Podcasts by The Gray Area with Sean Illing
The Gray Area with host Sean Illing is a philosophical take on culture, politics, and everything in between. We don’t pretend to have the answers, but we do offer a space for real dialogue. Resist certainty, embrace ambiguity, and get some cool takes on a very hot world. Formerly the Vox Conversations podcast. New episodes drop every Monday.
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Russia's war with Ukraine — and reality from 2022-02-28T18:01
Sean Illing talks with journalist, author, and Russian disinformation scholar Peter Pomerantsev about the invasion of Ukraine. Recorded on Friday, Feb. 25th, they discuss the current state of the c...
ListenRobert Glasper on why Black Radio is back from 2022-02-24T11:29:49
Vox’s Jamil Smith talks with musician Robert Glasper, four-time Grammy-winner, about the release of his new album Black Radio III. They discuss Glasper's distinctive genre-defying sound, his unique...
ListenCould we lose delicious foods forever? from 2022-02-17T13:07:59
Vox's Benji Jones talks with food journalist and author Dan Saladino, whose new book Eating to Extinction documents rare foods and food cultures from around the world, showing how they are being af...
ListenWhat Don't Look Up is really about from 2022-02-14T10:30
Sean Illing talks with David Sirota, the journalist turned Oscar-nominated co-writer (with director Adam McKay) of the film Don't Look Up. They talk about the movie and how it was originally receiv...
ListenDemocracy in crisis, part 2: The two-party problem from 2022-02-10T13:48:52
Just how worried should we be about the future of American democracy? This is the question at the center of a two-part series from Vox Conversations and host Zack Beauchamp. For part two, Zack talk...
ListenWhy we can't pay attention anymore from 2022-02-07T13:29:06
Sean Illing talks with the author Johann Hari about his new book Stolen Focus, which explores what's happening — and what's already happened — to our attention. They discuss how exactly Big Tech "s...
ListenDemocracy in crisis, part 1: Ross Douthat isn't too worried from 2022-02-03T13:04:20
Just how worried should we be about the future of American democracy? This is the question at the center of a two-part series from Vox Conversations and host Zack Beauchamp. For part one, Zack talk...
ListenPod Save the Democrats from 2022-01-31T10:30
Sean Illing talks with Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to President Obama and co-host of the Pod Save America podcast, about what is wrong with the Democratic Party's brand right now. They disc...
ListenA Yellowjackets creator spills his guts from 2022-01-27T13:36:17
Vox's Constance Grady talks with Bart Nickerson, the co-creator of new TV show Yellowjackets, which airs on Showtime. Yellowjackets follows a girls' soccer team, stranded in the Canadian wilderness...
ListenA scientist's case for "woo-woo" from 2022-01-24T10:30
Sean Illing talks with David Hamilton, a scientist and former research chemist turned author, about his new book Why Woo-Woo Works, in which he offers a scientifically-grounded defense of alternati...
ListenImagine a future with no police from 2022-01-20T12:54:39
Vox's Fabiola Cineas talks with author, lawyer, and organizer Derecka Purnell about her recent book Becoming Abolitionists. They discuss Derecka's journey to defending the idea of police abolition,...
ListenNovelist Lauren Groff on the other Matrix from 2022-01-13T13:32
Vox's Constance Grady talks with novelist Lauren Groff about her latest book, the National Book Award finalist Matrix, before a virtual audience for the Vox Book Club. They discuss the enigmatic hi...
ListenAre we living in a simulation? from 2022-01-10T13:13
Sean Illing talks with philosopher David Chalmers about virtual worlds and the nature of reality, and other topics that stem from Chalmers's new book Reality+. In this far-reaching discussion, Sean...
ListenRep. Jamie Raskin on living through the unthinkable, twice from 2022-01-06T12:58:13
Vox's Dylan Matthews talks with Congressman Jamie Raskin about the tragic loss of his son Tommy, who was twenty-five years old when he died at the end of 2020. Rep. Raskin also speaks about the ins...
ListenBest of: Why fascism in America isn't going away from 2022-01-03T10:30
Vox's Sean Illing talks to Yale professor and author Jason Stanley about why American democracy provides such fertile soil for fascism, how Donald Trump demonstrated how easy it was for our country...
ListenBest of: Clint Smith III on confronting the legacy of slavery from 2021-12-30T10:30
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with author Clint Smith III about his book How the Word Is Passed, which documents the writer's personal journey visiting sites that embody the legacy of American slavery. T...
ListenBest of: We need to talk about UFOs. Seriously. from 2021-12-27T10:30
Vox's Sean Illing talks with international politics professor and amateur ufologist Alex Wendt about why it's time to start thinking more seriously about the earth-shattering implications of discov...
ListenChris Bosh on winning (and losing everything) from 2021-12-23T10:30
Vox’s Jamil Smith talks with NBA legend Chris Bosh about his basketball career, his youth, and his legacy. They discuss Bosh’s transition to the NBA, his role on the controversial Miami Heat teams ...
ListenThe cult of toughness from 2021-12-20T13:11:57
Sean Illing talks with political commentator and author David French about modern conservatism and masculinity. They discuss the divergence between the Right's view of masculinity and what they fea...
ListenIs ethical investing a scam? from 2021-12-16T13:33:56
Vox's Emily Stewart talks with Tariq Fancy about whether or not "socially responsible investment" is a scam. Fancy is a former executive who led sustainable investing at BlackRock, one of the world...
ListenThe good life is painful from 2021-12-13T10:30
Sean Illing talks with psychologist Paul Bloom about his new book The Sweet Spot, and whether it's necessary to experience suffering in order to live a fulfilling, meaningful life. They discuss the...
ListenThe father of environmental justice from 2021-12-09T13:31:47
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with Dr, Robert Bullard, a pioneer in the crusade for environmental justice, about his more than four decades in the fight. They discuss how the movement to recognize enviro...
ListenJill Lepore on Elon Musk's imaginary world from 2021-12-06T13:31:22
Sean Illing talks with historian Jill Lepore about her new podcast: The Evening Rocket explores Elon Musk and the new form of extravagant, extreme capitalism — which Lepore dubs "Muskism" — that he...
ListenE.O. Wilson's plan to save the world from 2021-12-02T12:59
Vox's Benji Jones talks with the celebrated entomologist, biologist, and naturalist E.O. Wilson. They talk about Wilson's sixty-plus years as a leading thinker in his field, how his expeditions stu...
ListenWorkers of the world, stay home! from 2021-11-29T10:30
Sean Illing talks with Anne Helen Petersen and her partner Charlie Warzel about their new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. They talk about a new model o...
ListenHow progressives get back in the game from 2021-11-22T10:34:32
Sean Illing talks with Briahna Joy Gray, the former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 Presidential campaign, and current host of the Bad Faith podcast. They discuss the practical...
ListenThe highs and lows of the "creator economy" from 2021-11-18T10:30
Vox's Rebecca Jennings talks with Taylor Lorenz, tech culture reporter for the New York Times, about the creator economy: what it is, who's in it, and why more people are paying attention to it. Th...
ListenWhy Chris Hayes thinks we're all famous now from 2021-11-15T10:30
Sean Illing talks with Chris Hayes, author, commentator, and host of All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC. They discuss his recent essay in the New Yorker about fame and the internet, why we seek atten...
ListenThe stories soul food tells from 2021-11-11T10:30
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with Caroline Randall Williams, academic, poet, and co-author (with her mother, Alice Randall) of Soul Food Love. They discuss the ways in which the African American culinar...
ListenThe paradox of American freedom from 2021-11-08T10:30
Sean Illing talks with Sebastian Junger, journalist, filmmaker, and author of the recent book Freedom. Informed by his experience hiking (and trespassing) along America's rail lines, Junger discuss...
ListenNonbinary parenthood from 2021-11-04T09:30
Anna North talks with Krys Malcolm Belc, nonbinary transmasculine parent, essayist, and author of the memoir The Natural Mother of the Child. They talk about what it means to be a parent, our gende...
ListenJohn McWhorter, the anti-antiracist from 2021-11-01T09:30
Sean Illing talks with John McWhorter, linguist, New York Times columnist, and author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. They talk about the effects of modern antiracism...
ListenThe overwhelming, invisible work of elder care from 2021-10-28T09:30
Vox culture contributor Anne Helen Petersen talks with Liz O'Donnell, an advocate for working caregivers and the author of Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a ...
ListenHow Big Tech benefits from the disinformation panic from 2021-10-25T09:30
Sean Illing talks with Joe Bernstein of BuzzFeed News about online disinformation and what — if anything — can be done about it. They discuss the role of tech giants in the spread of propaganda, wh...
ListenFannie Lou Hamer and the meaning of freedom from 2021-10-21T12:08:11
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with Keisha Blain, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America. They discuss...
ListenWhat the internet took from us from 2021-10-18T09:30
Sean Illing talks with writer and New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul about her book 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet and the ways, big and small, that the internet has changed our l...
ListenTrapped inside with Susanna Clarke's Piranesi from 2021-10-14T11:32:57
Vox's Constance Grady talks with novelist Susanna Clarke about her latest book, Piranesi, before a virtual audience for the Vox Book Club. They discuss how Clarke's novel engages with themes that h...
ListenBryan Stevenson on the legacy of enslavement from 2021-10-07T12:34:39
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with attorney, author, and activist Bryan Stevenson about the newly expanded Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. They discuss the museum's project to connect America's his...
ListenWhat's your status? from 2021-10-04T09:30
Sean Illing talks with writer Will Storr about his new book The Status Game, and its central idea: all human beings are constantly competing for status. They discuss how certain aspects of society ...
ListenIs there a hack for enlightenment? from 2021-09-30T09:30
Vox's Sigal Samuel talks with scholars and authors Wesley Wildman and Kate Stockly about their book, Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering. They di...
ListenFighting a world on fire with fire from 2021-09-27T16:04
Sean Illing talks with climate scholar Andreas Malm about his book How to Blow Up A Pipeline. They discuss the failure of decades of protests and appeals to curb the actions of the fossil fuel indu...
ListenRevolutionary Love from 2021-09-23T19:49:11
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with author, activist, and filmmaker Valarie Kaur about her memoir See No Stranger and the Revolutionary Love Project. They discuss Kaur's personal experiences of the racism...
ListenHow to make meaning out of suffering from 2021-09-20T09:30
Vox’s Sean Illing talks with David Wolpe, senior rabbi of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, about the role and nature of God, how religion and spirituality can address our modern problems, and how t...
ListenKen Burns's latest on The Greatest from 2021-09-16T17:31
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with acclaimed documentary filmmakers Ken and Sarah Burns. The father-daughter team discuss their latest documentary about The Greatest, Muhammad Ali, trying to say somethin...
ListenThe road from 9/11 to Donald Trump from 2021-09-13T09:30
Sean Illing talks with national security reporter Spencer Ackerman, author of the new book Reign of Terror. They discuss the staggering changes to our country in the 20 years since 9/11; the flaws,...
ListenRep. Pramila Jayapal on immigrants and America after 9/11 from 2021-09-09T12:33:37
Aarti Shahani, host of the WBEZ Chicago podcast Art of Power and author of the memoir Here We Are, talks with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) about how 9/11 changed the relationship between immigrants ...
ListenWhy America's obsession with rights is wrong from 2021-09-02T18:27:18
Vox's Zack Beauchamp talks with Columbia law professor Jamal Greene about his book How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession With Rights Is Tearing America Apart. They discuss how the US obsession w...
ListenThe news is by — and for — rich, white liberals from 2021-08-30T21:32:55
Vox’s Sean Illing talks with professor and media researcher Nikki Usher about her new book News for the Rich, White, and Blue, which documents systemic problems in the ways journalists and institut...
ListenClint Smith III on confronting the legacy of slavery from 2021-08-26T10:56
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with author Clint Smith III about his book How the Word Is Passed, which documents the writer's personal journey visiting sites that embody the legacy of American slavery. T...
ListenWas the cruelty the point? from 2021-08-23T12:35
Vox's Sean Illing talks with Adam Serwer, whose new book The Cruelty Is the Point documents the role of cruelty in American politics, the way it was weaponized by the GOP during the Trump administr...
ListenHow seashells shaped the world — and predict our future from 2021-08-19T11:14:23
Vox's Benji Jones talks with author and environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett about seashells and her new book, The Sound of the Sea. They discuss the evolutionary function and human appeal of s...
ListenBill Maher on free speech, comedy, and his haters from 2021-08-16T09:30
Vox's Sean Illing talks with comedian Bill Maher about the risks and challenges of political comedy today, free speech, and whether ideology undermines humor. They discuss how Maher — who's been ou...
ListenRobert Reich wants you to take on the system from 2021-08-12T14:34
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with former labor secretary, author, and social media gadfly Robert Reich about how our elected officials have fallen victim to the interests of the wealthy, what the pandem...
ListenMarty Baron on the future of news from 2021-08-09T11:54:59
Vox's Sean Illing talks with former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron about the state of journalism. They discuss Baron's post-retirement reflections on both the Post and the profession ...
ListenThe death of cool from 2021-08-05T09:30
Vox culture contributor Anne Helen Petersen talks with writer Safy-Hallan Farah about the concept of 'cool.' They discuss different generations' approaches to determining what's cool, how the conce...
ListenWe need to talk about UFOs. Seriously. from 2021-08-02T14:56:13
Vox's Sean Illing talks with international politics professor and amateur ufologist Alex Wendt about why it's time to start thinking more seriously about the earth-shattering implications of discov...
ListenPhiladelphia's progressive prosecutor from 2021-07-29T14:21:22
Vox's Jamil Smith talks with Larry Krasner, the former civil rights attorney who's been district attorney of Philadelphia since 2018. They talk about the bold agenda of criminal justice reform that...
ListenFareed Zakaria on the fate of democracy from 2021-07-26T11:16:16
Vox's Sean Illing talks with CNN's Fareed Zakaria about the global trend in democratic decline, and whether we should worry about America. They discuss why the Republican Party has become an existe...
ListenJane Goodall on the power of hope from 2021-07-22T09:30
Vox's Sigal Samuel talks with world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall about what six decades of studying chimpanzees has taught her about humans. They discuss the work people can do to protect an...
ListenWhy we love drugs from 2021-07-19T19:31
Vox's Sean Illing talks with author Michael Pollan about his new book This Is Your Mind on Plants, why some societies condemn drugs that other societies condone, what will happen as the war on drug...
ListenThe rugged majesty of revision from 2021-07-15T13:09
Vox's Jamil Smith speaks with novelist and author Kiese Laymon in a far-ranging conversation about Laymon's reacquiring the rights to his own books, the struggle of retelling our own stories, and t...
ListenHow to forgive from 2021-07-12T12:57:56
Vox's Sean Illing talks with Elizabeth Bruenig about how hard it is to forgive, how to balance our desire for justice with our humanity, and about how the age-old moral framework of forgiveness has...
ListenWhat makes a great conversation? from 2021-07-08T13:08:14
Here's a look ahead at what's to come for Vox Conversations. Vox's Sean Illing welcomes colleague Jamil Smith to the podcast as an additional regular host. They talk about what drew each of them in...
ListenIntroducing: Now&Then from 2021-07-01T09:30
Now&Then is a new podcast from CAFE hosted by award-winning historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman. Every Tuesday, Heather and Joanne use their encyclopedic knowledge of US history to...
ListenThe science of dating from 2021-06-24T10:59:15
Relationships journalist and podcast host Andrea Silenzi talks with Logan Ury, behavioral scientist-turned-dating coach, and author of How to Not Die Alone. They discuss the decision-making that ge...
ListenHonoring Juneteenth with Ibram X. Kendi from 2021-06-17T10:11:10
In this special edition of Vox Conversations in honor of the Juneteenth holiday, Vox race reporter Fabiola Cineas spoke with author and podcast host Ibram X. Kendi before a virtual audience about t...
ListenDigital dictatorship from 2021-06-10T10:16:42
The internet was first conceived as a tool to promote free expression, to foster and enliven debate, and to strengthen democratic ideals. But it didn’t quite work out that way. In this episode, Vox...
ListenThe man who proposed reparations in the 1860s from 2021-06-03T09:30
Vox’s Dylan Matthews talks with historian Bruce Levine about his book Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary and Fighter for Racial Justice. They discuss how Stevens — a person with anti-racist ...
ListenWhat pandemic recovery should look like from 2021-05-27T09:30
Vox's Emily Stewart talks with Janelle Jones, chief economist at the Labor Department, about what's actually going on with the US economy — and who are the workers most dramatically affected by the...
ListenThe gift of getting old from 2021-05-20T09:30
Vox’s Sean Illing talks with Max Linsky, host of the new podcast 70 Over 70, which features intimate conversations with people over 70 years old. They discuss Max’s relationship with his aging fath...
ListenFreedom, and what it means to have a body from 2021-05-13T09:01
Vox's Anna North talks with author Olivia Laing about her book Everybody: A Book About Freedom. Through the surprisingly connected lives of artists, activists, psychoanalysts, and sexologists, they...
ListenWhy are we so worried about Satan? from 2021-05-06T09:38:32
Vox's Sean Illing talks with Sarah Marshall, co-host of the You're Wrong About podcast, about the Satanic Panic of the early 1980s. They discuss America's penchant for moral panics, why the country...
ListenHow to be wrong less often from 2021-04-29T09:01
Vox's Dylan Matthews talks with Julia Galef, host of the podcast Rationally Speaking, and author of The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't. They discuss how we can o...
ListenThe complicated history of wildlife conservation from 2021-04-22T09:00
Vox environmental reporter Benji Jones talks with journalist and author Michelle Nijhuis about her book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. They talk about the history of the...
ListenHow to replace everything in the industrialized world from 2021-04-15T11:37:29
Climate writer and Vox contributor David Roberts talks with Jessika Trancik, Associate Professor at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at M.I.T. They discuss many aspects of the vast unde...
ListenWho is the real George Soros? from 2021-04-01T09:00
Vox's Worldly host Zack Beauchamp talks with author and New Statesman editor Emily Tamkin about the life and legacy of George Soros. How did a Hungarian billionaire philanthropist become the No. 1 ...
ListenWho is the real George Soros? from 2021-04-01T09:00
Vox's Worldly host Zack Beauchamp talks with author and New Statesman editor Emily Tamkin about the life and legacy of George Soros. How did a Hungarian billionaire philanthropist become the No. 1 ...
ListenIntroducing Unexplainable from 2021-03-27T09:00
Unexplainable is a new podcast from Vox about everything we don’t know. Each week, the team look at the most fascinating unanswered questions in science and the mind-bending ways scientists are try...
ListenThe border, explained by someone who knows it intimately from 2021-03-25T09:01
Aarti Shahani, NPR journalist and host of WBEZ podcast Art of Power, talks with investigative journalist and author Alfredo Corchado about the US-Mexico border. Trump's actions created a new urgenc...
Listen"Wintering," wisdom, and weathering life's darkest times from 2021-03-18T09:00
Vox's Sigal Samuel talks with the author of Wintering, Katherine May, about the lessons we can learn during life's darkest seasons. They talk about our long collective pandemic winter, about how ti...
ListenReframing America's race problem from 2021-03-11T10:00
Vox's Sean Illing talks with the author of The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee, about the costs of racism in America — for everyone. They discuss what we all lose by buying into the zero-sum paradigm tha...
ListenWho owns the Western? from 2021-03-04T10:01
Vox book critic Constance Grady talks with Vox gender identities reporter and novelist Anna North about Anna's new book Outlawed. They discuss creating an alternative history, reimagining the Weste...
ListenA Watchmen writer on race, TV, and tech giants from 2021-02-25T10:00
The Undefeated's culture critic Soraya Nadia McDonald talks with Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer Cord Jefferson. They discuss the transition from journalism to TV, delving into Je...
ListenUncovering the history of psychedelics in Christianity from 2021-02-18T10:00
Vox's Sean Illing talks about the the little-known history of psychedelics and spirituality in the Western world with Brian Muraresku, author of The Immortality Key. What role did psychedelic drugs...
ListenBiden's immigration architect on racism, reform, and the Obama legacy from 2021-02-11T10:00
NPR journalist, memoirist, and host of the upcoming WBEZ podcast The Art of Power Aarti Shahani talks with Cecilia Muñoz, a former aide to Obama and part of Biden's transition team. It's a conversa...
ListenThe Capitol Siege and American Revolution from 2021-02-04T10:00
Vox's Dylan Matthews talks with author and Revolutions podcaster Mike Duncan about what history can tell us about the insurrection at the US Capitol. Is America experiencing a true moment of revolu...
ListenWhy fascism in Post-Trump America isn't going away from 2021-01-28T10:00
Vox's Sean Illing talks to Yale professor and author Jason Stanley about why American democracy provides such fertile soil for fascism, how Donald Trump demonstrated how easy it was for our country...
ListenThe Joe Biden experience from 2021-01-25T10:00
Ezra Klein is joined by Evan Osnos, a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now to discuss our new president. President Biden has been in n...
ListenWhat it means to be a "good" rich person from 2021-01-21T10:00
Vox columnist Anne Helen Petersen talks with sociologist Rachel Sherman about her research into the anxieties of wealthy people and their desire to be seen as "middle class." Sherman's work exposes...
ListenPeter Kafka and Kevin Roose on big tech's power and responsibility from 2021-01-18T10:00
Recode’s Peter Kafka speaks with New York Times’s Tech columnist Kevin Roose about big tech’s power and responsibility - and whether it is going to have accountability. Learn more about your ad cho...
ListenSam Sanders and Olivia Nuzzi on President Trump’s last days from 2021-01-14T10:00
New York magazine's Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi spent the past four years covering the Trump White House. In this inaugural episode of Vox Conversations, Nuzzi talks to guest host Sam San...
ListenBest of: We don’t just feel emotions. We make them. from 2021-01-07T05:00
How do you feel right now? Excited to listen to your favorite podcast? Anxious about the state of American politics? Annoyed by my use of rhetorical questions? These questions seem pretty straightf...
ListenBest of: Ending the age of animal cruelty, with Bruce Friedrich from 2021-01-04T05:00
You often hear that eating animals is natural. And it is. But not the way we do it. The industrial animal agriculture system is a technological marvel. It relies on engineering broiler chickens tha...
ListenBest of: The moral philosophy of The Good Place from 2020-12-31T05:00
After creating and running Parks and Recreation and writing for The Office, Michael Schur decided he wanted to create a sitcom about one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: What d...
ListenBest of: Michael Lewis reads my mind from 2020-12-28T05:00
Michael Lewis needs little introduction. He’s the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, The Fifth Risk. He’s the host of the new podcast “Against the Rules.” He’s a mast...
ListenBest of: Tracy K. Smith changed how I read poetry from 2020-12-24T05:00
It’s the rare podcast conversation where, as it’s happening, I’m making notes to go back and listen again so I can fully absorb what I heard. But this conversation with Tracy K. Smith was that kind...
ListenWhat I’ve learned, and what comes next. from 2020-12-21T05:00
As strange as it is to write, this is my last podcast here at Vox. In January, I'll be starting at the New York Times as a columnist on the opinion page, doing a reported column on policy and laun...
ListenBest of: An inspiring conversation about democracy with Danielle Allen from 2020-12-17T05:00
This conversation with Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen in fall 2019 is one of my all-time favorites. Allen directs Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She’s a political theoris...
ListenMichael Pollan on the psychedelic society from 2020-12-14T05:00
On November 3, as the country fixated on the incoming presidential election results, voters in Oregon approved a seemingly innocuous ballot measure with revolutionary potential. Proposition 109, wh...
ListenBest of: Robert Sapolsky on the toxic intersection of poverty and stress from 2020-12-10T05:00
Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist. He’s the author of a slew of important books on human biology and behavior, including most recently Behave: The Biology of Humans at ...
ListenJoe Biden and "the new progressivism" from 2020-12-07T05:00
It’s often said that Joe Biden has an instinct for finding the political center — that of his party, and that of the country. To understand how Biden has changed, and how he might govern, we need t...
ListenBest of: Frances Lee on why bipartisanship is irrational from 2020-12-03T05:00
There are few conversations I’ve had on this show that are quite as relevant to our current political moment as this one with Princeton political scientist Frances Lee. Joe Biden will occupy the Wh...
ListenThe most important book I've read this year from 2020-11-30T05:00
If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. Best known for the Mars trilogy, Robinson is ...
ListenBest of: Alison Gopnik changed how I think about love from 2020-11-26T05:00
Happy Thanksgiving! We will be back next week with brand new episodes, but on a day when so many of us are thinking about love and relationships I wanted to share an episode that has changed the wa...
ListenBest of: Vivek Murthy on America’s loneliness epidemic from 2020-11-23T05:00
At the holidays, I wanted to share some of my favorite episodes of the show with you (we’ll be back next week with brand new episodes). My conversation with Vivek Murthy tops that list, and it has ...
ListenWhat Democrats got wrong about Hispanic voters from 2020-11-19T05:00
Donald Trump has built his presidency on top of racial dog whistles, xenophobic rhetoric, and anti-immigrant policies. A core belief among liberals was that this strategy would help Trump with whit...
ListenAntitrust, censorship, misinformation, and the 2020 election from 2020-11-16T05:00
I’ve been fascinated by the sharp change in how the tech platforms — particularly the big social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and to some degree, YouTube — are acting since the 2020 elec...
ListenThe crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party. from 2020-11-12T05:00
If the past week — and past four years — have proven anything, it’s that we are not as different as we believed. No longer is the question, "Can it happen here?" It’s happening already. As this pod...
ListenChris Hayes and I process this wild election from 2020-11-05T00:50
This is not the post-election breakdown I expected to have today, but it's definitely the one that I needed. Chris Hayes is the host of the MSNBC primetime show, “All In," and the podcast "Why is t...
ListenStacey Abrams on minority rule, voting rights, and the future of democracy from 2020-11-02T05:00
We’re one day away from the election, though who-knows-how-many days from finding out who won it. But there’s more at stake than whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be our next president. Ther...
ListenNate Silver on why 2020 isn't 2016 from 2020-10-29T04:00
As you may have heard, there's a pretty important election coming up. That means it's time to bring back the one and only Nate Silver. Silver, the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, ...
ListenSarah Kliff grades Biden and Trump's health care plans from 2020-10-26T04:00
There are few issues on which the stakes in this election are quite as stark as on health care. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden plans to pass (and Democrats largely support) a massive hea...
ListenTrumpism never existed. It was always just Trump. from 2020-10-22T04:00
In 2016, Julius Krein was one of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. In Trump’s critiques of the existing Republican and Democratic establishments, Krein saw the contours of a heterodox ideology...
ListenWhat should Democrats do about the Supreme Court? from 2020-10-19T04:00
If Democrats win back power this November, they will be faced with a choice: Leave the existing Supreme Court intact, and watch their legislative agenda — and perhaps democracy itself — be graduall...
ListenMarilynne Robinson on writing, metaphysics, and the Donald Trump dilemma from 2020-10-15T04:00
Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest American novelists alive today. She’s the author of the Pulitzer-prize winning Gilead — one of my favorite books, ever — as well as Housekeeping, Home, Lil...
ListenThe case for Trump’s foreign policy from 2020-10-12T04:00
As we approach the 2020 election, I want to make sure the conversation on this show reflects the actual choice the country is facing. So we are going to be doing a few episodes, including this one,...
ListenFareed Zakaria on how Biden and Trump see the world from 2020-10-08T04:00
Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, a columnist for the Washington Post, and one of the most astute foreign policy thinkers of our time. So much of this conversation is focused ...
ListenHow a climate bill becomes a reality from 2020-10-05T04:00
Helluva week in politics, huh? And yet, in the background, the world is still warming, the fires still burning, the future still dimming. There will be plenty of episodes to come on the election. B...
ListenThe meat we eat affects us all from 2020-10-02T04:00
In this special episode of the Future Perfect podcast, neuroscientist Lori Marino helps us understand how arbitrarily we draw the lines between animals as pets and animals as food, and how we might...
ListenA dark, dangerous debate from 2020-09-30T16:59
In a special, post-debate episode, I'm joined by Matt Yglesias to discuss the most unnerving presidential debate I've ever seen. Hosts:Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias), Senior correspondent, Vox E...
ListenA radical — or obvious? — plan to save American democracy from 2020-09-28T04:00
We talk a lot on this show about the problems with American political institutions. But what if all those problems are actually just one problem: the two-party system. Lee Drutman is a political s...
ListenRBG, minority rule, and our looming legitimacy crisis from 2020-09-24T04:00
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just weeks before a presidential election, leaves us in dangerous waters. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which the election outcome is contested by one side an...
ListenDavid French and I debate polarization, secession, and the filibuster from 2020-09-21T04:00
David French is a senior editor at the Dispatch, a columnist at Time, and one of the conservative commentators I read most closely. French and I have rather different politics — he's a Christian co...
