The Gray Area with Sean Illing

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 is currently experience the worst refugee crisis since World War II — a crisis that has destabilized the Middle East, torn at the fabric of Europe, and left 65 million people displaced.This is what America is turning its back on. And just because we slam our doors, it doesn't mean the crisis eases. It could get worse, and if it leads to, say, the collapse of Jordan and Turkey, the consequences for America and the rest of the world would be disastrous.David Miliband served as Britain's foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010. He's now President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, which operates humanitarian relief operations in more than 40 countries and has refugee resettlement and assistance programs in 26 United States cities. I asked him on the show to offer a broader perspective than what we're hearing in the US conversation right now. Why is the refugee crisis so bad now? What are the solutions beyond resettlement? What is the vetting process for refugees who come to America, and how have they experienced Trump's order? Who are the world's refugees, and what do they need?What's happening right now is bigger than America. It's imperative we understand it.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 that a broad group of citizens should want to do," writes political scientist Jennifer Lawless.But Lawless's research reveals something scary — something that helps explain the political moment we're in. Participating in politics has begun to repulse the average America. 89 percent of high schoolers says they've already decided they will never run for office. 85 percent doubt elected officials want to help people. 79% don’t think politicians are smart or hardworking. And when good, normal people turn away from politics, the system breaks down.Well, be the change you want to see in the world. Lawless is the director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University. Her recent book, along with co-author Richard Fox, is “Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned Off to Politics." Her work, which details why young people and women are increasingly turned off by a political system that badly needs their participation, has never been more essential.This is an inspiring discussion, or at least I think it is. It's about the steps in political participation that come after Facebook posts and even marches. It's about how involving yourself directly in the daily work of politics is both easier and more meaningful than you might think. It's about the myths that keep people — and particularly keep women — from ever considering running for office. It's about recognizing that politics is much more than the presidency and the Congress, and that the opportunities it offers to make the world you live in a bit better are more numerous than you think.Lawless practices what she preaches. She ran for Congress in Rhode Island, and her story of that race, as well as the best advice she got while running it, should not be missed. I hear from a lot of people who feel powerless right now. But they're not powerless. This podcast is for them. Books:-Why We Lost the ERA by Jane Mansbridge-My Life by Bill Clinton-Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 a book Keith Ellison, the frontrunner to lead the DNC, brought up in our conversation last week. Everyone, on both sides of the aisle, has turned to Vance to explain What It All Means.All of which is a bit odd, because Vance's book is an awkward fit with Trumpism. As Vance describes it, it's about "what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it." It's a memoir about growing up amidst a particular slice of the white working class — the Scots-Irish who settled in and around Appalachia — and the ways that both propelled Vance forward and held him back. It's a book about one man's story — a story that is universal in some ways, particular in others, but was certainly not written with Donald J. Trump in mind.Vance, today, works for an investment firm founded by Peter Thiel. He's an Iraq veteran and Yale-educated lawyer who fits comfortably among the elites he never expected to know. He's a conservative who doesn't like Trump, but has nevertheless become a favored interpreter for his movement. He's a private person who finds himself having shared the most intimate details of his life with total strangers.We talk about all that, as well as some specific debates that have emerged in the age of Trump, and that speak to issues in Vance's book:- The resentment members of the lower-middle class have towards the non-working poor - The ways in which the discussion over poor white communities has come to mirror the debate over poorer African-American communities- How Trump constructed an "other" that merged both marginalized communities and powerful elites- Slights Vance faced as a member of the military attending elite schools, and how that made him think about the broader debate over political correctness- The difference between "economic anxiety" and "cultural anxiety," and why it matters- How members of Vance's family reconcile their support for Trump with their close friendships with unauthorized immigrants- What he feels defines the values held by elites, and how they differ from those he grew up withAnd, as always, much more. Enjoy. Books:-Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids”-William Julius Wilson’s “The Truly Disadvantaged”-Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart”-Robert Tombs’s “The English and Their History” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 he was the second member of Congress to endorse Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Now, Sanders has returned the favor, backing Ellison to lead the DNC. But in an unexpected effort to close ranks, Senator Chuck Schumer — who does not exactly come from Sanders's wing of the Democratic Party — has also backed Ellison. Which isn't to say Ellison doesn't face a race. Many in the White House are known to be skeptical of Ellison for this job, and have recruited Tom Perez, the popular Labor Secretary (and previous EK Show guest), to challenge Ellison. The campaign between the two men is increasingly seen as a new front in the Sanders-Clinton fight  — but that's a bit absurd. Both are extremely progressive, and neither is actually running for president. Which is why, in this conversation, I wanted to draw Ellison out on his vision for the job of DNC Chair, which is not a role that sets the ideological direction for the Democratic Party. What powers does the DNC chair have? How does Ellison want to use them? What is his philosophy of party organizing? How does a party — as opposed to a candidate — build a relationship with voters? What should the national party apparatus be doing in off-years? How much confrontation should there be with Trump? We get into the weeds of party-building here, and it's obviously a topic Ellison has thought about a lot — both in his own campaigns, and in his run for DNC Chair. The Democratic Party has some hard choices to make in the coming years, and so it's well worth hearing where Ellison wants to push it. Books (so many books!):-Evicted, by Matthew Desmond-Give Us Liberty, by Dick Armey-What a Party, by Terry Mcauliffe-Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Hocschild-Hilbilly Elegy, by JD Vance-Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown-The Autobiography of Malcolm X-The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabelle Wilkerson-Who Stole The American Dream, by Hendrick Smith-Give Us the Ballot, by Ari Berman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 problem with global warming—and the reason it continues to resist illustration, even as the streets flood and the forests die and the mussels rot on the shores—is that experience is an inadequate guide to what’s going on. The climate operates on a time delay. When carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, it takes decades—in a technical sense, millennia—for the earth to equilibrate. This summer’s fish kill was a product of warming that had become inevitable twenty or thirty years ago, and the warming that’s being locked in today won’t be fully felt until today’s toddlers reach middle age. In effect, we are living in the climate of the past, but already we’ve determined the climate’s future."Kolbert lives, to an unusual degree, in the planet's future. She travels to the places around the world where the climate of tomorrow is visible today. She has watched glaciers melting, and seen species dying. And she is able to convey both the science and the cost with a rare lucidity. Talking with Kolbert left me with an unnerving thought. We look back on past eras in human history and judge them morally failed. We think of the Spanish Inquisition or the Mongol hordes and believe ourselves civilized, rational, moral in a way our ancestors weren't. But if the science is right, and we do unto our descendants what the data says we are doing to them, we will be judged monsters. And it will be all the worse because we knew what we were doing and we knew how to stop, but we decided it was easier to disbelieve the science or ignore the consequences. Kolbert and I talk about the consequences, but also about what would be necessary to stabilize the climate and back off the mass extinction event that is currently underway. We discuss geoengineering, political will, the environmental cost of meat, and what individuals can and can't do. We talk about Trump's cabinet, about whether technological innovation will save us, and if pricing carbon is enough. We talk about whether hope remains a realistic emotion when it comes to our environmental future.Books:-Edward Abbe’s “Desert Solitaire”-Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”-David G. Haskell’s “The Forest Unseen”-Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Grant Gordon joins the host to answer questions in this Ask Me Anything episode. They cover topics like immortality, best concerts, culture's impact on universal basic income, interviewing techniques, explanatory reporting, and the idea of reality as a computer simulation. They also discuss building an organization, investment plans, Russian hacking's influence on the election, living a moral life, and desired superpowers.

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, and Caucasus regions and conventional arms control.Farkas is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and I asked her on the show to explain two of the issues that worry me most right now: the horror that has befallen Syria, and the risky belligerence that has overtaken Russia. If this sounds like a tough episode to you, give it a chance. This conversation doesn’t presuppose deep — or really any — knowledge of either conflict. Farkas is clear, thoughtful, and insightful, and at a moment when Syria is destabilizing Europe and Russia is destabilizing the United States, it’s more than worth taking the time to dig into both.Along the way, we talk about Farkas’s time in Bosnia, her frustrations with President Obama’s hands-off approach to the Syria conflict, why she’s sick of “slippery slope” arguments in foreign policy, the ways in which the lessons of Yugoslavia and Bosnia collided with the lessons Iraq and Afghanistan, and what to make of Russia’s hack of the US election.Also, a number of you have asked me to start putting book recommendations in the show notes, so here they are:-David Rhode’s "Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II” -Peter Pomerantsev’s "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” In the days since our interview, I picked up “ Nothing is True,” and Farkas is right: it’s amazing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the term "network neutrality," wrote the superb book The Master Switch, and was dubbed "Genius Wu" by Richard Posner — a man many consider to be our smartest living judge. And this is to say nothing of Wu's award-winning side-gig as a — yes — travel writer.Anyway, screw that guy. Wu's new book is The Attention Merchants, and it's a history of how the advertising business has shaped the information we consume, the products we crave, and the way we think. We talk about that book, but we also talk about Wu's approach to life. He explains why his great strength is his ability to ignore inconsistency, how Larry Lessig shaped his career and his marriage, why working in Silicon Valley left him skeptical of markets, and Marshall McLuhan and Timothy Leary’s advertising jingle for acid (really).We also go deep into antitrust law, the inner workings of the Supreme Court, whether Google and Facebook are monopolies, and what a world without advertising in media might look like. So this conversation covers a lot of ground. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. He's a certified MacArthur Genius. And he just released a blockbuster story based on hours of interviews with President Obama about the role race played in Obama's upbringing, his presidency, and the 2016 campaign.Coates is also one of my favorite people to talk to, and I think this conversation shows why.The first half of our conversation is political: it's about Coates's conversations with Obama, his impressions of the president, his perspective on American politics, the way his atheism informs his worldview, why he thinks a tragic outlook is important for finding the truth but — at least for nonwhite politicians — a hindrance for winning political power. The second half is much more personal: it's about his frustrations as a writer, his discomfort with the way "Between the World and Me" was adopted by white audiences, how he learns, his surprising advice for young writers, his belief that personal stability enables professional wildness, his past as a blogger, his desire to return to school, his favorite books. I loved this interview. I think you will, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices