Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “What’s Comedy For, Anymore?” with Wil Anderson

Transcript

“What’s Comedy For, Anymore?” with Wil Anderson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:07
  What is the role of comedy specifically stand up comedy in this crazy new world?
• 0:13
  We had the Jimmy Kimmel Trump snafu, we had Stephen Colbert being cancelled, we have
• 0:19
  these comedians going to Saudi Arabia and being paid bucketloads of money to perform
• 0:25
  for a questionable regime, we have Mark Marin going out and accusing his fellow comedy
• 0:31
  podcast bros like Joe Rogan of delivering unto the world Donald Trump just because
• 0:37
  they couldn't say the R word and they were all upset about cancel culture and it was
• 0:41
  a storm in a teacup.
• 0:42
  I wanted to sit down with Australia's most successful and best known stand up comic.
• 0:47
  I think that is fair to say, Will Anderson has been gracing Australian television screens
• 0:52
  for almost 20 years on his flagship panel show.
• 0:55
  It's called Gruen and it's essentially an analysis of advertising but through looking at
• 1:00
  advertising and marketing and social media it also looks at Australia and who we are
• 1:05
  and who we're becoming as a species.
• 1:07
  He started out in radio much like myself but on the comedy side of things rather than
• 1:12
  the journalism side he hosted the breakfast show on triple J he hosted a drive time radio
• 1:17
  show on triple M.
• 1:19
  He was nominated for the highest honor in Australian television, a low gear award for most popular
• 1:24
  host and he's just a wonderful person to sit down and rumble with such a quick wit and
• 1:29
  such a thoughtful person about social media about what's happening to humankind about
• 1:35
  the unique magic of working a crowd with no camera recording his shows no need to be
• 1:40
  pandering towards the algorithm to create a viral clip.
• 1:44
  We talk about his not knowing who Candace Owens is whether we have a duty to stay across
• 1:49
  the news in this crazy world or whether we're actually doing ourselves a service and humanity
• 1:54
  a service by tuning out.
• 1:56
  I hope you enjoy as much as I did the one, the only Will Anderson.
• 2:03
  Because I listen to this show like and I like it a lot and I like it because I feel like
• 2:12
  we share like a bunch of things we probably like world perspectives but then I feel like
• 2:17
  there's areas that you go into that I wouldn't actually go into and often I feel like you're
• 2:22
  my conduit to a world of names that I only otherwise here on the periphery but you kind
• 2:28
  of bring into your world and what I've got like who pretty man.
• 2:32
  Candace Owens or something.
• 2:33
  Oh right, yeah, yeah, you know, a person that I would have a wife but you would never
• 2:37
  I'm never going to go and search out in of her content.
• 2:40
  Wait, did you not know about Candace Owens until we heard on my show or well again here's
• 2:45
  what I would say is if somebody said to me have you heard the term Candace Owens I would
• 2:51
  have been able to say yeah I reckon if they said where on the spectrum of like do you
• 2:57
  can see if our spectrum is are they in the media are they considered do they have a lot
• 3:02
  of really verifiable opinions about like the things that had I guess filtered through
• 3:08
  to me would be that she didn't think that Macron's wife was like a woman or whatever.
• 3:13
  Yeah, I mean she is happy.
• 3:17
  Mac can't be every episode though she can't be on Oh, you'd be surprised these days would
• 3:20
  be.
• 3:21
  Yeah.
• 3:22
  If it's not that is that two hours a day or whatever what can you just be she's very
• 3:28
  Charlie is that not just that though she like I don't think she is and then what else
• 3:33
  you're just padding for fifty nine minutes.
• 3:35
  Well, no, but she's enthusiastic about so should be if you're down the rabbit hole
• 3:38
  then you've got lots to talk about so if it's not that then it's about how actually
• 3:42
  when Charlie Kirk was shot there was a trap door underneath and he was shot by a massage
• 3:47
  agent.
• 3:48
  Well, this is one of the angle of the bullet and stuff.
• 3:51
  So this is one of the things I'm really fascinated by which is so I went off social media a few
• 3:56
  years ago and I am really fascinated by like how much that means I have engaged disengaged
• 4:04
  whatever from the world from the debate from and how much of that is as you often talk
• 4:10
  about on this show you're like is that the real world is online the real world how much
• 4:14
  is how we behave with each other in an online or social media environment reflective of
• 4:19
  how we behave with each other on a day-to-day environment and I think that Charlie Kirk
• 4:24
  to me was the big one because if you said to me, do you know who Candace Owens was yes
• 4:29
  in the same way as I knew who Charlie Kirk was right which is honestly not at all.
• 4:34
  You turned the term I'd heard the term and I knew that the people I knew from the way
• 4:39
  that people had used the term that they were not fond of it or that the people that were
• 4:44
  fond of it didn't seem to be the people whose opinions I trusted on a lot of other things.
• 4:48
  I was like, you've just told me how I didn't need the vaccine and now you're telling me
• 4:52
  about this Charlie Kirk in the same voice.
• 4:55
  Yeah, I'll take a pass on both of those.
• 4:57
  Yeah, no, that's interesting, I mean Charlie, but I mean I do think there's a whole there
• 5:02
  is a whole world out there that is a real world that these people inhabit where they're
• 5:06
  doing real things.
• 5:07
  Yes, no, I'm encouraging.
• 5:09
  My question is this to you is like, if I don't know who Charlie Kirk is because I am just
• 5:16
  living in my life and in the rest of my life, Charlie Kirk doesn't come into my world unless
• 5:20
  I go into the infrastructures in which Charlie Kirk is a big star, the social media infrastructures
• 5:26
  where he lives and exists, even though they are real world events, they are real world events
• 5:29
  that are created for the idea of this social media engagement, right, or at least this building
• 5:36
  of a movement or whatever, if it has nothing to do with me, have I abdicated my responsibility
• 5:42
  to a modern society?
• 5:43
  Like do we have some, in the old days, if I didn't read the newspaper, I would have felt
• 5:47
  like I wasn't doing my role as a citizen which was to at least be informed enough that
• 5:54
  my vote counted or if I was asked for an opinion on something that at least it was something
• 5:59
  that was researched or whatever, and I, by not being on social media, I'm not indicating
• 6:05
  my responsibility to this modern moment.
• 6:08
  No, I don't think you are because I don't think that the being on social media is a prerequisite
• 6:12
  for understanding the forces that social media is aggravating or causing or like I was going
• 6:19
  to say ameliorating, but I don't think it's ameliorating very much because it, but I do think
• 6:23
  that you need someone to be the social media whisperer to you and I think that's partly
• 6:31
  my role in the satire ecosystem and it's partly the role of good publications, like I don't
• 6:36
  know, it's likely that the economist or the New York Times or one of those publications has
• 6:42
  written since Charlie Kirk's death, some kind of summary of his impact on American politics
• 6:47
  that's insightful.
• 6:48
  I haven't hunted for it because I didn't quite need it because I was already immersed
• 6:51
  in it, but I don't think you need to go to the, you don't need to go to the horse's mouth
• 6:55
  to like smell the horse's breath to coin a metaphor.
• 6:59
  Like you can understand what Charlie, like I've just recorded an episode just today before
• 7:03
  you came in.
• 7:04
  I don't know when we'll roll them out, so if it's in the feed or not, but with an academic
• 7:08
  and former journalist in the States who specializes in understanding the American, Christian
• 7:12
  nationalism in America and the importance that Charlie Kirk and his organization turning
• 7:17
  point USA have in resurrecting this quite fearcratic idea about what America ought to be,
• 7:22
  winding back the rights of sexual minorities and like, you know, installing Christians in
• 7:26
  public law, public office and retaking a Hollywood back from the simple, you know, eating
• 7:32
  this and, yeah, and secularists who it's been possessed by.
• 7:36
  And so I think episodes like that are where you get your information about Charlie Kirk.
• 7:40
  If anything, it's probably just deranging to try to get from social media.
• 7:44
  I don't know.
• 7:45
  Okay, so this is, I guess where I started with this is often you will have somebody on
• 7:49
  this show.
• 7:51
  One part of the reason that I listen to this show is that because I trust you in a way
• 7:56
  that I don't trust them.
• 7:57
  Right.
• 7:58
  I appreciate that.
• 7:59
  Thank you.
• 8:00
  As your, my guide to them, yeah, because if I go into their spaces, I think it's also
• 8:07
  because I'm not sure that I have the capacity to, I think I can be captivated by somebody's
• 8:15
  time and idea in the moment.
• 8:17
  We all can.
• 8:18
  I want to give it someone.
• 8:19
  So if they're there in front of me, you're going to be like, okay, they're telling me
• 8:21
  all their bullshit.
• 8:22
  I'm like, actually, your bullshit doesn't sell my bullshit right now.
• 8:24
  Why is there a photograph of a young, breachied macron between the ages of seven and
• 8:28
  twelve or whatever?
• 8:29
  I'll listen to you for 45 minutes and I realize, she's a dude.
• 8:33
  Okay.
• 8:34
  You're right.
• 8:35
  I don't want to be that.
• 8:36
  Yeah.
• 8:37
  How do you not be that?
• 8:38
  How do you go into these like situations where you might be talking to somebody that
• 8:43
  you know, you're going to, they're going to try to bedazzle you with a whole bunch of
• 8:46
  bullshit.
• 8:47
  How do you prepare for those who's interviewing who here, William, but I mean, well, we haven't
• 8:52
  really started.
• 8:53
  This is the reason to be where I get to interview here.
• 8:55
  Okay.
• 8:56
  We'll start rolling in a moment.
• 8:57
  Don't worry, folks.
• 8:59
  I think the, some, there are some that I don't go into like I have never, I, we were
• 9:04
  pitched recently a 9-11 truth, I who's got a new book out about building seven and
• 9:09
  how it was, it was able to do all the hallmarks of a controlled demolition and that sort
• 9:13
  of thing.
• 9:14
  And I declined and I had the good grace to explain to the public to the publicist that I'm
• 9:20
  just not well informed enough to be able to have that debate.
• 9:23
  The like that is the truth about it.
• 9:25
  Like it's not that I think that it is, it should be forbidden from public life that we
• 9:32
  debate whether or not 9-11 was an inside job and a controlled demolition by the US government
• 9:37
  or something, it's that if you're going to do that, you know that the other side is
• 9:42
  going to come so well armed with every little bit factoid that they've been able to
• 9:46
  dread job.
• 9:47
  I'm just going to be overwhelmed with an arsenal of what is probably bullshit and I'm
• 9:50
  not going to be able to resist it.
• 9:52
  All I'm doing is I'm saying popular mechanics, which is a magazine that I trust, which lots
• 9:57
  of engineers write for went through all of this 20 years ago and they said there's no
• 10:02
  there there and all of those things have been explained.
• 10:04
  So I'm just going to outsource my faith to people who are engineers for a living and
• 10:10
  of course you are.
• 10:11
  Also, it's 20 years after 9-11 and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way.
• 10:16
  Like half those people will be dead of natural causes by now.
• 10:19
  Like do you mean like the point being that like Pete Davidson's dad died in 9-11 is doing
• 10:25
  the rear comedy festival.
• 10:26
  Like I feel like if you're in 9-11, he's like why?
• 10:31
  That's the point.
• 10:32
  Even if you discover it wasn't inside job, most of the people had perpetrated it a long
• 10:38
  dead.
• 10:39
  I think that there I think there would be a good reason to want to know.
• 10:42
  If I were like even same with JFK, it's just like saying who cares, they're all dead.
• 10:49
  But here's what I would say.
• 10:50
  Have we not allocated the right amount of time looking for an answer?
• 10:55
  That's true.
• 10:56
  That's what I would say.
• 10:57
  Of all the things in the world that we are curious about and we need answers to this.
• 11:01
  We've searched.
• 11:02
  We've had a look.
• 11:03
  We've had a cool deal of learning.
• 11:04
  You've done that thing when you're like lost your case in the house.
• 11:06
  Yeah, and eventually you get like, I've looked in the lounge everywhere.
• 11:08
  I've looked everywhere.
• 11:09
  There is definitely not in the lounge room.
• 11:11
  I'm going to have to check the fridge.
• 11:12
  I know they shouldn't be in the fridge, but when you check the places that they normally
• 11:17
  are and they're not there, they're probably in the fridge, right?
• 11:20
  Well that's why.
• 11:21
  But the fridge in this metaphor is Brigitte Macron being a man, right?
• 11:25
  I know.
• 11:26
  Yeah, because you've done 9-11, although Candace with big on that as well, Candace is
• 11:31
  not a fine thing about it.
• 11:32
  Yeah, okay.
• 11:33
  Well 9-11.
• 11:34
  Now I've moved on.
• 11:35
  Yeah.
• 11:36
  But the Brigitte Macron thing just seems so humanly cruel as well, because of the, these
• 11:41
  are people.
• 11:42
  It isn't that sort of like, I mean, I know that 9-11 was real people as well, but you
• 11:47
  can take it to being a bigger thing and step back and kind of have the conspiracy around.
• 11:51
  You're not directly sort of like a tagging team, like that person.
• 11:55
  This person that I can name right now.
• 11:57
  Yeah.
• 11:58
  No, I think there is an asymmetry just to answer the original question about like, how do
• 12:02
  you insulate yourself from being sucked into a person's charm when they're spinning bullshit?
• 12:06
  You just have to, you have to make sure that your knowledge of the subject is moderately
• 12:11
  equally matched and up to the task, which for me, it's not if I talk to it, it's like
• 12:16
  the same with climate change.
• 12:17
  I don't know if climate change tonight has on the show because I just don't know enough
• 12:20
  to know how to respond to all of their little tidbits of, you know, nonsense that they're
• 12:24
  going to throw at me.
• 12:25
  That's me.
• 12:26
  Yeah.
• 12:27
  But you did ABC radio and like what you need to know, like to have some of those skills.
• 12:30
  I always get, as you can imagine, because I've kind of worked peripherally to the ABC
• 12:34
  for like a lot of my life, so you can imagine when some of those radio opportunities pop
• 12:38
  up, they occasionally ring me and say, hey, would you be interested in doing one of these?
• 12:43
  And I'm always like, you have overestimated me to not be one over like every single person
• 12:51
  who puts, I would be the constant sort of, well, that's how you convince me.
• 12:55
  We have this running joke on, which was actually speaking to David Letterman as we were
• 13:01
  before we started, because I know we're both huge fans of Letterman.
• 13:04
  He had this running thing, are these your drums?
• 13:06
  Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 13:07
  Are these your drums?
• 13:08
  At the end of Letterman, when you would go over to the band, often when he was saying,
• 13:12
  you know, this is like smashing pumpkins, and then always go to the drummer and you'd
• 13:15
  be like, are these your drums?
• 13:17
  Did you hide these drums?
• 13:18
  Are these your drums?
• 13:19
  Like a running bit, just in the background, there was only for him, you know what I mean?
• 13:23
  But there is a compilation on YouTube.
• 13:26
  This is one of the good things about the internet.
• 13:27
  Fabulous.
• 13:28
  There is a compilation.
• 13:29
  I find out a new anecdote about Dave.
• 13:30
  And you can just watch him band off the band, and some of the biggest bands in history,
• 13:34
  just him and these your drums?
• 13:36
  It's just called a leisure drums, you can just google it.
• 13:39
  It's amazing.
• 13:40
  Fabulous.
• 13:41
  But I'm groomed, we have a thing, so we have this segment, the pitch, we're advertising
• 13:43
  agencies, pitch and, like, uncomfortable audience.
• 13:46
  I'm familiar with the show, but yes, for a little bit, for a listener.
• 13:49
  So, yeah, so they do a little fake advertisement, you know, convince people to eat well meat
• 13:53
  or whatever.
• 13:54
  And I always need something to say at the end, but it's competition, and you just need
• 13:58
  a placeholder.
• 13:59
  And one day, I just started in the spirit of David Letterman saying, well, you've convinced
• 14:03
  me.
• 14:04
  And because you can just like that mean, whatever.
• 14:07
  Yes.
• 14:08
  And then, like, I just started saying, well, you've convinced me at all, like, and now
• 14:12
  in our, in our meetings, like, it's been going for like a decade, we can have a meeting
• 14:18
  and an ad can be bad that we're watching, and someone would just turn and go, well, you
• 14:22
  have this.