ListenThe Matt Yglesias Show from 2020-09-17T04:00
Matt Yglesias is a co-founder and senior correspondent at Vox, my co-host on The Weeds podcast, and my oldest friend in journalism. Matt’s college blog was an inspiration for my own, and since then...
ListenRace, policing, and the universal yearning for safety from 2020-09-14T04:00
Our conversation over race and policing — like our conversations over virtually everything in America — is shot through with a crude individualism. Talking in terms of systems and contexts comes le...
ListenHow to think about coronavirus risk in your life from 2020-09-10T04:00
Coronavirus has turned life into an endless series of risk calculations. Can I take my child to see his grandparents, even if it means getting on a plane? Is it okay to begin seeing friends or dati...
ListenBlack Republicans, Donald Trump, and America's "George Floyd moment" from 2020-09-07T04:00
The Republican Party began losing the Black vote around 1936. Since then, Republicans have commissioned reports, hired consultants, and spent huge sums of campaign dollars trying to win back Black ...
ListenAndrew Yang on UBI, coronavirus, and his next job in politics from 2020-09-03T04:00
The last time Andrew Yang was on the podcast, he was just beginning his long shot campaign for the presidency. Now, he’s fresh off a speaking slot at the Democratic convention, and, as he reveals h...
ListenWhy the hell did America invade Iraq? from 2020-08-31T04:00
In 2003, America invaded Iraq. The war cost trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and destabilized the both the US and the Middle East. And for wh...
ListenHow to decarbonize America — and create 25 million jobs from 2020-08-27T04:00
Saul Griffith knows the US energy system better than just about anyone on this planet. He’s an inventor, a MacArthur genius fellow, and the founder and CEO of Otherlab where his team was contracted...
ListenIsabel Wilkerson wants to change how we understand race in America from 2020-08-24T04:00
Isabel Wilkerson is an intimidating guest. She’s a former New York Times reporter, Pulitzer Prize recipient, Guggenheim fellow, and hands-down one of the best writers of our time. Her 2010 book The...
ListenWhat it would take to end child poverty in America from 2020-08-20T04:00
In 2019, about one in six children in America — 12 million kids nationwide — lived in poverty. That’s a rate about two or three times higher than in peer countries. And that was before the worst ec...
ListenHannah Gadsby on comedy, free speech, and living with autism from 2020-08-17T04:00
Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby became a global star with her Netflix special Nanette. It’s a remarkable piece of work, and it does what great art is supposed to do: Give you a sense, however fle...
ListenWhat would Keynes do? from 2020-08-13T04:00
The novel coronavirus — and America’s disastrously inept response — has shuttered the economy, leaving factories quiet, businesses closed, workers unable to do their jobs. Pulling out of this hole ...
ListenA devastating indictment of the Republican Party from 2020-08-10T04:00
For 30 years, Stuart Stevens was one of the most influential operatives in Republican politics. He was Mitt Romney’s top strategist in 2012, served in key roles on both of George W. Bush’s presiden...
ListenHow inequality and white identity politics feed each other from 2020-08-06T04:00
Conservative parties operating in modern democracies face a dilemma: How does a party that represents the interests of moneyed elites win mass support? The dilemma sharpens as inequality widens — t...
ListenBest of: Jia Tolentino on what happens when life is an endless performance from 2020-08-03T04:00
The introduction to Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, hit me hard. In her investigation of how American politics and culture had collapsed into “an unbearable supernova of...
ListenDadding out with Mike Birbiglia from 2020-07-30T04:00
Mike Birbiglia is one of my favorite comedians. He’s behind the specials. “Thank God for Jokes” and “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” the movies “Sleepwalk With Me” and “Don’t Think Twice,” and now the ...
ListenA rabbi explains how to make sense of suffering from 2020-07-27T04:00
In this special crossover episode of Vox's Future Perfect series, The Way Through, Co-host Sean Illing talks to David Wolpe, senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, about God and how to make s...
ListenThe crisis in the news from 2020-07-23T04:00
There’s been a lot of discussion lately — including on this show — of the problems facing national news. Cries of fake news, illiberalism in the administration, fractured audiences, the cancel cult...
ListenBryan Stevenson on how America can heal from 2020-07-20T04:00
What would it take for America to heal? To be the country it claims to be? This is the question that animates Bryan Stevenson’s career. Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal...
ListenWhat a post-Trump Republican Party might look like from 2020-07-16T04:00
Five years ago, Oren Cass sat at the center of the Republican Party. Cass is a former management consultant who served as the domestic policy director for the Mitt Romney campaign and then as a sen...
ListenFree speech, safety, and ‘the letter’ from 2020-07-13T04:00
Last week, Harper’s published an open letter arguing that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” The letter had a long...
ListenThe frightening fragility of America's political institutions from 2020-07-09T04:00
Masha Gessen grew up in the Soviet Union and spent two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, before being driven from the country by policies targeting LGBT people. Watching...
ListenCan artificial intelligence be emotionally intelligent? from 2020-07-06T04:00
When we talk about AI, we’re often talking about a very particular, narrow form of intelligence — the sort of analytical competence that can win you games of GO or solve complex math equations. Tha...
ListenDanielle Allen on the radicalism of the American revolution — and its lessons for today from 2020-07-02T04:00
My first conversation with Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen in fall 2019 was one of my all-time favorites. I didn’t expect to have Allen on again so soon, but her work is unusually relevan...
ListenLand of the Giants: The Netflix Effect from 2020-07-01T04:00
Land of the Giants is a podcast from our friends at Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network that examines the most powerful tech companies of our time. The second season is called The Netflix Eff...
ListenNicholas Carr on deep reading and digital thinking from 2020-06-29T04:00
In 1964, the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan wrote his opus Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In it, he writes, “In the long run, a medium's content matters less than the medium its...
ListenYour questions, answered from 2020-06-25T04:00
Believe it or not, we’re already halfway through 2020. What a great year so far, huh? Just a delight. That means it’s time for an AMA. Among the questions you asked: If Joe Biden is elected presid...
ListenWhich country has the world's best healthcare system? from 2020-06-22T04:00
I got my start as a blogger. But more specifically, I got my start as a health policy blogger. My first piece of writing I remember people really caring about was a series called “The Health of Nat...
ListenThe transformative power of restorative justice from 2020-06-18T04:00
The criminal justice system asks three questions: What law was broken? Who broke it? And what should the punishment be? Upon that edifice — and channeled through old bigotries and fears — we have b...
ListenRoss Douthat and I debate American decadence from 2020-06-15T04:00
In his new book, The Decadent Society, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat diagnoses America’s core problems as decadence: “a situation in which repetition is more the norm than innovation; in wh...
ListenA serious conversation about UFOs from 2020-06-11T04:00
You may have been following — I hope you are following — the New York Times's recent UFO reporting. Videos that the Navy confirms are real show pilots seeing and marveling over craft they can't exp...
ListenA former prosecutor's case for prison abolition from 2020-06-08T04:00
In 2017, Paul Butler published the book Chokehold: Policing Black Men. For Butler the chokehold is much more than a barbaric police tactic; it is also a powerful powerful metaphor for understanding...
ListenWhy Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful from 2020-06-04T04:00
The first question I asked Ta-Nehisi Coates, in this episode, was broad: What does he see right now, as he looks out at the country? “I can't believe I'm gonna say this,” he replied, “but I see hop...
ListenAre humans fundamentally good? (with Rutger Bregman) from 2020-06-01T04:00
Dutch historian and De Correspondent writer Rutger Bregman got famous for the lashings he gave Tucker Carlson and the assembled plutocrats of Davos. But his work is far more utopian than polemical....
ListenFrom politician to priest from 2020-05-28T04:00
I first met Cyrus Habib at a conference a few years ago. You don't forget him. He's a Rhodes scholar. Iranian-America. As lieutenant governor of Washington state, he was the youngest Democrat elect...
ListenRobert Frank's radical idea from 2020-05-25T04:00
I’ve known Cornell economist Robert Frank for almost 15 years. And for as long as I’ve known him, Frank has been trying to convince his fellow economists of an idea that’s simple to state, but radi...
ListenWhy “essential” workers are treated as disposable from 2020-05-21T04:00
Grocery store clerks. Fast food cashiers. Hospice care workers. Bus drivers. Farm workers. Along with doctors and nurses, these are the people who are putting their own lives at risk to keep our so...
Listen"The world’s scariest economist” on coronavirus, innovation, and purpose from 2020-05-18T04:00
The Times of London called Mariana Mazzucato “the world’s scariest economist.” Quartz describes her as “on a mission to save capitalism from itself.” Wired says she has “a plan to fix capitalism,” ...
ListenA mind-bending conversation about quantum mechanics and parallel worlds from 2020-05-14T04:00
While you read these words, the universe is splitting into countless copies. New realities, all with a version of you, exactly like you are now, but journeying off into their own branch of the mult...
ListenWhy the coronavirus is so deadly for black America from 2020-05-11T04:00
In Michigan, African Americans represent 14 percent of the population, 33 percent of infections, and 40 percent of deaths. In Mississippi they represent 38 percent of the population, 56 percent of ...
ListenJenny Odell on nature, art, and burnout in quarantine from 2020-05-07T04:00
One of my favorite episodes of this show was my conversation with Jenny Odell, just under a year ago. Odell, a visual artist, writer, and Stanford lecturer, had just released her book How to Do Not...
ListenAn unusually honest conversation about wielding political power from 2020-05-04T04:00
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) is the co-chair of the 95-member House Progressive Caucus. That means, in the aftermath of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, she leads the most influential bl...
ListenWhat should the media learn from coronavirus? from 2020-04-30T04:00
The coronavirus is “a nightmare scenario” for media, wrote New York Times columnist Charlie Warzel. “It is stealthy, resilient and confounding to experts. It moves far faster than scientists can st...
ListenBill Gates’s vision for life beyond coronavirus from 2020-04-27T04:00
In 2015, I asked Bill Gates a simple question: What are you most afraid of? He replied by telling me about the death chart of the 20th century. There’s the spike for World War I. The spike for Wor...
ListenAn epic conversation with Madeline Miller from 2020-04-23T04:00
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to introduce a conversation on this show as fun. But this one was. I needed it. Maybe you do, too. Madeline Miller has written some of my favorite novels of t...
ListenThe loneliness pandemic/Betraying “essential workers” from 2020-04-20T04:00
We have something a bit different today. Two episodes from our extraordinary colleagues at Today, Explained, both of them close to my heart. The first is an episode that I worked with them on, and...
ListenWhy Bernie Sanders lost and how progressives can still win from 2020-04-16T04:00
The Democratic presidential primary is over. Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee heading into the fall. And this week, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren endorsed their former competitor. On the ...
ListenScott Gottlieb on how, and when, to end social distancing from 2020-04-13T04:00
When will social distancing end? When will life return to “normal”? And what will it take to get there? Scott Gottlieb is a physician and public health expert who served as Donald Trump’s first FD...
ListenToby Ord on existential risk, Donald Trump, and thinking in probabilities from 2020-04-09T04:00
Oxford philosopher Toby Ord spent the early part of his career spearheading the effective altruism movement, founding Giving What We Can, and focusing his attention primarily on issue areas like gl...
ListenElizabeth Warren has a plan for this, too from 2020-04-06T04:00
In January, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the first presidential candidate to release a plan for combatting coronavirus. In March, she released a second plan. Days later, with the scale of economic dam...
ListenWhat social solidarity demands of us in a pandemic from 2020-04-02T04:00
There is no doubt that social distancing is the best way to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But the efficacy of social distancing (or really any other public health measure) relies on something...
ListenCoronavirus has pushed US-China relations to their worst point since Mao from 2020-03-30T04:00
The COVID-19 pandemic is a grim reminder that the worst really can happen. Tail risk is real risk. Political leaders fumble, miscalculate, and bluster into avoidable disaster. And even as we try to...
ListenIs the cure worse than the disease? from 2020-03-26T04:00
"We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself!" That was President Donald Trump, this week, explaining why he was thinking about lifting coronavirus guidelines earlier than public-health...
ListenAn economic crisis like we’ve never seen from 2020-03-23T04:00
“What is happening,” writes Annie Lowrey, “is a shock to the American economy more sudden and severe than anyone alive has ever experienced.” It’s also different from what anyone alive has ever e...
Listen"The virus is more patient than people are" from 2020-03-19T04:00
Ron Klain served as the chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden. In 2014, President Barack Obama tapped him to lead the administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Afric...
ListenA master class in organizing from 2020-03-16T04:00
The Bernie Sanders campaign is an organizing tour-de-force relative to the Joe Biden campaign; yet the latter has won primary after primary — with even higher turnouts than 2016. So does organizing...
ListenWeeds 2020: The coronavirus election from 2020-03-14T04:00
This week, President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders each gave separate speeches in response to a rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak in the Uni...
ListenDan Pfeiffer on Joe Biden, beating Trump, and saving democracy from 2020-03-12T04:00
Before becoming the co-host of Pod Save America, Dan Pfeiffer spent most of his adult life in Democratic Party politics, which included serving as White House communications director for President ...
ListenAre you a "political hobbyist?" If so, you're the problem. from 2020-03-09T04:00
Obsessively following the daily political news feels like an act of politics, or at least an act of civics. But what if, for many of us, it’s a replacement for politics — and one that’s actually hu...
ListenWhat would a Sanders or Biden presidency look like? from 2020-03-05T05:00
Super Tuesday winnowed the 2020 Democratic primary race down to two candidates: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. So how would their presidencies actually differ? Who would staff their administrations?...
ListenRebecca Solnit on Harvey Weinstein, feminism, and social change from 2020-03-02T05:00
Rebecca Solnit is one of the great activist-essayists of our age. Her books and writing cover a vast amount of human existence, but a common thread in her work — and a focus of her upcoming memoir,...
ListenWeeds 2020: The Bernie electability debate from 2020-02-29T05:00
Welcome to Weeds 2020! Every other Saturday Ezra and Matt will be exploring a wide range of topics related to the 2020 race. Since the Nevada caucuses, Bernie Sanders has become the clear frontrun...
ListenTracy K. Smith changed how I read poetry from 2020-02-27T05:00
It’s the rare podcast conversation where, as it’s happening, I’m making notes to go back and listen again so I can fully absorb what I heard. But this is that kind of episode. Tracy K. Smith is the...
ListenBarbara Ehrenreich on UBI, class conflict, and collective joy from 2020-02-24T05:00
In the late 90s Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover as a waitress to discover how people with minimum wage full-time jobs were making ends meet. It turned out, they weren’t. Ehrenreich’s book Nickle...
