The Gray Area with Sean Illing
How much money is too much?
In today’s episode, political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns tells Sean that we need to cap the amount of wealth a person can accumulate. They talk about how extreme inequality affects democracy, the role of money in politics, and why limiting personal wealth benefits everyone, including the super rich.
Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Ingrid Robeyns, professor and author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth
This episode originally aired in January 2024
We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email tga@voxmail.com or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show.
You can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube.
Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The free-market century is over
Sean Illing talks with economic historian Brad DeLong about his new book Slouching Towards Utopia. In it, DeLong claims that the “long twentieth century” was the most consequential period in human history, during which the…
Music and mysticism
Musician Laraaji joins Sean to talk about improvisation as meditation, the transcendent nature of laughter, and lessons from a long life in sound and spirit. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: Laraaji.…
The case for banning…millionaires?
Political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns believes that there should be a maximum amount of money and resources that one person can have. She tells Sean how much is too much and why limiting personal wealth benefits…
The joy of uncertainty
For much of her life, author Maggie Jackson disliked uncertainty and thought of it as something to eradicate as quickly as possible. But when she began to explore the uncertain mind, she discovered new scientific findings showing…
A pro-worker work ethic
Americans have absorbed the “Protestant work ethic” — the idea that our value as human beings is determined by how hard we work and how much money we make. Elizabeth Anderson explains how this evolved,…
How psychedelics can reinvent learning
If you’ve felt that learning new information or developing a new skill seems harder as you get older, you are not wrong. Neuroscientist Gul Dolen has studied brain capability and joins us to talk about…
Seeing ourselves through the darkness
When we find ourselves in a dark place, what if we didn’t “lighten things up”? Sean Illing talks with philosopher Mariana Alessandri, whose new book Night Vision offers a new way of understanding our dark…
Living Mindfully
Jon Kabat-Zinn helped kick off the American mindfulness movement with his bestselling book Wherever You Go, There You Are. On its 30th anniversary, he joins Sean for a wide-ranging conversation about what it means to…
Taking anarchism seriously
Most people think anarchists want to live in a lawless society devoid of any structure or order. But anarchism is actually a serious political philosophy that’s more focused on egalitarianism than it is on chaos.…
3,000 years of The Iliad
Constance Grady, a culture writer at Vox, is joined by Emily Wilson to discuss her bestselling translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. They unpack the buzz surrounding them and the significance of The Iliad…