Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Ask Me Anything - 2022

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Ask Me Anything - 2022 · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get A Human's Happy New Year from the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas, Josh Sips, with
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your last show of 2022, I was about to say last show of 2021 and move it behind, forgive
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me. Life moves fast, doesn't it? I don't know what year it is, it still sounds amazing
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that it's going to be 2023. And yet I even bore myself by saying that it sounds amazing,
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that it's 2023 because it's such a cliche that as people enter middle ages, that time
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is just going so fast, you would you believe it is December already? I can't believe it's
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December. I thought it was May. If you'd asked me, I would have said it was May. I know,
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it's boring, but it's true. If you're listening to this and you're, you know, 15 or 20, it is
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one of those bizarre things that no matter how much you tell yourself, I'm not going to
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become that guy, as always going, hasn't time flown another year. Honestly, I must be
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fading up the clock or something. You will become that guy or you will, you just will.
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Anyway, 2023, going to be a great year. We're doing an ask me anything today. You asked
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me some wonderful questions on social media. Oh, and last, when I was doing the intro to
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the last episode, gee, they come thick and fast these days, don't they? We're so generous
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to you because you're being so generous to us by subscribing on sub-stakes and now you
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get lots more content. And on the last episode, which dropped I think 48 hours ago, I was
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saying that I wanted to reflect about 2023 and why we should be hopeful for 2023 and what
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lessons we might take this new year. And I just wanted to share with you one thing that
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I punted to this episode, which is that I'm going to make a bit of a resolution, a new
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year's resolution, which I don't tend to do. I don't tend to be like, I'm going to lose,
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wait, I'm going to start to meditate mainly because I just always fail. But I think I can
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succeed at this one. I want to be less tolerant of people being down on everything. I think
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it's become a bit too fashionable to be down on everything, to be in the kind of like world
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is going to shit mindset. This is something that I thought was satirized quite beautifully
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and brilliantly in season two of White Lotus, which if you haven't seen, you should.
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The idea that, you know, when you're rich, you sort of have, you have so few real serious
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material problems that you have to invent a lot of problems to keep you entertained. Like,
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you know, PJ O'Rourke used to say, everyone knows what whiners rich people are. And in a
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sense, in the modern world, in the worst, we've all become rich. We just don't suffer.
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The threat of real hardship, starvation, and physical violence that has been the backdrop
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to human experience throughout most of history and in most places. And so as a result, we
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become neurotic and anxious and self-obsessed. We lose focus on the things that really matter,
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the things that are in our control, the things that surround us. And we locate our focus on,
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you know, be the big dramatic things that really do matter like climate chaos or Ukraine or
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floods in Australia or social media or COVID or politics. Or we focus our attention on the minutia
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that really shouldn't matter, you know, like whether on our couch has had red wine spilled on it or
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whether on what we're going to get little Brittany for Christmas. And we don't spend enough time
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just being generally positive. And like this is a different resolution from
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quiet gratitude, which I think is also important. Like I wish I was the type of person who had
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the discipline to write a gratitude journal every evening or every morning, even just three
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things. Like we have proven, we know these things work. We have proven that if you focus on just
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three, if you just notice, just take note of three things that you're grateful for in your life
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each day. And you spend just a minute doing that, then you are measurably more happy and relaxed
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and have better perspective. And then, you know, brings down your blood pressure and all that sort
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of nonsense. But who cares about that? It makes you happier. And if you think, oh, I can't think
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of three things that I'm grateful for every single day, well, you can, if you don't have cancer,
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there's one. If your loved ones are healthy, there's another. If your house hasn't burned down,
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there's a third. You know, we can easily rattle off, if you can't easily rattle off 20, 30 or 50,
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things to be really grateful for about living in a rich Western democracy or Eastern democracy.
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In 2023, you're not trying hard enough and your brain has been contorted and warped by the media.
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And by, I suppose, just our instinct as human beings to always focus on threats
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and to fret about the future instead of chilling out and appreciating the present, which probably
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wasn't, wouldn't have been a very good evolutionary strategy. The ancestors of ours who did chill out
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and appreciate things and gaze up at the trees got eaten by tigers. So we are the descendants of
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the people who are constantly in a state of anxiety. And in the absence of real threats, we have to
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channel that anxiety and fear somewhere. So we formed these sort of cultural cliques where we're
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snarky about everything. Oh, the world today. Oh, it's all going to hell in a hand basket.
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What about all those things like Ukraine and the climate and the floods and the wildfires and COVID?
