The Gray Area with Sean Illing6 Nov 2017

Evan Osnos on the North Korea crisis, Trump’s mental health, and China's rise

Evan Osnos is the author of the National Book Award-winning The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, as well as a staff writer at the New Yorker. And he’s recently back from a trip to North Korea, where he learned how Trump’s threats are playing in one of the strangest and most sealed-off regimes on earth. “To go between Washington and Pyongyang at this nuclear moment is to be struck, most of all, by how little the two understand each other,” he wrote. “In eighteen years of reporting, I’ve never felt as much uncertainty at the end of a project, a feeling that nobody—not the diplomats, the strategists, or the scholars who have devoted their lives to the subject—is able to describe with confidence how the other side thinks.” In this discussion, Osnos and I talk about that trip: about what North Korea is like, what they think about us, and what war with them would actually mean. We also talk about China — they literally can’t believe their luck with Donald Trump, he says — and whether the widespread rumors that Trump is facing some kind of mental deterioration are true. Osnos, who dove deep into the subject for a New Yorker article on the 25th Amendment, fears they are. And that’s not all: We dig into the pressures for war in Washington, the tendency toward survivalism in Silicon Valley, and why Osnos finds his best article subjects by looking at some of the worst things that could possibly happen to the human race. I enjoyed this conversation immensely. I think you will, too. Books Citizen-Protectors by Jennifer Carlson The Vegetarian by Han Kang The China Fantasy by James Mann Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(764)

Alone in a cage with cocaine

Addiction is one of those words that seems obvious until you try to explain it. We tend to fall back on two simple stories. Either addiction is a moral failure or it’s a brain disease that robs people...

9 Mar 48min

Winging it in Iran

What the hell just happened in Iran? The US launched an attack last weekend, and within hours, the explanations were already shifting. Is this regime change? Will it be a few days? A few months? Seve...

6 Mar 37min

Of course you're anxious

We use the word “anxiety” to describe stress, dread, worry, panic, even vibes. Which just goes to show: We really don’t know what anxiety is, or where it comes from, or what we’re supposed to do with ...

2 Mar 41min

Gen Z men have baby fever

A lot of Gen Z men sound surprisingly excited about fatherhood. A lot of Gen Z women…do not. And that divide — and the national handwringing about it — says a lot about the changing status of men an...

27 Feb 33min

Why mindfulness got weird

Mindfulness is everywhere now, which is kind of weird. What started as a countercultural practice has become a productivity hack and a billion-dollar app ecosystem. On one level, it’s great that more...

23 Feb 42min

You’re right to bear arms

Sean talks to Atlantic writer Tyler Austin Harper about the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and why liberals are missing the point about American gun culture and the right to bear arms. Beyon...

20 Feb 39min

Happy news from Sean

The Gray Area with Sean Illing is now twice a week! Look for new episodes every Monday and Friday, here in your ears and at Youtube.com/vox for your eyes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...

19 Feb 1min

The problem with gamifying life

Games are fun. Aren’t they? When we play games — board games, video games, any kind of game — something magical happens. Games allow us to explore, to create little worlds where we can be different...

9 Feb 49min