Meghan Daum is one of America’s sharpest cultural essayists, a former LA Times columnist and a longtime Angelino.

While Josh is in L.A., he and Meghan livestreamed from the Hollywood Hills in this Memorial Day conversation about what, exactly, Los Angeles is (city? county? megalopolis?), the decline of showbiz, the 2025 wildfires, California Democrats, dog abuse, addiction, incarceration, and why Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star from The Hills, might be the most honest candidate running for mayor.

It’s a question that has divided dinner tables, ended friendships, and split the left in half since October 7th, and with recent events, is no longer a theoretical debate. The oldest hatred in human history is once again at the surface.

Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres called David Harris “the foreign minister for the Jews”, having spent fifty years as one of the most prominent Jewish diplomats in the world. He served as CEO of the American Jewish Committee, has met with heads of state on every continent, and has just published Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know with Oxford University Press. He grew up in a family that lived through Soviet communism, Nazi-occupied France, and the expulsion of Jews from Libya. He knows what happens when the shapeshifting virus of anti-Semitism comes out of hibernation.

He joined Josh in the Uncomfortable Conversations studio to discuss why anti-Semitism always ends in lethality, why Israel has become the Jew among nations, what the left gets catastrophically wrong about October seventh, and why, after fifty years of working for peace, he still considers the existence of Israel nothing short of a miracle.

Dr Nick Coatsworth was the Australian government’s deputy chief medical officer during the pandemic’s first wave, when he regularly appeared on radio and TV to provide the public with information. He became the face of the vaccine rollout. Today, he’s more reflective. He shuns vaccine mandates, wants a national Covid inquiry, and opposes policies that would ban health “misinformation”.

Earlier in his career, as an expert in infectious and respiratory diseases, Nick led humanitarian teams in the Congo and in Darfur for Medicins Sans Frontiers - an experience so horrifying it left him with PTSD. He’s now a resident medical expert at the Nine Network on Australian TV, as well as a practising doctor at Canberra Hospital, where he was previously its director of infectious diseases.

Nick and Josh bring you up to speed on Hantavirus & Ebola, and wrestle with lockdowns, lab leaks, contact tracing, quarantine, misinformation, vaccine mandates, and what we need to learn from a pandemic we don’t reflect on enough.

Plus: Shakira vs the Spanish government, might be the most inspiring thing you’ll read this week.

Today, Josh sits down with a senior US former national security official to understand how three men - Trump, Xi and Putin - are remaking the world.

Tom Wright was a special assistant to President Biden and the Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the US National Security Council, where he helped to shape US policy on Ukraine, Taiwan, semiconductors, and the China relationship as it lurched from confrontation, to managed competition, and back again. Now, from the outside, he's trying to make sense of what Trump, Xi and Putin are building together, and what it means for every country they don't run (yet).

Josh probes Tom about the night he learned about the famous Chinese spy balloon in US airspace, about President Biden's mental decline, the Kamala Harris campaign, and how medium-sized powers might navigate a brave new world.

Tom is a scholar of international relations by training, originally from Ireland. He's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute and a contributing writer to The Atlantic. He joined Josh at the Uncomfortable Conversations studio during a tour of Australia to discuss the Trump-Xi summit, Putin in Ukraine, nuclear submarines, and why you shouldn’t buy a Chinese EV.

His new paper for the Lowy Institute is ‘Inflection Point: Biden, Trump and the Future World Order.’ Our thanks to the Lowy Institute for facilitating this conversation.

John Safran is Australia's Michael Moore, a provocateur and writer whose new documentary is ‘Shut Your Big Fat Mouth’. As a Jew, he interviews neo-Nazis, conspiracists and porn stars to understand what open expression means in a chaotic and hostile world.

'Shut Your Big Fat Mouth John Safran’ premieres Sunday 24 May at 7:30pm on SBS, and streams free on SBS On Demand.

David Moscrop, is a Canadian writer, academic and public intellectual. He has a PhD in Political Science and was a regular contributor for The Washington Post.

He joined Josh ahead of a trip to Australia to discuss national identity on a dog-eat-dog planet, the left’s overreach in the culture wars, Canadian truckers, right-wing anti-vaxxers, multiculturalism, jingoism, how all of us can be more coherent as a democratic unit, and most importantly, why Love Actually is a terrible film.

David Moscrop appears at Melbourne Writers Festival (7-10 May) and Sydney Writers' Festival (17-24 May).

Josh breaks down the the failure of “Project Freedom”, how Iran has discovered an asset even more valuable than nuclear weapons, and why the rest of the world is about to pay a tremendous price for America's miscalculation.

His hilarious, brutal crowd work is a viral sensation, and his television credits include hosting some of the UK’s longest running panel shows such as 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Big Fat Quiz Of The Year and his smash-hit Netflix specials, Natural Born Killer, and His Dark Material.

Whilst touring Australia for his latest live show, JIMMY CARR: LAUGHS FUNNY, he joined Josh in the flesh at the Uncomfortable Conversations studio to discuss revolution, A.I, fame, hair transplants, and why some things just can’t be fixed.

His new podcast is ‘Jimmy Carr: Crowd Work’ (https://open.spotify.com/show/72DxXJcIZGKEjX5hOoE2hk?si=e216f378b7b84f3f).

Anytime you’re faced with a decision that is likely to change who you are, you’re faced with a unique conundrum: The person you’ll be - who’ll judge whether you made the right call or the wrong one - is future you.

They’re a different person than Future You would be if present-day You had made the opposite decision. Still with me?

How are we supposed to decide how to lead a good life, if we can only ever know what we know right now (but we need to make decisions now that will affect who we become in the future)?

Laurie Paul is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University who’s a leading expert on the counterfactual analysis of causation and the concept of transformative experience.

She joins Josh to discuss how we judge whether to become a parent, how your preferences get scrambled by addiction, why atheists and religious people are secretly terrified of each other’s epiphanies, what cochlear implants tell us about identity, A.I., psychedelics, and what it means to make a choice in a state of radical ignorance… about who you’ll be once you’ve made it.

Steve Rosenbaum is an Emmy-winning former television news producer, TED Resident and boss of the NYC Media Lab. He joins Josh to explore the death of traditional news, why TikTok is so addictive, how young people think about trustworthiness... and how to fortify facts in a world of slop.

Steve's new book is "The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality". 

Joanna Howe is best-known for her viral videos on YouTube and social media debating people in the street about abortion, confronting politicians outside their offices, and smacking down pro-life politicians for not being pro-life enough. She's a law professor and a Catholic whose hundreds of thousands of followers cheer her on as she owns the libs and argues for abortion to be illegal because it is murder from the moment of fertilisation.

She joins Josh to have a rational debate about an emotional topic, and try in some small way, to help you have less toxic and more constructive conversations of your own.

You can find Josh’s previous conversation with the American family-values anti-surrogacy activist Katie Faust, here.

Last week, the end was in sight with a two-week ceasefire. Then talks in Pakistan between the US vice president and the Iranians went nowhere, and Trump suddenly imposed a blockade.

Since Monday, U.S. forces say they’ve now completely halted all economic trade leaving Iran’s ports. Iran say they’ll retaliate if the blockade continues. Where does the escalation lead? Does Trump have anything left up his sleeve? What exit ramps are there for either side?

Steven Simon served in the US State Department, where he specialised in the Middle East and counter-terrorism on President Clinton’s National Security Council. President Obama brought him back into the White House to serve as the NSC’s Senior Director for the Middle East and North Africa. He’s a leading world expert on Iran and co-wrote a book in 2011 called “The sixth crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the rumors of war.” His most recent book is “Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East.”

Steven joined Josh to explain the logic (or illogic) of Trump’s blockade... and what thirty years of shaping US policy in the Middle East has taught him about how this conflict is likely to end.

A.C. Grayling is a British philosopher who has written more than thirty books on everything from the nature of consciousness to the history of freedom to what it means to live well. Now, he is warning about the fragility of liberal democracy and on a speaking tour to Australia he joined Josh to discuss the crisis of meaning in the West, the rise of authoritarianism, and what remains of the self when the machines get smart too.

Plus, Professor Szeps answers your questions: "why is US petrol expensive if America doesn't import Iranian oil?"
Tune in live every week at uncomfortableconversations.substack.com.

Jack el-Hai wrote the book which became the movie "Nuremberg", in which Russell Crowe plays Hermann Göring. In Nuremberg jail, awaiting trial, 22 senior Nazis were interviewed by a young U.S. Army psychiatrist.

Psychiatrist Dr Douglas Kelly was only supposed to assess the Nazis’ mental fitness to stand trial. But he became obsessed with identifying a “Nazi personality”. He spent months with Goering, the man who was to succeed Hitler, hunting for traits or disorders that could identify who might commit such atrocities in the future. His private notes were kept secret by Kelly’s family until they released them to Jack.

He joined Josh to share what he learned, and what we all should understand about evil.

This is the final episode of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians.

Sam joins Josh to wrestle with her gayness, her blackness, her americanness, her creativeness, her differentness and sameness.

Josh breaks down the entire chaotic timeline of Trump's Iran strategy, and argues that these past two weeks may have written Trump's political epitaph. The crudeness, the bombast, the "you crazy bastards" diplomacy has become so unseemly that Trumpism itself may finally be toast.

Plus: Why the Artemis moon mission matters (stop asking why we're going back), what Survivor teaches us about coalition building, and why jihadists really shouldn't get nukes.

Thank f*ck for Taco.

This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You’ll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.

He joined Josh to discuss being poor, being rich, getting famous, and insulting the radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands.

This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You'll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.

Steve joined Josh to recount tales of the golden age of late-night television, the mishaps of hosting a live show every night, Kimmel, Colbert and how broadcast TV is evolving… and Andy Lee interrupts the podcast briefly.

This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You'll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.

Zainab joined Josh to school him on comedy, Islam, and marsupial reproductive biology.

Her Amazon Prime special is ‘Hijabs Off’

He returns to the show to discuss his getting cancelled for doing a Nazi salute, punching down, anti-semitism, Gaza & Zionism, cancel culture and offensive comedy.

This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You'll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.

Ballard's stand-up show is ‘Be Funny Challenge (Impossible)’ and his play about stand-up and cancel culture is ‘JKS: a Comedy(?)’

Tickets at comedyfestival.com.au

A major new study has divided young Australians into six "tribes": from far-left student activists to family-oriented nationalists, from pragmatic strivers to the affluent and already comfortable. They have almost nothing in common politically, but they all want the same things: financial security, home ownership, meaningful work, a family.

The difference between them isn't money or politics, but whether they believe the barriers in their way are within their control.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is a columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald and a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. She’s previously worked for the Australian Liberals, our conservative centre-right party, and the German Greens.

She joins Josh to explain the six tribes she identifies in her report, ‘Generation Trapped: Housing, handouts, and the collapse of young Australians’ life satisfaction’, and why understanding them is key to resolving the tensions simmering across the West, from intergenerational equity and immigration to the rise of populism.

Josh and Evan went live to answer your questions and explore some underreported stories: Ozempic zombies, insider trading allegations, humans about to return to the moon, and the lost art of talking to strangers.

Stephen Biegun was the United States Deputy Secretary of State in the first Trump Administration. He was also the special representative for North Korea, charged with overseeing America’s North Korea policy and running the first ever in-person negotiations between the two country’s leaders. While Trump was tweeting about “Rocket Man”, Biegun was trying to make history.

What was it like to work with Trump on complex foreign policy negotiations? What happened on last-minute sorties across the DMZ with the leader of the free world? And what has Stephen’s experience in seeing Trump’s worldview, first hand, taught him about strategy, Putin, Ukraine, and Iran?

Biegun worked in the George W. Bush administration as a member of the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice and was a senior executive at the Ford Motor Compnay. He joined Josh on a visit to Sydney to deliver a major lecture at the Lowy Institute, which kindly facilitated this conversation about American power, diplomacy, war, and the Trump you don’t see behind the scenes.

Eamon Waterford is a world expert on what the best cities get right. He's the chief executive of a think tank, the Committee for Sydney, that represents the interests of all the big players in Sydney’s economy: not just property developers but local councils, banks, architects, consultants, law firms, universities. He assesses how cities all over the world can evolve into the best version of themselves.

Eamon joined Josh to riff on Mamdani, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, Los Angeles; on the tension between low-density suburbs and walkability; between infrastructure and green spaces; between untrammelled development and too much risk aversion. If you want to live in the city of your dreams, listen up.

Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

In this week's edition of Josh vs the News, Josh offers something different: a tonic for tumultuous times. Instead of dissecting the latest outrage or geopolitical crisis, he invites you to zoom out and remember what actually matters.

How do you find peace when artificial intelligence threatens widespread, fast, and traumatizing change across every sector of society? When the news cycle never stops? When even our political tribes have become echo chambers of certainty?

Consider this your permission to touch grass, smell the roses, and remember that the waves of the South Pacific will keep crashing long after today's outrage has faded.

Today's episode will blow your mind with curiosities about the fabric of reality, the size of the biggest numbers, and how a simple probability problem, posed by a popular television game show, the Monty Hall Show, captivated America for years.

Adam Spencer is a former radio host, keynote speaker and the University of Sydney's ambassador for mathematics and science. His TED Talk was "Why I fell in love with monster prime numbers" and he has a new Substack, NerdNews by @adambspencer.

References from Adam:

• John Searle’s article “Consciousness” (published in Annual Review of Neuroscience)

• “Biological naturalism”

• Anil K. Seth, “Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2026, Cambridge University Press).

Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

In this week's powerful editorial, Josh invites you to shift focus away from the tsunami of hot takes, of Trump takedowns, of condemnations and victory proclamations and self-certainty on both sides.

Take a reprieve from the chatter and consider the question most commentators have skipped.

How should we understand the goals of the new, nationalist right? From Trump to Farage to the National Rally in France, from the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany to the meteoric rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in Australia, it's time to understand who we're dealing with.

