Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Josh vs the News: Think Bigly! with Reverend Szeps

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Josh vs the News: Think Bigly! with Reverend Szeps · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Got a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and another sermon from your
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  best buddy, your best pal, your mentor extraordinaire, the Reverend, the Reverend Doctor, Rabbi,
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  Imam, Zeps.
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  I feel like maybe there's been a little bit of negativity in the world and maybe there's
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  a little bit of negativity creeping into your newsfeed because they're sure as heck is
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  in mine. We've got the Iran situation, we've got petrol prices, we've got inflation, we've
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  got Ukraine. It's still gone on. Do you remember that? There are still like thousands, tens
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  of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people perishing in Ukraine. There's China and
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  what Trump is doing there. There's Trump just being Trump. Well, over the joint, he's
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  still got years left in office. There's artificial intelligence. Is it going to kill us all?
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  Is it going to liberate us all? There's climate. That's also still a thing. The missions
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  are still a thing. More severe and more frequent weather events, wildfires, hurricanes. That's
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  all a thing. There's anti-semitism. I just did an interesting chat which will come out next
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  week. We won on the world's foremost experts on anti-semitism. In fact, the former Prime Minister
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  of Israel, Shimon Perez, called him the foreign minister of the Jews. So there you go. He
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  was visiting Australia and we sat down. That's really interesting. There was the Australian
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  budget and the taxing of assets and taxation and not being able to keep your heart and
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  paycheck. There's Mamdani in New York. There's what's going on with Los Angeles. Apparently,
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  it's fallen apart. It's a crime ridden hellhole. That's what all the mayoral candidates seem
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  to be saying. There's the extremification of the far right. There's the hantavirus and
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  Ebola. In fact, I'm just about to sit down later today and you will get it either on Thursday
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  or Friday, depending on what time zone you're in with the deputy chief medical officer of Australia
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  during COVID. Nick Coatsworth will be a name that is familiar to all Australians. He presided
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  he was a household name during COVID and he can talk to us about not just hantavirus but also
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  Ebola and more importantly, pandemic preparedness and the weird ways in which we're kind of prepared
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  and not prepared. As I was in all this with bang around in my head, I was thinking you could be
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  forgiven for getting a little gloomy. Indeed, in a couple of weeks, I'll be going to Melbourne for
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  an event at the wheelers center where I'll be sitting down with Sarah Wilson. Now, if you don't
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  know Sarah Wilson, you should follow her sub stack, fabulous writer, brilliant thinker and just
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  a lovely human being all around. Her latest book is I would say deeply pessimistic, basically saying
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  we all just have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we are living through civilizational
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  collapse and once you accept that and you give up all hope, then there's a kind of a liberation
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  and you can feel a lightness lift off your your shoulders once you realize that there is no hope.
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  I didn't quite feel a lightness lift off my shoulders when I was told there was no hope.
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  This is something we're going to talk about. It's going to be a big live event. It's going to be
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  released here on the podcast. It's thanks to the wheeler center, which is an intellectual Australian
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  think tank. So that's coming up in a couple of weeks, but because my head's been stewing on all this,
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  I thought let's just step back and have a little perspective here. A perspective that I think is worth
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  pursuing on two different metrics, the big and the small. For the big, I will read to my latest
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  column in the Australian financial review about the way that we might be able to pursue a sort
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  of abundance agenda in a more inspiring and optimistic way than we currently think about
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  political squabbles. On the small, let's talk about creativity and the things that you can focus
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  on and that we all should focus on. Then we'll end with a rousing call to arms from none other
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  than Shakira. If you haven't heard the news, the big news coming across the transome across all
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  the wires today is that Shakira has won an eight year long gruelling court battle against the
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  Spanish government in which they they've been wanting to throw her in jail. They find her tens
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  and tens of millions of dollars and euros and whatever your account it's a lot of money for
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  tax evasion and she's always said she was innocent and so she took the government to court and
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  the high court in Spain has finally ruled in Shakira's favor and she released a statement
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  that is very juicy, which I will share with you later on in the show. So that's the the the basic
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  plan here. The context being that one way to interpret everything that's going on in the world
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  is with a sense of depressed resignation and just low grade anxiety. Another way to interpret it
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  is to say well at least we now have some stakes like there's something to fight for. There's
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  something under threat and humankind has shown many times before that we're capable of addressing
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  major challenges. I mean you know the ancient Rome fell and we're fine and ancient Athens fell
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  and we're fine and the British Empire fell and we're fine and malphous did his sums on the back
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  of a napkin in a crayon saying that the the growth of the human population is exponential
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  but the growth of food production is linear. Therefore inevitably there will be mass starvation
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  in the 20th century because the number of people will just exceed far exceed the amount of food
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  that we can produce for them. QED, Quad, Erat, Demonstrandum take it to the bank locket in the vault.
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  You're done. Malphous was wrong. We came up with incredible ways of increasing food production.
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  We discovered fertilizers. We discovered genetically modified foods.
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  You know nuclear weapons were invented and everyone thought well we're definitely done now or
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  we're just going to blow each other up. We haven't touched wood yet. The assumption that because
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  things are tricky that means that they're inevitably going to deteriorate is just that.
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  It's just an assumption. There are always multiple forces pulling on human beings and on human
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  civilization. From my perspective if you look at the history of humankind it is not a it is not a
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  history of decline and degradation. It is a history of going from leading lives of quiet
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  desperation and back breaking labor in surf-like conditions to living lives of such extravagant
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  opulence that even people in the middle of the 20th century would be flabbergasted by them.
