Sean Illing talks with Noah Hawley, the creator and showrunner of the anthology drama Fargo on FX, as well as a celebrated novelist whose newest book is Anthem (2022). They discuss themes stemming from Hawley's recent piece in the Atlantic about myths, stories, and tropes from the Old West (and Hollywood) that are still powerful and active in shaping American society. Hawley also talks about why we're drawn to shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, what to expect on the forthcoming fifth season of Fargo, and what his new novel says about the future.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray AreaGuest: Noah Hawley (@noahhawley), novelist; tv/film directorReferences:  "It's High Noon in America" by Noah Hawley (The Atlantic; Dec. 19, 2022) Anthem by Noah Hawley (Grand Central; 2022) Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) "'Duck Dynasty' vs. 'Modern Family': 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide" by Josh Katz (New York Times; Dec. 27, 2016) "The sex-trafficking investigation of Matt Gaetz, explained" by Amber Phillips (Washington Post; Jan. 27, 2022) The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with Glory Liu, the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism. Smith is most well-known for being the “father of capitalism,” but as Liu points out in her book, his legacy has been misappropriated — especially in America. They discuss his original intentions and what we can take away from his work today.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray AreaGuest: Glory Liu (@miss_glory), author; lecturer, Harvard UniversityReferences:  Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism by Glory Liu (Princeton; 2022) Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson (Yale; 2012) Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton & Rose Friedman (Harcourt; 1980) “Adam Smith’s ‘History of Astronomy’ and view of science” by Kwangsu Kim (Cambridge Journal of Economics v. 36; 2012) Works by Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations (1776) Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) Lectures on Jurisprudence (1763)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest host Sigal Samuel talks with Holden Karnofsky about effective altruism, a movement flung into public scrutiny with the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange, FTX. They discuss EA’s approach to charitable giving, the relationship between effective altruism and the moral philosophy of utilitarianism, and what reforms might be needed for the future of the movement.Note: In August 2022, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project is now on pause.Host: Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), Senior Reporter, VoxGuest: Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell; CEO of Open PhilanthropyReferences:  "Effective altruism gave rise to Sam Bankman-Fried. Now it's facing a moral reckoning" by Sigal Samuel (Vox; Nov. 16, 2022) "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism" by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (New Yorker; Aug. 8, 2022) "Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself" by Kelsey Piper (Vox; Nov. 16, 2022) "EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous" by Holden Karnofsky (Effective Altruism Forum; Sept. 2, 2022) "Defending One-Dimensional Ethics" by Holden Karnofsky (Cold Takes blog; Feb. 15, 2022) "Future-proof ethics" by Holden Karnofsky (Cold Takes blog; Feb. 2, 2022) "Bayesian mindset" by Holden Karnofsky (Cold Takes blog; Dec. 21, 2021) "EA Structural Reform Ideas" by Carla Zoe Cremer (Nov. 12, 2022) "Democratising Risk: In Search of a Methodology to Study Existential Risk" by Carla Cremer and Luke Kemp (SSRN; Dec. 28, 2021)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with writer and reporter Jerusalem Demsas about the causes of homelessness in America. They discuss our ideas of home ownership, and how our country’s cultural expectations and policies are working against us. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray AreaGuest: Jerusalem Demsas (@JerusalemDemsas) staff writer, The AtlanticReferences:  “The Homeownership Society Was a Mistake” by Jerusalem Demsas (The Atlantic; Dec. 20, 2022) “The Obvious Answer to Homelessness and Why Everyone’s Ignoring It” by Jerusalem Demsas (The Atlantic; Dec. 12, 2022) “The Billionaire’s Dilemma” by Jerusalem Demsas (The Atlantic; Aug. 4, 2022) “Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation” by David Schleicher (Yale Law Review; Oct. 2017) “Black Americans And The Racist Architecture of Homeownership” by Alisa Chang, Christopher Intagliata, and Jonaki Mehta (NPR; May 8, 2021)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with author Thomas Chatterton Williams about race and identity in America. Thomas has analyzed racial identity through the lens of his own upbringing, and the performativity and pressures he experienced. In conversation with Sean, Thomas speaks about how he sees these identities as restrictive connections to the racial oppressions of the past, whether it's possible to achieve liberation without sacrificing solidarity, and on the complex interplay between race and class.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray AreaGuest: Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill), author; contributing writer, The AtlanticReferences:  Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams (W.W. Norton; 2019) Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man's Escape from the Crowd by Thomas Chatterton Williams (Penguin; 2011) White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (Beacon; 2018) "Camus' Stance on Algeria Still Stokes Debate in France" by Eleanor Beardsley (NPR; Nov. 7, 2013) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880) Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World; 2018) South to a Very Old Place by Albert Murray (Vintage; 1991) "The limits of anti-racism" by Adolph Reed (2009)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with Timnit Gebru, the founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute. She studies the ethics of artificial intelligence and is an outspoken critic of companies developing new AI systems. Sean and Timnit discuss the power dynamics in the world of AI, the discriminatory outcomes that these technologies can cause, and the need for accountability and transparency in the field.