Joel Jammal gained popularity protesting Australia's Covid lockdowns. Nigel Farage convinced Charlie Kirk to hand Joel the keys to the Turning Point franchise. He now has more than 600,000 followers and a billion views, with a newspaper and a podcast serving Christian nationalism to hundreds of thousands of people disillusioned with mainstream politics.

This is not your grandpappy's conservative party. Joel joins Josh to debate immigration, Brexit, Trump and the future of democracy.

Drones. Precision-Guided Munitions. A.I. war games. Autonomous Weapon Systems. At the Pentagon, at Anthropic, for Trump and in Iran, they're redefining warfare in real time.

When the Pentagon's A.I. partner, Anthropic, insisted its systems mustn't be used to spy on Americans or to build killer robots, President Trump baulked. On Friday, Trump directed every federal U.S. agency to stop working with Anthropic, and the Pentagon declared Anthropic to be a "supply-chain risk" - a designation normally reserved for companies in enemy nations, which would bar even private defence contractors from using Anthropic's A.I. Its competitor, OpenAI, stepped in and took the Pentagon contract instead.

As conflict spreads across the Middle East, how is artificial intelligence being used? How will these fights change in the near future? Can we control it? Toby Walsh thinks so. 

He's the Chief Scientist at the UNSW A.I. Institute and a leading voice in the global regulation of A.I. weapons. He studied theoretical physics and mathematics at Cambridge University, has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, and was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.

Toby stopped by the Uncomfortable Conversations studios on his way to the airport to fly to Geneva to participate in a United Nations conference about A.I. in warfare. 

We’re all alert to the problem of smartphones, screentime, kids and social media. But what if the problem is bigger? What if our brains and bodies are fundamentally hardwired to learn in ways that technology cannot reproduce?

Today’s uncomfortable question is whether educational technology - Chromebooks and tablets and whizz-bang learning apps - are ruining education for students and grown-ups alike. That’s what the data says, according to the neuroscientist and educator Jared Cooney Horvath. He does education-related brain and behavioural research as the director of the Science of Learning Group and of NeuroEducation. He’s lectured and researched at Harvard University and been published in the New Yorker, the Economist, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Scientific American and New Scientist.

Jared’s new book is “The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning -- And How To Help Them Thrive Again”. He joins Josh to wrestle with the problems of multitasking, rote learning, memorising, the transferability of skills, the fragility of Gen Z, and how you can learn better.

Why has the Chinese leader purged five of the seven members of the military's top decision-making body (one of the remaining two members being himself)? 

Next month, the Chinese Communist Party will enact its fifteenth Five-Year Plan. It's a biggie, because 2027 is the centenary of the People's Liberation Army - a date when China has declared it will be ready for major military combat. 

Bill Bishop is the most-read China analyst in the world. A former media guy who wrote the New York Times Dealbook's China Insider column, he became an entrepreneur and was the media's go-to China analyst during Covid. He launched one of the first Substacks ever, a fascinating blog about China called Sinocism, which now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. 

Bill and Josh step back to ask: Will China own the 21st century? Will it eat our lunch, or slowly deflate? Happy lunar new year, humans.

It's within our grasp. Solar is the cheapest form of energy. The only impediments are regulations that were written in the 1970s and our own ideological hang-ups and squabbles about energy. In fact, Europe could already be energy-independent from Russia if they'd decided to invest a fraction of their gigantic gas expenditures on solar arrays when Ukraine was invaded.

Casey Handmer is an Aussie in California who got his PhD in Theoretical AstroPhysics at Caltech. He's worked at Elon Musk's Hyperloop One and at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Now he's the founder of Terraform Industries, which plans to bring cheap, carbon-neutral hydrocarbons to everyone on Earth, while displacing drilling as the cheapest energy source.

He joins Josh for an inspiring, freewheeling conversation about solar, nuclear, coal, Russia, China, defense, artificial intelligence... and why a truly extraordinary future of abundance is just around the corner, if we choose to take it.

"Normies" are finally waking up, it seems, to the scale of what's happening. The dam broke this week in part thanks to an essay which went viral by the A.I. founder and investor Matt Shumer, titled ‘Something Big is Happening.’ It's a clarion call for everyone to pay attention after two A.I. giants released their latest models this month. The new tech leaves no doubt that things are going to get very weird, for all of us, fast.

The neuroscientist Professor Joel Pearson works at the coalface of how humans can be psychologically and practically resilient for the social, economic and political impact of A.I. He runs the Future Minds Lab at UNSW and is Deputy Director of Human Readiness at the UNSW A.I. Institute. Joel joins Josh live on Substack to explain the recent developments, paint a picture of what the near-term looks like, and guide us on how us humans can adapt to, and survive, the coming A.I tsunami.

Read Matt Shumer’s essay here:

https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403

In his weekly livestream, ‘Josh vs the News’, Josh sits down to sift through the media reporting and how we might best think about protest, free speech and Palestine.

Jeff Maurer was a writer on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for its first six seasons. He left in 2020 after feeling its editorial angle had become too ideologically captured. Now, Jeff has a wildly popular political-satire Substack, “I Might Be Wrong”.

Josh intended to chat with Jeff to help make sense of Minneapolis, Epstein, ICE, the 2020 election ballots, Don Lemon’s arrest and, of course, the Melania documentary. There’s been a lot, lately. But this conversation evolved into a far more fascinating and funny discussion about what the controversies over blackface and transgenderism can teach us about how the media lost its way; about whether we’ve lost the ability to cover the news - and to satirise it - without preaching to the choir.

Follow Jeff’s comedy writing below at www.imightbewrong.org

Is the U.S. government openly pursuing authoritarian rule? What is the risk of a low-grade, neighbour-against-neighbour spate of Balkan-style violence? How do we stitch American democracy back together? How does the Trump Administration end?

Take this opportunity to step back from the fire-hose of news and join Josh, as he puts America's current crisis in context, homes in on the real threat, and identifies a path to national sanity.

Is the Trump Administration openly hunting down journalists now? Or, in the aftermath of Snowden, Manning & Assange, is Trump just more shameless in cracking down on voices he disapproves of? What happens to a democracy when reporters and commentators are targeted in politically-motivated, trumped-up prosecutions?

Seth Stern is a civil liberties lawyer and the chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He joins Josh to discuss the case against Don Lemon, the weaponisation of espionage laws, the difference between ethical journalism and genuine national-security threats, how the Trump Administration - using Minneapolis as a pretext - is criminalising the freedom of the press, and how we might fix it.

While everyone's been focused on Gaza, the larger, more populous chunk of Palestine - the West Bank - has seen a dramatic escalation of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians. Why?

Without answering that question, no solution in Gaza will amount to a hill of beans. In this double-feature episode, Josh speaks with two people who have each lived and worked in the occupied West Bank and emerged with very different opinions. 

Andrey X is an anti-Zionist Russian-Israeli journalist and activist who documents Israeli violence in the West Bank for his nearly 400,000 Instagram followers. Charlotte Korchack is an American-Israeli educator of Jewish & Israeli history. Both have lived in the occupied territories and reported on Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents alike.

Josh speaks with Andrey and then Charlotte about the reality on the ground and the history & future of all the territory between the river and the sea.

Kathryn Paige Harden is a world-renowned psychology professor who specialises in how genes affect our behaviour. She was nearly cancelled during the era of Peak Woke for her book 'The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality'. Her research, while egalitarian in intent, was demonised as paving the way for eugenics.

Now, Professor Harden reveals even more fascinating links between genes and addiction, appetite, sex and violence in her amazing new book ‘Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness.’

She joins Josh to discuss nature, nurture, free will, dysfunction, genetic predispositions, and what taking acid taught her about being human.

Markets reward clickbait. Politics rewards tribalism. Social media rewards outrage. Almost imperceptibly, our public institutions have drifted away from their core purpose of serving your interests.

Economist Nicholas Gruen argues there’s a better model hiding in plain sight. Using as his intellectual models TikTok, Wikipedia, referendums and juries, he shares with Josh a radical but practical idea that could reinvigorate democracy.

You can find his videos on the subject at The Shared Centre (https://www.thesharedcentre.com).

He’s a professor of Psychology at Harvard and his most recent book is a hugely entertaining reflection on social norms, cooperation, outrage cycles, social media pile-ons, sudden political shifts, and moral panics. It’s called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, and Pinker joins Josh to discuss echo chambers, status hierarchies, and the corrosion of common ground.

Hate speech laws are being tabled in Federal Parliament, pro-Palestinian authors are Writer’s Festivals are being cancelled, and the question of whether Australia’s uniquely successful multiculturalism can survive, is lurking below the surface.

Journalist and digital activist Andrew Lowenthal went live with Josh to discuss censorship, nationalism, identity politics, and the challenge of navigating free speech in a multicultural society.

One of the most peculiar strategies of gay activist organisations has been to hitch their wagon to a revolutionary, non-binary, gender-fluid, LGBTQIA+ ideology. Is it time for gay rights and trans rights to quietly uncouple?

Ronan McCrea is a Professor of Constitutional and European law at University College London whose new book is "The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom". He argues that the combination of the Christian right, socially conservative migrants, and backlash to LGBTQIA+ extremism is putting gay rights at risk. He joins Josh to propose a solution.

They've won two Emmys, performed stand-up specials in multiple languages, run dozens of marathons for charity, and even stood for parliament and for the mayoralty of London. In the US, they starred in television shows like The Riches, United States of Tara and Hannibal. Their film roles include Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Thirteen and Valkyrie.

Izzard was on Uncomfortable Conversations briefly in 2021, in the persona of Eddie. Now living full-time as Suzy - and on the eve of a global tour of a one-person production of Hamlet(!) and a new stand-up special - it's time for Szeps and Izzard to finally connect in the flesh.

Uncomfortable Conversations is chuffed to be a new Spotify Partner show, and even more grateful to the amazing folks at Spotify for welcoming us to their schmancy studios in London, where Izzard - recovering from a leg injury - hobbled in to discuss humour, wisdom, passion, gender, performativity and ambition.

Tickets to Izzard's Sydney shows are available here [https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/theatre/izzard-hamlet]. Our thanks again to Spotify and the team at the Sydney Opera House for making this conversation possible.

That’s the argument of Konstantin Kisin, co-host of Trigonometry, one of the world's most popular podcasts. He’s held up as a poster boy for certain elements on the right following a viral speech against woke culture at Oxford, but his diagnosis of Britain's malaise cuts deeper than culture wars. He joins Josh to dissect what's broken, and debate the path forward.

Watch Josh’s appearance on Triggernometry here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgxizmt4bUU

Every Christmas, families sit down to feasts... and Josh sits down with one of his favourite regular guests, Gary Kennedy. Gary is a food scientist who knows everything about the microbiology of what you eat, and what you shouldn't. Merry Christmas, humans. Bon appetit!

As his city picks up the pieces, Josh shares his feelings and his thoughts about extremism, free speech, Israel, Islam, anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, multiculturalism, liberalism and how to encourage a more peaceful future for us all.

But the real job is even stranger. They are the gatekeepers to presidents and prime ministers. The triage nurses for national crises. The confidantes who remind a leader to eat breakfast, steady them during massacres and terror attacks, and sometimes challenge them on the very policies they champion.

Phoebe Saintilan-Stocks has interviewed the people behind Mandela, Blair, Gillard, Howard, Ardern, Trudeau and more, revealing a world of invisible power, professional intimacy, and the oddity of a system in which unelected aides can quietly influence the fate of nations. From the death of Princess Diana to 9/11, from Port Arthur to Christchurch, their stories show how leadership actually works when the stakes are existential.

Phoebe joins Josh to unpack the hidden architecture of power, the personalities behind it, and what their experiences reveal about trust, loyalty, crisis, and the human frailty of the people we expect to carry entire countries on their shoulders.

Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

Aidan Alexander is the co-founder of a non-profit that distributes money to a basket of effective charities creating cruelty-free options for millions of farmed animals each year. If you care about whether pigs and hens endure agonising lives simply to shave a few cents off each pound of their flesh, here's your practical solution.

FarmKind, Aidan's organisation, is independently funded through philanthropy. It takes no cut of any donations -- they pass it all directly to six of the best charities working to fix factory farming. Until the end of 2025, all donations using the code "josh" will be matched 100% by FarmKind so your dollar goes twice as far. (If this reads like an ad, it's not. We're not paid for this; we just believe in fixing factory farming so Josh can have his steak and eat it too.) Go to FarmKind.giving and use the code "josh" before the new year, to double your contribution. Or follow the link below:

https://www.farmkind.giving/giving-season-2025?promo=josh

Aidan joins Josh to discuss why animal-rights activism hasn't worked, the problems of preaching veganism, the sentience of different species, the strangely elevated status of cats and dogs, the negative externalities of industrial agriculture, and practical ways we all can solve this fixable problem.

Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

Why did France lose to the Nazis, despite having more tanks, troops, and guns? How did Ukraine stand firm against Russia? Why was Winston Churchill right and Neville Chamberlain wrong? How do you know if you can trust an ally? Will the logic of nuclear mutually-assured destruction hold? How will technology shape the future of war? What will happen if China goes for Taiwan?

In an era of asymmetric warfare, of killer drones and bunker-busting bombs, it’s more important than ever to tease out the psychological games of conflict.

Dr Nicholas Wright is a leading neuroscientist who advises the Pentagon and the UK Cabinet Office on psychological strategy. His new book is Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain. He joins Josh to explain how all wars come down to psychology, to prediction, to second-guessing, to mental games... and how we in the West might master them.

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From Mayor Mamdani's win to Elon's trillion-dollar payday, from Instagram infuluencers embracing communism to Bernie and AOC, from Trump's tariffs to Chinese communism. Critiques abound of the neoliberal order that has dominated the past half century.

But those assumptions - not just about policies, like free trade and low taxes, but about the very structure of we live our lives, how we produce stuff, and get stuff; assumptions like the existence of money and markets and wages - are not inescapable facts of reality. They evolved, over the course of the last thousand years. They made us very rich. And they could've been otherwise.

