Sebastian Junger came as close as you possibly can to dying. While his doctors struggled to revive him, the veteran reporter and avowed rationalist experienced things that shocked and shook him, leaving him with profound questions and unexpected revelations. In his book, In My Time of Dying, he explores the mysteries and commonalities of people’s near-death experiences.

In this episode, which originally aired in May 2024, he joins Sean to talk about what it’s like to almost die and what quantum physics can tell us about the afterlife.

Host: Sean Illing (⁠⁠@SeanIlling⁠⁠)

Guest: Sebastian Junger, journalist and author of ⁠⁠In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face With the Idea of an Afterlife⁠

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Almost nothing stands the test of time. Machiavelli's writings are a rare exception.

Why are we still talking about Machiavelli, nearly 500 years after his death? What is it about his political philosophy that feels so important, prescient, or maybe chilling today?

In this episode, Sean speaks with political philosopher and writer Erica Benner about Niccolo Machiavelli’s legacy. The two discuss The Prince, Machiavelli’s views on democracy, and what he might say about the Trump administration were he alive today.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Erica Benner, political philosopher, historian, and author of Be Like the Fox

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We’re told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades. Get into a good school. Get a good job. Be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high-status position.

Some of us love this endless climb. But lots of us, at least once in our lives, find ourselves asking, "What’s the point of all this ambition?"Historian and author Rutger Bregman doesn’t think there is a point to that kind of ambition. Instead, he wants us to be morally ambitious, to measure the value of our achievements based on how much good we do, by how much we improve the world.

In this episode, Bregman speaks with guest host Sigal Samuel about how to know if you’re morally ambitious, the value of surrounding yourself with like-minded people, and how to make moral ambition fashionable.

Host: Sigal Samuel, Vox senior reporter

Guest: Rutger Bregman, historian, author of Moral Ambition, and co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition

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Show Notes

Vox’s Good Robot series can be found here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3 (discusses the "drowning child thought experiment" and effective altruism)

Episode 4

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What do you do when you’re faced with evidence that challenges your ideology? Do you engage with that new information? Are you willing to change your mind about your most deeply held beliefs? Are you pre-disposed to be more rigid or more flexible in your thinking?

That’s what political psychologist and neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod wants to know. In her new book, The Ideological Brain, she examines the connection between our biology, our psychology, and our political beliefs.

In today’s episode, Leor speaks with Sean about rigid vs. flexible thinking, how our biology and ideology influence each other, and the conditions under which our ideology is more likely to become extreme.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: Leor Zmigrod, political psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of The Ideological Brain

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There are lots of stories to tell about the Covid pandemic. Most of them, on some level, are about politics, about decisions that affected people’s lives in different — and very unequal — ways.

Covid hasn’t disappeared, but the crisis has subsided. So do we have enough distance from it to reflect on what we got right, what we got wrong, and what we can do differently when the next crisis strikes?

Professor Frances E. Lee — co-author of In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us — thinks we do. In this episode, she speaks with Sean about how our politics, our assumptions, and our biases affected decision-making and outcomes during the pandemic.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Frances E. Lee, professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton and co-author of In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

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Philosophy often feels like a disconnected discipline, obsessed with tedious and abstract problems. But MIT professor Kieran Setiya believes philosophical inquiry has a practical purpose outside the classroom — to help guide us through life’s most challenging circumstances. He joins Sean to talk about self-help, FOMO, and midlife crises.

This episode originally aired in April 2024.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Kieran Setiya, author of Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way and Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.

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What exactly is the basis for democracy?

Arguably Iiberalism, the belief that the government serves the people, is the stone on which modern democracy was founded. That notion is so ingrained in the US that we often forget that America could be governed any other way. But political philosopher John Gray believes that liberalism has been waning for a long, long time.

He joins Sean to discuss the great liberal thinker Thomas Hobbes and America’s decades-long transition away from liberalism.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: John Gray, political philosopher and author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism

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We have an exciting announcement! Vox Members now get access to ad-free podcasts. If you sign up, you’ll get unlimited access to reporting on vox.com, exclusive newsletters, and all of our podcasts — including The Gray Area — ad-free. Plus, you’ll play a crucial role in helping our show get made.

Check it out at vox.com/members.

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There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to artificial intelligence. Technologists love to talk about all the good these tools can do in the world, all the problems they might solve. Yet, many of those same technologists are also warning us about all the ways AI might upend society, how it might even destroy humanity.

Julia Longoria, Vox host and editorial director, spent a year trying to understand that dichotomy. The result is a four-part podcast series — called Good Robot — that explores the ideologies of the people funding, building, and driving the conversation about AI.

Today Julia speaks with Sean about how the hopes and fears of these individuals are influencing the technology that will change all of our lives.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Vox Host and Editorial Director Julia Longoria

Good Robot is available in the Vox Unexplainable feed.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

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Why do we keep comparing AI to humans?

Jaron Lanier — virtual reality pioneer, digital philosopher, and the author of several best-selling books on technology — thinks that we should stop. In his view, technology is only valuable if it has beneficiaries. So instead of asking "What can AI do?," we should be asking, "What can AI do for us?"

In today’s episode, Jaron and Sean discuss a humanist approach to AI and how changing our understanding of AI tools could change how we use, develop, and improve them.

Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)

Guest: Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, artist, and writer.

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