Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Osher Günsberg: Being a Man

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Osher Günsberg: Being a Man · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and boy there are a lot of dangerous
• 0:07
  ideas floating around about what it means to be a man, whether you're going through
• 0:12
  the sewers of Andrew Tate videos online or looking at the horrendous violence inflicted
• 0:18
  on women in domestic violence situations, it's tricky to figure out how to be a good
• 0:24
  man and today's guest, Oshikin's Berg, is a thoughtful, beautiful, soulful man, a man
• 0:31
  I look up to, a man many Australians look up to is one of the most popular television
• 0:35
  personalities in Australia having been the host of Australian idol, the host of the Bachelor,
• 0:39
  the host of the Bachelor Red, the host of the Mask Singer, he's the voice of Bondi Rescue
• 0:43
  and he has his own podcast called Better Than Yesterday, which focuses largely on his struggles
• 0:48
  with mental health and what it means to be a good man, what it means to be a good person.
• 0:53
  He like me is the father of a young boy and the two of us have been talking recently
• 0:59
  about the challenges of understanding the role of being a man in a world where we're
• 1:05
  expected to shoulder the sins of all men who have ever lived and the sins of men who
• 1:12
  currently live who might be violent, reprehensible individuals, how we carry the stain of supposedly
• 1:19
  toxic masculinity in balance with our own resilience and our own vulnerability.
• 1:26
  This is a beautiful chat, if you've ever been looking for an opportunity to upgrade your
• 1:30
  sub-stack to the paid version, I'd highly recommend it because the final half hour of this
• 1:34
  conversation is particularly powerful, I think, but the first hour is fantastic as well.
• 1:40
  Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, the one and only, Oshikin's
• 1:44
  Berg.
• 1:46
  Well, I did that just challenge myself, I kind of fucked up my hunger and satiety
• 1:52
  for a moment, really, and I couldn't tell when I was full quite a while, it's a bit weird.
• 1:58
  Meaning that you underrate or overrate?
• 2:00
  Overrate, I've been.
• 2:01
  Oh, right.
• 2:02
  And so, now, I find intermittent fasting is the easiest form of caloric restriction, I can't
• 2:08
  stand small meals, I can't hate it, I want to eat heaps.
• 2:10
  Me too.
• 2:11
  Well, and I have absolutely no problem with all things, food, alcohol, drugs, sex.
• 2:19
  Why have one?
• 2:20
  I could just exactly, I could just eat dinner, it's fine, it's probably fine.
• 2:24
  No, I'm the same way, it's interesting, isn't it?
• 2:26
  I need to lose weight, I just don't start, I just don't eat until one or two in the afternoon.
• 2:30
  Right, I'll go all the way to dinner, but then what happens is about a month is as long,
• 2:34
  because essentially, if you don't then go back to regular caloric intake, your set point
• 2:40
  doesn't change.
• 2:41
  So, your set point needs, you need to very slowly over time, so I've heard this on a
• 2:46
  site.
• 2:47
  It seems to add to us.
• 2:48
  Your friends at CSIRO who run, I don't know, and Ben and Wi-Fi and stuff, I think you're
• 2:53
  much in Ben and Wi-Fi.
• 2:54
  I pretty much in Ben and Wi-Fi, I'll take credit.
• 2:56
  Okay.
• 2:57
  I spoke to one of the guys in a Ben and Wi-Fi.
• 3:00
  Really?
• 3:01
  Yeah, and Aussie?
• 3:02
  Yeah.
• 3:03
  We like to take credit for things, but I'm always skeptical.
• 3:05
  We did though.
• 3:06
  We invented Wi-Fi.
• 3:07
  Australia.
• 3:08
  Yeah, did we?
• 3:09
  My CSIRO.
• 3:10
  My CSIRO.
• 3:11
  The same one that eradicated prickly pear.
• 3:14
  And the same one that also went cane toads.
• 3:17
  That's what we should do.
• 3:18
  I think prickly pear and inventing Wi-Fi, different levels of success.
• 3:22
  I don't know.
• 3:23
  Different levels of importance globally.
• 3:24
  I did a whole fucking podcast on how I draw a direct line between the red of the red
• 3:29
  coats to the invention of Wi-Fi.
• 3:34
  Communism.
• 3:35
  No.
• 3:36
  What are the red coats?
• 3:37
  That's the red coats are coming to British Army, the color of the British Army.
• 3:40
  Oh, the British Army.
• 3:41
  Oh, right, right.
• 3:42
  They needed a lot of dye.
• 3:43
  Is that right?
• 3:44
  To make, yes.
• 3:45
  And the Brazilians had...
• 3:46
  Well, when is this happening?
• 3:48
  Wi-Fi was only invented three minutes ago.
• 3:50
  The red coats needed dye in the...
• 3:51
  They did.
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  1780s.
• 3:53
  So what they did is they...
• 3:54
  On the way to Australia, they snuck in and they stole some fucking prickly pear
• 3:59
  because the cotchanel bug only grows on prickly pear and when you crush up the cotchanel
• 4:04
  bug, that's the red that you see.
• 4:06
  And it only grows on prickly pear.
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  So to secure a supply of this shit, they went, we'll plant it down in Australia.
• 4:14
  Right.
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  Let's fucking go.
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  And they did.
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  They planted it here with the idea of like securing and sourcing their own supplies.
• 4:19
  So they could go to war and I have to worry about having their own color jacket.
• 4:22
  So people wouldn't get shot.
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  And then, you know, cut to the 20s or also when prickly pear was advancing at like half
• 4:31
  a kilometer or a kilometer a year and an agricultural pest.
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  Terrible.
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  It takes over all the farms.
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  It farms native habitat.
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  You name it.
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  It's fucked.
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  They probably didn't give a shit about native habitat.
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  And so the CSIRO was founded basically.
• 4:47
  The first thing they did was they brought in their cacti blasters, Cantora Moff, which
• 4:51
  can't believe you know the last name for the Moff that was brought in to attack the plant
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  that was...
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  Have a brain.
• 4:58
  Have a...
• 4:59
  Have a...
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  Have a...
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  Have a...
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  Have a brain.
• 5:03
  Have a brain.
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  And so it was with this success and the idea that, ah, science is important.
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  We can have a lot of economic success if we lean into choices made and driven by scientific
• 5:14
  results.
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  What does CSIRO stand for?
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  Commonwealth scientific...
• 5:18
  And innovation.
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  And research organization.
• 5:22
  And head to all the way through to the mid-70s when, yeah, Wi-Fi.
• 5:28
  Because Wi-Fi is a construction of a few different things.
• 5:32
  But we were the ones that was John O'Connell or Donald, I can't understand, we spoke
• 5:36
  to him.
• 5:37
  He worked in...
• 5:38
  And this is a long story.
• 5:40
  There's a record line with black holes, listening for black holes to Wi-Fi because it is in
• 5:46
  the...
• 5:47
  It's the echoes that we're making it impossible to work because how can you...
• 5:51
  If a 1 and a 0 is traveling from me to you, but it bounces off that wall, how are you
• 5:56
  going to know which one to arrive first?
• 5:57
  Okay.
• 5:58
  So the packet arrives in all jumbles.
• 5:59
  Right.
• 6:00
  Because much like a John Michelle's jar record, when you hit the arpeggio, they would
• 6:05
  fire them at different frequencies.
• 6:07
  Right.
• 6:08
  So you have this arpeggio essentially of frequencies?
• 6:10
  You've lost me completely.
• 6:11
  I have no idea what you're talking about.
• 6:13
  How do we get to John Michael's jar under Son O'Lumier exposition Wi-Fi in Paris?
• 6:18
  But wait, so you send them in different packet now I'm interested.
• 6:22
  So you're sending information, but the information comes misordered because it bounces off
• 6:26
  other things.
• 6:27
  If it's all at the same frequency.
• 6:28
  Oh, I see.
• 6:29
  You put them on different layers essentially, and then using the fast Fourier transforms
• 6:33
  that they discovered while they were listening for black holes from like Stephen Hawking's
• 6:38
  theory.
• 6:39
  And they actually heard the echoes of ancient black holes, usually had this stuff.
• 6:41
  So if you're in radio telescope data, they use the same thing and as a broadcast to
• 6:45
  create Wi-Fi.
• 6:46
  And this is why you can now scroll TikTok.
• 6:48
  Well, I'm sure it's been lovely having you here.
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  Thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 6:52
  I really enjoyed this informative session about Wi-Fi.
• 6:57
  And that's just Wednesday.