• 14:23
  Okay.
• 14:24
  You've successfully created the meme.
• 14:26
  Yeah.
• 14:27
  No, I mean, the, the, I think you're also, when you decline the invitation from ABC local
• 14:33
  radio to do a fill-in gig over the summer or whatever, you may be, you may be overestimating
• 14:39
  the requirements of like the evening shift on ABC local radio in its journalistic chops.
• 14:47
  Yeah.
• 14:48
  You can also do lifestyle stuff.
• 14:49
  You're doing like, if you're doing the afternoon show or something like that, there's
• 14:53
  not much of a call to be holding the prime minister's feet to fire.
• 14:56
  I understand.
• 14:57
  But I think there's an expectation, no, you know what I think it is more than anything.
• 15:03
  It's just my general, like, the reason that we sat down and I immediately started asking
• 15:09
  you questions rather than the other way around, despite the fact that I'm very used to being
• 15:13
  interviewed is that I am, I already know all the stuff about me and the small curious
• 15:18
  about you the other way around me.
• 15:19
  Yeah.
• 15:20
  Yeah.
• 15:21
  I feel that way as well.
• 15:22
  And that's why I find parties and like meeting people on small talks, so boring, because
• 15:23
  I have to talk about myself, like, I've not already know me, or bore me, like, I don't
• 15:28
  want to have to tell you about me, rather ask people about themselves.
• 15:33
  And so on, in terms of like just keeping maintaining that healthy level of skepticism, one
• 15:38
  thing is the component of knowing a bit about the subject, but the other is also just having
• 15:43
  a good bullshit detector and I may have a more finely tuned bullshit detector than you
• 15:46
  do.
• 15:47
  Like, I'm quite good at just smelling a rat somewhere and then like tugging on that when
• 15:54
  other people would just ignore their feeling of skepticism and move on, because it would
• 15:59
  be an impolite to interrogate it too much, but if I think someone's glossing over something
• 16:05
  or aligning something, then instead of just letting it pass, I do have an instinct to
• 16:09
  start burrowing like a little fox hands and go like, what's in there?
• 16:13
  What are you hiding from me, dammit?
• 16:14
  Yeah, I think that is what I notice and I really like that because that's not me at all.
• 16:20
  Right.
• 16:21
  Like some of my friends would say to you that I am like a good person to run with or something
• 16:26
  to scam or whether you should be suspicious, something by, but the truth of it is if I'm
• 16:30
  being completely honest with you is I have an all or nothing approach, which is I start
• 16:35
  with the assumption that all things are okay.
• 16:38
  Right.
• 16:39
  And then work backwards from that position, whereas you are much better at sort of like
• 16:43
  going, okay, I'll let you get away with this bit because I think that maybe there is
• 16:47
  something to that.
• 16:48
  Yeah.
• 16:49
  You know, which gives you a capacity to learn from someone that maybe the other bits you
• 16:53
  do vehemently disagree with, you can learn about the bits in between that might be.
• 16:59
  Aren't?
• 17:00
  Yeah.
• 17:01
  Well, I also assume that people, but I think you assume this as well, that people think
• 17:04
  that they have good reasons for thinking the things that they think.
• 17:06
  Yes.
• 17:07
  Like, I've never understood people who think that other people they disagree with must be
• 17:12
  malicious or lying or something.
• 17:15
  Like I think everyone is the star of their own universe.
• 17:18
  Yeah.
• 17:19
  Everyone is the hero of their own story.
• 17:20
  I understand what you mean, but how much do you back this?
• 17:25
  I'll put it this way.
• 17:27
  If someone came to you and said, I want you to write a book.
• 17:31
  It's Josh's guide to life.
• 17:33
  You know, your Jordan Peterson, like Jordan Peterson, you know what, we've got those
• 17:38
  12.
• 17:39
  We mean rather 12.
• 17:40
  All right.
• 17:41
  Remind me to bring up a bit about Louis C. Cahill and Conan.
• 17:46
  So they come to you and they give you this and how confident would you feel that the
• 17:51
  choices you make for yourself are the sort of choices that you would say to other people
• 17:57
  you should also not confident at all.
• 17:59
  I don't think they're good for me.
• 18:01
  Like a lot of them.
• 18:02
  I'm in charge of me and I don't think I'm doing a great job like that, let alone outsourcing
• 18:07
  the idea that I should also be in charge of how other people are living their lives.
• 18:11
  Yeah, but how does that relate to each person being the hero of their own story?
• 18:15
  Well, I mean, because of course I'm still the hero of my own story.
• 18:19
  Right.
• 18:20
  But I don't think the right for yourself to out in some way.
• 18:22
  I think I'm the hero, but I'm not the writer.
• 18:25
  No, I mean, yes, I also agree.
• 18:28
  And it does happen, as you know, that publishers will come to you when you have a little bump
• 18:33
  in the media or something and they'll be like, have you thought about writing a book
• 18:35
  and maybe you could write an uncomfortable conversations book or a memoir or you know,
• 18:39
  answer as my ideas.
• 18:40
  And I always spend like a few weeks sort of noodling on it in the car.
• 18:44
  And then I go, I don't have anything to say and everyone's like, of course you have
• 18:48
  things to say.
• 18:49
  You say them all the time.
• 18:50
  I'm like, yeah, I don't know if they're any good.
• 18:51
  I don't know if I want to put them on a paper and ask people to sell money, giving
• 18:55
  money for them.
• 18:56
  Is it something about the idea of it being an ongoing conversation?
• 19:01
  So I think that's what it is for me is often I don't like, I listen to these people have
• 19:05
  this certainty of position and often it means that they have stopped right on a topic,
• 19:11
  right?
• 19:12
  Because to have a firm opinion on something, you almost have to say, okay, we're getting
• 19:17
  we're getting our boat out of the river.
• 19:18
  We're setting up camp.
• 19:19
  Yeah.
• 19:20
  Whereas I'm still like, we're in the boat.
• 19:21
  Yes.
• 19:22
  I can help.
• 19:23
  Yeah.
• 19:24
  Yeah.
• 19:25
  Yeah.
• 19:26
  Yeah.
• 19:27
  Yeah.
• 19:28
  We might get spun around a bit while we're in the boat and we're like, and so I always feel
• 19:31
  and I think that's partly the stand up thing.
• 19:33
  It's like just constantly moving forward, you have to be or otherwise you get stuck in
• 19:37
  the same place.
• 19:38
  But I also think it's just with ideas, I'm like, yeah, I'm in the business of us exploring
• 19:43
  this idea.
• 19:44
  I would love us to be having a conversation about this and in general, as we have this
• 19:49
  conversation about this, I will be hopefully trying to move you over more in the direction
• 19:54
  that I feel like is the helpful direction for our society to be moving in or at least
• 19:59
  guarding that you're not moving us all over into the part that I don't think is helpful
• 20:03
  or whatever.
• 20:04
  Off into the crocodile and festive swamp.
• 20:05
  In the small amount that I have any power or capacity, is it?
• 20:09
  I mean, that's one part of it and the other part of it is I think that most of the things
• 20:12
  that I have feel to you, most of the principles that drive me are more kind of meta principles
• 20:18
  about how to develop principles than they are principles themselves.
• 20:21
  What do you mean by that?
• 20:22
  If I had to write like 12 rules of living, it would be things like, don't get too certain
• 20:28
  about having 12 rules for living, which would be a sort of meta principle about principles
• 20:33
  or like, you know, always maintain an open mind.
• 20:36
  Yeah, there are more than, there are etched rules that are more than 12 rules, right?
• 20:39
  That's right.
• 20:40
  It would be like anyone who's trying to convince you this only 12 rules is trying to sell
• 20:44
  your book about how there's only 12 rules.
• 20:46
  That's right.
• 20:47
  Or like, I mean, my principles for having a conversation would be that sometimes it's
• 20:50
  useful in the conversation to step outside of the conversation and identify what's happening
• 20:54
  in the conversation.
• 20:55
  So if you're in an argument with someone, you know, a good way to defuse it is to say,
• 21:00
  it's to just point to what's actually happening, you know, I understand that if you're arguing
• 21:05
  about who, you know, should have stacked the dishwasher low to the dishwasher last night,
• 21:08
  you know, I understand that we're having a tip about this at the moment.
• 21:11
  And then you get some perspective on it.
• 21:13
  And similarly in an interview, you can often do that, you can step back, you can sort
• 21:17
  of backtrack.
• 21:18
  Most of my stuff is like, I would feel sort of weirdly hubristic about taking just a set
• 21:23
  of principles and like writing them down as if like, these are my beliefs because they'd
• 21:28
  all just be beliefs about how we should develop beliefs like be curious, be, you know, open
• 21:34
  minded, you know, assume the best of the other side, you know, try to find areas of common
• 21:39
  ground.
• 21:40
  I don't think this is rewriting.
• 21:41
  Yeah, but that's what I would say is, and I think that is a mindset thing or whatever
• 21:46
  it might be, but they would be things that I would consider to be, like, you know, guides
• 21:51
  to how you should live your life because that's what I mean about being in the river, right?
• 21:55
  Yeah.
• 21:56
  That be, that be curious, be open minded, whatever it is.
• 21:59
  And it might be to hear something that makes you feel uncomfortable for whatever reason
• 22:03
  like in an uncomfortable conversation, like it's nice to have somebody though to be your
• 22:07
  guide into that because like I said, there are people who come on here and say things
• 22:12
  or have world views or perspectives about things that I inherently, like, would it just
• 22:18
  my initial reaction is no, you're an idiot, I write you off immediately just because you
• 22:22
  believe this thing or have this perspective about a certain group of people in society
• 22:26
  or whatever it might be.
• 22:27
  And I've like really enjoyed being able to have a guide to access those conversations.
• 22:33
  Good.
• 22:34
  Right.
• 22:35
  Yeah.
• 22:36
  Yeah.
• 22:37
  Yeah.
• 22:38
  Yeah.
• 22:39
  Yeah.
• 22:40
  Yeah.
• 22:41
  Yeah.
• 22:42
  Yeah.
• 22:43
  Yeah.
• 22:44
  Yeah.
• 22:45
  Yeah.
• 22:46
  Yeah.
• 22:47
  Yeah.
• 22:48
  Yeah.
• 22:49
  Yeah.
• 22:50
  Yeah.
• 22:51
  Yeah.
• 22:52
  Yeah.
• 22:53
  Yeah.
• 22:54
  Yeah.
• 22:55
  Yeah.
• 22:56
  Yeah.
• 22:57
  Yeah.
• 22:58
  Yeah.
• 22:59
  Yeah.
• 23:00
  Yeah.
• 23:01
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:03
  Yeah.
• 23:04
  Yeah.
• 23:05
  Yeah.
• 23:06
  He was talking about his writing mentor, his comedy mentor back in the day was his old Jewish
• 23:10
  guy.
• 23:11
  And Louis was like, you know how people normally have rules of thumb like, you know, you've
• 23:15
  got to remember the three J's or something like, you know, the, you know, justice, you
• 23:22
  know, but this guy would say, you got to remember the 45 P's.
• 23:31
  Yeah.
• 23:32
  Yeah.
• 23:33
  Yeah.
• 23:34
  Well, boys, uh, post appearance, um, point at things you like, I just cannot come up with
• 23:48
  even five of his 45 P's.
• 23:50
  Yeah.
• 23:51
  The ABC radio studios in Melbourne, Australia, there is a list of P words on the wall that
• 23:57
  has it is there because obviously to test microphones and with the radio studio, people
• 24:02
  are in a booth, a good way to test a microphone is to say a series of P words, but because
• 24:07
  it is the ABC job, there's also pneumonia and a couple of silent people, because it's
• 24:13
  a very funny place for a very funny clip of it.
• 24:16
  Hilarious.
• 24:18
  How did you find your radio time when you were, so it was tripled at your first gig when
• 24:22
  you did breakfast radio on?
• 24:24
  Yeah, so I started doing stand-up in Melbourne when I was 21 or something, and so I'd been
• 24:32
  doing, yeah, Melbourne stand-up, they're just on the same for like four years.
• 24:35
  And why, how did you get in stand-up?
• 24:37
  Why was, why stand-up?
• 24:38
  Stand-up?
• 24:39
  Yeah.
• 24:40
  What did you want to do when you were like, you know, a pimpley 13-year-old?
• 24:44
  I was pimpley.
• 24:45
  Yeah.
• 24:46
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:47
  Okay.
• 24:48
  Got glowing skin now, radiant.
• 24:51
  I mean, this is not going outdoors.
• 24:53
  I wanted Terry Pratchett, so indoor work, no heavy lifting, and I know this is a dungeon.
• 25:00
  Yeah, a life-working, very hard, so I don't have to go back to the dairy farm.
• 25:04
  Right, right.
• 25:05
  This is your Nosferatu wash.
• 25:07
  I grew up under dairy farm, and so I'm the oldest kid of a dairy farmer, so there is
• 25:14
  some much like Hollywood, big nepot baby industry of the dairy farm.
• 25:18
  Yeah, I bet.
• 25:19
  Yeah, it's hard to recruit people in.
• 25:21
  You have to be born into it a little bit, dairy farming, and so...
• 25:23
  No, little kid grows up being like, I want a milk cow.
• 25:26
  No, it's hard.
• 25:27
  It's hard work.
• 25:28
  Like, it can be very rewarding, and my brother who did eventually take over the farm
• 25:31
  has found it a very rewarding life and career to have.
• 25:34
  But, and my dad built a great life, you know, with the simple philosophy, my dad always
• 25:38
  had that idea of like, we feed, like at the start it was like, we feed five families.
• 25:43
  Right, so by doing this dairy, that's how you'd always explain it to us.
• 25:47
  So our business is this, if we do our job every day, five families, and that was like
• 25:51
  us, and it was our grandparents, and it was like the share farmers, and there was whatever
• 25:55
  these five families were, like my dad did this little example of, and then over the years
• 25:59
  as the farm grew, you'd be like, you know, and now we bought that extra piece of land,
• 26:02
  and we're employing those people now, and that means that we're now feeding like 10 families
• 26:06
  or 12 families or whatever it was, and it was like a really nice way to think about
• 26:10
  it.
• 26:11
  This sounds so otherworldly and quaint.
• 26:13
  It sounds like a salinger novel or something from the dust bowl, where it's like, we live
• 26:17
  in our family, and that family will feed their family.
• 26:19
  Well, you know, I think about this a lot recently, because my dad is now 82 years old,
• 26:24
  and he lives on Anderson's road, Anderson, the road that he was born on.
• 26:27
  Don't give it away.
• 26:28
  You know, he's going to get doxed.
• 26:29
  I can't decide.
• 26:30
  I was talking about a lot, and if anyone can find it, you are welcome to it.
• 26:35
  But, can you say that?
• 26:36
  I was going to be on the doorstep tomorrow.
• 26:37
  There's no number.
• 26:38
  He has a rural RRMB, a rural mailbox.
• 26:42
  Is that right?
• 26:43
  Yeah.
• 26:44
  You don't even have it.
• 26:45
  You have to drive up to the local corner where the mailbox is.
• 26:48
  It doesn't even come down to where he says he is.
• 26:51
  Candace will be eaten by dingos by the time he gets to the road.
• 26:53
  Dad made it 500 meters, Josh, in his entire life, from the house he was born into, the
• 26:58
  house he will die in, hopefully, I hope, because I hear that's what he would like.
• 27:02
  I think, you know, you don't think he ever wants to be anywhere, but where he is.
• 27:05
  And he has built an enormously rich life in that local community, never having to
• 27:11
  have left that road.
• 27:12
  There's no one there.
• 27:13
  It's just him.
• 27:14
  250 people in like the last census.
• 27:17
  And so the nearest big town was Hayfield, 1200 people.
• 27:21
  So is he a celebrity?
• 27:22
  Like, is he more famous than you are because he's, he's everyone in town knows him?
• 27:26
  I mean, it's a low-barter celebrity in a community of 250, if the road is named after
• 27:32
  you, then, yeah, I guess.
• 27:33
  Yeah.
• 27:34
  You know what I mean?
• 27:35
  Like, you're in a small, I feel that sometimes when I go back to Sean's family's place,
• 27:38
  you're like, you're in a small town, everyone's famous.
