Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Josh Vs The News: Feel Better with Reverend Szeps

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Josh Vs The News: Feel Better with Reverend Szeps · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Good day, humans.
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Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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I feel like it's maybe time for a little tonic, just can we take a breather today?
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It has a lot going on and if ever one was tempted to doom-scroll, these weeks are a
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time when a lot of people are doing it, we're worried about the future of the Middle
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East, we're worried about the future of the world, we're worried about the President
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of the United States, we're worried about China, we're worried about fuel prices, we're
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worried about what will become of us.
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But I had a lovely experience this weekend, I've actually had a great week and I wanted
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to share it with you and share with you some of the insights and also a very entertaining
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court case out of the United States that may tickle and amuse you or like just gross
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you out which is also sometimes fun.
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I was having dinner on lunch rather on Sunday with some famous and wealthy friends and
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we were at one of the loveliest places that you can be in Sydney which is this restaurant
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that overlooks Bondi Beach and we're out and it's outside so you can hear the waves,
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you can see the surfers, it was a beautiful day like mid-20s Celsius, you know mid-70s,
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Fahrenheit and they're dropping a lot of cash, fortunately I didn't pay but they're
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dropping a lot of cash on this thing.
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I'm only talking about life, the universe and everything, we're talking about, you know,
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left versus right, social justice, we're talking about creativity, we're talking about
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maintaining your authenticity when you do this kind of work, you know, not getting captured
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by your audience, not just feeding red meat to the masses, not telling people what they
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want to hear, resisting the echo chamber, resisting the algorithm, touching the grass,
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smelling the roses and at one point one of the diners just gazed out over Bondi Beach
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and just said, I was just listening to the sound of the waves and how loud they are from
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up here, a few stories above the sand and how far they've come across the South Pacific
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before they crash into the shores of Australia having built up their swell from Fiji or New
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Zealand or Hawaii and he said I was just like, this is perfect, this is absolutely perfect,
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there's nowhere else I would rather be and no one I'd rather be with.
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And then we queued a whole bunch of self-deprecating jokes about, well yes, I mean that's
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what comes with privilege, right? I mean, we have the luxury of sitting here, we have
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the luxury of being at a fancy restaurant, not many people don't and then another person
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at the table said, actually, you know what, I had exactly the same kinds of experiences
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when I was 17 years old and I was smoking a spliff with my buddies and we were geeking
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out about the weirdness of the world and the nature of the cosmos and the size of the
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galaxy and all kinds of crazy things that you talk about when you're a stone teenager.
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And he said, and all my life as I do my creative work, as I worry about what other people will
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think of me as I read the reviews, as I try to avoid the toxicity of social media, all
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my life, all I'm really trying to do is get back to being that 17-year-old with a spliff
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and he was like, and that's why we're here. That's what the money is buying us right
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now. It's actually not an add-on to life. It's an attempt to claw ourselves out of the
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psychological measma that we've borrowed ourselves into being bombarded by bad news from
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the other side of the world and other people's opinions of us, and our own self-recrimination
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and our own high standards, our own insecurities, our own egos, and always spending our money
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on today is an attempt to strip all that away and become a 17-year-old kid with a spliff
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again hanging out with his friends and shooting the shit about whatever.
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And I loved that. I loved that that was accessible as a piece of wisdom just by listening to
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the loud roaring sounds of the waves, which you didn't need to be in a fancy expensive
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restaurant to appreciate. The beach is free. Now, you have to have time to go to the beach,
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you have to not be working three different jobs because you're a single parent, raising
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a bunch of kids, but it did remind me that all of us get so caught up in the expectations
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of our adult lives. Myself included, of course. How's the podcast doing? Is it doing
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well? Is there anything I could be doing better? How's my new column at the financial
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review, going up people liking it? Are they reading it? All of that. It's all just the
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chatter of the monkey mind while the waves of the South Pacific continue to roll in.
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So I just wanted to have a chat today and to hear your thoughts in the subset comments
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about ways in which you find peace and tranquility and silence and it's the craziness because
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I don't think you really need to hear from me today about the craziness itself with the
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exception of the very funny and grossed out court story that I'm about to come to. I was
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also in live and this week by the conversation with Adam Spencer, which if you haven't heard
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the last episode was just fabulous because Adam is a mathematics nerd. He's given a
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TED talk exclusively about how weird, enormously large prime numbers are. I mean, he's like
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that level of nerd. No, he's not just a bit nerd. He's like, he really, really gets
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a heart on for prime numbers that a millions of digits long. And after talking to him,
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I was also wowed by the fact that mathematicians and physicists can come up with a bunch of
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equations, little squiggles on a page and they can deduce other equations from those equations
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and other equations from those equations. And on the white board in their minds, they
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can come up with what seemed to be such esoteric relationships between semi-fictional constructs
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like X's and Y's and A's and B's that represent the properties of the momentum of certain objects.
