The Gray Area with Sean Illing

A lot of Gen Z men sound surprisingly excited about fatherhood. A lot of Gen Z women…do not.  And that divide — and the national handwringing about it — says a lot about the changing status of men and women in this country, and the uncomfortable realization that for American policymakers, not all children are created equal.  Today’s guest is Vox reporter and bestselling novelist Anna North, who covers kids, parenting, and American family life. She writes the Vox newsletter Kids Today, and her latest chart-topping novel is Bog Queen. She recently reported on the gap between young men and young women on parenthood and what that might tell us about gender roles, relationships, and the future of family formation in a politically polarized country. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Anna North  We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday. 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

Mindfulness is everywhere now, which is kind of weird. What started as a countercultural practice has become a productivity hack and a billion-dollar app ecosystem. On one level, it’s great that more people are meditating. But somewhere along the way, the whole thing got flattened. When mindfulness is mainly about optimizing your output, we’ve probably missed the point. Today’s guest is Jon Kabat-Zinn, pioneer of the American mindfulness movement and author of the mega-bestseller Wherever You Go, There You Are. Jon’s work helped bring meditation into medicine, schools, sports, and everyday life. He’s also spent decades reminding people that mindfulness isn’t about escape, self-improvement, or becoming some perfectly serene version of yourself. Sean and Jon talk about what mindfulness actually is, why being present is so damn hard, and what happens when industry turns meditation into another tool for self-optimization. This episode originally aired in December of 2023. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday. If you enjoy our reporting and want to hear more from Vox journalists, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/vox. Each month, our members get access to exclusive videos, livestreams, and chats with our newsroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean talks to Atlantic writer Tyler Austin Harper about the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and why liberals are missing the point about American gun culture and the right to bear arms.  Beyond that, Tyler asks an important question: If you really believe we’re sliding toward authoritarianism, how can you argue that the public should disarm?  Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Tyler Austin Harper (@Tyler_A_Harper) We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday. If you enjoy our reporting and want to hear more from Vox journalists, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/vox. Each month, our members get access to exclusive videos, livestreams, and chats with our newsroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Gray Area with Sean Illing is now twice a week! Look for new episodes every Monday and Friday, here in your ears and at Youtube.com/vox for your eyes.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Games are fun. Aren’t they? When we play games — board games, video games, any kind of game — something magical happens. Games allow us to explore, to create little worlds where we can be different versions of ourselves. But when we turn life into a game — where we have to get the best grade, or the most money, or the most “likes” — then games stop being fun. Why is that? This week Sean speaks with philosopher C. Thi Nguyen about what a game really is, the difference between playing for enjoyment and playing to win, and why games lose their magic when the stakes become real. Thi argues that the things we value in life are increasingly captured by grades and likes and downloads and step counts and a thousand other metrics that quietly rewrite what we want and what we think makes us happy. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: C. Thi Nguyen, author of The Score We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why do we love football so much? Why does this sport dominate American culture in a way nothing else can? Why does it feel essential even to people who barely like sports? And what does it say about us that we keep watching, even as the risks and contradictions become harder to ignore? Today’s guest is Chuck Klosterman, cultural critic and bestselling author, whose new book Football tries to explain the game at the height of its power. Sean and Chuck talk about how football became the defining spectacle of modern America, why it’s easily the best television show we’ve ever seen, and why it presents a ton of moral dilemmas we can’t really solve.  Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Chuck Klosterman, author of Football We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show.And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why is it so hard for America to build things? Bridges take years to construct. Housing costs are soaring. Transit systems are crumbling. And we’re struggling to update our infrastructure to prepare for the climate crisis. Even when there’s broad agreement that something needs to be done, collective action feels impossible. Why is that? Today’s guest is Marc Dunkelman, author of Why Nothing Works, a book about the modern American experience of watching government fail. He argues that by giving too many people the power to say “no,” we’ve stymied our collective progress. Marc and Sean discuss an inherent tension in American politics: the need for effective, centralized power and a deep fear of its abuse. They trace how that tension has played out across American history, from the clashes between Jefferson and Hamilton, through the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority, to the backlash against figures like Robert Moses. Marc argues that our current system — born out of a reaction to too much top-down authority during the late 20th century — has produced paralysis, dysfunction, and a deep distrust of government. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Guest: Marc Dunkelman (@MarcDunkelman), author of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back. We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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 This episode was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s not always the most wonderful time of the year. Every December, we’re told to be merry and stay positive. But a lot of us don’t feel that way. And when we don’t, the pressure to be happy makes everything worse. Sadness feels like failure. Grief feels like a personal mistake. Depression becomes something to hide. But what if dark moods aren’t problems to fix? What if they’re part of being human? Today’s guest is philosopher Mariana Alessandri, author of Night Vision, a book about how to honor the emotions we usually try to outrun. It’s not a celebration of sadness, but Alessandri calls bullshit on the culture of toxic positivity and the idea that happiness is something we’re supposed to choose on command. Sean and Mariana talk about why Americans are addicted to the light, why “cheering people up” often backfires, how Stoicism shaped our emotional habits, and what it looks like to sit with grief instead of shaming ourselves for feeling it. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Mariana Alessandri (@mariana.alessandri), associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley and author of Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods. We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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. This holiday season, your membership goes further: when you join Vox as an annual Member, we’ll gift a free membership to a reader who can’t afford it. By joining today, you’ll get 30% off for an annual membership, and we’ll match your membership. And if you can’t afford it, visit that same link to apply for a free membership through our gift program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You have to forgive people who wrong you…right? The world is filled with injustice and wrongdoing, and to live in the world — to not be consumed by anger — forgiveness is necessary. At least that’s what we’re told over and over again: By forgiving, we can set ourselves free.But is there a cost to forgiveness? Are we forgiving too quickly and too often? Today’s guest is philosopher Myisha Cherry, whose book Failures of Forgiveness critiques our cultural obsession with forgiving those who have done us wrong. She’s not against forgiveness — that would be weird — but she says we ought to be more intentional about why we do it, more aware that the expectation to practice forgiveness often lands on the most vulnerable people, and more concerned about what gets lost when we treat forgiveness as the only path to healing.  Sean and Myisha discuss the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the legacy of slavery, and the real difference between accountability, reconciliation, and simply moving on. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Myisha Cherry (@myishacherry), associate professor of philosophy at the University of California Riverside, and author of Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better. This episode was made in partnership with Vox's Future Perfect team. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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. This holiday season, your membership goes further: when you join Vox as an annual Member, we’ll gift a free membership to a reader who can’t afford it. By joining today, you’ll get 30% off for an annual membership, and we’ll match your membership. And if you can’t afford it, visit that same link to apply for a free membership through our gift program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean’s guest today is Daniel Kolitz, author of a remarkable Harper’s story on “gooning.”  They talk about this emerging subculture and how it reflects back on the larger world, from the economics of attention to the rise of short-form everything. Kolitz explains why the Gooniverse isn’t just about porn, how hyperkinetic media rewires our sense of pleasure and patience, and why this is really a story about how society is changing in ways we might not like. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Daniel Kolitz, author of The Goon Squad We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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. This holiday season, your membership goes further: when you join Vox as an annual Member, we’ll gift a free membership to a reader who can’t afford it. By joining today, you’ll get 30% off for an annual membership, and we’ll match your membership. And if you can’t afford it, visit that same link to apply for a free membership through our gift program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve never had more wealth, more data, or more ways to be entertained. So why doesn’t it feel like progress?  Sean’s guest today is Brad DeLong, an economic historian at UC Berkeley and author of Slouching Towards Utopia. They talk about the difference between getting richer and living well, and why the real hinge of the 21st century might be attention rather than growth. DeLong explains how AI could make life easier or simply make us more distracted, why the world’s progress continues even as American politics falters, and what smart policy could do for the people left behind by technological change. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: J. Bradford DeLong, economic historian and author of Slouching Towards Utopia We would love to hear from you. To tell us what we thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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 This episode was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We all know what awkwardness feels like. It's that jolt of discomfort when the social script breaks down, and no one knows what to do next. But what if awkwardness isn’t a flaw to fix but a window into how we live together?  Sean’s guest today is Alexandra Plakias, associate professor of philosophy at Hamilton College and author of Awkwardness: A Theory. They talk about why awkwardness isn’t a personal problem but a social one, how power and privilege shape who gets to be awkward, and why our fear of discomfort often keeps us from saying what really matters. This episode originally aired in November of 2024. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Alexandra Plakias, associate professor of philosophy and author of Awkwardness: A Theory We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at tga@voxmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show.And 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

We use “Orwellian” to describe everything from campus dust-ups to authoritarian crackdowns. But what did George Orwell actually stand for, what did he get wrong, and what can we learn from him about our age of surveillance capitalism and distraction? Sean’s guest is Laura Beers, historian at American University and author of Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century. They dig into Orwell’s defense of truth over ideology, his crusade against euphemism, his experience with propaganda and persecution in Spain, and why 1984 and Animal Farm only capture part of his project.  Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Laura Beers, historian and author of Orwell’s Ghosts We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at tga@voxmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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