ListenWhat Donald Trump got right about white America from 2020-02-20T05:00
Hello! I’m Jane Coaston, filling in for Ezra. My guest today is Tim Carney, a commentary editor at the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In the wake o...
ListenTa-Nehisi Coates on my “cold, atheist book” from 2020-02-17T05:00
This one was a pleasure. Ta-Nehisi Coates joined me in Brooklyn for part of the “Why We’re Polarized” tour. His description of the book may be my favorite yet. It is, he says, “a cold, atheist book...
ListenIf God is dead, then … socialism? from 2020-02-13T08:00
Hello! I’m Sean Illing, Vox’s interviews writer filling in for Ezra while he’s on book tour. My guest today is Martin Hägglund, a philosopher at Yale and the author of This Life: Secular Faith and ...
ListenTim Urban on humanity’s wild future from 2020-02-10T08:00
I’ve been a fan of Tim Urban and his site Wait But Why for a long time. Urban uses whimsical illustrations, infographics, and friendly, nontechnical language to explain everything from AI to space...
ListenJill Lepore on what I get wrong from 2020-02-06T08:00
Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian, a New Yorker contributor, the author of These Truths, and one of my favorite past guests on this show. But in this episode, the tables are turned: I’m in the hot...
ListenIs Tom Steyer the solution to our dysfunctional politics? from 2020-02-03T08:00
Tom Steyer has worked for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He made his billions running a hedge fund for decades before moving into progressive activism on causes like democratization, climate cha...
ListenWhy We're Polarized, with Jamelle Bouie (live!) from 2020-01-30T08:00
The Why We’re Polarized book tour kicked off this week with a wonderful event at Sixth and I in Washington, DC. My conversation partner for this one was New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. Our...
ListenAntisemitism now, antisemitism then from 2020-01-27T08:00
“The bad days are back” wrote Batya Ungar-Sargon in the Forward in December, “Orthodox Jews are living through a new age of pogroms. This week, as we celebrated the Festival of Lights, there were n...
ListenBook excerpt: A better theory of identity politics from 2020-01-23T08:00
This is a podcast episode literally years in the making. It’s an excerpt — the first anywhere — from my book Why We’re Polarized. A core argument of the book is that identity is the central driver ...
ListenThe war on Muslims (with Mehdi Hasan) from 2020-01-20T08:00
With “reeducation" camps in China, religious disenfranchisement in India, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, street violence in Sri Lanka, mass shootings in New Zealand, the flourishing of far-right part...
ListenPost-debate special! from 2020-01-16T08:00
Vox's Matt Yglesias and I unpack the debate that did, and didn't, happen. Related reading:"Joe Biden will never give up on the system" by Ezra Klein "4 winners and 3 losers from the January Democra...
ListenAn “uncomfortable” conversation with Cory Booker from 2020-01-13T09:00
There is a moral radicalism to the way Cory Booker lives out his politics. He lived for years in a housing project. He leads hunger strikes. He challenges political machines. He’s a vegan. He has a...
ListenThe conservative mind of Yuval Levin from 2020-01-09T09:00
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first is ideology, which describes our vision of a just ...
ListenHow an epidemic begins and ends from 2020-01-08T09:00
Introducing season 3 of The Impact! The 2020 candidates have some bold ideas to tackle some of our country's biggest problems, like climate change, the opioid crisis, and unaffordable health care. ...
ListenNathan Robinson’s case for socialism from 2020-01-06T09:00
“Socialism” is simultaneously one of the most commonly used and most confusing terms in American politics. Does being a socialist mean advocating for the complete abolition of capitalism, markets, ...
ListenHow to topple dictators and transform society (with Erica Chenoweth) from 2020-01-02T09:00
The 2010s witnessed a sharp uptick in nonviolent resistance movements all across the globe. Over the course of the last decade we’ve seen record numbers of popular protests, grassroots campaigns, a...
ListenAsk Ezra Anything from 2019-12-30T09:00
It’s here. The final AMA of 2019. Among the questions you asked: - If you believe that changing someone's mind about a topic, any topic is difficult, how do you function as a journalist?- What’s yo...
ListenBest of: Work as identity, burnout as lifestyle from 2019-12-26T09:00
Here, at the end of the year, I wanted to share one of my favorite episodes of 2019 with you. Earlier this year, two essays on America’s changing relationship to work caught my eye. The first was A...
ListenRepublicans vs. the planet from 2019-12-23T09:00
Dave Roberts is an energy and climate writer at Vox and a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He started as his career covering climate science...
ListenThe geoengineering question from 2019-12-19T09:00
Most analyses of how to “solve” climate change start from a single, crucial assumption: that carbon emissions and global warming are inextricably linked. Geoengineering is a set of technologies and...
ListenHow to solve climate change and make life more awesome from 2019-12-16T09:00
The climate series is back! The reason for the delay is that I wanted to make sure that this episode was next up in the series. Once you start listening, you’ll understand why. So far, we’ve spent...
ListenPaul Krugman on climate, robots, single-payer, and so much more from 2019-12-12T09:00
It’s cliché to call podcasts wide-ranging. But this conversation, with Nobel-prize winning economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, really is. A sample of what we discuss: - How economists mu...
ListenThe moral philosophy of The Good Place (with Mike Schur and Pamela Hieronymi) from 2019-12-09T09:00
After creating and running Parks and Recreation and writing for The Office, Michael Schur decided he wanted to create a sitcom about one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: What d...
ListenWhen doing the right thing makes you a criminal from 2019-12-05T09:00
For most of his life, Wayne Hsiung was a typical overachiever. He attended the University of Chicago, started his PhD in Economics, became a law professor at Northwestern, was mentored by Cass Suns...
ListenPeter Singer on the lives you can save from 2019-12-02T09:00
Imagine you’re walking to work. You see a child drowning in a lake. You’re about to jump in and save her when you realize you’re wearing your best suit, and the rescue will end up costing hundreds ...
ListenBest of: The age of "mega-identity" politics from 2019-11-28T09:00
Happy Thanksgiving! Please enjoy a re-air episode from April 2018 with Lilliana Mason. Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking abou...
ListenBecause podcast from 2019-11-25T09:00
Gretchen McCulloch is a self-described “internet linguist,” host of the podcast Lingthusiasm, and author of the recent book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. In it, she dem...
ListenThere’s more to life than profit from 2019-11-21T09:00
Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and he’s just released a new book, This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. In Strickler’s telling, our soc...
ListenHaving a bad day? Dave Eggers can help. from 2019-11-18T09:00
I’ve wanted to have Dave Eggers on the show for a while now. Eggers has not only written a vast range of books (a deeply ironic personal memoir, a heartwarming novel about a Sudanese refugee, a fut...
ListenHow Whole Foods, yoga, and NPR became the hallmarks of the elite from 2019-11-14T09:00
If you're anything like me, this episode will make you think about the way you shop, learn, eat, parent, and exercise in a whole new way. My guest today is Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor of ...
ListenHow social media makes us antisocial from 2019-11-11T09:00
Andrew Marantz is a writer at the New Yorker who, for years, has been deeply immersed in the world of conservative trolls, alt-right social media personalities, and online conspiracy theorists. His...
ListenICYMI: Edward Norton’s theory of mind, movies, and power from 2019-11-08T21:31:25
Due to a technical glitch this interview with Edward Norton did not find it’s way into most people’s feeds. If you were able to download the first one this is indeed the exact same interview, but ...
ListenIntroducing Reset from 2019-11-08T09:00
Thanks for listening to Reset from Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's episodes were Can A.I. Tech You To Write Better and Quantum Supremacy, WTF. If you enjoyed these episodes, subs...
ListenWhat a smarter Trumpism would sound like from 2019-11-07T09:00
Michael Lind is a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the co-founder of the New America Foundation, and an important contributor to American Affairs, a journal originally creat...
ListenThe climate crisis is an oceans crisis from 2019-11-04T09:00
Welcome to episode 2 of our climate cluster. The more I prepared for this series, the more I realize there was a big blue gap in my understanding of climate change. Oceans cover 70% of the earth, a...
ListenWe live in The Good Place. And we’re screwing it up. from 2019-10-28T08:00
Welcome to the first episode of our climate cluster. This isn’t a series about whether “the science is real” on climate change. This is a series about what the science says — and what it means for ...
ListenNeoliberalism and its discontents from 2019-10-24T08:00
“Neoliberalism” is one of the most confusing phrases in political discourse today. The term is often used to describe the market fundamentalism of thinkers like Milton Friedman and Frederich Hayek ...
ListenThe four words that will decide impeachment from 2019-10-21T08:00
Hey EK Show listeners! Something different today. The first episode of my new podcast: Impeachment, Explained. This was the week of confessions. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admi...
ListenWe don’t just feel emotions. We make them. from 2019-10-17T08:00
How do you feel right now? Excited to listen to your favorite podcast? Anxious about the state of American politics? Annoyed by my use of rhetorical questions? These questions seem pretty straightf...
ListenHow politics became a war against reality from 2019-10-14T08:00
In his brilliant 2014 book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Soviet-born TV producer turned journalist Peter Pomerantsev described 21st-century Russia as a political anomaly. He wrote abo...
ListenThe loneliness epidemic from 2019-10-10T08:00
As US surgeon general from 2014 to 2017, Vivek Murthy visited communities across the United States to talk about issues like addiction, obesity, and mental illness. But he found that what Americans...
ListenIbram X. Kendi wants to redefine racism from 2019-10-07T08:00
Racism is one of the most morally charged words in the English language. It is typically understood as a form of deep inner prejudice — something that people actively feel and consciously express. ...
ListenMalcolm Gladwell’s Stranger Things from 2019-10-03T08:00
Malcolm Gladwell’s work is nothing short of an intellectual adventure. Sometimes, as in his podcast Revisionist History, he takes something small and mundane — a hockey statistic, a semicolon, a v...
ListenAn inspiring conversation about democracy from 2019-09-30T08:00
Danielle Allen directs Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She’s a political theorist, and a philosopher, and the principal investigator of the Democratic Knowledge Project. I talk about d...
ListenSamantha Power’s journey from foreign policy critic to UN ambassador from 2019-09-26T08:00
Samantha Power reported from the killing fields of Bosnia. She watched a genocide that could’ve been stopped years earlier grind on amidst international indifference. What she saw there led to A Pr...
ListenWhen meritocracy wins, everybody loses from 2019-09-23T08:00
In The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits argues that meritocracy — a system set-up to expand opportunity, reduce inequality and end aristocracy — has become exactly what it was set up to combat: a...
ListenNikole Hannah-Jones on the 1619 project, choosing schools, and Cuba from 2019-09-19T08:00
“The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today” writes Nikole Hannah-Jones “it has been borne on the backs of black resistance.” Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist at the Ne...
ListenRandall Munroe, the genius behind XKCD from 2019-09-16T04:40
I’m not usually a fanboy on this podcast, but this episode is the exception. I love the web-comic XKCD. I’ve had prints of it hanging in my house for years. It’s nerdy and humane, curious and kind....
ListenJulián Castro's quiet moral radicalism from 2019-09-12T08:00
I’m careful about inviting politicians onto this podcast. Too often, questions go unanswered, and frustrated emails flood my inbox. So I only bring on candidates now if there’s a conversation direc...
ListenPolitical animals (with Leah Garcés) from 2019-09-09T08:00
Imagine, for a moment, what it’s like to be an animal rights activist. Tens of billions of animals are being tortured and slaughtered every year. It is, to you, a rolling horror. But to the people ...
ListenJohn McWhorter thinks we're getting racism wrong from 2019-09-05T08:00
Hello everyone. I'm Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter at Vox with a focus on conservatism (Ezra will be back from vacation next week). "Antiracism… is now a new and increasingly dominant reli...
ListenThe rocky marriage between libertarians and conservatives from 2019-09-02T08:00
Hello, everybody! I'm Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter at Vox with a focus on conservatism. Today, I'm speaking with Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer for the Atlantic, who has been navigati...
ListenA mind-bending, reality-warping conversation with John Higgs from 2019-08-29T08:00
I don’t usually begin interviews with the question “who the hell are you?” But, then again, not every guest is John Higgs. I fell into Higgs’s work by accident. An offhand recommendation of his boo...
ListenJia Tolentino on what happens when life is an endless performance from 2019-08-26T08:00
The introduction to Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, hit me hard. In her investigation of how American politics and culture had collapsed into “an unbearable supernova of...
ListenThe original meaning of “identity politics” (with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor) from 2019-08-22T08:00
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an associate professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University and the author of multiple books, including most recently How We Get Free: Black Feminism and t...
ListenAre bosses dictators? (with Elizabeth Anderson) from 2019-08-19T08:00
Imagine a society whose rulers suppress free speech, free association, even bathroom breaks. Where the government owns the means of production. Where the leader is self-appointed or hand-selected b...
ListenThe Constitution is a progressive document from 2019-08-15T08:00
“The Constitution must be adapted to the problems of each generation,” writes Erwin Chemerisnky, “we are not living in the world of 1787 and should not pretend that the choices for that time can gu...
ListenMatt Bruenig’s case for single-payer health care from 2019-08-12T08:00
The Democratic primary has been unexpectedly dominated by a single question: Will you abolish private health insurance?Wrapped in that question are dozens more. Why, if private health insurance is ...
ListenCan Raj Chetty save the American dream? from 2019-08-08T08:00
I don’t ordinarily find myself scrambling to write down article ideas during these conversations, but almost everything Raj Chetty says is worth a feature unto itself. For instance: - Great Kinderg...
ListenAstra Taylor will change how you think about democracy from 2019-08-05T08:00
Astra Taylor’s new book has the best title I’ve seen in a long time: Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone. I talk a lot about democracy on this show, but not in the way Taylor ...
ListenIs big tech addictive? Nir Eyal and I debate. from 2019-08-01T08:00
“How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?” That’s the opening line of the description for Nir Eyal’s bestselling 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Hoo...
ListenGeneration Climate Change from 2019-07-29T08:00
This is one of those episodes I want to put the hard sell on. It’s one of the most important conversations I’ve had on the show. The fact that it left me feeling better about the world rather than ...
ListenIs the media amplifying Trump’s racism? (with Whitney Phillips) from 2019-07-25T08:00
Some podcasts I do are easy. There’s a problem and, hey look, here’s a great answer! Some are hard. There’s a problem and, well, there may not be a good answer. This is one of those. When Donald Tr...