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Okay. Okay. They exist. And of course, some cohort of you will respond to what I've just said
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by misunderstanding that I'm saying that there aren't problems that need to be fixed or
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by misunderstanding that I'm agitating for people to be more apathetic about making the world a
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better place or that I'm speaking from a place of privilege. I mean, I am speaking from a place
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of privilege mainly because I was born into a rich democracy and the loving family. That's the
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ultimate privilege. You can probably sprinkle on top a bit of white privilege. There may be a bit
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of male privilege. I'm not sure that I believe that male privilege still exists, which is a conversation
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for another day. That doesn't mean that there aren't structural impediments that make it harder
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for women to do certain jobs like being politicians and CEOs, but that just for the actual daily
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experience of being discriminated against in, you know, as a result of gender quotas and parity
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and things now has to, as a male, now has to be balanced against the structural impediments to
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women. That's so, anyway, I probably just got myself into a huge amount of hot water, but I'm not
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going to spend the hour that I would need to spend to untangle what I mean by that. We can make
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that a podcast for another day. Nonetheless, I'm just acknowledging that I do have very privileged
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along various metrics and that nonetheless, that doesn't mean that I can't appeal to your better
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nature to be more grateful about the things that we're blessed with. Like I'm not saying let's be
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totally polyanna and I am saying what I think are defensible facts like you can literally measure
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that we are currently living healthier lives, longer lives, less violent lives, more prosperous
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lives with a greater range of foods, a greater range of recreation, and a greater range of creature
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comforts than any humans pretty much ever have. And I'm not saying that necessarily makes us happy,
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but I'm just saying if you're going to say that that's irrelevant, then you're making a very
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peculiar argument about human progress. And it's an argument that people who lacked the things
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that you currently enjoy did not buy into and that you probably wouldn't buy into if you didn't
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have all of the creature comforts that you're shedding on to. So I'm going to be less tolerant of
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people being down on everything in the new year. I'm going to try to foster not just quiet gratitude
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but almost radical appreciation. I want to try to encourage us as a people, as a community,
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as countries and a planet to proactively insist that we count our blessings.
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There are some wonderful traits in our cultural and political and social lives that we should be
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grateful for. In addition to acknowledging the systemic injustices and inequalities too.
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I think Australia has wonderful characteristics that we shouldn't allow ourselves to denigrate or
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forget about. Resilience, larychanism, a cheerful attitude towards argumentation and difference
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of opinion, freedom of thought, I should hope, egalitarianism, what some of these call
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mateship. We have the tools of science and reason. We have the attitudes of tolerance and debate.
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So let's not fulfill PJ O'Rawks' aphorism when he says that rich people are whiners and in a
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sense we've all become rich. Let's foster a little more joy gratitude and just a bouncy positive
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respect for the blessings that we inherit. This is a quick reminder. I never ask you to do this,
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but leave a bloody rating on the podcast app. I know it's annoying. I'm asking you to do a lot
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because there's the whole sub-stack thing that you should also be subscribed to.
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Uncomfortableconversations.substack.com slash subscribe. All you have to do is sign up with an email
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if you haven't just do it now. It's easier than hearing me bang on about it. But the other way to
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sort of create this independent media empire that means that people like me are not so beholden
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to big media money and big media executives is to leave us a review on Apple podcasts.
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Alarmingly few people have, I think we only have a few hundred reviews or something and other podcasts
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that are not as successful as this one have thousands and thousands. And the reason we do that
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is not because I want you to leave a good review. It's just because Apple's peculiar algorithm
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that's hidden there in the Silicon Valley service that no one quite understands. It bumps up
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and presents to other people as suggested podcasts, podcasts that people are talking about.
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So if it sees you chattering about it and like leaving a rating and a review it goes,
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oh, this is a podcast that has some interest, some engagement using that awful metric.
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You might hate it, but at least you're engaging with it. Therefore, Apple is going to put it in front
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of people who don't already subscribe to it or listen to it. I mean the other thing you can do
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that's really good is just scowl your brain momentarily to think if there's anyone else who
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you know who would like this show and shoot them a text message and say, by the way,
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do you listen to Josh's show? Do you know who Josh is?
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You know, if 10% of you do that and then 10% of those people do that, then pretty soon
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a hundred trillion people will be subscribed to this podcast and that would be terrible because
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there aren't even that many people and all of the podcast servers in the world would collapse.
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So for fuck's sake, be careful with this tool of exponential growth that I've just handed you.
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Like some deranged pyramid scheme. I am the Bernie made off of podcasts.
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So ask me anything questions. If you don't hear a question answered here, it's not because
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I didn't like the question. It's just because I don't like you and I think you're a worthless
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human being. Obviously, no, it's not true. It's because my producer didn't put it in front of me.
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Kate on Twitter says, thoughts on having one day a month every month when we get off
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socials, we walk out of our boxes, drop our labels and claims for status and we say hi to each
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other chat with neighbors in the shops at the park. We seek it out like it's a thing. Yeah, imagine
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that. Yes. So obvious. So obviously true. As you listen to this, is there any part of you
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that doesn't think that if we had a kind of a Sabbath from technology, we would be better as a
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people and that you individually would be better as a person. This is the weird thing about addiction.