• 27:41
  The Anderson's have been there forever.
• 27:42
  So we're actually both sides of the family.
• 27:44
  So my grandfather, Jim, so I was named after my two grandfathers, William and James.
• 27:50
  So James Anderson was the local, like, mayor of the area.
• 27:54
  And my other grandfather, William, who I was named after, read, read the local butter factory.
• 27:58
  So it's like, you know, all the families, all married each other.
• 28:03
  I'm such a local.
• 28:05
  I just, I have just images, like all that comes to mind is, you know, police chief Wiggum,
• 28:10
  like milking a pig or something.
• 28:11
  Josh, like, just.
• 28:13
  Do you know the show, who do you think you are?
• 28:14
  It's like that, so they, for people who don't know the show, it's an international franchise.
• 28:19
  And they'll find somebody who's like a person who's well-known in the media for something,
• 28:23
  and a sports person or whatever it might be, and then trace their heritage, basically.
• 28:27
  Like a DNA and ancestry.com.
• 28:29
  And they go back and like, yeah, hopefully get an overseas trip and you'll find out the
• 28:33
  history of the, I think I'm one of like two people in the history of the show that they went
• 28:37
  to all really within, like, walking distance.
• 28:39
  It's very lovely, but we've had a lot of the years in New South Wales.
• 28:45
  It's best to have an ad break worth of, we can literally do all the interviews in the
• 28:53
  same house.
• 28:54
  And so 200 years in this town, and then a long stretch in England before that.
• 28:59
  So, yeah, England, Scotland, like, you know, like literally, yeah, New Zealand.
• 29:04
  Boring.
• 29:05
  It's like so boring.
• 29:06
  Yeah.
• 29:07
  So much more glamorous than that.
• 29:08
  I'm all over the place.
• 29:09
  Yeah, that's right.
• 29:10
  They should do that.
• 29:11
  I should be on that show.
• 29:12
  Do they still even make it?
• 29:13
  Yeah, God.
• 29:14
  Well, I'm all over the show.
• 29:15
  I know.
• 29:16
  This was only recently I was just.
• 29:17
  Oh, you didn't even get on the show.
• 29:19
  No, they rule it out.
• 29:20
  I thought that would be part of the drama of the show.
• 29:25
  No one in your family.
• 29:27
  No drama.
• 29:28
  Ridiculous.
• 29:29
  They went back 200 years.
• 29:31
  They found one guy who got, like, sent to Australia, but couldn't even, I think, you
• 29:36
  know, it was real, like, loaf of bread, style stuff, like, you know, you didn't even
• 29:40
  get a proper blogging.
• 29:41
  You didn't even rate anybody.
• 29:42
  Come on.
• 29:43
  Just steal a loaf of bread.
• 29:44
  Yeah.
• 29:45
  Okay.
• 29:46
  So, but stand up.
• 29:47
  Why did you want to do that?
• 29:48
  So, my point being that the life was actually going to be either farm or anything but
• 29:53
  farm.
• 29:54
  Like, there were literally two categories of the way you thought of your life.
• 29:57
  It wasn't like a normal existence, which is that idea of like, oh, I might be a farm
• 30:02
  and a bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble.
• 30:04
  This was, are you making the decision, first decision, first is farm or no farm.
• 30:11
  And so, for a while, you kind of have to entertain the idea of that farm might be part
• 30:16
  of it.
• 30:17
  Parents were really good at not ever forcing it on us, but I mean, they would like,
• 30:21
  you know, they, of course.
• 30:22
  You know, they would like you to take over or at least, I think dad, you know, always
• 30:26
  dreamed of one of us working alongside him on the farm, which he got in there.
• 30:30
  My brother Ross ended up, did take the better.
• 30:32
  So, oh, I got the Josh, my sister and, I've got a sister and a brother.
• 30:37
  My sister's had four kids, great grandkids, you know, beautiful.
• 30:41
  My brother's got two kids.
• 30:42
  A dream.
• 30:43
  Took over the farm.
• 30:44
  A dream.
• 30:45
  It's fine.
• 30:46
  Yeah.
• 30:47
  Jobs done.
• 30:48
  They've got a, they've got a, they've got a, they've got a, they've got a, they've got a
• 30:49
  farm.
• 30:50
  Yeah, right.
• 30:51
  They've got a, it's the famous fuck off farm.
• 30:53
  They've got everything.
• 30:54
  They've got everything.
• 30:55
  No basis.
• 30:56
  Not covered.
• 30:57
  The farm, the farm, not farm binary reminds me of when I was in my teens backpacking around
• 31:03
  Thailand, I remember seeing a post box in Bangkok with two posts, I needed to put some
• 31:08
  to post card to Australia, and the post box had two slots, and it said Bangkok, not
• 31:14
  Bangkok.
• 31:16
  I just thought that was funny.
• 31:17
  Like the Sydney, the Sydney one goes in the same one as like the Chiang Mai.
• 31:23
  Yeah.
• 31:24
  That's all there is.
• 31:25
  Yeah.
• 31:26
  The world is divided into two places.
• 31:28
  There is Bangkok, and then there is not Bangkok.
• 31:31
  But Josh, is this not the perfect analogy of how we constantly, yes, absolutely.
• 31:38
  Like from at the start, our Bangkok is the people that we can see, like, and then everybody
• 31:44
  else is, like, not Bangkok, right?
• 31:47
  And then you get to that age where you finally get to venture out on yourself into not Bangkok,
• 31:51
  and maybe that Bangkok gets a little bigger.
• 31:54
  But the truth of it is that, like, as much as Heyfield was 1200 people, we had these,
• 31:58
  the most intense rivalries I've ever felt in my life were with, like, Kowla or whatever,
• 32:04
  Rosedale, these local, equally tiny towns that I remember at the Adelaide Fringe a couple
• 32:09
  of years ago, we were backstage.
• 32:11
  And, you know, so the Adelaide Fringe is like all sorts of performers, you know, trapeze
• 32:15
  through, you know, circus, mind, et cetera, et cetera, all there.
• 32:18
  And there was a comedian out the back, like, who was mocking the circus performers, like,
• 32:24
  you know, as if they were lesser than the group of audience.
• 32:27
  And I was like, mate, maybe inside this tent, you think there's a hierarchy, but to everybody
• 32:32
  who's outside this tent, we're all the, we're all the athletes, we're all the athletes,
• 32:37
  we're all the athletes.
• 32:38
  Yeah.
• 32:39
  And so that's, to me, is, like, to everybody else, that area is all these, like, hillbillies
• 32:45
  living in this, like, tiny, farming area, not knowing that within there, they've all got
• 32:49
  their own...
• 32:50
  They've been cocked.
• 32:51
  They've not been cocked.
• 32:52
  There's the bigger we get.
• 32:53
  It's still always the way we, like, there's this idea of, we're Victorian until we're
• 32:57
  Australian.
• 32:58
  We're Australian until we're...
• 32:59
  Yeah.
• 33:00
  You know?
• 33:01
  Oceania.
• 33:02
  No, I think it's a really useful thing to remember that, but it's actually impossible
• 33:08
  to get out of your sense that what is normal, like, I can intellectually understand that people
• 33:15
  in Thailand live lives that are equally valid and perhaps more so in many respects than
• 33:22
  my own, but they're still not normal and never will be intuitively from the perspective
• 33:28
  of me as a mammal who grew up where I did in the environment that I did.
• 33:32
  Yeah, but I think you're...
• 33:33
  ...really useful to understand.
• 33:34
  Yeah.
• 33:35
  And how biased we are, that who was it who said that, like, the stuff you liked when
• 33:41
  you were 15 is basically what you will always regard as the ultimate expressions of everything
• 33:47
  and the normal...
• 33:48
  And the way the world was at that time.
• 33:50
  And thereafter, the world just grows more and more and more distant from the way that
• 33:54
  it's supposed to be, which is why it's so easy to become a crotchety-old person.
• 33:57
  Right.
• 33:58
  But I wouldn't let a 15-year-old kid choose which coffee I had at a cafe.
• 34:01
  No way.
• 34:02
  And yet we let that 15-year-old kid...
• 34:05
  Yes.
• 34:06
  She's so many things about how we view the world.
• 34:08
  But it's also, I mean, I just love the idea that we can...
• 34:18
  That thing that you said about Bangkok, not Bangkok, and you say, we often try to go, we
• 34:23
  need to understand everything in the world, right?
• 34:26
  And that is too much to understand that Japan has a different culture to Thailand, there's
• 34:30
  a different culture to Finland has a different...
• 34:32
  That's too much.
• 34:34
  But if I just understand, like Bangkok, not Bangkok, like in my own sense, like me, not
• 34:40
  me, like I react like this.
• 34:43
  This is how I view the world as an Australian, as a white man, as a heterosexual, whatever it
• 34:47
  means that is in this particular time, the thing that is my like Bangkok, and that everything
• 34:53
  else is just not Bangkok.
• 34:55
  Right.
• 34:56
  And that is almost a better way to understand that I shouldn't be trying to...
• 35:00
  This is my thing.
• 35:02
  Yeah, no, I guess that, but all I'm saying is that you also need to bring with that
• 35:06
  insight, the recognition or the sort of intellectual empathy to understand that all the people
• 35:13
  who are in the not Bangkoks are in their own Bangkoks, which feel just as real and alive
• 35:20
  and normal as your Bangkok to them, you know?
• 35:23
  That's what's hard to get your head around, like it's easy to go like, all the, those
• 35:28
  mentally finished people think it's normal to be jumping into frozen saunas or whatever
• 35:32
  it is.
• 35:34
  And that's fine for them.
• 35:35
  It's much harder to go like, for them, that's not only fine, it's perfectly normal, and
• 35:42
  my way of not jumping into frozen saunas all the time is truly weird.
• 35:47
  Can I pitch you a rewrite of the Bible, so please?
• 35:52
  In every religion, there is a version of the Golden Rule, right?
• 35:55
  You're going to others as you would have them do unto you, or some similar sort of thing.
• 35:59
  It is a common thing in most religions because it is pretty good advice in life, but if
• 36:05
  I caught a slight rewrite, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• 36:09
  But first, just, you know, get the permission of others to see if they're into getting done
• 36:14
  unto them what you like didn't done to you, because not everybody likes getting done
• 36:19
  unto them what you like getting done unto you.
• 36:21
  And the biggest assumption we make in life is that somebody would want done unto them
• 36:25
  what we want done unto them, right?
• 36:27
  Other people, you know, you and I might want different things done unto us.
• 36:32
  We certainly do.
• 36:33
  Right?
• 36:34
  Yeah.
• 36:35
  So if I just do unto others as I would have them do unto me, then that's not actually
• 36:39
  like a, that's not enough.
• 36:40
  Right.
• 36:41
  I need to know what the other person wants done unto them.
• 36:43
  Yeah.
• 36:44
  Do an equivalent thing unto other people.
• 36:47
  I think you need to work on the wording.
• 36:49
  I think about that.
• 36:50
  I think, yeah.
• 36:51
  Concentration.
• 36:52
  I think I came out the first of us how I wanted it to get out, so.
• 36:55
  But I think that, well, a lot is, a lot is hinging on how expansive the do, the thing is
• 37:02
  right.
• 37:03
  I mean, the reason why you're rewriters funny is because it's taking a very narrow view
• 37:07
  of the thing, like strapping on a dildo and pegging somebody is a very narrow thing that
• 37:14
  some people like and other people don't like.
• 37:16
  That's narrow.
• 37:17
  But it ends up less narrow when you start to feel narrow all the way.
• 37:22
  But the, the thing that, the, if the thing is big enough to encompass, for example, like
• 37:29
  take no for an answer, now we're talking about the concept of the, we're still talking
• 37:34
  about, about plastic pieces, well, that's, that's all, that's all I'm saying with this
• 37:39
  answer.
• 37:40
  If we got what you were talking about, I did, I did, I'm fortunate to, to people who are
• 37:46
  listening to the podcast.
• 37:47
  I did accidentally hold my hands out to approximately 15 inches, and when I was saying the thing,
• 37:54
  the thing, but so, no, but if you're, if the thing is like kind of, you know, a principle
• 38:00
  of life, like, you know, except that other people have, they're, I have a right to articulate
• 38:06
  their own vision of a good life or whatever, or like, you know, nobody want, like, nobody
• 38:11
  wants to be lied to and cheated, like if they did, I mean, would it still be a breach
• 38:19
  of the golden rule to be like, I mean, they're asking all kinds of interesting thought
• 38:24
  experiments like ethics and why the philosophy of ethics about, if someone, like a movie
• 38:28
  is like a suspension of our, like, I mean, imagine if we went hang on, I don't think
• 38:33
  that was a long time ago in a galaxy, I mean, they're not just suspension of just belief,
• 38:39
  I mean, there's supposed there's a person alive who really, really likes being like whipped
• 38:46
  and degraded and, I mean, these people do exist, right?
• 38:49
  What you're saying is, don't treat me like that, but if what you mean is, don't treat
• 38:55
  me in a way that isn't consistent with my desires, and that's the thing, then the thing
• 39:00
  works.
• 39:02
  It's almost like the discussion about what the thing means is the important bit, not the
• 39:07
  thing itself. Yes, right? And this is the, I mean, I know this is what religious scholars
• 39:12
  will tell you a religion is about, right? Like, a lot of, most religious scholars are not
• 39:16
  about the idea of there are, like, 10 rules by which you can live your life if they were,
• 39:22
  they would be Jordan Peterson. Yeah, that's it, right? But also, the Bible wouldn't be the Bible.
• 39:26
  It would just be the 10 rules. Yeah, you can get it on a tea towel. Yeah.
• 39:30
  Well, I mean, there are 10 rules. I'm sorry to break it to you, but there are 10.
• 39:34
  But I'm just saying that that's, like, that would be all it is. Yes. And in fact,
• 39:38
  the more fundamentalists you are, the more you think that that's what it is.
• 39:41
  Yes. Whereas, like, somebody who studies it or examines it or lives it in that way,
• 39:45
  might argue that like, no, it's about the taking each part of it.
• 39:49
  Well, I mean, they would, but I can never tell, is that sophistry or not?
• 39:53
  Like, I mean, I had this discussion with Waleid Ali, who was on the show recently.
• 39:57
  I love that. I love that. Really interesting, because he's so smart.
• 40:00
  And so, and I always get so much out of talking to him. Yeah.
• 40:02
  And so I was trying to reconcile. That's a guy who could convince me to.
• 40:06
  Absolutely. He could scam me. Oh, my God.
• 40:09
  The fortune. Tone within the conversation.
• 40:11
  I wouldn't be halfway through a note of just, for some reason, given in the road of growing up on,
• 40:16
  and the name of my first pet, and suddenly he's hacking my whole bank account while we're doing
• 40:21
  a one-on-one. But my, his argument was that it's a caricature of Islam,
• 40:25
  because he's a practicing Muslim term for me to say, you know, do you believe in miracles,
• 40:31
  and do you believe that, you know, Ahmad was divine, and that he flew to heaven,
• 40:34
  and then a winged horse and stuff, because he was saying that, actually,
• 40:36
  if you're a serious scholar of Islam, then you understand how to interpret and do the work of
• 40:42
  looking at the Hadith and the Quran, and interpreting them in ways that are totally consistent
• 40:47
  with science, reason, logic, modernity. And my, I said, but aren't they just, like,
• 40:55
  shoehorning ancient silliness into a format that is palatable to 21st century liberal
• 41:02
  Democrats, like us? Like, aren't they? Isn't it putting the cart before the horse? Like, we need,
• 41:07
  we know that we need the outcome to be not wildly sexist and due hating and militaristic and violent.
• 41:16
  Therefore, we rejigger all of the bits that are that, and say that we've done enormous scholarly
• 41:22
  work to divine the true meaning of the words. Whereas, plainly, the fundamentalist
• 41:29
  has to his credit that he's not having to do any of that work. He's just reading the book.