• 6:59
  That's just Thursday.
• 7:01
  That's just Thursday.
• 7:02
  That's just Thursday.
• 7:03
  That's just Thursday.
• 7:04
  It's just today.
• 7:05
  Yeah.
• 7:06
  It is Thursday isn't it?
• 7:07
  I'm glad someone knows the day of the week.
• 7:09
  Well, thanks for having me.
• 7:11
  It's lovely to have you back on the program.
• 7:13
  Now I just want to talk about Wi-Fi the whole time because sometimes I feel like we take
• 7:17
  undue credit for things that maybe we had some small role in the house, for example,
• 7:21
  like crowdhouse, like Russell Crowe, even Mel Gibson in America, you know, Australian
• 7:27
  fans love things that they can claim as Australian.
• 7:30
  But we also create things and they're just like, so why didn't the red coats, if it was
• 7:34
  so hard, if they needed to find an exotic bug to crush down to create the red dye, wouldn't
• 7:39
  they just go, it's not red anymore?
• 7:41
  It's just now it's beige.
• 7:42
  Fucked to find out, mate.
• 7:43
  All right.
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  It's a brand.
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  It's a solid brand.
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  It's like the big M.
• 7:47
  It's like the Mac and France.
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  It's a solid brand.
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  Is it?
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  Yeah, the red coats.
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  You see that.
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  You see a tall ship full of red coats.
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  You're fucked.
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  You know, things are bad.
• 7:55
  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And you're going to have to learn another language and know cricket, like it's going to
• 8:00
  be bad times.
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  Yeah.
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  The cricket would upset me.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So how's the bachelor going?
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  How's the singer?
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  How's Australia?
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  I don't know.
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  Well, going well.
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  Good.
• 8:12
  So any news I need to know about your life, Oscar, since we last, only that my basement
• 8:17
  flooded.
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  And I needed my house is currently being kept dry by a 12 volt marine bilge pump connected
• 8:24
  to a battery that my son and I got CSIRO, CSIRO, they invented the build pump probably.
• 8:31
  I have, I know it's just wrote this in an email to someone like, I've spent, I got into
• 8:35
  radio.
• 8:36
  I spent 32 years working and perfecting and pursuing mastery of an industry, which is
• 8:44
  going through a rapid contraction and correction and all kinds of things.
• 8:51
  I have this very specific set of skills, which previously added a huge amount of value
• 8:58
  to people who owned, I don't know, broadcast licenses and such.
• 9:02
  And now I don't know quite what to do.
• 9:05
  It is funny, isn't it being a specialist in a field that then suddenly has much less
• 9:09
  need for specialists, although the field as a whole still needs the specialists.
• 9:14
  It's just that the particular financial model of the big mainstream legacy media companies
• 9:20
  doesn't because people really are only still watch, I mean, with the exception of streaming
• 9:25
  services, they watch a lot of Netflix and Apple Plus and whatever, but on regular television,
• 9:31
  they just watch sport and occasionally a bit of news and reality television, but obviously
• 9:38
  not enough reality television for your liking.
• 9:40
  Not for my liking, it's all market shift, all markets change.
• 9:46
  Having entropy is one of the laws of thermodynamics, you can't ignore it.
• 9:49
  Act to your CSLRO.
• 9:50
  It's true though.
• 9:51
  It's true.
• 9:52
  I was talking to Mark Boros on his podcast, which people she just sent to, and no, I'm
• 9:57
  overtly doing it.
• 9:58
  I'm not dropping a name.
• 9:59
  I'm overtly directing people to straight talk with Mark Boros, good Mark, was the Donald
• 10:04
  Trump of Australia on the Australian apprentice in Australia on Australian apprentice.
• 10:08
  He's a multi-millionaire and a very successful and smart guy.
• 10:12
  And he has a podcast and you just did an episode of his podcast, which is yet to be released.
• 10:16
  But the one that I did just came out, which people should listen to if I want to hear
• 10:19
  an interview with me.
• 10:20
  But one of the things that he was, we were talking about is, you know, it was very important
• 10:23
  when you were a young person to try to lean into whatever you're good at.
• 10:28
  There aren't very many jobs necessarily for the thing that you might be good at.
• 10:31
  Like for me, it was talking and how many times have you opened up a newspaper or like gone
• 10:39
  on to, you know, jobs, classifiers and seen radio host, prime time radio host wanted.
• 10:47
  You know, it doesn't work that way.
• 10:49
  There were a lot of those jobs.
• 10:50
  No, I would know when we did the news show, which you go, it really came and did.
• 10:54
  I would often preface the show by saying, no one's going to come down my front path,
• 10:57
  mock on my door and say, you know that late night's typical news show that you want
• 11:00
  to host?
• 11:01
  We've got the studio ready.
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  Audis is there.
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  That's right.
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  Can you come tonight?
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  You're somewhere alive.
• 11:06
  But this is one of the things that I love about you and that I admire about you is that
• 11:10
  when, is that you could see in advance that the writing was eventually going to be on
• 11:14
  the wall.
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  And when I say that I admired about you, it's, I'm also saying I admired about myself.
• 11:18
  Like we put in place certain hedges that would mean that we're not immediately destitute
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  the moment, the power for the, you know, so you do, you do your live, satirical news
• 11:31
  improv show, whenever you can, which is hilarious, which I've been part of.
• 11:38
  What else?
• 11:39
  I have the podcast, which is going rather well, we've got three times a week since 2013,
• 11:44
  which is rather lovely to do.
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  And we did the CSIRO invent that podcast in 2013 because that was three podcasts, really.
• 11:51
  No, but there is an entire podcast about that CSHR topic because I was just really fascinated
• 11:57
  with it and I ended up talking about it.
• 11:58
  I also write a lot and I made a book and I'm making more books and such.
• 12:04
  You made a book.
• 12:05
  Yeah, I wrote a book.
• 12:06
  It's interesting phraseyology.
• 12:08
  There's Charlie Clawson, who I'm working on.
• 12:11
  So I'm working on another project, but Charlie and, and his wife, Gemma, we're developing
• 12:15
  a, a documentary and then based up on, you know, true events that happen here in Sydney,
• 12:23
  also like a podcast and a scripted, we're developing out of that.
• 12:25
  It's been years.
• 12:27
  But what true events that happen is that we are developing up the, I'll tell you later,
• 12:33
  because Charlie and I worked on it.
• 12:36
  Charlie and I worked on something else together and we were gizamped at the last moment
• 12:40
  by a parallel project who had also seen this moment and they got in, I think like three
• 12:45
  weeks or four weeks before us on the funding.
• 12:47
  Right.
• 12:48
  So, yeah, similarly.
• 12:49
  So you're doing a show about Scott Morris and taking a giant dump in the, in the Mac
• 12:53
  as no, was that what was, no, no, I think I stand latched on that one.
• 12:57
  No, no.
• 12:58
  But Charlie has this great line.
• 13:00
  He said in our industry, it's a fast yes or a slow no.
• 13:03
  Yeah.
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  And the yeses were starting to slow down.
• 13:06
  Yeah.
• 13:07
  And I was like, uh-huh.
• 13:08
  Got it.
• 13:09
  All right.
• 13:10
  So I started.
• 13:11
  Yeah.
• 13:12
  And it's fine.
• 13:13
  You know, my old manager, John Faradah, he's a, passed away now, but he's incredibly,
• 13:16
  incredibly.
• 13:17
  Did John die?
• 13:18
  Yeah, John died.
• 13:19
  When did John die?
• 13:20
  A couple years back.
• 13:21
  Okay.
• 13:22
  Yeah, a couple years back now.
• 13:23
  Yeah.
• 13:24
  He was a legend of Australian entertainment.
• 13:25
  Uh, no.
• 13:26
  Well, John Faradah, he, no, we're talking about two different people.
• 13:29
  No, we're not.
• 13:30
  The manager.
• 13:31
  The American guy.
• 13:32
  John Faradah.
• 13:33
  Yeah.
• 13:34
  He was the American.
• 13:35
  Yes.
• 13:36
  Share as much.
• 13:37
  I know.
• 13:38
  It's okay.
• 13:39
  He was a legend of managing.
• 13:40
  But everyone I know who he managed was Australian.
• 13:42
  He was.
• 13:43
  I've never met the guy.
• 13:44
  Right.
• 13:45
  He was the one who, um, he kind of was a pioneer of packaging when it came to, uh,
• 13:49
  so he's this format.
• 13:51
  Right.