ListenRutger Bregman’s utopias, and mine from 2019-07-22T08:00
Universal basic income. A 15-hour work week. Open borders. These ideas may strike you as crazy, fantastical, maybe even utopian... but that’s exactly the point.My guest today is Dutch historian Rut...
ListenHow white identity politics won the Republican civil war from 2019-07-18T08:00
Tim Alberta’s new book American Carnage documents “the Republican Civil War”: a decade-plus struggle over whether the Republican Party would build itself around white identity politics or try to re...
ListenGeorge Will makes the conservative case against democracy from 2019-07-15T08:00
It’s a good time to be a Republican. But it’s a bad time, George Will argues, to be a conservative. Hence his new, 700-page manifesto, The Conservative Sensibility, which tries to rescue conservati...
ListenWhat deliberative democracy can, and can’t, do (with Jane Mansbridge) from 2019-07-11T08:00
Every time I do an episode on polarization, I get a few emails asking: What about deliberative democracy? Couldn’t that be an answer? Deliberative democracy, if you’re not familiar, refers to a bro...
ListenRod Dreher on America’s post-Christian culture war [CORRECTED] from 2019-07-08T14:05
[A quick note about this episode - we have fixed an error that caused some listeners to hear overlapping audio in the first portion of the show. Thank you for your understanding, and we're sorry fo...
ListenWhite threat in a browning America (Jennifer Richeson re-air) from 2019-07-04T08:00
This conversation with Yale psychologist and MacArthur genius Jennifer Richeson first appeared a year ago, and it’s one of my favorites. But I wanted to repost it now for two reasons. First, it’s a...
ListenBehind the panic in white, Christian America from 2019-07-01T08:00
About seven in 10 American seniors are white Christians. Among young adults, fewer than three in 10 are. During the span of the Obama administration, America went from a majority white Christian na...
ListenAn enlightening, frustrating conversation on liberalism (with Adam Gopnik) from 2019-06-27T08:00
“Liberalism is as distinct a tradition as exists in political history, but it suffers from being a practice before it is an ideology, a temperament and a tone and a way of managing the world more t...
ListenThe cognitive cost of poverty (with Sendhil Mullainathan) from 2019-06-24T08:00
If you’re a Parks and Rec fan, you’ll remember Ron Swanson’s Pyramid of Greatness. Right there at the base sits “Capitalism: God’s way of determining who is smart and who is poor.”It’s a joke, but ...
ListenFailing towards Utopia from 2019-06-21T15:49
Nice Try! is a new podcast from Curbed and the Vox Media Podcast Network that explores stories of people who have tried to design a better world, and what happens when those designs don't go accord...
ListenWhy liberals and conservatives create such different media (with Danna Young) from 2019-06-20T08:00
The debate over polarized media can make the two ecosystems sound equivalent. One is left, the other right, but otherwise they’re the same. That couldn’t be more wrong. They’re structured different...
ListenStacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo (Live!) from 2019-06-17T08:00
“The phrase ‘identity politics’ is a weaponization of the Democrats’ structural advantage in elections from now until eternity,” says Stacey Abrams. In this live interview from 2019’s Code conferen...
ListenThis changed how I think about love (with Alison Gopnik) from 2019-06-13T08:00
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California Berkeley. She’s published more than 100 journal articles and half a dozen books. She runs a cognitive devel...
ListenThe plan behind Elizabeth Warren’s plans from 2019-06-10T08:00
Oligarchic capitalism? Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that. Opioid deaths? She’s got a plan for that too. Same is true for high housing costs, offshoring, child care, breaking up Big Tech, curbing...
ListenMichael Lewis reads my mind from 2019-06-06T02:15
Michael Lewis needs little introduction. He’s the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, The Fifth Risk. He’s the host of the new podcast “Against the Rules.” He’s a mast...
ListenHow Mitch McConnell convinced Michael Bennet to run for president from 2019-06-03T08:00
I’m not sure what I expected Sen. Michael Bennet’s answer to be when I asked him why he was running for president. I didn’t expect it to be “Mitch McConnell.” Since arriving in the Senate in 2009, ...
ListenHow the brains of master meditators change from 2019-05-30T08:00
Richie Davidson has spent a lifetime studying meditation. He’s studied it as a practitioner, sitting daily, going on retreats, and learning under masters. And he’s pioneered the study of it as a sc...
ListenWhy good people are easily corrupted (with Lawrence Lessig) from 2019-05-27T08:00
I’ve been learning from, and arguing with, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig for a decade now. We have a long-running debate over whether money or polarization is the root cause of our politica...
ListenThe art of attention (with Jenny Odell) from 2019-05-23T08:00
“For some, there may be a kind of engineer’s satisfaction in the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experience,” writes Jenny Odell. “And yet a certain nervous feeling, of being overst...
ListenMatt Yglesias and Jenny Schuetz solve the housing crisis from 2019-05-20T08:00
In this special crossover episode, Brookings Institution’s Jenny Schuetz joins The Weeds’ Matt Yglesias to discuss subsidies, zoning reform, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...
ListenWhat kind of news is cable news? (With Brian Stelter) from 2019-05-16T08:00
Brian Stelter is the host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, as well as the network’s chief media correspondent. But before he was the host of Reliable Sources, he was just a kid with a blog — a blog that ...
ListenContrapoints on taking the trolls seriously from 2019-05-13T08:00
YouTube is where tomorrow’s politics are happening today. If you’re over 30, and you don’t spend much time on the platform, it’s almost impossible to explain how central it is to young people’s med...
ListenThe purpose of political violence from 2019-05-09T08:00
“Between 1830 and 1860, there were more than seventy violent incidents between congressmen in the House and Senate chambers or on nearby streets and dueling grounds.” Here’s the wild thing about th...
ListenAsk Ezra Anything 3: Endgame from 2019-05-06T09:00
Time for another AMA! You all hit the big stuff in this one. What’s the purpose of this show? How do I prep for it? What did I think of the Whiteshift conversation? What has fatherhood changed in m...
ListenThe disillusionment of David Brooks from 2019-05-02T09:00
2013 was David Brooks’s worst year. “The realities that used to define my life fell away,” he says. His marriage ended. His children moved out. The conservative movement was undergoing the crack-up...
ListenEmily Oster schools me on parenthood from 2019-04-29T09:00
I’ve read a lot of Emily Oster over the past year. Her first book, Expecting Better, has become the data-minded parent’s bible on pregnancy. Her new book, Cribsheet, extends that analysis to the fi...
ListenLessons from Vox’s first 5 years from 2019-04-25T09:00
This is a special episode for me. Vox turns 5 this week! So I sat down with my co-founders, Melissa Bell and Matt Yglesias, to discuss what went right, what went wrong, what changed in the media en...
ListenWork as identity, burnout as lifestyle from 2019-04-22T09:00
In the past few months, two essays on America’s changing relationship to work caught my eye. The first was Anne Helen Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed piece defining, and describing, “millennial burnout.”...
ListenHow social democrats won Europe — then lost it from 2019-04-18T09:00
Democratic socialism is on the rise in the United States, but it’s been a dominant force for far longer in Europe. Ask Bernie Sanders to define his ideology and he doesn’t start naming political th...
ListenIn defense of white-backlash politics from 2019-04-15T09:00
“The big question of our time is less, ‘What does it mean to be American?’ than, ‘What does it mean to be white American in an age of ethnic change?’” writes Eric Kaufmann in his new book Whiteshif...
ListenIdentity, nationalism, and fatherhood from 2019-04-11T09:00
Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review and the author of My Father Left Me Ireland, a moving, lyrical memoir about fatherhood and identity. It’s also a stirring defense of ...
ListenAn ex-libertarian’s quest to rebuild the center right from 2019-04-08T09:00
Nothing would do more to repair American politics than for the center right to regain power in the Republican coalition. But before that can happen, the center right needs to exist — it needs a the...
ListenHow whiteness distorts our democracy, with Eddie Glaude Jr. from 2019-04-04T09:00
“Race isn’t about black people, necessarily,” says Eddie Glaude Jr. “It’s about the way whiteness works to disfigure and distort our democracy, and the ideals that animate our democracy.” Glaude is...
ListenPete Buttigieg’s theory of political change from 2019-04-01T12:56
First off. Hello! I’m back from paternity leave. And this is a helluva podcast to restart with. Pete Buttigieg is a Rhodes scholar, a Navy veteran, and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He’s a marr...
ListenMeet the policy architect behind the Green New Deal from 2019-03-28T09:00
Last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey introduced a Green New Deal resolution, outlining a bold effort to decarbonize the US economy and forestall the worst effects of climate...
ListenThe somewhat fractured state of American conservatism from 2019-03-25T09:00
Matthew Continetti, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, sits down with Vox senior politics reporter Jane Coaston to discuss intellectual conservatism, the legacy of William F. Buckley an...
ListenAmerican politics after Christianity, with Ross Douthat from 2019-03-21T09:00
I’m Vox’s interviews writer, Sean Illing. Lately, I’ve been interested in the following question: Is the decline of institutionalized Christianity making our politics worse? The answer may be yes, ...
ListenWhy Gov. Jay Inslee is running for president on climate change from 2019-03-18T09:00
Vox senior politics reporter, Jane Coaston speaks to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee at South by Southwest about climate change, his 2020 candidacy, why it's time to eliminate the filibuster, and the Gr...
ListenICYMI: Julia Galef from 2019-03-14T09:00
For this episode of The Ezra Klein Show, we're digging into the archives to share another of our favorites with you! *At least in politics, this is an era of awful arguments. Arguments made in bad ...
ListenThe roots of extremism, with Deeyah Khan from 2019-03-11T09:00
What draws someone into an extremist movement? Is it about ideology? Race? Politics? So many of our discussions about extremism try to explain away the problem by reducing its complexity, but that ...
ListenICYMI: Paul Krugman from 2019-03-07T10:00
For this episode of the Ezra Klein show we're digging back into the archives to share another of our favorite episodes with you! ***On October 24, 2016, in the final days of the presidential electi...
ListenPop music can make you smarter from 2019-03-06T10:00
Vox takes culture seriously. Our coverage of movies, TV, books, and music delves deep into what our cultural touchstones reveal about who we are and what we care about — and how what we consume inf...
ListenLife after climate change, with David Wallace-Wells from 2019-03-04T10:00
After years of hovering on the periphery of American politics, never quite the star of the show, it seems that climate change is having a moment. An ambitious Green New Deal, backed by a large and ...
ListenPramila Jayapal thinks we can get to Medicare-for-All fast from 2019-02-28T10:00
The Democratic Party is quickly coalescing around an ambitious Medicare-for-All platform — and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) is shaping up to be a major voice in that debate. Jayapal co-chairs the Co...
ListenNoah Rothman on the "unjustice" of social justice politics from 2019-02-25T10:00
I'm Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter at Vox with a focus on conservatism and the GOP. For the last three years or so, there has been an ongoing discussion among conservatives about identity p...
ListenWhy should we care about deficits? from 2019-02-21T10:00
Stony Brook University’s Stephanie Kelton is the most influential proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, a heterodox take on government budgets that urges a focus on inflation, rather than deficits. ...
ListenAnniversary special: Rachel Maddow from 2019-02-18T10:00
To celebrate The Ezra Klein Show's third anniversary, I’m listening back to the very first episode: a conversation with Rachel Maddow. Rachel is, of course, the host of MSNBC's primetime news show...
ListenAndrew Sullivan and I work out our differences from 2019-02-14T10:00
I’ve been arguing with Andrew Sullivan online for almost 15 years now. It’s one of my oldest and most rewarding hobbies. In the past, I’ve always felt we understood each other, even in periods of s...
ListenThe core contradiction of American politics from 2019-02-11T10:00
The Republican and Democratic parties are not the same. I’ll say it again: The Republican and Democratic parties are not the same. I don’t just mean they believe different things. I mean they’re co...
ListenLeftists vs. liberals, with Elizabeth Bruenig from 2019-02-07T10:00
What separates Obama-era liberalism from Sanders-style democratic socialism? What are the fights splitting and transforming the Democratic Party actually about?This is a conversation I’ve wanted to...
ListenThe world according to Ralph Nader from 2019-02-04T10:00
Ralph Nader needs no introduction. But if your knowledge of Nader mostly consists of his 2000 campaign for the presidency, his career does demand some context. Nader is one of America’s truly great...
ListenThis conversation will change how you understand misogyny from 2019-01-31T10:00
Misogyny has long been understood as something men feel, not something women experience. That, says philosopher Kate Manne, is a mistake. In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Manne defines...
ListenEnding the age of animal cruelty, with Bruce Friedrich from 2019-01-28T10:00
You often hear that eating animals is natural. And it is. But not the way we do it. The industrial animal agriculture system is a technological marvel. It relies on engineering broiler chickens tha...
ListenRobert Sapolsky on the toxic intersection of poverty and stress from 2019-01-24T10:00
Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist. He’s the author of a slew of important books on human biology and behavior. But it’s an older book he wrote that forms the basis for ...
ListenFrances Lee on why bipartisanship is irrational from 2019-01-21T10:00
There aren’t too many people with an idea that will actually change how you think about American politics. But Frances Lee is one of them. In her new book, Insecure Majorities, Lee makes a point th...
ListenSean Decatur doesn’t see a free speech crisis on campus from 2019-01-17T10:00
Sean Decatur is the president of Kenyon College and the first African-American to hold that job. He’s also one of the most thoughtful voices in the debate over free speech and political correctness...
ListenCal Newport has an answer for digital burnout from 2019-01-14T10:00
Cal Newport suspects you’re a digital maximalist — someone who believes that any potential for benefit is reason enough to start using a new technology. Don’t feel bad. That’s how most of us are. T...
ListenEric Holder’s plan to save democracy from 2019-01-10T10:00
Eric Holder was attorney general during the first six years of Barack Obama’s presidency, and there are days when it feels like he’s the attorney general of Obama’s post-presidency, too. Holder cha...
ListenAnil Dash on the biases of tech from 2019-01-07T10:00
“Marc Andreessen famously said that ‘software is eating the world,’ but it’s far more accurate to say that the neoliberal values of software tycoons are eating the world,” wrote Anil Dash. Dash’s a...
ListenJill Lepore on America’s two revolutions from 2019-01-03T10:00
Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian, a New Yorker contributor, and the author of These Truths, a dazzling one-volume synthesis of American history. She’s the kind of history teacher everyone wishes ...
ListenBest of: N.K. Jemisin from 2018-12-31T10:00
This is the most fun I’ve ever had on a podcast. Nora Jemisin — better known by her pen name, N.K. Jemisin — won the Hugo Award for best novel this year for the third year in a row. No one had ever...