• 41:35
  So I never know. I'm not enough of a religiously articulate person or educated person to know
• 41:40
  whether or not. Like, suppose you had a scholar who was completely unaware of liberal democracy
• 41:46
  and the norms, an alien comes down and, like, studies these texts or an AI. Do they also arrive
• 41:55
  at the Waleed Ali version of Islam, which is peaceful, tolerant, pluralistic,
• 42:02
  or do you have to be retroactively interpreting the ancient text through the prism of today
• 42:07
  in order to get you there? That's what I don't know. Yeah. And then there's a kind of more practical
• 42:13
  thing is, where have you got to? For me, it's more about how did Waleed become Waleed,
• 42:20
  this considered person who wants to think about how society operates for the benefit of all.
• 42:25
  And I think uses his religion as a guide for the way that he operates in the rest of his life
• 42:32
  versus somebody who might use that very same thing to end up in a terrorism situation or whatever
• 42:38
  it might be. Like, to me, it's less about what the kind of thing they're having common.
• 42:43
  It's what was it that they didn't have in common? How did they end up in these different places
• 42:47
  because they both read the same book? Yeah. I mean, I think that the Waleed's of the world would
• 42:53
  say, well, the other person just isn't serious. Like, the other person has a psychopath who's
• 42:56
  not serious about engaging with the text. And the terrorist would say, well, you guys are just
• 43:02
  making up a whole bunch of Malaki that is not actually in the text. And I'm, what I'm saying,
• 43:07
  is I don't know who's right. I don't know enough about that. It's on my area of speciality to,
• 43:11
  like, like, to, I love that we're talking about his Islamic theology.
• 43:16
  Can I ask you something that's much more on you? I should say, I'm very much, I've Waleed
• 43:24
  fan and none of that is intended to cast his versions on him or Waleed's restaurant.
• 43:28
  I love Waleed. Yeah. I know. No, I think, like, I know you. I was like,
• 43:33
  he of all people, I think, enjoys, like, an intellectual conversation around a topic.
• 43:39
  Like, that's something that he is enthused by and helps shape his ideas and the way that
• 43:43
  he views the world. No, I'm just sitting on someone tweet, someone tweeting.
• 43:45
  Like, did you hear the Josh and Will were having a go at Islam or something?
• 43:48
  I'm talking about you. No, he wouldn't see it. He's like, I'm social.
• 43:51
  And also, I could no one tweet that, please.
• 43:53
  Can I have a go at Islam? Can I ask you a question then?
• 43:58
  Do you think this is a bad taste joke? So, and I'm taking it out of context now.
• 44:02
  So obviously, that's the first dangerous thing to do when it comes to comedy is take it out
• 44:07
  of the original context. So I won't even try to replicate the joke because I can't even remember how
• 44:11
  it was worded. But this year, I was doing, so I do, I'm currently doing a tour of these improvised
• 44:17
  shows, like fully improvised stand-up. Right. And I've done like 80 of them so far. And I've just
• 44:22
  decided to do a whole nother year of it just because I've enjoyed it so much. Is it proud work or just
• 44:26
  proud work? Yeah. But like crowd working away that is almost like a response to like
• 44:33
  crowd work that people are saying online. So for years, I've been doing like a version of
• 44:37
  these crowd work shows. And they were a bit similar to what you're seeing online with the sort
• 44:43
  of like, hey, that's a funny shirt. What job do you do? Sort of vibe. Right. But that was never
• 44:48
  when they were out there most interesting. They were out there most interesting when you got
• 44:51
  beyond those questions into like whatever it was next. And so when that style of it became quite
• 44:57
  prevalent online, my management, who are good management, you know, they were doing the right thing.
• 45:02
  They were like, hey, you're already doing these shows. Maybe we should be filming some of it
• 45:06
  and putting online. This sort of stuff's popping off on social media. And I had to think about it.
• 45:10
  And I thought, actually, the weird thing is it's the opposite of the reason that I do those shows.
• 45:15
  Those shows for me are absolutely about the moment and being in the room and the fact that that
• 45:21
  show cannot be repeated any other time that it was those, all those people had to walk into the room
• 45:27
  that night that you had to have those ingredients in the cupboard. And you didn't know until you
• 45:31
  started talking to people what you had to cook with. And you can never, I mean, there are bits and
• 45:36
  pieces that you replicate again, but that moment, what you created that night, the show, it was really
• 45:41
  about not having the camera there. And then the more I thought about that, the more I started
• 45:45
  thinking about the idea of how does the camera change the idea of the performance itself. And in a
• 45:51
  world where we're like, like, having this broader conversation around how AI will affect creativity,
• 45:57
  have we allowed the technology into the room in a way that is damaging to the value of the
• 46:03
  live experience or not? Maybe it's been a great, for some people it's been a great advertisement
• 46:07
  for the live experience, right? You could argue that for sure and people can't argue that. But
• 46:12
  philosophically, what I started thinking about was this idea of like, if I turn the camera off,
• 46:18
  the minute there's a camera in there, I say, this isn't for you. This is for someone else later.
• 46:23
  But if I turn the camera off and it's for nobody and we just make up something that could only be
• 46:27
  there in the room by taking this ingredient and adding it to this ingredient. So it's not about you
• 46:31
  or you, it's about how I can combine you both together into something that makes this like a unique
• 46:37
  experience. And then that has a broader, it has a broader idea of a shared experience that we're
• 46:43
  all in together. Like sometimes if I'm in the mood, I'll make the point like in a more direct way
• 46:49
  that you all have something in common now. Like if you run into each other in the street, you can say,
• 46:54
  I was there the night we heard about that thing or Janet did that thing or this thing happened.
• 46:59
  You have that in common now. You have a shared language, a little communication.
• 47:02
  But I love that. It's a very principled of you to maintain your principle allegiance to
• 47:08
  the audience who are ready to come and see you. Why would I value somebody who hasn't bothered
• 47:16
  to come and you guys don't give me any money over somebody who's done both those things?
• 47:21
  Worse still, why would you, why would your main allegiance be to an algorithm that is going to
• 47:26
  determine whether or not to put the clip in front of people on Instagram or YouTube shorts or
• 47:32
  whatever, which is really the master that a lot of people are working for these days.
• 47:37
  Instead of honoring the people who have actually come.
• 47:40
  Well, I've got to thought around that because I do think we've been fooled into thinking that
• 47:45
  mass appeal. The gross mindset of capitalism in general, like built into the infrastructure of
• 47:53
  it a little bit is the idea that growth is a good thing. In some areas, it just isn't,
• 47:59
  it clearly isn't. There should be limits or at least philosophical conversations around what
• 48:04
  the limits of infinite growth are. In this idea of trying to chase these enormous audiences,
• 48:11
  I think there is a sense that we might have forgotten that you can service. You can just have
• 48:15
  a nice restaurant in the country town and run it well and it can be full all the time and that
• 48:20
  can be great and valuable and a really nice life in the world in which to live. I think as
• 48:26
  careers, we're constantly told that it has the B for everyone when sometimes the best thing is that
• 48:32
  it is just for the people who are there that night. It makes it more special to do. It also then
• 48:37
  gives you permission to create moments, talk about things that you might not ordinarily talk about.
• 48:43
  So the little example I wanted to give, if you give better examples, this is just where this
• 48:47
  conversation started, is that this year 9-11 fell on are you okay though? So explain are you okay
• 48:57
  though? So people are in Australia. It is a well-meaning but perhaps naive idea that once per
• 49:05
  year there is a day wherever you ask people are you okay? It's a mental health initiative,
• 49:09
  you know, and it's pursuoso prevention and things like that, all very valuable things. And look,
• 49:15
  the idea is that this day will inspire you to have those conversations all the time. So I don't
• 49:20
  need to talk to that a friend might be a little off, maybe they've been gloomy, then you actually
• 49:24
  overcome your shyness and you say are you okay? Yeah, but like most of these things, while there
• 49:30
  might be genuine like good reasons behind it and also good intentions behind it, often it just
• 49:36
  results in once a year, we have a morning to work. Yes, and someone wears a bag, who says are
• 49:42
  okay? Yeah, and so I did a whole bit about how I come in because they were suicide bombers,
• 49:48
  and that is a suicide prevention, and if only the more people had asked me like I'm an utter,
• 49:57
  if he was okay. I noticed you've been taking final lessons, are you okay man? What's going on?
• 50:06
  I'm spending all the time down the mosque doing some every reading, are you?
• 50:11
  Why don't you come around for a morning too? We'll have a chat, you know what?
• 50:16
  So like to me, that is like, to me that I can't imagine that that is a topic that somebody could
• 50:24
  look at and say, no, I get that. Like these things, you've got both these ingredients,
• 50:28
  you've combined them together. And yet, I guess there is, right? There's a world in which if you take
• 50:34
  that out of a context and you wrote it down, or you wrote it down in the context that you said to
• 50:39
  somebody, and this is the area where we get into where you're like, do you care? Do you let that stop
• 50:46
  you saying things? Or then there's the other bit of it, which I know that you are fascinated by,
• 50:52
  which is the, you can't say anything, like do you monetize it? So there's kind of the steps of
• 50:57
  you let it affect you that you worry. Like Jimmy Carole always says, like what you're going to get
• 51:02
  cancer for you've already said. Yeah, which I think is a good way of, like just a good philosophy of
• 51:07
  going. Meaning that he would have said, he's on tape having said since 10 years ago, that were not
• 51:12
  outrageous then, that are outrageous now because our norms have shifted. So someone's going to
• 51:16
  dredge it up and they're going to, like, there's no way to get rid of that. So no, the expectation
• 51:20
  that you're always going to, that there's never going to be any clip of you saying something that
• 51:24
  isn't perfectly in line with the norms of today is ridiculous. If you've lived more than a few
• 51:29
  years, but also not to, but also not to be encouraged. I would argue in my world view, because in my,
• 51:35
  not to encourage what? Because I like to encourage the idea that your idea might not be what you
• 51:40
  thought about 10 years ago, because I think the best way for us to, like, keep on in that river
• 51:45
  moving forward is to be really open to the idea that you can, like, there's always a way back from
• 51:50
  a bat. Like, this is why I like, in Australia, we are quite a forgiving society. Like, you know, in
• 51:57
  fact, we have the bit of the tall poppy syndrome that people wouldn't know about, you know, if you
• 52:01
  get too big, people like to knock you down. But then when you knock down a bit, they love, they
• 52:04
  love a comeback story. You know, you, you can get a second chance if you earn a second chance. And
• 52:10
  I like to encourage that. Like, I think it's great when I love nothing better than a redemption
• 52:14
  story. Then when somebody kind of, you know, sees the error otherwise. And I know there's been,
• 52:19
  I know most of the things that I've learned about myself in my life that I can consider to be,
• 52:25
  like, often core values that I have now have come out of me overstepping. I've learned that that
• 52:31
  is one of my core values by not behaving in that way, realizing that that made me feel gross or
• 52:38
  like whatever, you know, to be like that. And then not wanting to do it again. So if we don't allow
• 52:44
  people the idea that you can learn from a mistake to make you a better person. And it depends what
• 52:50
  we're requiring the person to learn. Yeah, true. Like, I mean, I agree. There's like a, there's a,
• 52:56
  there's a performative kind of redemption that has taken place where it's like, what's that?
• 53:01
  The template, like where you can basically, yeah, basically, and like, I know what somebody's
• 53:05
  going to say in their apology. Yeah, exactly. And like, we will allow you back into the cool kids
• 53:09
  club as long as you genuinely, you know, or not even genuinely as long as you betray, as long
• 53:16
  as you read from our script, essentially. And then we're going to let you back in. But like,
• 53:19
  it's you who has to do the changing. Yeah. So this kind of thing of like, I'm going to go away and
• 53:23
  I'm going to listen and I'm going to do a lot of work on myself. And then I'm going to come back
• 53:27
  and I'm going to agree with everything that you that people in the end crowd tell me I need to
• 53:32
  believe in in order to get back in their good gracious graces. There's something unseemly about
• 53:37
  that for me. I just think we should be less, redemption's great, but it would also be great if
• 53:41
  you didn't cut down the tall puppy in the first place and weren't so quick to hound people out
• 53:45
  of polite society. For like that, that, that, that, you know, that 9-11 joke, right?
• 53:53
  There, there was a time like, have you seen Mark Marin's clip or special about his right,
• 54:03
  right-wing podcast comedy, Bro Pears? Yeah, there bit about it. If that off Hitler was alive today,
• 54:09
  go and tell you, what is up there? No, no, that's no, although that sounds funny, that sounds funny as
• 54:14
  well. He's basically, I mean, I absolutely love Mark. I was a Marker stand before he even got
• 54:18
  his podcast. I used to go and see him in a little, you know, stand up clubs in the, in the village
• 54:25
  on when I was, every time I was in New York City. And the, but he can be a little sanctimonious
• 54:33
  and self-righteous in the way that he articulates his politics. Mark Marin.
• 54:37
  Have you seen Will's face?
• 54:42
  And so he gets up there and he's, he's doing this bit about how basically all of the, you know,
• 54:46
  these, you know, right-leaning podcast bro comics were all going on about how, you know,
• 54:52
  cancel culture this and cancel culture that. And he was like, it's basically just because they
• 54:56
  wanted to say the, the word retard. They like saying the word retard and they want to be able to
• 55:01
  say it. And then he goes and he says, and as a result of that, we've now got an administration
• 55:08
  that is, you know, authoritarian and corrupt and he lists all of these terrible things. And he
• 55:12
  says, so my question to my friends in the, the comedy world are, is, was it worth it retards
• 55:20
  and gets a big laugh? Yeah. Good joke. I like it. But it does align to the fact that actually,
• 55:28
  in 2025, he can say that. But if he'd said that in 2020, he would have found it hard to
• 55:38
  rent a performance space like to put on his shows because there would have been a massive campaign
• 55:44
  against him. His ability to tell that joke is partly a result of the pushback against the
• 55:53
  sensoriousness of workness that the people he's criticizing were engaging in. If everyone in
• 55:59
  the world had been Mark Marin in 2020 saying, ah, there's no such thing as cancel culture,
• 56:04
  then in 2025, he wouldn't be able to use that word on stage without serious cultural repercussions.
• 56:11
  Yeah, I agree that that is absolutely part of it. And the other part of it, which is the bit
• 56:16
  that we hate to talk about, which is we're just colored by our own perspective on what it is
• 56:24
  we think the politics and personality of the person delivering the joke is like we know that
• 56:30
  Mark Marin is a good, like a person from this particular sort of world view. He's allowed to say
• 56:35
  that because he's saying it for a good reason because he's hitting on Joe Rogan. Yeah. Now I feel
• 56:40
  uncomfortable with him to be honest. I feel uncomfortable with him saying it for I personally feel
• 56:45
  uncomfortable with him saying it for that reason. I feel uncomfortable with you saying it. Yeah,
• 56:49
  I feel uncomfortable saying it. If you go to the table here, I'll force for about four seconds
• 56:53
  before I even said it because I was thinking should I say call it the I word? And that's not what
• 56:58
  he said either. Like, you know, so that's you're saying what he said and I think, yes, I'm
• 57:03
  quoting him. So I can be both my point being I can be all of those things I hope, which is the
• 57:08
  person who can say, I don't feel comfortable with that. I process that myself and why it is that I
• 57:13
  try not to, but also somebody could come to me and say like as somebody did recently, I try not to use
• 57:23
  mental health slurs in the same way just casually. Like if I can try to find another word in the
• 57:27
  moment, I'll try not to say like mad or crazy or whatever it might be. I'll try to say like bananas.
• 57:32
  But then there was someone else who came to me and said, well bananas, you know, you're still
• 57:36
  kind of saying what you're saying. So like even that kind of feels and I'm like, there is a point
• 57:41
  where you're like, you know, I mean, I have to go on something. Yeah. Well, I don't. I mean,
• 57:45
  and they said, maybe try to describe more accurately just the scenario in which you're and I say,
• 57:50
  well, sometimes, sometimes I'm just going to have to go with bananas. That's where my line is.