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Like you know, it's bad in every way and yet you keep going back to it. If you've ever had
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experience with smoking or over drinking or gambling or if you've had a loved one who is caught
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in the throes of any of those traps, it's quite bizarre, isn't it? It's like I'm aware that it's
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causing all of these problems. I'm aware that it's giving me nothing apart from momentarily fixing
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the problem that it created. And yet I can't get out of that loop. So what do you call our engagement
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with social media and digital devices at this point? If not that. Like I am 100% positive
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that if there was a day on which I knew that hey, it's Sunday. If I'm at the supermarket on Sunday,
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I'm there without my phone or at least like I've got some rule like it's on airplane mode or something
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or it's, you know, I've data is switched off. And if I'm standing in line at the supermarket
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and I'm waiting to check out on a Sunday, I don't pull my stupid little screen out of my pants
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and start scrolling through what other people are doing on Instagram. That's a time when I don't do it.
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I know six days a week, but I don't do it on that day. Does anyone think that we wouldn't be better
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off individually and as a society if we did that? It's a no brain okay. I'd love to find a way
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to instantiate a sort of a technology technological Sabbath. If not as a broad cultural movement,
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then at least in my life and my family's life. Dean on Twitter says Prince or Michael Jackson,
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I mean, that's easy. And maybe I'll surprise people by saying Michael Jackson without a doubt.
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It's funny. I never got on the Prince train. I don't know how I, how did I, you know,
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how there are some people who just passed you by and you're not quite sure why. Maybe I'm the
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wrong age or something or I'm not cool enough. I don't like, I mean, there are, I obviously know the
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big, big famous Prince songs, but I don't really understand, like, I don't get why he is who he is
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in the minds of people who revere him so. And the people who revere him so are clearly
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really, really well educated people about music and pop culture. So I guess they're right. But it's
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a bit like David Bowie. I'm like, yeah, okay, there's Bowie and there's Prince. Good on you. But
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I just don't spend a lot of time like if I had to spend the next year only listening to their music,
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I'd be bummed. But in a strange way, if I only had, if I'd spend the next year only listening to
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Michael Jackson music as long as we're including Jackson five, I'd be like, all right, I think I can
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manage it for a year. There's a lot of great poppy songs in there. It'll give me a spring in my
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step at least. But however, I should hasten to add, child rape, not so keen on that aspect of
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Michael Jackson. So not, you know, not going for the whole package, I'm just carving out the art,
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which I think we can still do. Can we? Someone's going to take a clip of this, and in 15 years,
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saying this is going to get you jailed. So I'll just jailed myself. Question from our wajari on
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Instagram. What are some of your most memorable class or seminar discussion moments from your
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formative high school and university days? What a great question. I remember at uni, and I went
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to the University of Technology Sydney, where I'm now a visiting fellow, which just means that we
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have a collaboration in which I assist them in having the kinds of conversations that they are
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interested in having, and they assist me in having the conversations that I am interested in
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having. And there is a kind of a, we dovetail nicely because their dean, Professor Davison,
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Alan Davison, is committed to the kinds, some kinds of ideals that I am, which are so rare in
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tertiary education around so much of the English-speaking world at the moment, ideals of true freedom
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of speech, true dialogue with people you disagree with, true generosity towards your opponents,
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true stimulating kind of provocative out there arguments at university. That's what universities
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used to be, and now they are just so much conformist social justice nonsense. And it's nice to see,
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it's nice to see Alan at UTS because UTS, the University of Technology Sydney, where I did
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journalism and media studies, was one of the worst offenders when it came to politically correct,
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conformist group think nonsense in its studies subjects. So it's, it's always been fantastic at
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the practical subjects, and it taught me an enormous amount about filmmaking and about radio
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broadcasting, about television production, and I loved all that. But as soon as I got into the cultural
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and social studies classes, like I was a nerd, I really wanted to learn about history, and I wanted
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to learn philosophy, and I wanted to learn art, and so I needed, I craved, I hung it for
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like big old sandstone buildings full of stuffy professors teaching the classics, like I wanted to
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understand Socrates, you know, I wanted to understand the enlightenment. It was a lot that I wanted
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to know that I hadn't gotten from high school. And University of Technology Sydney at the time was
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very focused on disrupting the discourse, and like problematizing like straight white male
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concepts, and you know, I guess this is the beginning of work. And so I quickly took cross-institutional
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electives at Sydney University, which is the oldest and sort of most eventable kind of old-school
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university in Sydney. And I absolutely loved that. And I remember one moment, like for example,
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I studied study history at Sydney University, but at University of Technology Sydney,
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they didn't even have a class called history. It was called making Australia. And it focused on
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the contribution that like women, minorities, migrants, and indigenous populations had had on
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the construction of Australia and their relationship with the Australian identity, which is all well
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and good. After you already know what happened, but you just can't start with that before you know
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what happened. And I felt the same about philosophy. I didn't yet know what Descartes had really
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been on about or what Hobbes meant or who Schopenhauer was. So stop like complicating this by
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teaching me how like, you know, pretentious French philosophers in the 1950s,
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problematized all of the ideas of the enlightenment. I didn't fully understand those original ideas
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yet. So anyway, I remember one particular class where we were talking about democracy and politics
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in Asia. And my tutor in the class was this South Asian lady who was very sort of, you know, like
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nose stud, you know, diamond nose stud kind of very, very like hippy-dippy type, I guess,
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Sri Lankan Australian or Indian or Pakistani Australian. And she was very
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hard to pin down about whether or not she thought there was anything good about
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the West about democracy, liberalism, freedom of speech. She basically required us all to
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concede that you're always biased towards the system that you live inside of. And therefore,
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it's impossible to find a position to stand from which you can impartially judge the various
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merits of competing systems, whether that's, you know, communist China versus the empire of the
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United States versus, you know, the Scandinavian social democracies and so on. She was basically saying
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like, of course, you students think that Western liberal democracy is superior because you live
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in Western liberal democracies. If you lived in Russia, then you would think that Russia's
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form of authoritarian government was superior. And that just always smelled like a bit of a cop
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out to me because it's one of those things where yes, there's a kernel of truth in it.