• 13:52
  But this producer, this host, this, you know, musical director who are all my clients,
• 13:57
  I will put them all together to this format and then take this format with this unbelievable
• 14:00
  team to the network and go, if you want to say no to what you can, but I'm taking it
• 14:05
  over there.
• 14:06
  It makes a week.
• 14:07
  So he was the first kind of person to package things up like that.
• 14:08
  He's very clever.
• 14:09
  But he used to say, um, unless you host the six o'clock news, one day your show is going
• 14:13
  to get canceled.
• 14:14
  So even when you booked that big show, you got to put time every week to figure out
• 14:18
  what you're going to do when that day comes.
• 14:20
  Yeah.
• 14:21
  If you host the six o'clock news, you're not going to host it forever.
• 14:23
  The show will exist.
• 14:24
  Yeah.
• 14:25
  So I did, uh, I took, took that on board because I had not done that.
• 14:30
  And when the first time Australian, I'll happen in Australia, when that ended, I was quite
• 14:33
  surprised.
• 14:34
  I didn't know what the fuck to do this time around.
• 14:35
  I was like, right, I had to put some evidence in here.
• 14:38
  And so yeah, I've been creating and, and it's, but I really quite enjoy the active creation,
• 14:42
  the active making formats, the active, uh, writing and pitching and things like this,
• 14:46
  because that gives me something to do in a, a way to test hypotheses and a way to sharpen
• 14:52
  the blade and keep the blade sharpen.
• 14:53
  And then if you pitch it and people pass, that's fine.
• 14:55
  It goes on the shelf.
• 14:56
  You start the process again.
• 14:57
  And then when you bump into someone who goes such and such, blah, blah, blah, you get
• 15:02
  to go, actually, I've got a fully functioning satirical news show with a casted of team
• 15:06
  and a writing and a showrunner and everything.
• 15:08
  Maybe we could help you.
• 15:09
  Yeah.
• 15:10
  Yeah.
• 15:11
  Because you're ready.
• 15:12
  Peter Helier was on the show, which will probably be released very shortly if you're
• 15:16
  listening to this or may just have dropped, uh, a great Australian comedian and, and TV
• 15:20
  personality.
• 15:21
  I'm good with your Ford and he was like this guy.
• 15:24
  That's what ABC training will give you.
• 15:26
  He was, uh, listen to cross promo just ABC always be contenting.
• 15:31
  That's what ABC stands for.
• 15:33
  A just promo promise.
• 15:34
  So good.
• 15:35
  You know, when you were talking about having a skill set, you know, I don't, I can't
• 15:38
  do many things very well.
• 15:39
  Yeah.
• 15:40
  I, this is what I do.
• 15:41
  Well, this is the only thing I know how to do.
• 15:43
  James Mathers and what I said, uh, he used to say, he's like, we just breed out loud
• 15:46
  for living.
• 15:47
  Yeah.
• 15:48
  Yeah.
• 15:49
  Wrong, Jimmy.
• 15:50
  So, uh, Peter was saying that because he, he has, uh, he had a sitcom that he got up
• 15:55
  on Channel 10, right, which he wrote and which he created.
• 15:58
  Yeah.
• 15:59
  And I said, how did that come about?
• 16:00
  And he said he was sitting, uh, he was at a luncheon at a social lunch with, and sitting
• 16:04
  next to Beverly McGarvey, who runs Channel 10, one of the networks here.
• 16:07
  And she just said to him, if you got any ideas, you know, we're thinking about sitcoms
• 16:11
  and he had it ready to go.
• 16:12
  Yeah.
• 16:13
  The one page you're ready, he had the, you know, it was like, absolutely, I know what
• 16:16
  it is.
• 16:17
  I'll send it to you.
• 16:18
  And so it makes her life easy.
• 16:19
  It doesn't it?
• 16:20
  Instead of being, instead of commissioning seven million things, she's like, I like Pete.
• 16:23
  And here's a show that he wants to do.
• 16:25
  That's easy.
• 16:26
  Done.
• 16:27
  You, if you could solve someone else's problem, then you're adding value already.
• 16:30
  This is good life lesson for anyone who's in a creative industry that involves some form
• 16:35
  of auditioning.
• 16:36
  Well, that's music or, uh, or acting or hosting.
• 16:41
  Dad always said that when you're going into an audition, because dad was an actor, a
• 16:46
  successful actor in Australia, and he would always say, remember, when you go into an audition,
• 16:53
  they're the ones with the problem, not you.
• 16:56
  You already don't have the job.
• 16:58
  Yeah.
• 16:59
  So worst case scenario is just baseline.
• 17:01
  It's where you are already.
• 17:02
  You've already got to know.
• 17:03
  They have a show.
• 17:04
  Yeah.
• 17:05
  Which they don't have a host for or they don't have, you know, that they're looking for a
• 17:09
  solution.
• 17:10
  Yeah.
• 17:11
  So help them solve their problem.
• 17:13
  Don't go in with an attitude of they have all the power and I'm the one who has to please
• 17:17
  like me.
• 17:18
  Yeah, please.
• 17:19
  Exactly.
• 17:20
  That's right.
• 17:21
  Just solve their problem.
• 17:22
  That is, that is, I did go through my first round of my career like that with the, I'm
• 17:27
  not worthy and not in the nice way in the world way, but in the, I don't belong here.
• 17:31
  And I needed to have it all go away and to realize, oh, I actually have worth here and
• 17:38
  I can work on that worth and be sure that I can add value whenever I come along and be
• 17:42
  a part of your project.
• 17:43
  And that's a much better way to be.
• 17:46
  Yeah.
• 17:47
  And what you were saying about like, you know, you put the stuff together and then it either
• 17:50
  gets up or it doesn't.
• 17:51
  And if it doesn't get up, then you go back to the drawing board and you start putting
• 17:53
  something else together.
• 17:54
  Yeah.
• 17:55
  But either way, you gain something out of it though.
• 17:56
  Yeah.
• 17:57
  But a lot of people find that process and I may be talking about myself here.
• 18:00
  But demoralizing and exhausting and arduous and frustrating.
• 18:08
  And yet the job of the creative is basically to continue to do that and, and to continue
• 18:13
  to throw shit at the wall until some of it sticks.
• 18:15
  Yeah.
• 18:16
  Do you enjoy the process of development?
• 18:18
  Yeah.
• 18:19
  Very much.
• 18:20
  A very much enjoyable because I have a, like it's, yeah, it might be frustrating and it
• 18:22
  may bother me that, you know, things that I'm creating aren't, you know, I'm the right
• 18:27
  guy with the right idea at the wrong time sometimes.
• 18:29
  Well, I'm the wrong guy with the right idea at the right time, like whatever.
• 18:32
  That's also happened.
• 18:33
  Um, it's easier to do that than to have this in my head going, you just fucking get off
• 18:38
  it fine.
• 18:39
  You should be writing this thing.
• 18:40
  Yeah.
• 18:41
  But I can, that's the other thing.
• 18:42
  John used to say, uh, you're the only one who knows how hard you work to make your dreams
• 18:45
  come true.
• 18:46
  And he's right because I'm the only one.
• 18:48
  If I didn't get a gig or whatever, I can say, oh, no, it was someone else I went with,
• 18:52
  you know, that guy.
• 18:53
  And you go, oh, I know him.
• 18:54
  He's a good lucky.
• 18:55
  He uses his knee.
• 18:56
  Oh, well.
• 18:57
  I can't see you by, and I'm the one that lies in me going, I fucking fade it in there.
• 19:00
  And I didn't pray.
• 19:01
  Get my shit together.
• 19:02
  I'm the one.
• 19:03
  And you know, I know, I know what I did or did not do.
• 19:07
  If I've done everything, I've left nothing on the, on the, you know, table, then I can
• 19:12
  sleep.
• 19:13
  If not, I'm like, yeah, fuck that.
• 19:16
  Another piece of great Henry Zepp's wisdom was after you've done something successful
• 19:20
  and you've done it successfully and everyone's congratulating you.
• 19:25
  Nobody asks how long it took.
• 19:27
  Nope.
• 19:28
  Did you get it?
• 19:29
  They just see the success.
• 19:30
  They just think, they think, they don't, you know, the fact that you spent four years of
• 19:34
  blood, sweat and tears hammering it out or that, you know, oh, no.
• 19:38
  Did you, did you end up getting, getting any of those total necks?
• 19:40
  Yeah, it's a fucking great total necks.
• 19:42
  A total necks sweater, like a, you know, a skivvy, as we would call it.
• 19:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:46
  It's a really good one.
• 19:47
  My father.
• 19:48
  Yeah.
• 19:49
  He did have good, a good total necks.
• 19:50
  Really?
• 19:51
  Did you get into your life?
• 19:52
  So I mean, he's allowed to.
• 19:53
  But I'm sure there's some jackets and stuff in a box.
• 19:54
  Yeah.
• 19:55
  Yeah.
• 19:56
  I don't know what he's doing.
• 19:57
  The turtleneck and the jacket.
• 19:58
  Nice.
• 19:59
  Right.
• 20:00
  He knew just a black turtleneck.
• 20:01
  Very steep jobs on him, actually.
• 20:02
  A black turtleneck jacket with 1980s shoulder pads.
• 20:07
  That's right.
• 20:08
  I mean, 80s executive woman shoulder pads.
• 20:11
  Hey, he was a pioneer.
• 20:13
  He was.
• 20:14
  He was.
• 20:15
  Now, one of the things that you do on your show wonderfully is talk to people about mental
• 20:19
  health in a kind of a roundabout way.
• 20:21
  People's personal journeys, what is fulfilling to them, what is corrosive to their own
• 20:25
  aspirations?
• 20:26
  And we've just been coming out of a period where there's a lot of conversation around the
• 20:31
  mental health of young males in particular, there's a lot of conversation around the violence
• 20:35
  of males and how we should talk about that.
• 20:38
  What are your insights into this moment?
• 20:40
  Well, I was listening to you talk about it in a gym in Canberra.
• 20:47
  I wasn't in any gym in Canberra.
• 20:49
  No, you were in my head for me.
• 20:50
  I had my hearing aids in today.
• 20:52
  I had my headphones in that day.
• 20:54
  And I'm listening to you talk about it and I'm listening to you, you're right up there
• 20:58
  with the stats and the statistics, frankly, were I was confronted by the statistics that
• 21:05
  you brought up in that episode.
• 21:06
  In what way?
• 21:07
  And this was a monologue that I did, which I think was called the problem with the conversation
• 21:12
  about male violence, which people can go back and take care of.
• 21:15
  Yeah.
• 21:16
  And I was kind of, I was thinking a bit like, and this is why I'm very glad that you do
• 21:20
  what you do.
• 21:21
  I think a lot of inspiration from you, but I'm not anywhere near as well, I quit to do
• 21:26
  what you do as you do.
• 21:28
  Well, as you do it.
• 21:29
  Thank you.
• 21:30
  Because you've got a young son, I've got a young son, and I am at the same time profoundly
• 21:39
  and terribly sad and afraid of what can happen to my wife from a stepdaughter who's 20.
• 21:47
  I hold this constant fear with me.
• 21:51
  And then when you talk about the likelihood that my little boy will be a victim of male
• 21:57
  and male violence or male and male homicide, and the difference in that likelihood, it shook
• 22:06
  me to my core, right?
• 22:10
  And just to tease that out, if you're just talking about homicide because so much of the
• 22:15
  conversation is around, I mean, I was looking at it.
• 22:17
  You're literally just driving back from Avalon the other day, and as you're going around
• 22:20
  the bends in northern, in the northern beaches of Sydney, there's a huge sign that someone's
• 22:24
  hand painted saying, stop killing women, that's what it says, stop killing women.
• 22:30
  Men need to stop killing women.
• 22:33
  And so the point I was just making is that you're more than twice as likely as a man to
• 22:37
  be killed by another man, a woman, in terms of domestic violence and domestic manipulation
• 22:44
  and abuse, then of course women get the short end of the straw there.
• 22:48
  But in terms of being afraid of walking to your car at night and someone just to costing
• 22:52
  you and killing you, you're more than twice as likely to be, your son is more than twice
• 22:56
  as likely to be a victim of that than your daughter.
• 22:59
  And that is, and I wondered, yes, the person that painted that time has a really valid point
• 23:06
  that I wholeheartedly agree with.
• 23:09
  It's not a terribly insightful point.
• 23:11
  I think we're on, I think the number of people who would object to the message of that
• 23:17
  sign or who would read that sign and go, wait a second, stop killing them.
• 23:21
  I thought, what next?
• 23:22
  I was supposed to kill more women.
• 23:23
  Isn't a good, isn't killing women good?
• 23:25
  I thought, oh, until I saw the sign, and I didn't realize, thank you for writing the
• 23:30
  sign and putting it up there.
• 23:32
  Well, I didn't realize, I understand that somebody getting into action is a good way of
• 23:39
  getting uncomfortable feelings out of your body and that involves going to a protest
• 23:43
  or creating a sign or doing something, some form of action to express these feelings
• 23:47
  of, I don't like this at all, I have to do something, that is something that person did.
• 23:51
  I hope it made them feel better.
• 23:53
  I, at the same time, wonder though, if we might be, if we, if we might benefit from perhaps
• 24:03
  asking a different question.
• 24:08
  And that might be, for example, I mean, I think, what's the most dangerous man you can
• 24:16
  think of?
• 24:17
  Most dangerous man I can think of is a man who's by himself and a man who's desperate.
• 24:22
  Yes, violence is never the fucking answer, yet for many people is the best idea they've
• 24:31
  got at that point in time.
• 24:32
  And that's a really terrifying thing, all right?
• 24:34
  Well, is it the best idea they've got at the time?
• 24:37
  I mean, do they, even they think that the violence is the best idea they've got at the
• 24:41
  time?
• 24:42
  Are you writing in shorthand like you've gone to some sort of fucking general school?
• 24:44
  No, I just wrote in messy phone call to remember that, my, my, my, my made a cut out
• 24:48
  the fact that you just took a phone call.
• 24:50
  Oh, okay.
• 24:51
  I thought it was nice.
• 24:52
  That's what it humanizes us in, you even say hello to you.
• 24:56
  No, that's great, but I'm not going to leave it in.
• 24:58
  The listener doesn't care that you took a phone call from your wife.
• 25:00
  I don't care that you took a phone call from your wife, but the listener doesn't need
• 25:02
  it.
• 25:03
  All right.
• 25:05
  So you were saying the, the, like I want, I want to be the wrong question.
• 25:08
  I wonder if sometimes if we're not getting the answer that we want, and in this case,
• 25:14
  the answer is what the person who made that sign is looking for, why are men killing women,
• 25:21
  which is a very valid question.
• 25:23
  Sometimes if we're not getting the answer that we want, perhaps sometimes the question,
• 25:29
  or maybe we're looking at the wrong thing.
• 25:32
  And it's important to ask lots of questions, and what should we be looking at?
• 25:37
  I don't know.
• 25:38
  I'm not a sociologist.
• 25:40
  However, I wonder, asking, like, is there, I wonder it, like, you know, we all have an
• 25:47
  implicit bias.
• 25:48
  I wonder if there's a subconscious thing inside of me, and I'd like to think that I am,
• 25:54
  I'm not going to use the W word, but I like to think I'm a fairly empathetic person who
• 25:58
  likes the W word.
• 25:59
  It rhymes with bloke.
• 26:00
  I'd like to think that I am an open-minded person who thinks about the world and appreciates
• 26:08
  everybody's humanity.
• 26:09
  Yeah, I also know that there are implicit biases within me that have been soaked into my brain
• 26:15
  through cultural conditioning and society and stuff like this, from when I was quite
• 26:20
  little, and that those things do exist.
• 26:21
  But I wonder if similarly there's a subconscious thing inside of me that says, hang on a sec.
• 26:28
  This may be asking a man to, like, it's up asking me to care more for someone else's
• 26:37
  daughter than my own son, who's twice as likely to, you know, be victim to this.
• 26:46
  I don't know if that's going to inspire the action.
• 26:49
  However, if we ask the question of, like, what about just violence in general?
• 26:54
  What about, what if we asked about the use of people resorting to violence in general?
• 27:01
  But wouldn't the person who is specifically concerned about violence against women say
• 27:06
  the reason why you need to care is not because you should care less about the risk to your
• 27:10
  son, but that you should care more about the possibility of your son becoming a perpetrator
• 27:15
  of violence because he is way more likely to be a perpetrator of violence than a female.
• 27:19
  Josh, I sit there at, there's a very large park near our home and one of those, like,
• 27:25
  seven playgrounds in there and one of them sometimes you're teeming.
• 27:29
  Is that what it's like to be rich to live next to a park where there are seven playgrounds?
• 27:34
  Is that, ask for money?