• 57:55
  And if somebody else wants to judge me by the banana standard, that's cool too. Like because I
• 58:01
  don't mind the idea that like, you know, Joe Rogan can say what he says and then Mark can say
• 58:06
  what he says and we battle out the ideas and we choose which ones we think are right and wrong
• 58:11
  and you can like something like 95% and like 5% of it go. I didn't like that bit of it,
• 58:16
  but that's good because it may be think about why I didn't like it and then I had a chat with my
• 58:20
  friend afterwards about how he really liked it because he thought it was important and made the
• 58:24
  point to actually use the whole word in there. There's a story. I tell about me and my hero,
• 58:30
  Billy Connolly, to take it for a circle back to, you know, where the comedy came into my life,
• 58:34
  which is that involves the C word, like several times, like to tell the story properly. And so
• 58:41
  when I tell people about telling Billy Connolly's story, I have to use it. Now there are parts of the
• 58:46
  world where that word is deemed to be not not Scotland. But there are American listeners. There are
• 58:53
  parts of the world in which that word like kind of comes with the same sort of baggage as some of
• 58:58
  those other words as well. Well, well, I don't think it's as better, but I don't think anyone
• 59:01
  regards it as being demeaning and like, no one regards that word as being violence against
• 59:08
  a traditionally just enfranchised community, which is the kind of... But I do think that people do
• 59:12
  think that. I think that like there'd be plenty of... Well, for the female genitalia, I think
• 59:16
  that people would say that there was like that it was used as a like a violent and demeaning way of
• 59:21
  like, you know, referring to women or like talking about women. There would be... I've heard that
• 59:26
  for me, it doesn't have the same violence as. There's just something... I think there's an
• 59:32
  internal logic that I understand to the social justice people who were pushing for serious
• 59:38
  consequences for people who used words that demean traditionally, you know,
• 59:45
  shadow upon communities. I get that. The question becomes, what should be the cultural penalty
• 59:53
  for doing those things? And I just think it's a bit rich in 2025 for people who
• 59:59
  denied that there was any cultural penalty at all really, apart from... Oh, a few people said some
• 1:00:03
  nasty things about you on Twitter to, you know, just to borrow a phrase, the lived experience,
• 1:00:10
  as we're talking about it, like the lived experience of being a one of the people who
• 1:00:16
  lost their jobs, lost their friends, lost their livelihoods, lost their reputation, lost their
• 1:00:21
  credibility, lost their ability to engage in the world, you know, like the mental health
• 1:00:26
  consequences, the stress consequences, to just gloss over all that because what they weren't
• 1:00:32
  arrested, like what's... It's like, it's so people say that, oh, Louis CK wasn't cancelled, he's
• 1:00:38
  doing Madison Square Garden. Yeah, he rented Madison Square Garden himself, he sold the tickets
• 1:00:45
  himself because no one else would hire him. What do they mean? What do they expect cancelled to me?
• 1:00:49
  Like he doesn't have a face anymore, they've got beheaded, yeah, he didn't get beheaded,
• 1:00:53
  and he still has arms and a face. But apart from that, he was stripped of everything
• 1:00:57
  that matters, his agent, his manager, like culturally speaking, all of that did happen.
• 1:01:02
  I mean, I agree with you, like that I don't think that the consequences should be that people make
• 1:01:09
  their own choices about whether they think they can deal with that person or not, like, you know,
• 1:01:14
  and in a full headed fashion, not in response to an angry moment.
• 1:01:18
  Yeah, and I agree with the mob, like in any scenario, whether it be from one way or the other,
• 1:01:23
  because you've seen it weaponized around that Charlie Kirk death thing, like, you know,
• 1:01:27
  you've seen now that the idea that like people were being on both sides weaponizing people's
• 1:01:31
  reactions to the mob. Yeah. Like, and none of that's good. None of that's helpful or productive,
• 1:01:36
  like in any way that sort of like response to those conversations, but I also would argue,
• 1:01:42
  maybe, or at least think about maybe, that we're not much hedging can you do?
• 1:01:47
  Well, that we've always, aren't we always just making decisions on like, I mean,
• 1:01:51
  if somebody doesn't want to come and see one of my shows because I made too much fun of John
• 1:01:55
  Howard on the glass house, like that doesn't mean they've cancelled me. No, it doesn't.
• 1:01:59
  No, but if you try to make a booking, if your manager makes a booking at the ICC or the
• 1:02:08
  state theater or whatever. Yeah. And then the the booker finds out that it's for Will Anderson
• 1:02:15
  and all of a sudden, it's not available anymore. And you can't, you know, that that would be
• 1:02:21
  cancellation, I think. Yeah, but I mean, do we think that like the amount that that would happen
• 1:02:28
  or the and it does happen, obviously, but it's like a small amount in the general scheme of things
• 1:02:33
  that are happening all the time. It's like that idea of everybody looks for conspiracy when
• 1:02:38
  most of the time the way to explain something is, I don't know, they just didn't have the budget.
• 1:02:43
  That's right. Yeah, Gary talked to a glider party or there's a new boss and he didn't like the
• 1:02:48
  old boss. So all the old bosses projects are off the table or whatever it is. You know, like,
• 1:02:53
  there's often a less sinister explanation and most of the time like, I mean, all the most of
• 1:02:59
  the people who got cancelled and I do agree that there were disproportionate consequences because
• 1:03:04
  people got caught up in the idea of mob justice and that which also like, I guess goes back to that
• 1:03:12
  idea that I have around the idea of that we are all imperfect people and the minute that you
• 1:03:18
  kind of identify somebody else as being the villain of the story rather than just not being,
• 1:03:24
  you know, not Bangkok, right? You can be like, I'm Bangkok, these are my values and that is not
• 1:03:30
  Bangkok. So therefore, I'm just not going to buy into that without it specifically going, now we
• 1:03:35
  must go and find this one specific place that isn't Bangkok. The irony being that it was banging
• 1:03:40
  into all the trouble in the first place. I mean, it strikes me that your sense of humor has always
• 1:03:50
  though driven you to find and correct me if I'm wrong, but that you enjoy finding ways of
• 1:03:57
  tickling people's humor without transgression that actually part of what you love about the craft
• 1:04:03
  of comedy is to not, is like, there's an easy way to get a laugh, which is just to say something
• 1:04:10
  outrageous or provocative or to swear or something like that, right? And similarly, you know,
• 1:04:16
  you're a very different comedian from Jerry Seinfeld, but I have heard him interviewed on this where
• 1:04:19
  he feels like it's cheap just to, it's cheap to get the laugh because you swore or you said
• 1:04:24
  something outrageous or you transgressed a taboo. Like what's actually artful is to stay within
• 1:04:30
  Bangkok is to keep it inside Bangkok and and still get the laugh. Other people's instincts are
• 1:04:36
  different from that and other people, you know, find the transgression part of the point and so
• 1:04:40
  that's why they've gone so hysterical about free speech and all this sort of stuff, which it
• 1:04:44
  strikes me that you were never at risk of getting cancelled really because it's not your stick to do
• 1:04:50
  cancelable material. I mean, it's not, but the idea of what might be cancelable material always
• 1:04:58
  changes. Like there are things that you're bending over backwards to say the word bananas instead of
• 1:05:03
  like even mad, then you're definitely not okay. To me, that is not about like being
• 1:05:07
  particularly with the audience is actually the opposite of that, which is that in a world in which
• 1:05:12
  the predominant form of comedy and the world in my industry is that's the kind of you can't say
• 1:05:18
  anything anymore. That the true like interesting path is to be more exploratory around like, well,
• 1:05:24
  what are different ways of, you know, approaching these ideas or talking about these things or
• 1:05:29
  exploring them or like, this is to bring it back to this improvise show, like part of the philosophy
• 1:05:34
  of that was genuinely as a response to, well, if this is all what's big and online and whatever,
• 1:05:39
  I'm going to like take it to the opposite of that, which is we're going to build this very small
• 1:05:43
  thing that I'm in control of and I'm going to make my own space and I'm going to do it my own
• 1:05:47
  way with my own rules and it's going to have the vibes that I want and we're going to explore the
• 1:05:51
  ideas that I want. Like, one night in Melbourne, we spent 12 minutes in the show, there was a woman
• 1:05:56
  in the front row who worked in, you know, infectious diseases and so she lived in Melbourne like one of
• 1:06:02
  most shut down, you know, cities in the entire world during the period of COVID working in the field
• 1:06:07
  of infectious diseases. So pretty fascinating, but I was doing the show in Melbourne. So you are in
• 1:06:14
  an environment in which there was a lot of like trauma still in the audiences in that city
• 1:06:18
  about the experiences they went through and so you could tell the minute I started talking to this
• 1:06:22
  person who was like, there was just real mixed feelings in the room and I said to her, I said like,
• 1:06:27
  you know, tell me about bird flu because at the time bird flu was like really in the news and I
• 1:06:31
  said, I just can't get my head around whether this is a risk here in Australia and like where the
• 1:06:35
  birds like, is there American birds who are going to like, I don't understand. I said, could you
• 1:06:39
  explain it to me? She said it'll take six minutes. That's too long no one wants to hear it and I
• 1:06:44
  said, tell you what, you take six minutes to explain it, but just give me some pauses in between
• 1:06:49
  and I'll make it fun. And we took the audience mic, or is it small enough? That's why I do it in
• 1:06:56
  like the venues are always somewhere between sort of 90 and maximum 250. I've done it in bigger venues.
• 1:07:02
  I find it doesn't work as well when I have to repeat something because it's not what they say as
• 1:07:07
  much as how they say it that is often the important thing. Right, right. Like it's not what someone's
• 1:07:11
  job is, it's how they tell you what their job is, it tells you what you need to know about their
• 1:07:16
  relationship to where you're going to go with it in the scenario. And so what was the 12 minutes?
• 1:07:21
  So in this 12 minutes, well, this is the thing was she was able to explain how infectious diseases
• 1:07:27
  work, then how bird flu works and then how birds migrate and then the risks of the taking and what
• 1:07:31
  it means in Australia and like, and this entire time in this show, I was just thinking 150 people
• 1:07:37
  here are having a very good time like we're enjoying this. But also I'm learning about bird flu
• 1:07:42
  and they're all learning about bird flu and they go out of here and they, but we all felt a little
• 1:07:46
  bit more healed by it as well because this woman who felt like she could not talk about what she
• 1:07:50
  did in public because it's through no fault of her own just that she had lived through a time
• 1:07:54
  where suddenly the job that she had became associated with. It's triggered everybody.
• 1:07:59
  Worse memories, right? Can you imagine that? Like, you know, there was a woman in my audience
• 1:08:04
  the other night, like a middle-aged woman with a blonde bob. And I said, what's your name?
• 1:08:08
  As she said, please don't like make me say it. And like, I've had it enough now that I understand
• 1:08:13
  if the immediately her name's going to be Karen and she has trauma with her for the last few years.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah, right. So my instinct is always, well, don't worry because I like my things counterintuitive.
• 1:08:24
  What does she expect the responses going to be? I want to go the opposite. So I do this whole
• 1:08:29
  thing about like how it's so unfair and it's like you were just going along your life and you're
• 1:08:33
  such a nice person. And you know, then a few people complain and your name gets this bad. Yeah,
• 1:08:37
  but like, I do this whole thing and I get to the end. And she just goes, no, say that's the thing.
• 1:08:42
  I love it to comply.
• 1:08:49
  Way to reinforce a stereotype, Karen. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. But I mean, you were not
• 1:08:55
  transgressing. You say that the reason why you do that is because it's so predictable at the moment.
• 1:09:03
  Lean into the like, oh, I'm so edgy. And I completely agree that like this whole stick about like,
• 1:09:09
  you can't cancel me or like I'm the guy who got canceled. And like, that's very, it's a very
• 1:09:15
  very old hat now. The monetization. Yeah, exactly. Can't say anything into the high selling
• 1:09:22
  during the world. Yeah, exactly. Perhaps a cliche now. It's like everyone's show is old. I think
• 1:09:27
  they can all shut me up. It's like, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, it's only people who can't say anything on
• 1:09:34
  the lines when we hear from them. But that being said, I don't want us to rewrite history and white
• 1:09:44
  wash what happened between 2016 and 2022 when there were real serious and startling and kind of
• 1:09:51
  headspinning repercussions for a lot of people on the basis of a bunch of new norms around how
• 1:09:56
  people were supposed to speak about gender or, you know, race or whatever it might be. And people
• 1:10:02
  who didn't quite get the memo as quickly as other people or who resented being given a memo at all
• 1:10:07
  were okay. I'll give you a more practical example then. Like something maybe like that we could
• 1:10:12
  just literally happen that we can grasp on to. Yes. So a road show called Willogical. The people
• 1:10:18
  can still find that was about living in the anti-backed capital of Australia during the global pandemic.
• 1:10:24
  So that got a lot of backlash from a particular group of society who didn't like any of the things
• 1:10:31
  that I said around like vaccines and the people's approach. But those were anti-vaxxers.
• 1:10:35
  Yeah, so they don't cover any cultural cash. Well, this is what I'm saying. So where do you start to
• 1:10:40
  rule the line around where like what a cancellation is or is it a cancellation? No, that's a unbladging code.
• 1:10:46
  I'm not unbladging. I'm glad you made that. I'm glad you made that point because one thing I'll
• 1:10:52
  often, one thing I'll often hear when I talk about, you know, poor little white man tears about
• 1:11:00
  how, you know, how mean people can be, you know, is like a try being a woman of color on social media
• 1:11:05
  or something like that. I mean, it's just the level of sexism and racism is out of control.
• 1:11:10
  Yeah, people like I didn't like that you said the artwork and then meanwhile someone in their
• 1:11:14
  DMs is like, I know where you live and I'm going to murder you. I wish I could say the artwork.
• 1:11:20
  Totally. And I totally take that. My only point is that in order to be clear about the
• 1:11:25
  phenomenon that we're trying to isolate and I think we need to understand that phenomenon in
• 1:11:29
  order to understand Elon and Trump and the far right and make America great and everything.
• 1:11:34
  You need to understand that and I've been on both sides of this because I've gotten
• 1:11:40
  shit, I've gotten anti-Semitic shit and I've gotten anti-gay shit and then I've also got the
• 1:11:47
  being hounded by a mob for being cluelessly insensitive about my breaching of social justice norms.
• 1:11:55
  Shit. And all I'll say is when some asshole is punching down at you for your identity,
• 1:12:04
  it hurts but there's no sense that the world is against you because polite society,
• 1:12:12
  universities, the media, you know, if everybody who matters,
• 1:12:19
  that is in our society. Like in regard to what though? Like in regard to what in the
• 1:12:25
  opportunities or what we're talking about or. Yeah, in regard to the tone of every single column
• 1:12:31
  that you will read in any newspaper, the tone of the agreed upon norms of the culture
• 1:12:36
  have agreed that hating Jews and hating gays and hating people for the color of their skin is
• 1:12:43
  wrong, that's not a legitimate chess move. But there was a period when it was a totally legitimate
• 1:12:49
  chess move to banish people for, you know, for saying that trans women were different from women
• 1:12:58
  or something like that. Yeah, I mean, I understand the point that you're making but I also think it's
• 1:13:03
  maybe a slightly naive read of the current state of the world to suggest that those. No,
• 1:13:07
  I'm not sure that. Obviously, obviously, there was a giant nuclear bomb. We're in the path of
• 1:13:14
  that. Yeah, those long shots have really paid off in the terms of no, but I think this is why
• 1:13:21
  we've got I mean, this is why we're in the shit that we're in because more that we went too far
• 1:13:25
  the other way and as a result, it's come back too far the other. It didn't help. Yeah, my thesis
• 1:13:30
  is not to blame the left. One for, yeah, it's not a monochrome. You think it's part of the,
• 1:13:35
  yeah, I don't think any realistic, you know, reading of history can regard Trumpism as a drop
• 1:13:41
  being dropped out of the sky in the absence of people's anxieties about this. I mean, it's why
• 1:13:48
  you can identify so many, you know, Bernie fans that were also Trump fans, which is that they both
• 1:13:55
  identified the problem and they just wanted someone who had a solution and they were willing to
• 1:14:00
  look at their two completely different solutions as long as like one of them had a solution.
