The Pentagon’s AI war machine
The Pentagon has spent years building AI tools to help identify targets, speed up battlefield decisions, and make war more “efficient.” What started as an effort to analyze drone footage has grown int...
20 Apr 48min
American democracy's structural flaw
Back in 2015, before President Donald Trump, before January 6, before all the craziness of the last decade, Matt Yglesias made a blunt prediction: American democracy is doomed. Guest host Zack Beauch...
17 Apr 38min
The contradictions of wokeness
What does it mean to be “woke”? It's become a catch-all term to smear or dismiss anything that has any vague association with progressive politics. So anytime you venture into an argument about “woken...
13 Apr 53min
How to forgive yourself
It’s easy to forgive other people because you don’t have to live inside their head. Forgiving yourself is different and much, much harder. Sean Illing is joined by philosopher Myisha Cherry to talk a...
10 Apr 41min
The revolution will be memed
Kalle Lasn has been trying to jam consumer culture for decades. Now he thinks that was only the beginning. Sean talks with the Adbusters founder about advertising, culture jamming, meme warfare, surv...
6 Apr 48min
How we standardized music
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 Emily Siner explores...
3 Apr 29min
Why humans need to matter
Why do humans have this deep need to feel like we matter? Sean Illing talks with the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein about why “mattering” is not the same thing as being important, how the hunger for ...
30 Mar 47min
A brief update on the AI apocalypse
Something is definitely happening in the AI world, but how seriously should we take it? Is this another hype cycle or a genuine inflection point? Sean Illing talks with journalist Kelsey Piper (forme...
27 Mar 36min
