The Gray Area with Sean Illing21 Touko 2018

Tyler Cowen on the painful end of American complacency

Headlining any conversation with Tyler Cowen is difficult. This one, for instance, covers how to write a book, single-payer health care, political correctness, loneliness, the expanding Overton window, the tech backlash, technological innovation, the case for American optimism, how to change our cultural assumptions about race, and much more. But if there is a theme, it calls back to Cowen’s fascinating 2017 book, The Complacent Class. There, Cowen argued that contrary to the widespread belief that America was undergoing convulsive change, it was actually changing less than ever — becoming geographically, ideologically, politically, and technologically complacent. But surveying the past year or so in American life, Cowen thinks that the age of American complacency is ending faster than he expected — and that change of the sort that’s happening now will prove deeply painful, even if it also kick-starts our economy and builds us a better future. Recommended books: The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order by Bruno MaCaes Symposium by Plato Grant by Ron Chernow Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Freud was right about one thing

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17 Elo 58min

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 cynical discourse, like a coping mec...

14 Elo 57min

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 speaks with Atlantic staff write...

10 Elo 51min

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 it, host Noam Hassenfeld and ...

7 Elo 27min

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, and optimization. From stick shi...

3 Elo 47min

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 to click on. But we are rapidly...

31 Heinä 41min

The illusion of the ‘self’

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27 Heinä 43min

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 figures now upset about where the mo...

24 Heinä 46min