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  It's a battle between declineists and people who try to use human ingenuity to for the better.
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  I think one reason why it's disorienting at the moment is because we've been
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  lulled into this period since the end of the Cold War when the stakes seemed settled and it's
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  felt like we were just sort of hanging around. The 1990s came and we were just like oh great we
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  can just you know, Clintons in power, Blair is in power. We can get blow jobs in the
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  Oval Office and play saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show and watch a sitcom about nothing
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  and everything's going to be peachy. Well you know the best laid plans of mice and men
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  it wasn't peachy and it was never going to be when you think about it it was always going to be a
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  tussle. It was always going to be a battle for ideas and to some extent I'd rather live in a world
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  in which there are actual stakes and in which the idea that human beings can live together in
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  liberal democracies and treat each other decently and respect other countries and not totally
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  dispoil the planet. But at the same time be inventive and courageous and innovative enough to
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  reach for the stars and to see how we can do the best with artificial intelligence and give birth
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  to new technologies and battle the climate crisis using technology as well as just a you know
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  rather than rather a sense of having to pull back or emiserate ourselves in order to get carbon
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  emissions down like this is part of the struggle of being human and that's totally okay it's
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  legitimate we are we are monkeys well well we're not monkeys we are primates we're great apes we're
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  great apes with a capital G on the great I say we're great apes with evolved brains that are full
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  of contradictions and bad intentions and also we have a consciousness as Ricky Gervais sometimes
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  says the size of a galaxy where a primate with a brain the size of a galaxy of course it is
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  hard to muddle through on this planet so I'm in a mood of like it cut ourselves some slack
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  I'd rather be fighting for things that actually matter than lollying around in the 90s or the
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  2000s with no real particular stakes like bring it wait now if you believe in liberal democracy
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  if you believe in everyone getting along if you believe in at the very least tolerance and at
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  best you know a deep respect and kinship for all your fellow humans and sentient creatures then
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  just we all we can do is live that way and have faith that over the long arc of history that way
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  will win out so let's just talk about the small ways that we can do that I think firstly I had
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  really interesting conversation the other day and it's a conversation that we'll release for
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  for our premium sub stack subscribers but it doesn't necessarily suit the podcast feed
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  which is with a creativity coach or rather a coach for creative professionals he's an Italian guy
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  and it's he it was fascinating because he's written a book about what it takes to sort of lead
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  a creative life and he's very very forgiving of people who have a creative sensibility and want to
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  practice their art whether that's writing or painting or music or whatever but haven't found a
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  weight and necessarily monetize it yet and are kicking themselves because they're they feel like
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  well they're not doing it right or they're just amateurs or they're their bombs with a high
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  class excuse they're actually waiting tables they're actually driving an uber they're actually
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  bartending but on the side there they've got these big dreams they've got he's like that's
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  totally fine what doesn't matter what you're making your money doing it doesn't really matter
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  what else you're doing in life if you can find a way to carve out some space in your existence
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  to do things that speak to you that speak to your soul then you're doing it that's it that's the work
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  you don't have to be rich you don't have to be famous you don't have to be successful I mean
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  success he was saying is something we often misinterpret or misconstrue or are blind to altogether
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  success is not the trappings of status success looks like you getting up in the morning and putting
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  your pants on and doing something that's constructive or challenging where you feel a little bit
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  of resistance to it but you do it anyway that's what success is that's what being a good human being
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  is like finding a thing that is more than just moping around scrolling on social media and putting
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  your mind to doing that thing that requires responsibility it requires a certain level of faith
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  faith in yourself faith in your own abilities faith that it's worth putting in the time into
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  something that you care about something that inspires you and it requires a certain diligence to
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  resist resistance you know resistance I talk about as a as a this kind of ethereal almost metaphysical
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  phenomenon where the capital R I get this from Stephen Pressfield one of my favorite writers on
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  creativity who has the indispensable book that if you haven't read I will slap you across the
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  face with a wet rotten fish and direct you immediately to your nearest independent bookstore
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  we wouldn't shop on Amazon all the way always do it's called the War of Art and it's written
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  for creative professionals and it's about but being it's about the mindset that enables you to
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  become a professional a pro a creative pro instead of an amateur and the mindset is basically if
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  you're a writer then a certain number of times a week you are sitting your ass down in that chair
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  and you're gazing at a blinking cursor and you're putting in the time you may not you know words
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  may come out but you're not doing anything else you're not checking your email you're not
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  surfing social media you're not cleaning the kitchen you're not realizing the laundry has to be done
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  while you've got your very important thing to do you're getting out there and you're putting the
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  brush to the canvas if you're a painter or you're going into the garden and you're doing the gardening
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  if that's what gives you meaning you're devoting the time to actually doing the things that fill
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  you up doesn't have to be a lot of time but it just has to be there and it has to be part of your
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  routine and press field talks about resistance as being that sense that you have there any time
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  you're up to something that's a little bit scary in a good way that's a little bit challenging
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  that sort of speaks to the deepest part of your soul and your aspirations there's this force
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  this psychological force that he almost regards as like a demon that exists in the cosmos
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  that will find every reason to stop you there will always be a way there will always be a reason
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  to not do the thing that you know you should be doing it could be as simple as this is this
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  extends far beyond creativity by the way it could be as simple as going to the the gym it could be
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  going up for a walk because you know that that's good for you cardio vascular system and it'll
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  clear your head there's always one more email to send there's always one more thing to do around
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  the house there's always one more chore there's always one more snack to be eaten there's always one more
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  one more one more one more and he talks about the sort of struggle of being human as being a struggle
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  to notice resistance to name resistance to set it aside and to do what inspires you in spite of it
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  and the weird thing about resistance is it gets stronger and stronger the more
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  worthwhile the thing that you're trying to do is in other words it will impede you to the maximum
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  extent just when you're trying to finish that thing for example that you've been working on
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  or just when you're trying to start it or just when you're trying to dream about it in such a way
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  that you'll actually bring it into existence for the first time after having just sort of been
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  noodling on it for far too long at those moments of maximum fragility and maximum vulnerability
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  you will feel this force that will give you very very good reasons not to do the thing that you know
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  that your soul is telling you to do they'll that might show up as negative self-talk it might show
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  up as you know I as I don't have time or I'm not good enough it might show up as something that
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  actually happens in the world that you have to suddenly respond to all of that's fine you know
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  make it wrong you notice it you recognize it this is the thing that's going to rail me and you
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  sit your ass down in the chair and you do the thing that you're supposed to do nonetheless
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  you don't care about rejection necessarily I mean God can you imagine we were talking you know
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  I was speaking earlier this week on the podcast where I didn't analysis of why politicians can't
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  just answer a question which has got a lot of great feedback and thank you for people who bother
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  to jump into the comments on sub-stack it's it's lovely to hear people's opinions about things
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  you can you you should be part of the conversation and in sub-stack in the sub-stack chat thread
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  about well basically analyze the oppositional leader of Australia and an interview that he gave
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  on Australia's preeminent nightly current affairs show in a spirit of goodwill to try to coach
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  him and I guess help all of us to think about the ways in which politicians come across as full
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  of shit instead of authentic and free from artifice and in doing that it did make me realize that
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  the amount of negativity and criticism that anyone in public life is going to get
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  is so massive that the only way you can exist is to not give a stuff about it and one of the
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  reasons why politics has become so tweeter dumb and tweeter D and so sort of dull is because too
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  many politicians do care about the negative headlines about the negative spin about getting pilloried
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  on social media and this range thing is that the people who don't care about being criticized
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  seemingly don't get criticized I mean because the criticism only lands if it lands like the
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  criticism is only salient if you allow it to be salient that's true if your Donald Trump shrugging
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  off every legitimate criticism of your malfeasance or if you're a creative artist shrugging off other
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  people's negative impressions of your work you just got to keep chugging along there's no point in
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  dwelling on on the negative that's an episode worth going back and listening to if you haven't
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  heard that yet it's called just Josh why can't politicians just answer a question
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  so part of this kind of small way of thinking about thinking constructively about your place in
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  the universe and your place in civilization is spending time doing things that fill you up
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  not taking criticism to heart and remembering that it's worth being grateful for all of the things
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  that we have I mean I think I do think that part of the humorism that's floating around at the
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  moment is a deep and evil lack of appreciation for what's going right and what has gone right
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  you know if I gave you a dart board and you could throw a dart at the dart board and I had a
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  whole bunch of different little you know sections on the dart board which represented different
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  eras in time and different places on this planet and I say you can throw the dart at the
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  dart board and then one of the tiny little squares is the rich western developed world in the 21st
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  century and then what the other squares are Mongolia in the 13th century you know you've got
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  everything everything all of human history stretching back 100,000 years and I said you can throw
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  the dart and you have to live in that time for in perpetuity for the rest of your life and you
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  don't get to come back or you can just not throw the dart I mean throwing the dart would be interesting
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  but really would you do it would you would you risk becoming a surf in Bulgaria in the 800s
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  I wouldn't so you know stop being quite so down on everything take a deep breath go outside
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  look at the sunshine find a way to connect to things that you think your purpose aligns with
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  and do that those are the little things that we can do to yeah yeah become a little bit more
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  sane whilst we also talk about all of the bad shit that's going on let us talk about the big
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  stuff so that's the small stuff that's the personal stuff that's the things that we think that we
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  can do inside our heads inside our families inside our neighborhoods but part of the problem is
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  also that I think we feel a little bit paralyzed by the inaction of sane leaders to improve things
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  and get their arms around the challenges that the world is throwing at us the only people who are
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  who seem to be making big swings are people are records are people who want to wreck the whole system
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  Trump's taking big swings Putin's taking big swings she seems to be quietly biting his time in
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  preparation for taking a big swing but didn't have a sense that the sort of the air has sort of
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  gone out of the the liberal democrats like what do what do center left and center right people
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  really want for the future that's going to take us dramatic into a dramatically better place
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  than we have today there's the there's the anti abundance agenda which is the way that much of
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  the left has framed itself since the 1970s which is power is terrible big corporations are terrible
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  so therefore we have to pull back we have to become more in line with mother earth and
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  gaya and we have to simplify things and we basically have to become poorer and less developed
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  and less advanced in order to shrink our footprint and live more harmoniously that's great if
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  if you think that that is for you it's not great as a model for civilizational flourishing I don't
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  think human beings are innovative we're creative we're strivers we're never going to sit still
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  we're not going to be content by sitting by the babbling brook and gazing at the stars and
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  doing nothing more we're always going to want to go away from the babbling brook and see what's
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  on top of the neighboring mountain and find out if there are some new types of goats that we can slaughter
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  like that's just in our DNA so finding the most constructive way of of channeling
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  those aspirations that is not destructive but constructive is the task that we have sort of
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  politically and I want to share with you the piece that I wrote in the Australian financial review
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  over the weekend which is ostensibly about the Australian budget but is really about the aspirations
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  of progressives globally and how we might think about a bigger picture rather than small
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  bore politics and how we might be able to articulate a vision that brings a lot more people along
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  whilst also maintaining the institutions and the norms that we value from the post-World War 2
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  order the abundance agenda is something you've probably heard of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
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  wrote a book about it last year there was a lot of like talk about about this you know 12 months
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  ago but as I describe in this piece the abundance agenda has been frequently misunderstood by the likes
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  of Gavin Newsom and the Australian and the Australian politicians as well as let's get rid of red
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  tape and make things easier so that government isn't such an obstacle to to growing things
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  that's fine that's one part of it but there's a whole other part which is less bureaucratic,
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  less technocratic and more aspirational and more ideological and more imaginative actually
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  and more audacious and this is the part that I want to enlist you into thinking about
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  we non-politicians have an opportunity to shift to the conversation and the way that we talk
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  about what's possible for humankind you know we've talked about the small bore stuff I think we
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  should shift our conversations about what's possible for humans for individuals for you for your
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  family we should stop engaging in such negative talk about the world and negative self talk about
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  ourselves and take a deep breath and find meaning and fulfillment in the small ways in which we can
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  flourish and in which we can honor our own creativity in our own aspirations and express
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  conscious gratitude intentional gratitude and intentional recreation and play when we can
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  away from screens away from algorithms but the big picture is to shift the conversation also
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  about what we might be able to be up to as humans and as a civilization so I submit to you in all
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  humility my latest piece in the Australian financial review where I am now a columnist a fabulous
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  newspaper to work for and I cherish the opportunity to try to hammer out my thoughts in print
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  so I write did the budget go big enough kids did we squeeze enough out of grandma will every
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  cheap house come with a screw to my ducks swimming pool of gold crew grand coins the treasurer gets
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  credit for shooting for the stars when it comes to taxing assets but as a country are there any
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  brighter stars we might shoot for we've heard a lot lately about the abundance agenda the idea
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  that the left should build things instead of blocking them the treasurer himself is a fan
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  but abundance is often misunderstood as a subtractive process of cutting red tape and streamlining
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  approvals that's not the same as creating wealth we have a national housing accord we just don't
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  have houses the more visionary part of the abundance agenda is to lift our ambitions to expand our
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  horizons to shift our conversations about what's possible consider one possible flavor of Australian
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  abundance becoming a 21st century hyper power of solar AI by exporting computation to Asia
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  the pitch here is simple no other rich country is so drenched with the energy source of the future
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  every future industry will rely on a revolutionary but energy hungry technology AI
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  data centers are effectively factories that churn out tokens that do AI's computational grunt work
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  it's inefficient to send electricity over huge distances but it's easy to send data
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  so if you power a data center with solar arrays and you export computation rather than electricity
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  you're effectively exporting green energy in another form
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  users in Singapore Jakarta and Hong Kong would face slightly slower compute times than if
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  they use their own servers but if Australian solar is cheap enough a few extra milliseconds
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  is a price that some of the two billion people living to our north will pay
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  this doesn't require some costly nbn or snowy 2.0 style boon doggle the economic case for private
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  investment in solar powered AI factories is settled the investor behind one of Australia's largest
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  data centers Paul Newfield says the cheapest option is already quote large scale solar plus
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  batteries usually co located and onshore wind in the energy mix he says without any subsidies
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  solar plus batteries is competitive i write what this requires is not taxpayer dollars
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  but political audacity the government is currently too involved where it shouldn't be
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  and too absent where only it can act it flexes too much muscle on approvals regulations and
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  prohibitions that's the side of the abundance equation that treasurer Jim charmers to his credit
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  understands while simultaneously neglecting the power lines pipelines and rights of way that no
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  private actor can assemble alone the state doesn't have to be our nanny but it could be a better
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  midwife solar AI is just one flavor of abundance i write cheap abundant base load electricity is
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  another Australia has more than a hundred billion billion jewels of natural gas reserves
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  and a sophisticated industry ready to bring it to market if we want a ditch coal
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  or if gas is too climate changey there's another zero carbon option to complement solar
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  it's opponents get heated about it so let's save ourselves a headache call it teeny tiny
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  particle splitting last year ontario ontario approved the first of four small modular teeny tiny
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  particle splitters to help power greater Toronto if you think that's a non starter here because
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  a woefully unpopular opposition leader tried at once the head of energy at the Australian law firm
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  Clayton roots points out that ontario is quote a similar jurisdiction to our own in terms of
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  legal system indigenous sensitivities and vast distances ontario's project will provide carbon
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  free energy to 1.2 million Canadian homes for 60 years the first is expected to come online in
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  2030 the province has phased out coal completely what else can we dream up i write besides AI hyper
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  power dumb and bucket loads of cheap energy housing is the topic du jour we might glance at what
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  Japan and Sweden are doing with prefabricated modular homes Australian construction productivity
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  is among the worst in the OECD pre approved houses built in factories eliminate weather delays
• 30:26
  improve quality control and enable economies of scale yet a modular home that's certified in
• 30:34
  Queensland might need to be re approved in New South Wales our liability laws are hostile to
• 30:42
  innovation our industrial relations laws freeze construction methods in Jurassic Amber
• 30:50
  to be fair last year's budget funded a voluntary national certification scheme due to start in
• 30:58
  2028 but Australia's building code has a long history of state by state variation and 2028 is a
• 31:06
  long way off if the housing crisis is as urgent as the treasurer claims a single mandatory pathway
• 31:13
  allowing modular builders to certify a home once and build it anywhere would do more for housing
• 31:20
  supply than anything in the budget the Commonwealth has coerced reluctant states many a time before
• 31:27
  that they haven't done so on what they say is their top priority housing is revealing
• 31:35
  the agenda for abundant modular housing arrived in Canberra and what it got was an issues paper
• 31:43
  the point here i write is not to nitpick policy minutia the point is to invite us to expand the
• 31:52
  national conversation Australia has bucket loads of private capital in super funds in global
• 32:00
  infrastructure investors and in manufacturing companies our wealth pie isn't stagnant because
• 32:06
  of a lack of money but because many potential investments are a bespoke legal and compliance
• 32:13
  adventure and we're not dreaming ambitiously enough to demand that it be otherwise
• 32:19
  how might we expand the pie until we're all staggering around like overstuffed kids at a pie
• 32:26
  eating fair maybe a budget can only do one thing at a time maybe the treasurer didn't have the
• 32:34
  luxury of shooting for brighter stars than the taxation of assets but that's the thing about
• 32:41
  shooting for the stars you need to be careful which star you shoot for you never know it might
• 32:48
  be the only star you get to hit so that was my most recent piece in the Australian financial review
• 32:55
  a fabulous newspaper which you should just subscribe to not just to get my wonderful thoughts
• 33:01
  because it's probably the best source of impartial news and opinion and analysis in the Australian press
• 33:08
  and the gist of it i think hopefully is clear that when politicians responsible politicians you
• 33:17
  know centrist politicians i mean just look at the UK at the moment with care starmas woes when
• 33:23
  they try to do things that are audacious within the context of political norms they end up going
• 33:32
  for technocratic logistical bureaucratic solutions because they are technocratic logistical
• 33:39
  bureaucratic people they've spent their lives in politics they are not entrepreneurs they are not
• 33:45
  business people now i do think we're at risk of giving too much credit to people from the private
• 33:50
  sector doing well in politics see for example Elon Musk and Donald Trump but i don't think we
• 33:56
  should rule it out completely just because they're jackasses i do think that there is something to
• 34:02
  be said for people who have the vision thing who have an ability to articulate a bigger aspiration for
• 34:09
  a country and for a people and for a civilization and for a planet then simply what exactly is this
• 34:17
  tax bracket and how exactly are we going to increase revenue from trusts uh you know so the rich
• 34:24
  people have to pay a bit more we kind of need the vision thing and i think that starts not with
• 34:31
  politicians but with us we need to find a way to talk to each other about things that matter a lot
• 34:40
  that connect with real people's lives and that would change the trajectory of our countries
• 34:47
  and our economies this conversation is undertaken in really positive ways by you know with
• 34:53
  you're in Australia you probably know of punters politics who's a friend of mine and a force for
• 34:58
  enormous good i think in bringing it you know social media star of the left who brings to people's
• 35:05
  attention not the traditional whiny american style progressive complaints about you know i don't
• 35:11
  know how terrible israel is or you know whatever the other thing that's floating across your
• 35:15
  algorithmically induced scroll feed is but concrete big policy things like how would we make sure
• 35:24
  that the Australian people retain more of the revenue from natural resources that we're exporting
• 35:30
  every year and he actually gets politicians independent senators and so on on board
• 35:36
  with things that he really cares about that are pretty big picture abstract things and finds a way
• 35:41
  to um convince everyday young Australians that these actually matter and that they should pay attention
• 35:48
  to the laws that they live under the people who they elect and the kinds of a society and an economy
• 35:54
  we want to be more talk like that is what we need so i see a sort of a a barbell here where at the
• 36:03
  moment we're spending all of our time on the thin pathetic middle the bar of the barbell we're
• 36:10
  squabbling over things that either are without our our outside of our control or are irrelevant
• 36:16
  that's actually an important I should I should double click on that actually I shouldn't double
• 36:20
  click on it because I hate that jargon I'm not going to double click on it as silicon valley uh
• 36:25
  cliche uh I'm going to dig into that just for a moment
• 36:31
  the the unconstructive way in which we think and talk about the things that are going on in the world
• 36:39
  stems from I think two places one is we get distracted by bullshit and that might be culture
• 36:45
  war bullshit it might be getting way too angry about things that are essentially sideline issues
• 36:50
  about things that are um you know minuscule in terms of their impact on the actual uh on
• 36:57
  people's actual everyday lives um it could be I don't know uh you know the trans issue or uh
• 37:04
  whatever else it might be so there there's that there's the there's the there's the all of the things
• 37:09
  that we focus on that we shouldn't be focusing on because their cultural war distractions their
• 37:13
  ways for us to be made to be essentially manipulated by people who should know better
• 37:18
  but then there's also all the things that really do matter but over which we have no control
• 37:24
  and spending a lot of time thinking about things that you have no control over
• 37:28
  is one of the worst things you can do for your mental health uh I've mentioned it before in
• 37:32
  previous uh reverend zeps sermons but there's this really useful idea in psychology that
• 37:39
  imagine if you will a series of concentric circles drawn on a page and uh at the center in the
• 37:46
  bulls eye there are all the things that are entirely within your control uh what time you get up
• 37:53
  in the morning or what you eat uh how much you exercise how much you take care of your mental
• 37:57
  health how you treat the people around you the level of generosity and empathy and compassion
• 38:02
  that you bring to your life all those things are entirely within your control even if they don't
• 38:08
  always feel like at times at times we'll put it this way even if they're not in your control
• 38:13
  they're not in anyone else's control right even if you feel like what I don't feel like I have
• 38:16
  control over whether or not I eat that you know that uh that cookie or whether I go through the
• 38:21
  McDonald's drive through or whether I sleep in until 10 in the morning um you certainly have
• 38:25
  more control over it than anyone else does and then you've got these concentric circles that go
• 38:30
  out and you might imagine that at the very very very outer ring are things over which you have
• 38:35
  absolutely no control whatsoever like what Israel does to Palestinian people uh you know how whether
• 38:42
  or not the Ukraine war is going to be successful for the Ukrainians um whether or not Donald Trump is
• 38:48
  elected uh you've basically no control if you're an American you have a tiny bit of control over
• 38:52
  Trump but not much and then you might come in and there are you know the second ring in might be
• 38:57
  climate change you have a tiny tiny bit of control but not really and then that comes in and comes
• 39:02
  in and local sort of uh your local politics and then things that are sort of tangentially within
• 39:07
  your control and you know the inner ring might be sort of neighborhood related things or family
• 39:11
  things or you know where you might my sister gonna behave this way or that way I have a bit of
• 39:15
  control but I can't control it completely and the psychological insight here is the unhappiest
• 39:21
  people spend the maximum amount of time focusing on the outer rings and the happiest people spend
• 39:27
  the maximum amount of time focusing on the inner rings things that are within their control
• 39:32
  that is psychological wellness that is human flourishing and so when I talk about the small and
• 39:40
  the big I'm not just saying I'm not saying that we you know that it doesn't matter what goes on
• 39:46
  in the world around us I'm saying that the extent to which you can control the small by focusing
• 39:54
  on and caring about and nourishing the things that are within your control is the extent to which
• 40:01
  you will be the kind of person who's capable of doing the big things of making the big changes
• 40:07
  of being part of the big solutions you know it reminds me a little bit of Jordan Peterson for all
• 40:12
  of his uh of floors initially sort of came to prominence having the great insights when he would
• 40:19
  talk to young males who needed advice that if you want to change the world start by making
• 40:25
  your bed you know it's it's actually very easy to get online and to virtue signal about how you're
• 40:31
  on the right side of this or that foreign intervention or how terrible Trump is or how awful you
• 40:37
  know the how illegally around uh conflict is it's actually harder to take care of yourself take
• 40:46
  care of the people around you get your shit in order carve out time to do the thing that makes you
• 40:51
  creatively inspired and that helps you to flourish once you do those things then you have the luxury
• 40:58
  of going out and protesting and chanting and marching and trying to enact change until you've
• 41:02
  done those things you're you're a shill for somebody else's ideas essentially especially if you're
• 41:09
  getting pinged around by those ideas like a like a ping pong ball uh because of the algorithms that
• 41:15
  you're seeing and the things that you're noticing online those are not impartial uh you know this
• 41:20
  is not an impartial feed I mean Jesus we all noticed don't we I got a text message uh the other day
• 41:27
  from an old friend of mine who was really really upset because people were being mean to her on
• 41:33
  social media in the comments because she left a comment about something and then other people were
• 41:37
  piling on because they were intentionally misunderstanding something that she'd said and she was
• 41:41
  really really sad so then she deleted the comment and I was like I just texted back saying like
• 41:46
  I'm sorry what is this 2012 that you think that the comments are reflective of anything that you're
• 41:54
  getting you're allowing yourself you're allowing your psyche to be hijacked and your emotions to be
• 41:59
  governed by what complete strangers are disingenuously saying about you on social media and she was like
• 42:08
  well yeah but you know I mean that I'm it's my actual name I mean they could you know contact my
• 42:14
  employer they could try to cancel me they're they're misrepresenting around I say I was like
• 42:19
  isn't that wasn't the lesson of the 2010s to just not read the comments if you're even going to
• 42:24
  comment at all if you're going to comment come on to sub stack and comment in our chat where you
• 42:29
  know constructive real human beings are talking about constructive and real things don't be scrolling
• 42:33
  through Instagram going yay yay or boo boo it's something that an algorithm puts in front of you
• 42:39
  just in order to around you into saying yay yay or boo boo at it I mean talk about being a fucking
• 42:45
  porn so focusing on things that you actually you know that you actually have control over gives you
• 42:51
  the freedom and gives you the capability and gives you the capacious sense of your own productivity
• 42:57
  and your own kind of wellness to be able to enact greater change so thinking about this barbell
• 43:01
  coming back to the barbell one end there's like big change like what do we actually want to happen
• 43:07
  what do we what do we want the 21st century to look like and what would what would what would be the
• 43:12
  big stuff that we would have to take place for the 21st century to go in a better direction than
• 43:17
  it seems to be going at the moment and then at the other end of the barbell there's the the other bar
• 43:22
  the other ball which is equally heavy and equally important it's not like there's a big one
• 43:26
  and a small one they're both equally sized for your life they're both equally sized there's the
• 43:31
  future of human civilization at one end and then there's whether or not you bother to go and
• 43:37
  draw something or do some coloring in or gardening or writing today and that is just as important
• 43:45
  in your universe in your subjective universe that is just as important and then in between there's
• 43:50
  this bar this thin little bar which contains all of the other stuff the stuff over which we both
• 43:59
  have no control and also which doesn't fill us up and we spend a lot of time there we spend a lot
• 44:05
  of time trying to ring some juice out of this dry hard little bar instead of recognizing that
• 44:16
  there's there are little things that we can focus on our own creative wellness our own creative
• 44:20
  flourishing and then there are big things that we can focus on and let's change the conversation about
• 44:24
  both let's change the conversation internally about what it means to have gratitude and to feel
• 44:31
  like things are going to be okay not because they necessarily will but because an attitude that
• 44:36
  things are going to be okay is a prerequisite for there being okay like that's that's one of the
• 44:40
  necessary conditions that the things don't get better if everybody is just wandering around
• 44:45
  accepting that they're going to get worse they get better because you get up in the morning and
• 44:49
  you put your shoes on and you put your pants on hopefully after having a shower or before having
• 44:55
  a shower you can walk around wet for all I care what you do you baby and so focusing on a small
• 45:02
  and then recognizing that when we talk about the big so that you know the conversations about the
• 45:07
  small things about the creative things about the things that you can control those are largely
• 45:10
  conversations that have to take place in your own head and another important insight to add
• 45:15
  there is don't wait for them to take place in your head do things in the real world that are conducive
• 45:21
  to that to changing your mind I mean one of the problems I think is that we hope to we hope to
• 45:26
  we hope that our minds are going to get into get us into a place at which we will finally feel
• 45:30
  motivated to sit down and write that novel or whatever it is that's not the way it works you got
• 45:35
  we we'll get it back to front here what happens is you sit your ass down and you start writing
• 45:40
  the novel and then after a while your brain goes oh is this what we're doing we're doing this
• 45:44
  okay I guess we're writing a novel now you know wait for your brain to get there before you do it
• 45:48
  you just do it it's a little bit like courage you know I was talking to my eight year old son about
• 45:53
  feeling the fear and doing something anyway he was like oh I don't want to do this and I want to
• 45:57
  do it you know I'm a bit I don't I'm not courageous enough I don't feel I don't feel courage
• 46:03
  and I was like that's back to front you don't wait to feel the courage and then do the thing you
• 46:07
  do the thing you do the thing anyway even though you're afraid of it and you don't feel courageous
• 46:11
  enough and that is what courage is courage is not not feeling fear if you didn't feel the fear
• 46:16
  it wouldn't be courageous to do it you just be an idiot you just be constantly doing dangerous
• 46:20
  things without fearing them courage means you feel the fear you don't have the courage you do it
• 46:26
  anyway that's the courage the doing of it is the courage the sitting your ass down and writing the
• 46:31
  going out and doing the gardening the going for a walk the going to the gym the being kind to people
• 46:37
  even when you don't want to that's the courage it's the practice is the thing you don't wait for
• 46:43
  the feeling um so that's the small thing this kind of internal self talk and then just to loop this
• 46:50
  back to sort of uncomfortable conversations and the purpose of this show which is hopefully
• 46:53
  to help us to have more uncomfortable conversations be it inside our head or between us
• 46:58
  the other side is the big stuff and the big stuff there's no point in sitting around complaining
• 47:03
  about how all of the people who have responsibility for the big stuff are failing at their duties
• 47:07
  because they largely are the the way to change the big stuff is to change the way that we have
• 47:12
  conversations about what's possible to spend 10% less time complaining about Donald Trump and 10
• 47:19
  percent more time doing what in all humility I think I was doing in my latest column which is like
• 47:25
  okay well what what what might it sound like to start talking about things that we could do
• 47:31
  that would make us rich abundant prosperous in the 21st century like what could we be doing
• 47:39
  this is another great thing about punters politics my my mate you know what are the things we can do
• 47:44
  yes we can complain about everything's going wrong but what are the actual things that we
• 47:49
  can do as a society and as a civilization we might not be able to do them as individuals we might
• 47:54
  not even be able to do them communally they might be entirely out of our control but what is in
• 47:58
  our control is how we talk and think and how audaciously we feel like we can like our aspirations can
• 48:05
  be so that's my little that's just thinking about how to think big Lee right and small Lee
• 48:14
  in order to maybe give you some more even keel while we're talking about all this other stuff
• 48:19
  de-semitism in Iran and Ukraine and China and the budget and climate and whatever allow me to leave
• 48:25
  you with a really inspiring set of words from my favorite philosopher and yours Shakira Shakira
• 48:35
  I mentioned she's won this this huge tax win from the Spanish government now Shakira has been poor
• 48:44
  Shakira poor poor Shakira the Colombian singer has been hounded by the Spanish government for years
• 48:53
  so she married she married she had the misfortune to marry a spaniard I shouldn't say I shouldn't
• 49:00
  say that I mean spaniards are hot but she had the misfortune to marry this particular spaniard
• 49:08
  he's a footballer and she lived with him at a time in Spain and the Spanish government was like aha
• 49:19
  here's our opportunity to get our hands on some of that rich Colombian money some of that mullah
• 49:26
  and so they they took it a court and they claimed initially it was the first one the first time
• 49:34
  they said that she was guilty of tax evasion was in 2023 is that right yeah 2023 no 2018
• 49:46
  so 2018 a Spanish court dropped an investigation into Shakira's tax payments because of a lack of
• 49:52
  evidence but there had been this sorry it was a 2020 2018 investigation that was dropped in 2024
• 49:58
  so for six years they were investigating her 2018 taxes then there was a lack of evidence that she
• 50:03
  didn't have anything wrong and they dropped it the year before that she reached a deal with
• 50:08
  Spanish prosecutors to settle a separate tax fraud case that they had brought against her covering
• 50:15
  the years of 2012 to 2014 it was about to go to trial and if she'd been found guilty she would have
• 50:22
  faced up to eight years in jail which is what the prosecutors were pushing for in Spain and she would
• 50:28
  have been fined 23.8 million euros and she settled that with them she she accepted six charges
• 50:36
  of wrongdoing and she said she and she paid them seven and a half million euros instead of 23.8
• 50:41
  but there was this big outstanding case and you might be thinking yourself
• 50:47
  zepsy you might be thinking zepsy old boy this is a strange hero to be a holding up right now
• 50:53
  if she's already if this is the third investigation by Spanish authorities into her tax affairs
• 50:59
  maybe where they smoke this fire well I would say to you innocent until proven guilty my friend
• 51:06
  and today she was proven well you can't be proven innocent she was found she was she was found not
• 51:15
  be guilty put it that way it was a huge case the question was whether or not in the financial year
• 51:24
  in question which was 2011 whether or not she had she had to pay Spanish tax because she'd spent
• 51:33
  more than half of the year in Spain and they were going after her for 20 for 55 million 55
• 51:47
  million euros this is 64 million US dollars which in Australian dollars is about a hundred
• 51:53
  trillion dollars and in New Zealand dollars it is it's more than more numbers and there are in
• 51:59
  the universe more atoms in there on the universe so the she took it she in other words they actually
• 52:05
  prosecute her they said she had to pay she was like screw this I'm not I'm not going to settle
• 52:09
  anymore I've settled in the past I've been hounded by you in the past you've dropped cases just
• 52:15
  because you didn't have enough evidence then you've threatened me with eight years in jail and I've
• 52:19
  just settled and I've paid you millions of euros just to make it go away this time now that I've
• 52:24
  actually got the I'm going to take you to court and she had so she'd already paid this money
• 52:29
  to the Spanish government and then she sued the Spanish government she went to the nation's
• 52:33
  highest court and this the nation's highest court has ordered the Spanish tax authority to refund
• 52:40
  to Shakira 55 million dollars after ruling that it was improperly collected in a dispute over her
• 52:47
  taxes she says she only spent 163 days in Spain that year which is 20 days less than the threshold
• 52:55
  for her to be classed as a resident for tax purposes uh and uh this is going back 15 years now so
• 53:03
  this has been hanging over her head 15 years and what I want to read to you is her statement
• 53:08
  about the victory uh because it just gave gave me a little you know give me a little tingling in
• 53:13
  my loins I gotta say for the little man against the big guy if you've ever been
• 53:19
  stuck at the DMV and you're waiting for your to get your driver's license renewed and there's
• 53:24
  that some big fat sloth behind the counter who's like just eyeing everyone off and they hate their
• 53:31
  job if you ever waited at the post office and it shows their lines along and nobody gives a
• 53:35
  shit about you and if you've ever had to deal with like attack the tax office asking you for more
• 53:41
  information before they're gonna approve something or say any any big institution especially
• 53:46
  a government one coming after you're unhounding you with laser like focus or just ignoring you
• 53:51
  and treating you like shit this is a great statement she writes um after more than eight years of
• 53:57
  enduring brutal public targeting orchestrated campaigns to destroy my reputation and sleepless nights
• 54:03
  that ultimately impacted my health and my family's well-being the national high court has finally
• 54:08
  set the record straight she writes there was never any fraud and the administration
• 54:13
  itself could never prove otherwise simply because it wasn't true yet for nearly a decade I was
• 54:18
  treated as guilty every step of the process was leaked distorted and amplified using my name
• 54:25
  and public image to send a threatening message to the rest of the taxpayers today that narrative
• 54:33
  crumbles and it does so with the full force of a court ruling my greatest wish is that
• 54:40
  this ruling sets a precedent for the treasury and serves the thousands of ordinary citizens who
• 54:47
  are abused and crushed every day by a system that presumes their guilt and forces them to prove
• 54:52
  their innocence at the cost of economic and emotional ruin this victory is dedicated to them
• 55:01
  you tell them Shakira yes it's been too much time being abused and crushed every day by a
• 55:08
  system that presumes our guilt and forces us to prove our innocence at the cost of economic
• 55:13
  and emotional ruin you can transpose that sentiment to the people who are suffering at the hands of
• 55:20
  ICE agents in the United States to the people who Donald Trump is pursuing the journalists who
• 55:25
  are being hounded and having their tax affairs looked through the the enemies Trump's enemies
• 55:31
  who he suddenly unleashing federal investigations into all the way from the big stuff like that
• 55:37
  down to the smallest little stuff of you being frustrated while you have to wait in line in order
• 55:42
  to approve something because you know the government needs you to demonstrate some change of
• 55:47
  address on a particular form that you filled out incorrectly three years ago I love it that's all
• 55:54
  take a deep breath I dedicate this particular sermon to everybody out there who's feeling a
• 56:01
  little bit untethered as am I feeling a little bit concerned as am I we can all take a deep breath
• 56:06
  together we can recognize that things are not so bad that the universe is unfolding as it should
• 56:13
  and that we are the solution that we've been waiting for take care I hope that helps I'll see you
• 56:21
  next time