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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. From the Vox Media Podcast Network.

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

We’re told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades. Get into a good school. Get a good job. Be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high-status position.

Some of us love this endless climb. But lots of us, at least once in our lives, find ourselves asking, "What’s the point of all this ambition?"Historian and author Rutger Bregman doesn’t think there is a point to that kind of ambition. Instead, he wants us to be morally ambitious, to measure the value of our achievements based on how much good we do, by how much we improve the world.

In this episode, Bregman speaks with guest host Sigal Samuel about how to know if you’re morally ambitious, the value of surrounding yourself with like-minded people, and how to make moral ambition fashionable.

Host: Sigal Samuel, Vox senior reporter

Guest: Rutger Bregman, historian, author of Moral Ambition, and co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition

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Show Notes

Vox’s Good Robot series can be found here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3 (discusses the "drowning child thought experiment" and effective altruism)

Episode 4

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Do you have moral ambition?

Liberalism, write Patrick Deneen, "has been for modern Americans like water for a fish, an encompassing political ecosystem in which we have swum, unaware of its existence.” Deneen, a political theorist at Notre Dame, isn’t talking about the liberalism of the left, the liberalism of Elizabeth Warren or Nancy Pelosi. He’s talking about the liberalism that drives both the left and the right, the one that elevates individual flourishing over groups, families, places, nature. That’s the liberalism that is wrecking our societies and our happiness, Deneen says, and while the left and the right often disagree on how to achieve it, they're both disastrously bought into its core ideas. Deneen’s book, Why Liberalism Failed, has become a quiet sensation, gaining plaudits from conservative pundits and even showing up on Barack Obama’s reading list. His is a radical critique, and while I disagree with much of it, the things it gets right are important. 
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Patrick Deneen says liberalism has failed. Is he right?

This week, host Sean Illing gets personal when he asks professor and podcast host Scott Galloway: What’s going on with men?
There’s a growing body of evidence that men are falling behind in education, the labor market, and other areas. And when you look at the numbers on drug overdoses and deaths by suicide, it’s pretty bleak.
Sean and Scott — both of whom are raising sons — talk about the struggles men are facing today, how parents can navigate the current moment, and the challenges they each faced as young men.
Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Scott Galloway, professor and podcast host
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Are men okay?

Can you ever really know what’s going on inside the mind of another creature?
In some cases, like other humans, or dogs and cats, we might be able to guess with a bit of confidence. But what about octopuses? Or insects? What about AI systems — will they ever be able to feel anything? And if they do feel anything, what are our ethical obligations toward them?
In today’s episode, Vox staff writer Oshan Jarow brings those questions to philosopher of science Jonathan Birch.
Birch is the principal investigator on the Foundations of Animal Sentience Project at the London School of Economics, and author of the recently released book, The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. Birch also convinced the UK government to consider lobsters, octopuses, and crabs sentient and therefore deserving of legal protection.
This unique perspective earned Jonathan a place on Vox’s Future Perfect 50 list, an annual celebration of the people working to make the future a better place. The list — published last month — includes writers, scientists, thinkers, and activists who are reshaping our world for the better.
In this conversation, Oshan and Jonathan explore everything we know— and don't know — about sentience, and how to make ethical decisions about creatures who may possess it.

Guest host: Oshan Jarow
Guest: Jonathan Birch, Author of The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. Available for free on the Oxford Academic platform.
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What do animals feel?

How can we find happiness? That's an old question. Since the beginning of philosophy people have been wondering what makes us happy and how to get more of it. But if you're a real person living in the real world, you know already that it's not possible to be happy all the time. So what do we do when we’re experiencing depression or grief or a dark mood?
Philosopher Mariana Alessandri thinks that we should stop trying to repress these feelings.
In this conversation, which originally aired in 2023, Sean speaks with Mariana about her book Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods and how our obsession with staying positive has produced destructive emotional cycles.

