Hey, I'm Sean Ely, host of the Grey Area, a new podcast from Vox.

I used to teach philosophy and on this show, I'll use philosophy to explore everything.

I used to joke that I'm an academic pretending to be a journalist,

but now I'm sort of a journalist pretending to be an academic.

I grew up in the South and I started reading philosophy when I was in the military

and the conventional wisdom is that philosophy is the stuff of academics

and I've always thought that was wrong.

Philosophy is and has always been a useful way of thinking about the world.

So hopefully we carve out the space on this show to have those ambitious open-ended conversations

without any concern about landing on the right answers or winning a debate.

It's just exploring ideas for the sake of ideas.

By asking big questions, like, how can we bolster our democracy?

Part of this problem of what people call polarization is that people feel safe talking about ever fewer things.

What do we misunderstand about love?

So what I try to do is talk about a kind of love that has space for the full range of human emotions.

What happens to a country full of lonely people?

People do not act according to moral norms because the moral norms have been technically bloody evacuated.

React less, think more, and join me for the grey area, conversations about culture, politics, and the good life.

New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday.

Listen and subscribe.