Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Darren McMullen joins the Comfy Couch

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Darren McMullen joins the Comfy Couch · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:00
Welcome to a special edition version of Uncomfortable Conversations.
0:09
We're calling this a comfy couch, Convo, see?
0:14
It's normally uncomfortable conversations, but this is a comfy couch convo.
0:20
The way it's going to work is that every two weeks you will get a fully fledged gargantuan
0:26
bells and whistles, uncomfortable conversation, an interview between me and a luminary
0:33
of intellectual life, and every other week you'll get a nice casual little nibble, just
0:40
a non non, a little amused bush like this episode, a tantalising taster of a conversation
0:46
on a comfy couch with a dear friend of mine about some chatty topic of interest.
0:52
This week to crack the metaphorical champagne bottle on the metaphorical boat of this non-metaphorical
0:58
inaugural comfy couch episode, our guest is none other than Australia's second most beloved
1:05
television host, the host of the voice, and before that, what were you hosting before
1:09
the voice, Darren?
1:10
I've hosted many shows, Josh.
1:12
What were the big ones?
1:13
Minute to win it.
1:14
Minute to win it.
1:15
The voice.
1:16
The voice.
1:17
BBC ones, the magician.
1:18
The magician.
1:19
These minute to win it.
1:22
I only say Darren McMullen is the man's name.
1:25
If you're Australian, you know him, if you're American.
1:27
You may also know him.
1:28
But I say second most beloved host, because Oshar.
1:31
I think they were being fair to me there.
1:32
I mean, I would be four or five, maybe.
1:35
Well, I'm.
1:36
Thank you.
1:37
I'm tech two.
1:38
Who's the they there?
1:39
It's the me.
1:40
I'm telling you that you're the second most beloved, and if you consider that a promotion,
1:45
then you're welcome.
1:46
Thank you.
1:47
Potentially a demotion, but it's, but Oshar has already been on the show who, and this
1:51
show, and I called him, Australia's most beloved, fair enough is an host.
1:54
Well, he's a lot older than me, isn't he?
1:56
Well, let's not malign the man.
1:58
I just mean I got plenty of years together.
2:00
Just a lot of years, but he, he, he hosts Australian Idol, and also the Bachelor, and
2:06
also all that must sing up.
2:08
Yes.
2:09
And also all that must sing up shoots of, of the Bachelor.
2:10
Bachelor Red.
2:11
Bachelor in Paradise.
2:12
Right.
2:13
Bachelor goes rogue.
2:14
Yes.
2:15
I think he's sufficiently older than you, that you're going to make up that distance.
2:19
I don't think so.
2:21
Oh, God, it's it's it.
2:23
Yeah.
2:24
Because he can't have more than 10 years on you.
2:26
We all have different paths.
2:27
We do.
2:28
We do have different paths.
2:29
But look, that you're here, and there's the voice, and then there's also a comfy couch
2:32
convo on uncomfortable conversations, which is also a highlight of your career.
2:37
Might want to look elsewhere than this IKEA Scandinavian style furniture you got for
2:42
the comfy couch conversations.
2:44
And we think that I need more, I'm more comfortable couch.
2:46
It is to be a significantly more comfortable couch.
2:48
And I'm great as what you're suggesting.
2:50
Today's topic of conversation on our comfy couch convo will not actually be the comfortable
2:54
ness of the IKEA couch on which we're sitting, but social media, because I did, so I mentioned
3:00
in the last episode that I deleted Twitter off my phone, and Facebook off my phone.
3:05
I did.
3:06
And then I actually have to admit that I had to, I keep reading and then taking them off
3:11
because it's hard to tweet out, like I still need to tweet out, like this episode, for
3:15
example, many people will have found it because they saw me tweet about it.
3:19
Like, how am I going to do that?
3:21
See, yes.
3:22
Why do you feel that need deep down to, like, share your life like anybody gives me?
3:26
Because I want people to lose my show.
3:28
I want people to lose my show.
3:29
But are you that fabulous that you have to tweet out all the time that you think people
3:33
need to listen to?
3:34
This is why Twitter does so well because we live in a narcissistic world, and everybody
3:38
thinks they're incredibly interesting and grandiose, and people should be listening
3:42
to all their ideas all the time.
3:43
Yeah, but in my case, I am.
3:46
You're more than most, I would say, you are more than most.
3:50
Here's what I need, Darren.
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I want someone to, and I'll get to what we're talking about in a second, but this is
3:54
going to be a little secluded.