ListenBest-of: Bryan Stevenson from 2018-12-27T10:00
Here, at the holidays, I wanted to share some of my favorite episodes of the show with you. Bryan Stevenson tops the list. He’s the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, the author of the remark...
ListenKara Swisher interviews me on the Future of Journalism (Live!) from 2018-12-24T10:00
When I decided to start an interview podcast, the first person I went to for advice was Kara Swisher — founder of Recode, host of the Code Conference and the Recode/Decode podcast, and one of the m...
ListenTED’s Chris Anderson on the lessons of listening from 2018-12-20T10:00
You know TED. Black stage, red accents, wireless mic, one speaker. Billions of views each year. TED is more than a conference now; it’s a meme: “Thanks for coming to my TED talk” closes Tumblr and ...
ListenRep. Katie Porter on how capitalism is failing from 2018-12-17T10:00
Katie Porter is the Rep.-elect from California’s 45th District, which happens to be the district I grew up in. She’s part of the brigade of Democrats who turned Orange County blue for the first tim...
ListenHow Hasan Minhaj is reinventing political comedy from 2018-12-13T10:00
In Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix show, he does three things political comedians often don’t do. First, he makes political comedy personal. Second, he makes it visual. And third, he makes ...
ListenAdam Serwer on white political correctness from 2018-12-10T10:00
“What a society finds offensive is not a function of fact or truth,” writes Adam Serwer, “but of power.” Serwer is a writer at the Atlantic, and he’s been looking at the identity politics and polit...
ListenWill Storr on why you are not yourself from 2018-12-06T10:00
“To have a self is to feel as if we are, in the words of neuroscientist Professor Chris Frith, the ‘invisible actor at the centre of the world’.” That’s Will Storr, writing in his fantastic book Se...
ListenHow to be a better carnivore from 2018-12-03T10:00
Here are two things I believe. First, the way we treat the animals we kill for food is shameful. Second, only a tiny percentage of the population will go vegetarian or vegan and stay that way, at l...
ListenPeter Beinart on anti-Semitism in America and illiberalism in Israel from 2018-11-29T10:00
This is a conversation I’ve been putting off, if I’m being honest. I can’t hold it from the safe space of journalistic distance. It’s about the strange, vulnerable space that many Jews, myself incl...
ListenWhere Jonathan Haidt thinks the American mind went wrong from 2018-11-26T10:00
Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist at New York University and the co-founder of Heterodox University. His book The Righteous Mind, which describes the different moral frameworks that animate the left...
ListenThe Impact: Deportation without representation from 2018-11-22T10:00
For Thanksgiving listening, I have an episode of The Impact, from my Weeds co-host Sarah Kliff. The Impact is a show about how policy shapes our lives. This season, Sarah and her team are focusing ...
ListenMolly Ball on Nancy Pelosi’s future and Paul Ryan’s failure from 2018-11-19T10:00
The midterm elections are being interpreted almost entirely as a referendum on President Donald Trump. But it was also a referendum on Paul Ryan’s speakership, which drove Trump’s domestic policy a...
ListenWhitney Phillips explains how Trump controls the media from 2018-11-15T10:00
Here’s a fun fact: The best training for understanding the president’s media strategy is to have studied internet trolls for years and years. Okay, maybe that fact wasn’t so fun. Maybe it’s incredi...
ListenPresidents in crisis with Slow Burn’s Leon Neyfakh from 2018-11-08T10:00
Slow Burn is one of my favorite podcasts of the past few years. Its first season, on Watergate, relived the confusion, chaos, and strangeness of the Richard Nixon presidency’s collapse. Its second ...
ListenSandy Darity has a plan to close the wealth gap from 2018-11-05T10:00
Here’s something to consider: For families in which the lead earner has a college degree, the average white family has $180,500 in wealth. The average black family? $23,400. That’s a difference of ...
ListenHow identity politics elected Donald Trump from 2018-11-01T09:00
Identity Crisis is the most important book written on the 2016 election. Based on reams of data covering virtually every controversy, theory, and explanation for the outcome, it settles many of the...
ListenRep. Mark Sanford on losing the Republican Party to Donald Trump from 2018-10-29T09:00
Mark Sanford was elected to Congress in 1994, where he quickly established himself as one of the most conservative members of the chamber. In 2002, he was elected governor of South Carolina. He was...
ListenDoris Kearns Goodwin (live!) on how great presidents are made from 2018-10-25T09:00
If you’ve got a question, Doris Kearns Goodwin has a charming, insightful, well-told presidential anecdote for you. Actually, a couple of them. I interviewed the Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential...
ListenWhat Nate Silver's learned about forecasting elections from 2018-10-22T09:00
This close to an election, who do I want to hear from? Nate Silver, of course. I sat down with the FiveThirtyEight founder and math wizard to talk about how he builds his forecasting models, what t...
ListenJay Rosen is pessimistic about the media. So am I. from 2018-10-18T09:00
This is a tough conversation. It was a tough one to hold, and it’s a tough one to publish. I’m a journalist. I’ve been a journalist for 15 years. I believe in journalism. But right now, I’m worried...
ListenWhy Bill Gates is worried from 2018-10-15T09:00
“To put it bluntly,” wrote Bill and Melinda Gates in their foundation’s annual Goalkeepers Report, “decades of stunning progress in the fight against poverty and disease may be on the verge of stal...
ListenReihan Salam makes the case against open borders from 2018-10-11T09:00
In his new book, Melting Pot or Civil War: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, Reihan Salam tries to do something difficult: build a pro-immigrant case for a more restrictive i...
ListenJose Antonio Vargas on living undocumented in Trump’s America from 2018-10-08T09:00
Jose Antonio Vargas was born in the Philippines in 1981. When he was 12, his mother sent him to America, to live with family. When he was 16, he went to the DMV to get a driver's license and found ...
ListenRebecca Traister: Women's rage is transforming America from 2018-10-04T09:00
Why did Christine Blasey Ford have to smile and politely ask for breaks while Brett Kavanaugh could rage at the cameras and dismiss the hearings as a farce? The answer is in Rebecca Traister’s esse...
ListenPatrick Deneen says liberalism has failed. Is he right? from 2018-10-01T09:00
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 the...
ListenFrancis Fukuyama’s case against identity politics from 2018-09-27T09:00
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 F...
ListenCarol Anderson on the myth of American democracy from 2018-09-24T09:00
The president of the United States was the runner-up in the popular vote. The majority in the US Senate got fewer votes than the minority. And even if Democrats win a hefty majority of the vote in ...
ListenMartha C. Nussbaum on how fear deforms our politics from 2018-09-17T09:00
In her new book Monarchy of Fear, famed philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum identifies fear as the oldest and deepest of our emotions. Fear takes hold in our earliest infancy, when we can experience nee...
ListenDavid French on “The Great White Culture War" from 2018-09-10T09:00
David French is a senior writer for National Review and one of the conservatives I read most closely. About a month ago, he published an interesting column responding to some things I had said, and...
ListenYour attention is being hijacked. Chris Bailey can help. from 2018-09-04T09:00
Life is the sum focus of what you pay attention to. You hear that a lot. But look at the verb there: “pay” attention to. As if attention is something we consciously spend out. As if it’s something ...
ListenAnand Giridharadas on the elite charade of changing the world from 2018-08-30T09:00
“How can there be anything wrong with trying to do good?” asks Anand Giridharadas in his new book, Winners Take All. “The answer may be: when the good is an accomplice to even greater, if more invi...
ListenI build a world with fantasy master N.K. Jemisin from 2018-08-27T09:00
I’m just going to say it. This may be the most fun I’ve ever had on a podcast. Nora Jemisin — better known by her pen name, N.K. Jemisin — just won the Hugo Award for best novel for the third year ...
ListenReup: Zephyr Teachout vs. Corruption from 2018-08-24T09:00
Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham University and one of the nation’s foremost experts on political corruption. She’s also, after a glowing New York Times endorsement this week, arguably...
ListenIs our economy totally screwed? Andrew Yang and I debate. from 2018-08-20T10:00
"The future without jobs will come to resemble either the cultivated benevolence of Star Trek or the desperate scramble for resources of Mad Max,” writes Andrew Yang. Well then. Yang is the founder...
ListenChef Marcus Samuelsson on immigration, creativity, and Anthony Bourdain from 2018-08-13T10:00
Marcus Samuelsson is the Michelin-starred chef behind Harlem’s The Red Rooster an award-winning cookbook author,the winner of the first season of Top Chef: Masters, ;nd the host of No Passport Requ...
ListenWhy online politics gets so extreme so fast from 2018-08-06T09:00
During the 2016 campaign, Zeynep Tufekci was watching videos of Donald Trump rallies on YouTube. But then, she writes, she "noticed something peculiar. YouTube started to recommend and ‘autoplay' v...
ListenTaking Trump’s corruption seriously from 2018-08-02T09:00
The question of whether President Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election has consumed Washington since the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller special counsel in March 2017. Bu...
ListenThe surprising story of how American politics polarized from 2018-07-30T09:00
We talk a lot on this podcast about the epic levels of political polarization and how much of our ongoing breakdown they explain. But what was American politics like before it was polarized? And wh...
ListenThe most important idea for understanding American politics in 2018 from 2018-07-23T09:00
America is changing. A majority of infants are, for the first time in US history, nonwhite — and the rest of the population is expected to follow suit in the coming decades. The number of religious...
ListenWhat economists and politicians get wrong about trade from 2018-07-19T09:00
For decades, Harvard’s Dani Rodrik has been a lonely voice in the economics profession warning that the academics were getting this one wrong. Trade is not an unalloyed good; “globalization would d...
ListenHow to disagree better from 2018-07-16T09:00
Arthur Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of Washington’s most respected and powerful conservative think tanks. He’s also launching a new podcast, The Arthur Brooks S...
ListenJaron Lanier’s case for deleting social media right now from 2018-07-09T09:00
During my book leave, I took a social media sabbatical. No reading Facebook. No reading Twitter. And you know what? It was great. I felt able to think more clearly, and listen more closely, than ha...
ListenThe most clarifying conversation I’ve had about Trump and Russia (part 2) from 2018-07-05T09:00
What have we actually learned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, and his administration’s efforts to cover those ties up? What role did Russia really play in the 2016 election? And what are speci...
ListenThe Supreme Court vs. Democracy from 2018-07-02T09:00
If 75,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had tipped the other way, President Hillary Clinton would’ve named both Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy’s replacements. But they didn’t. ...
ListenEric Garcetti on the lessons of Los Angeles from 2018-06-25T09:00
There’s been a lot of talk about the coming of majority-minority America — the point, projected for roughly 2045, when there will no longer be any racial or ethnic group that makes up a majority of...
ListenWhat Ellen Pao saw coming from 2018-06-18T09:00
Ellen Pao had a rough 2015. She lost her high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest and most powerful venture capital firms. She also steppe...
ListenThe Green Pill from 2018-06-11T09:00
What accounts for the way most of us eat? What’s the ideology, the theory, behind our diets? And what happens when you stop believing in it? Over the past decade, I’ve been on a fitful journey towa...
ListenHow Jane Mayer exposed Eric Schneiderman, Bush’s torture program, and the Kochs from 2018-06-04T09:00
On May 7, Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow published a story in the New Yorker detailing New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s alleged history of sexually and psychologically terrorizing the wom...
ListenPolitical power and the racial wealth gap from 2018-05-28T09:00
The racial wealth gap is where past injustice compounds into present inequality. When I asked Ta-Nehisi Coates, on this show, what would prove to him that white supremacy was over in this country, ...
ListenTyler Cowen on the painful end of American complacency from 2018-05-21T09:00
Headlining any conversation with Tyler Cowen is difficult. This one, for instance, covers how to write a book, single-payer health care, political correctness, loneliness, the expanding Overton win...
ListenA mind-expanding conversation with Michael Pollan from 2018-05-14T09:00
This is perhaps the most literal title I’ve given a conversation on this podcast. This is a discussion about how to expand your mind — how to expand the connections it makes, the experiences it’s o...
ListenOptimism about America from 2018-05-07T09:00
In a February 2017 column, David Brooks wrote about "the Fallows Question, which I unfurl at dinner parties: If you could move to the place on earth where history is most importantly being made rig...
ListenThe New York Times’s lead Clinton reporter reflects on her coverage from 2018-05-03T10:00
It’s time to talk about the damn emails — and the way the media covered them. Amy Chozick reported on Hillary Clinton for a decade. She was there as Clinton’s campaign fell short in the 2008 Democr...
ListenThe age of "mega-identity" politics from 2018-04-30T10:00
Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason traces the...
ListenIs American democracy really in decline? A debate. from 2018-04-23T10:00
Yascha Mounk’s new book, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, is perhaps the year’s scariest read. In it, Mounk argues that “liberal democracy, the unique mix ...
ListenSpecial episode: The Syrian conflict, explained by a UN diplomat who saw it start from 2018-04-20T10:00
Many of you will remember the interview I did with Grant Gordon, who works on humanitarian policy innovation at the International Rescue Committee. That conversation received a huge response — some...
ListenIs modern society making us depressed? from 2018-04-16T10:00
“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief — for our own lives not being as they should?” asks Johann Hari. “What if it is a form of grief for the connections we have lost yet still need?” In...
ListenCarol Anderson on White Rage and Donald Trump from 2018-04-12T10:00
Carol Anderson is a professor of African-American studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Anderson’s book emerged from a viral op-ed she w...
ListenThe Sam Harris Debate from 2018-04-09T10:00
There’s a lot of backstory to this podcast, most of which is covered in this piece. The short version is that Sam Harris, the host of the Waking Up podcast, and I have been going back and forth ove...
ListenMark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hardest year, and what comes next from 2018-04-02T10:00
It’s been a tough year for Facebook. The social networking juggernaut found itself engulfed by controversies over fake news, electoral interference, privacy violations, and a broad backlash to smar...
ListenIs Mitch Landrieu the "White, Southern Anti-Trump"? from 2018-03-26T09:00
Mitch Landrieu is the white mayor of New Orleans, and he wants America to talk about race. Landrieu is the author of the new book, In The Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. Th...
ListenMelinda Gates (live!) on stopping climate change, ending malaria, and the problems money can’t solve from 2018-03-19T09:00
Melinda Gates is the co-founder and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest private foundation in the United States. With more than $40 billion in assets, the Gates Foundatio...
