The Gray Area with Sean Illing
Society & Culture:Philosophy
Jon Favreau was President Obama’s chief speechwriter. In those days, he was a frequent critic of the political media, frustrated, as many in the Obama administration were, with its focus on conflict, on ephemera, on appearing even-handed even when reality was persistently skewed.
Today, Favreau is changing the media from the inside. He’s a co-host on Pod Save America, and co-founder of Crooked Media, both of which have seen tremendous growth in 2017.
In this conversation, we look back on 2017, talk through the first year of the Trump White House (“a day-to-day shitshow”); the Democrats he’s watching for 2020; the mechanics of building a podcast empire; Favreau’s concern about the left (“we need to take the time to persuade other people of what we believe”); and the rot in the Republican Party.
To Favreau, the right-wing media is “the real center of gravity in that party; it’s not the Republicans in Congress, it’s not even really Donald Trump, although I guess you could say that he is, in some ways, a creation of that media machine.”
Books:
What Happened by Hillary Clinton
The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton
All the Truth is Out by Matt Bai
The war on trans people
Michael Ian Black on being a better man
Carmen Maria Machado's haunted feminine
The rise and fall of America's monuments
The Philosophers: America's philosophy, with Cornel West
Why accidents aren't accidental
Rethinking the "end of history"
Anita Hill finally gets even
Elites have captured identity politics
The moral dangers of dirty work
Did the sexual revolution go wrong?
Who decides how to conserve nature?
The Philosophers: Loneliness and totalitarianism
The War in Ukraine, Explained — Part 4: The future of Europe
Michael Lewis on why Americans distrust experts
The War in Ukraine, Explained — Part 3: The nuclear threat
The case for regret
The War in Ukraine, Explained — Part 2: Sanctions
The spirituality of parenting
The War in Ukraine, Explained — Part 1: Why did Putin go to war?
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