Professor Sven Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard University and one of the world's leading historians of capitalism. He's not a free-market cheerleader, not a libertarian economist defending unfettered capitalism. He's a historian who studies how, in the real world, violence, coercion and empire were foundational to capitalism's rise... but how capitalism remains the indispensable system that made you richer than most people who ever lived.

Beckert got his PhD in history from Columbia University and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. His new book is Capitalism: A Global History, and he joined Josh to shed light on what capitalism is, how it came about, and how might we re-anchor capitalism in moral and ecological limits... without extinguishing the creativity that has made it the most productive engine of all time.

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Josh and Tony wrestle with the challenges facing the U.K. and the U.S. from right-wing populism, illegal immigration, multiculturalism, and the fate of Western democracy.

His new book is “Australia: A History“.

That's the claim of Paul Starr, a Pulitzer-winner who co-founded the iconic magazine The American Prospect. He worked in the Clinton administration and is now a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.

Starr's new book is "American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now". He joined Josh to explain how, from MLK to Nixon to Gingrich to NAFTA to tariffs to wokeness, we find ourselves in the latest cycle of a grand American battle between revenge, fear and freedom.

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Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post who opposed the Iraq War and supported Bernie Sanders. An Arab-Muslim American, he lived in Jordan on a Fulbright Scholarship and got his PhD in political science from Oxford University. He's not your average neo-conservative.

Shadi and Josh debate American influence, American decline, the Gaza War, democracies, dictatorships, China, Russia, Ukraine, Trump, and the future of the American Empire.

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All of our most uncomfortable conversations stem, at their heart, from a conflict about what we ought to do. And the basis of our modern morality, in secular Western culture at least, is utilitarianism: the pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Its most important living advocate, Peter Singer, has shaped how generations think about ethics, from animal rights to abortion, foreign aid, euthanasia, religion and more. 

But what if your utilitarian assumptions are wrong? "Spectacularly and extravagantly wrong", in the words of today's guest?

Bo Winegard is a social psychologist whose essay, Against Singerism, is an audacious critique of our basic moral framework. Josh and Bo unpack the appeal and limits of utilitarianism, the traps of moral absolutism, and what it means to lead a good life. If "the greatest good" isn't the ultimate moral goal, then... what is?

Who are these visionaries, planning galactic domination? What are they cooking up? Is this a new dawn of exploration, or a bunch of rich kids with planet-sized egos?

Jeffrey Kluger is Time magazine’s editor-at-large and the co-author of the book on which Apollo 13 was based, Lost Moon. He joins Josh to unpack the strange intersection of science, politics, and power shaping the new era in space. From Elon Musk’s embattled Starship plans, to China’s steady march toward a lunar landing, will the new space race be a platform for hare-brained geopolitical whims? Or is the human species deeply hardwired to take giant leaps for mankind?

This bonus episode is a live recording from a one-of-a-kind gala in Canberra dreamed up by social-media firebrand (and friend of the show) Punters Politics. Instead of corporations buying access to ministers, everyday Australians bought the tables, and the proceeds went toward hiring a lobbyist to represent the public for a change.

Josh hosted the flagship conversation of the night, joined by Senator Bridget McKenzie, Senator David Pocock, MP Allegra Spender and later MP Helen Haines, to tackle the taboo topic at the heart of Australian politics: how money, access and cosy fundraising circuits shape the worldviews of the people writing our laws.

Joining Josh from NYC on a Substack Livestream the day after the mayoral election is Jason Chatfield, one of the world’s most successful cartoonists. Jason was implausibly young when he was tapped to run Australia’s longest-running and most iconic comic strip, Ginger Meggs. After moving to the States, he won acclaim for iconic cartoons in The New Yorker, Esquire, Variety and Mad Magazine, and he served as the president of the National Cartoonists Society. Now, he's independent, on Substack.

In an age of algorithms, outrage and censorship, how far can creative people go? Politically, financially, and personal fulfillmentilly, it's a conundrum for anyone pursuing an independent creative life. Jason joined Josh from his home in Manhattan to talk Mamdani, Trump, satire, authenticity, perfectionism... and the future of free expression.

Quico Toro does. He's the Director of Climate Repair at the Anthropocene Institute, a former journalist who's written for the New York Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic, and a Venezuelan-born thinker shaped by his homeland's slide into authoritarianism.

He is deeply worried about climate chaos but believes the comfortable consensus about carbon must be shattered. There has always been a fringe of geo-engineers and techno-tinkerers with wild schemes to hack the sky or scrub the atmosphere. While most of those ideas deserve the scepticism they get, Toro's plan could, he hopes, literally save the world.

Clare Stephens is a feminist journalist who has spent years at the coalface of cancel culture. She spent years at Australia’s biggest independent women’s media outlet, Mamamia, copping heat from all sides and watching digital mobs turn ordinary mistakes into existential crises.

Now she’s written a novel about it, The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done, and created a podcast, The Pile-On. Clare and Josh unpack how cancel culture evolved, why it hit women differently from men, how shame works, and whether we’re beginning to find a healthier way of disagreeing online.

The question of who counts as a woman, once banal, is now a cultural lightning rod, shaping debates over prisons, sport, health care, and child rearing.

Professor Robert Wintemute is one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers. A lifelong gay rights advocate and an early contributor to international transgender rights frameworks, he has since revised his view, arguing for a balance between trans inclusion and sex-based protections for women.

He joins Josh to explore how we got here, what has changed, and what co-existence might look like.

That's been Josh's story for decades. So when he heard that the founder of one of the world's leading centres for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction has written a book criticising how meditation is marketed and packaged and practised, Josh's ears pricked up.

Have meditation apps, Buddhist mantras, and “good vibes” influencers turned mindfulness into a self-help circus?

Mo Edjlali is a former tech entrepreneur and the founder of Mindful Leader. His new book, Open MBSR: Reimagining the Future of Mindfulness, takes aim at elitism, pseudo-spirituality, and quick fixes.

Mo joins Josh to troubleshoot what isn't working about modern meditation... and to help you grasp the secular, scientific basis for mastering your attention.

Wil Anderson is perhaps Australia's most successful stand-up comic. As well as his countless sold-out live shows, he hosts Gruen, a weekly panel show that has run for seventeen years.

Wil and Josh riff on the state of comedy today and go deep into its craft, purpose and perils. How do you stay curious in a world allergic to doubt? What is humour when outrage travels faster than nuance? And is it wiser to just tune out of the chaos all together?

A powerful movement inside Christian America believes it is on a divine mission to rescue the nation’s institutions; from education and media to business and government. Their chief cheerleader was Charlie Kirk, whose organisation, Turning Point USA, is now better positioned to reshape American life than when he was alive.

In the same month as Kirk's assassination, by sheer coincidence, a book was released revealing the incredible backstory of Kirk's plan: The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy.

Its author, former journalist and academic Dr Matthew Boedy, joins Josh to explain how a vision of two evangelists in the '70s became the blueprint for a cultural takeover, and how its most modern champion, Charlie Kirk, built a machine capable of turning online outrage into real-world political power.

Is there actually a housing crisis? Or are most people, in fact, comfortably paying historically-unremarkable mortgage repayments for a desirable product? Economist Cameron Murray argues for this unpopular (you might even say “uncomfortable”) heterodox view. While many of his peers, like our recent guest Peter Tulip, argue that house prices are too high because of a lack of supply, Cameron reckons they’re actually… checks notes… just fine.

Josh pushes on this theory, from interest rates to immigration to the politics of property, in a conversation that asks what really drives up the property price tag, what we’re really paying for... and why we just can’t stop talking about it.

Former Senator Bob Brown co-founded the world’s first Green Party, in Tasmania in 1972. He led the Australian Greens in Parliament for decades and spearheaded a pivotal moment in global environmentalism, when he helped save the pristine Franklin River from being dammed.

Senator Brown joined Josh in Sydney to talk about his life of protest and purpose, from heckling President George W. Bush to being openly gay when it was still illegal. They discuss the phoney choice of voting for major parties, the pickle the modern left finds itself in, and why love and wildness are the keys to saving the planet.

His new book is Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders.

Could the Gaza War end up delivering real peace? What would it take, in Israel, Palestine and beyond, for the horrors of the past two years to give way to something better than the previous status quo?

Yaakov Katz is the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post after devoting many years as the paper’s military correspondent. He was briefly senior adviser to Naftali Bennett (a former - and, many believe, likely future - Israeli prime minister) and Yaakov’s new book is While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East.

Yaakov and Josh reflect on the intelligence and military breakdowns that led to October 7th, the clash between Israeli policies and world opinion, the disillusionment of many Jews with the Gaza War, the trauma on both sides, and whether the future for Arabs and Jews might, in fact, be more hopeful than you’ve been led to believe.

What’s going on? Race riots; migrant detention hotels ablaze; the prime minister condemning Elon Musk for using “dangerous and inflammatory” language at a nationalist protest with the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson. What happened to tea cups and crumpets, umbrellas and bowler hats - or even the “Cool Britannia” of the London Olympics?

Dominic Frisby is an English comedian, musician, author, and philosophiser about social justice, diversity, finance, economics, and all things cultural. As a Brexiteer (and a return-to-the-gold-standard Bitcoiner), he rejected accusations that he was “far right” with his hit song “We’re All Far Rigt Now”. It broke the internet with tens of millions of views and lyrics like “Worse than Winston Churchill, worse than Enoch Powell, Klu Klux Clan and Jimmy Fallon, we’re all racist now. Oh, the countryside is racist. Dogs and cats are racist. Eating meat is racist... We’re all far right now.”

Dominic sat down with Josh to wrestle with crime in London, immigration, race, conspiracy theories, freedom of speech, how to avoid a civil war, and why China is secretly stashing bazillions of dollars in gold.

The inside story of how the Covid lab leak hypothesis went mainstream is just one of the tales which the science journalist Elizabeth Finkel investigates in her new book. Josh is still suspicious of the Wuhan lab so the two of them debate the wet market, gain of function research, China's secrecy, RFK's disinformation, Occam's razor, and how to do good science in a post-truth era.

Finkel is the co-founder and former Editor-in-Chief of COSMOS magazine and a regular contributor to Science magazine. Her new book is Prove It: A Scientific Guide for the Post-Truth Era.

Waleed is a controversial superstar Down Under. He's the recipient of Australia's highest journalism award, a Walkley, and its highest television prize, a Gold Logie, for hosting The Project, a nightly network news panel show, for more than ten years. He's also a professor of politics working in the Monash University Global Terrorism Research Centre. A practising Muslim, he has a deep understanding of extremism on the left and right. 

Don't miss Waleed and Josh, two very different intellects, in this frank, far-reaching conversation about extremism, free speech, and whether our civic fabric can withstand the pressures of technology and ideology.

Substack’s co-founders are Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie, who were kind enough to sit down with Josh to discuss the conflict between free speech and hate speech, the decline of legacy media, the role of video, the challenges of living in a social-media world… and the future of their little company that’s becoming very, very big.

The official government line is that the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooter was a lone wolf. The killer himself cultivated this image. But the movement that radicalised him is a complex network of persuasion. It starts with goofy alt-right memes. It moves on to far-right forums like 4Chan & 8Chan. And it expresses itself in real-world groups like the white supremacist "migrant hunters" with whom the Christchurch shooter embedded in central and eastern Europe.

Joey Watson is a young investigative journalist who's been painstakingly exploring the far-right internet swamp - and travelling to Serbia, Austria and Bulgaria - to retrace the Christchurch terrorist's radicalisation. Joey and Josh discuss how immigration, nationalism, Islam, bigotry and the internet are being built into an ideological powder keg... and how we might defuse it.

Nick sat down with Josh in London on the Szeps Live World Tour to discuss songwriting, grief, faith... and, as a bonus, to critique some of Josh's recent episodes.

His hilarious, brutal crowd work is a viral sensation. His Netflix specials are smash hits. He hosts huge UK television panel shows and is currently touring the US, UK & Europe (and Australia and New Zealand early next year) with his latest live show, JIMMY CARR: LAUGHS FUNNY.

Jimmy and Josh caught up in-the-flesh in London on the Szeps Live Around-the-World Podcast Marathon to discuss crowd work, Elon Musk, immigration, COVID, and Kanye.

All info and tickets for Jimmy’s tour are available at www.jimmycarr.com

Coleman Hughes doesn’t just write and broadcast, he also plays a mean jazz trombone, bringing the same contrarian rhythm to politics as he does to music.

During the Szeps Live World Tour’s jaunt through New York, Josh and Coleman sat down to dive into race, identity, Trumpism, and whether the Left can find its groove again.

Meghan's independent media empire is The Unspeakeasy - a podcast, Substack publication and a community for freethinking women. Enjoy this sparkling ramble through the culture wars.

In this live-streamed conversation on the Szeps Live World Tour, Rich welcomed Josh to his new digs in a glorious mountaintop lair behind Malibu - to to talk discipline, midlife pivots, the seductions of modern distraction, and whether resilience today demands a new kind of grit.

Kmele Foster is one of the most original and humane thinkers Josh has the privilege of knowing. Funny, fearless and wise, the two young dads sat down in Brooklyn during the Szeps Live Around-the-World Podcast Marathon to wrestle with Blackness, whiteness, racism, parenting, guilt-ridden woke white leftists in San Francisco (where Kmele lives) and the meaning of the cosmos.

After having a falling-out with Silicon Valley, Kmele was recently appointed the editor-at-large of Tangle, an independent news website that summarises arguments from the right, left, and center. Kmele's first column was this absolute barnstormer. He also serves on the board of directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and co-hosts the smash hit podcast The Fifth Column.

Don't miss this uplifting, provocative, moving, mind-expanding chat.

Sam Harris is one of the world's most influential podcasters and commentators. He burst onto the scene as a prominent atheist but has since become an elder statesman of reason and logic, advocating mindfulness and rationality through his meditation app, Waking Up, and his podcast, Making Sense. 

Sam has always been a generous supporter of Josh's work and was kind enough to invite us to his private studio during the Szeps Live Around-the-World Podcast Marathon for a two-and-a-half-hour livestream. Enjoy this sparkling meeting of minds.