ListenThis isn’t Joe Kennedy’s grandfather’s Democratic Party, and he knows it from 2018-03-05T11:00
When you’re sitting in front of Rep. Joe Kennedy, it’s clear that you’re sitting in front of a Kennedy. The face, the jawline — it’s all uncannily familiar. But Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. K...
ListenAmy Chua on how tribalism is tearing America apart from 2018-02-26T11:00
Human beings are tribal creatures, particularly when they feel threatened. And the reality of living in America in 2018, at a time of massive demographic change and social upheaval, is that we all ...
ListenHow technology brings out the worst in us, with Tristan Harris from 2018-02-19T11:00
In 2011, Tristan Harris’s company, Apture, was acquired by Google. Inside Google, he became unnerved by how the company worked. There was all this energy going into making the products better, more...
ListenSteven Pinker: enlightenment values made this the best moment in human history from 2018-02-12T11:00
Does the daily news feel depressing? Does the world feel grim? It’s not, says Harvard professor Steven Pinker. This is, in fact, the best moment in human history — there’s less war, less violence, ...
ListenWhy my politics are bad with Bhaskar Sunkara from 2018-02-05T13:29
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founder and publisher of Jacobin, a journal of “socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.” He launched the publication in 2011 when he was an undergraduate ...
ListenHow Democracies Die from 2018-01-29T11:00
The year is young, but Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is going to be one of its most important books. It will be read as a commentary on Donald Trump, which is fair enough...
ListenHow to oppose Trump without becoming more like him from 2018-01-22T11:00
Krista Tippett is the host of the award-winning radio show and podcast On Being. In 2014, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. For good reason. She's created, ov...
ListenYou will love this conversation with Jaron Lanier, but I can’t describe it from 2018-01-15T11:00
Oftentimes it’s easy for me to describe these conversations. This one is on Trump and Russia. That one is on health care. But not this time. I want you to listen to this conversation, because Jaron...
ListenThe most clarifying conversation I’ve had on Trump and Russia from 2018-01-08T11:00
What really happened between the Trump campaign and the Russian government? The investigation into that question has rocked American politics. The FBI director was fired over it. The attorney gener...
ListenPod Save America’s Jon Favreau on Trump’s first year, the GOP’s “rot,” and the left’s failures from 2018-01-02T11:00
Jon Favreau was President Obama’s chief speechwriter. In those days, he was a frequent critic of the political media, frustrated, as many in the Obama administration were, with its focus on conflic...
ListenThe inside story of Doug Jones’s win in Alabama from 2017-12-25T11:00
“The day before the Washington Post story came out, we were behind by one point, 46 to 45,” says Joe Trippi. “And the day before the election, we were ahead in our own survey by two points. We ende...
ListenWhat life is like in North Korea from 2017-12-18T11:00
The most important story in the world right now is how real the chance of war with North Korea is — and how cataclysmic such a war would be. Part of the reason the risk of war is so real is that ou...
Listen"An orgy of serious policy discussion" with Paul Krugman from 2017-12-11T11:00
On October 24, 2016, in the final days of the presidential election, Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, tweeted, "When this election is finally over, I'm ...
ListenThe case for impeachment from 2017-12-04T11:00
I have grown obsessed with a seemingly simple question: Does the American political system have a remedy if we elect the wrong person to be president? There are clear answers if we elect a criminal...
ListenWhat Buddhism got right about the human brain from 2017-11-27T10:00
I wanted to take a post-Thanksgiving break from politics and current events this week to talk to Robert Wright. He's written some of the best books on religion and evolutionary psychology, includin...
ListenRebecca Traister on #MeToo, female rage, and Anita Hill’s legacy from 2017-11-20T10:00
We’re living through an upheaval. The #MeToo moment has engulfed some of the most powerful men in politics, entertainment, and media. It has also forced a national reckoning with the reality of Ame...
ListenAi-jen Poo: the future of work isn’t robots. It’s caring humans. from 2017-11-13T10:00
When we talk about the future of work, we usually focus on artificial intelligence, robotics, driverless cars. The future of work, we’re told, is a future where humans cease to be necessary. Ai-jen...
ListenEvan Osnos on the North Korea crisis, Trump’s mental health, and China's rise from 2017-11-06T10:00
Evan Osnos is the author of the National Book Award-winning The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, as well as a staff writer at the New Yorker. And he’s recently b...
ListenWhy politics needs more conflict, not less from 2017-10-30T10:00
Here’s a counterintuitive thought: maybe Congress in particular, and politics in general, has too little conflict, not too much. That’s James Wallner’s argument, and it’s more persuasive than you m...
ListenWhy the Weinstein scandal gives Tig Notaro hope about Hollywood from 2017-10-23T10:00
Tig Notaro dropped out of high school. She drifted between odd jobs for a long time and eventually found her way to Colorado, where she discovered open mic nights and a talent for stand-up comedy. ...
ListenWhat happens when human beings take control of their own evolution? from 2017-10-16T10:00
Over the past decade, scientists have developed what was once just the subject of dystopian fiction: gene editing technology. It's known as CRISPR. Jennifer Doudna, a professor of molecular and cel...
ListenTa-Nehisi Coates is not here to comfort you from 2017-10-09T10:00
“It’s important to remember the inconsequence of one’s talent and hard work and the incredible and unmatched sway of luck and fate,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in his new book, We Were Eight Years in ...
ListenHow the Republican Party created Donald Trump from 2017-10-02T10:00
Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have studied American politics for more than three decades. They are the town’s go-to experts on the workings of Congress. In 2012, they rocked Washington when they ...
ListenReihan Salam wants to remake the Republican Party -- again from 2017-09-25T10:05
In 2008, Reihan Salam co-wrote Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream with his frequent collaborator Ross Douthat. After nearly eight years of Presi...
ListenDavid Remnick on journalism in the Trump era and why he hires obsessives from 2017-09-19T10:05
For the past 19 years, David Remnick has been the editor of the New Yorker, perhaps the greatest magazine in the English language. Under his leadership, the New Yorker has received 149 nominations ...
ListenWhat Hillary Clinton really thinks from 2017-09-12T19:58
On page 239 of What Happened, Hillary Clinton reveals that she almost ran a very different campaign in 2016. Before announcing for president, she read Peter Barnes’s book With Liberty and Dividends...
ListenDan Rather thought he'd seen it all. But then came President Trump. from 2017-09-05T10:05
Dan Rather has covered the most momentous events of the modern era. He was in Dallas, Texas, during President Kennedy's assassination. He was in Vietnam, embedded with US troops, in 1965 and 1966. ...
ListenFrom 4Chan to Charlottesville: where the alt-right came from, and where it's going from 2017-08-29T10:05
Angela Nagle spent the better part of the past decade in the darkest corners of the internet, learning how online subcultures emerge and thrive on forums like 4chan and Tumblr. The result is her fa...
ListenWhy prosecutors, not cops, are the keys to criminal justice reform from 2017-08-22T10:05
Angela J. Davis is the former director of the DC public defender service, a professor of law at American University, and editor of a remarkable new book titled Policing the Black Man, which pulls t...
ListenChris Hayes on whether Trump should be removed from office from 2017-08-15T10:05
In the aftermath of Trump’s bizarre, dangerous North Korea tweets, I’ve been fixated on a question: Should Trump be removed from office? The mechanisms we have for curbing a dangerous presidency ...
ListenSen. Michael Bennet on why this is a dismal, sociopathic era in Congress from 2017-08-08T16:05
Michael Bennet is an accidental senator. He was unexpectedly appointed to fill an open seat after Ken Salazar joined the Obama administration. He had never run for elected office before, or served ...
ListenWhat’s scary isn’t Trump’s illiberalism but America's acceptance of it from 2017-08-01T16:05
Yascha Mounk is a lecturer at Harvard, a columnist at Slate, and the host of The Good Fight podcast. He’s also an expert on how democracies backslide into illiberalism — which was the topic of our ...
ListenJulia Galef on how to argue better and change your mind more from 2017-07-25T16:05
At least in politics, this is an era of awful arguments. Arguments made in bad faith. Arguments in which no one, on either side, is willing to change their mind. Arguments where the points being ma...
ListenDr. Nneka Jones Tapia, the first psychologist to run a jail from 2017-07-18T12:30
Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart calls the 8,000-person Cook County Jail the largest mental health institution in the country. Thirty percent of its inmates have diagnosed mental health issues, and ...
ListenEddie Izzard on World War I, cake or death, and marathoning from 2017-07-11T15:46
Now that I've gotten Eddie Izzard to re-derive his famed "cake or death?" routine in real time, I'm ending this podcast. Always good to go out on top. Okay, maybe I won't actually end it. But this ...
ListenAvik Roy and Ezra debate the Senate GOP's health bill from 2017-07-03T19:43
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate GOP’s health care bill — officially known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act — will lead to 22 million fewer people with health insurance...
Listendanah boyd on why fake news is so easy to believe from 2017-06-27T13:39
danah boyd is an anthropologist and computer scientist who studies the way people actually use technology. Not the way we wish we used technology, or the way we hope we will use technology, but the...
ListenAl Franken on learning to be a politician from 2017-06-20T15:23
Sen. Al Franken’s new book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, is the rare politician memoir that’s actually interesting. And note that I said interesting, not funny (though it is also funny).Most bo...
ListenZephyr Teachout on suing Trump, fighting corruption, and breaking monopolies from 2017-06-13T15:05
Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham University, the author of Corruption in America, one of the lead lawyers in the emoluments case that’s been brought against Donald Trump, and a former ...
ListenMasha Gessen offers a plausible Trump-Russia theory from 2017-06-06T10:00
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and the author of, among other books, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Since the election, she has been analyzing Donald Tr...
ListenKwame Anthony Appiah on cosmopolitanism from 2017-05-30T21:30
Few words are as reviled in American politics as “cosmopolitan.” The term invokes sneering, urban, elite condescension. It’s those smug cosmopolitans who led to Donald Trump’s election. It’s those ...
ListenYascha Mounk: Is Trump’s incompetence saving us from his illiberalism? from 2017-05-23T17:07
Yascha Mounk is a Lecturer on Government at Harvard University, a Fellow in the Political Reform Program at New America, and host of the podcast, The Good Fight. He’s also the author of some of the...
ListenBryan Stevenson on why the opposite of poverty isn’t wealth, but justice from 2017-05-16T15:29
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release for more than 115 wrongly convicted prisoners on death...
ListenDeath, Sex, and Money’s Anna Sale on bringing empathy to politics from 2017-05-09T12:00
There’s much talk of “empathy” in today’s politics, but it’s a cramped, weaponized form of empathy — an empathy designed to force us to grudgingly tolerate each other, or an empathy used to explain...
ListenCory Booker returns, live, to talk trust, Trump, and basic incomes from 2017-05-04T16:06
Senator Cory Booker is back! In this special live episode of The Ezra Klein Show — taped at Vox Conversations — Booker and I dig into America’s crisis of trust. Faith in both political figures and ...
ListenVC Bill Gurley on transforming health care from 2017-05-02T19:35
Washington has been gripped of late by the world’s most depressing, least imaginative, debate over health care. The question, as it stands, is whether Obamacare will survive (while being mildly, bu...
ListenElizabeth Warren on what Barack Obama got wrong from 2017-04-25T14:10
Elizabeth Warren is the founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the senior senator from Massachusetts, and the author of the new book, “This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save Amer...
ListenCal Newport on doing Deep Work and escaping social media from 2017-04-18T13:06
I was asked recently to name a book that changed my life. The book I chose was Cal Newport’s “Deep Work,” and for the most literal of reasons: it’s changed how I lived my life. Particularly, it’s l...
ListenG. Willow Wilson on religion, comics, and modern myths from 2017-04-11T14:15
This is a podcast about topics we don’t always cover on this show. Religion. Spirituality. Gender roles. Traditionalist societies. Comic books.G. Willow Wilson is the author of The Butterfly Mosque...
ListenChris Hayes on the crisis of elites and the politics of order from 2017-04-04T19:06
I could describe this podcast, and I will. But the tl;dr is this is one of my favorite conversations so far, and you’re going to enjoy it. So just go listen. Chris Hayes is, of course, the host of ...
ListenTyler Cowen explains it all from 2017-03-28T15:02
I have never come across a mind quite like Tyler Cowen’s. The George Mason economist, and Marginal Revolution blogger, has an interesting opinion on, well, everything. He’s a genuine polymath who c...
ListenMolly Ball on whether facts matter in politics from 2017-03-21T11:00
You may remember the Atlantic's Molly Ball from the fantastic pre-election conversation we had on this podcast. She's back this week to talk about an issue I've become more and more obsessed with —...
ListenDenis McDonough on how to run the White House from 2017-03-14T11:00
How do you actually run a White House? What is the president’s actual job? What is the chief of staff’s role? What happens if you screw up? These are questions I’ve been reflecting on rather a lot ...
ListenCecile Richards on Planned Parenthood, labor organizing, and the Supreme Court from 2017-03-07T12:00
Before Cecile Richards was president of Planned Parenthood, she was a labor organizer working with garment workers in El Paso, Texas. The experience taught her a key principle of political change: ...
ListenTim Ferriss on suffering, psychedelics, and spirituality from 2017-03-02T19:36
Tim Ferriss is the author of the 4-Hour Workweek, as well as the new book, Tools of Titans. He’s also the host of The Tim Ferriss Show, which is one of my favorite podcasts, and an inspiration for ...
ListenYuval Harari, author of “Sapiens,” on AI, religion, and 60-day meditation retreats from 2017-02-28T12:00
Yuval Noah Harari’s first book, “Sapiens,” was an international sensation. The Israeli historian’s mind-bending tour through the trump of Homo sapiens is a favorite of, among others, Bill Gates, Ma...
ListenElizabeth Drew covered Watergate. Here's what she thinks of Trump. from 2017-02-21T12:00
Elizabeth Drew is the author of Washington Journal, one of my favorite books about Watergate. Drew covered the story as a reporter for the New Yorker, and the book emerges from the real-time, journ...
ListenAvik Roy on why conservatives need to embrace diversity from 2017-02-14T12:00
Avik Roy advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign on health care, ran the policy shop on Rick Perry’s 2016 campaign, and then worked for Marco Rubio after Perry dropped out. So Roy’s Republican credenti...
ListenKara Swisher gives a master class on reporting and interviewing from 2017-02-07T12:00
Before I launched this podcast, I asked Kara Swisher to coffee. Swisher founded the technology news site Recode, hosts the excellent Recode Decode podcast, and runs a legendary conference series. S...