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Like I get what she's saying, of course, we're all biased and we should try to think outside the
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box. But it is sometimes also the case that like there has to be one system that produces better
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results than others. I mean, there can be many, but you know, there is going to be some cohort of
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systems that produce better results than some other cohort. And in those better systems,
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there will also be people living. And you can't just say you guys aren't able to haven't to
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formulate an opinion, you know, a very fact-driven database opinion about whether or not life is
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superior in countries like Canada, New Zealand and Norway than it is in countries like North Korea,
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Cuba and Cuba, because you're in those countries, therefore you don't have any standing because
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you're not standing on like Saturn looking back with no prior assumptions. That just seems to
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me to be just an intellectually lazy cop out. So we were talking about Tiananmen Square. And she goes,
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you know, what you need to understand is that there is a very different attitude towards
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the community and individual rights and individual thought and individual what we call,
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quote unquote, freedoms in China than there is here. And she basically proceeded to sort of justify
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Tiananmen Square. And I pulled my hand up and I said, well, I'm sure that argument would have come
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as a great consolation to the people whose limbs were being crushed under tanks. I'm sure they were
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sitting there lying there as their guts were spilling out onto the pavement thinking, you know what,
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this is really just cultural relativism that makes me dislike this. You know, if I really understood
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the confusion mindset, then I would understand that the Westerners who are criticizing the Chinese
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Communist Party right now for driving over me in a tank, they are just, they're just caught up
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in their own. They're just as biased. They're just as biased. Really, I mean, I should really be
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enjoying seeing my legs being ripped apart from my body by a fascist communist mercantilist regime.
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Because, you know, who am I to say that this is bad? And that was the point at which I unsubscribed
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from the social and cultural theory subjects at the University of Technology Sydney. But now it's
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better because they've got a great professor. So don't use this as a contemporary argument against
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that, that college. David on Twitter says, what are your thoughts on the Voice to Parliament?
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If you're not in Australia, the Voice to Parliament is a proposal that will go to a referendum
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shortly within the next 12 to 24 months to create a body for Indigenous Australians to advise
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Parliament about issues that will impact Indigenous people. I think it seems like a common sense idea,
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most Australians seem to be behind it. I think there's any, any real reason to object to it. It's
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not going to be binding. It's not going to be, you know, some people are claiming, oh, this is
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like an extra chamber of Parliament or something just for Indigenous people and it's discriminatory
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because they're only there because they're First Nations people and what about white people.
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You know, I think when you colonise another country, if you're going to be decent about it,
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then after 200 years of shitting on them, then you can say like there's been a lot, a lot of
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completely disregarding what First Nations communities wanted. So it doesn't hurt just to have
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like a place in which they're able to say, okay, our opinion about XYZ would be that this is the
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preferable way to do it. However, my big part is when you're talking about a Voice to Parliament,
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the obvious next question is, whose Voice? Because one of my big problems with identity politics
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is that highly educated, usually quite wealthy, sort of university inclined white people
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like to cherry pick, you know, on the left, like to cherry pick people of colour from minority
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communities who reflect the white educated person's own preferences about how to resolve some of
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these questions. So it's important to make sure that there's a diversity of voices, not just a
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diversity of, you know, well, here are all the black people. We're going to put them in a chamber
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and we're going to pick the ones who sort of agree with each other about what the mainstream
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progressive narrative, about what's best for First Nations is. Like there is a lot of disagreement
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among First Nations Australians about the utility, for example, of doing acknowledgements of country
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and welcomes of country, you know, land acknowledgements before every public meeting.