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And those things actually turn out to be embedded in the fabric of the reality that we're living
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in. Like how crazy is this world? How crazy is this simulation that we're living in? I was trying
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to explain the simulation argument to my eight year old daughter the other day. It's interesting
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to try what the rationale is for thinking that we might be living in a computer simulation because
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you know, they're fascinated about that age. They love computer games. They love the the idea of
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multiplayer games. They love they love the free guy, the movie about the you know guy who
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realizes it's sort of a little bit true and show. He realizes that he's a character in a video
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game, but he's a non what do you call an NPC like a non player character. So he doesn't have any
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agency and then when he wakes up and realizes that he does have agency, he realizes that he can
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change the game and change the world. And I was like, it's sort of like that that the you know,
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the idea that we're all living in a simulation. And then I said not so much to my kids, but more
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to my partner. I mean, in a way, religions are a kind of simulation theory. They claim that the
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world that you think that you're living in is actually just a game. It's a test to see how well
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you do and it's a preparation for another level of the game that you're going to graduate to and
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you're either going to be rewarded in heaven or burned in hellfire depending on how you do in
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this game. But the things that you think are important in this game are actually not the things
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that you think you're lasting after are actually sinful. So the world is a topsy turvy sort of
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simulation of what it actually seems to be and the deeper truth is an invisible one. The fabric
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of reality is illusory. And so we spend a lot of time as humans, I guess, playing these games
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and living inside of our stories and our different realities. And talking to Adam Spencer, talking
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to a mathematician who sees the whole world as essentially an interlaced network of mathematical
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theorems is inspiring because it's true that the world actually does obey these abstractions. We
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don't understand how it is that if you build a bridge and you don't obey the equation that the
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engineers and the physicists have come up with, then that bridge will collapse. But if you do obey
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them, then the bridge will stand up. How does the bridge know? How does the bridge know what
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pie is? How does a black hole and your liver and a skyscraper, how do those objects all conform
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to the same basic quite abstract and weird principles of gravitation and radiation and
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all of the forces that are acting upon matter in this cosmos? It's mind boggling and it's too mind
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to justify wasting very much of your attention at all on what's happening in the straits of
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hormones. So that's my thinking about that. However, I am also currently writing my column for the
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Australian financial review this weekend today and have been thinking quite a bit about artificial
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intelligence. Oh, a question on the sub stack from Jeff. Why do you say maths when we say math?
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Yeah, I don't know where that comes from. There are lots of little quirks in American English.
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Non-American English says maths because it's shortened for mathematics. Mathematics,
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it's a plural, maths. There are mathses that you can do, right? It's like maths. And then
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Americans say math. Yeah, there are a little, lots of little quirks like that. Like, um,
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you know, he wrote me a letter. Americans will say to a non-American ear, that sounds like
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you have to say he wrote, sorry, not he wrote me a letter. He wrote me full stop. He wrote me a letter
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is fine for strange grammatical reasons that I can't articulate now because I don't have the language
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for them. But he wrote to me. He didn't, he didn't write me. He doesn't write me. To a non-American
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ear, that sounds like saying me go coffee shop. He, he, he wrote me. You need the two. Anyway,
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lots of little things like that and differences between, uh, between language. Another person on
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the substax says, uh, reverend zeps or rabbi zeps. Yes, we're calling this reverend zeps.
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Only because we thought about rabbi zeps. We thought maybe when I talk about things that
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aren't related to the news, I could be rabbi zeps. Um, why, why give yourself a term that you know
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that 75% of the population thinks is kind of suspect, uh, reverend. We could do like, uh,
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swami or something, but then cultural appropriation. Be canceling a heartbeat. Um, so AI,
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the conversation with Joel Pearson that we had, which we should, you should listen to from
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a couple of weeks ago, if you haven't heard it, has left me bracing. I mean, this is the
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Straits of Hummus to the power Straits of Hummus or Straits of Hummus cubed if you want to go
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out and spend some nerdy. Um, because the scale and the pace of change that AI is going to bring
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we are not prepared for. And I've been thinking about it like this. This is a point that I'm going
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to try to make in the column. We know reliably what happens to human psychology and to sociology
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when, uh, evolved primates like homo sapiens undergo high stress, high uncertainty, uh,
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environments. They become anxious. They become foolish. Uh, they don't make good decisions.
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And I think there might be a few metrics, a few conditions that you can think of that would
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make a situation particularly, um, uh, conducive to that kind of a, uh, a maladaptive response.
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One is the, uh, how traumatizing the change is. Uh, another is how widespread the change is.
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Another is how long the change lasts for, um, so you think about something, uh, for example,
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uh, like the industrial revolution, right? Uh, it's very significant change and it's very widespread
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change. It doesn't just affect one portion of the, of the country, but it happened very, very slowly.
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So we manage it. You think about another change that might be really, really fast like the
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introduction of the internet, uh, and maybe smartphones. And it's very widespread. It's not just
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limited, uh, and it's very fast, but it's also not hugely traumatizing. Turns out it was probably
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more traumatizing than we realized at the time, especially social media, but not so traumatizing
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that society fell apart yet. Then you think about something like COVID, deeply traumatizing,
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completely widespread, but fast. And importantly, it was known that it was going to be fast
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at the beginning. You know, when COVID happened, there was no real fear that it was going to last
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for the rest of our lives. We knew that we were just going to have to hunker down and the lockdowns
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would be over and the budgetary rating that we were splashing would be over at some point.
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There would come a time when the prime minister or the president would say, okay, it's time to go
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out and have picnics again. And then there's another final category, which is things like
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the deindustrialization of Appalachia or of Northern England, which is now voting for
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Greens parties and, you know, for the reform party because of the economic trauma that they've had.
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There you have something which is extremely intense and quite fast in terms of the economic
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changes, but it's not widespread across society. It's localized to a particular geography.
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And what I've been noodling on since talking to Joel Pearson about AI is that you're going to have
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changes that are widespread. In other words, they affect everybody in terms of how we do our work,
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who has a job, how we manage our creative output, how we manage our families, how we organize our
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days, how we see doctors, how we use lawyers, whatever it is that we do, how we educate.
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So widespread, yes, fast, very fast. I mean, you can see it in real time happening and it's only
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going to get faster in the next few years. Traumatizing because people will lose their jobs,
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people have to reevaluate, it'll have massive economic impacts, there'll be retrenchments,
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high productivity with also high unemployment that might have implications for the housing market,
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if all of a sudden some significant number of people who took out home loans at the very
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edge of their borrowing capacity in the past five or 10 years can't repay their mortgages because
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they got retrenched because they've been replaced by AI. So AI worries me because even in the best
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case scenario where we end up coming out the other end, there's no alignment problem, it doesn't
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become sentient, it doesn't try to eat us all with farther beans than a nice Pianti. It's good,
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it does everything we want, AI, great. But to get from here to there in 20 or 30 years is going
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to be an incredibly fast-paced, incredibly widespread, incredibly traumatizing experience for
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everybody with no known end date. So not to be the downer of the party, not to take attention
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away from the waves crashing gently from the South Pacific over the beach. But if you wanted to
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be focused on something, don't focus on the orange man in the White House. Let's think about how to
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make ourselves more resilient and more capable and more well, just psychologically well in order to
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be prepared for things that are going to be quite tumultuous in coming years, both geopolitically
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and also in terms of AI. So that argues for more or not less listening to the waves or wandering
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out in the forest or whatever your equivalent of that is, more or not less contemplation and
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less, not more scrolling and figuring out who's right or wrong about this or that particular
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question in the news. JP on the substaxis, love the zoom out. Thank you. I'm not particularly
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close to a beach, but we all have access to the sunset. Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it.
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After a satisfyingly difficult day, JP writes, taking a few minutes to fathom our place in the
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universe helps provide a sense of awe and meaning among the meaninglessness of it all. That's great.
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I love it. I actually, you know, JP, I flipped from being an atheist to an agnostic.
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This is such a talk about privilege. This could land wrong, but many of you may know that I'm
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a frequent flyer and an aviation junkie and a travel hacker. So while I was living in New York,
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Latam, which is now defunct, but I think it's called Lan Chile now, but the South American
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airline had a special on business class fairs to anywhere in South America. I think they were like
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$900 or $1000 return from New York City. So I was like, ah, here's how I'm going to get back to my
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executive platinum status with American airlines and be able to use all of the platinum lounges
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the world over on one world airlines of which quantis is one. So I'm like, I'm going to just go
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and fly for a weekend and go somewhere totally random. What's the furthest place in South America
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that I can go in order to rack up the largest number of frequent flyer miles and get the highest
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possible status for the lowest possible price? Turns out Easter Island is not very close to anything
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and it's technically part of South America, even though it's like practically a third of the way
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between South America and like Australia, some crazy distance, uh, practically all the way to
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Tahiti. Uh, so I fly to Easter Island for a weekend by myself, nerd lonely sad nerd that I am.
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And one morning, everyone had said, uh, on, on the interwebs, so you got to, what you got to do is
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you got to go up to the rim of the volcano, uh, at sunset. I thought I'm not going to go up to the
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rim of volcano at sunset. Everyone's going to be there at sunset. I only got to the rim of the
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volcano at sunrise when there's no one else there. So, uh, on the first day, I drove, uh, rented
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this, uh, like ATV, you know, a lot of those little, uh, buggies drove around the island, uh,
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saw the biggest island heads. Great, beautiful, wind swept, remote, crazy, middle of nowhere, fabulous,
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you know, what kind of history is there here? Who knows? Didn't do any research about the place,
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didn't go to the archaeological museum, didn't really care. Uh, you know, I don't want to sound
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out uncouth, but I was just, I was there for my, my miles, give me my miles. So I set my alarm
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the next morning and I wake up and I get in the ATV and I drive to the top of the volcano.
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And it's an active volcano. And I'm the only person there. It's dark. And I sit on the rim of this
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volcano and you get this like smoke coming out of it and you can kind of hear rumbling,
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but nothing else. And as the sun begins to rise, I'm looking out over the south Pacific.
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And there's just obviously nothing. I'm sitting on a volcano. There's a town down the
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bottom of the volcano. Easter Island is split around me. But as far as the eye can see, there's just
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the Pacific Ocean, a few birds. And as the sun starts rising, I realize, of course,
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the sun isn't actually rising. What's happening is that as I watch the sun rise, the sun is stationary.
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Let's set aside for a moment that everything's relative and nothing stationary, but the sun is
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stationary for the purposes of our solar system. And what's happening is I'm on a rock that is
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spinning around the star. And the rock is rotating backwards. And my back is falling,
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sorry, my rock is rotating forwards. And my back is falling forwards towards the star.
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And the light of the star is that sort of thin line between the light bit of my rock and the dark
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bit of my rock is coming into view. And I'm passing rotating slowly through the dark side of the
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rock to the light side of the rock. And that's why it looks like the sun is rising.
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Now I promise I had not done any ayahuasca. It was five in the morning. I was not on acid.
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I hadn't taken any mushrooms. But just the experience of seeing the, I want to honestly
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to sunrise, of seeing the earth rotate forwards to expose the local star in this cosmos where there's
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a hundred billion stars in the galaxy and billions of galaxies in the universe did make me
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somewhat amend the certainty of my atheism. Not that I thought that there was going to be anything,
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you know, there wasn't necessarily anything true about ancient texts that were written thousands
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of years ago by, you know, pre-medieval people who didn't even have any understanding of the
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germ theory of disease or let alone the fact that it was the rock of earth that was moving around
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the sun and not the other way around. But just that the whole simulation is nutty. The whole thing
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is crazy. Is it inside a computer? I don't know. Is it created by some kind of intelligence? I
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don't know. Does the whole thing have some kind of purpose? I don't know. Are we conscious humans
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implicated in that purpose? I don't know. I'm pretty sure that it's not true that Muhammad
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flew to heaven on a winged horse or that Jesus rose bodily from the cave behind a rock or whatever,
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they were born of a virgin. We don't have any reason to believe such things. But it was obvious to
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me that we also had no reason to believe that we weren't part of something majestic and extraordinary
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that was far beyond the realm of what we could conceive and that to say, well, we know what happened
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because there was a big bang and physicists can measure what the big bang was and we know how
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evolution happened because Darwin told us about natural selection. None of that actually gets
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down to the sort of ground level why of why does there need to be anything and why does it need to
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be set up in such a way that matter can accrete itself into the form of a brain that can look back
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on this volcanic wondrousness and perceive its own minuscule identity inside this vast cosmos.
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So those were my things thinking and I agree JP sunsets sunrises their moments of contemplation.
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I don't know if it's if it's made up or not but apparently there were tribes of chimpanzees which
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will be just sitting in the in the wild doing their thing. I think maybe Jane Goodall or Diane Fosse
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saw that reported on this in which case perhaps they were gorillas. I don't know what great
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ape it was. Okay, give me a rest. Wasn't homo sapiens and they would be sitting there and they're
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all picking their little knits off each other's hair and eating them on doing whatever you do when
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you're a non homo sapiens evolved primate and when the sun will come sunset time just as the sun
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was setting they'd stop what they're doing and they'd all look at the sunset and the sun would
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set and then once it was set they'd go back to picking lice off each other and gobbling up
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gross little lice I thought that's great even they have the the daunings the inklings the
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beginnings of some kind of sense of the transcendent presumably or maybe they were just maybe that's
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when they fart or something I don't know what that would do but you know it's possible that they
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look at that and they go this is our little spiritual moment this is our the Reverend Dr. Josh
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Zeps speaking to us from the through the photons of our local star as our rock rotates slowly
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backwards and plunges us into night colons says I've noticed people are really enjoying saying
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the words straight of homo's yeah I like it yeah if it was called like you know the narrow lane of
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barry it wouldn't have the same ring it's great homo's it's like when people need to talk about South
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American names and everyone suddenly turns into a Spanish speaker Bené Thurella Nicaracath
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why not it's fun uh now she says uh the anthropic principal strikes again uh yes
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perhaps we're done into going to uh Joe says if we're in a simulation these programmers suck
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yeah they haven't fun aren't they they're having fun I mean the program is really
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they're gone for it they're like let's see what we can throw at them a little a little plague
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we'll give them a little plague we'll give them a dummy in the White House well see what's going on
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uh JP says uh I wish we instead borrowed from AI dumas here my p-god is somewhere between one
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and five percent yeah it's a nice way of putting you know the p-dome where um
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at people who analyze artificial intelligence try to put a number on how likely it is that
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humankind is going to kill itself uh through artificial intelligence JP saying we should do
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the same thing about god instead of either being certain if you're a person of faith or you know
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certain in the negative if you're an atheist have like some kind of uh conditionalization of your
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credence as philosophers of epistemology would say where like instead of it being a binary on off switch
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you have a credence which is like a proposition and then you conditionalize it based on
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your evidence and so for JP like one to five percent that god exists yeah I like that I mean
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depends on your god doesn't it I think the likelihood that the it's the god of one of the books
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who wants us to do the things that the books say close enough to zero percent but the likelihood
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that there is some kind of purpose behind the universe that brought it into existence whether or
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or not that purpose is conscious today could be could be high could be about 50 percent who knows
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um so also I'd lastly before we get to the court case and you're going to want to hear about this
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court case it's fabulous uh I had a dinner last night which was uh at that I don't think I'm
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spilling any beans but um I'm not okay yeah well right now I said that I'm spilling beans I just
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have spilling beans it was that Tony Abbott's office where he occasionally has this is the formal
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prime minister of Australia conservative he was on this show um end of last year and we had quite
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a combative but can convivial conversation where I you know tried to call him out on the morality
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of Australia's refugee policy and locking up asylum seekers in what I'm not locking them up set
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deporting them to desert island open air concentration camps in perpetuity uh for trying to get to
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Australia in an unauthorized fashion um and a few other things that I thought that he needed to
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be challenged on like climate change uh and uh but nonetheless uh I've got an invitation a couple
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weeks ago do you want to come and have dinner with it you know a dozen or so other sort of
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influential people in your space uh at his office and I went and uh had a great time even though
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we come from completely different sides of the political aisle um another real mensch was there
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there's my rabbis apps coming out mensch being the word for an upstanding there's a Yiddish word
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uh for an upstanding person a person who who has credibility and um and gravitas uh who was
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John Anderson the former deputy prime minister of Australia he was actually the acting prime minister
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on 9-11 funnily enough and if you go back and listen to my conversation with him you now has a
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podcast so you know if you're familiar with the whole kind of I don't know trigonometry sort of
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maybe you know new right kind of manosphere space uh John Anderson these I suppose a
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bit of an elder statesman of that maybe Australia's sort of Jordan Peterson but without the crazy
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um and John's a great guy but if you listen to my conversation with him I think it's the only time
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that he's been interviewed uh in this incarnation of his career about what it was like to be the
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acting prime minister on September 11th uh 2001 um anyway so he was there with his delightful wife
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and as we were chatting and I was talking to these people who are almost exclusively
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you know from the opposite side of the political aisle that I am I did walk out of their thinking
29:59
what would the left wing equivalent of that be can I actually imagine any deeply progressive
30:10
leader in Australia inviting to a dinner party someone as frankly offensive to their worldview
30:21
as I am I'm not just politically offensive to the worldview of Christian shall I say nationalist
30:27
conservatives I probably wouldn't want to be called Christian nationalist but they're Christians
30:30
and they're patriots and they're conservatives and they're social conservatives you know
30:37
I'm married to a guy I have kids through surrogacy I'm a non conservative I'm a non Christian
30:44
it's weird I'm always a bit allergic to the claim that you hear from some podcasters uh of like
30:52
you know the most important thing is like civility and to have a nice chat because sometimes
30:56
people need to be called out and sometimes you need to call bullshit where there's bullshit
31:01
but it is worth noting how much more willing the conservative side of the aisle seems to be at
31:09
least in Australia I'm not talking about make America great again here which is the kind of you
31:13
know toxic reactionary politics that you get when I think people feel backed into a corner by the
31:20
extremes of the left over the past decade or so I mean old school small sea conservatism does
31:28
tend to be casting a much bigger umbrella of tolerance at the moment than the left does I cannot
31:33
imagine the mirror image of the dinner that I went to last night where a heterodox bunch of people
31:40
were gathered together by a vehemently left-wing progressive leader in order to air their
31:50
point of view about important issues in a space of non-judgment and uh and a safe space so that's
31:55
just worth thinking about uh what was for dinner someone asks on the uh on the chat it was great
32:03
we had a prawn and avocado and pomegranate appetizer followed by what seemed like beef cheek and
32:08
red wine uh sauce with uh with carrots and uh and uh rocket or a ruler as uh americans say
32:17
and then a mini pavlova with uh probably cremonglays on top and uh some fresh mango on the bottom
32:24
was it to tell us um and scott says if you really want to destroy your concept of what's real try
32:31
DMT yes uh well so DMT is the active compound in ayahuasca if i'm not mistaken scott so i have had it
32:41
in its natural form but yes i understand that if you if you isolate it then DMT is uh i mean that's
32:47
like you know that fires you off to the other end of the universe and back again in like 20 minutes
32:53
doesn't it um and nashie says was the left always this way on the sub stack i've read about wh
33:00
ordin and george bernard shore specifically not being like that curious about how this developed
33:05
yeah no i don't think it was at all i mean yeah golvedal you know people the whole heaps of people
33:11
who sat down and broke bread i mean i guess a bala is the last uh in car in sort of incarnation of
33:18
that philosophy the last famous person famous left wing leader who embodies that sense of
33:25
conciliation like remember his beer summit remember the beer summit on the white house lawn
33:30
when a professor at a university in new england was arrested he's a black professor arrested by a
33:39
white cop in his own home because the cop was working on a bad tip or something and wouldn't
33:45
allow the guy into his house and uh and he wouldn't let the cop into his house and you know a bala
33:50
is naturally instinct was like okay this obviously is racially charged we're in a very racially hot
33:55
moment in this at this moment in time uh let's just uh get him on get the cop and the professor to
34:01
come and have a beer on the white house lawn and to many it seemed trite or uh you know performative
34:08
but it was part of the same philosophy as the dinner last night it's like you know we're not
34:12
getting anywhere by fighting each other so let's just talk and hash it out and have a drink and
34:16
see where we get so no i don't think the left was always this way the left has become
34:21
um i just think the left had too many wins so for the very was did we just thought we were
34:26
ascendant uh and you know by the 2010s it was like histories on our side the arc of justices on
34:33
our sides like we're again in the right direction we've we've vanquished culture we've got all our
34:39
gay television shows we've got our you know what's the next what are they going to do tell you
34:44
know turn us back to the 1950s well be careful what you wish for be careful what you uh challenge
34:51
other people to respond with um and so i think the left got tensorious and became soft certain and
34:57
became coddled and stopped actually i mean it also didn't help that conservatives didn't have
35:03
very good arguments for the modern world they weren't they weren't prosecuting their case
35:08
very well uh and so leftists were insulated from any good arguments against their own positions
35:14
they just regarded it as self-evident that uh they were on the right side of history and to some
35:18
extent that has continued and part of the part of the lesson of the left and part of the trajectory
35:24
of the left now is to lick its wounds a little bit and say okay well what what did we actually
35:30
believe in in the era of Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Mandela uh you're like what are the
35:36
overarching precepts of universalism and pre-speech and tolerance and generosity of spirit and
35:43
egalitarianism that motivated left wing um politics uh and how do we reclaim those and make
35:50
those appealing to everybody instead of uh hunkering down into an antagonistic crouch and just
35:55
trying to take pot shots at mega because uh you know we find them so offensive like let's have
36:02
a positive reinforcement message rather than simply reacting to the shock and trauma of having
36:07
been brought down a peg because we had gotten so finger waggy and sensorious and closed off but
36:13
that's going to be a long journey and I think that the people who could be holding the the left
36:19
wing versions of the dinner party that I went to last night are just going to have to retire or
36:24
die and a new generation of invigorated Gen Z or Gen Z leftists will hopefully arise and hopefully
36:33
they won't all be AOC and Mam Dhani and some of them will be uh you know I don't I hesitate to
36:41
say the Bill Clinton's of the next year or the Barack Obama's of the next year because what you
36:45
need in the future is not what you needed in the past but they will be they will be to the future
36:51
what Bill Clinton was in the early 90s or what Obama was in the early 2000s you know you don't
36:59
know what shape the next you know I guess incarnation of a movement's spirit is going to take
37:09
but when it comes you can sort of spot it and Joe says 20 years ago I took a drop of DMT
37:16
galloped around like a horse and saw a carousel on the ceiling never did any such drug ever again
37:21
I don't blame you Joe I think I'm too much of a pussy I don't think I'm uh yeah I'm I'm too old
37:27
I don't but I do mushrooms again I probably do acid again but do we need to go all the way to DMT
37:33
I'm not sure although ayahuasca you know also very interesting experience so the American court case
37:41
this is an interesting one the ninth circuit you may remember if you're the kind of person who
37:47
listens to the fabulous podcast blocked and reported with Jesse single and Katie Herzog to
37:54
wonderful people and I will be amazed if they're not releasing an episode about this right now
37:58
but you heard it here first you heard it here right for here with the reverend doctor zeps right
38:04
here before they released it I think unless they just released it now uh there was a case
38:10
during peak woke when there was a Korean spa uh in Washington that is the state of Washington I
38:19
believe not the uh the city and uh you know it's an all-newed spa just for women and uh so
38:29
trans woman tried to go in uh who had you know traditionally biologically male genitals and uh
38:36
they refused uh her service and she sued and under Washington state law uh she won and so that's
38:45
gone through the appeals process and it's finally gone to the this is a you know six years ago
38:49
something yeah but now and then she took the case in four years ago 2022 now the ninth circuit court
38:55
of appeals has ruled and the circuit is upheld the state of Washington saying that the spa
39:00
has to allow anyone who says they're a woman under Washington state law that's it if you say you're
39:05
a woman you're a woman so uh the ninth circuit court of appeals ruled on Thursday that a Christian
39:11
owned traditional women only Korean spa in Washington cannot sue the state on first amendment
39:18
grounds for forcing it to open its doors to transgender women the spa's case was it's part of our
39:24
freedom of speech and freedom of religion to practice out you know cultured the way that we want to
39:29
and if that doesn't include having you know biologically male genitals in uh women's only space
39:36
then so be it no no no no no no no no no no no the appeals court said what's interesting though about
39:41
the case is the incredible language that is roiling uh the American jurisprudence right now
39:50
because of one of the dissents from a Trump appointed justice who disagreed with his colleagues
39:58
decision on the court and I'll read it to you uh it's uh it's something uh so just as background
40:04
Olympus spa are with two locations in Washington state is a traditional Korean spa with mass
40:10
arches body scrubs and hot tubs that require nudity in 2020 the state's human rights commission
40:19
issued a complaint after a transgender woman who still had a penis was denied entry
40:26
the spa then sued the human rights commission on first amendment grounds arguing the state's policy
40:31
violated its right to free exercise of religion freedom of speech and right of association
40:38
the business wrote in 2023 in its complaint against the Washington state human rights commission
40:45
since inception the spa wrote Olympus spa has served women in their intimate spaces in a private setting
40:52
the family run businesses owned by Korean Christians who hold sincere faith-based convictions
40:59
against allowing persons whose genitals are external and then they put in parentheses
41:04
males uh to be present with persons whose genitals are internal and in parentheses
41:11
females in case anyone needs clarification which of course these days we do while in a state of
41:16
partial or full undress if such persons are not married to one another that's their religious
41:21
conviction um should they be forced to allow transgender women with male genitalia to enter the
41:27
spa the plaintiffs wrote quote customers and employees have clearly communicated that they will
41:31