ListenDavid Miliband explains the global refugee crisis from 2017-02-02T17:03
Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning Muslim refugees from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, and indefinitely banning them from Syria, doesn't come in a vacuum. The world i...
ListenJennifer Lawless on why you — yes, you — should run for office from 2017-01-31T15:26
There are 500,000 elected positions in the United States. I'll say that again: 500,000. And that's no accident. "Our political system is built on the premise that running for office is something th...
ListenJD Vance: the reluctant interpreter of Trumpism from 2017-01-24T16:13
J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy has been adopted as the book that explains Trumpism. It's the book that both Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rob Portman recommended as their favorite of 2016. It's...
ListenKeith Ellison: The Democratic National Committee has become the Democratic Presidential Committee, and that needs to end from 2017-01-17T16:22
Congressman Keith Ellison is the frontrunner to lead the Democratic National Committee in the Trump era. Ellison has a fascinating backstory: he's the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, and h...
ListenElizabeth Kolbert: We have locked in centuries of climate change from 2017-01-10T19:02
Elizabeth Kolbert covers climate change for the New Yorker. She's the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction. And she recently wrote a paragraph I can't stop thinking about. "The pro...
ListenSarah Kliff and Ezra Interview Obama About Obamacare from 2017-01-06T23:43
Two weeks before he leaves office, President Obama sits down for a lengthy conversation about the lessons of the Affordable Care Act and the law's uncertain future. Learn more about your ad choices...
ListenYou Ask, Ezra Answers from 2017-01-03T12:00
At long last, here’s the Ask Ezra Anything episode. You sent in great questions, and I answered as many as I could. To keep me honest — and to make sure I didn’t just talk to myself for two hours —...
ListenEvelyn Farkas explains the crisis in Syria and the threat of Russia from 2016-12-27T17:50
From 2012 to 2015, Evelyn Farkas served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, where she was responsible for policy toward Russia, the Black Sea, the Balkans, an...
ListenTim Wu's interesting, unusual, fascinating life from 2016-12-20T15:48
Columbia law professor Tim Wu makes me feel boring and underaccomplished. He’s been a Supreme Court clerk, a Silicon Valley startup employee, a bestselling author, and a star academic. He coined th...
ListenTa-Nehisi Coates: "There’s not gonna be a happy ending to this story" from 2016-12-14T12:00
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author at the Atlantic. His book, Between the World and Me, won the National Book Award, and was spoofed on SNL. He's writing the (awesome) Black Panther series for Marvel. H...
ListenStripe CEO Patrick Collison on management, rationalism, and the enlightenment from 2016-12-06T12:00
Patrick Collison is the 28-year-old CEO of Stripe, the online payments company that was just valued at $9 billion.Haven't heard of Stripe? You've probably used it. Last year, 40 percent of people w...
ListenAward-winning chef José Andrés on cooking, creativity, and learning from the best from 2016-11-29T12:00
José Andrés isn't just a chef. He's a force. All that talk of how DC is now a hot dining scene? Andrés deserves more than a bit of the credit. He's popularized Spanish tapas through Jaleo, brought ...
ListenHeather McGhee returns to talk Trump, race, and empathy from 2016-11-22T16:07
There are few episodes of this show that people loved as much as my conversation with Heather McGhee, president of the think tank Demos. Our first discussion focused on race, class, populism, and t...
ListenRon Brownstein: Clinton didn’t lose because of the white working class from 2016-11-15T15:23
Why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? Why did Donald Trump win it? And why was the polling so completely wrong?No one digs deeper into the demographics, polls, and trends of modern American po...
ListenDavid Frum on the 2016 election, and the long decline of the GOP from 2016-11-06T12:00
We’re bringing the Ezra Klein Show to you a little early this week because, well, there's an election coming in a few days. And we wanted to talk about it. The 2016 election is the product of profo...
ListenDeborah Tannen on gendered speech, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and you from 2016-11-01T14:50
To understand the 2012 election, you had to ask a political scientist. To understand the 2016 election, you need to call a linguist.At least, I did. Deborah Tannen is a Georgetown University lingui...
ListenJoseph Stiglitz on broken markets, bad trade deals, and basic incomes from 2016-10-25T11:00
This week’s guest is a Nobel Prize winner. We like to sprinkle those in every so often. Joseph Stiglitz revolutionized how economists understood market failures (hence that prize), served as chief ...
ListenLet's talk about Hillary Clinton's policy ideas, with Jonathan Cohn from 2016-10-18T11:00
The overwhelming focus of this election has been Donald Trump — the things he does, says, tweets. But the next president is likely to be Hillary Clinton. And we've put a lot less effort into unders...
ListenFrancis Fukuyama on whether America's democracy is decaying from 2016-10-11T11:00
Francis Fukuyama is a political scientist, a public intellectual, and progenitor of the famed "End of History" thesis. But his recent work is his most important yet. Over two volumes, he's been stu...
ListenTyler Cowen interviews Ezra Klein about politics, media, and more from 2016-10-06T07:00
A number of you have asked that we turn the tables and have someone interview me for the show. So when Tyler Cowen — economist at George Mason University, blogger at Marginal Revolution, and genera...
ListenThe best conversation I’ve had about the election, with Molly Ball from 2016-10-04T13:57
This election season has left pretty much everything I thought I knew about politics in doubt. Both parties nominated unpopular candidates, even when they had popular alternatives. One party's nomi...
ListenHHS Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell on running Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid from 2016-09-27T12:52
This week, I've turned over the mic to The Weeds' Sarah Kliff. She went to Capitol Hill to interview HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell about all things healthcare. They talked about how to pay doctors t...
ListenDr. Leana Wen on why the opposite of poverty is health from 2016-09-20T11:00
There are a couple of ideas that drive how I see policy and politics. One of them is that most of what drives health outcomes has nothing to do with what happens in doctor's offices. Another is tha...
ListenArlie Hochschild on how America feels to Trump supporters from 2016-09-13T11:00
I’ve been reading sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s writing for about a decade now. Her immersive projects have revolutionized how we understand labor, gender equity, and work-life balance. But her la...
ListenStewart Butterfield on creating Slack, learning from games, and finding your online identity from 2016-09-06T04:00
If you came by the Vox office, you would find it oddly quiet. That's not because we don't like each other, or because we're not social, or because we don't have anything to say. It's because almost...
ListenW. Kamau Bell on the lessons of parenthood, Twitter, and fame from 2016-08-30T04:00
W. Kamau Bell is a comedian and a writer. But you probably know him from one of his podcasts(Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period and Politically Re-Active) or his CNN show Th...
ListenMalcolm Gladwell on the danger of joining consensus opinions from 2016-08-23T14:36
Malcolm Gladwell needs no introduction (though if you didn't know the famed author has launched a podcast, you should — it's called Revisionist History, and it's great.).Gladwell's work has become ...
ListenGrant Gordon on studying the world's worst conflicts from 2016-08-16T14:28
Grant Gordon is a political scientist and policymaker who specializes in humanitarian intervention. He’s a fellow at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation, and has worked on...
ListenMelissa Bell on starting Vox, managing media, and connecting newsrooms from 2016-08-09T14:32
I first started working with Melissa Bell at the Washington Post. I was trying to launch a new product — Wonkblog — and I needed some design work done. Melissa wasn't a designer. She wasn't a coder...
ListenAtul Gawande on surgery, writing, Obamacare, and indie music from 2016-08-02T10:11
I've wanted to do this interview for a long, long time.Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He's a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard S...
ListenTrevor Noah, host of The Daily Show from 2016-07-26T14:09
This is a serious conversation with a very funny man.Trevor Noah is the host of Comedy Central's the Daily Show. He's also a stand-up comic who grew up in apartheid South Africa, the son of a black...
ListenConservative intellectual Yuval Levin on how the Republican Party lost its way from 2016-07-19T11:00
Yuval Levin has been called "the most influential conservative intellectual of the Obama era," and the moniker fits. As editor of National Affairs — in my opinion, the best policy journal going on ...
ListenHillary Clinton. Yes, that Hillary Clinton. from 2016-07-12T11:00
My interview this week is with Hillary Clinton. You may have heard of her.I won't bore you with Clinton's bio. Instead, I want to say a few words about what this interview is, as it's a bit differe...
ListenPatrick Brown on plant-meat that bleeds and the science of flavor from 2016-07-05T12:54
Not long ago, I had the chance to eat a burger from a company called Impossible Foods. The burger was delicious. It was juicy, savory, and bloody. Oh, and it was made from plants.Yes, they've creat...
ListenHeather McGhee on what Democrats get wrong about racism from 2016-06-28T13:09
Heather McGhee is the president of the think tank Demos, and one of the most interesting thinkers today on the intersection of racism and economic inequality.Among Heather's most interesting argume...
ListenJesse Eisenberg on Jewish humor, writing lessons, and interrogating strangers from 2016-06-21T14:21
My guest on this episode is Jesse Eisenberg — who you may know as Lex Luthor in Batman V. Superman, Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, or Daniel Atlas in the just-released Now You See Me 2.I wa...
ListenJessica Valenti on honesty, internet trolls, and modern feminism from 2016-06-14T11:00
Jessica Valenti is the founder of Feministing, a columnist at the Guardian, and the author of the new book "Sex Object." She's also a friend from the early days of blogging. In this podcast, we tal...
ListenMoby on how cheap rent leads to great art from 2016-06-07T11:00
Moby's new memoir, Porcelain, is a great read for policy wonks. Really.It's less a history of music than a history of New York in the 80s and 90s, and a reflection on how density, crime, racial and...
ListenSecretary of Labor (and maybe VP?) Tom Perez from 2016-05-31T15:58
Tom Perez is President Obama's Secretary of Labor. He is also, according to the New York Times, on Hillary Clinton's shortlist for the vice presidency.I spoke with Perez about his path to the Labor...
ListenAndrew Sullivan on quitting blogging, fearing political correctness, and Donald Trump from 2016-05-24T14:28
Last year, Andrew Sullivan quit blogging — the medium he had done so much to create. And you know what? He was pretty damn happy about it. He was taking walks, meditating, exercising, reading, and ...
ListenAlice Rivlin, queen of Washington's budget wonks from 2016-05-17T11:00
There is no budget wonk in Washington with a resume as thick as Alice Rivlin's. She was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office. She was the director of President Bill Clinton's Of...
ListenArianna Huffington on sleep, death, and social media from 2016-05-10T13:52
Arianna Huffington is, of course, the editor and namesake of the Huffington Post, one of the true juggernauts of the new media world. But her path to that position has been a winding one. She was a...
ListenRobert Reich on supporting Bernie Sanders, dating Hillary Clinton, and fighting inequality from 2016-05-03T15:17
You could fill a podcast just reciting Robert Reich's biography. Rhodes Scholar. Assistant to U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork. Director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission under C...
ListenBruce Friedrich on how technology will reduce animal suffering from 2016-04-26T11:00
When I first met Bruce Friedrich, he was running PETA's awareness campaigns. Yeah, those campaigns — the ones where naked people stuffed themselves in saran wrap and cages, and where wounded chicke...
ListenBen Thompson on how to make it in media in 2016 from 2016-04-19T15:28
Note: If you saw this twice, this is a reissue of a previous episode, with corrected audio.Since starting his site Stratechery in 2013, Ben Thompson has established himself as one of the smartest a...
ListenBen Thompson on how the media business is changing from 2016-04-19T11:00
Note: There was a technical issue with the first upload of this show, please re-download if you got to it early.Since starting his site Stratechery in 2013, Ben Thompson has established himself as ...
ListenGrover Norquist explains what it takes to change American politics from 2016-04-12T11:31
This is an interview you all have been asking for since day one. Grover Norquist is the head of Americans for Tax Reform, the creator of the no-new-taxes pledge that virtually every Republican offi...
ListenNeera Tanden on what it's like to work for Hillary Clinton from 2016-04-05T19:12
Neera Tanden is CEO of the Center for American Progress — perhaps the most influential left-leaning think tank in Washington. Before that, though, she was the policy director for both Hillary Clint...
ListenDavid Chang, head of the Momofuku empire from 2016-03-29T11:00
David Chang has driven many of the most important food trends of the last decade. His Momofuku empire has put pork belly on your plate, ramen on your corner, and bagel bombs in your local coffee sh...
ListenCory Booker on the spiritual dimension of politics from 2016-03-22T11:00
Cory Booker is a United States senator from New Jersey, the only vegan in Congress, and the author of the new book "United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good". In this...
ListenMichael Needham on the Republican Party's crack-up from 2016-03-15T12:00
Want to understand what's happened to the Republican Party? Then listen to this discussion.Michael Needham is the CEO of Heritage Action for America, where he's been one of the activists at the cen...
ListenJim Yong Kim on revolutionizing how we treat the world's poor from 2016-03-08T12:00
This was an amazing interview.Jim Yong Kim is the president of the World Bank — the massive, multilateral institution dedicated to eradicating poverty. But Kim is also a public-health legend: he wa...
ListenTheda Skocpol on how political scientists think differently about politics from 2016-03-01T12:00
Political science is a misunderstood discipline. It's often laughed off by people who think it's ridiculous that something as human and contingent and unpredictable as politics can be called a scie...
ListenBill Gates on stopping climate change, building robots, and the best books he's read from 2016-02-23T12:00
Bill Gates is one of those people for whom "needs no introduction" is actually true. The polymathic Microsoft founder now leads the world's largest and most important private foundation, and he's p...
ListenHow lobbying works, with super-lobbyist Tony Podesta from 2016-02-16T12:00
When the New York Times profiled Tony Podesta, the headline was simply: "Tony Podesta, superlobbyist." Podesta is head of the Podesta group, and considered by many to be the most powerful, or at le...
ListenRachel Maddow on skinhead rallies, AIDS activism, and why she doesn't read op-eds from 2016-02-09T16:00
Rachel Maddow is, of course, the host of MSNBC's top-rated, Emmy-award winning primetime news show and the bestselling author of "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power." But Maddow took a...
ListenRachel Maddow on skinhead rallies, AIDS activism, and why she doesn't read op-eds from 2016-02-09T16:00
Rachel Maddow is, of course, the host of MSNBC's top-rated, Emmy-award winning primetime news show and the bestselling author of "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power." But Maddow took a...
ListenRachel Maddow on skinhead rallies, AIDS activism, and why she doesn't read op-eds from 2016-02-09T16:00
Rachel Maddow is, of course, the host of MSNBC's top-rated, Emmy-award winning primetime news show and the bestselling author of "Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power." But Maddow took a...
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