Is South Park doing more to resist Trump than the press, or is it part of the circus? What happens when podcasting becomes the default news source? Is "platforming" bad ideas dangerous or essential? Are we nostalgic for a media era that never was? And how do you choose between marrying Donald Trump or f**king Tucker Carlson?

Josh welcomed Matt Welch and Kmele Foster, co-hosts of The Fifth Column, along with the owner of the Cellar, Noam Dworman, who has his own fiery podcast, Live From the Table. Blocked and Reported's Jesse Singal even swung by for a round of "Jew In The Hot Seat".

The room was packed. The drinks were flowing. Enjoy the fun.

His day job is as an economics professor at George Mason University, where he also runs the classical liberal Mercatus Center. But his influence is immense... on policymakers, tech titans and thought leaders who hang on his ideas as a visionary sage.

Tyler hosts what Josh regards as one of the world's best intellectual interview podcasts, Conversations with Tyler.

He's written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, but he's now a contributor at

The Free Press. We're grateful to the FP for helping us to boost this mind-expanding conversation, which streamed live from Tyler's bucolic porch in northern Virginia.

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Second, she tripped out on Ayahuasca.

Third, she walked away from her podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

What happened?

Sarah sat down with Josh in her home in the suburbs outside Washington, D.C. for a livestream about belief, justice, gender, and tolerance, on the Szeps Live Round-the-World Podcast Marathon.

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It's time for the SZEPS LIVE WORLD TOUR.

Yes, global mega-giant publishing behemoth Substack has tapped this li'l ole show for Substack's first-ever Live-Streamed Around-the-World Podcast Marathon. That's a LOT of hyphens.

Six cities. Twelve days. Twenty-four time zones. No filter.

For the next two weeks, Josh will go head to head, live, with some of the world’s most fascinating minds before a global audience in back-to-back foreign locales.

From London to Los Angeles, New York to Malibu, Josh and his long-suffering producer, Jono, are hopscotching the planet to visit a parade of iconoclasts and intellectual troublemakers, broadcasting raw, unfiltered conversations sometimes multiple times a day.

To enjoy every morsel, subscribe for free to get notified whenever we go live. You'll be able to watch every episode as it streams in real time. To catch up afterwards, about half the shows will be exclusive for paid subscribers. For the price of a cup of coffee a month, you'll get the whole enchilada. All will be available on your podcast app too.

The tour's centrepiece will be a high-voltage live event at New York’s iconic Comedy Cellar – the stomping ground of Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle and Robin Williams – on Tuesday July 29th at 6pm ET (11pm in London, 3pm in LA, 8am Wed in Sydney). Put it in your calendar. It'll be a no-holds-barred panel discussion with some of the biggest names in New York journalism.

Your normal podcast release schedule may be a little wonky while we fly blind around the planet, streaming live with no safety net, chasing the most fascinating minds… while jet lag fries ours. But you're a big kid. You can handle it.

Today's episode is the first cab off the rank - a livestream from a Brooklyn rooftop with panoramic views of Manhattan and the one-&-only 

Jesse Singal, co-host of the smash hit podcast Blocked and Reported, and one of America's most courageous reporters on youth gender medicine.

Buckle up, humans, for the most audacious live-streaming event in Substack's history.

Osher is a superstar in Australia. He was the face of Australian Idol, The Masked Singer, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. He also happens to have, as he politely calls it, "a different brain" -- a brain prone to depression, social anxiety, obsessive compulsion, psychosis and addiction. His podcast, Better Than Yesterday, discusses sanity, recovery, parenting, and what it means to grow older without growing rigid.

This episode is a recording of a Szeps Live stream which you can watch on YouTube or Substack if you wanna see Osh 'n' Josh's purdy faces.

And just a heads-up to stay across Uncomfortable Conversations in the next few months because, as we discuss in this episode, Josh is about to deliver some killer livestreamed celebrity content during an imminent Szeps Live around-the-world tour. If you've been putting off figuring out how to download the Substack app, do it now in one click and follow this show to keep abreast of what'll be a delightful tsunami of mind-expanding chats.

Osher’s new illustrated book about mental wellness is called "So What, Now What?”

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Dr Billy Garvey is one of Australia's leading developmental paediatricians. He's a senior specialist at one of Australia's largest university paediatric hospitals, where he works with kids struggling with behavioural issues just like he did. His clinic has a waiting list that's years-long.

Billy and Josh debate masculinity, permissive parenting, rigid schools, the over-diagnosis of mental "diseases" in kids, and whether kids are coddled these days. Josh wants to understand why the Greatest Generation was able to win WWII without the high rates of clinical anxiety and depression that supposedly afflict today's snowflakes. Billy says that's exactly the wrong way to look at it.

Billy also hosts the #1 parenting podcast in Australia, Pop Culture Parenting, and is the founder of Guiding Growing Minds, a social enterprise that helps children to live meaningful lives. His book is Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child’s Mental Health.

Josh walked out of this conversation feeling like he'd received a bracing, mind-expanding free therapy session. Unleash your inner twelve-year-old and take a seat.

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Aidan Morrison is the Director of Energy Research at the classical-liberal Centre for Independent Studies. He's a data scientist with postgrad qualifications in physics who leads the centre's energy systems research. He argues that most assessments of renewable energy are incomplete or misleading.

If you missed Josh's chat with the renewable-energy engineer and entrepreneur Saul Griffith on June 10th, you might want to give it a listen first here. Here, Aidan and Josh debate how to think about generating and supplying cheap power to a high-tech society... and whether the answer to our growing energy needs is staring us right in the face.

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In an era of social-media mobs, splintering communities and anti-immigrant ideas, the way we sort ourselves into in-groups and out-groups is a fascinating field of social psycology. Professor Jetten is an expert in the psychology of inclusion and exclusion, radicalisation, social dynamics, and the ways in which “who you are” is shaped by “who you are with.”

Professor Jetten is from the Netherlands, but currently works at the University of Queensland in Australia.

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At a time when Republican support for same-sex marriage is dropping fast thanks to discomfort with parts of the LGBTQIA+ agenda (especially relating to kids and transgenderism), Katy's ideas are gaining traction. Her policies would revolutionise - and in some case, criminalise - IVF, surrogacy, adoption, sperm donation, egg donation, and even divorce.

The group most targeted by biological-parenting laws would, of course, be gay parents - who, by definition, subvert the nuclear biological family.

While Katy was touring Australia, she was kind enough to stop by the Uncomfortable Conversations studios to make her case against gay parenting to one of Australia's most prominent gay dads, the host of this show.

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In America, two tech giants just won landmark court cases over their use of copyrighted works to train A.I. models. The court found that Meta and Anthropic didn't violate copyright when they trained their large language models on books without the authors' permission.

This raises big questions. Who gets to create? What is A.I. actually doing, under the hood? How is it impacting human work? Is the famous "Turing Test" even relevant any more? And by what measure would we even know if machines are "intelligent"? Might we already have achieved Artificial General Intelligence and will only know it with hindsight?

Professor Toby Walsh is one of the most respected - and most measured - A.I. academics in the world. He studied theoretical physics and mathematics at Cambridge, and got his PhD in artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. He's currently a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, where he runs the A.I. Institute, and the former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence.

At this tipping point in the evolution of A.I., Toby and Josh wrestle with the development of artificial intelligence, its future... and where that leaves the rest of us. Toby's new book is "The Shortest History of A.I."

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Professor Carl Rhodes was the dean of the business school at the University of Technology, Sydney. His new book is "Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire".

Carl and Josh debate fairness, democratic socialism, Bernie Sanders, Steve Jobs, diversity, whiteness, wokeness and wealth.

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That’s the thesis of 'The War of Return’ by former Labor parliamentarian and foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Einat Wilf. She opposes settlement-building but is otherwise a left-wing hawk. Wilf argues that the main reason why the conflict endures - and why Palestinians remain stateless - is the ongoing refusal by every Palestinian leader to accept that Israel is here to stay and there's no coming back.

To discuss her views and how the conflict has unfolded since October 7th, Einat joined Josh in our Sydney studios. This conversation took place at almost exactly the moment Israel began striking Iran, before the Iran news broke.

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Eric Schwitzgebel is a legendary professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley and an important voice in Silicon Valley's conversations about ethical artificial sentience. He and Josh muse on the various explanations of what your experiences actually are at their most profound level; why you probably don't have a soul; whether sufficiently intelligent machines will ever feel internally emotional alive... and how we'll even be able to tell. 

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Today's episode would normally be paywalled. We're offering it as a free example of the kind of unstructured, unpredictable, unedited, freewheeling, thought-provoking clashes Josh does live on Substack, versus the more buttoned-up, pre-recorded tone of the podcast. 

Sarah Wilson is a former media high-flyer - the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, host of MasterChef Australia, big-time wellness columnist - who turned her back on her fabulously materialistic life, sold all her possessions, and became a nomadic creator. She doesn't have a home but spends most of her time now in Paris, where she preaches her secular wisdom of sanity to fans around the world. 

Josh and Sarah have a relationship of respectful disagreement and curious admiration. They streamed live this week with no particular agenda (except to save the world). Treat yourself to more conversations like this by registering here and downloading the Substack app.

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Today, Josh comes to you battered and bruised by the slings and arrows of a national pile-on. He wrote the lead opinion piece in the big thumping weekend edition of Sydney's and Melbourne's biggest broadsheet newspapers, in which he argued for diaspora Jews to stop reflexively making excuses for Israel. 

The backlash has been as savage as you'd expect on a topic where nuance goes to die. 
From the fallout, Josh takes a crack at wrestling with tribalism, group-think, moral honesty, and the unfolding Israel-Iran war.

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He's made the leap to Substack, and joined Josh to discuss his regrets as a leading journalist, objectivity, fairness, thought bubbles, the flaws of media (old and new), climate change, immigration, and what it was like to interview Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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Eureka Day is playing in Sydney until the 21st June 2025 at the Seymour Centre. You can find out more here.

Saul's U.S. research labs were recently eviscerated by Elon Musk's DOGE cuts. He begins this conversation in a gloomy mood about the state of American scientific research, but peps up about the potential for overhauling how we generate, deliver and manage clean electricity. It's a wild rebuke to the climate hysterics on both sides.

While the rest of the country argues about nuclear energy, solar panels and fossil fuels, enjoy this electrifying chat about how we could be on the brink of electrifying everything.

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Yascha Mounk is one of Josh's favourite thinkers on how to hold liberal democracies together in a destabilising time.

Yascha will rejoin Josh on a Szeps Live Substack Livestream next Tuesday June 17th at 9pm ET to answer your questions about this conversation (11am Sydney-time on Wed 18th). Be sure you're subscribed to notifications here to stay abreast of all the additional content - it's free to watch (but comments are only for paid subscribers).

This interview was recorded before the Los Angeles protests. Enjoy this sanity-inducing chat about the state of liberalism in 2025 and beyond.

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An unapologetic progressive, she recently interviewed the prime minister and earned the honour of speaking at one of Australia's most prestigious forums, the National Press Club address. Ferguson intends to run for the senate and to someday be prime minister.

She and Josh wrestle with new media and old, feminism, schisms in the online mediaverse, Rupert Murdoch, and holding guests - and themselves - to account.

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He became the face of the gay marriage fight, after writing the first major American article arguing for it in 1989. His 1995 book, Virtually Normal, became a bible of the marriage equality movement.

Andrew had moved to America to get his PhD in politics from Harvard in the '80s, after studying at Oxford.

As a gay, British, Catholic conservative in America, he dominated debates - on television as well as in writing - on everything from AIDS to Iraq to Obama.

Andrew pioneered online journalism as one of the first superstar "bloggers". He wrote for the likes of London's Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, the Atlantic, Time magazine, the New York Times Magazine and New York magazine. He now publishes The Weekly Dish on Substack.

Josh and Andrew discuss his gay marriage fight, the opposition from gays, the transgender culture wars, HIV/AIDS, the "LGBTQ+ community", Andrew's college life in Reagan's America, and how he won over a conservative country to a radical agenda (and how liberals might do it again).

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Born and raised in Israel, Dr Goldberg is a professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the head of the university's Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry until last year.

Goldberg is a world-renowned expert on the cultural history of Jews during the Holocaust, in particular in the Warsaw Ghetto. He's been a visiting scholar at many of the top institutes for the study of genocide all over Europe and America, including at Cornell University and at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

These bona fides give Goldberg the authority to level devastating accusations against his homeland. He recently went viral after co-authoring an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, entitled "There's No Auschwitz in Gaza. But It's Still Genocide".

Professor Goldberg made time for Josh from his office in Jerusalem.

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David Smith is an expert in American and international politics with the U.S. Studies Centre in Sydney. He's an Aussie who got his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.

Here, he helps us understand the real theory underpinning Trump's foreign policy, and how it's likely to shake out.

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Josh shares his thoughts about the art of persuasion; reveals topics on which his position has changed; and wrestles with conundrums like factory farming, freedom of speech and abortion.

How persuadable are people, really? Josh is more hopeful than many.

"Changed My Mind" is hosted by Aidan Alexander and Thom Norman. 

You can check out the tool we discussed that Thom and Aidan's non-profit created to offset your diet's impact on animals at compassioncalculator.org, and if you use the code uncomfortable conversations you'll get your donation matched 100%.

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Jenara Nerenberg is the founder and host of The Neurodiversity Project. She's a Harvard graduate who lectures widely on neuroscience and diversity, and who runs workshops at institutions like the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Her new book, "Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing", investigates the psychology of “self-silencing” and the toxic impact of groupthink.

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Whenever the news turns to alien life, Josh turns to his favourite astrophysicist, Dr. Sara Webb, at the Swinburne Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Light up a reefer, lie on your back, gaze at the stars, and pop this one in your ear holes, humans.

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This episode is a cracker. Sacha Judd is an expert on internet subcultures. A former lawyer, she has become something like “the Mark Cuban of New Zealand” - a smart, left-wing investor in high-growth startups; advisor to businesses; and fierce commentator on Big Tech.

