Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / SZEPS WORLD TOUR – MEGHAN DAUM on What You’re Not Supposed to Say

Transcript

SZEPS WORLD TOUR – MEGHAN DAUM on What You’re Not Supposed to Say · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. This episode of Uncomfortable
• 0:08
  Conversations is the audio of a video live stream from the ZEPPS Live around the world
• 0:15
  tour sub-tax first ever live streamed global podcast marathon where I'm crossing two dozen
• 0:23
  time zones in a dozen days and a circumnavigating the globe to sit down with some of the world's
• 0:29
  most interesting people in some new global capital nearly every single day, sometimes multiple
• 0:34
  times a day. Streaming live in full high-def glory not on the smartphones mostly to millions
• 0:42
  of subscribers across multiple publications and you can join in at Uncomfortable Conversations.substac.com
• 0:49
  should you wish to do so. Or you can listen to this episode. It's delayed to conform to
• 0:55
  this podcast's normal twice-weekly schedule, which is fine, but you could have seen it or heard
• 1:01
  it already on sub-stake if you want to get ahead of the next one. If you're new to Uncomfortable
• 1:05
  Conversations, this is a place for wrestling with the world's most consequential and controversial
• 1:13
  and divisive issues in a non-divisive, mostly non-uncomfortable way with the world's most
• 1:20
  fascinating minds. We don't try to make guests uncomfortable, but the point is that the topics
• 1:27
  are subjects that normal people generally feel uncomfortable disagreeing about honestly,
• 1:31
  and we try to model how to do that in a courageous and courteous and bullshit-free way.
• 1:38
  This particular conversation is just a preview. If you're a paid subscriber and you're hearing
• 1:44
  this message, then you're accidentally on the free feed, which you can fix with one click in
• 1:50
  the show notes, either via Apple or via Substac, or you can just enjoy this excellent appetizer.
• 1:57
  A reminder that if you get a paid subscription on Apple podcasts, then you get the full episodes,
• 2:03
  but there's no way to feed you the live stream or the video or for you to join the conversation
• 2:09
  in the live chat on Substac or to get notified when we're live. All that stuff comes with the
• 2:15
  Substac subscription, which is the same price as the Apple subscription with more benefits.
• 2:20
  Some people are just committed to staying inside the Apple ecosystem. Don't want to download
• 2:24
  a new app. I get it. If you don't want the bells and whistles, that's totally fine. I will just say,
• 2:30
  trust me, Substac as a platform is becoming so ubiquitous and is growing so fast and has so much
• 2:36
  more great stuff on it that you will almost certainly get around to signing up sometime soon,
• 2:43
  so you're probably only postponing the inevitable at this point and you might as well
• 2:47
  lodge your vote for sane independent media in the meantime. Enjoy this conversation and thank you
• 2:53
  whether you're paid or unpaid for helping us to make debate healthy again.
• 2:58
  I think I owe you an apology because last time we spoke, we were talking about trans issues and
• 3:08
  you were like, oh, everybody is so crazy about trans. I was like, that's so 2022. People aren't
• 3:13
  crazy about like the left understands now that trans is like, that it misstepped a little and
• 3:19
  there was overreach and you were like, you need to come to California and see what it's like.
• 3:24
  And here you are. Now that I've come to California and seen what it's like, I think you're right.
• 3:29
  How long have you been here? Like you stepped off the plane? I stepped off the plane and all of a sudden
• 3:34
  the leftists were throwing trans people in my face. Everyone was trans. No, it was more it's not that
• 3:39
  again, it's not about the trans people because most of them are a sick and tired of this whole
• 3:45
  nonsense. Don't say sick. They're not sick. They're tired of it. They just want to live their lives.
• 3:51
  The most of them are as abnormal regarding all of this as the rest of us are. So New South Wales,
• 4:00
  the state where I live, has just passed a law proving that it's not just California that the
• 4:05
  worksters are everywhere now, passed a law for self-id. So in Sydney now, I with no, no, not a
• 4:16
  little bit, no medical attention whatsoever. What you do need is what, you know, I don't know what
• 4:24
  they've put in as a safeguard to make sure that this doesn't get abused. There's so many punchlines
• 4:30
  here, go ahead. Okay. All you have to do is find someone who's known you, who will say they've
• 4:37
  known you for 12 months and who can say that you're not fucking around with this. Oh,
• 4:44
  that you're serious about it. So how many people would not be able to find one person? It
• 4:50
  doesn't have to be a cop. It doesn't have to be a justice of the police. It doesn't have to be
• 4:54
  a judge. It's like somebody can get ordained online to marry you and they're ordained for 24
• 5:04
  hours. This would be a great cottage industry. But also who needs to go and get a hobo off the
• 5:11
  street and give them a, give them five bucks and a cup of coffee and be like, can you sign here
• 5:16
  on my gender? Oh, anybody, anybody, anybody, anybody. There's no bedding. And now if I did that, I
• 5:24
  would then be under the like anti-discrimination legislation as a woman. I'd be a protected class
• 5:30
  as a woman. I'd be able to use the female, changing whims, the female swimming pools. I thought
• 5:35
  you were crazy. No, I'm not crazy. This is very, you would be a protected class which would
• 5:41
  enable you to invade the space of women who are protected class. Am I already a protected class?