• 1:14:05
  Yes, because they both were able to look at the thing and go, we think this is broken or
• 1:14:10
  appeal to them in that way. So your comedy and your humor, so what the point that I was trying to
• 1:14:14
  make was you've been a conciliator in your humor. Like you want to give your answer group hug
• 1:14:23
  instead of being like, watch me like like my thoughts and like, you know, I mean, that is
• 1:14:28
  I agree with that long before it was cool to be like transgressive. Like this has only happened
• 1:14:35
  when I when I was just articulating that model, I was really talking about
• 1:14:39
  2016 and I think this is a trend that that's what I actually like say to people sometimes
• 1:14:43
  but in the 90s you were polite. But as in like, yeah, like I think I would like to think my
• 1:14:49
  comedy is my comedy regardless of it's just because earlier you said I like doing it that way
• 1:14:57
  because everybody else is being, you know, probably because often what you do is you lean into
• 1:15:02
  the things that are like if if I am about more than 10 things, you know, if I am about to 100
• 1:15:09
  things or 200 things or a thousand things or 10,000 things or whatever it is. And I'm looking to
• 1:15:14
  which bits of that am I going to turn up or which of those am I going to turn down? Yeah,
• 1:15:19
  it will be dependent on the environment and often it's a push against whatever the prevailing,
• 1:15:25
  it's never been as fun for me to be like whatever the prevailing thing is. I've always like
• 1:15:30
  tried to go, which is do something that's like leaning to the thing of yours that is like because
• 1:15:35
  in every situation and I guess and I don't mean this in any other way than I think sometimes
• 1:15:40
  you see younger comedians and the only they'll be like, oh, I hate having to put a clip on social
• 1:15:45
  media every day. I hate this infrastructure that I'm now in. And I'm like, well, if you hate it,
• 1:15:50
  I just want you to know there are other ways to do it. I know this is the way to do it,
• 1:15:53
  what this is absolutely one way to do it. And in fact, it may be the main way to do it, but there
• 1:15:58
  are other ways to do it. You can always find another option. You don't have to just because
• 1:16:03
  C.O. Vaughn and Joe Rogan are the biggest comedians in the world doesn't mean that you have to
• 1:16:06
  be like them. It means you can be. But also 10 years ago, Hannah Gadsby was like comedy goes in
• 1:16:13
  waves and Steve Martin was and blah, blah, blah was and you know, like there's different times when
• 1:16:18
  comedy is different things and we tend to react like this is what comedy will be like forever.
• 1:16:23
  Like it gets to this moment and we're like, well, this is what comedy is now. But at the same time is
• 1:16:28
  we have this conversation around the can't you can't say anything any more crowd. The actual
• 1:16:33
  biggest stand-up comedian in the world is Nate Bugazzi and who's like the most family
• 1:16:40
  like act you've ever, I mean, not in a bad way. He's a genius comedian, but like, you know,
• 1:16:46
  no swearing, good Christian values, like, you know, playing 60,000 state stadiums everywhere he
• 1:16:52
  goes all over the world. So like, you know, it's not even like this moment that we're in. We have
• 1:16:57
  these conversations as if all of comedy is one type of comedy. It never is. Like, there's always
• 1:17:04
  flight of the Concords alongside Jim Jeffery. So often in the same show.
• 1:17:12
  What do you make of like the role that comedy's been playing lately politically? As I'm thinking
• 1:17:16
  of the late night shows, the controversy around Kimmel being pulled, Stephen Colberg getting the
• 1:17:22
  acts. Like you mentioned, we were talking about Letterman. And like, we grew up in an era when
• 1:17:26
  there was this Titanic figurehead of American culture, which was the late night television host,
• 1:17:33
  and there were two of them. And, you know, prior to that, there was only one in Carson that was
• 1:17:39
  before my time. But the idea of there being like a sort of a conveyor belt of comedy that led
• 1:17:47
  up into the upper echelons of culture, either in a sitcom or a late night show, was like taken
• 1:17:52
  for granted. And now with the diversity of different media and with social media and Instagram
• 1:17:57
  clips and everything, it does feel like a bit denuded to me that there's like a whole bunch of
• 1:18:04
  people who are like foul on space, they're just producing clips for the interwebs now. And like,
• 1:18:09
  that's the point of his show really. Nobody really watches them when they go to air.
• 1:18:13
  Yeah. Like, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I just think that's like I'm in free-air television.
• 1:18:22
  Like, it's also something that I have worked on in Australia. What Americans call network
• 1:18:27
  television? Yeah, it's like, it's a dying medium, you know, people have like embraced the
• 1:18:34
  streamers. But then, of course, we're now in this period with the streamers where suddenly these
• 1:18:39
  things, which always happens, by the way, you pay a premium because there's no advertising.
• 1:18:44
  And then, after a while, they're like, it's not really making enough money here. We're
• 1:18:47
  going to put some advertising on it. But then there'll be a premium one where you cannot get
• 1:18:51
  the advertising. And now we basically just have a bespoke cable package, really, because we have
• 1:18:55
  to pay for more expensive because like you've joined 90 different services instead of the,
• 1:19:01
  and you've forgotten three of them. And it turns out you've got an Australian Netflix and an
• 1:19:05
  American one that you're paying for both, that you don't have to cancel the ad because you must
• 1:19:09
  have a little binge. I can't even remember. What's it on and how do I do it? And now my TV doesn't
• 1:19:15
  have enough storage for all these apps. And you literally need an app to figure out what app
• 1:19:20
  anything's on because there seems to be no, at least my TV doesn't have any reliable way of searching.
• 1:19:25
  What's on aware? So I like have a literal dedicated app to find out what streaming app the thing
• 1:19:31
  that I want to watch is on. I met a guy at a garden Barbie the other day, my younger than me
• 1:19:39
  who still watches television. I haven't watched television. Honestly, it would be at least since my
• 1:19:47
  kids were born. So eight years since I turned on a television and just like watched whatever was
• 1:19:55
  on or like just flicked around. Unless I'm traveling and I'm in a hotel room and I'm just bouncing
• 1:19:59
  between seeing an international and BBC or something because there's nothing on but like getting
• 1:20:03
  like turning on a TV. Imagine me like it sells bonkers to me. Sorry, not bonkers, bananas to me
• 1:20:10
  right now that you would just be like, I so have nothing to do and I so want to just watch TV as
• 1:20:19
  an abstract idea with nothing in no particular goal that I'm going to sit down and just turn it on
• 1:20:27
  and then whatever's there, I'm going to gaze at. I know. And yet like he's doing this. He's
• 1:20:35
  having more choice like always a better thing, right? Like we're seeing it more and more in businesses
• 1:20:42
  and I actually quite like it is the idea of just do one thing well, right? Yeah. Like where a
• 1:20:48
  place that does like these sandwiches or these. It's your little restaurant again like that just does
• 1:20:53
  it just do this well. It doesn't have to be but also a broader thing which is that the idea of
• 1:21:01
  something being unique. Like it almost has to come with the idea that like what it's always gross
• 1:21:10
  that leads to things becoming less unique, right? More universal is the way that you would put it
• 1:21:16
  right, which is the reason that you can now walk into a cafe in Sydney and a cafe in Japan.
• 1:21:21
  And if you didn't look outside the window, you'd be able to you wouldn't be able to identify
• 1:21:25
  which of the cities you're in because the cafe you're in looks exactly the same because it's been
• 1:21:28
  this standardization of culture across social media and a lot of it has been for the idea of it
• 1:21:34
  just be expanding. Like people they crave for familiarity and it's what the big chains have done
• 1:21:38
  and that's happened now through social media with even smaller businesses. So you just don't have
• 1:21:43
  anything that's unique or the minute it is unique, it's on social media. So therefore
• 1:21:47
  someone else is then doing it. It can't remain special because of the very nature of it. Like
• 1:21:52
  it almost requires you to fiercely guard how small it is to keep it being you know special.
• 1:21:59
  Yes, but I don't you think that stream I totally take that point and that's one of my great
• 1:22:05
  it's it's dismaying to me that we that the sort of homogenization of the world and the
• 1:22:10
  corporatization of everything and the generalization of everything.
• 1:22:15
  But also wasn't there something nice about when we all used to watch something at the same time
• 1:22:19
  and then going to the next day. That's what I was alluding to with the comedy thing as well.
• 1:22:23
  I mean it was there was something special and unifying about coming to school and everybody
• 1:22:29
  knew everybody had seen the Seinfeld tonight before or an error or at least the cool kids had seen
• 1:22:33
  Letterman as well. And yeah now who knows what there are very few things but the things are
• 1:22:41
  there are on streamers like the the cultural touch points at least in our elite little bubbles.
• 1:22:47
  Yeah, they're there tend to be things like succession or white lotus or something.
• 1:22:51
  But then you have to tap back into the like the broader social media infrastructure to have
• 1:22:57
  those discussions or debates or whatever and you have to be like everyone's watching this at
• 1:23:00
  the same time or now I have to avoid those places to avoid. They're not doing it at the same time.
• 1:23:05
  Yeah, but at least they're in the yes no that's true. Yeah, I mean the only thing that people watch
• 1:23:09
  at the same time anymore is sport and reality television occasionally if there's like a finale
• 1:23:13
  at the bachelor or something like that. Things that you need to see in real time to avoid.
• 1:23:17
  But I don't think that I don't quite agree with your implication that I think you are implying
• 1:23:22
  about there being a diminution of quality as a result of no longer channel surfing. I mean
• 1:23:28
  I think quality of experience not quality of content of content. Of course there's more content
• 1:23:35
  and of course having more choices in theory is a better thing. Right? Like you know the more
• 1:23:39
  chance that there's good things but is there a point by which we actually lose our capacity to make
• 1:23:45
  a choice at all? You know the idea yeah no idea where you would like yeah you get seven like you'd
• 1:23:52
  have time in the week to watch seven movies yeah like which is probably still the amount of time
• 1:23:57
  like you probably don't like I've there's not a week where I've watched seven movies. So I've
• 1:24:01
  had a real serious thing about like a psychologist once said to me that I buy books for the person I
• 1:24:07
  want to be not for the person I actually am because I have enough unread books like if you came to my
• 1:24:12
  house you'd go this is a well read guy what you would actually know is this guy loves buying.
• 1:24:18
  Yeah someday I'm going to get around to middle March. Yeah that Proust is definitely going to be
• 1:24:23
  read now. This is definitely like it's a list of topics I thought I'd be interested in. Yeah yeah
• 1:24:29
  no totally me too me too. And so if I had a realistic thought about my life instead of wandering
• 1:24:35
  around the bookshop that is the internet if I just went to my shelf and I chose one of those
• 1:24:40
  books and I sat in my chair and I read a book is there an argument to be made that that is the
• 1:24:45
  better experience for me to be encouraging that I already have the books that one stream that you
• 1:24:50
  has enough shows choose one and watch it and think about it and talk about it with someone else
• 1:24:56
  like this is the thing about that and I don't know I'm the same as everybody else next episode next
• 1:25:01
  episode but there was something built into the weekly thing that required of us to like if lost
• 1:25:07
  came along now as a bingeable show would people talk about it in the same way as they talked about
• 1:25:12
  it was that's gone yeah unfortunately yeah I was thinking that about breaking bad as well
• 1:25:18
  or madmen or one of those other shows that that you know it seems quite recent that people would
• 1:25:23
  have viewing parties I mean I remember going down to the the bar on the corner of my street in
• 1:25:28
  New York to watch the finale of madmen and it was like you know it's like a moment where this thing
• 1:25:33
  is emerging on the screens and everyone's getting like madmen themed and everything like the whole
• 1:25:37
  city was alive with like the finale of this one television show and I don't think that's ever coming
• 1:25:41
  back sadly yeah I mean I think that if people remember the feeling of something that things do come
• 1:25:52
  back they might not come back exactly how they come back but there there will be something else that
• 1:25:56
  feels that void that we find that we have inside ourselves like it might take us a while but there's
• 1:26:01
  always that thing is like let's join the rally to bash the Jews or something you know like it's
• 1:26:05
  you know that you because they're like yes people need to feel a sense of community I'd like a
• 1:26:09
  second draft I'd say if you've got some other ideas could read is this all you've done
• 1:26:14
  and how long did you think how did you long did you brainstorm talking to the man who rewrote the
• 1:26:18
  golden rule I mean come on I'll get on a zoom with you or something if this is all you got
• 1:26:25
  but I do think it I think you'll enjoy by the way I'm not many to distract you but I was once
• 1:26:29
  in a pub where a woman told me an awful anti-Jewish show please and I said to her that I had not
• 1:26:35
  enjoyed that joke and I didn't think it was very funny and she said to me well I'm not anti-Semitic
• 1:26:41
  and I enjoyed the irony the semantics are the the word for the correct usage of language
• 1:26:46
  and I was like thank you for your first job but this one this one you've just done is actually
• 1:26:54
  very sophisticated a comedy this is yeah that's good um oh I just lost my train of thought now
• 1:27:01
  with that anti-Semitic joke but I quite liked it um do you flick around do you just get do you
• 1:27:06
  even you know turn on this television oh no I know what I was gonna say do things with intention
• 1:27:09
  I used to do things intention I like it and when you're doing your television shows you must
• 1:27:15
  be thinking of it as like even though it's on a free-to-wear channel and some people are just
• 1:27:23
  randomly catching it and other people are tuning in for it you want it to be as good a little unit
• 1:27:31
  of its own as it can be and something that people would want to revisit and binge and will someday
• 1:27:38
  I mean I think that about this show as well it's like it's great if people are listening to us
• 1:27:44
  as soon as this drops but the only person listening to this right now is AI to just
• 1:27:50
  say like a replica of his conversation but you know you want it to be you want it to be
• 1:27:57
  interesting enough and stimulating enough as its own little but is there too much content
• 1:28:03
  for anybody to ever revisit anything I think about that you know I don't even mean revisit that
• 1:28:07
  if someone stumbles upon it in four years time uh and you know they've only just discovered
• 1:28:13
  the podcast and they go back and listen to it like you want it to be
• 1:28:19
  but then there's a problem or there's something that was we go back in time four years and you
• 1:28:24
  get to that idea of what did I say on this podcast that this time it's like turns out
• 1:28:30
  after the great banana like it every day that COVID was caused by banana
• 1:28:35
  banana farmers are going to be on here that's why why are you demeaning this noble fruit bananas
• 1:28:40
  become the new slur in the last four years and I'm not sure why we should just as a general
• 1:28:45
  principle not how people out of polite society for transgressing no no and I agree with that in
• 1:28:50
  general and it's in the same way as I cannot like to say a word but also become suitable enough
• 1:28:55
  to sit alongside you and have a conversation where you can say the same word and us like have I
• 1:28:59
  think this is important for us to like have conversations where we're not all because we're not
• 1:29:04
  all the same and maybe by the way if people could just be a little better at like not feeling like
• 1:29:10
  they're an expert in something that they only learned about yourself. Oh yeah yeah because that's
• 1:29:14
  the one that I think is a real yeah like when someone is so specific or something I was like hang on
• 1:29:20
  yeah I know three three weeks ago you weren't saying banana the amazing people have weighed people
• 1:29:26
  have to turn the fucking dial down too much passion no I want more apathy I want more of your
• 1:29:33
  Nosferatu dwelling in the basement getting white skin kind of just like chill out a little bit
• 1:29:38
  but let's just stop being so hysterical but is it not also and again like I'm not talking about
• 1:29:44
  big conversations obviously big conversations happen to happen in the right ways and you know our
• 1:29:49
  society to like a battle of ideas good I like all that sort of stuff in principle but this idea
• 1:29:54
  that we are just trapped in this world that we feel like and because we have been demanded of it
• 1:30:01
  by society haven't opinion on everything right this thing how do you feel about this right
• 1:30:06
  on a review five stars what do you immediately think host it tell us what you thought of the movie
• 1:30:12
  sometimes I just want to sit with what I thought yeah sometimes I'll never fully think about
• 1:30:17
  something also enterprise car rental I don't want to get an email from you asking how the rental
• 1:30:23
  was we all know how was it was fine he was fine I'm not going to give you a start I'm not going
• 1:30:31
  to do your market research for you stop emailing me about you know all like you buy a fucking
• 1:30:35
  table of like here or something then send your follow up email about what your experience that
• 1:30:40
  Ikea was like I got up let me let me buy you stupid furniture and live my life just two years ago
• 1:30:46
  I bought some sheets and I love linen won't stop sending me recipes they're not even a recipe
• 1:30:51
  company here's very winter recipes I'm like why is the linen company the recipe is a favorite
• 1:30:59
  winter recipe the involved I can just imagine you were standing over a giant part with a sheet
• 1:31:05
  in it and some beef stock the internet content and then the idea that like obviously we're in a