Sacha wants to bring back the “good internet”: a place fueled by genuine community, creativity, and connection.

She and Josh wrestle with online conspiracy theories, artificial intelligence, social-media content moderation, whether platforms like Substack have a “Nazi problem”, and whether Mark Zuckerberg just wants to say the R-word.

They get into a few fascinating arguments about free speech, transphobia, A.I., and whether Twitter’s content moderation was ever ‘woke’. Don’t miss this terrific chat.

Follow Sacha here and, if you enjoy this conversation, do bother to throw the price of a Venti Mocha Frappuccino into a monthly subscription. If you, our audience, don’t devote sixty seconds to subscribing, then this show dies. You’ll score more episodes, longer chats, no ads, and video livestreams that you don’t even know exist. Go for it right now. Right here.

For more on the Australian election, check out Josh’s Livestream with Peter van Onselen here.

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Dave Sweeney co-founded the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

Dave and Josh debate the risks and rewards of nuclear weapons and nuclear power in an unstable world, and discuss whether environmentalism is antithetical to progress. 

To hear every bit of this fascinating, two-hour-plus conversation with no ads, subscribe here. And follow Dave's work at the Australian Conservation Foundation here.

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On Friday, far-right hecklers disrupted the Welcome to Country (i.e. the land acknowledgment, in North American parlance) of a profound Australian national event, the Anzac Day Dawn Service.

The protest has sparked a national firestorm about race, racism and remembrance.

Josh shares his thoughts about the coverage of the controversy, and then debates its deeper implications with the Indigenous scholar Tyson Yunkaporta.

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Mark Zuckerberg has been a busy boy on the witness stand in Washington DC lately. In one of the most consequential antitrust cases in tech history, Meta is being sued by the U.S. government for allegedly maintaining a monopoly. It could reshape the future of social media, privacy regulation, and Big Tech.

But in an ideal world, how would you reform social media? How might we prevent it from deranging us?

Frances Haugen worked at Google and Facebook as a product manager and data engineer. She helped build algorithms that tweaked the ranking of search results. Then she made global news as a whistleblower, collaborating with the Wall Street Journal on bombshell stories about Facebook's misdeeds. She appeared on 60 Minutes and testified before Congress.

Frances and Josh discuss the problems with social media and what practical steps she recommends to reform the industry... and save civilisation.

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Matt Welch is a libertarian journalist. He's no wild-eyed, Trump-loathing leftie. Fresh off the back of his appearance on Bill Maher, Matt joined Josh on Josh's streaming TV show, Szeps Live, to riff about Elon, DOGE, government effectiveness, abundance liberalism, high-speed rail, Orbán, Erdoğan, el Salvador, the Supreme Court, and, ultimately, whether America is sliding towards an illiberal, MAGA-tinged, Hungary-style democratic authoritarianism.

Follow Matt over at The Fifth Column, and catch Szeps Live every Tuesday at 9pm ET on Substack.

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Professor Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world's leading education experts. He ran Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, moved to Washington DC to advise the World Bank on education, and was a visiting professor at Harvard University. His award-winning book is "Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?"

Pasi is now a professor at the University of Melbourne. He sat down with Josh to discuss radical ideas in teaching, learning, play, discipline, devices, and how to view school from the perspective of a child.

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David Pakman is the guy Josh goes to for a vibe-check of the American left. He hosts one of the most-watched progressive YouTube shows in the world, The David Pakman Show, with over three million subscribers. His book is "The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America".

This week, David appeared on Szeps Live, which airs on Substack every Tuesday night at 9pm ET. They discuss their criticisms of the president, the curious spinelessness of congressional Republicans, how the Democrats can recover, and to what extent the left's woes are caused by purity tests and social-justice dogmas.

You can follow David's YouTube show here and watch Josh's Substack show, for free, every week, by signing up here.

You’re missing out on tons of exceptional content if you haven’t hit up the Uncomfy Convos Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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"Decoding the Gurus" is a podcast that dissects how new-media personalities gain guru status. Frequently, such podcasters claim to be bravely challenging the status quo... while comfortably pandering to their team. Is Josh such a hack?

Josh is in Tokyo visiting one of the Decoding hosts, Chris, who lives there. The three of them caught up to record this crossover episode -- reflecting on Josh's run-ins with the likes of Candace Owens and Joe Rogan, debating the role of the new media vs the legacy media, and establishing, once and for, why Lex Fridman is a robot.

You can find the Decoding the Gurus podcast here.

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A writer and culinary graduate, Laurie had worked for another gigantic cooking celebrity, Mario Batali, before he was brought down for alleged sexual harrassment.

She spent almost ten years as Bourdain's right-hand-gal. The two of them wrote two books together, one of which they were halfway through when Bourdain died by suicide in 2018. Laurie posthumously published "Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography".

Josh asks Laurie about her life with Bourdain, his struggles, her addiction, his death, and whether his romanticism and hedonism brought him down. Laurie's new memoir is called "Care and Feeding".

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Cordelia Fine is a feminist academic who studies scientific explanations of sex differences and workplace inequality. Her books on gender have won prizes at the Royal Society, been recommended by the Sunday Times, and cited as among the Top Ten books on women of the past thirty years.

Professor Fine has a psychology degree from Oxford, a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge, and a PhD in Psychology from University College London. She's now a professor of the History & Philosophy of Science at Melbourne University. Her latest book is "Patriarchy, Inc."

Josh and Cordelia debate biology, culture, sexism, masculinity, transgenderism, the patriarchy, and what gender equality should look like in the 21st century.

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The new Disney re-make is so committed to not offending anyone that it’s a social-justice jumble. Snow White isn’t white as snow; her love interest isn’t a prince; the dwarves aren’t “dwarves”; but there IS a dwarf in a non-dwarf role; Snow White doesn’t need a man; the man doesn’t “stalk” her; she’s a bad-ass independent gal; the word “dwarf” isn’t mentioned. It’s a mess.

As Australian politicians introduce sweeping hate-speech laws, Josh argues that Snow White gives us a glimpse of the dystopian cultural wasteland that awaits us if we try never to offend.

Hey, it may be a long bow. But Szeps is committed to drawing it. Enjoy.

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Bob Carr is a former foreign minister of Australia (i.e. the secretary of state) and, before that, the longest-continuously-serving Premier of NSW, Australia's most populous state. He's an intellectual powerhouse, an icolonoclast, a champion debater, a student of American history, of geopolitics and of diplomacy.

For the first portion of this conversation, he and Josh discuss Australian issues - nuclear submarines, his tenure as state leader. But the second half is a delightful rumination on power, Trump, the liberal world order, China, success, legacy, and grief.

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This week, the ceasefire talks that President Trump boasted he'd wrap up in 24 hours fell apart, again. Russia says it wants an end to the war, if Ukraine effectively surrenders. Trump now admits Putin might be "dragging his feet".

Misha Zelinsky lived in Ukraine for the first year of the war, reporting from the conflict. A Fulbright Scholar and national security expert, he has the honour of being personally sanctioned by the Putin regime.

Misha and Josh assess where the conflict currently stands, what Ukraine's options are now, and whether it still matters to the rest of us.

His recent book is "The Sun Will Rise", a fictional story inspired by his time in Ukraine.

In this conversation, we reference:

• Josh's conversation with the former President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, here.

• Josh's conversation with Wall Street Journal reporter Marcus Walker on Ukraine here.

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A former cabinet minister, businessman and Rhodes scholar, he's often discussed as a future prime minister. Opinion polls put his party's return to power in the May election as a 50/50 bet.

Josh sat down with the Shadow Treasurer to discuss innovation, productivity, nuclear power, and how annoying it is to do your taxes.

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No group debates these questions more vehemently than Jews themselves. After the October 7th Hamas attack, one book in particular shot up the bestseller list in the West. "The Palestine Laboratory" detailed how the technologies which Israel developed to control Palestinian populations have been exported for ugly purposes to regimes all the world. The book won Australia's most prestigious journalism award, a Walkley.

Its author, Antony Lowenstein, is an anti-Zionist Jew. He lived in East Jerusalem from 2016 to 2020 and has been published in The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times.

Josh felt it's time to invite Antony back for another argument, as Jews are wont to have, about the state of the Jewish state.

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John and Josh sat down in Sydney to discuss gay slang, the Trumpist right, Black provocateurs and “serving c***t”.

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Sherri Goodman was the Pentagon's chief environmental officer in the Clinton Administration. Her specific expertise is in the polar regions, Russian nuclear subs, climate chaos, and Arctic security. She's a Senior Fellow with the Polar Institute and the Environmental Change and Security Program with the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and her latest book is "Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership and the Fight for Global Security".

Josh picks her brain about the threats and opportunities of climate change… and why Greenland does, in fact, matter.

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This is a recording of an episode of Szeps Live, a weekly Substack Video Livestream. Most episodes will not be released in this feed. To watch or listen to Szeps Live (either live or delayed), subscribe for free to our Substack mailing list here.

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As part of Uncomfortable Conversations' election coverage, Josh invited a select handful of prominent politicians who are likely to be the most interesting figures for listeners from all over the world to enjoy.

Senator Dave Sharma is one of them. He's a member of the Opposition centre-right Liberal Party. He was a member of the Australian House of Representatives in the last government but lost his seat to an independent, Allegra Spender, when the conservatives lost power in 2022. He made a comeback the following year to become a senator representing the nation's most populous state. Before entering politics, he was Australia's ambassador to Israel, although he himself is of Canadian-Indian descent.

Senator Sharma and Josh discuss populism, Trump, Gaza, nuclear power, and whether liberalism will survive the 21st century.

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This happens at a moment of extraordinary uncertainty for Canadians. As the U.S. launches a painful trade war, Canadians are being forced to rethink their economic and strategic future.

What's going on up there? Who are the candidates you need to know? How do they perceive the Trump tariffs?

Jen Gerson is a writer who worked for the Economist, Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She's now the co-founder of The Line, a Canadian Substack commentary website and podcast. Here, she gives you everything you need to know about the Great White North.

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A spate of anti-semitic attacks has led to new laws that will punish Australians for "hate speech". But are hate-speech laws a band-aid over deeper problems like ethnic bigotry, religious conservatism, historical ignorance, social media, migrant integration, university bias, and Islamism - problems which may have been addressed if we'd spoken more openly about them in the first place?

That's the argument of Professor Alan Davison, the incoming president of Australia's Free Speech Union. He and Josh discuss free speech, diversity, journalistic integrity, critical thinking, and who gets to speak for minority groups.

Is it time to speak more fearlessly, not less? Or is the free-speech position just an excuse for more division and hate?

Want to see this conversation at your leisure? Watch it on YouTube. And if you love all two hours of it (who doesn't?), chances are you'll enjoy the rest of the content on the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.

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Last Friday, the pilot of a Virgin Australia flight from Australia to New Zealand noticed a flash of weapons from a Chinese warship just a few hundred miles off the coast of Sydney. Other passenger planes suddenly got mid-air warnings to divert course. The Australian government scrambled to reassure citizens that nothing was amiss.

But this is the first time China has sent naval assets so far south down the Australian coast. It's the first time they've conducted live-fire exercises so close to Australia, inside its exclusive economic zone, in a busy flight corridor linking the region's only two Western democracies.

What's going on? How should we react? Is a China-U.S. war in the 21st century inevitable?

Sam Roggeveen is a former intelligence officer and a foreign policy analyst who now heads the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, Australia's preeminent international policy think tank.

He and Josh discuss China's belligerence, the Australia-U.S. alliance, Trumpist isolationism, Taiwan, NATO, and immigration. His book is The Echidna Strategy, an argument for developing an independent security strategy.

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Will Trump's crackdowns at the Mexican border stanch the flow? Why are other rich countries less affected by opioids? How did fentanyl cause the worst drug crisis in American history. Is the problem getting any better?

Ben is a best-selling investigative journalist who's written about the fentanyl crisis for The New York Times, The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Times. His book is "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" and his story of heading to China to meet fentanyl's manufacturers is unmissable.

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Why is there a revolving door between politicians and the industries they regulate? What does Norway do that we should, too? And what does it mean to “pass the pub test?”

From Rupert Murdoch to mining taxes, from government lobbyists to the beauty of the mullet, Konrad and Josh gleefully explore what, exactly, ails democracy... and how to fix it.

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None of it will free you from the sense that there's more to do than you possibly can. That's because you're finite. Your time is finite, your focus is finite, and you're going to die. No productivity hack can change that.

It's a liberating idea, if you look at it the way Oliver Burkeman does. Oliver was the second-ever guest on this podcast, at the height of the Covid pandemic, to discuss how to ignore the news. He returned in 2021 to discuss his profound book, "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" (four thousand being the number of weeks in an eighty-year life).

Oliver was a columnist for The Guardian in New York before decamping to the English countryside from where he writes his marvellous blog, The Imperfectionist. Today, Oliver and Josh discuss ambition, anxiety, the hedonic treadmill, self-help, Elon Musk, distractedness, boredom, and snorkelling in Yorkshire.

Oliver's latest book is "Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts".

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Today, she uses her experience to advocate for the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

She and Josh discuss Gaza, the Israeli occupation, hatred, love... and her experiences that day.

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The producer of "Fleabag" and "Baby Reindeer" -- both humongous British TV shows which started as one-person stage shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival -- has a new one-person stage show about a gay Brit looking for love. "Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen" was a smash hit in Edinburgh and just opened at the Sydney Opera House.

The show's writer, Marcelo Dos Santos, and its star, Samuel Barnett, swung by the Uncomfortable Conversations studio on the day of their opening night. Marcelo won Britain's Critics Circle Theatre Award last year. Samuel has been nominated for an Olivier Award and two Tony Awards, for "The History Boys" and "Twelfth Night" on Broadway.

You can also watch this entire conversation in-person here.

Samuel, Marcelo and Josh wrestle with promiscuity, grief, self-worth, mental health, cultural malaise, sex on stage, and why Aussies and Brits are so allergic to American self-help.

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David Farrier is a New Zealand documentarian living in L.A., where his whimsical podcast Flightless Bird is produced by Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert production company.

David premiered at the Sundance Film Festival with his extraordinary feature-length documentary, Tickled, and is a frequent collaborator with Flight of the Conchords' Rhys Darby.

David swung by the Uncomfortable Conversations studio on a recent visit to Sydney to muse delightfully with Josh about Los Angeles, Joe Rogan, A.I., YouTube, and the future of America.

*Note: This episode was recorded in late 2024 prior to the outbreak of the 2025 Los Angeles fires.

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Among the first deluge of White House orders is a decree defining "sex", "gender", "male" and "female". The reporting on this order -- and on LGBT and gender issues more broadly -- tells us a lot about ideological echo chambers, newsroom diversity, and how not to have constructive conversations in an era when they're more necessary than ever.

These "post-liberals" are correct in some of their criticisms of modern America but wrong in their solutions, argues today's guest, Jonathan Rauch. And who's best-placed to defeat them? Paradoxically, this atheist Jew argues: the Evangelical Church.

Rauch has spent his life fighting for liberal values. At The Economist magazine, he pioneered its editorial embrace of gay marriage long before that was popular. His hugely influential books include "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth", about which Josh and Sam Harris interviewed him on Sam's podcast, Making Sense, in 2024.

Today: What happens to American democracy if Christianity can no longer perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends? Josh and Jonathan wrestle it out.

Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His new book, "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy", is available at https://tinyurl.com/y8ejdd5z

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Meghan lost her house in the LA fires just days after we recorded this conversation. Support her terrific podcast at www.theunspeakablepodcast.com and discover her new venture at www.theunspeakeasy.com.

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David Frum is one of the most influential conservative "Never Trumpers". He worked in the White House as President George W Bush's speechwriter, and is now a staff writer at The Atlantic. He wrote the books Trumpocracy (2018) and Trumpocalypse (2020).

Enjoy this bracing analysis from one of the most rigorous defenders of conservatism against the tide of right-wing populism. It's a conversation you don't want to miss.

We've kept this episode free, outside the paywall, as a public service. If you appreciate it, please consider whether you really need to free-ride or if you could subscribe at the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.

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Batya is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and one of the most articulate pro-Trump voices in America. She has a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and promotes Trumpism from the "populist left". She has written two books, "Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy", and "Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women".

Today, Batya and Josh have a spirited debate about immigration, isolationism, NATO, the woke left, the working class, and Trump's political cronyism. It tells you a lot about our topsy-turvy politics that our pro-Trump guest is a former leftist and our anti-Trump guest is a conservative. Enjoy.

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Stan was CNN's Senior International Correspondent based in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing, before returning to Australia as International Affairs Analyst for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

He is arguably Australia's most experienced global journalist and the most famous Indigenous Australian. He resigned from the national public broadcaster last year in a national firestorm about racism.

Stan and Josh discuss racial slurs, changing norms, tribalism, the rootless global elite, and finding meaning outside religion.

P.S. Do yourself a favour and help Meghan Daum - upcoming guest, friend-of-the-show and all-round brilliant gal - to get back on her feet after losing her home in the L.A. fires. Subscribe to her Substack at www. theunspeakablepodcast.com... for her and, more importantly, for you.

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How should we prepare for the inevitable human response?

Professor Joel Pearson is a psychologist and neuroscientist who runs the Future Minds Lab at the University of New South Wales as well as MindX, a consultancy that works with companies like Samsung, Pixar, Saatchi and Google to help tailor products to how people’s minds actually work.

Josh and Joel consider the current state of A.I., how far it came in 2024, what to expect from 2025... and how to arm yourself for the disruptions of a world grappling with new hyper-intelligent artificial systems.

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The show is called "A Lot to Talk About" and it's hosted by Bradley Dryburgh, a young guy whose parents were told his Cystic Fibrosis would ruin his life. Instead, he became an ultra-marathon runner, podcaster and motivational speaker.

He invited Josh on his show shortly before the U.S. election, so forgive their brief exchange about presidential politics. It's interesting as an analysis of the 24-hour media cycle and how small events can have a big impact. Mostly, Josh and Bradley focus on clear thinking, courageous conversations, the legacy media, algorithms and how to stay sane in a hectic world.

Happy 2025, humans.

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What might the next quarter of a century have in store? Josh argued it out with the whimsical and surprisingly youthful public speaker on futurism, Dr Ben Hamer. He's done projects at the World Economic Forum and as a visiting scholar at Yale University, and hosts The ThinkerTank Podcast. Have a happy and safe new year. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this podcast possible in 2024.

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Check out Alexei’s podcast ‘The Last Video Store’ HERE

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How long can you leave a Christmas ham in the fridge after it sat on the table for three hours? Can you use just one chopping board for the whole feast? Will reheating Chinese fried rice kill you? Does a "best before" date mean anything? Is it more dangerous for Australians to eat stale prawns in the sun on or for Americans to eat marshmallow-slathered sweet potato mash?

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"Woke” is such a tired word. Yet there remains a cultural elite which uses the language of social justice to gain power and status, without helping the disadvantaged. What’s going on?

Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor of sociology who studies how knowledge workers have improved their cultural power by deploying the language of social justice to justify their own influence -- and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality.

Far from being a right-wing anti-woke crusader, Musa is a Black Muslim academic who explores how we think about about social phenomena. His new book is “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite”.

Here, Musa and Josh wrestle with what the “Great Awokening” was really all about, how ideas are the currency of the knowledge economy, and how we can actually help the marginalised and disadvantaged. This episode is part of Permission to Think, a collaboration with the University of Technology, thanks to Professor Alan Davison.

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The chattering classes are now busy condemning such hot takes for seeking to “understand” a killer’s motives; for excusing the inexcusable.

But neither reaction will convince the growing minority of Americans who believe that something is fundamentally broken, and that violence could be morally justified to fix it. Here, Josh dares to ask… could it ever, in fact, be okay to respond to corporate malfeasance with public violence? Can we use this moment to think a bit harder about our moral code?

Tim Dean is the Senior Philosopher at The Ethics Centre, a non-profit that fosters moral conversations about everyday life. He has a PhD in philosophy with an expertise in the evolution of morality, he runs philosophy and ethics workshops for businesses, and he's a public philosopher and science writer whose first book is How We Became Human, about how our evolved moral minds are out of step with the modern world.

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Andrew Doyle writes for the fictional parody characters Jonathan Pie and Titania McGrath. He invented Titania as a caricature of social-justice activists (her Twitter bio describes her as an ecosexual radical intersectionalist poet with variable pronouns) but many people believed she was real, falling for her absurdly worthy tweets.

Andrew has written a couple of terrific books, "Free Speech and Why It Matters" and "The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World".

Andrew and Josh sat down in London shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election to discuss satire, free speech, the working class, partisan politics, comedy and the future of the Left. You can also watch this interview in its pretty British glory on YouTube here.

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Stan Grant was CNN's Senior International Correspondent based in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing, before returning to Australia as International Affairs Analyst for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

He is arguably Australia's most experienced global journalist and the most famous Indigenous Australian. He resigned from the national public broadcaster last year in a national firestorm about racism.

He and Josh discuss the future of the global order, whether Enlightenment values are up to the task, and the role of public broadcasters like the ABC.

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Nathan is the founder of Current Affairs magazine, of which he is the editor-in-chief, and the author of Why You Should Be a Socialist. 

Here, Josh picks Nathan's brain... on the contrasts between Trump's populism and Bernie Sanders', the Ukraine War, Medicare-for-all, and the role of the United Nations in world affairs.

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The legendary financial journalist Joe Aston, formerly a political staffer and Qantas communications man himself, spills the beans in his explosive new book, "The Chairman's Lounge: The inside story of how Qantas sold us out". It's a universal parable about what happens to capitalism and democracy when any one company gets too powerful... and its political favours too luxurious to resist.

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Omar Dajani is one of the visionaries. As a Palestinian-American professor, he and Josh disagree about much regarding the culpability and dysfunction of Gaza's misery. Omar was a negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization and attended the Camp David Summit with President Clinton in 2000.

But he now argues for a new type of two-state solution that would enable Israelis and Palestinians to live and work on both sides of the 1967 Green Line. As the co-chair of the non-profit A Land for All, he wants to shift our thinking from a model of separation to one of power sharing.

In this episode, Josh has a frank and heartfelt conversation with a senior Palestinian thinker that offers a glimpse of a better future.

This episode was recorded prior to the recent Lebanon ceasefire.

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David did ten seasons as a judge with Simon Cowell on Britain's Got Talent, and has written 43 children's books that have sold over 60 million copies. 

Josh and David recently did a six-week, fifteen-show tour of Australia and New Zealand, where Josh interviewed him in front of tens of thousands fans. Before the final show in Perth, David sat down for an uncomfortable conversation about offending people, dressing up as a woman, and how he and Matt Lucas created some of the most memorable characters of 21st century television.

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Sexual predation. Political power. Investigative journalism. Innocence until proven guilty. Josh has never spoken publicly about his own experiences while working with Alan Jones. Until now. 

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Niall is one of Britain's most prolific and influential historians. His seventeen books, including the groundbreaking tomes Civilisation and Empire, define the modern historical canon. 

Niall has become associated with heterodox concerns about wokeness and Western decline. But Josh wanted to probe deeper: How should we think about Ukraine, Gaza, populism and the West, in light of what we know about what makes human societies thrive?

Josh and Niall sat down in Westminster, London, on the afternoon of the 2024 American presidential election -- before the result was known. 

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The bill was passed last Thursday by Australia's House of Representatives and is currently stalled in the Senate. Right-wing populists are spreading hysteria that it would let the government throw you in jail for speaking your mind on social media. 

The bill would not, in fact, punish you for posting on social media. But it could give government officials the power to make social media companies suppress opinions the Australian government deems "harmful".

Josh opposes giving such power to the state. By contrast, Professor Daniel Angus is broadly supportive of the bill. He's one of Australia's leading researchers into technology, social media, fake news and misinformation, and he advised the government on the legislation. 

At this crucial moment, with only two weeks remaining before parliament shuts down for the year -- and as the Senate deliberates on this hugely important law -- please listen to this conversation and get informed. Wherever you are, enjoy this friendly clash of perspectives about algorithms and free speech on the web.

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On TV, he's an Emmy-winning comedy legend immortalised in shows like A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves & Wooster, and Blackadder. He has hosted the British Academy Film Awards twelve times and won six BAFTAs as the host of the smash-hit BBC television quiz show Q.I. 

On stage, Stephen's adaptation of Me and My Girl won two Olivier Awards. He was nominated for a Tony for his performance in The Globe's production of Twelfth Night on Broadway.

On the big screen, he's starred in Wilde (as Oscar Wilde, a performance nominated for a Golden Globe), Gosford Park, Chariots of Fire, A Fish Called Wanda, V for Vendetta and The Hobbit.

Stephen is the voice of all the Harry Potter audiobooks. His eloquence infuses his countless essays, comedy sketches, articles, novels, and books about Greek mythology.

His autobiography, Moab is My Washpot, with its raw honesty about his screwed-up teenage years, was transformational for a young Josh Szeps. 

On a recent trip to Sydney, Stephen swung by the Uncomfortable Conversations studios to visit with Josh. Enjoy this sparkling conversation about the cycle of life, the richness of being human, finding creative authenticity, and ignoring Donald Trump.

And if you haven't jumped over to Substack to get free updates on what we're up to, you're a duffer. There's more great stuff coming. Go to uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe. It's not hard -- we promise. 

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Here we go. Kamala Harris was on Saturday Night Live. At Madison Square Garden, Puerto Rico was garbage. Trump is appropriating Charlamagne tha God. Kamala is deploying Will Ferrell. And now, you vote.

The host of ABC TV's "Planet America", Chas Licciardello, joins Josh to break down the campaigns, the media's coverage, and the hysterical online nonsense you should avoid. Happy Election Day.

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At 11:00 a.m. on November 9th, 2016, the day after Donald Trump's surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, a shell-shocked Josh sat down with Slate's former editor David Plotz, the co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest, to share their analysis of what might happen. This is that conversation.

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What would it look like if we could escape the phony choice between strident positions and find a third way? Not a "compromise". Not a squishy midpoint betweren any two extremes. But a genuinely new way of looking at an issue, informed by the best of all sides? Instead of hunting for the worst in our opponents' positions, what if we could harness the best?

That's the mission of the journalist Stephanie Lepp, a producer whose new series of short videos, Faces of X, demonstrates what she's up to. She and Josh wrestle with partisanship, social media, both-sidesism, ideological capture, and how we all might think more freely in this toxic election cycle.

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Join Michael Moynihan of The Fifth Column and Josh Szeps of Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps as they tackle America’s role in global affairs and discuss whether the U.S. should remain the world’s cop or if its superpower days are over. Josh brings insights from Australia, a nation with tough illegal immigration policies but high legal immigration, while Michael draws from his time in Sweden, where immigration and NATO are key concerns.

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He and Josh discuss online trolls, taboos, social media, satire, anti-Jewish conspiracies and living as a prominent Jew during the Gaza War. His new book is "Squat: A week squatting at Kanye’s mansion."

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Coleman Hughes is an American writer, podcaster and public intellectual known for his criticism of modern social-justice ideas about racism and racial inequality. In this live Festival Of Dangerous Ideas edition of Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps, Hughes articulates his vision for a future where individuals are judged by ‘the content of their character’, not the colour of their skin.

Drawing from research and personal insights, he argues for a society that embraces a colourblind ethos, aiming to dismantle divisive narratives and foster a more inclusive culture.

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Nick Bryant is one of the BBC’s greatest foreign correspondents. He has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford University and lived for years in Washington D.C. and New York City covering American politics for a global audience. One of his books sits on Joe Biden’s bookshelf in the Oval Office.

As we head into the final weeks before the U.S. election, Nick and Josh discuss Trumpism, polarisation and Nick's latest book “The Forever War”.