not return under such circumstances causing the business to spiral into bankruptcy so the spa is
41:37
come on guys where a Christian Korean ladies spa the human rights commission is going to ruin us
41:46
if the Christian Korean ladies who come uh are around other ladies who have wing wings uh franken beans
41:56
doodles um but a federal judge dismissed that claim and sided with the human rights commission said
42:02
nope you got to allow the doodles in so now we get to this appeal the appeal that just came down
42:09
this week on Thursday so uh needless to say it's border alert the you know the the human rights
42:16
commission in Washington state won the appeal so the spa is screwed but one of the judges on the
42:22
Ninth Circuit are dissented and uh this is uh a judge Lee his name is uh and uh he wrote uh he
42:33
wrote the following in his formal dissent in the uh in the Ninth Circuit court. Korean spars he
42:41
writes are not like spars at the four seasons or the Ritz Carlton with their soothing ambient
42:45
music and lavender aroma in private lounges uh he says uh he goes on he explains the context of
42:56
the Korean spa that basically this is uh oh here it is uh steeped in centuries old tradition
43:03
Korean spars require their patrons to be fully naked as they sit in communal saunas and undergo
43:10
deep tissue scrubbing of their entire bodies in an open area filled with other unclothed patrons
43:16
now see this is breaking news that even I didn't know after having heard about this damn case for
43:22
years I thought that I thought that the problem was that the trans woman wanted to go in and have
43:27
like a sort of a massage with a female Korean spandah that they didn't want a massage the trans
43:36
woman with external journals um but it's not that it's actually that it's there's a whole
43:41
communal area and you're sitting right next to other women while the Koreans are scrubbing you
43:46
down in intimate places um so the the judge the dissenting judge adds now under direct under
43:55
edict from the state women and even girls as young as 13 years old must be nude alongside patrons
44:03
with exposed male genitalia as they receive treatment and female spa employees
44:10
must provide full body massages to naked preoperative transgender women with intact male sexual organs
44:19
uh so I was the beginning of the dissent and uh it went on to say this which has caused all the
44:26
ruckus isn't a legal court opinion this is a case the dissenting justice rights about swinging
44:33
dicks he says uh by the way if you're listening to this portion of the uh of the live stream uh with
44:40
children around uh that's not the last time I'm gonna say that term the Christian owners of
44:46
Olympus spa a traditional Korean women only nude spa understandably don't want swinging dicks
44:53
in their spa their female employees and female clients don't want them in their spa either but
44:59
Washington state insists on them the them here being you know swinging dicks and now rights
45:07
justice so does the ninth circuit he's outraged it is colleagues for reaching this decision
45:13
he continues you may think that swinging dicks shouldn't appear in a judicial opinion
45:19
he's preempting the fact that people aren't gonna like the fact that he's writing this
45:24
you're not wrong he writes but as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to
45:29
merely encounter that phrase in this opinion I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring
45:36
for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus spa some as young as 13 to be visually assaulted
45:43
by the real thing uh to which his colleagues when they read this dissent were so horrified
45:51
that they've released a statement saying the lead to sense use of such course language and
45:55
invective may make for publicity or entertainment value but it has no place in a judicial opinion
46:01
now the legal dissent ignores ordinary principles of dignity and civility and demeans this court
46:06
neither the parties nor the panel panel dissent found it necessary to invoke such crude and vitriolic
46:12
language decorum and collegiality demand more we are better than this to which the trump
46:21
appointed judge who was writing the dissent including the term big swinging dicks says
46:28
I'll respond briefly to my colleagues discomfort with however written the dissent my distressed
46:32
colleagues appear to have the fastidious sensibilities of a Victorian numb when it comes to mere
46:38
unpleasant words in my opinion yet exhibit yet exhibit the scruples of our dearly departed
46:43
colleague colleague judge Ryan Hart when it comes to the government trampling on civil liberties
46:47
and exposing women and girls to male genitalia he writes yes the introduction to this dissent
46:53
intentionally uses indecorous language but that is quite literally what this case is about
46:58
male genitalia is precisely what the spa for religious reasons object to admitting into its
47:05
female only spaces the fact that so many on our court want to pretend that this is a case about
47:10
anything other than swinging dicks he repeats it again is the very reason the shocking language is
47:17
necessary and the majority opinion just was like okay dude whatever and they just said that
47:26
washing in state has adopted an expansive definition of sexual orientation which includes gender
47:31
identity therefore the the lady with the big swinging dick not my words not my words is allowed
47:41
to use the Korean female spa which probably doesn't even exist anymore because it's been years now
47:46
it's gone in a business I don't know maybe it's there maybe a lot of people love it maybe they love
47:50
seeing the the BS D's while they're getting their Korean rub down so that's that's the little
47:59
side the main point of this is don't scroll get off social media and remember the points that
48:07
my friend said about how all of the things that we try to do in order to make ourselves fancy or
48:13
earn money or socialize with the right people or be in the in-crowd are all just ways for us to try
48:21
to slough off the accretion of bullshit that we've accumulated throughout our lives that our egos
48:27
get us to focus on that our algorithms and peers distract us with and what we're really trying to do
48:35
anytime we try to splurge on a good time for ourselves is revisit what it's like to be a 17-year
48:43
old smoking a spliff and hanging with their buddies thinking about how crazy life is and how
48:50
weird it is to be a human so here and if the sermon have a fabulous day we'll see you next time