• 27:35
  Ask a rich person.
• 27:36
  Ask a rich person.
• 27:37
  I'm currently self-reported.
• 27:38
  I am.
• 27:39
  I am.
• 27:40
  Okay.
• 27:41
  Okay.
• 27:42
  Before I enrich.
• 27:43
  Yeah.
• 27:44
  Oh, hosting multiple smash hit reality television.
• 27:47
  Sure.
• 27:48
  I'm sure Mark Boris is state of origin group chat.
• 27:50
  He was telling me about last night is full of people way richer than he is, as far as
• 27:54
  he's concerned.
• 27:55
  Well, look, there's a, there's a, like, one of the seven playgrounds that your nanny
• 28:00
  was taking, there's kids too, right?
• 28:02
  Yeah.
• 28:03
  We live within five kilometers of Centennial Park in Sydney, which is one of the great
• 28:07
  parks of the world.
• 28:08
  Yeah.
• 28:09
  And it is beautiful.
• 28:10
  And there's a playground there.
• 28:11
  We're on a weekend.
• 28:12
  There will be 200 kids just peaving and teeming all over this incredible playground.
• 28:17
  And you look at it, they look, you look at the young boys, none of them are much older
• 28:21
  than six.
• 28:22
  Anything statistically 20 years from now, one of you is going to think, I don't know what
• 28:29
  to do now.
• 28:30
  Puncher in the face.
• 28:31
  And that's fucking horrible to think about that that my son might become a perpetrator,
• 28:36
  that my son might become a victim.
• 28:39
  Like nobody wants their son to do that.
• 28:42
  Nobody, nobody, nobody.
• 28:43
  And that itself is, is frightening, is absolutely frightening.
• 28:47
  And the idea that, I think by, there's someone in my life who, Maggie Dent came on the show
• 28:56
  and I let them know he was whether, you know, we're working on something else together.
• 29:00
  And I said, oh, Maggie Dent comes, oh, I'll find her a bit gendered.
• 29:02
  And I was like, she's a parenting expert, perhaps she is.
• 29:07
  She is.
• 29:08
  She's a parenting expert.
• 29:09
  Yeah, she's extraordinarily good.
• 29:10
  Yeah.
• 29:11
  And I really like it.
• 29:12
  Lava.
• 29:13
  And I kind of, I see where she comes from because if you can help young boys deal with their
• 29:20
  emotion.
• 29:21
  Oh, this person was critical of Maggie because Maggie focuses too much on young boys.
• 29:25
  Yeah.
• 29:26
  Right.
• 29:27
  And I might, but if you focus on young boys and help young boys be okay with frustration
• 29:30
  and be okay with not getting the thing they want right now and feel okay about themselves
• 29:35
  that they don't need an external validation.
• 29:38
  For the age of five, you've gone a long way to when they're 25 doing something real
• 29:44
  fucking dumb that can change their life or the lives of everybody around them forever.
• 29:48
  What was your experience of masculinity and role models when you were a kid?
• 29:52
  I mean, I remember growing up in a very progressive neighborhood of Sydney and being, I left primary
• 29:59
  school with a very firm idea thanks to one aggressively feminist teacher in particular
• 30:06
  that women don't enjoy sex.
• 30:09
  Girls don't want sex that you should never try, you should never seek out sex that you
• 30:16
  should only accept it when it comes to you and that you need to respect.
• 30:21
  This was her way of trying to get young boys to respect girls boundaries as they grew up.
• 30:27
  I mean, this was not a kindergarten lesson.
• 30:29
  This would have been a new sex.
• 30:31
  I've done some field work and I would, in the research that I've done, you might, I
• 30:37
  would say that.
• 30:38
  Well, they call more than women with sex with, oh, sure, of course they do.
• 30:45
  This is the pinnacle of their lives, so gay gets to have sex with, but I'd like to think
• 30:51
  this.
• 30:52
  But that was the, that was the milieu, that was the black, the sort of consensus.
• 30:56
  So my understanding of masculinity was really quite, I think, lukewarm and, and mine
• 31:04
  was, I went to, I went to an all-boys private school in Brisbane, which was for the, the
• 31:14
  sons of the landed gentry and their, and their doctors and lawyers, my parents were the
• 31:19
  doctor part of that, and were there seven playgrounds?
• 31:23
  No, just one, and the only woman that wasn't my mum and my life was my accounting teacher.
• 31:30
  I left that school with a very strange view of women, that it was a bumpy, bumpy landing
• 31:41
  into the world once I started the ladies, once I started working in professional environments,
• 31:48
  hugely because of the osmosis of the attitudes that I had never sought to question.
• 31:54
  Would you say they were retrograde?
• 31:56
  I am very happy to say that, in the words of the man that guides me on my sobriety journey,
• 32:00
  the good news is I get to live the rest of my life not being that guy anymore.
• 32:04
  And, you know, it was through the very deep and patient actions of, you know, probably
• 32:11
  my first proper living girlfriend, we were together for about seven years going, oh, no,
• 32:16
  no, no, no, you can't actually do that.
• 32:18
  It's not okay to get a look at women in the eye when you speak, oh, okay, you know, I just
• 32:23
  didn't.
• 32:24
  I'm one of four boys, you know, I didn't really have any women really in my life.
• 32:28
  And that was a, that was an issue, but I, I, I, I, could you look men in the eyes?
• 32:33
  I was pretty, I was pretty jumpy, but yeah, yeah, I was pretty jumpy kid, but yeah, I had
• 32:38
  a strange view of women's role in the world until, yeah, until I was, oh, perhaps not
• 32:45
  that strange in terms of the, what people have tended to believe throughout history.
• 32:49
  I mean, that was the dominant view, presumably, that I kind of a vaguely sexist,
• 32:53
  but it was 80s queen.
• 32:54
  It was a sexist misogynistic idea that there was 80s queens land, and I consumed a lot
• 32:58
  of pop culture that under, you know, underwrote a lot of that.
• 33:01
  Yeah.
• 33:02
  So I didn't question, you know, that was all, if you, there's a great Australian drama
• 33:08
  that was filmed on Tangle Luma, which is a resort on Morton Island off of Brisbane
• 33:12
  called Holiday Island.
• 33:15
  And I think it's not Harold, the other one from Neighbors, is in the opening credits slapping
• 33:22
  a girl on the ass in the opening credits of Holiday Island, right?
• 33:26
  And at way it went.
• 33:27
  It was a Crawford production or something.
• 33:29
  Good for him.
• 33:30
  And that, but that was Tickety Boot off you go.
• 33:32
  Well, it was a very nice, I don't see you on the loggies.
• 33:34
  Could you, could you, could you, could you, could you blame him for resisting the
• 33:38
  crime?
• 33:39
  You know, it's that that's where the line was at the time.
• 33:42
  And thankfully, thankfully, that we are aware that the line isn't in a different place
• 33:45
  now.
• 33:46
  Right, but so the, you know, the only way the line gets into a different place is by people
• 33:53
  shouting that the line's in the wrong place, right?
• 33:55
  And so people shouted for a long time and said the line's in the wrong place, we're not
• 33:59
  going to cop this anymore, we're not going to cop having our asses slapped in the workplace,
• 34:02
  we're not going to cop the level of violence against women, we're not going to cop police
• 34:06
  turning a blind eye to domestic violence, we're not going to cop police implicitly blaming
• 34:10
  the victim when a sex worker gets murdered or something or raped because so, you know,
• 34:14
  she was probably asking for it, like these are the new norms that we have to enforce.
• 34:21
  What, how do you do that without also doing the thing that you seem to be uncomfortable
• 34:26
  with, which is, I don't know, what is it, some kind of a group demonization of men
• 34:32
  or a narrative about male violence that are disempowering to your son?
• 34:37
  I don't agree with it last thing, that's not what I think at all.
• 34:41
  I'm just asking the question of, like, perhaps if we could hold this idea that what's happening
• 34:46
  at the moment is really fucking terrible and agree this to be true and then maybe perhaps
• 34:52
  ask some questions about what are some other ways you might be able to get to a outcome
• 34:56
  where this stops happening.
• 34:59
  That isn't, you need to do better, Josh, because you do amazing.
• 35:05
  I don't know what more can you do?
• 35:07
  You do incredible, right?
• 35:09
  The people that are in my life, that are in my cohort, the people that I am vaguely a
• 35:14
  group chat away from, they're all fucking amazing people and so, I wonder, like, the way
• 35:24
  I'll get to it is this, I haven't eaten meat in a long time, like mid-90s, all right?