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At last, we have a much-needed accounting of the lessons of Covid, from the Aussie academic who became an unlikely pandemic authority in the U.S. thanks to his position as an outspoken economics professor at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Steven Hamilton's new book is a frank, factual, fierce recap of the Covid years. Written with his fellow economist Richard Holden, "Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race" will be an important tool for the next pandemic.

Marcus Walker is a senior reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and the friend to whom Josh turns when he needs to understand the Middle East. A Brit based in Rome, Marcus has been deployed to Israel as a journalist seven times since October 7th, interviewing the most influential players and embedding himself in the conflict. No one knows the country's mood better.

Enjoy this bracing, eye-opening assessment of the fate of the Jewish state and its Palestinian subjects. 

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He has spent most of the past 20 years as a correspondent for The Times. He’s been based in Baghdad and Miami, Mexico City and Sydney, and spent lengthy stints reporting from many other places, including Lebanon, India, Taiwan, Turkey and Cuba.

In 2017, He led a team opening The Times’s new Australia bureau, covering a region where both his grandfathers served in World War II, and inspiring him to write a book titled “Into the Rip” in Australia and, in the United States, “Parenting Like an Australian: One Family’s Quest to Fight Fear and Dive into a Better, Braver Life.”

Before that, from 2014 to 2017, Damien was a deputy editor on the National desk, advancing the digital development of The Times.

In 2007, He was part of a team of finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for our coverage of the war in Iraq. The team also won an Overseas Press Club award that year, his second — the first one was for a humor essay about Paraguay.

Initially critical of President Trump, she was a famous critic of Black Lives Matter and became the communications director for the conservative group Turning Point USA. Her talk show on the conservative website The Daily Wire, "Candace", was cancelled earlier this year after she made antisemitic remarks. She now runs her platform independently.

Ahead of her Australian tour, Josh wanted to understand what she's up to and what makes her tick. To keep abreast of conversations like this, be sure to join the Uncomfortable Conversations Substack, and check out the YouTube page to watch this conversation in the flesh.

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That’s what the journalist Katie Herzog thought as she sat through AA meetings, feeling like a failure for boozing. Then, she found naltrexone. Josh hasn’t had a drink in four years after having a different epiphany. Here, the two of them wrestle with myths, blind spots and revelations about drinking, addiction, introspection, and being a grown-up.

Katie hosts one of the most successful podcasts on the web with Jesse Singal, Blocked & Reported, where they dissect internet craziness.

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Ross Anderson is an expert on right-wing YouTubers, the Life Editor at the world edition of The Spectator, and a regular contributor at The New York Sun. He explains the whole extraordinary shebang.  

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He’s about to start a residency in Las Vegas and he'll tour Australia in 2025. His new album is “HIGH”.

Don’t miss the YouTube page to see Keith and Josh bantering in the flesh. And get more amazing conversations by popping your email address into our Substack supercomputer.

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Andrew Lowenthal worked with Matt Taibbi for months on the Twitter Files. He helped to create the Westminster Declaration to oppose any restrictions on online speech.

He used to work with leftie NGOs fighting for the digital rights of dissenters across the Asia-Pacific, until he saw his activist colleagues drift away from free speech towards the opposite – what he calls "anti-disinformation".

He now runs a digital civil liberties initiative called liber-net which argues that, under the cloak of countering misinformation, the powers-that-be suppress information, ideas, and opinions expressed by everyday people. Andrew is an Australian based in Europe and he was kind enough to stop by the Uncomfy Studios on a recent trip to Sydney.

Watch the in-the-flesh video on the YouTube page (subscribe while you’re there) and if you’re not a paid Substack subscriber, enjoy this preview of a much longer, gripping convo.

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Tabloid speculation swirled about her sexuality. Josh wants to know how she now thinks about gayness, love, fame and failure. Her new album, released exactly on the 20th anniversary of her first, is The Second Act. 

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He is a member of Australia's most famous comedy group, The Chaser, and starred in their satirical TV shows for nearly a quarter of a century: The Chaser Decides, CNNNN, The Chaser's War on Everything, Yes We Canberra! and The Hamster Wheel.

Chas and Josh sat down after the landmark presidential debate to share their thoughts. 

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Inside Australia, Downer is a household name. He is the most consequential Foreign Minister in decades (what Americans call the Secretary of State), serving for over a decade during 9/11 and the Iraq War. As a senior government minister in the Five Eyes alliance, he was influential in formulating Western countries' response to ISIS and jihadism. Most recently, he was Australia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom (a position which, between Commonwealth countries, is called the High Commissioner).

Downer recently wrote about the UK race riots and the strains of multiculturalism. As someone deeply familiar with immigration, multiculturalism, Islamism and foreign policy, Josh wanted to pick his brain.

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Jon Yates is an entertaining, whip smart writer and activist who studies how to build a more united society. He says the problem is not that we're different from each other, but that we're distant from the other. We are not fractured because of Trump or Fox News or MSNBC - those are consequences, not the cause, of our fracturing. Our divisions create the space for demagogues, he argues, not the other way around.

Is he right? If so, what can we do? Jon has a few ideas. Many of them you won't like, especially the "Hitler-y" ones (we hope). But you definitely want to hear them.

Jon's book is called "Fractured". To hear more from clever bunnies like him, get our newsletter at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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Josh took to the stage for a special one-night-only Uncomfortable Conversations live event with Coleman Hughes, one of America’s most prominent authors and thinkers on the topic of race.

This is a 25 minute preview of the exclusive live show. If you want to hear the full 1 hour + event, as well as lots more similarly provocative conversations, head to https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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So wrote Josh in Australia's top newspapers on the weekend, linked below. He had gotten into a stoush on the national TV panel show Q+A with Australia's eSafety Commissioner, whom Elon Musk calls a “censorship commissar”, over free speech on social media.

Thanks to you, the listener whose attention makes this show possible, we needn't restrict ourselves to thinking inside the limitations of the television sound bite, or the newspaper column inch. Here, in a freewheeling, unfettered way, let’s wrestle with free speech, algorithms, incitement... and whether it's sexist to tweet that #NotAllMen are dicks.

Josh's article

Josh's episode of Q+A

The Australian's profile

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During the riots and racial reckoning after the killing of George Floyd, newsrooms were roiled by existential questions: Should journalists be activists? Do white male journalists hide behind "objectivity" to impose their bias? Do they get coddled by media companies who hide their misdeeds, or do they suffer extra scrutiny as targets for the social-justice mob?

Andy was in the eye of the storm. He'd been snapped up by the world's most powerful newspaper to grow its audio division, co-creating The Daily and other celebrated podcasts like Caliphate and Rabbit Hole.

Then, in a life-altering cancel-culture frenzy, he lost it all.

Andy is in Sydney for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, where he and Josh spoke together on a panel, "Speaking Bluntly: Identity politics in journalism". He stopped by the Uncomfortable Conversations studios to share his incredible tale, warts and all.

Andy's new podcast is Reflector.

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Emile Sherman is the Academy Award-winning producer of Heartstopper, Slow Horses, The King’s Speech, Top of the Lake, The Power of the Dog, Anthony Hopkins' latest film, One Life, and much more.

His new podcast, The Sandbox, interviews the key creatives behind his biggest shows and films about their creative process. His other podcast is Principle of Charity

If you’re on the free Uncomfortable Conversations podcast then this is a delightful twenty-odd-minute preview of the full conversation. Or enjoy the ninety-minute-plus intellectual adventure in all its Oscar-worthy glory by scoring your own primo podcast feed at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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Dennis Glover has a PhD in History from King’s College Cambridge and works as a professional speechwriter and author. He has written policy and speeches for many of Australia's most influential left-wing politicians including Julia Gillard and Kim Beazley.

He's the author of The Art of Great Speeches, Orwell’s Australia, An Economy is Not a Society, and The Last Man in Europe, a novel about George Orwell.

His new book is "Repeat: A Warning from History". 

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Jesse is among the world's most astute analysts of internet nonsense. He became a lightning rod when his 2018 Atlantic cover story was the first deeply reported mainstream article to question child transgender medicine.

His punishment was swift and severe, driving him into the netherworld of Podcastistan where his hit show with Katie Herzog, Blocked and Reported, analyses the pieties and group think of internet tribes. His own Substack is here.

Today's other guest is the most articulate, clear-headed contemporary thinker on race and social justice, tribalism and civil rights. He's been on The View, Real Time with Bill Maher and Joe Rogan. He's triggered a backlash from social justice warriors at the Ted conference with a Ted speech that transgressed racial taboos by calling for colourblind equality. His podcast is Conversations with Coleman and his Substack is here.

This episode is the audio of a YouTube video shot in New York City in early spring. Check it out here. It’s cool. (Oh, and subscribe to the YouTube channel, silly.)

Get tickets to see me and Coleman live in Melbourne here or at the festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney here.

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It's a question Josh wanted to ask Australia's most influential athlete-turned-politican. David Pocock was a rugby champion who played for Australia's national team, one of the world's most iconic rugby sides.

He then became the first senator not aligned with any major political party to represent the Australian Capital Territory. He was one of the most prominent faces in a tsunami of independents who annihilated the ruling conservative government. The billionaire backer of that political revolution, Simon Holmes à Court, had a fascinating conversation on this show which you should listen to here

You don't neeeeed to hear Holmes à Court before listening to this episode, but it's a bloody great chat so you might as well.

Josh's conversation with The MeatEater, Steven Rinella, which Senator Pocock refers to at the start, can be heard here

Senator Pocock grew up in a white family in Zimbabwe in the 1990s before moving to Australia in his teens. He and Josh discuss his anti-racism, his activism, why Aussies gamble so much, what the purpose of sport is, and whether it's time to do away with the two-party system.

If you're new to this show and you're a fan of Dave Pocock's, here are a few other episodes you might want to check out:
Sam Harris
Megan Phelps Roper
Douglas Murray Live
Tim Minchin

Needless to say, subscribe to the show in your podcast app and on YouTube if you dig it.

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Josh is surprised, impressed, and uncharacteristically chipper about what this means for Harris, for the election and for the future of the American left. Cheer up and dive in to everything you need to understand about the possible fiftieth vice president of the United States, Tim Walz.

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Vaccine mandates. Wokeness in Hollywood. The female pay gap. Race protests. Diversity programs. Covid lockdowns. #metoo. The so-called intellectual dark web tackled it all. A loose grouping of dissenting intellectuals and commentators, they sought to buck taboos and open minds.

What happened? Who went down the rabbit hole to crazy town, and who maintained thier heads? And where is the space for sane dissent today?

Dr Jamie Roberts is a political philosopher and university lecturer who has ruffled feathers by openly admiring some of what the IDW was trying to do -- and even teaching college classes on it. His new book is "The Way of the Intellectual Dark Web: What Joe Rogan and his associates can teach us about political dialogue". He and Josh perform a real-time post mortem on a still-metastasising movement.

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This old hippy idea has been wrestled into a more fascinating, harder-headed thesis by the scientist and journalist Ferris Jabr. He's written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, National Geographic, Wired and The Los Angeles Review of Books; and he’s a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. His new book is “Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life”.

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If your idea of a good time is listening to a couple of nerds geeking out on evolution, the cosmos, consciousness, and what happened to woolly mammoths, this is the episode for you, baby.

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She’s the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a non-profit that promotes democracy through court cases, lobbying and education. Washingtonian magazine named her one of this year’s Most Influential People Shaping Policy and her legal work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Skye and Josh debate what really matters in the stoush over Project 2025 and what Trump Round Two might look like.

This episode is a taste of a longer conversation. To hear the full chat and get more Uncomfortable Conversations content, head to: https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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Tim Minchin is one of the most successful creatives Australia has ever produced. He wrote the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical, which won more Olivier Awards than any other show in history at the time. Now in its 13th year, the show continues to sell out on the West End. The Broadway production was nominated for a stash of Tonys. The 2022 movie version is a riot.

Minchin went on to write the Broadway stage musical Groundhog Day, which scored seven Tony Award nominations and won the Olivier for Best New Musical.

Tim has starred in massive arena shows like Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, and sells out stadiums with his own blend of music, comedy, and musical comedy. He co-wrote and starred in the hit television comedy show Upright and he's a staple on the biggest TV talk shows.

But he's been most influential as a thinker, rationalist and activist -- as a New Atheist, a Defender of the Enlightenment and a Renaissance Man. He often finds himself at odds with the progressive wing of the artistic scene... cautious about being cancelled, but compelled to call out the bullshit he sees.

Due to copyright, we aren’t able to include the full versions of the songs mentioned in this podcast, but I urge you to listen if you’re unfamiliar with Tim’s work:

White Wine In The Sun
https://youtu.be/fCNvZqpa-7Q?si=dTedPJk58G54Ikza

When I Grow Up
https://youtu.be/6Y82wktAEmQ?si=gVaVtvQIO1f8jCEB

Woody Allen Jesus

https://youtu.be/_SFdUJLebzU?si=1-rBM5ht7xt85V1S   

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Sydney https://bit.ly/Coleman-Szeps-Syd

Melbourne https://bit.ly/Coleman-Szeps-Melb

Meanwhile, the new YouTube page is going gangbusters. The episode you're listening to was shot as an outdoor TV interview on an early spring day in a Manhattan park. Check it out and subscribe to YouTube for more cool videos to come: https://bit.ly/UC_Videos

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a New Yorker who lives in Paris. He's the son of a Black father from the segregated South and a white mother from the West. He himself is the father of two white-looking children. Straddling the USA and Europe has given him a fascinating insight into identity, diversity and life as a Black man in America and in France. His memoir, Self–Portrait in Black and White, is a must-read.

As Thomas and Josh chat on a chilly but sunny New York day, they wrestle with the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks, Islamism, blood-and-soil right-wingers, George Floyd’s murder, racial profiling, and much more.

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Instead of arguing with Alastair on Twitter, Josh invited him on the show to hash out their differences and discuss what challenges the LGBTQ+ community still faces.

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On the eve of Trump’s coronation as the Republican presidential candidate at the party’s National Convention this week, he was narrowly shot in an apparent assassination attempt at a rally.