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You know, every morning on ABC Radio Sydney, whenever I'm on the breakfast show, the first thing
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that goes to air is an acknowledgement of country. You get on a flight in Australia, there's an
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acknowledgement of country. And so a question as simple as that has disagreement amongst different
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indigenous Australians, let alone something like how do you address high rates of domestic violence
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among regional communities, amongst First Nations people, to what extent should states and territories
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go into, you know, single parent households and quote unquote rescue indigenous children and
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try to foster them against the will of an alcoholic or abusive parent given that we know the history,
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the terrible appalling history of the stolen generations in places like Australia and Canada,
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where children were forcibly removed from perfectly peaceful, perfectly functional Indigenous
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families because it was, you know, because racists regarded Indigenous Australians as being
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incapable of raising children the proper way. So there are lots of disagreements, you know,
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should alcohol be banned in some outback Indigenous towns? A lot of local Indigenous elders think
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it should be. So you want to make sure that the voice to parliament is a freewheeling,
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rambunctious, true voice where people with lots of different perspectives from across all of
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the First Nations communities can hammer out their disagreements and hopefully present those disagreements
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to parliament when relevant and go look, you know, well, those of us from here think this,
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and those of us from here think this, almost like you might have a court, I guess,
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handing down recommendations, but there would also be a dissent from inside the chain. But something
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like that, like I would want a voice to parliament that is complex and messy, what you don't want,
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and what I would, you know, think would be a terrible missed opportunity, would be a voice to parliament,
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which is all of the self-appointed, self-important, you know, spokesperson for this particular
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community, being cherry-picked to speak with one voice that conforms to what bleeding heart
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liberals think that they should say. That would be a missed opportunity.
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Lee on Twitter says 5842, Elon is voted out of office, sink and all. Josh Sepson, his funky accent,
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is taking the wheel of Twitter. What do you do? I won't take the easy answer here and say shut it
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down, because that's not very helpful. I think what needs to happen is half what Elon is trying
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to do, which is it needs to turn into a subscription. I think all social media should be paid subscription
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services. But Elon is missing the other half of my strategy. Well, it's not my strategy. It's
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the strategy of anyone who understands the ethics and the social and cultural impacts of social media,
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if you've seen a show like the social dilemma on Netflix. What needs to happen is that you need
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the algorithms to stop governing what we see, to drive us to more addictive and extreme content.
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Like social media is an extremification machine. It is a reinforcement machine. This is part of the
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mission of this podcast to try to help us break out of our echo chambers and our bubbles by extending
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a maximally generous attitude towards people I disagree with so that you have the freedom to
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hear decent arguments on all sides. Social media doesn't do that. Social media values engagement.
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An engagement means it's either a piece of content that you agree with and it reinforces your
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preconceptions. Or if it's a piece of content that you disagree with, you're more likely to engage
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with it more. If it flames your, inflames your outrage, then if it provides you with the most
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nuanced and sophisticated version of your opponent's arguments. So some people say, oh, you're
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on social media. All you see is things that you agree with that just reinforces what you already
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believe. That's not entirely true because obviously your social media feed includes lots of things
30:30
that you disagree with. The problem is that they're always the more extreme or stupid versions of
30:35
things that you disagree with because those are the things that are being presented to you because
30:39
the algorithm knows that you're more likely to comment on them or to share them and try to own
30:45
own them, own the person who posted it. So I understand that you can't really just go back,
30:53
I mean, I've heard Mark Zuckerberg talk about this. When he's asked, why don't you just go back to
30:58
what Facebook was, which it used to be a reverse chronological feed of all of the things that
31:02
your friends had posted. So whichever was most recent would be at the top and then it would just go
31:06
back in time instead of having an algorithm rig the system to try to present you with things that
31:11
it thinks you're going to engage with more. And Zuckerberg says, well, the problem with that is,
31:17
what if you have a friend or a brand who just knows that they can post every eight minutes and
31:22
then they're always going to be at the top of your feed. So the algorithm has to factor in
31:27
that kind of thing. I do not believe that it is beyond the capability of software engineers
31:35
in Silicon Valley to devise algorithms that weed out that sort of nonsense and stop the system
31:41
from being game, but nonetheless do not favor content that you're necessarily going to engage with.
31:49
Like why is engaging with content necessarily the metric of the good? It's the metric of
31:55
inflaming us and reinforcing us and making us more aggravated and more impassioned and losing
32:02
perspective. I mean, just look at what's happened to Elon himself. The man is a walking case study
32:06
of the dangers of Twitter. I was listening to Ezra Klein the other day who was making the point that
32:12
does anybody in the world think that Elon today is focused on more important things with a bigger
32:22
picture compared to the Elon of 10, 15, 20 years ago with a bigger mission, a bigger heart,
32:29
a greater sense of purpose and generosity and humanity. I mean, here is a person who has so much
32:38
to recommend him who's done an extraordinary amount through SpaceX and his boring company and Tesla
32:45
and neural link. Incredible visionary. Does anyone think that Twitter has made him more focused on
32:53
things that matter? I mean, here you can see in one person the microcosm of what Twitter is doing
33:01
to all of us and to our culture. So what would I do if I took over Twitter? I would try to make money
33:08
from subscriptions and eliminate advertising. So the ad dollar is not part of it. And I would try to
33:14
I would just tell my tech engineers to stop using like time on site and engagement as the metric.
33:22
The metric should be are people paying their monthly fee and that should be it.
33:27
They shouldn't need to be on it all the time. That shouldn't be the imperative.
33:32
Reminds me a little bit of the shift that HBO made to network television.
33:37
You know, network television needs you to be watching TV all the time at every moment the maximum
33:42
number of eyeballs watching every 15 minutes. And so it's sort of dumb it's a dumbed down version
33:47
of television. What streaming has done the reason we've got such great content on television now
33:52
it began with HBO but now is exploded through all the other streamers is because the streamers don't
33:57
need a maximum number of people watching every 15 minutes. They just need you to like something
34:02
enough that you're willing to pay your monthly fee. If we could make social media like that.
34:07
So you're not constantly being tugged to look at it. It's just like there is a utility here.
34:12
I'll pay my monthly fee but it's not always like programmed to draw you in and keep you there.
34:20
That would be my main mission as the new boss of Twitter.
34:24
Pastrami Nostradamus on Twitter. Great name.
34:27
Says what would you do if you were PM of Australia and what would you do if you were dictator
34:33
of Australia? If I was PM of Australia I would work as hard as I can to get the country's
34:44
brightest minds to figure out how to pull off the transition to clean energy and then race towards
34:51
doing that as quickly as possible without ruining the lives of people who currently work in
34:58
coal and dirty industries. Australia is so blessed as such a sunny hot country with plenty of
35:07
wind and a vast coastline. Australia is the same size as the continuous United States with half
35:12
the population of California basically about the population of Florida. There's no reason at all
35:17
why we shouldn't be producing way more energy than we need from renewables. It's just the fact that
35:23
we also happen to have tons of coal and that sort of excuse things. How do you pull off that
35:29
transition? One of the big ways would be to electrify everything. I'd basically take
35:36
Saul Griffith's idea if you haven't heard of Saul Griffith. He will be a guest on the podcast
35:41
shortly as a fascinating idea which is basically electrify everything and worry about how you get
35:47
your electricity later because as long as once everything is electrified then as more and more
35:54
people get electric cars that will solve the oh what happens when the wind doesn't blow and the
35:59
sun doesn't shine problem because you'll have a massive battery like car batteries are extraordinarily
36:04
dense in terms of their energy. If you have one and a half cars which is what most people have
36:10
on average in every Australian home then that solves the problem altogether. I think that can
36:17
run an Australian home for like a week that's an amazing amount of power and then if each household
36:22
was able to for example sell its excess power that is stored in its car battery back to its
36:28
neighbours when its neighbours have all their air conditioners on and you're away on holiday
36:32
we need to have like you know almost the entire problem can be fixed just by electrifying
36:37
everything and having smart grids that connect us to our communities and producing as much power
36:42
as we can locally like on solar panels and at a community level. So I would basically just dedicate
36:48
myself to pulling off that transition and figuring out how to bring enough interested parties
36:54
who have vested interests in the mining industry and mining jobs along with me. You're never going
36:58
to bring the big dirty mining companies along but you may be able to create a civil war between
37:05
them and some of their other stakeholders like their employees by producing a clever enough plan
37:10
and then I would use Australia's cloud on the international stage to encourage other countries to
37:16
do the same thing and to work maximally quickly to avert climate chaos. When I say Australia's
37:24
cloud on the international stage some people might chuckle behind their hands a little bit because
37:28
it is a medium sized country and it doesn't have the cloud of a country like I don't know the
37:34
United States or even you know Germany or the UK or something but it is interesting if you talk
37:40
to diplomats and you talk to people in other governments around the world. They do have an
37:43
interesting attitude towards Australia. It's not so small that it can be ignored like New Zealand
37:51
and it's not so big that it's regarded as being a bully so people don't have ill will towards it.
37:56
It's regarded as being a quite an innovative country and certainly a very desirable and
38:00
enviable country. It's a pretty good player in the world I mean with a few exceptions like
38:06
its refugee policy for example. It's pretty up to scratch when it comes to abiding by international
38:15
norms and in many cases leading them. I mean it was the first jurisdiction to give women the vote
38:21
and you know it has a number of notches on its belt and credits in its history like that.
38:28
So I actually think that if Australia came together and we did try to do this I think it was at
38:33
the Paris Accords when was Kevin Rudd Prime Minister and was it Copenhagen and there was a real
38:39
attempt and Australia was one of the principal brokers in trying to keep the US and the EU in the room
38:44
in a dispute with developing countries like China and India about who was going to shoulder the
38:49
main burden. Anyway all of that's to say Australia has a disproportionate amount of soft power
38:54
diplomatically and we should use it on climate change and the other thing that I would do as
38:59
Prime Minister is I would make it my mission to try to figure out what to do with the distribution
39:04
of humanitarian of people who need like humanitarian refuge around the world because
39:12
my father came to Australia as a refugee when he was eight years old my his parents fled the Holocaust
39:18
as climate chaos becomes more and more intense we're going to have hundreds of millions more
39:23
refugees you know if the monsoons get screwed up in Bangladesh or something or if you know
39:27
whole swathes of Asia or Africa become just incrementally less habitable because it's so much
39:35
more hazardous that an old person is going to die of heatstroke there or some such then you are
39:40
going to have significant movements of people there will be significant political destabilization
39:46
and the risk is that that leads to right wing populist backlash politics and that liberal democracy
39:52
might not be strong enough to withstand the huge swings and costs of constantly being buffeted by
39:59
not only natural disasters like floods and hurricanes and and fires but also the humanitarian and
40:07
political challenges of having lots and lots of people trying to get into other countries
40:12
and it's just not fair at the moment that a country like Lebanon has to shoulder all of the problem
40:18
of you know Syrian refugees or half of it it there needs to be a systematic way to for every country
40:25
as a proportion of its sort of ability to do so to resettle people on a more orderly process it's
40:29
a completion model at the moment so that's the second thing that I would do as Prime Minister
40:34
the second part of your question pastrami nostradamus is what would you do if you were dictator of
40:39
Australia I think that's a fairly obvious answer isn't it I would give myself as much money as
40:48
I wanted from probably the people who are most able to afford it like you know big tobacco companies
40:56
or big coal mining companies and then once I had criminally stolen what I wanted I would turn
41:03
Australia into a democracy and stop it from being a dictatorship Sam on Twitter says where do you
41:09
get the best chicken parmigiana this is such a peculiar Aussie culinary thing the chicken parmy
41:16
if you're outside of Australia you may think that it's Italian you know a breaded piece of chicken
41:21
breast with some melted cheese on top and usually some ham underneath the cheese but they're all
41:27
kinds of interesting spins on it like you can do you know I don't know jalapenos or whatever it
41:33
might be it is in Australia regarded as like a local sort of pub delicacy and people really pride
41:42
themselves on where to get the best one I don't want to have my passport revoked but I don't
41:47
really get it like I would much rather have I don't know a steak or a spaghetti bowl and aes
41:56
or the lamb chop or like anything else that is your standard pub fair in Australia than the chicken
42:02
parmy I'm not sure I'm not a connoisseur wrong person to ask sorry Sam Nath on Instagram or
42:09
Nath says how can you support Australia investing in nuclear power Josh and then says a few thoughts
42:16
with me being an electrician one we don't have any experience or the workforce in building nuclear
42:22
power plants so we need to import everything and time frames would blow out from the expected 10 to
42:26
15 years two it's the most expensive form of energy two and a half times the cost of renewables
42:31
and three times the cost of coal three with the rise of China it'd be a potential target if war
42:37
broke out and four by the time it's built renewables will have flooded the market which they already are
42:42
and it costs more money to turn it off than leave it on uh Nath you've convinced me I agree with
42:50
all of that I don't know why you think I do support Australia investing in nuclear power this might
42:56
be a misunderstanding because I've said that I don't object to nuclear power I may have said that
43:02
I think we we need nuclear power as a bridge to renewables but I that may have just been part
43:08
of a rhetorical brain fart my basic attitude towards nuclear is 90% of people
43:14
are have their opinion about nuclear power for ideological reasons not impartial fact-based
43:22
reasons uh that is not the kind of person I am I want to be as fact-based as possible
43:27
therefore I don't have any ideological objection to nuclear power I don't I don't think it makes
43:33
much sense to focus relentlessly on the accidents of corrupt communist run first generation nuclear
43:42
power plants like Chernobyl when we're talking about 21st century technology which is as I understand
43:49
it incredibly safe I don't think it's worth worrying about the fact that you know when an accident
43:57
does happen it might take out some significant number of people in one hit when we seem so cool
44:03
with particular emissions and coal taking out people very very slowly I mean to me a nuclear
44:09
accident is a bit like a plane crash like planes are safer than cars it's just we don't report
44:14
on all the daily car crashes so when a plane falls out of the sky it's horrendous and people get
44:19
afraid of flying but really you'd be better off flying from a safety perspective than driving a
44:24
car similarly you know nuclear is ugly when it goes wrong but it's harms absolutely nobody
44:31
for years and years and years and years and years when it goes right so those are those are the
44:35
reasons for nuclear but all of those engineering reasons against nuclear I am completely convinced by
44:43
I also think it's a political non-starter in a country like Australia where the number one
44:48
issue that voters say they care about is the environment so in places like Europe where
44:54
I'm told by reliable people it will always be required or is it you know for the foreseeable future
44:59
will be required because it's too cold for solar to be as to make up as large a proportion of
45:06
their energy mix as it can in Australia I don't but an objective nuclear that's all I'm saying
45:14
if that makes some sense if we can get from where we are to fully renewable with no nuclear in
45:20
the mix and there's no downside to that then obviously I would not I don't want to make a hobby
45:27
of randomly building nuclear power stations for no reason they don't worry about that last question
45:33
from titled is missing on Twitter what was your best meal of the year what a lovely question
45:39
what a lovely question because I've had some absolute crackers because during the long pandemic
45:46
lockdowns I didn't get shit and so I've had a lovely time going a bit columnary in 2022 the one
45:55
that stands out the most is probably a farm to table restaurant in the middle of nowhere in Tasmania
46:03
and it's not actually that hard to get to it's only about a 30 minute drive out of the capital
46:08
city of Tasmania Hobart but in Tasmania it doesn't take very long to get to what feels like
46:13
the middle of nowhere and you're sitting in this sort of renovated barn with floor-to-ceiling windows
46:19
looking out over this coastline that sort of looks like I guess what you might imagine like New
46:24
Finland would look like lush and cliffs and water and sky all of the food comes from their own
46:33
farm or just up the road they have bees that make the honey it's all very sort of portland out
46:39
sort of quite pretentious but you know at a price point that is not insane I think it was maybe
46:47
about a hundred fifty Australian dollars or a hundred US dollars for like 12 courses it was just
46:53
course after course of lovely gentle delicate beautiful flavoursome natural Tasmanian produce
47:03
another highlight of the year would be a meal that I had in Milan this was just as Omicron was
47:11
exploding so I guess this was probably just before the end of 2021 but I'm going to include it
47:16
anyway because it's within the past 12 months just I had one night in Milan on a stopover I'd
47:24
been visiting family for the first time since the pandemic had started so first time in a couple of
47:29
years in the south of France I've found a flight out of Milan to JFK in first class on Emirates using
47:36
points so I thought it was worth getting a little train for nine hours from the south of France to
47:40
go to Milan just to experience the shower in the sky at all that nonsense that Emirates has in first
47:45
class travel hacking and using your frequent flyer points and acquiring frequent flyer points in
47:50
order for the world's most expensive airline products is another hobby of mine probably a
47:55
conversation for another day because I know a lot of you are interested in how to do that but
47:59
nonetheless I'm in Milan and I text my friends who live in Italy who live in Rome and say where
48:05
should I go for just one meal in Milan and they send me back all these all these very hip places you
48:10
know there's this amazing you know Belarusian chef who spent some time in Denmark and now he's
48:17
putting together all these flavors of you know from around the world and he's got lots of foam on
48:23
his scallops and things like that and I was like no no no no no I can get that anywhere that generic
48:30
fancy you know three Michelin star international cuisine I want to go to the place where
48:37
when really wealthy classy Milan elites go out for a business lunch say where do they go
48:46
so they say oh you have to go to bloody blood I'm not I can't just can't remember the name of the
48:51
place I look it up it's been around since the 1400s it's been a restaurant since the 1400s
49:02
and I go there straight from the train station on my way to the hotel that I'm staying at to
49:08
fly out the following morning like literally with my carry on luggage white tablecloths
49:14
immaculate service again not wildly expensive I think the mains were about like 25 euros 30 euros
49:21
so it's not it's not where unclassy people go to feel like they're classy it's where genuinely
49:28
classy people just go all the time and I had a risotto that was beyond belief just beyond belief
49:36
and I don't even normally like risotto but the thing about it there is they just give you a tiny
49:40
little bit and then you can order a whole bunch of other stuff as well it's not just a big dollop
49:43
of rice and lastly my best meal of the year this my partner Sean will laugh you know we'll
49:48
be teasing me about this because he can never get me to say my favorite anything I think it's I
49:52
think favorite to stupid like oh what's your favorite color I don't know depends on what we're
49:55
talking about do you want like if it's a lobster then I want the lobster it'll be lobster colored I
49:59
don't want it you know I don't have it some abstract and best movie of all time what are you talking
50:04
about there are so many different movies with so many different attributes I have to go I'm so
50:07
I end up giving these long answers to what is my favorite anything but another male would be a
50:11
couple that I had in Bangkok I've actually been to Thailand twice in the past 12 months just to get
50:16
out of my system all of this pent up covered wanderlust and one of them was at a great restaurant I
50:23
think it's called pure and that's a high-end restaurant and I remember that my daughter Stella drew
50:28
all over the beautiful white tablecloth and they were very polite about it and that's a sort of a
50:32
prefix you know high-end Thai food but I probably didn't even enjoy it as much as a gritty
50:41
smelly stinky spicy joint that I went to the last time I was in Bangkok by myself the name escapes me
50:48
but it was just several courses of mouth fiery flavoursome chilies and funky extraordinary so good thank
50:59
you for reminding me of it I hope this has been randomly enjoyable in in some vague way as I say
51:06
leave a review subscribe you know on iTunes leave a review under and a rating a subscribe and
51:11
sub stack rather uncomfortable conversations dot sub stack dot com slash subscribe have a very
51:16
very happy new year I'll see you soon