• 5:48
  You're gay. Yeah. Is that, is that protected? Not anymore. No. No, it's no. I think women are the new
• 5:54
  men and gays are the new straits, I think. Did you see the Broadway star who said that blacks are
• 6:00
  the new Jews? No. Oh, that was interesting. Billy Porter. Does that name ring the bell? I think that's
• 6:06
  the gentleman's name. Okay. He's playing the MC in a terrible production of Cabaret at the moment,
• 6:11
  which I walked out of halfway through. And yeah, he was on like the view while I did Morning
• 6:16
  America or something like that. And he was, I thought it, I thought he was joking when I read
• 6:20
  the headline, but then I looked at it and he was quite sincere and he was like, you know, it's
• 6:24
  wonderful that this is the first ever production of Cabaret in which all three leads are African
• 6:29
  Americans because Cabaret is about the precursor of Holocaust. And, you know, black people today
• 6:36
  are like the modern day Jews. Oh, I thought he was. And he was like, oh, it sounds like.
• 6:41
  On the view. There wasn't on the view. It was something more subdued. It was Good Morning
• 6:46
  America or like one of those. Oh, like the tonight show. Something nobody watches. So, wait,
• 6:51
  so he's saying the blacks control the media is what they said. I mean, that's obvious. And drink
• 6:57
  the blood of babies. I think that's what he's saying. No, he's saying that like, you know,
• 7:00
  of all the things that have ever happened to the Jews, that's what black people are currently facing.
• 7:06
  Okay. Yeah, there's a lot going on in the world. Well, I'm glad that you've come into the
• 7:11
  trans thing. I mean, I get, you know, I feel like it's complicated because we are getting legislation
• 7:17
  now that is banning childhood child medical transition, which is actually good. And it's just
• 7:24
  unfortunate that it had to be legislated. But is it good? Because then it's just another
• 7:29
  blunt tool. But that see for a long time, I said, this should not be legislated. This should
• 7:35
  be, you know, something that the medical profession, the problem is that the medical institutions
• 7:42
  are just like out to lunch on this. But this is what happens in your fine country. You go from
• 7:47
  some one extreme to another extreme where it's like any any adolescent who might have gender dysphoria
• 7:53
  suddenly funneled into, you know, onto a conveyor belt that ends with yeah, genital surgery.
• 8:00
  And then so then the right comes in and they're like, no one's going to get it at all. And then
• 8:03
  you're like, but what about the people who from the age of two have known that they're in the wrong
• 8:07
  body? Yeah, although I use, I don't want, I know, I know it's that the algorithm doesn't favor it.
• 8:15
  No. But yeah, well, I mean, look, it's a lot of those kids are gay. We don't have, I don't think we
• 8:20
  should spend a whole live stream talking about this unless the people are eating it up. But that,
• 8:24
  no, a lot of these kids are gay and it's a very homophobic movement. And I think another thing,
• 8:29
  a lot of people don't realize is that in some of these cases, believe it or not, the families
• 8:35
  will are homophobic enough that they would rather have a kid that was transgender than gay.
• 8:41
  Yeah. And so this is not like, again, this is the extreme. So you have these like extreme left
• 8:46
  progressive, like kind of performatively woke families on one side. But then you also have
• 8:51
  very conservative, sometimes religious, you know, people in, you know, rural areas or whatever,
• 8:58
  or even immigrant communities that would rather have a trans kid than a gay kid.
• 9:04
  Well, look at the emolas in Tehran. They love the trans because it means no guys, right?
• 9:09
  Like if you're gay, you get thrown off a rooftop. But if you agree to become a woman,
• 9:14
  they're like the government for it. Yeah. It's medical tourism. They should start going over
• 9:19
  there. That's a nice idea. There might be other different incentives to go to Iran. They should
• 9:22
  have had a million Perez, but she goes to Iran. Did you ever see that? Yes. Well, how was it?
• 9:27
  I didn't see it. I couldn't be bothered. It was, it was, it was not great. So she got
• 9:34
  good performances. So good acting. Okay. That's a very tactful response. Yeah. And I'm going to
• 9:40
  go to movies anymore. So I can't, I can't be bothered. I love movies. You do. I love going to
• 9:46
  the movies by myself. Oh, me too. I love going to theme parks by myself and riding rollercoaster.
• 9:49
  Really? I love all that's a little bit on the, on the edge. You're the theme parks by yourself.
• 9:56
  By myself. Really? Okay. I like doing a lot of stuff by myself. Yeah. Because I get stressed out
• 10:03
  if what the other person they're having a good time, if they're enjoying the movie. I like
• 10:06
  even going to concerts by myself. Oh, yeah. I've never done that. I know what I hate is that
• 10:12
  there's a group of people and we're trying to walk down the sidewalk. And like it's taking up
• 10:16
  the whole sidewalk and people can't decide where to go. And we're standing around and turning around.
• 10:20
  And I just walk ahead of them and I'm very anti-social. You know what I hate? People don't care
• 10:28
  for them much. I like people who I like. But there seems to be a large boundary, a large spectrum
• 10:36
  between the people who I like and just people, quiet people as a, as a group. Okay. You like
• 10:43
  your audience. Love my audience. Yeah. I like my audience. I mean most of them. But then sometimes
• 10:50
  some of them are, you know, a little talky too. Yeah. You never can't tell. They demand a lot.
• 10:55
  You never can't tell. I love feeding the beast. But I don't necessarily want to go to
• 11:01
  six flags, Magic Mountain, with the beast. You know, that's my, that's Daddy's time.
• 11:06
  I'm calling it Daddy. So I'm going on in that sentence. Going to six flags with the beast, Daddy,
• 11:12
  by yourself. Megan Down is with us for this live stream on the ZEPS live world tour where we're
• 11:22
  doing incredible episodes of uncomfortable conversations with fascinating people in every
• 11:26
  different city. I would even call this a different city. It's a Los Angeles. Yeah. Because L.A.
• 11:31
  is so big. It's basically like, you could, we've driven across Belgium today. You know what I mean?
• 11:37
  Like in terms of, in terms of, in terms of just the distance. Uh, yeah. L.A. is great. I say L.A.
• 11:44
  is a terrible place to visit and a great place to live. It's just a reverse. Well, you live
• 11:51
  here. I live here. I love visiting. Okay. But you're probably lived in like, you know,
• 11:55
  I lived in Venice Beach for a year. And then I went back to New York and then I lived in Hollywood
• 11:59
  for a year. Yeah. Uh, I think it's all about finding the right neighborhood. Uh-huh. And there's
• 12:04
  all kinds of little strangers surprising corners of L.A. people. No, no. And I love that it's like
• 12:09
  wild and you can be five minutes from downtown and yet have like owls and hawks and coyotes and
• 12:16
  things like that. If you care for coyotes, great place. Yes. Also, if you want to get a lot,
• 12:22
  this is something that Angelina always say is say, you're only an hour from the snow, you're an
• 12:28
  hour from the beach. So basically, the selling point is if you want to get the fuck out of here,
• 12:34
  no problem. Right. You're an hour from wherever you have to go for dinner. That's right. You're
• 12:40
  basically an hour to an hour and a half from everywhere. Uh, and that's the, that's the joys.
• 12:46
  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's been, it's been a challenging time in L.A.
• 12:51
  I think it's going through some, some changes. Why? Well, I mean, we had the fires, of course.
• 12:56
  Of course. You, uh, you copped the brunt of that. I did. But people who don't know Megan's house
• 13:00
  literally burned literally burned down. Isn't that like so on the nose? It's like my house burned
• 13:06
  down. How would you ever think such a thing? I mean, yes, because there were fires engulfing
• 13:11
  the whole city and I come from a country that has dealt with its fair share of wild, destructive
• 13:16
  wildfires. Yeah. And, and you were very generous. You offered me a room in your house. Yeah.
• 13:22
  If you had to come to Sydney, you know, I was, I had, I was pretty confident that that little
• 13:28
  bell fire, that that asterisk would rule out what if I had said, yes, what if I truly had so
• 13:34
  few friends that you were like, I'm coming to Sydney with my, with my dog, you go. Yeah.
• 13:39
  Yeah. I would have started asking about the duration of time that we're talking about. I would
• 13:43
  have been like, absolutely, move in. Are we talking about 12 hours, 24 hours? What are we talking
• 13:49
  about here? And then when you were like, I was thinking maybe three to six months, I would have
• 13:53
  given you a list of youth hostels. You know, hostiles literally. Yes. As you would say, you know,
• 13:59
  I'm, I'm such a frugal person. I stayed in the youth hostel last week. Really? Yeah.
• 14:05
  Okay. That, I want to, I don't, I want to hear about this tour because this seems exhausting.
• 14:11
  Yeah. Although I love it that you're going to people's houses. Yeah. That is kind of my dream.
• 14:14
  Yeah. It's like a tour of homes. Yeah. So that's right. It's like lifestyles of the river.
• 14:19
  Lifestyles of the, of the middle class, independent, independent creators. Yeah.
• 14:24
  People hustling. Yeah. To make it on sub sack and such. Yes. So what are you finding about
• 14:30
  people's homes where they live? Are you surprised? Well, sometimes people are coming to us.
• 14:34
  Sometimes we're going to studios. We did a live show at the comedy cell. I saw it.
• 14:38
  My actual ability to sort of purve on people's lives has been somewhat limited. But I don't
• 14:45
  think it's anything surprising in New York City. People live out of shoe boxes in Los Angeles.
• 14:50
  People live way out in the wilderness where they're 90 minutes from, where they're a mere 90 minutes
• 14:54
  from anything interesting. And, you know, the rest of the tour is still to come. We went to DC.
• 15:01
  Everyone knows how pretty and leafy the suburbs of northern Virginia are.
• 15:06
  Okay. It's lovely. It's hot. It's hot this time here. Very hot. Yeah. Yeah. Let's build the capital
• 15:11
  city on a reclaimed swamp land. They said that'll be a great idea. They said, yeah,
• 15:17
  they were going to drain the swamp on a swamp land. I know. I had a theory when I lived in New York
• 15:23
  that the only reason why the pilgrims would ever have settled such a unpleasant climate was because
• 15:28
  they all arrived there in April. And they built it by June. It wasn't as hot back then. Yeah. And then
• 15:34
  they were like, by August, they were like, this is fucking awful. But at least it's going to get
• 15:38
  cool. And then in January, they were like, it's not just cool. It's fucking terrifyingly cold.
• 15:43
  Yeah. It's a tough, tough, tough country. I like it. I like that climate. You like the
• 15:51
  pleasant place instead. Well, I like, I love the fall. That's so obvious. You know,
• 15:57
  what I like about it. You don't get a fall out of it. No. That's what I like to be back.
• 16:00
  It's during the fall. But I like about California is the light. I mean, you can't really tell
• 16:05
  right now. This is a harshest time of day. Yeah. Like in a kind of late afternoon, you get this
• 16:09
  beautiful sort of golden blue magic hour, they call it. Yes. And I just find it spectacular.
• 16:17
  It's just, yeah. I just went to Norway during the summer when they had the midnight sun
• 16:23
  up above the Arctic Circle. And I sort of naively thought that the midnight sun meant that it was
• 16:28
  like Los Angeles at 12 p.m. for 24 hours. But of course, it's not. That sounds terrible. It's not
• 16:33
  that. It's that it's always twilight between like 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. It's that beautiful golden
• 16:41
  twilight. And it's just never, you know, how a cinematographer will be like, we've got to catch
• 16:45
  the light. We've got to get the light. Like we go, we go at 15 minutes before we lose the light.
• 16:48
  I don't know if they still do that. Yeah. Yeah. We've got to get the light. The lights,
• 16:53
  that beautiful light, the golden light, and they shoot the thing at the golden. It's that forever.
• 16:59
  Wow. Move Hollywood to Norway. And you've got permanent, golden, beautiful light.
• 17:05
  They should. It's lovely. Everyone's leaving Hollywood. They should move to Norway. They're
• 17:08
  going to get their free childcare and everything's going to be great. What's your most underrated,
• 17:14
  either American city or international destination? Well, I think Chicago is a great city.
• 17:20
  Just really solid. Yeah. Excellent. There's no reason for me to live there. They would have no
• 17:25
  business there. I don't really know any. Oh, I printed it. Oprah went to Chicago. She shot
• 17:30
  her show. Well, she didn't live there, but I mean, yeah, that was her original show. She's on
• 17:34
  shows a week. Yeah, but in the beginning of her career. Right. But she, I don't think she's from
• 17:37
  Chicago. Yeah, but she was affiliated with that net with that hell of a new station. I think
• 17:42
  Chicago. I think that's how that started. I was on the Oprah Winfrey show in Chicago. Yep.
• 17:47
  Get out in 20 in 2001. Yes. You were on Oprah. And the worst part was that I had nothing to
• 17:55
  promote. It was a total wasted opportunity. Yes. I went to Chicago because here's why when I was
• 18:04
  30, I did this thing. You're asking about American cities. I moved from New York to Nebraska.
• 18:09
  This is like old lore of my career. Okay. Some people will remember this. And I was a freelance
• 18:17
  writer. And there's a whole backstory to this. I ended up writing a whole novel about it.
• 18:21
  But I was writing a lot of was the day of the magazines. A lot of women's magazines. It was
• 18:25
  the simplicity movement. Remember all that stuff? Like a real simple magazine. Yes. By this
• 18:30
  $800 waste basket and you'll cleanse your soul. Right. And so I was writing a lot of magazine
• 18:37
  articles about how I had moved to Nebraska. And so I wanted a simpler life. And it was just two
• 18:41
  like, you know, it was kind of this low rent carry Bradshaw life. I was living in like 20s in
• 18:47
  New York. And so I moved there. And Oprah show inviting me on to talk about people. It was like
• 18:53
  women women who had radically radically changed their lives. And it was like, you know, somebody who
• 19:00
  had been a cop. And then she becomes a yoga teacher or something. And so then I was on this
• 19:09
  crazy girl. She moved from New York to Nebraska. And Oprah, it was one of these things where I don't
• 19:18
  think she had been prepped or something. And then she starts interviewing me and I start telling
• 19:23
  my story. And I had to send them all these photographs of myself and my little farmhouse.
• 19:27
  I literally lived in a little house on the prairie. And so I had these photographs of myself
• 19:33
  with a cow or a horse or something. And they would show them as I was talking. And I started
• 19:39
  telling my story. And I go, yes, and I moved to Nebraska. And she's just up. She goes, what?
• 19:44
  Nebraska? Like girlfriend? What kind of thing? She had no idea what I was saying.
• 19:50
  Well, was she finding it? That might be part of her profession. No, I think she didn't.
• 19:53
  I think that she, I don't know, maybe so, maybe so. But you know what? I didn't even have a book
• 19:58
  out. I think I had a book coming out like in a few months. My first book, my Miss Fentany, it was
• 20:02
  so long ago. And nothing like a came of it. I love that moving to Nebraska is so unthinkable
• 20:10
  to the producers of the Oprah show that it's like, we have to get this person. She's the only
• 20:14
  person in the history of the world who's ever moved to Nebraska. I dined out on this move for years.
• 20:20
  I was on NPR all the time. Right. About it. Yeah. I was on like talk of the nation all the time
• 20:25
  talking about it. Wow. New York stations. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, it's sort of like after the
• 20:30
  Democrats, like lose elections, then like the New York Times will go like, oh my goodness,
• 20:36
  we have to hire, you know, JD Vance to tell us in a column what it is that we did wrong. Right.
• 20:41
  And they were like, wow, here's a person who has gone to the hot land and lived to tell the tale.
• 20:46
  Yeah. I was a wheel person on the brass gun. I was a person. And I did little commentaries
• 20:50
  for morning edition about living there. And I had been trying to get on NPR doing commentators,
• 20:58
  commentaries for like my whole career. Like I was obsessed with it. Right. I was 30 at this point
• 21:03
  in my life. So I was really young. But yeah, but now looking back on it, I realized how obnoxious
• 21:07
  this was. Like the people in the town that this girl. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And like,
• 21:12
  commodifies their home. And I was totally like, I cringe now. And I ended up writing a whole
• 21:18
  novel, the quality of life report, which was a satire of the kind of person that would come and do
• 21:23
  this. Right. So it was like very meta. But yeah. So now you need to, if you want to give you a
• 21:28
  career boost now, you got to move to Saskatchewan. Yes. And then you tell, you know, the, or the
• 21:35
  Washington Post about it. And they're like, what she left civilization and she went to live in
• 21:40
  Saskatchewan. I think you get one of those in your life. Do you? Maybe build a cabin with your
• 21:45
  bands, kill a bear. You know, it has to be a little bit, well, gland up this time. Maybe. Yeah.
• 21:51
  I think it's cute when you're younger. But I'm not sure it would go over so well, though.
• 21:55
  Maybe wait 20 years until you're all. Oh, yeah. And then I'm gonna go here to die. It's like,
• 22:00
  I'm gonna push myself off in a canoe. Yes. Yeah. Because the evil Republicans refuse to legalize
• 22:08
  euthanasia. Yes. This lady has moved from Los Angeles to kill herself. That's right. In Edmonton.
• 22:16
  Or an abortion. You know what? If a 70 year old cannot get an abortion, I don't want to live there.
• 22:21
  Speaking of Amelia Perez, that's not about abortions. No, it's trans. But there's another,
• 22:27
  it strikes me that there's like a lot of movies, a lot of movies over the past five years,
• 22:33
  where when I see that they have a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I have to try to read
• 22:38
  between the lines about whether it's actually a good movie or whether it's a worthy movie that
• 22:43
  none of the critics wanted to say was actually pretty boring and pretentious and self-indulgent.
• 22:47
  And that's why I didn't see Amelia Perez. I was like, I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for
• 22:52
  the subject matter, it wouldn't be so acclaimed. It's brave. It's just think brave, you know? It
• 22:58
  seemed like a really brave. It was really brave. Just brave. It actually was so weird that it
• 23:03
  transcended brave. Okay. Yeah, it was very, very weird. That's a musical elements. I don't know
• 23:09
  why I saw it. So we have to make a movie about trans people getting abortions, right? It has to
• 23:15
  be a road trip. Look, I hope that is a thing. I mean, Planned Parenthood in the US, they're all about
• 23:21
  inclusive, pregnant people. They serve pregnant people. Pregnant people. Yeah.
• 23:25
  Pregnant people. Yeah. One of the reasons that I felt quite good after leaving the public broadcaster
• 23:31
  in Australia or being fired or however you want to phrase it, being made unwelcome was I went
• 23:38
  abroad. I came back and like a month after my last show, I opened up the app and this is the main
• 23:47
  source of public, national news, right? The news that you need to read. And you know how
• 23:54
  sometimes news organizations will have like a very lavish digital feature that put a lot of man
• 24:00
  hours into. They've done the graphics and like you'll sometimes, you see this on the New York Times,
• 24:04
  there'll be a one paragraph and then you scroll up and there's a picture and you scroll up and
• 24:07
  there's a video interview with someone. One of these lavish things that they really devoted a lot
• 24:13
  to and it was about how trends, gender, men in the outback are not being treated well enough
• 24:21
  for menopause because rural doctors in Australia are not familiar enough with male
• 24:29
  trans people's menopause needs. And I was like, they need to send doctors. It's like
• 24:35
  northern exposure. They need to send a Jewish doctor from from New York to properly take care of
• 24:41
  that. I just felt like maybe maybe a little niche, maybe a little niche. Like is this the most
• 24:48
  pressing? I mean, I feel for these guys, they had photo, they found like three people in Australia
• 24:55
  who were like, trans male farmers who were like, you know, you go to the doctor and you tell them
• 25:01
  about your menopause and the doctor looks at you funny. We need to tell you if you're a woman,
• 25:07
  that's the same thing happens. That also happens. So yeah. But this is interesting because I feel like
• 25:14
  this is this is waning a little bit here other than in universities and in certain nonprofits and
• 25:20
  like, you know, certain sort of cultural millios, this is still very much like it's the last
• 25:24
  grasps they're making on. But people are starting to laugh at this a little bit. But maybe you guys
• 25:29
  are maybe a little behind. We sort of inherit the exhaust fumes of the American culture wars.
• 25:34
  And then we're like, do we have to go through this? They just went through it. Now Mayor Pete's
• 25:39
  gone out against it. Did you see that? Oh he is. Yeah, Mayor Pete came out and was like,
• 25:44
  well, I say came out. He probably was giving an interview and happened to be asked about it.
• 25:47
  And was just saying like, maybe it's time for us to have a little more compassion to everyone
• 25:51
  involved. If someone is concerned about whether or not their daughter is going to have to compete
• 25:55
  against a trans girl, then maybe we could not shut them down and throw them off buildings.
• 26:01
  Yeah, Sarah McBride was saying the same thing. This is the trans Congress. Yes.
• 26:07
  So yeah, no, they're walking it back. Yeah. How do you feel about the whole
• 26:11
  cancel culture moment and peak work with the hindsight of 2025 if it is hindsight then?
• 26:18
  Oh, you mean, you mean the 2020 moment? I think it was even crazier than we were experiencing
• 26:22
  at the time. I mean, like, at the time it was right up in front of your nose. So there was a lot of
• 26:26
  like, am I crazy? Like, am I crazy? You know, I started my podcast The Unspeakable in 2020
• 26:32
  with all the podcasts. Subscribe to The Unspeakable. Yeah. And it's soon to be rebranded as The Unspeak Easy,
• 26:37
  which is my. The Unspeak Easy is your group of little gals. Should we say a little
• 26:41
  last? Well, we have co-ed events too. At the end of this, I'm going to plug a number of things.
• 26:46
  Right. Actually, I have so much to plug. I should have started the beginning. Just plug right now.
• 26:51
  Really? Just don't unplug. The first thing I'm going to plug, speaking of the comedy seller,
• 26:55
  I'm doing an event at the Village Underground in New York with Lionel Shriver. Right. You know,
• 26:59
  she is the fabulous, contrarian novelist and spectator columnists. We're going to be,
• 27:06
  we're going to be talking about my book, The Catastrophe Hour. Okay. Great. Um, and also her stuff.
• 27:11
  And so we'll be in conversation September 3rd. Now, why have I not read The Catastrophe Hour?
• 27:15
  When did the Catastrophe Hour come out? It came out in April. Josh, I'm so much going on.
• 27:19
  Don't feel bad. I know, but you're going to send me an email when you publish a book for crying
• 27:24
  and crying. You're, you're, it's went into your spam. It's, it's, you know what? It's not,
• 27:28
  it's called The Catastrophe Hour. And it's actually about the existential catastrophe that I would feel
• 27:33
  around the magic hour time, kind of like four or five o'clock. And like how this was sort of a
• 27:38
  metaphor for the changing world and aging and don't go to always, you'll feel terrible. It's a
• 27:43
  20. I know. Yes, the catastrophe, uh, the 24 catastrophe hour woman. Yes. Um, so it's not about
• 27:51
  my house burning down because my house burned down. I, the book was finished before my house
• 27:56
  burned down. So it's a little bit people are like, how did you write a book about your house burning
• 27:59
  down so quickly? Can you put in the pandex on? No, it's gone to the point. No, it's not. Yeah. So,
• 28:05
  um, so anyway, we're talking about my book and we're going to just talk about, uh, you know,
• 28:11
  the world and culture war stuff and Lionel's vinyl is very, um, you know, she, she has a novel
• 28:18
  coming out next year about immigration and, uh, you know, is on the pulse. So people can go to,
• 28:24
  maybe you'll, I don't know, they can go to my, my website. Yeah. In the podcast, we'll,
• 28:28
  we'll link to it in the things, unless you're watching live in which case you screwed. If you're
• 28:32
  on sub stack of sub stacked noted about this many times. Okay. So there's that. Yes. And then
• 28:38
  the unspeak easy, which is, we have an online forum that's just for women, it's private,
• 28:44
  it's off the record. We talk about all these, um, all kinds of things, not just culture war stuff,
• 28:49
  all kinds of things. And that's, uh, just for women and we have some retreats that are just for
• 28:54
  women free speech vacations. I call them sanity spa vacations. The safe spaces for broads. Okay.
• 29:01
  That's what I would call, but we're also like, it's not necessarily, I mean, it's safe and that
• 29:05
  it's totally private and we don't use social media or anything, but we, you know, we, we really
• 29:08
  disagree. We have a range. We have people who are, you know, pretty far left and then people
• 29:12
  don't consider themselves mega right. The terrible thing about the idea of a safe space is
• 29:17
  that it's been perverted by the left to mean a place where you're never gonna hear an opinion
• 29:21
  that you disagree with. But what I mean by it is a place where you're allowed to say whatever
• 29:26
  the fuck you want, you know, I'm gonna get canceled for it. No, you're not gonna get canceled. Um,
• 29:30
  and so we do do those. However, we are, uh, we're doing a co-ed retreat in New York. Um, and it's
• 29:37
  gonna be bigger. Uh, it's gonna be more attendees. And we're gonna have like 10 different speakers.
• 29:42
  Great. So, uh, any of them bros or they were bros as well. And no, men and women are attending
• 29:47
  the retreat. And the speakers get John McWhorter. Um, is a speaker, Mike Pesca. Right.
• 29:53
  Carol Hoobin, the evolutionary biologist. I was just hearing it out with Matthew. I know. Fabulous
• 29:59
  man. Well, he's great. What a great guy. So he'll, he'll be there, uh, Rob Henderson, um, who else,
• 30:06
  Andrew Hart of the Open Therapy Institute. Okay. Trying to get people that, you know, find some
• 30:11
  unwoke therapists. So, uh, is that a problem? Yeah. Work miracles. I cannot tell you how many of the
• 30:18
  women in the unspeak easy community are therapists. And if it was known that they were in the unspeak easy,
• 30:25
  they think they would lose their licenses. Wow. Because the capture in the psychotherapy world here
• 30:31
  is intense. And how does that show up? Oh, um, your clients are afraid of their therapists and
• 30:38
  vice versa. The client can cancel a therapist if a client comes in and says, oh, like, you know,
• 30:43
  a lot of it is around gender, but like discussions around race. What any of these topics, when people go
• 30:49
  to, um, like school for social work to become a licensed therapist, the education around this stuff
• 30:57
  is insane. Like literally you take classes and like kink, kink inclusivity for weeks at a time.
• 31:03
  Right. And so if anybody, if any client comes in and they're like worried about, you know, they,
• 31:09
  they want to have sort of more gay keeping around their life, or they're just sort of normies.
• 31:13
  There's a default and the therapists are supposed to kind of like, you know, yeah. So if a person,
• 31:19
  yeah, I'm just trying to picture how this conversation goes. If a person is like suffering a lot of
• 31:24
  negative consequences from acting out their kink, let's say. And the therapist is like, well,
• 31:29
  maybe you want to try to maybe consider not engaging in the council. Yeah, that would be
• 31:34
  then the person is like, you're shaming my inner. No, the therapist should be like, you shouldn't
• 31:39
  change brands of lube. You should all baby oil. Yeah. Uh, so and similarly, I can imagine that in
• 31:47
  race conversations, if someone is feeling like, if there, if it's a middle class white lady who's
• 31:53
  catastrophizing about how she lives in a white supremacist society, yeah, might be difficult for
• 31:58
  the therapist to go, maybe it's useful to not consider the whole society as irredeemably racist.
• 32:04
  Yeah. And then she's like, well, you know, you're just part of the white supremacist power structure
• 32:07
  and we get inside of my hand. Oh, we got a good doggy. He heard white supremacist and he came
• 32:14
  right over. That's how you trained the you trained him to come. Yeah. Change your dog to come with
• 32:20
  white supremacists white supremacists white supremacists. Oh, come on. This is this is this is
• 32:26
  huge. Can we can we see you go in the shop? John. Oh, yeah, otherwise they're going to be like,
• 32:31
  what are you guys looking at? Because I want to see this beautiful big job. Can you sit? Yeah,
• 32:35
  you love white supremacists. Yeah, not to them. Not to them. You go sick. Not to not see. Well,
• 32:41
  he's good boy. Yeah. So we're never going to get rid of him now. Oh, we know, but this is going to,
• 32:47
  uh, this is going to get people's attention. To people who are listening on the podcast,
• 32:51
  I'm currently petting a dog that's that's about probably about a 250 to 300 kilo dog. So maybe
• 32:59
  maybe 500 pounds, just say 600 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. But it's been bombed. It's not that
• 33:04
  muscle and and fur. How fast your reckoning can go. Oh, not fast at all. Really?
• 33:10
  It's very slow. I was thinking maybe because, uh, you know, what's a really surprisingly fast
• 33:15
  animal. Uh, I give you a hit. Yes, that would be one. That this is an Australian animal. Uh,
• 33:23
  I Australian animal. A kangaroo. Kangaroo is a fast, but they're not surprising. I don't know
• 33:27
  what is Australian. You would assume that kangaroo is a bit fast. The wombat. Have you ever seen a wombat,
• 33:32
  a picture of a wombat? I think they're kind of cute. Surprisingly, they look like a, you know,
• 33:37
  like a sort of, I was going to say a dog, but they don't look like a dog, but they're like, uh,
• 33:42
  I guess a small bear, which scurries around their thores. They look like the kind of thing that
• 33:48
  might, you know, just sort of waddle around. You get them going. They go like the clappers, Megan,
• 33:54
  the clappers. They go like 30. Oh, that means very fast. They go like 30 miles an hour. Really?
• 34:00
  They look like little Ewoks, right? Uh, yes, but on all thores. Okay. Yeah. Cute. I wish we had those.
• 34:06
  Yeah, I know. It's possible. You've got your owls. You got your coyotes. No, I mean, you were saying
• 34:11
  earlier. I wish we had wombat in the US. Yeah. You got a lot of Australian trees here as well.
• 34:18
  Yeah. You know, all the eucalyptus. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Anyway, I'm going to finish
• 34:23
  plugging and then we'll, okay. So October 11th and 12th, we're going to have two days. We're
• 34:28
  going to have these speakers and they're going to do different events. And I'm going to interview
• 34:31
  them, but it's very quickly going to open up into like a conversation, not just a Q&A. Like the
• 34:37
  people who attend going to be there all day, both days, and they're going to actually be in
• 34:42
  dialogue with their intellectual heroes and all off the record, nothing's recorded, no social media.
• 34:48
  What's the punishment if you find someone recording it? It's their serious punishment for this.
• 34:52
  Okay. We don't, we don't mess around. There's a guillotine in the bottom of the basement. Yeah.
• 34:56
  We know, but some people pay extra for that. That's true. That's the king story as well. The
• 35:00
  intellectual dungeon. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And do you think that the punishments from the
• 35:05
  2020, early early 2020, is that still in the air? I think that the, I think it's sort of like
• 35:12
  when you, when your movement is dying, you grip on harder. Right. I think there's some of that.
• 35:18
  But I think now people are able to actually look back and say like that was crazy. I, I felt
• 35:24
  crazy. So that's what I was saying. So when I started the podcast in 2020 and then I started
• 35:28
  to the unspeak easy in 2022, like a lot of the spirit around it was like people asking themselves
• 35:33
  if they were getting it wrong. Yeah. It's like, I feel crazy. There's a cognitive dissonance here.
• 35:38
  Well, there's a squirrel outside. Oh, there's a squirrel. That's the, we don't have those in
• 35:42
  Australia. So I'm, I'm still really impressed by squirrels. I don't like it that it's on the deck.
• 35:48
  It's fun. Some of the deck. It's not inside. Okay. Don't worry about it. I can't, that's adorable
• 35:52
  that you're, I think you're so cute. They're amazing. They're such amazing little critters.
• 35:58
  I mean, give me a kangaroo, you're, give me a squirrel. Okay. Well,
• 36:02
  beauty petudi. Give you one to take home. All right. Thank you. Yeah. I'm not sure that the
• 36:05
  customs and quarantine would be that appreciative of my drug bag full of squirrels carrying on. So,
• 36:10
  yeah, they're clinging on for dear life. Right. So I think a lot of it back then was people not
• 36:15
  knowing if they were missing something. If they were getting it wrong. Yeah. Like why do I,
• 36:20
  why do I feel one way about policing deep down, but I'm being told to feel this other way?
• 36:25
  And I think now five years on, we've had a lot of people, you know, that contingent of people
• 36:30
  who were listening to a lot of podcasts and, you know, like yours and mine and, and reading stuff
• 36:36
  online and actually kind of finding their way into these other places. They're able to say,
• 36:41
  okay, there was a lot going on that we were missing in the mainstream media. Like I wasn't crazy.
• 36:46
  Yeah. The public radio was missing the story. Yes. And so I think that like now we can step away
• 36:52
  and look at it. But that way we were just totally blindsided back then. I still run into people
• 36:57
  who are like, is public radio kind of a little biased, do you think? And I'm like, hmm.
• 37:03
  Wake wake. How is it still showing up? Do you think? It's showing up in universities. I mean,
• 37:09
  I actually just had this, it's funny because I was interviewing Carol. Who have been who's
• 37:13
  this incredible evolutionary biologist. She wrote a book about testosterone and she writes about
• 37:17
  sex differences as she's a scientist and she got canceled from Harvard for talking about this
• 37:22
  stuff. And I had her on the podcast recently and I kind of said, I think this is dying down or
• 37:27
  we're kind of in this like, wokeness 2.0 or something. And she said, no, not true. She said, on
• 37:33
  campuses, this is still very much in play. Right. Right. So like don't, don't get too comfortable.
• 37:38
  And what about on NPR? What about on like public media? You're laughing. But like what are the
• 37:43
  issues on which they still have a blind spot? Get a humans. Well, if you've listened to this much
• 37:49
  of the episode, then you must enjoy it presumably unless you're just releasing from massacistic
• 37:54
  reasons. So you should listen to the rest of it. And the way you do that is by subscribing to the
• 37:58
  premium feed where you not only get to hear the rest of this delightful conversation and trust me,
• 38:03
  oh, it gets better than what you just heard. But you also get to hear no ads, zero ads.
• 38:08
  And previously up until now, you had to go to the old sub stack to do that and follow me on
• 38:13
  sub stack and add one more platform to your life if you're not already on sub stack. But here's
• 38:18
  the thing. We're now on Apple premium podcast as well. So with one click, Apple will just
• 38:24
  subscribe you up to the premium feed. You'll be able to listen to the rest of this conversation
• 38:26
  right now, right now, right now. So open up your Apple podcasts. Click the old pay old zepsy button.
• 38:33
  That's probably what it's called pay old zepsy. And you click the button and then you no longer
• 38:37
  have to be a free rider. You can feel like you're contributing to the mission of this show,
• 38:42
  which is really what we're all here for better conversations, a freer, more free willing
• 38:47
  attitude towards the things that we can talk about a way to steal man our opponents and to take the
• 38:52
  most gracious approach towards disagreement. That is what you're voting for when you vote for
• 38:57
  uncomfortable conversations by going into your Apple podcasts and clicking subscribe. I love
• 39:02
  you. If you don't do that, that's fine. I'll see you the next free episode, I guess. Take care.