3:56
What I need is for someone to invent an app that makes the output from my brain and
4:01
into the social media platforms, as seamless as the social media platforms own apps are,
4:07
so that I can go, oh, you know what, I should tweet.
4:09
I should tweet wire cats so ordinary.
4:14
They should be more like dogs, smiley face.
4:17
And then I should just be able to tweet that out, easily, without having to have the
4:22
Twitter app on my phone.
4:23
Bill Gates is your man for that.
4:24
He'd probably want to see a little microchips in with the vaccines.
4:28
That one of the side effects for that, or not side effects for the pluses of that, it's
4:33
going to be you can tweet out things just in a moment's notice by thinking about it.
4:37
I think Elon's working on it.
4:38
Is he?
4:39
He's got a race to the finish.
4:42
So since we, since I got rid of Twitter and then got Twitter back and then got rid of
4:46
Twitter again, what you've been encouraging me to do is spend more time on the clubhouse.
4:52
Yeah, it's the future, is it?
4:55
Well, it is.
4:56
It is going to take off for a while, essentially, it's like what we're doing here, but in
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very real time for those who don't know, it's a live podcast where you can interact with
5:04
the crowd, you can choose to give them an open mic or not depending on if they're making
5:08
much sense.
5:09
However, I'm seeing a real trend at the moment, it's still in beta phase, so I believe
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they've got something like 7 million people and they're about to open up to the entire
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world.
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And it was by invitation only.
5:19
By invitation only.
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I mean, they're handing those things to us, really.
5:22
Yeah, I've got one.
5:23
Yeah, no, I've got one.
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I got one quite early on, so clearly the standards were very low.
5:27
They were very low.
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But I'm told behind the scenes that Instagram's working on its own version of clubhouse.
5:32
So the topic of conversation today is, what do we make of the conversations on social
5:36
media?
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Is there any way for them to actually enhance the national intellectual conversation?
5:41
Or are they always going to invariably get toxic?
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And is clubhouse a special version of social media weirdness?
5:51
Because you've encountered also its more woke side.
5:55
It's woke heaven there.
5:57
It's absolute woke heaven.
5:59
But inevitably woke culture just ends up eating itself up and cancelling each other because
6:04
you can never be too woke.
6:07
You can be as far left feminist as you could possibly imagine.
6:11
And there'll be somebody else beating you on that particular day because you've used
6:14
an adjective or a verb or God forbid a noun that is no band on the band list and you didn't
6:19
get the memo overnight.
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And that's it.
6:22
You're canceled night.
6:23
You're done.
6:24
Your rooms finished.
6:25
Your followers are gone.
6:26
But you still think clubhouse is going to work or is not going to work because it's
6:29
going to keep cancelling itself.
6:30
I think at the moment it's very North American centric.
6:35
I think hopefully the Europeans, the South Americans and the Pacific and Asian folk when
6:44
they come on won't be as bananas as the Americans.
6:48
It seems to be a weird cultural shift in America where everybody's petrified of
6:54
racist against North Americans.
6:56
Yeah.
6:57
I am racist against North Americans.
6:58
No, I'm not at all.
7:00
And by the way, they should be the kind of rules that people live and die by during these
7:05
open and honest conversations with one another.
7:09
Do I believe that my racist superior to another race?
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Absolutely not.
7:13
Then I'm not a racist and I want to indulge any conversation in which you say I am.
7:17
Do I believe that do I have fear of phobia of any kind of LBTQ or any in the world?
7:24
And if you want to put on that, no, I don't.
7:26
I think they should be able to live a free life.
7:28
I mean, you're obviously homophobic because you've got the acronym as well.
7:31
Yeah.
7:32
And by the way, there would be a massive, there would be people that would have that.
7:35
Right now someone's just turned off because you didn't say LGB.
7:38
Yeah.
7:39
I even heard that I missed the G.
7:40
I missed the G instead of Sean.
7:41
He always, instead of just talking about like the gay community or something, which as
7:44
I would colloquially, he will say the LBTQI plus community.
7:51
And when we're in the kitchen cooking dinner and there's no one else around, I'm like,
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stop it.
7:55
You don't have to do that in here.
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This is a safe space.
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I'm for all the pluses.
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I'm just creating a safe space for everybody.
8:01
Shut the fuck up.
8:03
Just call it the gay community.
8:04
What about the eye?
8:05
I don't even know what the eye stands for.
8:07
What is the eye?
8:08
We're in my kitchen.
8:09
What is the eye?
8:10
Intersex.
8:11
Intersex, right?
8:12
Come on, I didn't know that either.
8:13
But hey, you know, doesn't make me fearful or have a phobia of them and me want them
8:19
to succeed less in life.
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Go forth.
8:22
So I won't engage in any conversations in which I'm called discriminatory against those.
8:27
And I think you have to look at people, people at a core, right?
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Does this guy, at his core, does this guy believe that women should get paid less than men
8:39
and men are a superior race and should be listened to more?
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No, of course he doesn't.
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So if there's any kind of miscommunication in what he has said, it's just that.
8:46
It's a miscommunication.
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And we don't do that.
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The common sense is just throwing out.
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It's like these people are conversational terrorists that are just throwing sand on every
8:56
little thing you say so they don't actually have to listen to the point you're trying
9:01
to make because it shuts down conversation and it's the perfect place for unreasonable,
9:07
uneducated people to hide behind trigger alerts and warnings because they can just shut
9:11
down any sensible conversation.
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So the response to that could be, well, it's all well and good to say that you don't want
9:24
women to earn less than men and that you're not prejudiced against women.
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But simply sitting on your ass and saying that there should be equality has gotten us into
9:33
the situation where we are where there is still where women are still paid less than men
9:37
and they still don't have the same opportunities as men and they still face more violence
9:41
than men.
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So you actually have to do something proactive.
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This is the argument.
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Like if you're not actively with us, then you're against us.
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It's not good enough to be neutral.
9:51
No.
9:52
Well, well, absolutely.
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And if you're in a position to make that happen, if you are somebody running a business,
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make sure that the woman are paid just as much as the men, 100%.
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I can, you know, any opportunity if asked that question, do I believe in equality of
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the sex is 100% I believe that.
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That's my bit.
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That's all I can do until I'm employing people to work for me and they will be paid
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exactly the same, regardless of if they're men or women or aliens from outer space.
10:16
Well, don't pay the aliens from outer space the same.
10:18
Well, I think they should.
10:19
You can get away with unpaying the outer space.
10:20
Actually, you should probably pay them more because if they've managed to get here, they're
10:24
probably better.
10:25
They probably have a massive family to support back in neck tuners.
10:28
Well, they're also probably more efficient.
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I mean, they're probably more efficient, high productivity from aliens if they've been
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able to get to planet earth.
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On the right question, it's interesting and of course you would say this is a straight
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white man.
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That's the other thing I have.
10:41
That's the other thing, isn't it?
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Like I just don't get a place to say anything.
10:44
Absolutely.
10:45
You have no standing.
10:46
No.
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But on that question of you said, do I think that one race is superior to another?
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That's the old version.
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That's like the old definition of racism.
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The new definition of racism is what's probably being rapidly uptightish at the moment,
11:02
the dictionary definition of racism, to be like everything we live in a white supremacist
11:09
culture.
11:10
Therefore, we're all racist in ways big and small, and the first step toward salvation
11:19
is acknowledging your own racism or reading Robin DiAngelo's book.
11:23
That's right.
11:24
So this is the way to clear yourself.
11:25
Yes.
11:26
So Robin DiAngelo wrote white fragility and then there's Ibrahim Kendi who wrote, I can't
11:31
remember the name of the other book, but the two books have basically been on the New
11:34
York Times bestseller list ever since Donald Trump won election for years.
11:41
And this idea that everything, you read DiAngelo's book, did you?
11:45
I did.
11:46
Because I remember you texting me saying, I'm reading this book called White Fragility
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and boy am I a fragile.
11:51
Yeah.
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Apparently.
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And incredibly racist.
11:54
Yeah.
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Because I don't know I'm racist.
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And the very fact that I'm saying I'm not racist makes me the most racist person.
12:00
Didn't Sharon Osborne just have this?
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Did you see that in the...
12:03
I missed that.
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I can't believe I'm better.
12:05
I'm more up on the pop culture than you are.
12:07
You're normally...
12:08
Yeah.
12:09
Especially since you're allegedly off Twitter.
12:10
Where do you get your news, Josh?
12:12
From my partner.
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And that's something he's obviously seen on the old Instagram.
12:18
Yeah.
12:19
So that'll pull it your brain.
12:20
And he mentioned last night that Sharon Osborne's been cancelled because she went
12:24
it well.
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She was trying to defend Pierre's Morgan and she was on TV and then people started
12:30
peppering her with lots and lots of questions about race and instead of saying yes I'm racist
12:34
we're all a bit racist.
12:36
Yeah.
12:37
Sorry if I ever offended anybody.
12:39
She was like I'm not racist, I'm not racist, which is the cardinal sentence and now she
12:42
been cancelled.
12:43
Yeah.
12:44
What I remember people years ago when I said everybody's a little bit racist being up
12:47
and arms about that.
12:48
So you can't really win either way.
12:50
No.
12:51
Because that was the grab that would use as well.
12:53
Yeah.
12:54
Oh, Sharon Osborne says everyone's racist.
12:55
Yeah, that's true.
12:56
But also it's weird because the deangeloas and the candies of the world want, I mean they
13:01
have two seemingly contradictory positions which is everyone's racist, everything's racist.
13:08
We live in a society and a culture that is infused with racism.
13:13
So don't object to your racism like understand it.
13:17
But then on the other hand they also say racism is the worst thing in the universe.
13:22
Yeah.
13:23
So you bickward us and also really, really bad.
13:26
Like, that's in the second book, you're going to come back for the second book to find
13:30
out.
13:31
Like I would think that either racism is just part of the human condition.
13:36
And we have to sort of live with it and try to overcome it, understand our own biases,
13:40
but not dwell on race terribly much and try to just treat each other as individuals,
13:44
not think about, not view our whole world view through the prism of race.
13:50
In which case, racism can be absolutely terrible or, and maybe I've just said the wrong way
13:57
around, but I think you understand what I mean.
13:59
Like either we're all racist and that's okay or racism is the worst thing in the world
14:05
and we have to make sure that racists are excluded from society.
14:09
Yeah, and I think it's probably going to be the format to be honest because we are all
14:14
racist.
14:15
We've seen it.
14:16
I mean, I mean, Arab people are racist, black people are racist, tribes are racist, Asian
14:24
people are racist.
14:25
There's a hierarchy within it like everybody is a little bit racist to another race.
14:29
They think they are a superior and let's face it, most people are more racist than we
14:33
are.
14:34
But yeah.
14:35
Yeah.
14:36
Then me and you?
14:37
Yes.
14:38
And also then people in Western countries.
14:39
I think so.
14:40
Yeah.
14:41
100%.
14:42
Certainly the menu.
14:43
I certainly think that me, I mean, you're sounding a bit racist, but I'm not at all racist
14:50
apart.
14:51
Unless you're using racism in the same sense that we were just talking about, we're like
14:54
everybody.
14:55
Look, do I think I'm superior?
14:57
No.
14:58
Will I make jabs about English people?
14:59
Yeah.
15:00
Of course I will because I'm Scottish.
15:01
Could some of those jabs be considered racist?
15:03
Of course they could.
15:04
But the funny thing is that I'm good fun.
15:05
As you mentioned, like in Asia, there are all these hierarchies of, you know, the Chinese
15:11
looking down on the Japanese, like the Koreans looking down on the Chinese, like they
15:16
will have very, and for them it's not just what you're, what we're talking about, we're
15:21
like, oh, do you make a slightly insensitive remark that, you know, made a generalization
15:25
about somebody?
15:26
It's like, no, they're fucking worse.
15:28
Yeah, yeah.
15:29
They are definitely worse.
15:30
Yeah.
15:31
They don't deserve to clean the dirt off my shoes.
15:33
No.
15:34
So bring it back to clubhouse.
15:35
So clubhouse got to do with all of this.
15:37
Well, there seems to be a growing movement on clubhouse.
15:41
I mean, as far as I can see, the rooms within clubhouse, and again, for anyone that doesn't
15:45
know, it's like walking into a talk back radio show where you can choose a subject you
15:51
want to talk about.
15:52
And any one time there could be eight or nine or 10,000 people in that room talking about
15:55
that.
15:56
So it's good if you, hey, I want to learn about cryptocurrency or NFTs or growing a business
16:01
or tennis or any kind of sport, there's, there's, you always mean to, I had you until
16:06
10.
16:07
Yeah, that's because I do want to know about NFTs and all that.
16:09
Well, that's all I do want to know.
16:10
They're all on there.
16:11
I think Elon Musk had a room on NFTs the other day.
16:15
So but there's also, I mean, the majority of the rooms that I'm getting served in my
16:19
feed are people on clubhouse, bitching and moaning about how terrible clubhouse says.
16:24
Right.
16:25
I was on my way here and I tried to ping you into a room and the title of that room was,
16:28
should men be banned on clubhouse?
16:30
I was, I thought that was in good fun.
16:32
So I went in there and it seems that it was a serious conversation that looked like
16:36
that ladies were having to ban men from being allowed to be on clubhouse because they're,
16:41
they're, they're toxic and they talk over the top of people and they don't allow women
16:46
to speak.
16:47
Now, men were allowed to be in this room and on stage, but they weren't allowed to speak.
16:52
They weren't allowed to finish sentences and they weren't allowed to even agree.
16:56
It seems with the females.
16:57
There was a guy on there who came on to say, I agree with everything you're saying.
17:00
And I think that men don't have a place here and that, no, shut it.
17:03
Now, I want to just stop you there.
17:06
I want to just stop you there because you started the conversation by saying one of,
17:10
because the, the founder, because he said, even though the founder of clubhouse is a man
17:16
and even though your iPhone, your own right now is a man, I do believe that we should be
17:19
but, and like, no, I'm sorry, actually, he was the co-founder, a woman co-founded it with
17:24
him and then they all jumped on him for that.
17:26
And this guy was agreeing with them.
17:28
It was, but he was probably man's planning.
17:31
Well, well, now if you bet, if you bet, oh, God, all right, don't get me started.
17:36
Yeah, don't, I'm not an ally, absolutely not an ally.
17:39
Well, it depends on your definition of ally and again, I go by the old school definition
17:43
of an ally, but I think that's changed drastically.
17:45
Maybe you're right.
17:46
Maybe I do need to reclaim these terms because it's one part of me just, like I was interviewing
17:50
John McWater for, in an online thing, actually, people haven't seen that you should look
17:56
it up.
17:57
It's great.
17:58
It was through Quillette, the online publication and it was probably October of last year and
18:03
you can find it online.
18:05
If you Google my name and John McWater, anyway, part of what John, part of what I was sort
18:09
of suggesting to John, who's a brilliant black American intellectual, who deviates from
18:14
the convention, are you pouring yourself wine?
18:16
Well, a little sharnate.
18:17
What is this?
18:18
He's pulled out a metal, a goblet, a goblet and he's got, he's got some sharnate.
18:25
I'm a wine critic now, so this is all, I'm actually, yeah, I'm a wine critic for the
18:32
Sunday telegram.
18:33
Wine critic.
18:34
A wine writer, you might say sharnate.
18:35
Wine writer?
18:36
I'm actually doing two things at once.
18:37
I'm doing your podcast, but I'm all sharnate.
18:38
And you're reviewing a sharnate.
18:39
I'm reviewing a sharnate.
18:40
I'm reviewing a sharnate from business.
18:41
It's actually rather nice.
18:42
Buttery.
18:43
Right.
18:44
Texture.
18:45
Lovely.
18:46
Okay.
18:47
Continue.
18:48
So you can just claim that anything you're doing is work when you've, oh God, talk about
18:52
pretentious.
18:53
Sitting back in his comfy couch, having a comfy couch, convo.
18:57
It's definitely not a comfy couch, people.
18:59
He's selling you a life.
19:01
This goblet of wine, of buttery sharnate.
19:03
You don't know anything about wine, why they're paying you to write about wine.
19:07
Because I can use big adjectives that people seem to agree with.
19:10
Right.
19:11
Do they think that the voice audience is going to be young and hip, so they'll read
19:15
you even if you're a clueless about the thing you're writing about?
19:19
I don't know.
19:20
I think the wine industry is one of those industries that's a little like the art industry,
19:24
you know, where bullshit.
19:25
It's just full of pomposity and people like pretending they know what they're talking
19:29
about.
19:30
Did you hear about the work of art that just got sold for tens of millions of dollars?
19:33
And all it is is a line of code.
19:35
Coke or code?
19:36
Code, unfortunately.
19:37
Okay.
19:38
Right.
19:39
C-O-D-E.
19:40
No.
19:41
No, I didn't.
19:42
Is this an NFT?
19:43
Yeah.
19:44
Yeah.
19:45
Right.
19:46
I did hear about that.
19:47
Yeah.
19:48
And basically a bit coiny thing.
19:50
Yeah.
19:51
Well, Elon Musk was on club host as we were talking about before the other day doing a room
19:55
on he was releasing an NFT that was a song about NFTs and he was going to sell that.
20:01
But he's since.
20:02
None of it makes sense to me.
20:03
I don't understand.
20:04
Why are you paying tens of millions of dollars for a line of code for an NFT?
20:07
I don't know what it means.
20:08
Anyway, well, this is going to be the future.
20:11
This will be a conversation.
20:12
Where was I going?
20:13
Well, I was just.
20:14
What is?
20:15
John McWater and I was saying, should we just, I'm glad to see you all, this is what happens
20:20
when you have kids.
20:21
Charter name brain.
20:22
This is what happens when you have kids.
20:23
Your Charter name brain is sharper than my child brain, than my twin toddler brain.
20:27
You got baby brain?
20:29
Totally.
20:30
Really?
20:31
Yeah.
20:32
It's a real thing.
20:33
And also just work brain.
20:34
Yeah.
20:35
Too much work.
20:36
Anyway, enough about me.
20:37
So I was saying to John.
20:38
Another man stealing something from a female.
20:39
Yeah.
20:40
No, you're going to take our baby brain away from us.
20:42
And just listening to the complaints of two privileged white men who don't understand
20:50
what it's like to have a vagina.
20:52
By the way, if you got rid of men off clubhouse, would you have to get rid of trans men?
20:57
That was going to be my question, but then I had to walk into this room.
21:00
So that should be your first question.
21:02
I'm sure they'd love that.
21:04
Just dropping this bomb and then I'm off to chat to Josh.
21:06
Will there be a general's or test or will it just self identification?
21:10
I think it must be self identification.
21:12
But there was a lot of, even that guy who was agreeing with everybody, then he was getting
21:16
attacked not only for claiming that the founder was a man, but he was getting attacked for
21:21
not sounding genuine enough in his support.
21:24
I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but you're saying it in a sarcastic tone.
21:28
I don't like the way you're supporting us.
21:31
So it's not even enough to be an ally and fall in line and say everything they're telling
21:35
you to say.
21:36
If you don't say it in a nice tone, that's also.
21:39
Because I want you to create an alter ego who speaks like that on clubhouse.
21:43
You would become like the toast of clubhouse and just have her host a whole bunch of club
21:48
houses.
21:49
And in that voice and pontificate about how terrible men are, well, I come back to Karamek
21:56
Mulling's show.
21:57
Okay.
21:58
Here we go.
21:59
So allyship.
22:00
Yes.
22:01
And then John McQuater allyship.
22:02
The reason I don't like that word and this will get us to John McQuater is because it
22:07
doesn't actually mean having the back of the people who you're trying to support.
22:13
What it means is subscribing and genuinely reflecting towards their to their every idea
22:17
about everything and essentially groveling and humiliating yourself before everything that
22:21
they say.
22:23
So if they correct you for having miss accidentally misused a word, then instead of saying,
22:27
oh, yeah, but you know what I mean, like that's not allyship.
22:30
Allyship is essentially taking on board our religious doctrine that we've handed down
22:35
to you and making sure that you comply with it.
22:37
And if you deviate from it in any way, then having a sort of confessional sin thing where
22:43
you have to say, I'm truly sorry, I'm taking this as a learning experience.
22:47
It's almost like an old Soviet show trial or something to be an ally these days, where
22:51
you know, you're being, you have to be like, I'm sorry, I preach my, I pledge my loyalty
22:56
to the party into, anyway, so that's why I don't like about the word allyship.
23:00
So when I was talking to John McQuater about words like allyship and racism, I was saying,
23:04
maybe we just give up on them, maybe just let them have them, and maybe allow racism
23:09
to mean whatever they want it to mean, and allow allyship to mean whatever they want
23:13
it to mean, and just start using new words and just use bigotry or like racial animus
23:21
or prejudice or something to mean what we actually don't like.
23:24
And then when they say you're racist, just be like, okay, well, that's fine.
23:29
That thing that you're talking about is a thing that is essentially meaningless.
23:32
You're just putting a label on something that I don't really regard as being about it
23:35
or jump into the avenue.
23:36
Yeah, and then we're all just, everyone's a little bit racist, and none of us are allies.
23:43
So that's fine.
23:44
Now let's talk about where the rubber actually meets the road and talk about how we can
23:46
make lives better for people who have historically been, like, lives better, obviously.
23:51
Well, all lives better.
23:52
No, Josh.
23:53
Not all lives.
23:54
Not all lives.
23:55
Oops.
23:56
Canceled.
23:57
Canceled.
23:58
Yeah.
23:59
And I don't want to look, I'm not really selling clubhouse hard.
24:02
It's not a great, it's not a great sales pitch.
24:04
You might have guessed I don't have shares in the company, but it is a phenomenal platform
24:09
to go on and discuss some some some great ideas with forward thinkers within that industry.
24:17
There is, however, a growing number of this woke crew coming in there trying to just
24:21
kind of put a dampened rod for everyone.
24:23
I'm not really sure why you'd want to hear it.
24:26
I mean, I kind of get it, but I also think if I wanted to find out about NFTs, there
24:31
are tons of podcasts that are well produced with smart people who are just talking about
24:35
them where they're not, no one's interjecting and being like, but also it's the patriarchy.
24:41
Like I could just, you know, why do I need a clubhouse?
24:43
Well, you can be the moderator though.
24:45
So you, you can actually choose, yeah, but I'm an idiot, so I wouldn't know anything.
24:49
I can't.
24:50
Okay, but on a lot of subjects, you are semi-knowledgeable.
24:53
So comfortable couches.
24:55
Yeah, you're good at, you're good at interviewing people.
24:57
So you could actually start a room as a moderate.
24:59
Water NFTs.
25:00
I want people to come on and explain it to me and ask my questions and invite people
25:04
up one by one and then boot them off right away, because I think a lot of the problems
25:07
with clubhouses, people invite everybody that comes into the room up on stage, meaning
25:11
that they've got a live mic and you have to trust them to hit the mute button, which
25:15
a lot of people don't.
25:17
And then you can have a hundred people just kind of shouting over each other.
25:20
But if you can have one-on-one conversation.
25:21
So when people like Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Joe Rogan was on it recently and thought
25:27
it was amazing and probably the future of his industry and where it was going, but they
25:31
have very limited amount of people on stage that they're interacting with.
25:34
Right.
25:35
So you can control it and then thousands and thousands of people listening in real time.
25:39
And if any one of those people can be, and it's not recorded, it's not recorded.
25:43
So this is like-
25:44
Although anyone could be recording, anyone could have it if it's Joe Rogan, someone's
25:47
recorded.
25:48
Somebody's probably worked out a way to do that.
25:51
Well, technology.
25:52
What do you mean worked out a way?
25:54
You just hold your phone up to an old-fashioned cassette record.
25:57
I didn't even know how to work Google Maps to get it for God's sake.
26:00
That's true.
26:01
I don't know.
26:02
Before we wrap here, I'll just reveal to people the guilty secret about Darren Moan's
26:05
life is, which is that you're a bit of an old school.
26:07
You're sort of, I think, if you're as a Hollywood starlet from the 1940s, a bit sunset
26:13
boulevard.
26:14
Like, you only call me and then I text, and I've got a busy life now.
26:18
I'm not 10 years ago, I was Darren Moan living in New York City, Naria Care in the
26:24
world.
26:26
No obligations, no long-term relationship, no children, enough money to play, and I could
26:33
call people all day long.
26:34
Yeah.
26:35
Can't do it anymore.
26:36
Can't be picking up calls from Darren Moan at 312 p.m.
26:39
I'm the Hollywood, I'm the old school Hollywood starlet.
26:41
Yeah, you're the one.
26:42
And you're using words like Naria Care.
26:44
No.
26:45
You're on the, you're sitting by your pool in, in sunny Sydney, and you can just die, you
26:51
just tap on a way, dialing people, and I'm texting you, going, send me a text, and then
26:56
you don't respond for three days, and then you call me, and then I, and then I go, send
26:59
me an email.
27:00
I don't even know what your email address is, because you can't write emails.
27:04
You just have to call me, and then we're to get here to the studio.
27:08
You call me while I'm here, just before the recording, and you said, where is it?
27:12
And I said, we'll just click on the link in the calendar invitation that I sent you,
27:16
and it'll open in Google Maps, and you're like, if, in comparison to Central Station,
27:21
tell me where to walk.
27:22
I'm like, what are you an 82 year old woman?
27:24
But the moment you did, right?
27:25
Or man could be a man.
27:27
Yeah, exactly.
27:28
No, no.
27:29
I'm glad you didn't say female, because that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's
27:32
right.
27:33
Someone got angry at you for calling women female.
27:34
Yeah.
27:35
Apparently that's what you call a, a, a dog at the vet.
27:37
I was like, isn't that a bitch?
27:38
So you can imagine her that.
27:39
Oh, yeah, that would have helped.
27:41
Yeah.
27:42
Female is on the band wordless.
27:44
Right.
27:45
I know.
27:46
They thought it was a bit biological and crude.
27:47
Yes.
27:48
And sex, of course, can not be biologically judged anymore.
27:51
I would have said, I would have said, I won't call you females.
27:54
I'll call you a little ladies.
27:56
I'll call you a gaggle of bronze.
27:59
Yeah.
28:00
Is, is that why, have you been banned from clubhouse already?
28:02
Is that why I'm not seeing you on there?
28:04
So yeah, in, in, in, in wrapping it all up, clubhouse is a phenomenal place you should
28:09
all go there.
28:10
And are you still going to use social?
28:11
Do you use other social platforms?
28:12
I, look, I'm a bit like you, I mean, I, I, I can see where you're coming from with the
28:16
whole Twitter thing.
28:17
It's so toxic on there.
28:18
I mean, it just is the worst of humanity.
28:21
And I think actually genuinely, lovely people, it tends to bring out the worst of as well.
28:26
Oh, yeah.
28:27
It's not that the cohort of people on Twitter are any worse than in the rest of us.
28:29
They're generally like smarter and more plugged in, I think, because they're generally
28:34
journalists and political insiders and so on.
28:37
But it rewards the, it rewards caricaturing other people's positions and slam dunking
28:43
people.
28:44
Yeah.
28:45
And it's dangerous too.
28:46
I mean, you know, I don't know.
28:47
No, that you've deleted your, your Twitter account allegedly.
28:50
I mean, can the people still go back?
28:52
No, I, I never said I didn't delete my account.
28:53
The year is 10 years and I just deleted the app off my phone, right?
28:57
It was harder to use.
28:58
Got it.
28:59
So it's still there?
29:00
Yeah.
29:01
Oh, it's all still there.
29:02
Yeah.
29:03
Or something you said 10 years ago, totally, which is no longer it probably will be.
29:08
No, I mean, like a friend of mine uses Twitter and apparently there's a feature where it
29:15
can auto-delete after two weeks or something.
29:18
That's a good one.
29:19
Yeah.
29:20
That's a good one.
29:21
I mean, especially in this ever-changing landscape.
29:22
Totally.
29:23
You probably need it after a day though.
29:24
Yeah.
29:25
Not because words are changing by the day of what is acceptable.
29:27
No, that's right.
29:28
I mean, last week I was putting on my big blackface cabaret and now you're not allowed
29:33
to do that anymore.
29:34
So I've been a takedown in the ads for that.
29:36
What was the lady?
29:37
There was a woman.
29:38
Actually, if she worked for the Washington Post as a graphic designer, Sue Schaefer.
29:43
Okay.
29:44
Do you remember that story?
29:45
No.
29:46
So you remembered the meaghan Kelly story when she talked about wearing blackface.
29:50
So those are self-meaghan.
29:51
When Megan got fired from NBC for saying essentially like what exactly is the problem with
29:57
blackface?
29:58
Like if you're doing it as she was sort of saying she wasn't saying like what's the problem
30:02
with mommy, type blackface.
30:04
But I think she was on the air on NBC and she was saying like if you're dressing up as
30:09
Michael Jackson or Tina Turner or something like that and you put and you put yourself
30:14
in blackface, like is that the same level of bad as kind of an old racist show?
30:20
I think that's why she was fired, right?
30:22
She was fired for that and then a lady who was a graphic designer at the Washington Post
30:26
Sue Schaefer was her name.
30:28
She actually that week in an ironic way, quite a tone deaf ironic way to be honest, went
30:34
to a party in blackface to mock Megan Kelly for not seeing how wrong blackface was.
30:41
Yes.
30:42
And I think was it the New York Post picked it up, ran the story and then the Washington
30:46
Post fired.
30:47
She got fired.
30:48
She got fired for wearing blackface as a joke saying I'm actually Megan Kelly in blackface.
30:55
Yes.
30:56
Point out how ridiculous wearing blackface is and how she was for not getting that.
31:02
Well the good thing is that we all understand context.
31:04
So Darren it's delighted to talk to you.
31:08
It's always true.
31:09
So sitting on the comfy couch for this comfy couch installment of non uncomfortable conversations
31:16
next week a genuine, uncomfortable conversation.
31:20
Have a lovely week.
31:21
Thank you very much.
31:22
And busy with state short nights.
31:23
Shut this is not an ass unless unless I'm getting paid cash.