The Gray Area with Sean Illing

  • Danielle Allen on the radicalism of the American revolution — and its lessons for today

    My first conversation with Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen in fall 2019 was one of my all-time favorites. I didn’t expect to have Allen on again so soon, but her work is unusually relevant to…

  • Land of the Giants: The Netflix Effect

    Land of the Giants is a podcast from our friends at Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network that examines the most powerful tech companies of our time.   The second season is called The Netflix…

  • Nicholas Carr on deep reading and digital thinking

    In 1964, the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan wrote his opus Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In it, he writes, “In the long run, a medium’s content matters less than the medium itself in influencing…

  • Your questions, answered

    Believe it or not, we’re already halfway through 2020. What a great year so far, huh? Just a delight. That means it’s time for an AMA. Among the questions you asked: If Joe Biden is…

  • Which country has the world’s best healthcare system?

    I got my start as a blogger. But more specifically, I got my start as a health policy blogger. My first piece of writing I remember people really caring about was a series called “The…

  • The transformative power of restorative justice

    The criminal justice system asks three questions: What law was broken? Who broke it? And what should the punishment be? Upon that edifice — and channeled through old bigotries and fears — we have built…

  • Ross Douthat and I debate American decadence

    In his new book, The Decadent Society, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat diagnoses America’s core problems as decadence: “a situation in which repetition is more the norm than innovation; in which sclerosis afflicts public…

  • A serious conversation about UFOs

    You may have been following — I hope you are following — the New York Times’s recent UFO reporting. Videos that the Navy confirms are real show pilots seeing and marveling over craft they can’t…

  • A former prosecutor’s case for prison abolition

    In 2017, Paul Butler published the book Chokehold: Policing Black Men. For Butler the chokehold is much more than a barbaric police tactic; it is also a powerful powerful metaphor for understanding how racial oppression…

  • Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful

    The first question I asked Ta-Nehisi Coates, in this episode, was broad: What does he see right now, as he looks out at the country? “I can’t believe I’m gonna say this,” he replied, “but…

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