The Gray Area with Sean Illing

  • Breaking our family patterns

    Sean Illing speaks with marriage and family therapist Vienna Pharaon, whose book ‘The Origins of You’ aims to help us identify and heal the wounds that originated from our family, which shape our patterns of…


  • Why Orwell matters

    In an Orwellian twist, the word “Orwellian” has been misused so much over the decades that it’s essentially lost its meaning. But George Orwell, author of the classics Animal Farm and 1984, was very clear in his beliefs.…


  • The timebomb the founding fathers left us

    The US Constitution is a brilliant political document, but it’s far from perfect. This week’s guest, Erwin Chemerinsky, argues that many of today’s threats to democracy are a direct result of compromises made by the…


  • Swear like a philosopher

    You can’t drop an f-bomb on the radio, but fortunately for our guest, you can say anything you want in a podcast. This week, host Sean Illing talks to philosopher Rebecca Roache, author of For F*ck’s Sake:…


  • Taking Nietzsche seriously

    Sean Illing talks with political science professor Matt McManus about the political thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher with a complicated legacy, despite his crossover into popular culture. They discuss how Nietzsche’s work…


  • What India teaches us about liberalism — and its decline

    Authoritarian tendencies have been on the rise globally and the liberal world order is on the decline. One hotspot of this tension lies in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi employs autocratic language and tactics…


  • 1992: The year politics broke

    We’re living in an era of extreme partisan politics, rising resentment, and fractured news media. Writer John Ganz believes that we can trace the dysfunction to the 1990s, when right-wing populists like Pat Buchanan and…


  • The existential struggle of being Black

    Nathalie Etoke joins The Gray Area to talk about existentialism, the Black experience, and the legacy of dehumanization.  Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: Nathalie Etoke. Her book is Black Existential Freedom.…


  • The world after nuclear war

    A mile of pure fire. A flash that melts everything — titanium, steel, lead, people. A blast that mows down every structure in its path, 3 miles out in every direction. Journalist Annie Jacobsen spent…


  • Gaza, Camus, and the logic of violence

    Albert Camus was a Nobel-winning French writer and public intellectual. During Algeria’s bloody war for independence in the 1950s, Camus took a measured stance, calling for an end to the atrocities on each side. He…