The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Updated: 05 May 2025 • 710 episodes
www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast

The Gray Area with Sean Illing takes a philosophy-minded look at culture, technology, politics, and the world of ideas. Each week, we invite a guest to explore a question or topic that matters. From the the state of democracy, to the struggle with depression and anxiety, to the nature of identity in the digital age, each episode looks for nuance and honesty in the most important conversations of our time. New episodes drop every Monday.

Show episodes

05 May 2025 • EN

The science of ideology

What do you do when you’re faced with evidence that challenges your ideology? Do you engage with that new information? Are you willing to change your mind about your most deeply held beliefs? Are you pre-disposed to be more rigid or more flexible in your thinking? That’s what political psychologist and neuroscientist L

55 min
00:00
55:41
No file found
28 Apr 2025 • EN

Politics after Covid

There are lots of stories to tell about the Covid pandemic. Most of them, on some level, are about politics, about decisions that affected people’s lives in different — and very unequal — ways. Covid hasn’t disappeared, but the crisis has subsided. So do we have enough distance from it to reflect on what we got right,

51 min
00:00
51:14
No file found

Philosophy often feels like a disconnected discipline, obsessed with tedious and abstract problems. But MIT professor Kieran Setiya believes philosophical inquiry has a practical purpose outside the classroom — to help guide us through life’s most challenging circumstances. He joins Sean to talk about self-help, FOMO,

54 min
00:00
54:49
No file found

What exactly is the basis for democracy? Arguably Iiberalism, the belief that the government serves the people, is the stone on which modern democracy was founded. That notion is so ingrained in the US that we often forget that America could be governed any other way. But political philosopher John Gray believes that l

57 min
00:00
57:40
No file found
11 Apr 2025 • EN

A new way to listen

We have an exciting announcement! Vox Members now get access to ad-free podcasts. If you sign up, you’ll get unlimited access to reporting on vox.com, exclusive newsletters, and all of our podcasts — including The Gray Area — ad-free. Plus, you’ll play a crucial role in helping our show get made. Check it out at vox.c

1 min
00:00
01:09
No file found
07 Apr 2025 • EN

The beliefs AI is built on

There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to artificial intelligence. Technologists love to talk about all the good these tools can do in the world, all the problems they might solve. Yet, many of those same technologists are also warning us about all the ways AI might upend society, how it might even destroy humanity

50 min
00:00
50:22
No file found