• 1:31:11
  world of like AI slot where so much of this infinite content is just being regurgitated regurgitated
• 1:31:17
  is there a chance that there is like a I don't know is there a burnout to that where we've gone
• 1:31:23
  through this period where we were immediately like iPads dropped into like a village that's never
• 1:31:29
  seen in television we all went a bit you know bananas yes but now there's going to be a
• 1:31:35
  re-adjustment where we say oh that heightened way that that made us engage with each other
• 1:31:42
  is not actually how we should be engaging with each other in society and I would still argue
• 1:31:48
  isn't like I go to places all over the country and I have conversations with all sorts of people
• 1:31:54
  and often they are people who absolutely don't agree with something I say or might even bring
• 1:31:59
  up a topic that I know is like this just happened recently somebody was like you know at schools
• 1:32:05
  kids are identifying his cats and they're putting literature in the and like somebody said that to
• 1:32:09
  me and you know what I did Josh what moved the conversation awfully to another topic
• 1:32:15
  oh because I was being polite in a pub with a guy I did not know there was no reason like I mean
• 1:32:21
  maybe if that's my mom and she's getting a lot of bad information from the extent and I'm worried
• 1:32:25
  that you know you engage right but in a general sort of just chat with someone I'm like when
• 1:32:31
  did you think of the grand final I don't you know it's so hard to know when to push back I think
• 1:32:36
  you can I think you can because it contributes to an environment in which people are more susceptible
• 1:32:45
  to anti-trans messaging if they believe that you did in that society like right then it doesn't
• 1:32:50
  no right then it doesn't but if that guy knows that when he says stuff like that then people like
• 1:32:54
  you say I think that's an urban myth made I don't think just in a pleasant way like I honestly don't
• 1:32:59
  I've heard that a million times from million places they've never been able to track down it actually
• 1:33:03
  happening it's not yeah I guess I think you're right in that like I wouldn't have fully
• 1:33:11
  ignored that he'd said it right but you're right I think that you that is important that you
• 1:33:18
  at least acknowledge that it is incorrect yeah but I do think that in that scenario my instinct is
• 1:33:23
  always to acknowledge this incorrect and then move on yes of course we don't want to let us
• 1:33:29
  close pull up some sources on our phones no I can't really agree there's so much oh my god so
• 1:33:38
  many things just I wonder that so I guess what I'm saying is have we just artificially inflated
• 1:33:43
  our level of engagement our level for feedback our level for needing an opinion I think I have
• 1:33:48
  like six or so opinions a year like strong opinion opinion a year and that feels about the right
• 1:33:54
  in that you know I feel like someone has a bit about that is it you about how about the correct
• 1:33:59
  number of opinions no it might even be Louis it's yeah it's like you know everyone's going to
• 1:34:02
  opinion on it no or Bill Burr or something you know this you know the correct number of opinions
• 1:34:07
  is like it is something like six you know that that is the number should have an opinion about a sports
• 1:34:11
  team you should have an opinion about the weather you should you know but like that's basically it
• 1:34:15
  and you don't get anymore you get you get to have like five opinions and that's it but also takes
• 1:34:20
  me time to form an opinion hmm I don't have a lot of immediate takes or if I do they're often wrong
• 1:34:27
  yeah and so like if I want to go is you two a good band which is just a question I've been asking
• 1:34:33
  myself recently because I have childhood memories of you two right and then I was listening to a
• 1:34:37
  podcast about you two and I was like do I think you two is a good band is do you think you two is a
• 1:34:42
  good band still not sure and so I'm like three months into that process of me trying to work out
• 1:34:46
  whether I think you two are a good band yeah right and I feel like it's taken me that time to be
• 1:34:51
  still maybe yeah that's about every second I think they're pretty good yeah I'd like that they're
• 1:34:58
  creative and try different things although I wish they'd kind of stuck to a bit more of a essence
• 1:35:03
  of what they are all right like you know it's complicated yes I don't know it's a complication like
• 1:35:09
  I think we've been demand like there's so much demand for black and white exactly yes one way or
• 1:35:14
  the other algorithmic engagement comes in two forms right which is either positive affirmation of
• 1:35:21
  we believe the same thing as you all like the same thing as you or we hate or like don't like the
• 1:35:26
  thing that you like so that you'll engage with this content right so that we think that everybody
• 1:35:31
  either loves the same things that we love or absolutely hates the same things that we love when
• 1:35:35
  most people are actually yes somewhere in between those two positions yeah I mean this comes
• 1:35:40
  back to my point about like meta about us me not having very good opinions because my opinions would
• 1:35:45
  all be meta opinions in the sense that if someone has a very stride and opinion about something
• 1:35:51
  I take a default position that they're almost certainly full of shit because it's rare that binary
• 1:35:58
  is actually quite rare and so my meta position like the position about the the opinion about the
• 1:36:06
  opinion would be as a as a rule of thumb if someone is hedging a bit they're likely to be a good
• 1:36:13
  faith person who has a better understanding of the situation than someone who is like if you are not
• 1:36:18
  putting a black tile on your Instagram you're on the wrong side of history because it shows that
• 1:36:24
  you're not now or something like someone who's like well yes this is on the way they want
• 1:36:29
  hand on the other hand then as a general rule I just haven't a bias towards that kind of opinion
• 1:36:34
  precisely because it's not binary the and strangely people have the most intense opinions about the
• 1:36:43
  most unbalanced things like if someone if someone is a hundred percent in for like Israel is totally
• 1:36:51
  right or a hundred percent in for like Hamas and Gaza are totally right then you know that they're
• 1:36:58
  going to be a incredibly opinionated about it and be wrong yeah you know I like it I know I
• 1:37:05
  agree I mean the idea that you're saying oh you know that thing that has been shorthand for
• 1:37:12
  a situation that is complicated to an extent that it cannot be resolved where everybody is happy
• 1:37:18
  about it you have a very simplistic and easy to understand position one way or the other one who
• 1:37:23
  is right or wrong in that situation and then well congratulations I mean it's amazing you solved it
• 1:37:28
  it's about you did it because people have been having a real crack at this yeah and you just only
• 1:37:32
  heard about it last week yeah you were very honest you figured it out yeah so I agree with you that
• 1:37:37
  that is over simplistic and then the idea that we take the way that other worlds are engaging in
• 1:37:45
  something and transport it to ourselves and our own worlds without the empathy that comes with that
• 1:37:50
  that some saying hey regardless of what your position is that if you're like hey I'm one way this
• 1:37:55
  way or one way this way that there are people within the community that might affect in a way that
• 1:37:59
  aren't right it might be mostly on your side but in the way that you have like put forward your
• 1:38:06
  side you have also different disenfranchised them fulfilling included in that right is that do you
• 1:38:12
  know you lost me about the fulfilling included in that bit but I think I understand what you
• 1:38:15
  that you're just I guess what I'm trying to say is that regardless of what you think about like
• 1:38:21
  you know where you might find yourself on Israel and Palestine and I have friends like who are in
• 1:38:26
  communities on both sides of that who also have the added complication of them being from that
• 1:38:31
  community regardless of what they might think of this current battle that is between a right-wing
• 1:38:37
  government in like you know in Israel that isn't like you know the Israeli football team at the
• 1:38:42
  Olympics or whatever you know this is like a specific yeah a specific thing yeah but they might
• 1:38:48
  culturally you know like align like with the Jewish community but have very different opinions
• 1:38:52
  and this has been tearing those communities apart as well because of that when we import these
• 1:38:58
  things and a lot of that comes from the idea that there is a simplistic black or white
• 1:39:03
  yeah well I mean it's Bangkok not Bangkok you know and I mean it's like you know if you're a Jew
• 1:39:08
  then shut up and don't criticize Israel because it's a you know the Jewish people have been
• 1:39:14
  you know Israelis were traumatized and the yes they're understandably lashing out and similarly
• 1:39:19
  if you're Muslim or an Arab or you're even you're even just a progressive then you know you have
• 1:39:25
  to toe the line about thinking that every single a gas and casualty is unjustifiable like it's
• 1:39:31
  yeah there's a there's an exclusivity to the kind of sphere of moral concern where if you're not
• 1:39:37
  inside the the tent then you're outside again Bangkok not yeah and yeah and it becomes then
• 1:39:43
  down to labels right that's not us yeah and that's when it does become very damaging like is that
• 1:39:48
  idea of because you can judge you know Netanyahu for the same things you were judging for if he
• 1:39:55
  were president of any country right like if you're doing the same things right like without it
• 1:40:00
  becoming about like that he is Jewish right and that but you would see those conversations so quickly
• 1:40:09
  yeah like yeah like everything you're saying to hear is absolutely right and then when you
• 1:40:15
  put that label and vice versa like what happened on both sides yeah but it would become about
• 1:40:19
  the us and not us as opposed to the idea that there are various degrees of those things yeah I mean
• 1:40:24
  you're also reminding me a little bit of the of the point that Tim mentioned has made so well about
• 1:40:29
  like it's interesting to note who we give sympathy to and who we give agency to when we think
• 1:40:34
  about you know the hierarchies and justice and whatever that you know you I mean this we're going
• 1:40:43
  a bit down a rabbit hole here but I think it'll look back we have a tendency to play the white
• 1:40:50
  saviour and look at people of color who are being bombed or who are poor or who are being shot by
• 1:40:56
  police or whatever the injustice we have a sort of a postcolonial guilt in the West and where we
• 1:41:01
  find it much easier to deprive them of agency so you know you talk in all conversations about
• 1:41:07
  Gaza and Israel just since we were on that particular topic anyway you'll hear a lot of rationalizing
• 1:41:12
  about how well it's understandable that Hamas would be a dysfunctional jihadist death cult because
• 1:41:17
  they're you know they're the product of all of the underlying reasons why the Palestinian people's
• 1:41:23
  aspirations have been thwarted and they've been shut up on for so many decades by Israel and by
• 1:41:27
  the by everybody that of course they're going to express their their desire for self determination
• 1:41:31
  in dysfunctional ways so that's a you're giving sympathy there but you're sort of depriving them
• 1:41:37
  of any agency for the way that they're behaving and then you turn to the white looking Israeli leader
• 1:41:43
  who's standing in a nice suit who's raining the bombs down on them and it's all agency fucking
• 1:41:49
  Natanyahu could be choosing otherwise the Israelis could be choosing otherwise and they should be
• 1:41:53
  they should be choosing otherwise it's like we recognize ourselves in the villain dropping the bomb
• 1:42:01
  and therefore we expect more of them and we give them the power to choose otherwise yeah I don't
• 1:42:06
  accept that they are also products of their environment products of their trauma products of
• 1:42:11
  their context of being surrounded by a half billion Arabs who hate them products of all of these
• 1:42:15
  different things so like it is a balancing act of like it's it's just interesting to note our
• 1:42:21
  own Bangkok if you project who is a human and who is your victim yeah that's right and
• 1:42:28
  it feels to me and I have absolutely like no sense of an understanding of this enough to make
• 1:42:33
  any informed opinion on it really but that regard that regardless of what is going to happen
• 1:42:39
  it felt like the two worst people were in charge to work it out you know they're not the ones
• 1:42:45
  that I was like we need to work something else here yeah can we can we give another go at who we're
• 1:42:49
  going to put in charge on either side that's what I feel about the whole world at the moment
• 1:42:53
  though well it's like you know so that's the us and not us over it all right so I would say
• 1:42:59
  the us in this situation is us is we are Australians first the us so I would firstly think about
• 1:43:06
  in our community are we caring for the people on each side of this and the ramifications in our
• 1:43:11
  local community in a way that is firstly about us and our community here first before we think
• 1:43:16
  about it letting something that's happening overseas divide us on the streets here at home I guess
• 1:43:21
  yeah it absolutely depends not on your us and not us but it's also not like we're going to solve
• 1:43:26
  the problem over there if we just like if we can just get more people to march across the harbour bridge
• 1:43:31
  in support of Palestine then that's going to solve the problem it's like keep this society cohesive
• 1:43:36
  as much as we possibly can and then let them fucking Middle East figure out the Middle East
• 1:43:42
  there was a quite line by there was a an Israeli general who was a more pacifistically minded
• 1:43:50
  person not a Netanyahu hawk who said you have to remember it's not us against them it's some of
• 1:43:56
  us and some of them against some of them and some of us and I think that's a nice way of
• 1:44:03
  blowing up the Bangkok not Bangkok and I think sometimes that that applies to the crisis of
• 1:44:09
  liberal democracy at the moment as well it's not actually left against right it's those of us who
• 1:44:14
  want to treat each other with respect and sanity and reason and a sense of decency about the rules
• 1:44:20
  of the game in this multicultural liberal democratic you know society that we have created
• 1:44:28
  and those of us who want to throw over the chessboard and smash everything and act in bad faith
• 1:44:35
  and there are people like that on both sides yes there are and often depending on what your
• 1:44:42
  personal world perspective is that the people who are willing to you know throw over the table
• 1:44:49
  and say this is not right are the ones that you admire if they're doing it on behalf of the
• 1:44:53
  liberal right no not me but I understand actually do uphold the principles yeah but this I understand
• 1:45:00
  what you're saying as an intellectual argument and I would love to have that same and I would like
• 1:45:04
  to apply that intellectual regard to my own ideas before I express them in the way that I've
• 1:45:10
  thought about but am I in at that moment going to be yeah good on them I'm glad that they did that
• 1:45:16
  you know because they believe what I believe yeah and and that's part of the problem right which is
• 1:45:21
  that we encourage that sort of thing when it is what also we talk in existentially terrifying
• 1:45:27
  ways I mean I think social media I think one good thing about you being off social media is that
• 1:45:31
  it doesn't make you as apocalyptic as everybody else which is like there's the stakes have been
• 1:45:37
  heightened so much yes but of course you're going to support the person pushing over the table on
• 1:45:42
  like and smashing everything as long as they prevent the other side from destroying the world
• 1:45:48
  and the right things that the left is just sending the drag queens into the libraries to groom
• 1:45:53
  kids to change their gender so that's what I mean about the you know that algorithmic function of
• 1:46:01
  extremes which is the yes that one side thinks that you know the drag queens are being sent into
• 1:46:08
  like you know convince all the kids that they need to be trans and then so there's a response
• 1:46:13
  to that thing that isn't true in the first place and then of course there's a response to the
• 1:46:17
  response because then people and then because everybody's responding like eventually there's
• 1:46:22
  going to be a bad faith actor or someone who crosses a line or somebody who can be held up as the
• 1:46:27
  example of all people are of the you know I that's the coverage I saw of that Charlie Kirk theme was
• 1:46:33
  the coverage of people being sacked for their reactions to the right and the thing that I thought
• 1:46:39
  when they showed them on the news was there was like four of them and I was like that feels
• 1:46:44
  I feel like you could find four of anything of anything yeah yeah it doesn't matter what print like
• 1:46:51
  thing you person you nominated or whatever they died you'd find four people say something bad
• 1:46:57
  to taste about them how do you think about just making me think about legacy and death and like
• 1:47:05
  religion and stuff like that if you have your thoughts about the purpose of life and the nature
• 1:47:11
  of consciousness changed over the course as you've gotten older it's interesting like I
• 1:47:18
  I love talking about like why we're here but I've got no closer to having any understanding of why
• 1:47:24
  it might be in fact I think I've got further away the more that I hear what other people's opinions
• 1:47:29
  about what did it used to be I think that I was somebody who and in general principles still do
• 1:47:35
  subscribe to the idea of expertise like you know allocating things that are not my expertise to
• 1:47:42
  people who are experts in those fields is kind of a general principle in which that I you know
• 1:47:48
  live my life now like obviously it's been harder to tell a modern society who is an expert and I
• 1:47:53
  do is not an expert the places that we used to be able to trust the information we also have
• 1:48:00
  older people in our lives who talk to like you know who will come across you and say I saw this
• 1:48:04
  but you know about how you know actually the you know the second world war and like you know
• 1:48:11
  and you're like who was what was this from I was like I was on YouTube was like I'm like but who is
• 1:48:15
  it who is this person I was like I'm sure it was an expert he spoke very articulately
• 1:48:21
  we used to move before this you know me how tall do you think I am
