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

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(764)

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 Mars 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 Mars 36min

Consciousness is a mystery

What is consciousness, really? We don’t know. Scientists aren’t sure. Philosophers can’t agree. All we have is the fact that it feels like something to be you right now. Beyond that, human consciousn...

16 Mars 39min

The end of world order as we know it

Venezuela. Greenland. Iran. Things have been moving so quickly that we weren't even at war with Iran when we recorded this episode of The Gray Area with Sean Illing. It’s only March, but it’s been a ...

13 Mars 35min