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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1:00:40
The science of ideology
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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55:41
A new analysis of the pandemic
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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51:14
Halfway there: a philosopher’s guide to midlife crises
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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54:49
Whatever this is, it isn’t liberalism
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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The Gray Area with Sean Illing takes a philosophy-minded look at culture, technology, politics, and the world of ideas. Each week, we invite a guest to explore a question or topic that matters. From the the state of democracy, to the struggle with depression and anxiety, to the nature of identity in the digital age, each episode looks for nuance and honesty in the most important conversations of our time. New episodes drop every Monday.
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