthood

    Anna North talks with Krys Malcolm Belc, nonbinary transmasculine parent, essayist, and author of the memoir The Natural Mother of the Child. They talk about what it means to be a parent, our gendered assumptions…


  • John McWhorter, the anti-antiracist

    Sean Illing talks with John McWhorter, linguist, New York Times columnist, and author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. They talk about the effects of modern antiracism, why McWhorter compares…


  • The overwhelming, invisible work of elder care

    Vox culture contributor Anne Helen Petersen talks with Liz O’Donnell, an advocate for working caregivers and the author of Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living. They talk…