• 35:28
  I tend not to do any vegan stuff, all right, out publicly, because I tend to think that
• 35:33
  the messaging shoots himself to the foot, all right?
• 35:38
  You've murdered that pig.
• 35:40
  That's not going to get someone to change their mind, because it's a valley, it's a personal
• 35:44
  identity thing, all right?
• 35:46
  So, I don't think it really does the job and when I listen to the way you talk about
• 35:53
  any kind of progressive idea, you can almost find a point where, in the prosecution of
• 35:59
  that progressive idea and why it should change, there's a shaming or something element to
• 36:03
  it, to try to get the person to change their mind, that if it, you know, if you get, I
• 36:08
  personally, if you just get at the wrong angle, it bounces off their self-identity and
• 36:13
  then they galvanize and then you never get them, ever.
• 36:16
  And that, I think, it might be what we might, that's something I think to consider, Josh
• 36:21
  and I mean, that's a good way of putting it, the bouncing off their identity, because
• 36:26
  I think sometimes when blocs have this conversations that even attempt to talk about this kind
• 36:31
  of area, it will bounce off a, off the identity of the woman who wrote that placard saying,
• 36:40
  stop killing women, right?
• 36:41
  Because she'll be like, well, of course, a couple of blocs have an conversation, you know,
• 36:46
  about this.
• 36:47
  Well, she may not be right, but she, but it will land for her, not as a constructive
• 36:53
  attempt to wrestle with a complicated issue that we need to address, but as defensive
• 36:58
  posturing by men who refuse to take responsibility.
• 37:01
  And it's not that, so she's not right about that.
• 37:05
  When we think about our sums, what we want, what we all want is for young males to grow
• 37:13
  up to be non-violent, but to still find a way of expressing their masculinity that isn't
• 37:19
  emasculated, that isn't castrated, and that has traditional values of masculinity in the
• 37:26
  best sense, right?
• 37:27
  That is, that takes responsibility, that takes responsibility for community, that tries
• 37:31
  to achieve things in the world, that tries to provide for people.
• 37:38
  And I guess the worry is that if it becomes the responsibility of your and my little boys
• 37:47
  to shoulder the kind of moral albatross of the actions of males they've never met who
• 37:55
  did things they can't imagine doing, maybe it impedes their ability to grasp and see
• 38:03
  a positive vision of masculinity because they feel so suppressed and sort of victim-blamed.
• 38:08
  And there's a large question around it.
• 38:13
  I sat on a panel with your husband at the All About Women Festival, and I loved that.
• 38:19
  This was at the Opera House, and it was so, it's a big list of all my own festivals.
• 38:22
  And it was an all-male panel.
• 38:24
  Yeah.
• 38:25
  We had about 300 people, 200 people in the room.
• 38:28
  Right.
• 38:29
  And Jamila.
• 38:30
  Yeah, she's fantastic.
• 38:31
  She's great.
• 38:32
  She's very good at what she does.
• 38:33
  Yeah.
• 38:34
  And I told her, so I was like, this is hard to do, so I've done it a thousand times.
• 38:36
  Yeah.
• 38:37
  Jamila was, she's very good at shout out.
• 38:40
  And I was talking, I raised the point I'm about to raise, and I'll tell you the reaction
• 38:46
  that I've got afterwards, in that, if you, and it's funny, because one of my dear mates
• 38:51
  is one of the Australian dads that we see in all the ads, all right?
• 38:55
  He's not dumb fat dad, though.
• 38:56
  He's the only one who's not dumb fat dad.
• 38:59
  Okay.
• 39:00
  But every other ad is dumb fat dad.
• 39:02
  Yeah.
• 39:03
  I forgot the fucking thing.
• 39:04
  Yeah.
• 39:05
  I'm giving me hose into the fucking whatever, you know, fucking, assurances on fire.
• 39:12
  Right.
• 39:13
  It's home at, there's home at home, a Simpson version of masculinity.
• 39:15
  Right.
• 39:16
  And if that's what we're expecting of our, you know, you like women have stopped being
• 39:21
  reader to the eta eta for a long time.
• 39:23
  Right.
• 39:24
  But men have not moved.
• 39:25
  Read of the eta eta was an old Australian ad, so you're in a, a, a, a, a chirpy home maker.
• 39:30
  You order.
• 39:31
  But you can graduate it.
• 39:32
  Yeah.
• 39:33
  And we're aware that a minority of our listeners own viewers are in Australia.
• 39:36
  There's no one knows what you're talking about.
• 39:38
  That's fine.
• 39:39
  Everyone knows the trope of the, you've done a good house off and you're baked a great
• 39:43
  cast.
• 39:44
  Yes.
• 39:45
  Fuck you.
• 39:46
  You win.
• 39:47
  Good.
• 39:48
  I love you.
• 39:49
  Yeah.
• 39:50
  Yeah.
• 39:51
  Be quiet.
• 39:52
  The very conventional.
• 39:53
  And we have, because of the aforementioned, you know, line pushing, that has not been an advertising
• 39:54
  for a long time.
• 39:55
  Yeah.
• 39:56
  The ads that you'll see today last night during state of origin, and that is the dad that
• 40:02
  we expect.
• 40:03
  That is what we'll get.
• 40:04
  That's the standard we're sending.
• 40:05
  It's a problem.
• 40:06
  It is a real problem when the greatest dad on Australian, if not the world's television
• 40:10
  is a blue dog.
• 40:12
  That's true.
• 40:13
  That's true.
• 40:14
  Is the greatest Australian dad there?
• 40:15
  Yeah.
• 40:16
  And that was an explicit decision by the creators of that, absolutely, to, to model a good
• 40:19
  version of masculinity and being a good dad because there's so much that isn't.
• 40:24
  You can't do better than Bandit Healer.
• 40:26
  Yeah.
• 40:27
  You really cannot.
• 40:28
  Yeah.
• 40:29
  It's all Peter Griffin.
• 40:30
  I listen to a lot of different podcasts, but I listen to Jocco Willink quite a bit.
• 40:35
  He is a Navy SEAL Bandit Healer.
• 40:37
  When you listen to the way he talks about accepting responsibility, understanding empathy,
• 40:43
  trying to avoid any kind of violence or conflict, what, so even this is like a train killer.
• 40:48
  Yeah.
• 40:49
  You're holy shit.
• 40:50
  You know?
• 40:51
  Well, this is the thing.
• 40:52
  I mean, you know, because we've done such a bad job of finding a way to talk about
• 40:56
  the positive attributes of masculinity because we have felt like that could in some way be
• 41:02
  perceived as detracting from feminism or detracting from the desire for equal rights for
• 41:07
  women or downplaying violence against women or something.
• 41:10
  We have spent the past couple of decades sort of, I think, emasculating men in the same
• 41:16
  way that my primary school teacher accidentally did by trying to get us to not be rapey, but
• 41:20
  as a result, just making us feel like we didn't have a dick.
• 41:23
  Are you saying, are you saying she turned you gay?
• 41:25
  You turned me gay, man.
• 41:26
  I was so straight.
• 41:27
  You were straight.
• 41:28
  And there was, oh, it was ridiculous.
• 41:31
  I walked out of that class.
• 41:32
  I was like, man, dick, not boobs.
• 41:36
  What have I been doing?
• 41:37
  This is so neat.
• 41:38
  I like, I joke because like, I guarantee you like what you were five for when you figured
• 41:43
  it out.
• 41:44
  No, no, but that's a whole other story because I had, I mean, my sexuality is much more
• 41:50
  nebulous.
• 41:51
  I imagine being at an alternate life having fallen in love with a woman, and I can imagine
• 41:56
  that having happened.
• 41:57
  And I had long and loving relationships with girls in my teens.
• 42:02
  For me, it was more about, for me, I fell in love, I fell in love much more intensely
• 42:08
  with a certain handful of guys that I ever had with girls, but it wasn't, I wasn't one
• 42:13
  of those.
• 42:14
  I wasn't like my husband who, like the moment he was out of the womb, boom, he was
• 42:17
  forlaming.
• 42:18
  Gold star.
• 42:19
  Gold star.
• 42:20
  Gold star.
• 42:21
  That's another deep cut for those.
• 42:24
  But because we've done them not very good job of articulating a vision of masculinity,
• 42:29
  um, oh, where did, where did we talk about?
• 42:32
  I was talking about the idea of making, like, if we expect men, if we expect men to be,
• 42:37
  if that's what we're expecting of men, that's the standard we're setting.
