The Gray Area with Sean Illing

  • The Joe Biden experience

    Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. And — counting the votes of people, not just land — it won’t be close. If current trends hold, Biden will see a larger…


  • Chris Hayes and I process this wild election

    This is not the post-election breakdown I expected to have today, but it’s definitely the one that I needed. Chris Hayes is the host of the MSNBC primetime show, “All In,” and the podcast “Why…


  • Stacey Abrams on minority rule, voting rights, and the future of democracy

    We’re one day away from the election, though who-knows-how-many days from finding out who won it. But there’s more at stake than whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be our next president.  There is…


  • Nate Silver on why 2020 isn’t 2016

    As you may have heard, there’s a pretty important election coming up. That means it’s time to bring back the one and only Nate Silver.  Silver, the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, boasts one of…


  • Sarah Kliff grades Biden and Trump’s health care plans

    There are few issues on which the stakes in this election are quite as stark as on health care. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden plans to pass (and Democrats largely support) a massive health care…


  • Trumpism never existed. It was always just Trump.

    In 2016, Julius Krein was one of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. In Trump’s critiques of the existing Republican and Democratic establishments, Krein saw the contours of a heterodox ideology he believed could reshape American…


  • What should Democrats do about the Supreme Court?

    If Democrats win back power this November, they will be faced with a choice: Leave the existing Supreme Court intact, and watch their legislative agenda — and perhaps democracy itself — be gradually gutted by…


  • Marilynne Robinson on writing, metaphysics, and the Donald Trump dilemma

    Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest American novelists alive today. She’s the author of the Pulitzer-prize winning Gilead — one of my favorite books, ever — as well as Housekeeping, Home, Lila, and her…


  • The case for Trump’s foreign policy

    As we approach the 2020 election, I want to make sure the conversation on this show reflects the actual choice the country is facing. So we are going to be doing a few episodes, including…


  • Fareed Zakaria on how Biden and Trump see the world

    Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, a columnist for the Washington Post, and one of the most astute foreign policy thinkers of our time. So much of this conversation is focused…