Host, Sean Illing (@seanilling)
Guest: Mariana Alessandri, philosopher and author of Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods
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What to do with your sadness, pain, and grief

At the beginning of the new year, many of us make pledges to change ourselves. We want to work out more. Or read more. Or cook more. Within a few months, some of us will have succeeded but many of us will have failed. When we do, we’ll probably tell ourselves to try again, that failure inevitably leads to success.
But is that true? And is failure really such a bad thing?
In this episode, which originally aired in March of 2023, Sean interviews professor Costica Bradatan about his book In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility. The two explore different kinds of failure and discuss how embracing our limitations can teach us humility and ultimately be good for us.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Costica Bradatan, professor and author of In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility
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The importance of failure

What is the first thing that you touch in the morning? What about the last thing you touch before you go to sleep? For many of us, it’s our phone. Digital devices are with us constantly, often putting a digital layer between us and the world. The benefits of this are enormous: convenience, efficiency, and constant stimulation.
But is there a personal cost to living in a mediated reality?
Today’s guest is Christine Rosen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of the new book The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World. Christine and Sean discuss how the digital revolution is affecting our social skills and our quality of life.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling)
Guest: Christine Rosen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World.
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The screens between us

What does it take to be happy? Professor of psychology Laurie Santos just might have the answer.

This week The Gray Area takes a break from its regular programming to bring you an episode of another podcast that we love.

In this episode of Stay Tuned With Preet, host Preet Bharara interviews Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale University, about what we all can do to be happier. The two discuss how to maximize your happiness, how to bring meaning to your career, self-care vs. caring for others, and the barriers to happiness that parents face.

Host: Preet Bharara, host of Stay Tuned With Preet
Guest: Laurie Santos, professor of psychology at Yale University, and host of The Happiness Lab
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How to be happy

Where is your attention right now? Where was it a minute ago? A second ago? Where will it be a minute from now?
One of the primary features of this age — the age of the internet and smartphones and algorithmic feeds — is that our attention is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
This is no accident. Our devices and apps are engineered to constantly alert us to things that are important and to things that are not. That’s because holding our attention is valuable. The time we spend reading, watching, and listening to content on our digital devices has been commodified, and that commodity is fueling the economy of the digital age.
Today’s guest is Chris Hayes, the host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and author of The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. Chris speaks with Sean about how the attention industry is changing our economy, our society, and ourselves.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling).
Guest: Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and author of The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.
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Attention pays (with Chris Hayes)

Americans are spending an historic amount of time alone, a phenomenon that is often referred to as an "epidemic of loneliness."
But are we actually lonely? Or do we prefer being by ourselves? And if we do, what does that mean for us and our society?
Today’s guest is journalist Derek Thompson, who, in a recent essay for the Atlantic, challenges the conventional wisdom around loneliness. He argues that Americans prefer solitude, and that preference presents a wholly different kind of challenge for the country.
Derek and Sean discuss the far-reaching effects of America’s antisocial behavior, including what it means for our society, our politics, and our future.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Derek Thompson, staff writer, The Atlantic
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The cost of spending time alone

Is all politics identity politics? And if so, then what does it mean to condemn identity politics in the first place? That’s the subject of my discussion with Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama. In his new book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, he builds a theory of what identity means in modern societies and how spiraling demands for recognition are tearing at the fabric of our politics. "The retreat on both sides into ever narrower identities threatens the possibility of deliberation and collective action by the society as a whole," he writes. "Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure.” Yikes. Fukuyama’s book revolves around a question I’ve become a bit obsessed by: When do we see political claims as identity politics, and when do we see them as just politics? What’s obscured in the passage from one boundary to another? Whose agendas are served by it? And in a country whose narrative of progress and perfection is inextricably bound up in the success of past moments of identity politics, how did this come to be such a vilified term today? So I asked Fukuyama on the show to discuss it. This is a great conversation with one of the foremost political thinkers of our age. Recommended books: Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
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Francis Fukuyama’s case against identity politics

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