The Gray Area with Sean Illing Vox Media Podcast Network

You can’t drop an f-bomb on the radio, but fortunately for our guest, you can say anything you want in a podcast. This week, host Sean Illing talks to philosopher Rebecca Roache, author of For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing Is Shocking, Rude, and Fun about the philosophy and linguistics of swearing, and why certain four-letter words hold the magical power to both offend and delight.
Warning: In case it’s not obvious, this episode contains swearing.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Rebecca Roache (@rebecca_roache)
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Sean Illing talks with political science professor Matt McManus about the political thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher with a complicated legacy, despite his crossover into popular culture. They discuss how Nietzsche's work has been interpreted — and misinterpreted — since his death in 1900, how his radical political views emerge from his body of work, and how we can use Nietzsche's philosophy in order to interpret some key features of our contemporary politics.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Matt McManus.
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This episode was made by: 


Producer: Jon Ehrens 


Engineer: Patrick Boyd


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Authoritarian tendencies have been on the rise globally and the liberal world order is on the decline. One hotspot of this tension lies in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi employs autocratic language and tactics to maintain power. But a recent election may indicate that voters are losing interest in this style of rule. Guest host Zack Beauchamp talks with scholar Pratap Bhanu Mehta about the past of the Indian liberal tradition and what the current politics of the world’s largest democracy say about the state of global politics. 

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Pratap Bhanu Mehta
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This episode was made by: 


Producer: Jon Ehrens 


Engineer: Patrick Boyd


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We’re living in an era of extreme partisan politics, rising resentment, and fractured news media. Writer John Ganz believes that we can trace the dysfunction to the 1990s, when right-wing populists like Pat Buchanan and white supremacist David Duke transformed Republican politics. He joins Sean to talk about the 1990s and how it laid the groundwork for Trump. His book is When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: John Ganz (@lionel_trolling). His book is When the Clock Broke. 
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This episode was made by: 


Producer: Jon Ehrens 


Engineer: Patrick Boyd


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Nathalie Etoke joins The Gray Area to talk about existentialism, the Black experience, and the legacy of dehumanization. 
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Nathalie Etoke. Her book is Black Existential Freedom.
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This episode was made by: 


Producer: Jon Ehrens 


Engineer: Patrick Boyd


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A mile of pure fire. A flash that melts everything — titanium, steel, lead, people. A blast that mows down every structure in its path, 3 miles out in every direction. Journalist Annie Jacobsen spent years interviewing scientists, high-ranking military officials, politicians, and other experts to find out how a nuclear attack would be triggered, the devastation it would cause, the ruptures it would create in the social fabric, and how likely it is to happen today. She wrote about all of this in her new book Nuclear War: A Scenario. Jacobsen spends the hour clearly laying out the horrifying yet captivating specifics for Sean, and the prospects for avoiding catastrophe. 

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Annie Jacobsen. Her book is Nuclear War: A Scenario
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