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray AreaGuest: Timnit Gebru (@timnitGebru), founder, Distributed AI Research InstituteReferences:  “The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence" by Adrienne Williams, Milagros Miceli, and Timnit Gebru (Noema; Oct. 13, 2022) “Effective Altruism is Push a Dangerous Brand of ‘AI Safety’” by Timnit Gebru (Wired; Nov. 30, 2022) Datasheets for Datasets by Timnit Gebru, et al. (CACM; Dec. 2021) “In Emergencies, Should You Trust a Robot?” by John Toon (Georgia Tech; Feb. 29, 2016) “We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says” by Karen Hao (MIT Technology Review; Dec. 4, 2020) “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” by Timnit Gebru, et al. (Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency; March 2021)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest host Sigal Samuel talks with philosopher and author Martha Nussbaum about her new book, Justice for Animals. Martha discusses several different ethical, legal, and metaphysical theories for how we humans should treat other non-human animals, and offers her own distinct new approach.Host: Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), Senior Reporter, VoxGuest: Martha Nussbaum, author; Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, U. ChicagoReferences:  Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility by Martha Nussbaum (Simon & Schuster; 2022) Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights by Steven M. Wise (Basic; 2003) Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved by Frans de Waal (Princeton; 2006) Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals by Peter Singer (1975) Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to Other Animals by Christine Korsgaard (Oxford; 2018) Political Liberalism by John Rawls (1993) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) "Ag-Gag" Laws in the United States (Animal Legal Defense Fund) Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka (Oxford; 2011)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with Cornel West about the American philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. They talk about what makes pragmatism so distinctly American, how pragmatists understand the connection between knowledge and action, and how the pragmatist mindset can invigorate our understanding of democratic life and communal action today. Cornel West also talks about the ways in which pragmatism has influenced his work and life, alongside the blues, Chekhov, and his Christian faith.This was an episode of The Philosophers, a series from Vox Conversations, originally released in May.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), Interviews writer, VoxGuest: Cornel West (@CornelWest), author; Dietrich Bonhoeffer professor of philosophy & Christian practice, Union Theological SeminaryReferences to works by American pragmatists:  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882): "Self-Reliance" (1841) William James (1842–1910): Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907); The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902); "Is Life Worth Living?" (1895) Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914): "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) John Dewey (1859–1952): The Quest for Certainty (1929); "Emerson—The Philosopher of Democracy" (1903); The Public and Its Problems (1927) Richard Rorty (1931–2007): "Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism" (1979); "Solidarity or Objectivity?" (1989) Other references:  Cornel West Teaches Philosophy (MasterClass) The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism by Cornel West (Univ. of Wisconsin Press; 1989) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) Plato, Republic (refs. in particular to Book 1 and Book 8) The Phantom Public by Walter Lippmann (1925) Leopardi: Selected Poems of Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), tr. by Eamon Grennan (Princeton; 1997) "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus (1942; tr. 1955) Democracy & Tradition by Jeffrey Stout (Princeton; 2003) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area by subscribing in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sean Illing talks with Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan about his new book The Paradox of Democracy, which he co-authored with media studies professor Zac Gershberg. Sean and Margaret discuss the relationship between free expression and democratic society, talk about whether or not the January 6th hearings are doing anything at all politically, and discuss some potential ways to bolster democratic values in the media ecology of the present.This was originally released as an episode of Vox Conversations in July.Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), Interviews Writer, VoxGuest: Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview), media columnist, Washington PostReferences:  The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing (Chicago; 2022) Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy by Margaret Sullivan (Columbia Global Reports; 2020) "Four reasons the Jan. 6 hearings have conquered the news cycle" by Margaret Sullivan (Washington Post; July 22) Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan (1964) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (1985) Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life by Margaret Sullivan (St. Martin's; Oct. 2022) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area by subscribing in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest host Alissa Wilkinson talks with Katelyn Beaty, author of the new book Celebrities for Jesus, about how the dynamics of fame, influence, and new media are changing our experience of religious faith. They discuss how celebrities like Billy Graham set the tone for a lionization of celebrity in the Evangelical Church, why faith leaders cultivate distance from their congregations and build influencer-style social media presences, and share their thoughts on the future of the Church in our perhaps increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture.Host: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), senior culture writer, VoxGuest: Katelyn Beaty (@KatelynBeaty), authorReferences:  Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church by Katelyn Beaty (Brazos; 2022) "Inside Hillsong, the Church of Choice for Justin Bieber and Kevin Durant" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (GQ; Dec. 17, 2015) "After Columbine, martyrdom became a powerful fantasy for Christian teenagers" by Alissa Wilkinson (Vox; Apr. 17, 2019)  Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app.Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcastsThis episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices