Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / An Interview With Josh

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An Interview With Josh · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to 2025 and to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Something
• 0:08
  a little different for the New Year's week. Instead of compiling long boring things that
• 0:14
  you've already heard before as best of as towards the end of the year, we decided to continue
• 0:19
  regular programming with the exception perhaps of this episode, which is just me reframing
• 0:27
  and rethinking the way that I currently think about the legacy media, about our ability to have
• 0:33
  uncomfortable conversations, about cultural courage, political courage, about what algorithms are
• 0:39
  doing to us, and about how to stay sane in this hectic world of ours. A few months ago, I was
• 0:44
  invited as a guest on a colleague's podcast. He's an amazing guy, Bradley Drybra. He was,
• 0:51
  he has cystic fibrosis and was told, but his parents were basically told that they should
• 0:55
  write him off and that it would be better if he had a terminal illness so that he could just die
• 0:58
  and be done with it. And he has an amazing story. It became an ultra marathon runner. He's a
• 1:04
  podcast. He's a motivational speaker. So he invited me to come on his show. It was about a week or two
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  before the US election. And I was listening back to it recently and I thought, you know what,
• 1:13
  this is a pretty good, about as good a summation of my thoughts about where we all are as I have given.
• 1:21
  So why not offer it to you in a spirit of kind of recalibrating and resetting for the new year.
• 1:27
  It's an amazing time for me and I invite you to consider all the possibilities of 2025 as well
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  as all of the anxieties. A year ago, I was completely an utterly traumatized and bruised and
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  humiliated by my falling out with the Australian public broadcaster and wasn't sure whether or not
• 1:49
  this hobby, this podcast could become a going concern. And thanks to you, it is. I make more now
• 1:57
  from this than I did at having a full time three hour a day talk back news radio show. And I get to
• 2:05
  enjoy my life more and feel like I'm contributing more and I'm more fearless in the things I can say.
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  And I can't be fired. And that is the great, that is really the greatest thing that has ever
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  happened to me, the ability to wrestle with ideas intellectually, playfully, freely and pursue my
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  curiosity in a way that I hope is useful to you and stimulates you without having to conform to
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  anyone else's ideas of propriety. So I want to say thank you. I always feel weird saying these
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  sorts of things like it, it always feels humble, braggie to say, I'm so grateful to get what I
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  do, what I love every single day and to get up and just, you know, you permit me to have the
• 2:48
  greatest job in the world. But if you, you know, if new years is not the time to pinch yourself
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  and be grateful for the way things are going, when is? You know, think of the number of people in
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  this world who are worse off than you. Think of the fact that your life, if you're lucky enough
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  to be living a life as blessed as mine is untouched by severe illness or hardship, untouched by
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  extreme poverty. You know, we are living the dream as far as most people in most places in most
• 3:27
  eras would have had it. You know, would they want to swap with us? If you were throwing a
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  dart at a dart board on which every single life lived by every single human in every single place,
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  let alone expanding that to all sentient creatures. So you might find yourself
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  being born as a factory farmed chicken or something. But even just limiting it to homo sapiens,
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  you know, someone gave you a dart and said, okay, you can give up your life and throw the dart at
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  the dart board. You know, even if you limited it to all the people who are currently alive on this
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  planet, you wouldn't take that bet. Let alone all the people who've ever lived. Let alone all the
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  sentient creatures who've ever lived. We are a fraction of a percentage point of a fraction of a
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  percentage point of the luckiest of the lucky. And this is a moment to acknowledge that and
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  be grateful for to the people who make that possible. And you are, you know, even if you're not a
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  paid subscriber on substack, forget about all that. Just the fact that you're listening to my voice
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  now and have bothered to be part of this mission, this community, this piece of entertainment,
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  this fluff that may or may not matter in the large scheme of things. The fact that you're,
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  I don't know, on my team is meaningful to me. It makes a difference to my life. It makes a
• 4:37
  difference to my kids' lives. So thank you. It's been a crazy year. I've done three big live tours
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  with people I have so much admiration for, even if I disagree with some of their ideas,
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  Coleman Hughes, Douglas Murray, David Williams. If you told me a year ago that this year,
• 4:56
  we'd be doing episodes live in the same room with fans of mine like Jimmy Carr and Steven Fry and
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  Keith Urban and Emil Sherman, the Academy Award winning producer and deputy prime minister,
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  foreign minister, sitting Senator Tim mentioned David from whom I'm forgetting Peter Garrett,
• 5:17
  David Badeel, Candace Owens, like it is beyond my wildest dreams. And we're going up and
• 5:25
  bigger and better and we have lots more planned for this year. So thank you. If you have some spare
• 5:30
  time, then download the sub-stack app and your might as well subscribe, even if you don't
• 5:34
  subscribe to the paid version of it, because lots and lots more interesting stuff is going to be
• 5:37
  coming down the pike. So you probably don't want to have to do that when you're super busy,
• 5:42
  when work resumes. So if you have a moment to do it now, subscribe to the to the sub-stack,
• 5:46
  uncomfortable conversations dot sub-stack dot com. So yes, this conversation with Bradley took
• 5:53
  place just before the US election. So towards the end, we briefly go into a little bit of sort of
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  out-of-date US politics. So apologies for that, but I didn't cut that because I actually think it's
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  still pretty interesting in the way we're talking about the 24 hour media cycle and how small
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  events can have a big impact. It's kind of, yeah, it's worthwhile nonetheless, even though we
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  didn't know who was going to win the election. Most of all, this is an invitation to you to join
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  me in a moment of gratitude and to, yeah, get a little bit more of an insight into where my
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  head is in case that's constructive to where your head should be at the beginning of 2025
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  in helping you think about how to think clearly, how to be courageous in your conversations,
• 6:37
  and in your convictions, and how to stay sane in this crazy world. Love you. Thank you again,
• 6:43
  we'll be back to more normal programming soon. Enjoy this conversation with the one, the only. Josh
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  steps.
• 6:53
  Mate, I'm so fascinated to talk to you because I have been a listener of your work both on your pod,
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  but an avid listener of you speaking on any topic and finding it so intellectual and so
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  outside of my depth that it felt only natural. It sounds ominous when you say that you
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  listen in on me, not only in my pod, but also in my private life. In the private life,
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  trailing in behind me, tapping my phone. Exactly. You're outside my front door with a little glass
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  next to your ear, just listening in on my private conversations. If I did, would I be well-researched
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  enough for a podcast? That is the kind of commitment I like to see. Exactly, exactly. But I'm so
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  fascinated by what you do, and the first time I ever come across you, which I like to recall with
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  any guests, because I think it's interesting to start with a reference point, is I'm an
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  avid listener of Modern Wisdom, who isn't in 2024, and Chris has done a great job with his pod.
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  And I see this title for the latest episode that comes out, has gay pride gone too far. And I'm
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  like, wow, that feels really taboo to talk about. I wonder what this person has to say. And then
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  I'm fascinated by the fact that someone who is Australian, that I haven't heard of up until
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  this point, is on this podcast discussing a topic that I think fairly relates to your life
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  experience. You're married gay men with children who would be more qualified to have a take,
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  that is a little bit controversial, or taboo compared to what most would say in modern society.
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  Right. Did it feel uncomfortable to bring that up, and to potentially write that article at the
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  time? No, no, I didn't. I mean, I knew that I'd get shit for it, because I'd already got shit
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  for it. And it had been one of the contributing factors to my departure from the public broadcast,
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  and not that I was punished for it in any way, but they wouldn't allow a particular article to run.
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  And that was a red flag for me about my ability really to work under that particular
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  management structure. This is not a knock on like the public broadcaster in general, because I think
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  as I think historically, it's actually been really good at fostering a diversity of ideas.
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  And I think in the future, it will be again. But in this particular climate that we've sort of
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  seen, I guess, between the beginning of this decade, really just in the past five years, there's
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  been a confusing sort of social justice reckoning that has been quite dogmatic about enforcing the
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  particular ways that you're supposed to think about minority rights. There's a right way to think
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  about racism, and there's a right way to think about sexism, and there's a right way to think
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  about gay rights. And it's very difficult for people. It's impossible, essentially, for people
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  outside of those communities to critique the kind of narratives of there being structural
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  oppression that we have to fight against. And if you're not anti-racist, if you're not really
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  trying to turn the dial up on the way that we notice race and emphasize sexual difference and
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  express pride in our sexuality and kind of hook ourselves to the wagon train of like where the
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  the future is going. If you're not on the right side of history, if you're not an ally,
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  in exactly the way that the kind of LGBTQIA plus organizations want you to be an ally,
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  if you're not an ally in exactly the way that this specific kind of university educated,
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  mostly white academic vision of oppressors versus victim when it comes to either indigenous
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  issues or migration or anything like that, then it's almost impossible if you're not part of
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  the minority community to critique that without being perceived as a right wing fascist blowhard.
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  Right. If you're inside the community, it's at least you have some standing to be heard
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  and the only communities in which I, the only minority communities in which I have standing
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  to be heard in which people can't say, well, you're just mansplaining to us, is the gay community
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  and to some extent the Jewish community because my grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
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  The Jewish community now is not a, there's not perceived by anybody as being a disadvantaged
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  community, despite 5,000 years of oppression because of all of the horrible stuff that
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  Israel's doing. Right. So that basically it's like open season essentially on Jews not having
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  standing as a, as a minority that's worthy of protection from discrimination. But on the gay
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  issue, yeah, I do think that there, look, all I was doing was noticing that there was a community
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  within a community of people who just feel like maybe the way to find greater self expression and
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  to flourish more is to turn the volume down on difference and to turn the volume down on identity
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  and to turn the volume down on shoving in everybody else's faces how much they have to be on board.
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  Like, I mean, this was at a time when just to give people background. I was, I had a radio show
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  on ABC, the public broadcaster in Sydney, which was fabulous. And I was working with fabulous
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  people and I had a fabulous team and I felt very supported. And it was, and Sydney was hosting
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  what's called world pride, which is like they have, I mean, I hadn't heard of it until Sydney
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  hosted it, but all of a sudden the Sydney was awarded world pride. Everyone had to pretend that
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  it was this thing that everyone had always celebrated, you know, and known about it. It's like,
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  oh my god, we finally got world pride. I was like, what the fuck's world pride? You don't know what,
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  well, you home a phone for not knowing that every two years, one city is selected to have the big
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  gay pride thing. Okay, great. So Sydney already has one of the biggest gay and lesbian festivals in
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  the world in the form of the gay and lesbian party. And gay pride was was on was scheduled to be
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  at the same time as this thing. And the public broadcaster of the ABC was the official broadcaster
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  partner of world pride. And I wrote a piece, which the Sydney Morning Herald, which is the big
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  broadsheet in Australia, wanted to publish, which was basically just saying, will there ever come a
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  time at which aggressively asserting our pride in this particular aspect of our identity is actually
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  counterproductive to the ability of young people to just sort of scroll around and fuck around a
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  bit and like, you know, play around with their identity and figure out who they are. Because my
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  experience growing up was that I knew that I liked boys and I knew that I liked girls. And yet
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  all I really had to choose from in the 90s was like either your straight, which means you're
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  actually a masculine male or you like have a certain type, a certain way of walking, a certain
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  way of talking, a certain way of dressing, a certain way of voting, a certain way of dancing,
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  a certain way of thinking and it involves high heels and involves, you know, sitting a stride,
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  a giant inflatable penis that goes down Oxford straight once a year. That wasn't me, which left
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  me in a bit of a conundrum, right? And it doesn't strike me as particularly constructive to require
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  that every time a 15-year-old wants to explore the possibility of being intimate with a member
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  of the same sex, you're going to require them to open up this whole pandora's box of identity
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  issues that are going to have to make them question whether or not that means something fundamental
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  about who they are and who their community is. Is that a disservice to people who are listening to me?
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  Yeah. It was for me and the ability to simply say that it was for me and to say that if it was
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  for me, it probably still is for some other people is an enormous taboo. So, you know, they wouldn't
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  let the pub, the article be run because it was, the claim was that this was me a public face of
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  the public broadcaster taking a position on a controversial cultural issue and we don't do that,
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  we don't take positions. Now, at the same time, every single other show, all of them hosted by
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  straight hosts, is celebrating how fabulous Māori values, how fabulous gay pride is, how fabulous
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  world pride is, every second guest is someone representing world pride, every second promo on the
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  network is about tune in for our live coverage of world pride. You're walking to the lobby and
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  there are gigantic rainbow flags flanking the lobby and then the broadcaster is the official broadcaster
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  of world pride. So, of course, you're allowed to have an opinion about a controversial cultural
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  event. It just has to be management's opinion. It has to be management's opinion, right? Now,
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  there has since then been a change of management at the ABC and I think that that is now changing,
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  but at the time in this kind of 2020 to 2023 period, there was just a real sense and it wasn't
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  just a public broadcaster, it was everywhere and I think everybody can kind of feel it that like
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  talking about things like gayness or I don't know, little on trans issues or Indigenous issues
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  or migration or feminism or me too or these were things that if someone raised, you know,
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  had a strident opinion about it at an office party or at the pub or at a barbie,
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  everyone's assholes would pucker up just a little bit and you know, everyone would get
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  uncomfortable and that's why I created uncomfortable conversations because I was like stuff this,
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  I just want to be able to talk about these things without worrying about whether it makes people
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  uncomfortable, not to make the guest uncomfortable, but just because I think that in order to survive
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  the 21st century, humankind is going to have to talk about important things in a way in which
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  we're not constantly self-conscious about treating on egg shells and not triggering trip wires and
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  things. Well, it's so fascinating you say that because I love the slogan of your show,
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  a safe space for dangerous ideas. I think that's absolutely brilliant. I didn't actually know this
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  at first when I started listening to your pod and just threw a further investigation about
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  your Instagram bio, so I really dug deep. I seen that slogan and I thought, that's fucking brilliant,
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  but it's funny you say it because I was, I believe at the start of this year or the end of last year,
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  I can't quite remember the date. I'm a really good mate of mine. One of my best mates is a very
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  talented cinematographer and over the years he's done a lot of work for Marty Grah and for the
• 17:18
  organizations behind it and last year he needed just a second pair of hands on set to move lights
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  and I was in between jobs and he's like, I'll pay you a cashier to come up and help me for two days
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  in Sydney. I'm doing a massive promotion and cinematography piece for Marty Grah's. I was like,
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  yes, sweet, I'll come up. So we got up to Sydney. It was in Belmaine or Leicart, someone like that,
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  somewhere like that in this big warehouse and I walk into the most colorful fucking warehouse I've
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  ever seen in my life, right? And I actually show you a video after there's a great video of me sitting
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  atop of a glittery pink unicorn with an incredibly young, sunny, angelic heaven-like set behind me,
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  testing the lighting. So I feel qualified to have this conversation again today, right?
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  But I still remember being there amongst this incredibly lovely group of people who were all
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  like going out of their way to make sure that we felt really comfortable and I'm pretty sure
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  Aston and maybe one of the other photographers there were the only straight people on set, right?
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  Because as any community, it's full of its own people who are working hard to bring this together
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  and a lot of them are working as volunteers. But I still remember the whole time I was there
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  being very sensitive about anything that I said. Of course. Because we were experiencing some
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  like very visual images of stuff that I'm like, you would not see this every day. Guys on their hands
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  and knees with like dog masks on and chains around their neck, being pulled by like two lesbian
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  women on a fucking Harley Davidson, is not what I had on my fucking bingo card for today. But I'm
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  experiencing it and I don't know how to commentate on it, right? And I found it so uniquely different,
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  but dangerous to make any comment or be surprised by anything. I was worried about offending people.
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  And it makes me think about if we can't have uncomfortable conversations in modern society,
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  how does society, politics, anything that feels particularly taboo actually move forward?
• 19:23
  Hmm. Well, it doesn't. I mean, and don't get me wrong. I love the fact that guys are putting on
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  dog masks and being let around on chains by lesbians. Like, you do you brother, like whoever you
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  are. I mean, you want to go out and have a big party for Maddie graph fabulous. Absolutely. I'm
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  very liberty and I'm very libertarian culturally and people should be allowed to do whatever they
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  want to do. But just don't insist that I be part of your group. Don't insist that because I am
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  married to a man, I must parrot what your team tells me to parrot. And certainly don't try to punish
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  people or get them fired or ex communicated for screwing around with different ideas and like
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  trying to spitball different ideas. I mean, those conversations that we have to have, like you
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  the 21st century is going to be full of big challenges like climate chaos and artificial
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  intelligence and social media is already doing our heads in. And the only way that really democracies
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  work and the only way that enlightenment principles and, you know, traditional kind of tolerance for
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  other people's ideas work is if you have some sort of common ground that you can talk to each
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  other on where like there's a baseline sort of acceptance of like I'm going to be roughly
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  generous towards what you think you're going to be roughly generous towards what I think I'm not
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  going to immediately prejudge you as being from another tribe. You know, we're going to agree that
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  there's like a baseline agreement that we all sort of have standing to be part of the conversation.
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  And so let's try to figure out where we agree rather than constantly jump down each other's
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  throats about where we disagree. And something's happened like in the past five to 10 years
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  where it's just, I mean, I think social media has a lot to do with it where our world views
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  have become extremely strident and blinkered. And half the population thinks that the other half
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  of the population is absolutely nuts on a number of really important issues that we're going to have
• 21:22
  come together on. And so I sort of see my job as I definitely don't see my job as being a both
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  sides are like I don't like the idea that centrism is always the best solution. My point is not that
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  if you have someone who believes that, you know, I don't know, climate change isn't real and then
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  you have someone who believes that climate chaos is going to be a problem that what you should do is
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  just like find the dividing point between the two of them and try to be a nice conciliatory centrist
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  so that everybody should get along. There are true, there are things that are true and there are
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  things that are not true that planet is warming and we know that certain gases trap heat more than
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  others and we're putting those ones into the atmosphere and that's going to have disruptive effects
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  and that's going to be really expensive and really annoying to have to deal with this century.
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  So let's try to make it less expensive and less annoying to deal with, right? Like I don't think
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  that is just a fact and so but there's a lot of things that not just facts. There are a lot of
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  things that are opinions and you know we saw this, I'm not just going to pick on the LGBT issue here
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  but you know if you talk about the voice referendum for example, I was on the air during that
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  and there was a lot of what sounded to a lot of Australians like quite finger waggy judge mental
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  sort of just get on the fucking train, just get on this train, we're doing this thing,
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  it's fucking obvious, this community's been shot on for hundreds of years like stop asking questions
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  about whether or not putting it in the constitution is the right way to do it or you know whether
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  or not this or that or how many people how much it's just going to cost how many people it's going to
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  like shut up and be on the right of history. No one's going to come along if you just tell
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  them to shut up because you know what the right side of history is, you have to persuade them
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  what the right I voted yes but you have to do the work to explain to people why you know and we're
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  not very good we're getting worse and worse at talking to each other in ways that are
• 23:24
  maximally generous to each other and so I kind of just want a feel like if my show can just help
• 23:33
  people to have 10% more empathy towards a position that they previously thought was beyond the
• 23:39
  pale then I've kind of done my job. Well I think if I can compliment you for a moment I'll say
• 23:44
  into the boys before you got here today and for those listening by the boys I'm in the producers
• 23:48
  who are in the studio here but I think your best skill set on your podcast is your ability to
• 23:54
  challenge someone without disrespecting them. Right and I think if your job or thank you that is
• 24:00
  the goal yeah well I think if I was to give you you know you said there what is my job that
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  being the posing question of having these kind of conversations I would say it's to be an example
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  of that to teach other people how they could potentially challenge points ask deeper questions
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  in the effort to deeper understand and allow themselves to educate themselves and progress
• 24:22
  in society you would be a great example of that for people and you know it's so interesting you
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  bring up the point here around I guess people feeling uncomfortable having those conversations and
• 24:35
  then things like the voice referendum I was speaking about it last night with my partner saying
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  it's so interesting that we voted yes but I still was a little bit confused about what I was
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  voting for and what the whole thing was about I made an educated decision as much as I could with
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  the information I had at hand that I don't think voting yes moves us backwards right and someone
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  who has family history friends people in my circle who are indigenous I thought this was
• 25:04
  like the right decision I made yeah but I'm not quite sure what every piece of the puzzle is
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  going to look like moving forward with whatever result happens because it felt so confusing so I think
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  education is a huge part of any kind of progression right and it makes me think about we spoke
• 25:21
  there about the LGBT community and I don't know some of the other acronym QIA plus in America there's
• 25:29
  two spirit because of the First Nations people who apparently had two spirits so it's all very
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  it'll never end it'll never end it's all very label and I think that's part of maybe the problem
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  because it feels like it I don't know for maybe for some people it makes them feel like they have
• 25:45
  a greater sense of identity I can't speak to that as it like as a straight male I can't speak to
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  feeling like my why is it important to have like this whole identity thing right it comes back to
• 25:56
  what you were saying about whether you have a plan for your life or not have a plan for your life
• 25:59
  people some people think it's very important to have a plan for their lives I just don't some people
• 26:04
  think it's very important to feel like their identities a paramount and I just don't the majority
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  of people in the majority of places throughout most of history have been deeply connected to a
• 26:17
  sense of identity and in most places at most times that identity has caused tribal
• 26:25
  disputes warfare it's caused imperialism it's caused complete misunderstandings between cultures
• 26:32
  massive cultural clashes the history of humankind is a history of groups of people who felt
• 26:40
  very important who felt that it was a very important part of their individual identity to be part
• 26:45
  of a community to be part of a tribe to be part of a race it's where racism comes from it's where
• 26:50
  sexism comes from all of those things identity is fundamental and there was a period I guess between
• 26:59
  the middle of the 20th century until the second decade of the 21st century when the progressive
• 27:05
  left became basically on board with the idea that identity is corrosive identity is dangerous
• 27:11
  you don't want to inflame identity you certainly don't want young males to start thinking about
• 27:16
  their identity because they're the most dangerous demographic in the world young males will burn
• 27:20
  the world down if they get a chance so you want to make sure that you're not you know turt just turn
• 27:25
  the cool things down when it comes to being proud of your identity white pride is not a good thing
• 27:32
  and nor is black pride if you're in an environment in which there isn't overt racism if racism is to
• 27:39
  boo then this whole question of identity like Martin Luther King Jr was very clear like judge
• 27:45
  people on the content of their character not on the color of their skin and that was regarded as
• 27:51
  being the goal that was the light on the hill that someday you know in the in the 60s 70s 80s 90s and
• 27:58
  2000s the goal was that someday we would look at at skin color with as much relevance as hair color
• 28:06
  or eye color and we would treat each other with love and compassion as individuals
• 28:11
  that was Obama was probably the last prominent person on the left to articulate that worldview
• 28:18
  with any power because when social media came along and we can go into all the reasons why this
• 28:24
  might be the fairly bonkers ideas that had come out of universities sort of post structuralist ideas
• 28:33
  about how everything is actually powered relations between people right with you sort of old
• 28:37
  fashioned and fuddy-duddy and naive to think about individuals as being the main unit in a society
• 28:43
  actually society and culture are groups of warring factions and they will always use their power to
• 28:49
  try to get on top and what's actually happened over the past half century this narrative said was that
• 28:54
  privileged white straight males have invented this idea that oh everyone's just equal we shouldn't
• 29:01
  regard people on the basis of their identity but that actually just serves their benefits no I'm
• 29:06
  sorry historically they entrenched their power by through their identity they entrenched their power
• 29:14
  by excluding Jews and blacks and women from positions of power and all of a sudden the left in
• 29:21
  the past decade thanks largely to this kind of university educated clique and and the kind of
• 29:28
  derangement that's happened from social media has somehow encouraged everybody the identity is a
• 29:33
  great thing as long as the right people i.e. the historically disadvantaged people are the ones
• 29:39
  who get to think about their identity so let's turn up the volume on identity let's talk much more
• 29:43
  about race let's talk much more about sexuality let's have much more pride in our gainess and so on
• 29:51
  that's all very well as long as you can ensure that the the only people who are proud of their
• 29:58
  identity are the worthy ones the trans woman of color but at some point white men are going to start
• 30:09
  if you impose that hard enough are going to start saying well why are we the only group that
• 30:12
  doesn't get to identify as an identity group it doesn't get to fight on our behalf
• 30:17
  and that's why you've got Andrew Tate I was just going to say right and that's why you've got
• 30:21
  Donald Trump and that contributed to Brexit and it's contributing to the rise of the far right in
• 30:26
  Europe there's only so far that you can push your worthy cause before the people who are disadvantaged
• 30:32
  by your self-righteousness push back and go hey what the fuck about us like are we part of this
• 30:38
  demos that we part of this country as well do we get a vote about how things should go so my
• 30:43
  call is for a sort of a more compassionate understanding of us as individuals who are dealing
• 30:51
  with each other as individuals rather than as icons of like an identity group I mean this first
• 30:56
  the this reminds me of the first time that I noticed this happening I was living and working in
• 31:01
  New York and I was a host on half post live which was this experiment in doing a talk show like
• 31:08
  a 12 hour a day you know television talk channel from out of Manhattan and there was a an Asian
• 31:17
  American activist who was a young woman in her early 20s who was trying to get Stephen Colbert
• 31:22
  pulled from the air I think this interview is still on YouTube if you want to look it up
• 31:27
  because Colbert had satirized a and some racist and he didn't he had done it in some way that she
• 31:34
  felt was demeaning towards Asian Americans but it was a surgical point and I interviewed her
• 31:40
  and halfway through she just starts saying well you know I completely understand that you know as
• 31:45
  a white man you feel entitled to talk down to a woman of color that's what white men have been
• 31:49
  doing for centuries so it doesn't really surprise me and I was like hang on hang on hang on I don't
• 31:54
  the fact that I was born with balls and white skin doesn't mean that we can't have a conversation
• 32:00
  about what satire is and what's appropriate for it to allow on television she's like well I
• 32:04
  understand that you feel entitled to talk over me as white males do and feel entitled to talk over
• 32:09
  women of color and I was like that was the first time I noticed that okay this is not two humans
• 32:17
  having a conversation this is two representatives of identity groups trying to score a win for their
• 32:26
  identity group against each other that's what she's doing she's not talking to me as a person
• 32:32
  she's talking to me as some kind of cardboard cutout of white manhood and she's a cardboard cutout
• 32:41
  of woman of color and we're just blabbing slogans at each other about power and oppression and
• 32:47
  who feels entitled to do what that was like a canary in the coal mine for me and that has become
• 32:55
  very widespread I would say and it's a cause of why so many conversations do feel uncomfortable for
• 33:02
  people because they've been sort of indoctrinated to feel like their identity group
• 33:08
  isn't doesn't give them standing doesn't give them the right to be able to comment on whatever it
• 33:13
  is that the whatever conversation is happening I mean my attitude is we're all in this together
• 33:18
  the world is either going to succeed or fail with all of us or without all of us right I mean
• 33:23
  you know we're all whether we're we're all going to help or we're all you know going to keep
• 33:26
  muddling along so we have to figure out a way to do it together rather than being like well you
• 33:32
  don't get to talk to me about the way that we talk about this subject because you're not from
• 33:36
  the identity group that I'm from no I'm sorry I do if it has relevance to the whole of society
• 33:42
  that's like we're all in this it's so interesting because I I often think would the world be better
• 33:49
  if it is didn't label anything and when I say better would we be more collaborative would we
• 33:54
  have better progression would we exist in a space where people feel less of a victimhood and
• 34:00
  less oppressed because there's not a label placed on their situation where they are you know
• 34:06
  do you think we are going in that direction of labeling everything too tightly that we're actually
• 34:13
  going to create greater division long-term yes but I hope we can avoid it and I mean I'm not
• 34:21
  I want to be clear here there's an obvious critique of this which is it's all very well for the
• 34:26
  white man to talk about how you know everyone's too focused on their identity like you know walk a
• 34:31
  mile in the shoes of a woman of color and then tell me that we're too focused on I don't I get it
• 34:35
  I get it I own my privilege I understand that perspective entirely but I would just say that the
• 34:42
  way that we have traditional I mean the the best things that have ever happened to everybody
• 34:48
  including traditionally disadvantaged communities has been by trying to target need to where it
• 34:56
  is most needed rather than privilege people on the basis of their skin color or sex or gender which
• 35:01
  means that you know I'm or I'm fully in favor I'm a lefty I'm fully in favor of you know aggressively
• 35:07
  trying to give people opportunities when they don't have opportunities but that those policies
• 35:12
  should be targeted on the basis of who actually doesn't have opportunity rather than who belongs to
• 35:16
  a particular category you know like so yes I think there is a big challenge of like labeling
• 35:24
  ourselves I just don't I mean can you imagine a world it sounds almost comical now but imagine
• 35:30
  a world where we just didn't even think about race well imagine a world where skin color was like
• 35:41
  hair color and of course there would be culture there would be ethnicities you know you'd have
• 35:46
  traditions even if you're born in nationalities you know you come from a Sri Lankan family so you
• 35:51
  like a particular food you know you know from a there are still religions so you're still you know
• 35:56
  if you're a Muslim you do certain things and everyone gets along but the the kind of ramping up
• 36:02
  of an antagonistic battle ready sense of like we need to be fighting for our fucking rights
• 36:11
  they comes a point at which that becomes corrosive and actually alienating and not the best way
• 36:18
  to win over the people who you actually do need in a democracy to win over you need people on
• 36:23
  your side I mean but and just one last one on that by definition if you're a minority you need the
• 36:31
  majority to empathize with you right but we've kind of had this weird logic lately where it's like
• 36:39
  when people who claim not on the same minorities because most minorities don't feel this way
• 36:42
  when you actually talk to the Sri Lankan or you talk to the Muslim Southwest Sydney they haven't
• 36:47
  bought this whole ideology this ideology is coming out of universities and it's mostly white people
• 36:51
  who are peddling it right but this particular social justice sort of orthodoxy this dogma
• 36:56
  that I'm talking about seems to assume that you can kind of shut everybody up as long as
• 37:03
  you are on the right side of history and the right side of history is being defined by this
• 37:08
  minority group by you know any whatever minority group you're picking they just fail to notice
• 37:14
  that at some point the majority is going to have to agree because if they don't the majority is
• 37:19
  going to vote in the Trumps and the Paulian Hansons and it's going to start listening to Andrew
• 37:25
  Tate well it's so interesting because you just said there imagine a world in which people don't
• 37:31
  think about race religion color any of these things that are you know identified as labels for
• 37:38
  groups there is a world it's called childhood as a child when you grow up without anybody telling
• 37:44
  you otherwise you walk into the school yard for the first time and you pick your mate because
• 37:49
  they smile across the room you or they walk in your direction or you walk in theirs and they're
• 37:53
  kind enough and they're empathetic and often invite you into whatever activity that they're doing
• 37:58
  and I grew up in my two closest mates at school when I was really young one of them was
• 38:03
  Singaporean background so we had a different skin complexion to me different skin tone he had
• 38:08
  a little sister who was in my little sister's year and we're all best friends and his family
• 38:12
  looked different on my family and we had different backgrounds but it didn't matter none of it
• 38:17
  mattered because he was my mate yeah and then all of a sudden you go through the world and you start
• 38:23
  being told by other people that in fact you are different yeah right and so then then people start
• 38:29
  to think different things and God forbid you grow up in a family where there is some kind of racist
• 38:34
  views around the privilege that you should have as a white person or that you're told that you
• 38:39
  know people of color do this and there's people who have done this terribly who are from that religion
• 38:45
  and you hear all of these kind of horror stories from usually places where there is less of a minority
• 38:53
  right but I think it's really interesting that that does exist totally I mean I would change
• 38:58
  over time I would add to that you know analogy we always go for the analogy of the white household
• 39:03
  that is preaching racism to the kids right and that is that has traditionally been the worst example
• 39:10
  of racism certainly was up until the middle of the well even at the end of the 20th century
• 39:17
  Jim Crow laws in the States you know segregation here in Australia stolen generations and so on
• 39:23
  in the 2020s now right living in the world we live in not the world of the of historical disadvantage
• 39:31
  but the world we live in are you more likely if you just throw a data to dart board and select a
• 39:36
  random Australian white family to find a family that is raising a child and teaching them that black
• 39:43
  people are inferior or you're more likely if you throw a data dart board of say Muslim families
• 39:50
  to find a family that teaches their daughter that women should obey men or that Jews are a bit
• 40:00
  fishy or if you throw a data dart board and it's a I don't know a Chinese Australian community
• 40:06
  are you more likely to find a family that's quite openly racist towards Koreans and Japanese people
• 40:12
  or if you throw a data dart board and you find a group of lesbians let's say at the pub
• 40:19
  are you likely to find more likely to find them casually denigrating men and talking about osteopor
• 40:23
  bloody men and male pigs and male privilege and whatnot let's just be careful about the way that we
• 40:28
  think about casual discrimination right i'm not saying oh boo hoo hoo it's so hard to be a white
• 40:34
  man but i'm saying if you don't want white males to act out and we know that when white males act
• 40:41
  out civilisations burn to the ground because they're extremely testosterone-fueled and dangerous
• 40:48
  then you have to have some acknowledgement that we currently live in an environment in which
• 40:55
  it's open season on some people and it's not open season on other people i would carve out a
• 41:01
  slight exception here on the trans issue because i think trans people really are copying it really
• 41:07
  badly at the moment because they're such conservative backlash against the the gains that they've
• 41:13
  made lately but basically it's to be if you if in every other sort of forum of polite society
• 41:22
  in Australia gotta any you know pub in a be this may not be true in some remote parts of
• 41:28
  Australia or something but just think about your experience of living if you live in a big city
• 41:33
  if you live in Sydney or Melbourne think about your experience of just going out and about going
• 41:37
  in the movies going off pub going to a restaurant hanging out with your mates how much open
• 41:43
  racism and sexism is there from white males it's taboo it is much more taboo than it is in any
• 41:51
  other community you are much likely if someone says oh bloody Asians you know coming in and swamping
• 41:59
  the country that person is much likely to be called out that by their friends then any other
• 42:06
  community saying the reverse so can i can i make a good point here i because i think you are
• 42:12
  being on right i had an incident i work in in mongong mongong boy i don't know you Sydney
• 42:17
  ciders for out of that no i love the gong the gong's great right but one thing we definitely have
• 42:21
  a problem within the gong is we have a drug problem right there is a certain part of wellongong
• 42:29
  that is heavily affected by drugs and it tends to be around the methadone clinics where we see
• 42:34
  bad addiction to heroin and ice and these kind of drugs that really destroy people's lives
• 42:40
  now i'm an i i have been so privileged to grow up in a great family where how to
• 42:45
  die who's a copper pop who's a copper who were very much do everything you can to help people
• 42:52
  who are in positions of need right and my mom and my sister both like really empathetic loving
• 42:58
  people so i grew up loving all different people in my life and like love the women in my life
• 43:03
  i wanted to look after them and you know love the way that my dad the amount of times me and my
• 43:07
  sister abandoned were worse and my dad's chased someone for being rude or staff member of
• 43:12
  and saying right and so i'm at work the other day and we work in this our office is in a spot that
• 43:18
  tends to get a little bit of riff raffer around it right walking down to a point not downtown L.A.
• 43:23
  riff raffer you know you know downtown willongong and walking down the street headphone in where i
• 43:28
  hear just like a scream like a bit of a wailing scream and i turn around and watch this woman running
• 43:34
  in my direction probably a hundred yards away being chased by like a tall fucking dude like
• 43:40
  absolutely chasing her at full pace grabs her by the pony talent and reefs her back
• 43:45
  and i'm like fuck and just the way that i've grown up first instinct is running her direction
• 43:49
  yeah and then he sort of takes off long story short we aren't end up getting in a bit of an
• 43:54
  altercation because i'll put myself between them where he's sort of trying to swing at me yep
• 43:59
  i end up de-escalating him we get him charged all that sort of stuff happens he ends up apologizing
• 44:05
  to me a couple weeks later i've seen the bloke every day since i've never seen him in my life
• 44:08
  before really interesting right but they were both drug-affected and they left two kids in the middle
• 44:13
  of the road to go in this domestic fucking adventure and the thing that disappointed me the most
• 44:21
  right is i looked around after i was in a physical altercation with this guy and watched probably
• 44:29
  20 other people and i'm talking 20 amongst them a good group of guys who stood behind the door
• 44:35
  of their office poking their head out looking in my direction as i tried to do the right thing
• 44:42
  and so part of me feels like online these conversations are amplified but in real life
• 44:50
  where these situations unfold are people brave enough to then call it out because i'm sure that
• 44:56
  all of those guys would agree that domestic violence is wrong right or at least 99% of them
• 45:01
  right you'd like to think yeah the conversation then becomes i don't think any of them should have
• 45:07
  to put themselves in front of someone who's particularly violent but strengthen numbers
• 45:11
  exactly right so i'm happy to make that call for myself but if all of a sudden all the 10 guys
• 45:17
  within 20 meters of me yeah decided to come out and stand yeah as a tall fucking open and united
• 45:24
  front yeah yeah then all of a sudden we've got a de-escalated situation but and if you want to
• 45:29
  really blow your brain about the question about the difference between what people say online in
• 45:34
  order to signal how good how good they are and how worthy they are to other people versus what
• 45:38
  they actually do it'd be an interesting study to figure out if those guys who fail to help
• 45:45
  are likely to be the sorts of people who profess their solidarity with feminism or likely to
• 45:52
  be traditional blocs because in part of the conversation about sexism i think we have this
• 45:59
  caricature that traditional masculinity is brutalizing and violent toxic masculinity right and
• 46:07
  what we need young boys to understand is like that you know they've had it good for too long and
• 46:13
  that its women's schools turn now and that they should take a back seat and they should learn
• 46:17
  to suppress their emotions they should learn to not act up and so on all of that may be very
• 46:22
  worthy the greatest generation the you know the generation of the great war basically um people who
• 46:31
  are now either very old or just died these were not of course there would have been and you know
• 46:39
  widespread domestic violence in a way that we would now find unconsciousable but these people
• 46:43
  had very traditional ideas about masculinity and they were very chivalrous people like they were
• 46:48
  guys who if they found themselves in that situation that you're in all of them would help yeah right
• 46:54
  everyone every bloke born in the 1920s comes to help that woman for sure now do they express
• 47:01
  the same ideas about gender and sexism and masculinity and femininity that would land as being
• 47:08
  progressive and pro woman amongst the university educated kind of feminist class at the moment
• 47:16
  of course not they would have really old fashioned retrograde ideas about masculinity they'd be like
• 47:20
  our women need protecting and nowadays that we'd be like that's awful you're all part of the problem
• 47:26
  it begins with a sexist comment and it ends with a dead woman's body well maybe it doesn't
• 47:31
  maybe it begins with a sexist comment and the the old bloke who has the sexist comment feels really
• 47:36
  protective of women and maybe there's another bloke who is in it for the likes on instagram and
• 47:43
  is talking about how much of an ally he is like with women and just can't understand like the
• 47:49
  brutality of mountainous beyond him like how awful men are who would cower in the hallway and not
• 47:55
  help a woman yeah you know so that all I'm saying is Twitter's not real life like social media is not
• 48:02
  real life the way that we talk about sort of minority rights and like social justice at the moment
• 48:08
  is not real life it doesn't always map on when we talk about privilege you know I own my privileges
• 48:15
  but really the kinds of privileges that have been the most beneficial to me and not the ones that
• 48:18
  are part of the conversation about privilege it's not really that I'm a man that I'm six foot tall
• 48:25
  that is one of if you look at how much people earn there is a direct correlation between
• 48:31
  yes between how tall people are and how much they earn if you're a man who's five foot two I'm
• 48:36
  so you reliably the cop that cohort of males reliably earns less than people who are over six
• 48:41
  four is that just average down by NBA players are you know like no no you can exclude the NBA
• 48:49
  either all kinds of other privileges I mean I was born middle class I was born into a family we
• 48:53
  weren't rich but yeah I was never aware of us having a problem feeding ourselves like but we don't
• 49:00
  talk about class privilege very much and we sort of you know we we pay lip service to it we don't
• 49:06
  really take seriously just the kind of the difficulty that people have when they have financial
• 49:13
  impediments regardless of their race um you know there are all kinds I mean I mean you could go
• 49:19
  through an entire list of the ways in which privilege works and you could have a highly articulate
• 49:26
  well-educated middle class black woman who is far more privileged than a working class
• 49:32
  bloke who has no education I mean that's just a fact and that and that reality does not
• 49:38
  does not currently factor into the way that we're supposed to talk about things and on your point
• 49:42
  about children I think it's a really good one I just had an American a great American woman
• 49:49
  Stephanie Lepp on the show people should listen to uncomfortable conversations obviously if you
• 49:54
  think what I'm saying is interesting and you can hear her episode and she talks about children as
• 49:59
  well and I I made the point that a lot of people will say that children are racist that like children
• 50:06
  of cruel like you look and you go to a playground and you know they'll say they'll say things that
• 50:11
  sound racist right a child might say he's got funny slanty eyes about a right an Asian kid right
• 50:17
  like or your skin looks like you were burned in a fire if you're a blanket right but the point is
• 50:23
  they're actually those things are only racist once you learn about race and about taboos
• 50:30
  they're not meaning that it will be racist now they might be picking on a kid but they're
• 50:35
  going to find something to pick like if there's a kid who's in the out group they might pick on
• 50:38
  a kid because he walks funny they might pick on a kid just because I don't like him they might
• 50:41
  pick a kid because he eats funny they might pick you know whatever it might be he's not good at sport
• 50:45
  or whatever and if you're a different race then maybe they'll pick on that but the things that
• 50:49
  people think that they hear which make children racist are actually usually things that we
• 50:57
  have learned to be racist because you know that's the way that we think they're just talking
• 51:02
  about people's skin color or shape it's very true it's very true their intent isn't to be racist
• 51:08
  or their intent isn't to be provocative in most cases it's just kids point out the obvious
• 51:13
  right you got to sort of learn to be an asshole about your tribe and what we've done lately is
• 51:18
  we've forgotten that being super tribal is actually the asshole move we now think it's the
• 51:23
  noble move yeah arsolism is learnt yeah do you like that is that I like it that's a good one
• 51:29
  arsolism is learnt yeah well we'll add it to the dictionary the oven dictionary yeah well maybe
• 51:33
  some arsols are built but born there's a particular type of arsolism which is my group gives me
• 51:41
  gives me the right to tell you how you need to think about anything that might relate to my
• 51:45
  group and that's what's learned that's learned can I ask because I think this is really interesting
• 51:51
  where this conversation is headed we're talking about the fact that everything is a little bit
• 51:57
  overlaiable everything is maybe in some ways it's almost like it's almost like in some ways the
• 52:04
  progressive culture is man-splaining everything to make it maybe more challenging to have these
• 52:11
  conversations and move forward in a collaborative direction but I think about kids at school right
• 52:17
  now and and I think it's a challenging time to have a conversation around the environments that
• 52:23
  kids are being educated in because as a 28 year old bloke who yes middle class like you Josh
• 52:29
  yes is privilege from my color of my skin my head goes I'm really empathetic that if somebody was
• 52:37
  growing up right now or an adult that existed in a body they were born in that they didn't feel
• 52:43
  like they should be in that'd be a really fucking challenging way to live I'm so blessed that
• 52:48
  I feel really good about who I am body I was born into I'm blessed enough that because I am
• 52:54
  straight I can love my beautiful fiancee and not potentially full nervous about going out on a
• 53:00
  date and being seen because it's different or considered progressive I love that my life is
• 53:05
  fairly easy because of who I am right but I can have the empathy to go man if you're not me
• 53:12
  if you're maybe white a little bit differently if your sexuality is something you're considering
• 53:18
  and you haven't quite figured out yet or you think that maybe you exist in a body that shouldn't
• 53:22
  be yours and you'd like to be a different gender wouldn't be an easy way to live right wouldn't be
• 53:27
  an easy way to live into you've confronted that and become comfortable with it but then there's
• 53:32
  part of me that thinks you know we're educating kids about this stuff from a really young
• 53:36
  age in school but are we educating them or are we confusing them because for a six-year-old to
• 53:41
  be confronted with pronouns for a nine-year-old I know I've heard of schools in my local area where
• 53:45
  there's kids who identify as cats and they've now got kitty-litters in the classroom for a nine-year-old
• 53:50
  that might be a social media bullshit though right I've heard there's two schools in 11 area you
• 53:54
  heard you heard what did you hear when you let yourself out my grandmother on Facebook right so
• 53:59
  I'm just I'm just saying it out there but for kids to be within this environment right now are
• 54:04
  we actually educating them or are we confusing well it depends what we're talking about I think
• 54:11
  that we're currently in a moral panic about trans issues and I am skeptical that we are that the
• 54:23
  that children are exposed to as much pro trans nonsense as we think they are because I think
• 54:29
  there's I think there's I think there's a right wing pushed to just make it to just cynically
• 54:35
  manipulate this issue so you know there's there'll be one and social media contributes to this right
• 54:41
  there'll be one classroom in somewhere in Canada where like some extremely ostentatiously
• 54:48
  sexualized trans you know female teacher with gigantic boobs which is one thing that I saw
• 54:55
  was you know teaching a class and like asserting in all kinds of radical you know gender nonsense and
• 55:02
  that goes viral and everyone freaks out and similarly the thing about cats I've heard that from
• 55:07
  I've heard that in the States there were you know people identifying as cats and they put kitty
• 55:11
  litter in the corner of a classroom I'd be skeptical I'd want to say that yeah I'd really want
• 55:18
  to verify that that sounds like bullshit um and if it's not bullshit then I hope it's just
• 55:24
  a temporary fad that people can push back on I think the bigger challenge with
• 55:31
  any kind of sort of social justice movement is to think about whether or not are we trying to
• 55:39
  tether people to an aspiration of tolerance and live and let live or are we trying to dogmatically
• 55:47
  force people to conform to a set of ideas right are we being Stalinist about this or are we being
• 55:56
  kind of Gandhiite about it and what has happened what had happened with the transition I think one
• 56:02
  of the reasons why we're seeing this really unfortunate backlash is that some minority of you know
• 56:08
  again hyper academic kind of university activist gender theory types were pushing an
• 56:16
  extremely dogmatic vision of gender an anti-scientific vision of gender the claim that there really
• 56:26
  is no such thing as sex that that you know um the xy chromosomes and xx chromosomes are basically
• 56:32
  irrelevant to when it comes to to gender um and because there was such pushback against people
• 56:40
  who started questioning that and I mean I have spoken to an interviewed and and colleagues with
• 56:46
  a number of people who lost their jobs from big newspapers just for writing an article saying
• 56:50
  hang on we're actually sure that this is true that they get demonized as being turfs and so on
• 56:57
  I think that's changing and I think the turf side in many respects went too far because once they
• 57:03
  started getting wins they just started getting deranged by online and social media is making
• 57:07
  everything so much worse because I mean the whole profit model of a social media company is to
• 57:14
  show you things that are either going to reinforce what you already believe or demonize the things
• 57:18
  that you don't believe so just makes things seem a lot more outrageous than the reality actually is
• 57:24
  I think in reality if you went into most classrooms there would it would probably be a fairly moderate
• 57:32
  attitude towards towards gender we should not be I mean the pronouns thing is
• 57:40
  is strange because it's become a little bit like I think welcomes to well acknowledgements of
• 57:48
  country have become a sort of a litmus test which white privileged people can use between
• 57:55
  themselves to show that they're on the right side of history and that they're better than each other
• 57:59
  you know what I mean it's become untethered like you know thinking about
• 58:05
  what is actually going to benefit trans people and what is actually going to benefit
• 58:09
  first nations people having a bunch of wealthy middle class university educated white people
• 58:15
  in a zoom room at an HR meeting all the saying I pay my respects to elders past past and present
• 58:21
  while they do fuck all for First Nations people probably not the best solution yeah whilst you've
• 58:25
  never employed a First Nations person you never employed them you don't you know you don't associate
• 58:30
  with them you don't go to the parts of town where they live you don't go you don't care about going
• 58:34
  and you know supporting them in any way but you're going to do this thing because it makes you feel
• 58:39
  good and similarly the pronoun thing of like oh we as a corporation firmly believe in like
• 58:45
  inclusion and everyone in our corporation has to put the he her or the she you know the he
• 58:50
  him or the she her at the bottom of their email signature as if this is a great triumph for you
• 58:56
  know trans rights I mean all of this is it's window dressing it's identarian and you know
• 59:04
  the aspiration ought to be everyone should be treated with respect and nobody should be
• 59:09
  discriminated against and actually I mean there's there's a sort of the useful I think contrast
• 59:15
  between the the gay rights movement of the 60s 70s 80s and 90s and the trans rights movement
• 59:22
  of the 2010s and 2020s in that the original gay rights movement was very clever about not making
• 59:31
  it about sex and not making it about forcing anything on anybody else they were like what I was
• 59:37
  saying earlier about like finding common ground for everybody to agree on instead of trying to
• 59:41
  instead of trying to focus on differences trying to focus on areas of agreement the yes there
• 59:46
  were riots it's you know in this 1960s when police were bashing up you know gay people because
• 59:51
  it was illegal but as soon as there was a forum in which gay activists could speak what they were
• 59:57
  saying in the 80s was we want exactly the same things that you do we want to not be discriminated
• 1:00:01
  against when we try to get a home loan we want to be able to go and visit our partners when they're
• 1:00:06
  in hospital and they're dying rather than being treated as if West Rangers someday we'd like to be
• 1:00:10
  able to marry we'd like to be able to share our finances at the bank you know we'd like to not be
• 1:00:14
  discriminated against when we try to rent an apartment these are basic human values when I'm asking
• 1:00:19
  you to do anything and that was really compelling and the gay rights movement was probably the most
• 1:00:24
  successful civil rights movement in the history of the world I mean when I was born it was illegal
• 1:00:31
  to be gay and quite apart from being illegal it was an absolute perversion and now the fact that I'm
• 1:00:37
  married to a guy is the most boring thing about me right instead of doing that the trans the extreme
• 1:00:46
  trans movement instead of saying we would just want to be treated like everybody else you don't
• 1:00:51
  have to change your lives at all took a policy of you will change the way that you understand biology
• 1:01:00
  you will say things that you know not to be true about the fact that all life forms basically
• 1:01:05
  have two different sexes and you will deny that and if you don't deny that they'll be punishment
• 1:01:10
  and you might get at that best hounded off twitter and attacked and demeaned and vilified
• 1:01:17
  and at worst you'll lose your job and you will sign off every email by putting in your pronouns
• 1:01:27
  so it became this very adversarial approach of instead of saying we want to not be discriminated
• 1:01:32
  against we want the same things that everybody else wants which I think would have had it I think
• 1:01:40
  the winds would have been swifter and I think the pushback would have been gentler and more people
• 1:01:45
  would have come along if you could frame it in universalist humanist language than if it was like
• 1:01:51
  you are on the rights on the wrong side of history and you have the blood of trans children on
• 1:01:55
  your hands for not being on board that has now triggered a really bad backlash from the right
• 1:02:02
  and I feel terrible for trans people I have a lot of trans friends who feel really betrayed by
• 1:02:11
  their own movement because now they're having to cop a backlash from right wing assholes who
• 1:02:17
  are being really awful to all trans people just because an activist wing of the trans community
• 1:02:25
  went too far it's such a fucking fair point because to me the common sense play and I know
• 1:02:33
  common sense is hard to find the common sense plays as a human being if you can have empathy for
• 1:02:40
  the fact that someone should be able to live their life the way they want to live it and provided
• 1:02:44
  that they don't force that on anyone else that's fine right but then I have the problem with
• 1:02:49
  like you just mentioned there great example of that is I sent a video on TikTok last week of
• 1:02:56
  somebody who has transitioned right and they're sitting there filming themselves on TikTok live
• 1:03:02
  at a cafe or just filming a video and the very polite way they walks up to them and says
• 1:03:10
  hello sir how could I help you today and they're like oh my god you've just misjended me you
• 1:03:14
  absolute fucking can't that's not the words that they've said basically that's the energy and I'm
• 1:03:21
  like whoa yeah I would make who's earning an average income to provide for himself yeah who's
• 1:03:28
  chosen to go in a hospitality likely because he enjoys people and wants to be nice and wants to
• 1:03:35
  give somebody an ice get A and say hello didn't come there to offend you no and the fact that you
• 1:03:40
  can't respect that in the process of trying to educate people and move forward and and have a
• 1:03:47
  progression in society is the problem that's right I mean and it's even goes further than that
• 1:03:53
  because in some cases like I understand it a person who has transitioned would find it
• 1:03:57
  confronting if they didn't pass so to speak if they you know they didn't look like the gender that
• 1:04:02
  they identify as and so they got misjended that would be hurtful but on many occasions you have
• 1:04:07
  people intentionally trying to look provocative and then getting offended when people are provoked
• 1:04:15
  I mean you know I sort of get into arguments with my with some of my non-binary friends about
• 1:04:19
  this as well who will like have a beard they're born male you're supposed to say assigned male
• 1:04:27
  at birth as if the doctors have no idea what sex you could be they just sort of pull it out of
• 1:04:30
  that you know was well assigned this one male the fact that's got a penis and you know and the
• 1:04:35
  chromosomes and you know the evidence suggests yeah yeah yeah but no we're just randomly a sign
• 1:04:40
  male at birth that's whatever but so you know we here we're talking about individual has a beard
• 1:04:45
  and a hairy chest and has no desire to transition to being a woman because the person is non-binary
• 1:04:51
  but we'll wear a very big floral dress for example and earrings right and lipstick and then go
• 1:04:58
  out to a pub a non gay pub on Oxford Street and we'll feel violated that someone made a remark
• 1:05:08
  well isn't the point that you're trying to fuck around with gender stereotypes like aren't you
• 1:05:13
  trying to provoke I mean good for you like great yes why do why do women wear dresses and not men
• 1:05:20
  you know why are we judgmental about playing around with this great but don't push the boundaries
• 1:05:27
  and then cry foul when someone points out that you're pushing the boundaries no men it's a fair point
• 1:05:34
  it's a very fair point how you have to ask you like everything we're talking about here today three
• 1:05:40
  years ago four years ago you probably wouldn't have been able to have that conversation on mainstream
• 1:05:45
  media your transition to move right into your podcast now I wonder if you look back at that moment
• 1:05:52
  with hindsight is it potentially the best thing that ever happened to your career
• 1:05:58
  sort of being driven out of the legacy media yeah because at the time anything that is a massive
• 1:06:04
  change like that there's probably some frustration yeah it's too early to say ask me in 20 years
• 1:06:10
  you know what I mean like um I still feel hurt to be honest and I feel betrayed by
• 1:06:22
  a small number of people in the organization who did not have the courage to say you know what
• 1:06:37
  we're a big place we're full of big ideas we are the nation's broadcaster we broadcast on behalf
• 1:06:45
  of all Australians and we're big enough to cop whatever shit you know some tabloid is going to throw
• 1:06:52
  at us for being a little bit edgy like it's our job to be edgy it's in our charter to represent
• 1:06:58
  all Australians not to represent a small clique of university educated social progressives
• 1:07:04
  and the fact that that that particular point and I'm not saying this is at all endemic to
• 1:07:09
  the organization because it really isn't because there are so many good people there who are
• 1:07:12
  really open-minded but the fact that at that particular point there was like that pressure point
• 1:07:18
  and that the people who could have stood up to it and allowed conversations like the one that we're
• 1:07:23
  having now to take place not in as extreme a way as we're having it right but just like half of
• 1:07:30
  this conversation if that could take place and if people had been um big enough to allow that to
• 1:07:38
  happen then I just would have had so much more faith in humanity I guess and just in people's
• 1:07:46
  backbone and the fact that um I mean I did feel at the time sort of not not victimized but sad
• 1:07:59
  about humanity that there's this great august institution that is having its founding ideals
• 1:08:10
  betrayed by a few cowards who are now no longer there so that's good but um God I love not having
• 1:08:20
  a job it's great not having a job is the best I've played for periods of my life in this full time
• 1:08:28
  and it's a very nice feeling wonderful and look I mean the my departure from the ABC I mean my
• 1:08:37
  subscribers doubled the month that I announced that I was leaving and they doubled again the next
• 1:08:41
  month and so I pretty quickly started earning more from the podcast than I the ABC was paying me
• 1:08:46
  I mean you know I get paid much in public broadcasting anyway so like yeah it's a huge relief
• 1:08:52
  but I still love like legacy broadcasting I really do I just wish that this level of communication
• 1:09:01
  could also take place in the old school because I fear that the old school will die if it doesn't
• 1:09:09
  speaking of jobs Donald Trump recently gets a job at McDonald's yeah how much of a play
• 1:09:16
  and a change will that make in the election process do you think it will impact the way that people
• 1:09:21
  what the mackers think yeah you don't think do what do you think well I think it's so interesting
• 1:09:27
  there was I was telling the guys out in the in the office here before saying there's a gentleman
• 1:09:32
  that I come across last year who was actually on Chris Williamson's podcast named Brian Klaus he
• 1:09:36
  wrote a book called Fluke right and a big part of what Fluke is about is about chaos theory and how
• 1:09:42
  he seemingly insignificant events can change the course of history forever right we really don't
• 1:09:47
  know that went to we look back and hindsight right and there's some great stories in the book where
• 1:09:52
  there's examples of this he gives an example of a former secretary of defense in the US who
• 1:10:02
  goes on a honeymoon to Kyoto Japan with his wife they fall in love with the place it's the most
• 1:10:09
  magical thing they've ever experienced from the moment they step off the train they love it they
• 1:10:13
  enjoy every day of their two weeks there and they return home until four years later we're ready
• 1:10:18
  to drop an atomic bomb I say we as the US yeah they're ready to drop an atomic bomb in Japan he finds
• 1:10:25
  out that Kyoto was one of the two destinations at their targeting and in a moment of divine
• 1:10:31
  fucking inspiration he absolutely flocks in to try and get them to change their mind on where they
• 1:10:36
  drop this atomic bomb because Kyoto holds so much sentimental value to him and his wife and he
• 1:10:42
  convinces them to change where they drop this bomb so the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives
• 1:10:48
  hinged on one guy's romantic honeymoon four years ago seems like quite an insignificant event that
• 1:10:54
  turns out to be actually quite significant in the course of history I love it yeah it makes me
• 1:10:59
  think about these little moments that you know we're coming up to the US election these little
• 1:11:03
  moments like Donald Trump at a Mac Donald's apparently he's on Rogan tomorrow right Kamala Harris
• 1:11:10
  on call a daddy all these little moments that in the scheme of history seemed to be insignificant
• 1:11:17
  it's one I mean I love the Kyoto example but I think what you're missing is that the whole
• 1:11:25
  premise of like the fluke worldview is that you don't know at the time that it's happening that
• 1:11:30
  it is so consequential which we can't tell where you can't tell what impact the McDonald's thing
• 1:11:36
  I think if there's something like the McDonald's thing or Kamala doing a particular show then
• 1:11:43
  that's unlikely to be the the pivotal sort of flap of the butterfly wings that is the fluke
• 1:11:48
  because we can sort of see that it's a stunt a little bit you know like it's the McDonald's
• 1:11:52
  thing with Donald Trump for me is perfectly consistent with his brand which is a disruptor
• 1:11:58
  he's a disruptor he doesn't give a shit about the rules he does crazy shit you don't know what
• 1:12:02
  you're gonna get that's his stick right you know I say what I think you know and you know he's
• 1:12:08
  shameless he's shameless so doing doing something like that for me is it's not going to make anyone
• 1:12:14
  who thinks that he's you know a dangerous delusional authoritarian big it like I do vote for him
• 1:12:22
  and it's not going to it's not going to you know turn off anybody who was already committed to
• 1:12:27
  thinking that he was the better of the two options but I do like the contingency of history
• 1:12:33
  and I think a certain humility about what we know and don't know is pivotal to my worldview like
• 1:12:40
  we're just we're just muddling through man with you know I don't know I don't watch right and wrong
• 1:12:45
  that's why I'm just suspicious of people who claim to I'm suspicious of people who are very
• 1:12:50
  finger waggy about how they've got the new ants or about how everything ought to be and anyone who
• 1:12:56
  disagrees is like like these people have been it's almost an archetype throughout history I mean
• 1:13:02
  in the 1950s in the United States the worst thing that you could be was a communist and so
• 1:13:07
  Senator McCarthy had witch hunts and hounded everybody down and now it sounds oh why would
• 1:13:12
  they so sound silly why would they so frightened of communism in the 1950s it was really
• 1:13:16
  fucking scary it might end the whole system of freedoms that we like Russia might win you know
• 1:13:21
  like those people thought they were doing the right thing they were the social justice warriors
• 1:13:27
  of their time they were the sensorious people who knew that they were on the side of the right
• 1:13:32
  and you have to can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs so you have to sort of do cancel
• 1:13:36
  culture on people who aren't you know in the who run on the right side of history and it just
• 1:13:42
  happens again and again and again from the inquisitions the Catholic Church to whatever people
• 1:13:48
  have a tendency to feel like they have found the right way of thinking about things and they just
• 1:13:53
  don't have time for people who aren't on board with their right way of thinking about things because
• 1:13:57
  those people are just impediments to a better future and that's the kind of like dogmatic
• 1:14:03
  know-it-all attitude that the left has taken on which is really unfortunate because
• 1:14:08
  as a lefty I want the left to be like the party where you go to the McDonald's drive through
• 1:14:13
  like Donald Trump does and where like you smash him shit up you know in the when my kids when
• 1:14:18
  my parents were kids rather being on the left meant that you were the revolutionary that you were
• 1:14:24
  the bad guy right like in the 60s you were the you were doing drugs you were having sex with
• 1:14:28
  everybody like the left was fun and the right was all like me me me me me me now the left is on me
• 1:14:34
  me me me me and like the right is like fuck yeah throw some shit at the wall you know say some
• 1:14:38
  outrageous things with the left needs to reclaim being outrageous we need to reclaim taboo then
• 1:14:44
  you know just not caring about taboos I like it yeah just tread on some eggshells the weather
• 1:14:49
  sky doesn't fall fuck it I like it so let me ask you then if you consider what history will say
• 1:14:56
  about the moment we're living in what do you think the statement will be made in 20 years time
• 1:15:01
  when we look back on 2024 all of the heat and the conversation that's going into this election all
• 1:15:07
  of the debates that we've discussed today all the things that feel uncomfortable to talk about
• 1:15:12
  in this moment right now what will history say about it I suspect it will say something that we
• 1:15:19
  haven't even touched on yet which is that this was a moment at which it was the last moment at which
• 1:15:26
  humans were not engaging with non-human creatures that were intelligent actually think that's
• 1:15:37
  probably gonna be like in some decades time what we look back on in the same way that we might
• 1:15:43
  look back on like the 90s as like that was an era when nobody had smartphones in their pocket
• 1:15:50
  there was no such thing as a selfie there was no such thing as social media there was no such
• 1:15:54
  thing as like you know you just sat down you watched an old white guy talk at you for half an hour
• 1:15:59
  about what's going on in the world that was where you got your news from right you know or you
• 1:16:04
  opened up like a shredded piece of a tree and you leaf through it with ink printed on it and you
• 1:16:10
  read about what was going on in the world that was what was very that was what was most different
• 1:16:14
  about the 90s than the 2020s in many ways I don't know if you've seen the story that today show
• 1:16:20
  covered in Australia what was one about the the AI chatbot and that young man who's 14 no name was
• 1:16:29
  soul I think from Florida in the US who took his own life he went on this AI site where you could
• 1:16:35
  create a creator character essentially that you have a relationship with and then this this
• 1:16:42
  character through conversations started to pick up the and this is generated by AI it starts to
• 1:16:48
  pick up that this young boy 14 years of age is struggling with his mental health and starts to
• 1:16:53
  through its messages convince him to take its life so they take his life so they can be together
• 1:16:58
  and so this young man takes his life and now his mum is left in the wake of trying to figure this
• 1:17:03
  out and this conversation around we really haven't regulated this AI AI thing that much have we?
• 1:17:11
  Well no and I mean how do you even and that is just like the tip of the iceberg I don't think we
• 1:17:16
  have any idea what's what's coming I mean I think we will soon be living in a world that is
• 1:17:21
  populated by I call them creatures because they will they will back we will interact with them
• 1:17:27
  all the time I mean you'll just you know you're you'll walk into your house and it won't be like
• 1:17:34
  lights turn on it'll be how you'll be having a conversation with your house and it will be
• 1:17:40
  indistinguishable from the intelligent intellectual level of a human being and it will no way more
• 1:17:44
  than any human does and it will be able to notice maybe from your heart rate and the way that
• 1:17:49
  your eyes are moving that you're a bit stressed out and you know so it might suggest an Airbnb
• 1:17:55
  that you could go to that weekend or what I mean you'll have a personal assistant and a doctor
• 1:18:01
  and a lawyer and an accountant just in your life around you not even in your pocket because it
• 1:18:07
  won't need to be in your phone and they will be funny and they'll be personable they'll be creatures
• 1:18:15
  and that will change things just as much as like if you parachuted someone from the year 2000
• 1:18:21
  into today and they just looked around and they looked at people walking across the street or
• 1:18:24
  gazing at their phones like we've become acclimatized to think that that's normal but it's really
• 1:18:28
  quite weird that we are just constantly looking down at these glowing screens so I think that the
• 1:18:39
  I guess the big my big picture quote answered to the question of like how will we how will
• 1:18:43
  historians look back on this era we're living through the beginning of an explosion of an
• 1:18:48
  information revolution which is going to be as consequential as the industrial revolution was
• 1:18:55
  and or the enlightenment and we don't know how to deal with that we are like the baby giraffe
• 1:19:01
  who's just been born who's like all covered in placental goo and there's like trying to stand up
• 1:19:05
  you know and so and that is that to me is Elon Musk buying Twitter and like Donald Trump getting
• 1:19:11
  elected and all these things that are kind of that feel very disorienting and the difference between
• 1:19:17
  what the way people view the Gaza war for example like TikTok and Instagram reels and algorithms
• 1:19:24
  and now the impending beginning of artificial intelligence in a way that's actually integrated
• 1:19:29
  into our lives is going to I think we looked back on by historians as like well that was a big
• 1:19:35
  fucking challenge and it might be a challenge that takes 20 or 30 or 40 years to figure out like
• 1:19:40
  so what do we need how do we need to change the apps and the algorithms and how do we need to
• 1:19:44
  regulate the industry and how do we need to you know just deal we're just grappling with something
• 1:19:49
  it's like it's like we've just invented nuclear bombs or something or any other era like the
• 1:19:55
  the printing press when the printing press was invented and people could start reading the
• 1:19:58
  bible for themselves in Europe there was 80 an 80 year long war because all of a sudden people
• 1:20:04
  like like you know there's a religious war so we don't know what is going to happen but it's
• 1:20:09
  I think people will look back on this as like the beginning of a massive change well as you said
• 1:20:13
  30 to 40 years when maybe we figure this out I hate to break it to Josh but you and your husband
• 1:20:18
  will be the old boomers for watching Sky News and quite conservative never are we the old radical
• 1:20:26
  I'll be like the Rolling Stones but I wonder like how does that make you feel as a father about
• 1:20:31
  your two kids we're going to grow up in a world that is so fucking foreign you're not going to be
• 1:20:36
  able to help them because you don't understand it I'm fucking genius I'll help them
• 1:20:40
  yeah I'll figure it out I'll figure one of those guys that you want me about the guy that knows all
• 1:20:45
  the guy that knows all no I mean who knows yeah it's gonna I mean I already feel the pace of
• 1:20:50
  things changing I already feel like an old man just in terms of the way that I you know think
• 1:20:54
  about tiktok and stuff like I don't it doesn't appeal to me to consume information in at that pace
• 1:21:02
  and I think it it impedes my ability to do things that I care about a lot like read long books
• 1:21:09
  and stuff like that and so in that sense maybe I'm a fatty dutty but like I'm a fatty dutty who has
• 1:21:14
  in common who has preferences in common with all of the great thinkers of all time and I think
• 1:21:20
  we will continue to and the people who excel and who shape thought will continue to value a certain
• 1:21:26
  amount of kind of temperance and contemplation and empathy and small liberalism uh that
• 1:21:35
  keeps them grounded in a universe that is increasingly chaotic and crazy so when I think about
• 1:21:40
  my kids look I don't think AI is going to take away everybody's jobs but people who use AI are
• 1:21:47
  going to take away all the jobs if the people who don't use AI um and it's going to change things in
• 1:21:52
  a big way but it's exciting I mean we might all end up with our brains in plugged into computers in
• 1:21:58
  150 years living forever I mean I'm along for the ride I'm up for it I'm never going to be the
• 1:22:03
  guy who's shaking his fist at the heavens saying like we should be going back to some supposed olden
• 1:22:10
  times the olden times sucked you know like you were saying earlier like I was a you know white guy
• 1:22:14
  it's a lot easier to live than it is if you're less privileged I mean yeah that's true you don't
• 1:22:22
  have the same problems but life basically has generally sucked for everybody always life's
• 1:22:28
  fucking tough you know like life wasn't easy for the white guys in the 1800s who were down in
• 1:22:33
  the mines or you know for farmers farming's hard when you don't have any agricultural equipment
• 1:22:38
  most people through most of history have either been grinding themselves through poverty or they've
• 1:22:43
  been doing back breaking labor in fields or they've been in a factory more recently now we are
• 1:22:51
  the lucky ones right we're living in a blessed life if I can podcast the miners the podcast is
• 1:22:56
  the purchase of in a podcast yeah not just the privilege podcast but basically everybody who's
• 1:23:00
  listening to this and almost everybody who's listening to this is probably in the top 5% of
• 1:23:05
  income earners in the world very very that's a fact and and in terms of their assets in terms of
• 1:23:11
  in terms of their freedom from random crime in terms of the fact that I have to worry about
• 1:23:16
  law and order I mean unless you're listening to this in like a hovel in Nigeria or something you
• 1:23:21
  are probably living in a Western liberal democracy and you're probably you're probably not worried
• 1:23:27
  about whether or not you can have enough food tomorrow to survive if you really work at it you know
• 1:23:33
  and that is incredibly rare and I'd just like us all to have some tiny little bit of gratitude
• 1:23:38
  and appreciation for that and to enjoy the ride like it's life short you know it's been
• 1:23:45
  nice to people it's going to be over soon very fucking true I will say the last closing point
• 1:23:51
  you said before you spoke about the minority groups that you exist in you forgot one what's
• 1:23:56
  that you're potentially one of the last men to wear a mohawk we provide and pull it off and pull
• 1:24:01
  it off my I say so it's like you know I would love to have a mohawk I mean that would be
• 1:24:06
  seriously punk rock it's got a great green it's sort of like a foe hawk like if you're listening
• 1:24:13
  to the podcast without looking without seeing me well I mean you can always Google me but I would say
• 1:24:17
  it's like a sort of maybe 1995 David Beckham foe hawk yeah maybe fucking bring it back can I say
• 1:24:25
  something yeah it it strikes me you know it was really dangerous about a guy like David Beckham
• 1:24:32
  is it's very easy to watch David Beckham in his series you know the Netflix three-part series to
• 1:24:39
  follow a guy like that on Instagram and as a fucking straight dude who's 28 go I can
• 1:24:44
  fucking pull off a fishnet singlet with a pair of jeans there you go I can pull off a
• 1:24:48
  fireball you can do it I can pull off anything that that guy wears and you can no no you can do it
• 1:24:55
  and you look like a dude is ever fucking fight with a fishing net it's true it's it's it's so does
• 1:25:00
  hey he just happens to be David Beckham he happens to be fucking handsome looking rooster yeah
• 1:25:05
  as a handsome looking rooster isn't he might he could have done anything I mean he could have worn
• 1:25:09
  anything it's the thing Harry Styles can wear anything he can wear a feather boa it's fine you know
• 1:25:16
  wait you or I wear a feather boa outside we'll look ridiculous I also speaking to my hair I can't
• 1:25:21
  even wear hats because I look ridiculous in a hat like you know quite apart from the foe hawk
• 1:25:25
  I mean I have terrible fashion ability oh bastard we're just the foe hawk
• 1:25:30
  I could do it maybe I need a mullet I could do mullet I like but like you know what I mean like
• 1:25:36
  you're Harry Styles you can get away with wearing anything you're Josh Sips can't even wear a baseball
• 1:25:42
  cap without looking like I'm wearing a baseball cap you know how some people can wear a hat and
• 1:25:46
  you're like hey and then other people wear a hat and you go oh you wearing a hat I'm that guy
• 1:25:51
  speaking of equality welcome to fucking my world mate so I feel seen mate I appreciate you so
• 1:25:59
  much I've I've enjoyed this it's it's fun and you know this is typically not the kind of conversation
• 1:26:03
  I would have on the pod these very taboo topics they come up from time to time depending on the
• 1:26:07
  guest but it was fun for me to riff with you today I loved it I had a blast thanks for thanks
• 1:26:12
  for inviting me you're a good man we'll make sure that all the links to your show and and
• 1:26:15
  everything that you do of course are in the show description but the truth is people don't need
• 1:26:20
  them they know who you are you're biggest they don't just google uncomfortable conversations
• 1:26:25
  when surely there's they can't be that many of them Josh Sips is the name but it's hard to spell
• 1:26:29
  they'll find it's right there in the show nice you're a good man I appreciate you too