• 1:48:23
  hmm six three yeah okay so what's that in centimetres you know no no it's like 190 centimetres
• 1:48:33
  yeah right so if you look on the internet right now it'll come up that my height is 1.81 or 1.83
• 1:48:39
  depending on which website you go to okay because for some reason the internet is decided to just
• 1:48:44
  take a punt on that I don't care but the point is why has it bothered taking a punt on something
• 1:48:52
  that it doesn't have accurate information for and if something as simple as that is I played a
• 1:48:57
  radio game the other day where it was like it was like one of those like region I'm doing regional
• 1:49:01
  touring and so it's like a regional radio station where that we've invented a game and we're
• 1:49:04
  going to play the game which of these things did you say and which of them didn't you say will or
• 1:49:08
  won't is the game and you'll say it's will if you did and won if you didn't yeah I said won't
• 1:49:13
  to all of them and I remain convinced I said none of them but according to the internet they had
• 1:49:18
  found that I had said I know there were just things that I think I had taken from other probably because
• 1:49:24
  they had that but feel of jokes and stuff but just not the feel of things that I had ever said and
• 1:49:29
  pretty soon there's going to be audio of you saying them whether or not you said them as well
• 1:49:33
  and video pretty soon of you saying and whether or not you said them but even you're not going to
• 1:49:37
  be able to tell yourself so that's why when I walk into that room with 150 people who are all
• 1:49:43
  there just to make the show there's still some form of control in that like you can feel that
• 1:49:48
  idea of like here we are stripped down to what I first saw this to be which is someone just on
• 1:49:53
  stage with nothing more than their imagination just trying to because that's what it means to be a
• 1:49:59
  human to me so I think we are just an accident in the corner of the universe and evolution happened
• 1:50:04
  in the right sort of the way that we all became what we are but okay if that is true that's the
• 1:50:10
  previously on the cloud's daughters that's the yada yada yada right however we got to hear
• 1:50:16
  we're here and to be honest cloud's daughters was in Australia and driving so it was a long running
• 1:50:21
  long running also you're saying that all of that even if it was even if we are an accident
• 1:50:26
  yeah that's like the previously on what does it matter yeah because who we are now like
• 1:50:34
  the world from when the internet was invented till now which is only 20 years ago right like
• 1:50:39
  well 25 years you know I'm like pretty sure the internet was invented in the 1980s okay 1991
• 1:50:45
  or whatever your older than you think well but that's what I meant like yeah so half my life
• 1:50:49
  not so but like I think Google was like 2000 or something right like so social media and the
• 1:50:54
  internet as we know it not that technology itself not the information super by way but what we
• 1:50:59
  yeah consider be this like global connection which is kind of like when Google says like so early
• 1:51:04
  2000s that was hot that's half my life so there was a whole world like you know most of human
• 1:51:10
  civilization you know that theory that like if you talk about like what we were we're on like the
• 1:51:14
  last page of a yeah 600 page book or whatever yeah Tim urban has this great analogy about
• 1:51:20
  you know the if every thousand years is a chapter of the work and you know then you know each
• 1:51:26
  page is like 250 years or something and you start at the begin at the dawn of homo erectus or
• 1:51:32
  you even just start at the dawn of farming you know like 20 thousand years or something like that
• 1:51:37
  and so you started the internet or if you started AI well like literally on the last line yeah
• 1:51:42
  like the entire past century like everything since you know 1900 or something is on the last
• 1:51:49
  page or page on half and yeah or at the end of the old bit and we're at the start of whatever the
• 1:51:54
  new bit is like I mean like whatever this next thing is going to be because there might be
• 1:51:58
  technology that's going to happen now that will change what it feels like to be a human being or
• 1:52:03
  what we consider to be a human being like one of the interesting things about yeah this AI like
• 1:52:10
  revolution for me has been I mean obviously it's even Edison and technology there's such like
• 1:52:15
  there's obviously a lot of it being used already and there's great possibilities that are
• 1:52:19
  be grateful what it means to be a human in the other way you know the stuff you see online the fancy
• 1:52:25
  this is what it used to look like to create this thing and now this is what it looks like
• 1:52:29
  I wonder how quickly we get bored of the fact that we can just do anything because we were
• 1:52:35
  I'm watching an ad on grue and where there was like a realistic looking octopus on the bottom
• 1:52:39
  of the ocean ballroom dancing in this advertisement and it occurred to me that just six months ago
• 1:52:44
  or two years ago maybe I would have found that miraculous like we would have been like isn't
• 1:52:49
  this amazing we should do a whole segment on this and we all just sat there a bit bored because once
• 1:52:53
  you know that you can make an octopus to Edison then it's not really special to make it do anything
• 1:52:59
  all right why would I read a book that's what my old brand review used to say once you know you can
• 1:53:03
  make an octopus do anything you know it can do anything he was a great fisherman maker but I know
• 1:53:11
  what you mean and I hope that that doesn't lead to total jadedness I hope that it leads to a
• 1:53:17
  re-appreciation of the real world in some way what's my final records yeah it's artisanal
• 1:53:23
  experiences it's cooking your own food like it's singing your own songs it's making your own art
• 1:53:28
  is going to a thing and like creating something with your own hands like it doesn't all have to be
• 1:53:34
  there are we've been spoiled and this is what I mean when I say we've been spoiled by choice
• 1:53:39
  because we spend so much of our time choosing rather than that time we should be spending
• 1:53:45
  like if we were just able to make because we're always got this idea that there is a better choice
• 1:53:49
  or that the choice that we've made that we could be doing something better with our time
• 1:53:53
  we're at lunch with our friend but I'll have a look at my phone because maybe there's something
• 1:53:57
  better out there and the thing that I'm doing right now I mean even your choice of the lunch
• 1:54:01
  spot with your friend that you're not going to enjoy because your on your phone is contaminated by
• 1:54:06
  the desire to make sure that the lunch spot is the best lunch spot so you spend 10 minutes trying
• 1:54:10
  to find the right like I actually had a bit of a bit of experience and like look at the stars
• 1:54:15
  of these people that you never met that are mostly bots because this is the infrastructure we're
• 1:54:18
  now making you're making a decision to go to this restaurant based on recommendations that were
• 1:54:23
  done by robots so you have got nothing to do and like the cousin of the guy who runs the restaurant
• 1:54:28
  you go in there it looks exactly the same as the same place you went to in Japan like I mean
• 1:54:33
  and but this is why there is an opportunity for like synchronicity or like some kind of you know
• 1:54:41
  what do you call it like the kismet I suppose in Hebrew like this idea of like
• 1:54:47
  almost fate or destiny or like something that happens accidentally for a reason like
• 1:54:52
  you mentioned Japan I took the kids to Japan for the first time in April and you know
• 1:54:57
  spent a lot of time like googling where with what the best place to what's the best place to take
• 1:55:01
  the kids to to eat in toko and there's like this really well rated like ninja restaurants where
• 1:55:08
  you go down through these alleyways and you're sit around and you eat ninja food and then you get
• 1:55:12
  a magic show and then it costs an absolute fucking fortune nobody liked it very much we didn't
• 1:55:17
  think the food was that great the kids thought it was gimmicky best place we ate was in a town where
• 1:55:22
  we had done no research whatsoever and we're just walking along a little canal and like took a
• 1:55:27
  punt on a little found some on a little doorway and we were the only people there we found it ourselves
• 1:55:32
  we're the only people there right yeah we took her and was incredible didn't have to line up
• 1:55:38
  added to the experience so much felt like you discovered something yourself felt like I did
• 1:55:43
  fucking discover something myself it was an enormous sense of it's it's the problem with the if
• 1:55:47
  you like this you'll also like this sometimes if you like this I've now had enough of this
• 1:55:53
  actually need something that is completely unlike this and you can't tell me because that is
• 1:55:58
  Bangkok and not Bangkok right like because that is that idea of going you can tell me about other
• 1:56:03
  things that are like Bangkok you can't say okay well maybe now what you want is something that's
• 1:56:07
  completely different yeah so what's going to happen when you dive in I'm like whatever happened
• 1:56:13
  before I was born I asked people that question on my show all the time and like
• 1:56:18
  like it's now been going long enough that there's been a few people who have died you know
• 1:56:24
  who you know can I get a memo about what actually happened because now that you're there so you
• 1:56:31
  know I don't know if they were right or wrong or whatever but yeah but you know I mean it feels
• 1:56:37
  to me that it's that like I asked the question but it's always the wrong question because who cares
• 1:56:41
  like something something will happen after we die who cares everybody cares this is the biggest
• 1:56:46
  question that has racked the brains of the world's greatest thinkers for millennia this is why we
• 1:56:51
  have religions and temples and churches this is why people bother praying to mecca five times
• 1:56:57
  yeah but is it for why we die or is it for how we should live and so that's the thing because I
• 1:57:03
  think we crave to know how we should live and that's the hard thing life doesn't come with an
• 1:57:07
  instruction book so we are constantly looking for somebody to tell us how it is that we are meant
• 1:57:12
  to be living our lives and that's why we fall for scams that's why we fall for cults and religions
• 1:57:17
  and all sorts of things did you hear about Brigitte Macron she's a dude because people want to be
• 1:57:21
  involved in the community they want to believe something they want to be told that there is someone
• 1:57:25
  in charge of the world and it's all a conspiracy and the reason that things are going well for you
• 1:57:29
  is because the French president is married to like you know you mean like that that I understand why
• 1:57:36
  these things exist I understand why we found ourselves in the place that we want to you know you have
• 1:57:40
  a community of people who watch and listen to this show regularly and they they might not ever
• 1:57:46
  meet each other they might not like you know go to your sub stack and talk to each other some will
• 1:57:51
  some will be actively involved in the community and know each other and they'll have their own
• 1:57:55
  side relationships that you actually don't have anything to do because they met in the chat on one
• 1:58:00
  of your you know topics and they had an argument with each other but then became friends and did
• 1:58:04
  went off and did but you don't have any control over that that is just a thing that passes by your
• 1:58:09
  life like the idea that I mean I crave I mean I guess I would like to know in a way like what
• 1:58:16
  life is meant to be about I guess but I think more than that I really as I've got older have
• 1:58:26
  appreciated that the good bits and the hard bits have all felt like part of being what a human is
• 1:58:34
  and that I don't need to curate the experience of being a human to only five star experiences
• 1:58:40
  or what other people think the idea of being a human is that's the whole thing that I opted out
• 1:58:45
  of by not wanting to if I wanted to that I would be religious or I'd join a culture I'd like
• 1:58:49
  whatever it might be if I had that desire to be part of a bigger group that had a guideline for
• 1:58:55
  I love the idea of listening to you and then listening to Jamfran talk about like the middle
• 1:59:00
  least and probably get better informed by hearing both of you kind of talk about things from
• 1:59:05
  a different perspective and at the end I know a little bit more I still wouldn't then go I'm
• 1:59:09
  the expert because I've listened to both of them I just be like I know a little bit more and I
• 1:59:13
  was able to take a little bit more of that in a little bit more of curiosity about what it is
• 1:59:17
  what other people think it is to be human I don't really care what happens after I die I care
• 1:59:22
  about what happens right now because I think we're here right now and it's the only thing that I
• 1:59:28
  can care about I've enjoyed this this main part right like I've really I've looked forward to it
• 1:59:34
  like I've listened to you show a lot and I worried about coming on because I what just because I
• 1:59:39
  don't think that I like a lot of the people that you have on do have like more definitive
• 1:59:45
  views around right a topic even right they might have a specialist topic whether it be economics
• 1:59:51
  or law or like a social issue or whatever it is and they want to pursue that point of view
• 1:59:56
  sure that's a type of episode but there were also just types of episodes where smart and
• 2:00:00
  entertaining people riff about whatever's on there yeah yeah I know but yeah so I think but yeah
• 2:00:06
  I liked it it was great I mean the final point I would make about the five star thing that
• 2:00:12
  occurs to me is that if you if everything is five stars that's the same as everything being one
• 2:00:17
  star because you have no metric by which to judge what whether it's any good you know it's like
• 2:00:22
  the old there's some old eastern saying about how a life with a life with no darkness has no light
• 2:00:30
  like it's only in the shadow that the light makes sense it's only in the contrast to the night
• 2:00:34
  that day is day if there was no night then day wouldn't be day it would just be nothing you know what
• 2:00:39
  I mean it's like you need the ups and downs in life you need the the negatives in order for the
• 2:00:44
  positives to shine or but also it's okay for things just to be enough
• 2:00:54
  not everything a less poetic way of putting but yeah it is like sure most of life is just things
• 2:01:03
  that are good enough and this idea if you like it if you haven't got a bumper sticker if you have
• 2:01:10
  a good life most of your life are things that are just good enough are you okay and that you
• 2:01:16
  had support around you when things were tough that is like a life I live this idea that everything
• 2:01:21
  must be super sized excellence that everything is measured by the amount of followers or dollars
• 2:01:26
  or blah blah blah or whatever that is the thing that everyone should aspire to without the judgment
• 2:01:31
  of it I'm not saying that these are things that people shouldn't be aspiring to what I think
• 2:01:36
  is a problem is when you read about the idea that like you know when you're talking to kids and
• 2:01:40
  whatever and like you know however a very high percentage of them want to be famous or on social
• 2:01:45
  media or whatever were you just say to people it's the only option I hate these conversations when
• 2:01:50
  we say yes okay you might not like you might not like the comedy of you know Bill Burr or whoever
• 2:01:58
  it might be but you know you might love Maria Bamford one because one exists it doesn't mean the
• 2:02:04
  other doesn't have to exist yes and so often we like you think about this world as if there are
• 2:02:11
  limited there's a finite number of people yeah if I like if I like Bill Burr more than
• 2:02:17
  Maria Bamford yeah then there's no room it's not a competition what ideas a little bit but it's
• 2:02:21
  also fine for them both to exist I don't know if it is though like I mean I guess I understand
• 2:02:26
  what you mean like that it in some sense it can be viewed as a competition but in many senses
• 2:02:31
  if Bill Burr brings I remember Chris Rock when Dane Cook was blowing up big on my space probably
• 2:02:37
  the first person who really used virality to make Bill their career like does it all go back to
• 2:02:42
  Dane Cook is that the documentary he was patient zero oh we go back and like and whatever that
• 2:02:49
  thing was that he let me hand simply invented all the people but he had that idea of like you
• 2:02:58
  know communicating with people like early on and he was judged by a lot of the comedy community
• 2:03:03
  because everyone's like always teenage like it's all teenage girls that are his fans Chris Rock I
• 2:03:08
  remember saying yeah but those teenage girls are not going to be teenage girls forever and if they
• 2:03:13
  like comedy when they are teenage girls and they then end up liking comedy they will end up
• 2:03:19
  going who else is in comedy and what are their comedy is it's a very healthy way of looking at it
• 2:03:23
  and I do think about think that about podcasting as well because I think everything at some point
• 2:03:28
  coming back to the streaming conversation is going to be podcasts I mean even podcasts even
• 2:03:31
  I don't even call this show a podcast unless I'm telling someone to get it on a podcast app
• 2:03:36
  because it's just a show I mean some people watch it on YouTube and some people I mean like it's
• 2:03:40
  just content right and so well can I tell you if you're just saying anything about podcasts yes
• 2:03:46
  that like that we found so we did a little experiment for a while where if I went on someone's
• 2:03:50
  podcast we would say or vice versa we'd just say hey we'll put it up in our stream as well after
• 2:03:56
  you so if it's your show we say but we'll put it up in our stream as well and then just let us
• 2:04:01
  know what the numbers are like compared to like what a normal episode is versus and we did a
• 2:04:06
  little experiment for a while and found that there was no drop off from putting it in two different
• 2:04:10
  feats like there wasn't that idea you'd think that if you split it yeah it would mean that fewer
• 2:04:16
  people would listen to one of them yeah but there were people who would just only listen to the
• 2:04:21
  conversation that you or I had in your infrastructure they would never come over to
• 2:04:26
  all vice versa yeah no I mean I think the pie is infinitely you know well not infinitely the
• 2:04:30
  pie has a lot it can grow a lot larger and if the pie is growing then everyone should be happy
• 2:04:35
  all right on that happy note thank you Will thank you talk to you