Is this the most dramatic election of our lives? David Frum is one of the most influential anti-Trumpers to come out of a Republican White House. As President George W Bush’s speechwriter, he's credited with the famous phrase the "axis of evil". He wrote the first insider account of the Bush presidency. Frum is now a senior editor at The Atlantic.

David and Josh sat down shortly before the Trump shooting for the occasion of the Republican National Convention. They discuss Trump’s plans, Biden’s options, the fate of both parties… and of America.

In the first half-hour of this episode, Josh reflects on how to process this moment, and how the assassination attempt and response have already begun to shape what the future will hold for this campaign as well as American democracy at large.

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Josh Szeps

𝕁𝕠𝕤𝕙 𝕊𝕫𝕖𝕡𝕤 (@joshzepps) on X

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Dr Dana Beyer says so. She's one of the most influential and effective trans activists in history. A medical doctor and self-described transsexual, she's been striding the hallways of power since the 1970s meeting with the likes of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden to achieve landmark wins for LGBT rights. Today, she believes modern gender theory is harming transsexuals like herself.

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Dr Jean Twenge is a psychology professor who's been studying large, national surveys of young people for decades, teasing out how the generations differ. Her books include an analysis of millennials ("Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled―And More Miserable Than Ever Before"), Gen Z ("iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy―and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood―and What That Means for the Rest of Us") and most recently, a study of every single one of us in "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future".

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The hero of 21st-century right-wing European triumphalism is Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Many European far-right candidtaes are his devoted fan boys, as are farther-flung admirers like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.

This week, Hungary assumed the rotating leadership of the European Union presidency. Orbán’s first move was to swoop into Kyiv to tell the Ukrainian President to stop fighting and get along better with those nice Russkies.

How has this anti-Western, anti-democratic strongman upended a European democracy? What’s happened to Hungary? And could it happen here?

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Here, you get a double feature. In the first half-hour, Josh shares his reaction to the debate and his advice on Democratic messaging. Then the iconic political scientist Yascha Mounk -- an expert in how democracies thrive or fail – joins us to explain the pathway to Democratic victory. But is Joe Biden part of the plan?

Finally, for premium subscribers, Yascha proposes a strategy for either the Republicans or the Democrats to win back popular support and re-stitch the fabric of American democracy.

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Judith Whelan died last night. She was 62. She was Josh’s mentor, his champion, his arch-defender, playmate, and confidante, despite being his boss’s boss’s boss. She is, in many ways, the person who made Josh’s current career possible.

Another mentor and friend, Howard Fineman, died two weeks ago. And Josh’s father is in the death spiral of Alzheimer’s.

Here, Josh answers a question his six-year-old daughter asked him this morning: Why is he crying for Judith Whelan… but not his own dad?

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Billy challenges many of Josh's assumptions about parenting and childhood. He's a fascinating, insightful, riveting guy whose own podcast about raising kids is called Pop Culture Parenting. His show is blowing up in Australia as parents crave simple, evidence-based strategies to raise tiny mewling lizard-people into flourishing human beings.

Billy's new book is Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child’s Mental Health. Enjoy.

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Anderson is a Christian conservative who opposed same-sex marriage and the 2023 indigenous referendum. He and Josh have a fascinating time, wrestling with the biggest issues of culture and politics -- from religious faith, to gay rights, to Gaza. He brings you his first-hand experience inside the halls of power. John now interviews public intellectuals on his podcast, Conversations with John Anderson.

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Anthony Dillon is an Indigenous Australian, an academic and commentator who rejects today’s popular ideologies about White Australia, invasion and racism. He and Josh wrestle with how to make progress on First Nations issues in an innovative way.

This episode is part of Permission to Think, a collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney, thanks to Professor Alan Davison. It’s a taste of a longer episode which you can hear by popping over to https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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This interview was recorded shortly after another comedian, Arj Barker, asked a breastfeeding mother to leave his Melbourne Comedy Festival show when the baby was making too much noise, sparking a cultural debate about discrimination against mums versus the craft of comedy. Peter is hugely insightful as a performer. Enjoy.

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Osher Günsberg is the biggest TV host Down Under. For the past 21 years, he has been a mainstay of the country’s biggest shows as the host of Australian Idol, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and The Masked Singer, which were recently cancelled. He’s the narrator of Bondi Rescue, and his podcast, Better Than Yesterday, is one of the country’s biggest shows. In it, he discusses his mental health journey with high-profile guests.

Osher, like Josh, is the father of a boy. Here, he and Josh wrestle with male violence, women's safety, masculinity, mental health, and being a dad.

This conversation is a great listen in its own right, but the whole thing is even better. To hear the final section, get your own personalised premium ad-free feed by jumping over to https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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Helen is arguably Britain's most insightful and entertaining journalist. Her interview with Jordan Peterson for GQ has nearly 70 million views on YouTube. She's done several terrific radio series and podcasts: The Spark, Great Wives, and The New Gurus; and she co-hosts The Private Eye Podcast. Her book, Difficult Women, was an instant classic. She’s a frequent panellist on the smash hit BBC TV panel show Have I Got News for You. And her columns in The Atlantic, where she is a staff writer, are a must-read.

If you believe the polls (and who could possibly doubt them these days?), the Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is about to sweep away fourteen years of conservative rule. There’s no one better to explain why than the unmissable Helen Lewis.

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Josh Szeps

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This is a preview of a longer monologue for paid subscribers. We hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening.

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In additon to his many books about the threat from China and from climate change, he penned an article: "Wake up, lefties, and reject wokeness".

This episode is part of Permission to Think, a collaboration with the University of Technology, Sydney, where Josh is a visiting fellow. Thanks to the university’s dean of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Alan Davison, for making it possible.

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Josh Szeps

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Today, he is a leader of a dissident group of tech geniuses who believe the hype of A.I. is overblown, in both its capabilities and its risks. While many of his colleagues speak of artificial intelligence as a mythological turning point for civilisation, he argues -- in books and in a series of groundbreaking essays in The New Yorker magazine -- that A.I. is just a tool. It's a mindless auto-complete bot.

Lanier's humanism is laudable and infectious. But Josh can't quite grok his dismissiveness of artificial intelligence. In this chat, Jaron is as frustrated by this impasse as Josh is. Enjoy the resulting to-and-fro.

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Josh breaks down the most intriguing stories of the week with two scintillating commentators: Claire Lehmann, the founder and editor of Quillette and a columnist for The Australian newspaper, and Peter van Onselen, the political editor of the Daily Mail Australia and a politics professor at the University of Western Australia.

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At the last Australian election, a decade of conservative government rule was brought to an end thanks largely to a wave of so-called "teal independents" supported by Simon Holmes à Court’s organisation. 

The son of Australia’s first billionaire and the heir to generations of influential politicians and businessmen, Simon Holmes à Court has become one of the most significant figures in Australian politics. His political revolution has challenged the status quo of the two major political parties and allowed communities to wrestle back power from institutions that don't represent them. This is a fascinating, wide ranging chat with a brilliant mind.

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Meshel’s podcasts are Australian True Crime and Can We Be Real. Here, she and Josh reflect on social media, alcohol, drugs, comedy, stardom, Buddhism, the pandemic, and how to discuss male violence without alienating men.

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Keep an eye out for more live ask-me-anything sessions in the future, and make sure you’re signed up to uncomfortableconversations.substack.com to get involved.

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Steven Rinella hosts the long-running TV show and podcast MeatEater. He’s an outdoorsman, conservationist, writer and TV star who's written ten books about wildlife, hunting, fishing, and wild game cooking. But best of all, he’s a generous and wise thinker about ecology and animal suffering.

Josh has never shot an animal in his life. Enjoy.

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On this visit, Joel and Josh wrestle with how you experience time. Why does time sometimes seem to move fast, and slow? Are some people naturally better at different times of day? How fooled can you be by tricks of time? Is there a biological timer in your brain? And why does time speed up as you age?

Joel is a professor of cognitive neuroscience who runs the Future Minds Lab at one of Australia's big ivy leagues, UNSW. His latest book is "Intuition: Unlock Your Brain's Potential to Build Real Intuition and Make Better Decisions".

This is a taste of a longer episode for premium subscribers. It includes a couple of visual brain games to test your time perception. They need to be seen to be experienced. If you'd like to hear the whole thing and to see the experiments, pop over to the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe to access to videos of this and all our other premium shows.

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I sat down with Jimmy during my visit to London to discuss his new special as well as all things comedy, cancel culture, social media, the state of the world and much much more.

Jimmy Carr returns to Netflix with his latest stand-up special Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer out now.

Jimmy’s brand-new international tour Jimmy Carr: Laughs Funny is on sale now. For tickets and info visit jimmycarr.com

Website: https://www.jimmycarr.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jimmycarr

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmycarr

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@jimmycarr

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Whether you agree or disagree with him, Douglas is one of the most important public intellectuals today. A journalist and bestselling author, he tackles controversial issues head on like nobody else.

Two of the live shows will be posted on YouTube (you won't hear those here to avoid duplication, so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel). Enjoy the intellectual rumble.

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Eiynah is a Pakistani-Canadian podcaster, illustrator and commentator who grew up in Saudi Arabia. Throughout the Gaza conflict, she has been vehement in her opposition to Israel.

Eiynah's podcast is called Polite Conversations and you can follow her @NiceMangos.

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Should women be allowed to exclude transgender women from female-only spaces? Or do trans women have a human right to be treated, anywhere and everywhere, as biological females?

Most of the media isn't covering the case, because in polite journalistic circles it's heresy at best, or bigotry at worst, to question whether trans women differ from biological females. Sall Grover is the creator of the app, whose life has been deranged by this litigation.

In this unique one-on-one, ahead of her landmark court appearance this week, Sall and Josh wrestle with profound questions that could redefine womanhood and gender rights in Australia.

‌
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Here, he brings you into the inner circle. What takeaways did Josh get? Was he frustrated by Douglas' blind spots? Has Douglas changed Josh's mind on Gaza, Zionism, trans issues or wokeness?

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Whether you agree or disagree with him, Douglas is one of the most important public intellectuals today. A journalist and bestselling author, he tackles controversial issues head on like nobody else.

Two of the live shows will be posted on YouTube (you won't hear those here to avoid duplication, so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel). Enjoy the intellectual rumble.

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Douglas and Josh just completed the first ever Uncomfortable Conversations live tour at sold-out venues in five cities, debating topics as diverse as the conflict in Gaza, cancel culture, gender dysphoria and much more. 

Here's the first taste of the tour: Two audience Q&A segments from the Brisbane and Adelaide shows, where Douglas and Josh attempted to solve the world’s most complicated problems... one audience-submitted question at a time.

This episode is only available in full for premium subscribers. If you're not a paid subscriber, enjoy a short taste -- or, to experience the full multicoloured glory of Uncomfortable Conversations, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg caused a splash 12 years ago with his research into the formation of habits and his book "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life." Now, he's studied super communicators to discover why you're misunderstood, and what you can do better. His new book is "Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection".

Here, Charles and Josh misunderstand each other... in instructive ways.

‌
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What should we make of politics in the 2020s? Are we in an ascendant moment for the centre left? The US swung Democratic at the last midterm elections. The Australian conservatives were annihilated at the last poll. The same will happen to the UK Tories later this year.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics who has written multiple books about the rise and fall of almost every recent conservative prime minister. He has worked inside parliament house, written political commentary for The Australian newspaper, he was the chief political reporter for Channel Ten, and hosted Australia's nightly TV news panel show, The Project.

Should the Right be conservative, or populist? Should the Left be woke, or working class? Peter and Josh take stock of the political landscape in 2024.

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Australia's commentariat has been twisting itself in knots trying to find the correct anti-racist hot take. The official consensus is that people of colour can't be racist, so she did nothing wrong. The other side shrieks that that's hypocrisy, insisting that all race-based insults are equally bad. Josh tries to bring rationality to an irrational debate.

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This is a crossover episode with The Fifth Column podcast. If you've already heard it on their feed, sorry. If you've never heard of them, check them out at https://wethefifth.substack.com.

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Amid the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, "anti-Zionism" has become shorthand for "anti-bombing-Palestinians". But what do we mean when we ask if someone opposes Zionism? Does being a “Zionist” mean you support Israel's brutality? Josh is being asked this question more and more. He tries to untangle an answer.

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Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar at Deakin University in Melbourne. His new book is "Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking". He and Josh have it out.

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But now, the threat of cancellation looms. Activists are trying to force theatres to cancel the Douglas Murray events. Here, Josh shares his thoughts.

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This episode was recorded before the tragic death of Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies on Monday the 19th of February.

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Also, Josh bought a cat and needs your advice.

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Joel’s book is The Intuition Toolkit and you can check out the show’s YouTube page to see our purdy faces.

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Joel Pearson is a psychologist and neuroscientist who runs the Future Minds Lab at the University of New South Wales and is in charge of Innovation & Enterprise in their school of psychology. His new book is "The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What without Knowing Why."

Join Joel as he blows your mind about your mind.

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Josh Szeps

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This week, our guests are the two most interesting people in the world: Sarah Wilson and Jessie Stephens. Sarah’s podcast is Wild, which you should listen to. She’s also a multi-New York Times best-selling author, social philosopher and keynote speaker. Jessie’s podcasts are Mamamia Out Loud and Cancelled, which you should also listen to. She’s also a best-selling author. They’re both rather impressive and you should follow them.

If you’re a paid subscriber and if you’re seeing that this episode is only about 26 minutes long, then something is wrong and you’re on the free feed. The full episode is almost an hour long! Log into Substack to get your own unique premium podcast feed with no ads and longer episodes at https://bit.ly/UC_Primo. Or, if you’re just a free subscriber and you’re happy with that, enjoy the first 25 minutes and we're glad to have you.

In this week’s conversation, a judge strips Elon Musk of his big fat bonus, the government bans vapes, and the UK prime minister practices serrrrrrrious intermittent fasting. Let us know what you think in the Substack comments. Enjoy.

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