• 42:40
  That's the highest that will, uh, expect them to, and that's the highest that men will
• 42:44
  rise to, and then making them wrong for not being anything better than that.
• 42:50
  It's not great.
• 42:51
  Right.
• 42:52
  I was just going to go down the old job of media, uh, the ecosystem as well.
• 42:56
  Yeah.
• 42:57
  Because the mainstream media doesn't have great visions of masculinity.
• 43:00
  It's either the doofus dad or, uh, you know, the politically correct, extremely sensitive
• 43:06
  new age guy, um, people like Jocco and Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson now have a platform
• 43:14
  in which they're speaking to young men in ways that really resonate, but because we're
• 43:20
  all governed by sociopathic algorithms that nudges into ever more, you know, extreme
• 43:26
  content, because that's where the engagement lies.
• 43:29
  That also becomes a, I don't want to say a sort of a pathway, but like it becomes a bit
• 43:34
  of a gateway to much more toxic versions of my skill and any like Andrew Tate and, um,
• 43:38
  nonsense.
• 43:39
  Like getting ready for podcasts and stuff, like I'll watch videos and like see if I can
• 43:44
  do stuff like, so I don't know what the fuck my algorithm is telling me, but if I see
• 43:47
  like 12 female journalists owned by some is, I don't, what?
• 43:51
  Yeah.
• 43:52
  I don't want to watch this.
• 43:53
  No.
• 43:54
  People don't feed me this YouTube.
• 43:55
  No, and there seems to be, I think, a misconception amongst some, you know, women's
• 44:00
  rights people or some people who are very agitated about, um, feminism that phenomena
• 44:07
  like Andrew Tate are indicative of something intrinsic to masculinity.
• 44:12
  And this is why we need to fight harder and shout louder that men need to stop killing
• 44:18
  women.
• 44:19
  I actually think they've got to ask backwards that the shouting too loudly about men as
• 44:24
  a whole need to stop killing women makes young men feel like they.
• 44:29
  Young peaceful men that is who don't want to kill women who don't want to be violent
• 44:32
  towards women feel like they're being unfairly maligned.
• 44:37
  It pings off their identity like you were saying before.
• 44:40
  It makes them more keen on playing the identity game.
• 44:44
  If they're like, oh, is that the game we're playing that like women have to be part of
• 44:48
  the sisterhood?
• 44:49
  Well, then I guess guys have to be part of the brotherhood, don't we?
• 44:52
  And Andrew Tate becomes this perverted, like horrendous kind of offshoot dark place
• 44:58
  that I actually don't think would have the currency that he does if we'd all been a
• 45:01
  little bit more, bit less judgy of men as a cohort.
• 45:06
  I understand where you're coming from.
• 45:09
  When I spoke about making space for men to be better and expecting better of men and
• 45:14
  displaying men in a better way on this panel, we're strong.
• 45:20
  It was actually quite a lovely message, I got someone sent me a message going, I saw
• 45:24
  you think I was really fucking confronted by it, I was really confronted that I was
• 45:29
  being asked to make space for men, ever I understand what it is really, really hard.
• 45:38
  There's a lot of particularly difficult problems in our world right now.
• 45:43
  And making space for the part that we don't necessarily agree with is an important part
• 45:48
  of getting to a place that we can both be.
• 45:51
  And when it comes to violence in our community, my God, I don't know about you.
• 45:59
  From the age of 14, I've been terrified and it's interesting because I remember the first
• 46:05
  time I read something about this, walking from the train station with my keys in my hand,
• 46:11
  as a group of men passed me by, I'm like, that's every night coming home when I was 14, 15,
• 46:16
  don't be big, be small, don't make yourself a target, because I knew how quickly I could,
• 46:21
  which you're looking at, that's it.
• 46:23
  What am I looking at? I'm looking at me running as fast as I fucking can away from you guys,
• 46:26
  that's what I'm doing, because the threat of really terrifying violence has always been there
• 46:32
  for me. And it's, I feel it's important to recognize that is, you know, that is a real thing.
• 46:40
  And it's not like the idea that I walk through the world never worrying.
• 46:46
  I've made the worry less as I have learned more about how to move through the world,
• 46:50
  but I certainly don't walk through the world not worrying. I'm always,
• 46:54
  we're just become a part of who I am, like, okay, that guy there, okay,
• 46:58
  that's a doorway there, you know, I'm always like that, have been for a long time.
• 47:02
  And I don't think I'm alone in this way, but I certainly don't want Wolfie to grow up
• 47:08
  in any way thinking that, oh, I can't express myself fully as my, you know, who I am,
• 47:16
  because it's making another person uncomfortable, you know, if he's hurting them, you know,
• 47:22
  that's a different story, but for him to be, you know, proudly and wonderfully being the young
• 47:28
  fellow that he is, that's part of who he is, that's his identity, that's, and I don't, well, I'm just,
• 47:35
  I'm not okay with even saying that word out loud. I guess what I'm trying to. What identity?
• 47:39
  Yeah, I don't like him. Well, I look, I keep saying, like, if you want to turn the volume up
• 47:45
  on people's identities, just look at all the cultures that have done that and tell me that they're
• 47:50
  better than the ones that have strived towards downplaying identities. Like,
• 47:56
  civil war is what you get when people really focus on their identities.
• 48:01
  It's probably a good thing to maybe not want to be a bunch of warring tribes. I don't think
• 48:07
  I'd like to think we're not going to get there in this country. I hope we don't.
• 48:11
  Can't say the same for some other countries. So when you, if your experience of being a young male
• 48:18
  was that you were moving through the world, basically frightened of other young males,
• 48:25
  what lands for you when you hear someone say, men just don't understand because
• 48:34
  when women move through the world, they have to live in constant fear of men.
• 48:42
  I wouldn't know what those people are thinking, but I can imagine that it is,
• 48:49
  I think there may be some,
• 48:53
  through clearing my throat and qualifying, everything here, George. I'm so worried,
• 48:57
  just being even in your presence. It might be, I don't know. I would say that ultimately,
• 49:09
  this person is appealing to another party to have some empathy for their experience.
• 49:15
  That experience is absolutely valid without a doubt. I've after a shoot wherever we are,
• 49:22
  I'm sure you've done the same walking my team back to their cars. That's just what you do.
• 49:28
  Wherever the city you are in the world doesn't matter. That's just what you do because you know
• 49:33
  that they are also at risk and the three of us together will be okay. You would want that empathy
• 49:40
  to be extended to you. Yet it's not zero something. Yes, you want these empathy to be extended to you,
• 49:47
  but are you able to extend this empathy to understand? Maybe it is not only my experience. Maybe
• 49:53
  there are men in the world who also have this thing. I think I have learned to move through the
• 49:59
  world a little better lately. Do you mean more fearlessly? No. I would say
• 50:10
  there was a study done I think in the 60s or 70s where they showed back when Times Square was
• 50:14
  like the juice that David, the thing I showed when it was disgusting involved. It was horrible,
• 50:19
  right? Basically, there was like gut muggers who were in prison for having mugged people in Times
• 50:24
  Square and they showed them footage of people walking but only filmed from the waist down and these
• 50:29
  guys went, yep, yep, no. Easy. No, it wouldn't go near them. Yes, yes. They could tell by their gate
• 50:35
  as if they were going to be an easy target. So there's something that I don't know. I didn't do
• 50:41
  it deliberately. There's something I've figured out as I've moved through the world. Walk with a bit
• 50:45
  more heft. I don't know what it is, but it's not to say that. I certainly walk differently when I'm
• 50:50
  alone at night than I do during the day. In the day, I might be scurrying along, but yeah,
• 50:55
  absolutely. If I'm alone on a dark street at night, I walk with a certain wrestler's
• 51:00
  plot. Oh, you might find it in my pocket. Yeah, totally. Yeah, but just like a certain heaviness
• 51:06
  of foot that implies that I might know what I'm doing with my body because they're the random nature
• 51:12
  of violence that is a risk is always is ever present. Yeah. I'm not having guns in Australia.
• 51:19
  You're basically going to get you're probably going to get punched or not. And it's not fun for
• 51:24
  anyone. You want it, but you want the other person to think that it's not going to be easy.
• 51:28
  So I guess, you know, to in the context of, you know, the little boys in our lives,
• 51:34
  I would like to say that if we can figure out how to help these young men, as they grow into
• 51:40
  young men, find ways to deal with their emotions and their big feelings and their physicality,
• 51:46
  which will, thanks to genetics, possibly usually most of the time become bigger and much
• 51:54
  more powerful transphobic than the Earth. Yeah. Thank you. You know, I went to school with kids
• 52:03
  who are as big now as they were when they were 14. Yeah. And so here you are. You've got a brick
• 52:10
  shit. You're a hundred and five kilo of a monkey. Exactly. You've literally been given the
• 52:14
  keys to a cat D nine's fucking bulldozer with not even a learner's permit. And you don't absolutely
• 52:21
  don't understand that you can go through walls and hurt people quite easily because of the size of
• 52:27
  you now. And but you don't have any idea how to control this physicality. And it's super important
• 52:32
  that what we do with our young men is allow them because ultimately that we're going to get to
• 52:37
  this point where if we can help these guys to deal with their big feelings and deal with them,
• 52:40
  you know, physicality and be expressive masculine in a in a healthy way, masculine way.
• 52:46
  When it comes time and when they're in a conflict and when they're like really fucking frustrated,
• 52:52
  fingers crossed, violence won't be the thing that I mean, do you ever wonder that this is a
• 52:55
  bit of a privileged conversation that we're having in the sense that the reality is that you and I
• 53:00
  will raise sons who will be hyper cognizant of their own man. I don't know like any of their
• 53:06
  own danger because we will have conversations which we all which I already have with my son
• 53:09
  yeah about you cannot cannot resort to physical violence. Yeah. It's for me. It's not necessarily
• 53:15
  a gender thing yet, but I guess it will be once he's a teenager. But that is being embedded from a
• 53:20
  very young age. There are communities in this country who are not inculcating that message
• 53:26
  necessarily. Like I don't want to say that it's a class thing because there's more than it more
• 53:31
  than our fair share of domestic violence amongst rich shit holes as well. But there are just certain
• 53:38
  types of families and certain types of men who do not think that it's a terrible thing to be violent
• 53:43
  and don't think that it's always the worst thing in the world to slap a woman. Those people
• 53:50
  other people who need to have you met them because I've never met one. Yeah. But and I think
• 53:54
  that I think a lot of the women who say that we need to do better what they're actually saying is
• 53:59
  we need to make a concerted effort to find out find those guys and bring them over to our way
• 54:05
  of thinking. Now the problem is I think that the women who say men need to stop killing women
• 54:11
  are actually ignorant of how rare it is for us to come in contact with anybody who is violent
• 54:19
  towards women. I mean I've never ever in my entire life ever been in a situation with a bunch
• 54:26
  of blokes where one of them has made light of being aggressive towards a woman
• 54:35
  or confessed to anything like that. No, I don't know that no one I've ever met has
• 54:41
  but no one I've ever met has expressed the opinion that it's okay ever anywhere. Yeah.
• 54:48
  And it is a I would say to you that you mentioned that our sons are largely ended that you mentioned
• 54:54
  that the privilege I've been in enough sobriety meetings to know and I've seen it happen with
• 55:02
  my own friends to know that any teenager is the the right summer the right song the right
• 55:09
  some of the right song and the wrong friends away from throwing everything their parents have
• 55:14
  taught them out the window and choosing a completely different set of values. So yeah he came
• 55:21
  from a good home is a trope for a reason because it can all shift like like that.
• 55:28
  So but then what does it mean to say men need to do better? I don't know man. I mean if you're if
• 55:33
  if you're at the whims of the the right song the right summer and the wrong friends it would be
• 55:40
  I don't know man I'm not I don't have the solution but I would I would say that perhaps it is
• 55:45
  considering how we view violence in our community and how who's saying violence is good
• 55:53
  the the cohort that you just mentioned of you know I suppose the wrong friends are the ones
• 55:59
  they're wrong friends and that largely is a you know that is a generational thing as well there's
• 56:06
  men in my life man close to people in my life I should say there's men close to people in my
• 56:11
  life who their adult lives is men in their fifties their adult lives are absolutely ruined because
• 56:16
  of horrendously abusive fathers okay and there's nothing to say that those men were abusive outside
• 56:22
  the home but these guys hurt people hurt people right these guys will probably abuse themselves right
• 56:28
  this idea of it's a it's a it's a much I guess I'm saying it's a much larger thing it's a
• 56:36
  than whoever painted the sign might be making out yeah because it's a simple thing to say it's
• 56:41
  fun to say stop the boats right there we go did you really address the incredible difficult problem
• 56:47
  of what's actually happening with three words probably not it's easy to say put it in an ad put
• 56:52
  it on trophy you can win an election but it might not be the answer yeah I mean it can also just
• 56:59
  be facile right I mean stop killing women is facile it's it's it's it's not serious you're not
• 57:06
  being serious when you're saying things like that in my opinion you you are it's sloganeering yeah
• 57:13
  it's like saying of the war and Gaza stop the killing well who doesn't want to stop the killing I
• 57:19
  mean with the exception of Hamas and perhaps the most psychopathic reactionary Israeli like I don't
• 57:26
  know far right racist everyone wants to stop the killing yeah like thanks for enlightening me
• 57:33
  about how killing is bad whether it's of cousins or of or of women the generational point that
• 57:40
  you made is interesting in the sense that there are two possible meanings of generational there's
• 57:45
  the intergenerational trauma right that the as you say hurt people hurt people and and hurt
• 57:51
  parents can be abusive towards their kids and that can be then ripple out in other dysfunctional
• 57:56
  ways and violent ways but then there's also the question about generational attitudes towards
• 58:03
  the sexes this comes up quite a lot where you know there was an article that I read out on that
• 58:10
  monologue that you were talking about that not I released on this podcast the one about the problem
• 58:15
  with the come with the way we're having the conversation about male violence which was
• 58:20
  articulating a pretty common point of view about male violence against women which is that
• 58:25
  it starts with the sexist micro aggression and it ends with a woman body in a river it begins with
• 58:35
  you man spreading on subway train right and not respecting women's space or implicitly assuming
• 58:44
  that the female in the household should do more of the work around the house the household chores
• 58:50
  and it ends with you know the bruised and battered face of a woman this I think is fallacious
• 59:01
  it may work in reverse it may work it's a bit like pot being a gateway drug to heroin you know people
• 59:07
  would always say well you know 95% of heroin heroin users started with marijuana and I always
• 59:15
  thought that was silly because you're looking at it the wrong way around of course to get to heroin
• 59:19
  you have to start with marijuana but almost no people who start with marijuana end up on heroin
• 59:24
  like very very very few similarly it's probably true that male murderers started out being
• 59:30
  arseholes man spreading on the train right you know being domineering in their domestic environment
• 59:38
  but it's not true that any significant proportion of man spreaders go on to become violent towards
• 59:45
  women and indeed general generationally I don't know about your experience but I find young
• 59:53
  younger males you know millennials can actually be just as sort of actually patronizing and
• 1:00:01
  disrespectful towards women or more so than my grandfather's generation my grandfather came from
• 1:00:09
  a generation that was undoubtedly very sexist in the way in the things that he thought women were
• 1:00:13
  capable of doing like he once told me but when the police plane touched down from he lived in
• 1:00:19
  New Zealand in Sydney he was like the pilot came on so woman like that was remarkable enough
• 1:00:28
  for him to actually start up a conversation with me about he was like and I'll tell you what Josh
• 1:00:33
  it was the smoothest flight I ever had like you know he gets cred he gets cred by being the
• 1:00:41
  nice patronizing condescending sexist you know that it was like women can do real jobs just like
• 1:00:48
  normal people can anyway that's all a long round about way of saying he would never have raised
• 1:00:54
  a finger towards a woman I mean there was there was no suggestion that there was a connection
• 1:01:00
  between his old fashioned ideas about sex and gender and on the one hand and any kind of
• 1:01:07
  disrespect for a little own violent behavior towards women and in the new cohort of guys who are
• 1:01:12
  super sensitive and on board with all the the right social justice gestures about women I can
• 1:01:18
  sometimes detect a kind of taking for granted a female colleagues there's not casual sexism
• 1:01:30
  but it wouldn't surprise me if there was just as much violence oh boy I
• 1:01:36
  I was texting you coming out here I was worried I even come and have this conversation
• 1:01:41
  because I'm terrified of how wrong I will already be and I'm sure since the start of this
• 1:01:46
  podcast there's a long list of things that I've said wrongly and why do you care why do I care
• 1:01:53
  I guess there is there is a part of me and I've identified this there's a part of me that
• 1:02:03
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• 1:02:08
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