The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Is starting a family becoming impossible?

Why does it feel so hard to start a family today? How much of that is truly a personal choice? In this episode of The Gray Area, guest host Christine Emba sits down with

The millennial midlife crisis

Is "adulthood" a moving target? For millennials, hitting the milestones of the past — homeownership, secure careers, and financial independence — feels tougher than ever.

How to be less neurotic

If you could change anything about your personality, anything at all, what would it be? And why would you want to change it? Writer Olga Khazan spent a year trying to an

Your body wasn’t built for a desk

We’ve all heard that "sitting is the new smoking," but the research behind that phrase goes much deeper. How bad is sitting for you really? In this episode guest host Br

Why we want to believe in aliens

Are we truly alone in the universe? Despite the lack of hard evidence, belief in aliens and UFOs, officially known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), has shifted

Straight dating isn’t broken

Have you noticed the bad vibes around dating lately? Whether you’re swiping on apps or scrolling through social media, it’s easy to feel like the romantic landscape has b

Kidneys for sale

Is it ever okay to put a price on a kidney? Why is it illegal to sell an organ, but perfectly legal to sell blood plasma? This episode explores the world of "repugnant tr

How memory changes you

We like to think of memory as a record of the past. But that’s not really what it is. Memory doesn’t keep the past — it can also remake it. It stitches fragments into sto

Freud was right about one thing

Sigmund Freud is probably the most famous psychoanalyst. Yet many of his theories have been critiqued or discredited. So is there anything we can still learn from the fat

Why straight dating feels bleak

The internet is rife with chatter about “heteropessimism,” the feeling that gender relations are broken and heterosexual relationships are doomed. But is this just cynica

We’re postliterate

What happens when we read less? What does that do to our ability to understand complex ideas, or even think for ourselves?In today’s episode, guest host Jonquilyn Hill sp

What does a parent owe their child?

The Gray Area is taking a short break this week — but we’ve got something special for you. We’re dropping an episode from one of our favorite podcasts, Unexplainable. In

The vanishing pleasures of daily life

Sean talks with writer and philosopher Ian Bogost about his new book The Small Stuff. They discuss what modern life has lost in its pursuit of convenience, efficiency, an

How Google broke the internet

The internet is changing. For years our primary gateway to the internet has been search engines: we ask a question, a list of websites pops up, and we choose which ones t

The illusion of the ‘self’

Sean Illing talks with neuroscientist Gregory Berns, author of The Self Delusion. Berns claims that the idea of a unified, persistent self is a kind of illusion, and that

How MAGA is turning on itself

For years, right-wing influencers and politicians have pushed the conservative movement to have more controversial, anti-establishment views. Why are some of those figure

The global baby bust

Birth rates are dropping and global population growth is slowing. Why? We’re heard all the different speculation: It’s the economy. It’s housing costs. It’s the feminists

Why public opinion turned on AI

AI was supposed to make our lives better. Instead, it’s made many of us scared and angry. Communities are protesting data centers across the country, and polling shows mo

A skeptic considers the case for God

Sean talks with writer Liz Bruenig about faith, doubt, and the experience of believing in God in a modern, skeptical age. They discuss religious experience, the limits of

The “Godzilla El Niño” is coming

Sean talks with journalist David Wallace-Wells about a looming climate event that could make 2027 one of the hottest years ever recorded. They discuss the return of El Ni