The Gray Area with Sean Illing

  • 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…

  • How a climate bill becomes a reality

    Helluva week in politics, huh? And yet, in the background, the world is still warming, the fires still burning, the future still dimming. There will be plenty of episodes to come on the election. But…

  • The meat we eat affects us all

    In this special episode of the Future Perfect podcast, neuroscientist Lori Marino helps us understand how arbitrarily we draw the lines between animals as pets and animals as food, and how we might redraw those…

  • A dark, dangerous debate

    In a special, post-debate episode, I’m joined by Matt Yglesias to discuss the most unnerving presidential debate I’ve ever seen. Hosts: Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias), Senior correspondent, Vox Ezra Klein (@ezraklein), Editor-at-large, Vox Credits: Producer/Editor –…

  • A radical — or obvious? — plan to save American democracy

    We talk a lot on this show about the problems with American political institutions. But what if all those problems are actually just one problem: the two-party system. Lee Drutman is a political scientist, senior…

  • RBG, minority rule, and our looming legitimacy crisis

    The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just weeks before a presidential election, leaves us in dangerous waters. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which the election outcome is contested by one side and is…

  • David French and I debate polarization, secession, and the filibuster

    David French is a senior editor at the Dispatch, a columnist at Time, and one of the conservative commentators I read most closely. French and I have rather different politics — he’s a Christian conservative…

  • The Matt Yglesias Show

    Matt Yglesias is a co-founder and senior correspondent at Vox, my co-host on The Weeds podcast, and my oldest friend in journalism. Matt’s college blog was an inspiration for my own, and since then we’ve…

  • Race, policing, and the universal yearning for safety

    Our conversation over race and policing — like our conversations over virtually everything in America — is shot through with a crude individualism. Talking in terms of systems and contexts comes less naturally to us,…

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