We all think of ourselves as authors of our lives. The difference between our happy ending and someone else’s tragic one are the choices we each make. But what if none of that’s true? Sean’s guest today is Robert Sapolsky, a biologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University and author of Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. They dig into Sapolsky’s claim that free will is an illusion and discuss what the science says about genes, stress, culture, and how all this research might reframe the way we think about meritocracy, blame, punishment, and even hatred. This episode originally aired in November of 2023. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Robert Sapolsky, biologist and neuroscientist at Stanford University and author of ⁠Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will⁠. We’d love to hear from you. Tell us what you thought of this episode by emailing thegrayarea@vox.com or leaving us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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 story we tell about climate change is mostly a story about loss. But look to the data, and that story starts to fall apart. Emissions are peaking in key sectors. Clean energy is scaling faster than anyone predicted. Real progress is happening. It’s just not happening in the way we imagine it. Sean’s guest today is Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor at Our World in Data and author of Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change. They discuss why our picture of the planet is so distorted, why despair can be as dangerous as denial, and what a truly energy-abundant, livable future could look like. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Hannah Ritchie, author of Clearing the Air We’d love to hear from you. Tell us what you thought of this episode at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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 This episode was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Open a browser and you can feel it instantly: everything online just feels… worse. Search results that look like ads. Social feeds that you don’t control. Streaming platforms that are packed with ads. Services that used to be free, but are now behind paywalls. It’s not your imagination — it’s enshittification, the process by which good platforms turn bad… and it’s starting to happen outside the internet as well. Sean’s guest today is Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. They discuss how the web became enshittified, why monopolies are the true engine behind our digital decay, and what it would mean to build a freer, fairer, and more human internet. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Cory Doctorow (https://x.com/doctorow), author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. We’d love to hear from you. Tell us what you thought of this episode at tga@voxmail.com or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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

Is America at a tipping point? Sean Illing talks with Barbara Walter, one of the world’s leading experts on violent extremism and domestic terror. She’s the author of How Civil Wars Start, about how democracies unravel from within, and a professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. Walter talks to Sean about the warning signs she’s seeing in the US, why polarization and party identity become combustible, and what lessons we can draw from other countries. They also discuss what an American civil war might look like in the 21st century, the social and informational dynamics that accelerate breakdown, and whether America still has a path away from the brink. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Barbara Walter, professor at UC San Diego and author of How Civil Wars Start We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at tga@voxmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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

We like to think of memory as a record of the past. But that’s not really what it is. Memory doesn’t keep the past — it can also remake it. It stitches fragments into stories, and those stories — true or not — are what we end up calling our life, and sometimes, our collective history. Sean’s guest today is Charan Ranganath, a neuroscientist and author of a book called Why We Remember. The two discuss the strange alchemy of remembering and how the stories our minds create end up creating us. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Charan Ranganath, neuroscientist and author of Why We Remember We would love to hear from you. To tell us what we thought of this episode, email us at tga@voxmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And 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

This week, Sean talks with Emily Baker-White, author of Every Screen on the Planet, about why TikTok feels uniquely addictive, how it turned social media into a push-not-pull entertainment feed, and what happens when human editors inside the company can override the algorithm. A few days after they spoke, TikTok was in the headlines again. So they jumped on a follow-up call to unpack the latest twists in the saga of who will ultimately control the app's US-operations. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Emily Baker-White, reporter and author of Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok The Gray Area has been nominated for a Signal Listener’s Choice Award. Vote for The Gray Area here: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2025/shows/genre/thought-leadership We’d love to hear from you. Email us at tga@voxmail.com or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your questions and feedback help us make a better show. Watch full episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Listen ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bill McKibben has spent four decades warning us about climate change. Much of what he predicted has come true. And yet, his new book Here Comes the Sun is more hopeful than you might expect. That’s because, for the first time, we have a genuine alternative: Solar and wind energy are now the cheapest, fastest-growing sources of power on Earth. The revolution has already begun. This week, Sean is joined by McKibben to talk about the peril and promise of this moment. They explore how close we are to catastrophe, why each fraction of a degree of warming matters, and how the fossil fuel industry is fighting a desperate last stand. They also discuss the politics of energy in the age of Trump, why Texas and Utah may hold surprising lessons, and how cheap, abundant power could transform not just the climate fight but democracy itself. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: Bill McKibben, climate activist and author of Here Comes the Sun We’d love to hear from you. Email us at tga@voxmail.com or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your questions and feedback help us make a better show. ⁠⁠This episode was made in partnership with Vox's Future Perfect team. Watch full episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Listen ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices