The Gray Area with Sean Illing

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 who bought something online used Stripe's payment systems. The company has become an integral part of the internet's financial plumbing. And Collison has become one of Silicon Valley's leading lights — he made the cover of Forbes last year, where one venture capitalist described him as "the LeBron James of entrepreneurs."Collison is also one of the few people I've met who is a genuine polymath. He seems to know everything about everything, and his recall — particularly his ability to live-footnote his own comments — is something to behold. We talk about how he and his brother conceived of, and launched, Stripe, and then we go much deeper. Among the topics we discussed: -Why there was a market opportunity for Stripe in a world that had PayPal-Why people are often wrong when they look at a market and think an incumbent has dominated it-What he thinks is untrue about the stereotypes of how Silicon Valley handles regulation-How we might be able to tell whether a buildup of regulations are preventing new companies from emerging-Why jobs like home healthcare and childcare are becoming tension points in our national immigration discussion-The difference in the way politicians and tech leaders approach problem-solving-How he tries to shape culture within his company to help it become, in his words, more like itself-What he admires about CEOs like Jeff Bezos and Jim Simons-The culture of "rationalist” bloggers, and why he reads them-How we underestimate the importance of the Enlightenment periodEnjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 El Bulli-style molecular gastronomy to America through MiniBar, and racked up some Michelin stars and James Beard awards along the way.Andrés has hosted television shows, taught courses on the science of cooking at Harvard, extended his restaurant empire to Las Vegas and South Beach, set up a nonprofit in Haiti, and launched a fast-casual chain focused on vegetables. He's been named "Man of the Year" by GQ and one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time. I've known Andrés for a couple of years, and I've never met a better storyteller, or seen anyone who thinks harder about the component parts of creativity.  We talk about that, as well as:-What Andrés learned from his father-Why the most important job when making paella is tending the fire-Why cooking at home is important but not essential-What he makes of Americans eating out of the house more than ever before-Why we need to be pragmatic about sourcing food-How he applies what he learned in the Spanish navy to his restaurants-What he learned from Ferran Adrià, the founder of molecular gastronomy-How he takes ideas from other disciplines and applies them in his kitchens-How important hiring is to him and why immigration policy is so crucial to the American restaurant business-Why his fast-casual restaurants called Beefsteak are nearly meatless-How he's managed to run an empire while remaining focused on the creative side-What he thinks we might lose by eating synthetic food or soylent-The one dish he thinks people should learn to cookDo you eat? Do you think? Then listen to this.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the sometimes toxic ways the three interact. It's a topic I wanted to revisit in the aftermath of Trump's election, and so I asked Heather back to the show. After this conversation, I'm very, very glad I did. Among other things, we discussed:-The three factors that explain the election results-Why race is a more complex force in politics than either liberals or conservatives assume-The dangers of Democrats convincing themselves that populism and racial justice are either/or-Her experience talking with a white man who realized he was prejudiced, and asked her help in changing-Why Clinton lost states Obama won-Why Clinton didn't outperform Obama among nonwhite voters-Why the core of modern racism is seeing some races as made of individuals and others as collectives-Whether the very language around race and racism makes empathy more difficult-How Democrats should think about cooperating — and not cooperating — with TrumpAnd, as always, much more. Heather is brilliant on these topics, and this is worth listening to.Also, a lot of you have asked for an episode where I answer your questions, and we're going to make it happen. So send your questions for me to ezrakleinshow@vox.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ron Brownstein, Atlantic's expert on demographics and trends of American politics, analyzes the reasons behind Hillary Clinton's election loss. Topics include Clinton's assumptions about winning the middle of the country, James Comey's influence, and Trump's ability to win unqualified voters. The discussion also explores the impact of race and identity politics, the importance of voter turnout, and the challenges for the Democratic Party in the future.

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 profound failures on the part of different institutions in American life: the Republican Party, the media, the financial system. And few have tracked those failures as clearly, or closely, as David Frum.Frum is Canadian by birth — a perspective, he says, that helps him see American politics as the product of institutions, rather than just personalities. Since moving to the US in the 80s and finding himself inspired by Ronald Reagan, he's chronicled and commentated on conservatism in America. His book, Dead Right, is one of the key documents for understanding the Republican Party of the 1990s. He then did a stint as speechwriter in George W. Bush's White House, where he wrote the famous "Axis of Evil" line in Bush's 2002 State of the Union. More recently, he's written for the Atlantic, where he's been unsparing — and largely proven right — in his assessment of the Republican Party's institutional collapse.This conversation is an exploration of what has happened to the Republican Party — what it was, what it's become, and why. We talk about:-Why journalists need to account for governing institutions before turning to cultural explanations-How he thinks diversity and inequality are linked-How Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump differ-What he learned about inequality while working for the Wall Street Journal editorial page-The best-titled speech Newt Gingrich probably ever gave-His critique of the 1994 Republican Revolution and Newt Gingrich’s consolidation of the Speaker’s power-How Fox News and conservative talk radio echo chamber have harmed the Republican Party-The apocalyptic attitude conservatives rely on while campaigning -Why Trump was so successful running against the Bush family legacy-The role white nationalism plays in Trump's rise (This is an argument I found particularly valuable)-How Canada avoided the nationalist backlash that plagues the US-His best and worst-case scenarios for a Hillary Clinton presidencyEnjoy! And then go vote. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Deborah Tannen is a Georgetown University linguist and bestselling author renowned for her insights on gendered communication. In a deep dive, she explores how communication styles differ between men and women, drawing connections to political figures like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Tannen highlights how interruptions and cultural norms can lead to miscommunication, explains the significance of African-American Vernacular English, and introduces concepts of conversational style that impact daily interactions. Her insights offer practical tools for understanding and improving our conversations.

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 economist at The World Bank, led the Council of Economic Advisers under Bill Clinton, has written more great books and articles than I can count, and now leads The Roosevelt Institute. He's a pretty smart guy. Markets, Stiglitz argues, are man-made, and we need to make them a lot better. We often treat markets as natural phenomena, but they have rules, their rules create some winners and some losers, and, crucially, those rules can be changed. How to change those rules, and which rules to change, is where Stiglitz's recent work has focused — work that is known to have caught the eye of Hillary Clinton — and we talk about it at length, as well as:-Why he became an economist-The nature of the work that won him the Nobel prize-His basic explanation of “information asymmetry,” the term for which he’s probably most famous-His time as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors-The unintended consequences that can come from rewriting economic rules, even when it's being done with good intentions-Why we can’t use NAFTA to try to understand the Trans-Pacific Partnership-What a good trade deal would look like in this day and age-The difference between Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s economic priorities-Who he’d like to see working at the Treasury Department and on the National Economic Council in the future-What he thinks about a Universal Basic Income-What he learned from the economic failings of Venezuela and GreeceThe arguments you hear in this podcast are very likely to be things a Clinton administration will be thinking about as it tries to craft a post-Obama economic agenda. So there's a lot worth mulling over here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 understanding her lengthy, detailed agenda for the country.So I sat down with one of my favorite journalists, The Huffington Post’s Jonathan Cohn, who has been doing that work, to talk through what Clinton's platform actually says, and what it all adds up to. We also discussed:-How the stereotype of her has gone from "radical liberal feminist" to "sell-out conservative Democrat," and what both miss-How childcare, work-life balance issues, and parental leave define Clinton's platform-How racial dynamics have changed since Clinton’s emergence as a national public figure in the 90s-The people who surround Clinton and shape her policy platforms-Jon’s evaluation of how Obamacare’s doing and what about it still needs work-The way geography’s complicating the way Obamacare works by creating so many healthcare marketplaces-Why Obamacare's specific struggles have made it so hard for Republicans to promote their own healthcare plansAll this and more. I hope you enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 studying how societies become safe, pluralistic liberal democracies — and then how those advanced democracies descend, and decay, into chaos.Sound familiar?This is a scary conversation that comes at just the right time. We discussed:-How American became a “vetocracy”-Why the representative democracy we have has calcified-Why the internet may be overwhelming our ability for government agencies to deal efficiently with public comment-What he thinks is stoking Trump supporters in the way we talk about diversity and pluralism-Why conversations about class are important-What he thinks about different models of government around the world, especially Denmark’s-How we overcompensate for what we’ve learned through past wars-How polarization is disrupting the way the public views government agencies like the Fed and NOAA-What he's learned from Samuel Huntington, from the Iraq War, and from the Black Lives Matter movement-What an agenda to reverse America's political decay would look likeEnjoy!We want you to tell us about the podcasts you enjoy, and how often you listen to them. So we created a survey that takes just a couple of minutes to complete. If you fill it out, you'll help Panoply to make great podcasts about the things you love. And things you didn’t even know you loved. To fill out the survey, just go to www.megaphone.fm/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 generalized genius — invited me on his podcast Conversations with Tyler, I said yes, and asked if we could post the discussion here, too. Tyler — whose podcast you should listen to — asks some of the hardest, strangest, most provocative questions of anyone I know, and so this was a lot of fun. Among the topics we discussed:-What we do now that we will reflect on as kind of crazy or unethical in the next few decades-How my video team at Vox has taught me to think about visual stories-The value of making content that’s made to be re-discovered-Why identity as a driver of virality is important to the current online media landscape-The ethics of eating meat, and why I think those attitudes will change fast in the coming decades-My thoughts on how CEOs work and how the job of being a CEO has become its own profession-What I think I’m good at in leading Vox, and how I try to support my team in fostering the things they do-The importance of to-do lists-My biggest talent-spotting tip-Why the government doing clunky, difficult things is sometimes good-How you shouldn’t probably trust my taste in culture, like sports or music-The role of shame in the mediaAll this and so much more on this week’s episode. I hope you all enjoy.Panoply SurveyWe want you to tell us about the podcasts you enjoy, and how often you listen to them. So we created a survey that takes just a couple of minutes to complete. If you fill it out, you'll help Panoply to make great podcasts about the things you love. And things you didn’t even know you loved. To fill out the survey, just go to www.megaphone.fm/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices