Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / THE SZEPS LIVE WORLD TOUR IS UNDERWAY

Transcript

THE SZEPS LIVE WORLD TOUR IS UNDERWAY · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  So before we begin, I just want to say a big thank you to anyone who has hit me up to
• 0:09
  express their condolences about my dad.
• 0:13
  My father died on Wednesday.
• 0:15
  It was not unexpected.
• 0:17
  He had Alzheimer's disease.
• 0:19
  I managed to get an amazing evening with him on his final night where he had some level
• 0:26
  of lucidity and I'm feeling complete.
• 0:29
  So you don't have to worry about me, I'm not in the pits of grief, but I did just record
• 0:34
  the introduction to today's episode and I completely neglected to mention anything
• 0:38
  about it, which given how prominent my father was, he was a beloved actor in Australia,
• 0:44
  would probably seem remiss of me.
• 0:46
  I am just trying psychologically to keep work and personal life separate at the moment,
• 0:51
  but don't worry about me.
• 0:53
  And I'm sure I'll have more to say about grief and loss and my father when it's time
• 0:59
  for that.
• 1:00
  That time is not now, but thank you for all the kind messages.
• 1:03
  So without further ado, on with the show.
• 1:06
  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, we're here.
• 1:14
  We did it, we made it to the fine United States of America, I'm broadcasting to you live
• 1:19
  from New York City, New York, New York, as they call it, the town so nice, they named
• 1:25
  it twice.
• 1:26
  And let me tell you, it's warm, it's summer in New York City, it can be warm, my balls
• 1:31
  are sweating, I mean, not just my balls, my body, but you know, just wanted to put that
• 1:34
  image in your mind, you're welcome.
• 1:36
  It's the Zeppes Live World Tour, a global livestreamed event, the kind folks at Substack
• 1:43
  have been good enough to allow us to basically spend two weeks traveling around the planet
• 1:48
  and in each city we land in my trustworthy producer, John Oonday, we'll track down some of
• 1:55
  the most fascinating minds, we'll sit them down, sit them on their little tushes, and
• 1:59
  we will, we will pour into your noggin, all of the most interesting conversations that
• 2:05
  you could possibly imagine from each global local that we find ourselves in.
• 2:09
  Our first one, our first cup off the rank is Jesse Single today, if you don't know Jesse,
• 2:14
  co-hosts a fabulous podcast called Blocked and Reported, where they do forensic deep
• 2:19
  dives into internet nonsense, they've been accused of being kind of anti-woke, maybe
• 2:24
  not just accused, maybe also self-proclaimed, he and his fabulous co-host, Kay Herzog.
• 2:31
  And Jesse's been very courageous in having been the first mainstream American journalist
• 2:36
  to write a big magazine feature about the controversy in pediatric gender medicine.
• 2:42
  This was all the way back in the grand old days of 2018 when the Atlantic published his
• 2:48
  cover piece.
• 2:49
  And ever since then he's been persona non grata, really, with the left for trying to
• 2:53
  encourage progressives to see that there is a legitimate debate going on between the
• 2:58
  transgender community and, you know, people who take a more cautious approach about prescribing
• 3:04
  puberty blockers and medications to kids with gender dysphoria.
• 3:09
  We don't talk too much about that today, we were sitting outside on a beautiful balcony,
• 3:14
  I say beautiful, because it was not the center of the sun, the surface of the sun.
• 3:20
  This is the first in a string of conversations, tomorrow we're headed to Washington, D.C.,
• 3:24
  and I sit down with Sarah Hader and Tyler Cowan, the renowned economist, we're going to
• 3:30
  Los Angeles, we'll sit down with Megan Downe and Rich Roll and Sam Harris, going to Massachusetts
• 3:36
  to catch up with Andrew Sullivan, then we're popping over to London for Jimmy Carr and
• 3:41
  Constantine Kissin and a few other major celebrities that I still want to tease.
• 3:46
  So the podcast will look and sound a little bit different over the next couple of weeks,
• 3:49
  I won't always do an introduction like this, sometimes you'll just be parachuted into
• 3:53
  wherever it was that we happened to be sitting when I managed to track one of these people
• 3:57
  down.
• 3:58
  If you want to enjoy the whole thing as it happens live, you know what to do, you're dreading
• 4:03
  me saying this, aren't you?
• 4:04
  You don't have to pay, you don't have to pay.
• 4:11
  If you download the substack app and then in one click you subscribe, then you'll be notified
• 4:16
  and anytime you want to watch the things live as they're going to wear, you can watch
• 4:20
  from anywhere in the world.
• 4:22
  If you want to catch up, then you'll have to be a paid subscriber to see all of them,
• 4:27
  about half of them will be pay-world on this podcast and for watching after the fact.
• 4:32
  But I hope you enjoy this little adventure, this little experiment, this first installment
• 4:37
  of the Zeppes Live World Tour with the one the only Jesse Single.
• 4:41
  You'll come here as literally baking because I want to mention this because you didn't
• 4:50
  glad to meet you live stream, which I was happy to do, always, yeah, great.
• 4:53
  Anytime, anywhere, anytime, you mentioned earlier today, it would be outdoors.
• 5:00
  That's the temperature in New York City today in Celsius.
• 5:04
  It would probably be about 35 degrees Celsius.
• 5:06
  Would you say humidity is high or low?
• 5:08
  I would say it's high.
• 5:09
  It's rough out here.
• 5:10
  So if I'm sweating a lot, it's not because I'm in the presence of greatness, it's
• 5:13
  really amazing.
• 5:14
  Well, I mean, it's a look, a little from Colomé and a little from Colomé B. Oh, Jesse
• 5:18
  now has been on a boat sport sunscreen.
• 5:20
  Thank you.
• 5:21
  Thank you.
• 5:22
  He's spraying me.
• 5:23
  Yeah.
• 5:24
  That's okay.
• 5:25
  I'm gay.
• 5:26
  You're allowed to rub my legs as much as you want, Jesse.
• 5:27
  I'm gay.
• 5:28
  You're allowed to rub my legs.
• 5:29
  I'm just going to turn this into something quite different, but it's what the punters
• 5:33
  want.
• 5:34
  I love that one.
• 5:35
  A lot of homosexual gentlemen here in New York City, I'm going to tell you that for
• 5:38
  enough of this.
• 5:39
  I mean, really?
• 5:40
  I was walking through Chelsea yesterday and there were quite a few of them.
• 5:42
  I had no idea what to do.
• 5:43
  Absolutely.
• 5:44
  No, it's true.
• 5:45
  It's in neighborhood.
• 5:46
  It's in neighborhood and Sydney.
• 5:47
  Although I was expecting that there would be more, more shirtless, cavorting on a day
• 5:53
  like this.
• 5:54
  What's that?
• 5:55
  You weren't here to incride.
• 5:56
  I wasn't here to incride.
• 5:57
  But the gay is cavort anyway.
• 5:58
  I mean, it depends.
• 6:01
  It depends.
• 6:02
  I mean, you would know more about this in me.
• 6:03
  There's the more acidity.
• 6:04
  They're pretty bad guys.
• 6:05
  Oh, apparently we're streaming.
• 6:06
  Respectability gains like you.
• 6:08
  And we're head and ears.
• 6:10
  Slavicly heterosexuals like me.
• 6:12
  Some people say I had an episode of Uncomfortable Conversations entitled Is Josh a Bad
• 6:17
  Guy because I so frequently get the princess and it was with the head of an LGBTQIA plus
• 6:23
  acronym, acronym, organization, who was taken issue with an article that I'd written
• 6:29
  against gay pride.
• 6:30
  And he thought this was...
• 6:31
  Oh, you were saying in favor of gay shame.
• 6:33
  I was saying, why do we not have more shame?
• 6:36
  No, I was saying, like, isn't it a little bit, I haven't even sort of jumped a shark
• 6:40
  a little bit.
• 6:41
  Like, do we have to, does it actually provide the maximum amount of sexual flourishing
• 6:47
  to require everybody to sign up to being a con carrying member of a community that has
• 6:51
  a particular way of looking at a particular way of creating a particular way of acting?
• 6:55
  This is something I should definitely not have that way.
• 6:57
  Well, I mean, maybe not in the case of gay, but certainly in the office, he's bringing
• 7:01
  up the...
• 7:02
  He's bringing up the sight gag of the sunscreen.
• 7:09
  How I know how an episode of Block and Reported Comes Together because of all of the snarky
• 7:14
  podcasts that rail against the excesses of wokeness and online stupidity, it does seem
• 7:20
  to be one of the bad at produced ones.
• 7:22
  Thank you.
• 7:23
  I can't tell if that's just Katie.
• 7:26
  Your co-host or Katie.
• 7:27
  I mean, Katie.
• 7:28
  We have some contribution.
• 7:29
  A podcast is created similarly to how a baby is, a man and a woman come together.
• 7:34
  Right.
• 7:35
  Ideally, they will love each other, but...
• 7:36
  On opposite sides of the country, in your case.
• 7:38
  On opposite sides of the country.
• 7:40
  Yeah, look, we do some light planning and prep.
• 7:44
  I do think we get a lot of mileage out of the fact that we have good chemistry, but we're
• 7:47
  not...
• 7:48
  We do some editing.
• 7:49
  It's not like we just do it all in one take and then publish it.
• 7:51
  Katie does a very good job.
• 7:52
  She does the editing.
• 7:55
  And she does a good job making it flow.
• 7:57
  And I do think for aspiring podcasters, first of all, everyone should get in.
• 8:04
  It's nothing but a growth market.
• 8:05
  There's tons of room.
• 8:06
  It's not over-saturated.
• 8:07
  So if you're going to start a podcast, I think the worst thing you can do is go too long.
• 8:12
  I think there are way more podcasts that are too long than are too short.
• 8:15
  I think we're doing a good job keeping it tight, doesn't work.
• 8:18
  I always want more.
• 8:20
  Yeah, yeah, another hasn't won anymore.
• 8:22
  I always won more for me because I'm a fan of a long podcast.
• 8:24
  I gotta say.
• 8:25
  I do like a lot of podcasts.
• 8:26
  I mean, yeah, it depends what you do.
• 8:28
  There's a lot.
• 8:29
  I mean, what you don't want is a slow-boring podcast, but I think a lot is nothing wrong with
• 8:34
  you.
• 8:35
  You don't want nothing racist?
• 8:37
  And what do I mean?
• 8:38
  A slow-boring is the name of Matt's substag.
• 8:41
  Yeah.
• 8:43
  But it's not a slow-boring, actually.
• 8:45
  It's quite interesting.
• 8:47
  And so has there been an increasing derth of things to talk about?
• 8:52
  How do you describe yourself when you have to write something on a custom's?
• 8:55
  White form.
• 8:56
  White.
• 8:57
  Slot-unly.
• 8:58
  Slot-unly, Aryan.
• 8:59
  Intersecular.
• 9:00
  Intersecular.
• 9:01
  Yeah.
• 9:02
  Sorry.
• 9:03
  How do I describe myself and what's that?
• 9:04
  Like, when you have to, when someone asks you what you do.
• 9:06
  Oh.
• 9:07
  Journalist and podcaster.
• 9:08
  I used to just say journalists.
• 9:09
  Now, weirdly, the most amount of money comes from a podcast, which I never thought would
• 9:13
  be the case.
• 9:14
  And the podcast to people who don't know it is what?
• 9:17
  What does it do?
• 9:18
  What is the Dwarmsons object?
• 9:19
  We can't talk about internet bullshit or nonsense, depending on who worries when they
• 9:24
  so.
• 9:25
  And that spans a wide range of subjects.
• 9:28
  We launched in 2020 at the time.
• 9:30
  There was definitely a lot of sort of over-the-top lefty craziness going on.
• 9:35
  That will always be near and dear to our hearts, because Katie and I are both on the
• 9:38
  left.
• 9:39
  And we both think the left tends to...
• 9:41
  I don't know what transphobic, right-wing begets and fascists.
• 9:43
  No.
• 9:44
  We swear I was.
• 9:45
  We saw whoever is more powerful.
• 9:47
  We take the underdog.
• 9:48
  So right now, where...
• 9:49
  No, I mean, there was like a lot of crazy cancellation stuff, a lot of wokeness or whatever
• 9:54
  you want to call it.
• 9:55
  So we did.
• 9:56
  I think we had originally made our bones doing that.
• 9:58
  We still do some of that.
• 9:59
  But I'd like to think that people listened to us for other reasons.
• 10:02
  And at the moment, there's no shortage of right-wing craziness to focus on.
• 10:06
  And we've done some recent episodes on that.
• 10:08
  We have one in the pipeline that I think people like.
• 10:11
  Oh, good.
• 10:12
  If you're just tuning in, Jesse Singles here.
• 10:13
  This is the...
• 10:14
  Actually, the first...
• 10:15
  You're like, you're a figure, an all-girl, first guest of these EPS live world tour...
• 10:20
  Holy shit.
• 10:21
  ...where for 12 days, we're hopscotching around a half-dozen city...
• 10:24
  He's viewing me.
• 10:25
  ...to luminaries like yourself.
• 10:27
  This is not good to be.
• 10:28
  First is not good.
• 10:29
  That's not...
• 10:30
  So we would try it out with you so that if it falls apart...
• 10:33
  The laptop is literally sitting at an ice pack.
• 10:35
  The laptop's spring to sink or put a basketball.
• 10:38
  If people are wondering, it's about 105 degrees in the shade Celsius in New York City.
• 10:44
  I'm forcing Jesse to sit out.
• 10:47
  So do you want to shift forward because you're getting his on your head?
• 10:49
  Yeah, I can.
• 10:50
  Yeah, getting his on your head.
• 10:51
  Shift forward.
• 10:52
  We've misplaced the umbrella so that I am in a beautiful, cool shade.
• 10:57
  Yeah.
• 10:58
  And Jesse is baking because I want him to look shifty.
• 11:00
  I want him to look like a shifty Jew.
• 11:01
  Shifty, shifty, maybe.
• 11:02
  Shifty, shifty Jew.
• 11:04
  Yeah.
• 11:05
  And pretty much every day we're going to a different city and we're interviewing different people
• 11:10
  and it's all going to be live-screen on the sub-stack.
• 11:13
  About half of them will be behind a paywall and half of them won't.
• 11:15
  But if you watch them live, then they're all free.
• 11:17
  They're all free.
• 11:18
  They're all free.
• 11:19
  You don't know what's going to happen.
• 11:20
  And he's got sunscreen here.
• 11:22
  You're only sunscraining the exact identical place on the top.
• 11:25
  I know.
• 11:26
  I just want to leave him.
• 11:27
  Oh my God.
• 11:28
  More hell-area CB sprayer directly into my eye.
• 11:31
  It's unbelievable.
• 11:32
  I'm fucking tempted.
• 11:33
  Yeah.
• 11:34
  Sweater rolls into my eyes.
• 11:35
  I feel like we should be identical.
• 11:37
  So tomorrow we're going down to DC and we're talking to Sarah Hato and we're going to
• 11:40
  tie a cow on.
• 11:41
  That's a collaboration with Barry Weiss and the Free Press.
• 11:44
  We're going all over the joint.
• 11:46
  So thank you, Jesse, for being the first person.
• 11:47
  I can make your sweatiest guests even on the first one.
• 11:49
  I'm hoping not.
• 11:50
  I'm hoping that we manage to ramp up the temperature.
• 11:52
  The final episode will actually be conducted inside a sauna.
• 11:55
  Inside the sauna.
• 11:56
  Sam Harris and I will be sitting in a sauna.
• 11:59
  I've interviewed him all for my last episode.
• 12:01
  A very overweight man on the surface of our sauna.
• 12:04
  That's exactly.
• 12:06
  So you said that the show began in 2020.
• 12:08
  Yeah.
• 12:09
  When it was just shouldn't fish in a barrel.
• 12:11
  I mean, it wasn't that you didn't have to be courageous because you did because there
• 12:15
  were so many taboos at the time about speaking out against what had become a fairly winger
• 12:20
  in social justice orthodoxy.
• 12:21
  I mean, but there was a he did the messed up a lot of people are listening to this.
• 12:25
  You cannot do a master.
• 12:26
  I'm doing the masturbated thing because I do not masturbate visually in public and expect
• 12:33
  everyone together.
• 12:34
  That's true, baby.
• 12:35
  I think I don't know about courageous, but yeah, we got out there a little bit, but Katie
• 12:40
  and I were both in a position where professionally we were able to do that without much genuine
• 12:44
  risk because you didn't have jobs.
• 12:46
  I had left New York, and I just to get the record straight, Katie had been furloughed.
• 12:50
  Yes.
• 12:52
  Been discharged myself with what they call honorably discharged myself from New York
• 12:57
  90s.
• 12:58
  What did they have?
• 12:59
  They got a couple of discharges outside the military.
• 13:01
  No.
• 13:02
  No.
• 13:03
  I make a joke.
• 13:04
  Okay.
• 13:05
  I'm the first guest.
• 13:06
  It's very good.
• 13:07
  I don't know.
• 13:08
  I don't know.
• 13:09
  But yeah, we like I say you didn't have jobs.
• 13:10
  I was ready about it, but yeah, I don't know.
• 13:11
  Yeah.
• 13:12
  Yeah.
• 13:13
  And then this became our job because there's no God.
• 13:16
  And what I'm wondering is it becoming harder to find the shit because people are now less
• 13:23
  crazy and they realize that the whole thing was a bit of I don't think people will be
• 13:27
  well.
• 13:28
  I think there's just so much craziness, they've just been redistributed.
• 13:31
  I mean, Trump, Trumpism and negism is an incredibly crazy movement, and there is something
• 13:37
  a little bit different.
• 13:38
  I think criticizing people on your side is particularly interesting and useful and important, but
• 13:45
  we're finding there's plenty of stuff going on the right that is also worthy of criticism.
• 13:49
  And we think we have an audience that will stick with us because you can only do so much
• 13:53
  of the hippie punching before it gets a little bit tiring.
• 13:55
  Yeah.
• 13:56
  Not to say we'll ignore it.
• 13:57
  I mean, I'm writing a book about the, we get into the slate, but I'm writing a book
• 14:01
  that is basically about failures of the liberal establishment.
• 14:04
  So let's get it.
• 14:05
  Let's get into it.
• 14:06
  Let's get into it.
• 14:07
  Yeah.
• 14:08
  It's interesting.
• 14:09
  Yeah.
• 14:10
  You don't even have to look at the camera.
• 14:11
  I know.
• 14:12
  I've got my 10,000 hours as a professional television host.
• 14:16
  He's holding up sunscreen now to the screen.
• 14:18
  Do you describe it?
• 14:19
  No, I know.
• 14:20
  Every time I do this, do you have to describe it?
• 14:22
  Yes, of course, because so many people, he masturbated, and was that, was that you seculared?
• 14:29
  Was that?
• 14:30
  Yeah.
• 14:31
  He mind.
• 14:32
  I mean, if you want to see what Jesse did, you have to go back if you're listening to
• 14:35
  the audio podcast and you have to watch the video on YouTube or substack, and you will
• 14:40
  see him in a really much horrendous sexual act.
• 14:43
  This is so sweaty.
• 14:45
  I know it's sweaty.
• 14:46
  It's sweaty for a reason, because you keep pulling your dick, your penis out, and
• 14:49
  live on the live stream.
• 14:50
  All right.
• 14:51
  That's the definition.
• 14:52
  The book that you're writing.
• 14:53
  I'm interested in whether it's jumped to the shock, like, is it a forensic analysis of
• 15:01
  what happened, or is it an analysis of where the left is now, because where the left
• 15:05
  is now.
• 15:06
  Oh, there was a book about you being different.
• 15:07
  Use gender medicine stuff in general.
• 15:09
  Yeah.
• 15:10
  You got a little bump.
• 15:11
  I'm like, is that a ladybug?
• 15:12
  No, it's less.
• 15:13
  A little ladybug.
• 15:14
  Wait, wait.
• 15:15
  Make a wish about the temperature dropping 20 to 15 degrees.
• 15:18
  It's going to go from a hundred and five down to a hundred and four.
• 15:20
  There you go.
• 15:21
  The war.
• 15:22
  There you go.
• 15:23
  The ladybug went away.
• 15:24
  And it was incinerated by the software.
• 15:26
  Yeah.
• 15:27
  The book is about, mostly, to me, the liberal medical establishment really failing to
• 15:35
  introspect and to, like, save guard kids.
• 15:40
  And I think it's an important story.
• 15:41
  Now, the question of, like, things move so quickly, that's, like, by the time it comes
• 15:45
  out, how much use gender medicine will be left?
• 15:47
  Well, it'll be just basically, I mean, now it's being effectively banned in blue states
• 15:50
  because Trump is sort of throwing his reader away to red states.
• 15:54
  No.
• 15:55
  Legally in red states, but sort of the fact, though, a lot of blue state hospitals are
• 15:58
  shutting down because of Trump's threats.
• 16:01
  So I'm hoping I can write a book that explains what happens and include, oh, my God.
• 16:05
  I'm like a boxer in my brain.
• 16:06
  Do you know what you're going to tell us?
• 16:08
  Just hand in Jesse a moist towelette because we're sitting outside in New York.
• 16:12
  If you're just joining live stream, I'm Josh Sips.
• 16:15
  This is Jesse's single.
• 16:16
  You should be subscribed to blog.
• 16:18
  Sure.
• 16:19
  You should be subscribed to uncomfortable conversations because over the next two weeks,
• 16:21
  we're traveling all around the world.
• 16:23
  Oh, it's uncomfortable.
• 16:24
  I'll give you that.
• 16:25
  It's uncomfortable.
• 16:26
  It has nothing to do with the conversation.
• 16:28
  No.
• 16:29
  Okay.
• 16:30
  So I was going to say, I thought uncomfortable conversations have been politically.
• 16:32
  You just went, you're going to physically make the guessman.
• 16:34
  I'm going to make you uncomfortable.
• 16:35
  Yes.
• 16:36
  Is he going to be an ice bath or it's going to be just going to be too hard?
• 16:39
  Well, also, if you're just showing us, I've twice, three times sprayed Josh with sunscreen
• 16:44
  and rubbed him out.
• 16:45
  That's right.
• 16:46
  And when he's not spraying, we move with sunscreen.
• 16:49
  He's miming masturbation.
• 16:50
  I don't even when you say that's when I was miming the miming shaking, I think the
• 16:56
  challenge.
• 16:57
  Yeah.
• 16:58
  So the book is going to be try to explain what happened, but also try to like provide
• 17:01
  lessons because this won't be assuming this goes down as a medical fat or a medical error,
• 17:06
  which I would argue that we're on our way there.
• 17:08
  It wasn't the first one.
• 17:09
  It won't be the last one.
• 17:10
  How do you prevent this from happening in the future?
• 17:12
  Is it just the medical error with regard to the pediatric side of things or is it also
• 17:17
  the ideological error with regard to gender theory?
• 17:22
  I think it's related to both with kids like we've leaned really heavily from the 2010s
• 17:27
  on a lot of the talk of sort of, you know, what a trans kid is and who should go on hormones
• 17:32
  or blockers has to do with this concept of gender identity.
• 17:35
  And I think that concept is a little bit challenged and you have a generation of doctors
• 17:39
  who don't think they're doing medicine in the traditional sense.
• 17:43
  They're doing something a little bit more philosophical, which is aligning someone's
• 17:47
  body with their gender identity.
• 17:49
  And I don't think like we really have a category for what that is medically because if you
• 17:54
  go to a doctor and they give you medicine, well, either it's a cosmetic procedure,
• 17:58
  which no one would argue this is, or they're treating some would argue that it should be
• 18:04
  treated like that.
• 18:05
  But it's also life saving, right?
• 18:07
  It prevents suicide supposedly.
• 18:08
  One cosmetic or something.
• 18:09
  No, I mean something on the right.
• 18:10
  Yes, sure.
• 18:11
  You would treat it as a cosmetic.
• 18:12
  Well, except it's cosmetic and more serious because if you remove someone's breast
• 18:15
  you're removing functionality.
• 18:16
  So a good job is cosmetic.
• 18:17
  Yeah, that's fair.
• 18:19
  So it's in this weird gray area of medicine where a lot of the people performing the medicine
• 18:24
  or referring kids for it, they can't really explain like in the traditional language of
• 18:29
  philosophy of medicine what they're doing because it's like, are you one view is there's
• 18:33
  a condition called gender dysphoria and you're treating it.
• 18:37
  But that's to you that's pathologizing and that leads to gatekeeping.
• 18:40
  So I think the philosophical confusion is part of the story, but I'm most interested
• 18:44
  in the question of sort of the evidence and how professional associations avoided or
• 18:49
  distorted the evidence and just sort of the sociology of all things.
• 18:52
  Yeah, that's interesting.
• 18:53
  I mean, I was speaking recently we haven't released the episode yet, but with a human rights
• 18:57
  lawyer and a professor in the UK who was previously a big advocate for trans rights and
• 19:02
  who has now come around.
• 19:03
  He's just about, he's just published a book.
• 19:05
  You may know of this gentleman, his name escapes me, Robert Osborne, but he is basically
• 19:12
  makes the point that so there are a bunch of jurisdictions, including the one that I
• 19:15
  live in, I use up Wales, the stake where the most populous state in Australia, where Sydney
• 19:20
  is located.
• 19:21
  That's where you run on Australia?
• 19:22
  Yeah.
• 19:23
  To Australia.
• 19:24
  Believe it or not.
• 19:25
  I thought you were in New Yorker.
• 19:26
  I didn't, you know, I didn't live with the majority of my adult life in this great city
• 19:29
  of house.
• 19:30
  So they moved back when I had kids.
• 19:32
  But that's by the way, the state that I live in within the past two weeks has just passed
• 19:38
  a law that self-id is now the law of the land.
• 19:41
  So in other words, you don't need to have had any prehistory.
• 19:45
  All you need to have is one person who can attest, who's known you for 12 months, who
• 19:50
  can say that you're the opposite sex.
• 19:53
  And it doesn't have that to be a medical professional, there have to be a justice of the
• 19:56
  peace or like a cop or anything.
• 19:58
  There's just any human, any, I mean, who can't find one human being to sign a piece of
• 20:01
  paper full?
• 20:02
  Yeah.
• 20:03
  And you don't have to have had any medical history or anything.
• 20:05
  And you can be the opposite sex, which means that now underage is criminal.
• 20:08
  For example, in terms of female quotas and female squads and all this sort of stuff,
• 20:14
  biological males have no impediments.
• 20:16
  So it is, what I'm saying is that this illusion that it is a medical condition that needs
• 20:21
  to be treated is belied by the policies that jurisdictions are undertaking, where there's
• 20:26
  no claim even that it's a medical issue.
• 20:28
  Oh, sure.
• 20:29
  I think there's a subset of people who feel gender dysphoria very deeply.
• 20:34
  Certainly.
• 20:35
  Yeah.
• 20:36
  In case you would have, you would have, you would have a medical history and you're
• 20:39
  to have medical.
• 20:40
  Right.
• 20:41
  There's these different things going on.
• 20:42
  There's the activism side of it, which has really, and that I, I'm not an expert on
• 20:48
  this, but I know within the LGBTQ plus whatever movement, there's been some internecine
• 20:52
  fighting over this over like how big a tent do we want.
• 20:56
  And in the trans community, that sort of comes down to the difference between like often
• 21:00
  mostly sort of older school traditional quote unquote, transsexuals who like have really
• 21:05
  felt that war with the body and had to go through a long, bruising process to get hormones
• 21:09
  and then this sort of more self-idea approach where no matter how you look or how you present
• 21:14
  yourself or whether you have gender dysphoria, you can sort of opt into this category of being
• 21:19
  treated.
• 21:20
  It's like one of the only sort of categories of marginalization that you can just opt
• 21:25
  into.
• 21:26
  And there's some tensions there when you're talking about giving permanent medical treatments
• 21:31
  to kids as young as 13 or 14.
• 21:33
  There's also tensions with the gay and lesbian community in a sense that like, you know,
• 21:39
  we are supposed to, I speak on behalf of all gay people here, I'm married to, by the way.
• 21:45
  And there's some tension because the camp misfits a feminine boy or the daiki tomboy
• 21:55
  girl now have a context in which to understand their difference that is not gayness or
• 22:01
  lesbianism.
• 22:02
  Andrew Sullivan and my podcast co-host Katie Herzog, Sullivan more speculated.
• 22:07
  Herzog thinks that if she had grown up in today's milieu, like she thinks she had actual
• 22:12
  gender dysphoria as a character and would have been potentially diagnosed as a boy or increasingly
• 22:17
  now it's non-binary.
• 22:20
  So yeah, anyway, everything we're saying for a long time in liberal spaces, there's been
• 22:25
  verbodan, at least if you want to stay in good standing.
• 22:28
  But when you say verbodan, that's another thing I want to talk to you about.
• 22:31
  If you want to stay in the camp, thank you very much.
• 22:34
  Wait, it's doing you on something where you said verbodan in the poll, you didn't, was
• 22:38
  that Joe Rogan or someone I heard someone say, usually I heard someone used the word
• 22:42
  verbodan.
• 22:43
  It may not have been you.
• 22:44
  Can we get this umbrella further over here, is that not going to happen, John?
• 22:48
  I'm worried about every five minutes, Jesse's head gets more and more in the sun and
• 22:53
  I feel bad.
• 22:54
  I feel like this is one of those cruel science experiments where you put a drop of
• 22:59
  water on the head of a cat for 24 hours and see what's going to happen.
• 23:03
  If you're just tuning in on Josh Seps, so this is part of the uncomfortable conversation.
• 23:07
  No, I'm Josh Seps.
• 23:08
  I'm Josh Sly.
• 23:09
  This is Jesse Singles.
• 23:10
  World to a, you should subscribe to uncomfortable conversations for free, get notified every
• 23:14
  time we have one of these conversations, there's going to be every single day basically
• 23:17
  over the next two weeks in different locales from around the world.
• 23:20
  This is the fabulous Jesse Singles.
• 23:22
  So if you don't know the locks are reported, you should be following the locks are reported
• 23:25
  and Jesse himself.
• 23:26
  Fingermont is most of the same.
• 23:29
  So this whole verboten thing, there is a movement among my lefty friends to what I would
• 23:35
  regard as being the rewriting of history.
• 23:38
  Brett Conninger.
• 23:39
  Oh no, rewriting history.
• 23:41
  Yeah.
• 23:42
  Brett Conninger.
• 23:43
  And from their perspective, it's just, yeah, okay, so there were maybe a few excesses
• 23:49
  here and there, but it was never a big deal.
• 23:51
  So it was mostly just the right was, was sour about the fact that the left was winning
• 23:56
  that during the work was, and what we were all banging on about with all your streaks
• 24:00
  about cancel culture because Brett Conninger is still a multi-pizzillionaire and Louis C.
• 24:04
  Kay still sells out.
• 24:05
  Just fun.
• 24:06
  An unbelievable version of this, I think on Blue Sky, of someone basically saying there
• 24:10
  was this righteous mass movement in the wake of George Floyd and that scared the powers
• 24:16
  that be, so they somehow ceded a backlash, whereas that's just not true.
• 24:22
  There was a backlash, but it was because of the excesses, it wasn't because of some
• 24:26
  sort of conspiracy.
• 24:27
  Can you explain the excesses?
• 24:28
  Because now we don't feel them canally enough.
• 24:30
  Now that it is possible to have a feature piece in the New York Times about gender medicine
• 24:36
  without there being some tremendous backlash, how would you articulate to people who just
• 24:41
  woke up having been put in a coma for the past 10 years, what happened?
• 24:44
  Well, first of all, you picked up that time to wake up from the coma and waited it out
• 24:48
  a few more years.
• 24:49
  Well, we don't know what's going to happen in a few years, and this might be it.
• 24:52
  It might be bad, but it might just wake up during the fourth trauma term.
• 24:57
  I would just say in newsrooms, certain issues, you could get fired or like really attacked
• 25:03
  by your colleagues.
• 25:04
  I'm just restricting it to journalism, which is what I know the most about.
• 25:07
  If you look up the stories of James Bennett or Donald McNeil Jr., or my friend Mike
• 25:12
  Pescat Slate, these are folks who got,
• 25:15
  fired or forced out just for trying to do journalism.
• 25:18
  And that was partly because it's just for the, sorry, didn't drop it.
• 25:21
  The most, but I like in the case of Mike, he just had a conversation on Slack about whether
• 25:26
  or not white people should be fine for having used the N-word and in the context of Slate,
• 25:34
  where the house rule at the time was yes, we will write out that word even if the author's
• 25:40
  white.
• 25:41
  So Mike got fired basically for arguing for the current position.
• 25:45
  Donald McNeil Jr., it's too surreal a story to even recount here.
• 25:49
  It involves a trip to Peru and maybe insultingly glancing at the witch, I'm not a witch doctor.
• 25:55
  A she-man who was doing, I didn't even hear that, I thought he just had a conversation
• 26:00
  with a student about what he did, but again, he didn't use it, sorry, to trigger me here.
• 26:06
  You mentioned it, which is different from using it as far as linguists are concerned.
• 26:11
  I don't know if these were a reaction, but hang on, aren't there three or four gigantic cases
• 26:17
  like this?
• 26:18
  And the lefties can say, well, yeah, okay, so there were some newsrooms who took a strong
• 26:23
  line against racism and transphobia and there may have been a couple of casualties and
• 26:28
  those casualties are getting elevated by these anti-woke activists like you and made to
• 26:34
  seem like some huge cultural phenomenon when the general thrust of society was and remains
• 26:41
  transphobic, bigoted, structurally prejudiced against people in all kinds of intersectional
• 26:45
  ways.
• 26:46
  Yeah, I mean, I guess I just disagree with a lot of that.
• 26:51
  So for example, one example is, I find class gets erased from a lot of these discussions.
• 26:57
  Like if my view is if you're a trans person living, look, it's gotten worse and harder.
• 27:04
  I do think Donald Trump is genuinely transphobic, but the fact of the matter is like some
• 27:08
  of these identity characteristics bring benefits if you're in a newsroom or on a university.
• 27:14
  There were the idea that you're oppressed for being trans, for example, at the New
• 27:21
  York Times.
• 27:23
  I just don't put that much credence into that.
• 27:26
  I also don't think you're oppressed for being Jewish at the New York Times.
• 27:28
  I think in fact, a lot of these outlets have gone out of their way to include these voices
• 27:32
  and sometimes done so far out of their way that they haven't sort of let me sack some
• 27:38
  logic prevail and they've also excluded a lot of trans voices themselves or more skeptical
• 27:43
  because it's not as though trans people don't have a debate over the age of which people
• 27:46
  should go on hormones or at which they should transition.
• 27:50
  So that argument that, I guess I put it this way, blotter reported found a niche and
• 27:57
  I think it's always important to report on what the elites are doing, what their norms
• 28:02
  are, how they make decisions because elites are powerful, like what is published in the
• 28:05
  New York Times to a certain extent matters and what kind of intellectual environment the
• 28:10
  average 20-year-old finds themselves in as they progress matters and I think these are
• 28:15
  where they think it's reported on.
• 28:16
  I don't think boldness is the most important thing in the world.
• 28:18
  I think anyone who makes an entire career out of fighting weakness won't go crazy.
• 28:23
  I've written this multiple times with specific named examples, but I-
• 28:26
  Who are the named examples?
• 28:28
  Like Brett Weinstein, quotes like that.
• 28:30
  I mean, just people whose brains have completely melted.
• 28:32
  Michael Schellenberger, his brain has melted and after Donald Schumpel's elected, Schellen
• 28:37
  berger put out a video where he talked about how resentful he was toward the people who
• 28:41
  had been mean to him and how Trump was sort of validated him.
• 28:47
  And it's like, I don't know, man, I dealt with a fair amount of shit too, but I'd like
• 28:52
  to think I didn't let it affect my ability to reason through problems or really affect
• 28:57
  my politics.
• 28:58
  Your politics are different questions from who the worst exemplars are of a given political
• 29:02
  movement, right?
• 29:04
  Yes.
• 29:05
  I'm glad you mentioned class because this is kind of my bug bear that I could go on
• 29:09
  banging on about, which is that we've decided that we, meaning the left over the past
• 29:13
  10 years or so, that the most important metric by which we're going to determine disadvantage
• 29:18
  is identity.
• 29:20
  And that's the thing to focus on.
• 29:22
  And we've done it at a time when not to interrupt, but like race in terms of obstacles
• 29:27
  to prosperity in the U.S., race is less important on its own.
• 29:33
  If you can somehow control for everything else, which you can't, race on its own does
• 29:36
  not tell you very much about how well someone would do it.
• 29:39
  Like it's a much more access to resources.
• 29:41
  We have extremely, not extremely prosperous, but like middle class, into upper class groups
• 29:48
  of all sorts of different ethnicities.
• 29:51
  Like we're actually doing well in becoming a truly multicultural democracy, setting
• 29:56
  aside certain setbacks involved in the White House.
• 29:58
  So the sort of race for, if you tell me that a person is from Ghana or Nigeria, then
• 30:03
  I can tell you a lot more about how successful they'll be in the United States, which is quite
• 30:07
  success.
• 30:08
  They've had more successful than like the median white Americans.
• 30:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 30:12
  And that's over, over generalizing, but we didn't come up, we didn't decide to talk about
• 30:15
  in terms of these categories.
• 30:16
  Yes.
• 30:17
  No.
• 30:18
  I mean, and then so when it comes to class, what we're talking about there, I think is
• 30:20
  a more posimonious understanding of disadvantage, where it is really shitty in America to be a
• 30:26
  single mom on minimum wage with a bunch of kids who you're trying to support and trying
• 30:31
  to deal with Medicaid and you're trying to deal with food stamps and you're stuck in
• 30:34
  the bureaucracy of all that regardless of your race.
• 30:37
  Now, it happens to be that those people, it's also disproportionately black in this country.
• 30:41
  Yes.
• 30:42
  And the other thing is you absolutely, you're disproportionately black, yes.
• 30:45
  And if you do the nerd thing, if you do a regression analysis and you control for everything
• 30:51
  else and you just take like a single mom with two kids, only a high school education,
• 30:56
  I'm sure if you control for everything, the black single mom in that situation would
• 31:00
  affair a little worse than the white one, they're both in really shitty situations.
• 31:04
  They both should not be in these situations in the wealthiest country on earth, and there's
• 31:07
  been so much less of that class first, Bernie S. Grederick during this period of just elite
• 31:14
  insanity.
• 31:15
  The other thing I would add is like folks like Musal Garbi have written really good books
• 31:20
  diving deep into this and theorizing about the source of this insanity.
• 31:25
  So I think it's on the way, but Musa is great and people don't know Musa, there is an
• 31:30
  episode of Uncomfortable Conversations with Musa, if you know, Uncomfortable Conversations
• 31:34
  is and you're just coming here to see Jesse, hello, I'm Josh Seps, we're traveling around
• 31:39
  the world.
• 31:40
  I'm Josh Seps for the next two weeks, I'm going to be almost in a single day, I'm traveling
• 31:45
  around the world.
• 31:46
  You know what I mean?
• 31:47
  I'm going to do that.
• 31:48
  Oh, he's got out the sunscreen again.
• 31:50
  He's got the sun.
• 31:51
  Look, my leg is red.
• 31:53
  My leg is red and punched.
• 31:55
  We're sitting in New York City and it's about 125 degrees.
• 32:00
  It's Celsius in the shade.
• 32:02
  There are helicopters, there are sirens.
• 32:04
  The wonderful Jesse single is with us for our first in all of the world.
• 32:07
  They're going to support you and sit for me.
• 32:10
  Zets lives at World's Tour, subscribe to have 12 conversations and get notified every
• 32:15
  time we sit down with the lights of Sam Harris and Rich Roll and Tyler.
• 32:18
  By the way, there's a parallel universe in which we do this at 5 p.m.
• 32:22
  It's a Friday.
• 32:23
  Yeah.
• 32:24
  Bucket, giant contacts.
• 32:25
  Oh, he's gay, straight.
• 32:27
  Yeah.
• 32:28
  That's right.
• 32:29
  One would be a car.
• 32:30
  It's my car.
• 32:31
  It'll be a giant car, right in front of us.
• 32:33
  I'm sorry.
• 32:34
  I'm sorry.
• 32:35
  So I don't drink anymore.
• 32:37
  So I have to have mocktails and things.
• 32:39
  Is this for health or what?
• 32:40
  I was drinking it too much.
• 32:41
  I think it.
• 32:42
  You.
• 32:43
  To the state.
• 32:44
  I'm Australian.
• 32:45
  I'm Australian of Irish, Jewish.
• 32:46
  Yeah, Descendant.
• 32:47
  I guess the Jews don't drink that much, but I had little kids and I was bowed hosting morning
• 32:54
  radio and had to be known for it.
• 32:55
  If anything, you got too drunk and you had a couple of kids.
• 32:57
  I got too drunk.
• 32:58
  I had kids.
• 32:59
  I got too drunk.
• 33:00
  I accidentally got a morning radio show.
• 33:01
  It became more hassle and it was worth.
• 33:03
  So I'm enjoying.
• 33:04
  Right.
• 33:05
  But it's normal.
• 33:06
  It's normal.
• 33:07
  Once we have our giant cock slash cocktails, slug beers, it's all going to be fabulous.
• 33:12
  If you're joining us to watch a little of me here in New York City, this is the fabulous
• 33:17
  Jesse Singles, the co-host of Blocks and Report at a big, hollowed K-Hose on one of
• 33:22
  my other favourites.
• 33:23
  It's better that you're getting sweaty too.
• 33:25
  I am.
• 33:26
  Oh my god.
• 33:27
  Holy shit.
• 33:28
  I got the sweat stains.
• 33:29
  Yeah, but yours ain't hidden because you were in dark.
• 33:31
  It's dark.
• 33:32
  I'm wearing a light shirt.
• 33:33
  And so you're going to end up with massive pit stains.
• 33:36
  If people want to see it, they can do it.
• 33:37
  Can we take a 30 second break for me to check if there's a portion?
• 33:39
  Yeah, and have a look at the reddit and see whether or not people are asking you what
• 33:42
  the hell we're doing outside in New York.
• 33:44
  Some is dead.
• 33:45
  Okay.
• 33:46
  So I posted to the blotter report as subreddit.
• 33:47
  Yeah.
• 33:48
  I'm not sure we got any responses.
• 33:50
  Really?
• 33:51
  Wait, hold on.
• 33:52
  So the people would be gone crazy for your-
• 33:54
  You know, I just signed into sub-stack.
• 33:57
  Well, keep talking.
• 33:58
  I don't want to totally torpedo this.
• 34:00
  I want to say the problem, just finishing wrapping up that point.
• 34:04
  Oh, wait, here you go.
• 34:05
  Why are you doing this?
• 34:06
  So I posted it.
• 34:07
  I vowed to do an hour long live stream with Josh subs on sub-stack.
• 34:09
  Let me know if you have any questions.
• 34:10
  Like, why are we doing this outdoors?
• 34:11
  One is 90 degrees in human out.
• 34:13
  Yeah.
• 34:14
  This did not get a lot of upwards.
• 34:16
  What?
• 34:17
  We're coming up on two years of the anniversary of the American Academy.
• 34:23
  Oh, there's a good question.
• 34:25
  Okay.
• 34:26
  American Academy Pediatrics said they were doing their own systematic evidence review on
• 34:30
  youth gender medicine.
• 34:32
  Our own journalist calling them up and asking about it.
• 34:34
  Yeah.
• 34:35
  Also, why on people giving you shit for being sitting outside in New York and not need
• 34:39
  a way to hate?
• 34:40
  I think I'm just not.
• 34:41
  I figured, usually when I post to our own sub-reddit, I get a heroes welcome.
• 34:46
  Yeah.
• 34:47
  These are people who I'm- they live through them very-
• 34:50
  That's right.
• 34:51
  Yeah, it's a sort of a social life thing.
• 34:52
  They're social.
• 34:53
  They love you.
• 34:54
  Yes, they love it.
• 34:55
  I think once they met with groups, they were just like, I don't care for Josh.
• 34:59
  Um.
• 35:00
  The American Academy Pediatrics said they were doing their own systematic review.
• 35:04
  This is a group that has come out in favor of youth gender medicine.
• 35:07
  They did not register.
• 35:09
  This is too nerdy.
• 35:10
  But you're supposed to register.
• 35:11
  I'm going to do a systematic review.
• 35:12
  Here's the questions I'm looking at on this database.
• 35:14
  This is what I'm going to evaluate.
• 35:15
  Yes, exactly.
• 35:16
  So you can jot yourself off to the facts.
• 35:18
  Or other stuff.
• 35:19
  Retroactively.
• 35:20
  Yes.
• 35:21
  Pretend that you were looking something.
• 35:22
  They've never registered that.
• 35:23
  I think that I did.
• 35:24
  You know, at one point, and didn't hear back, I know no one has got any more information
• 35:29
  on that.
• 35:30
  I think if a journalist did, it would probably be a zinger ratio of the times because she's
• 35:32
  like reported on that.
• 35:33
  But, um, this is one of many examples in my book of Oxford institutions, just, uh,
• 35:39
  what's necessarily an equivalent?
• 35:40
  Well, I was going to say, shoulding the bed, dropping the ball-
• 35:42
  You can shit the bed.
• 35:43
  Fumbling the digital idea.
• 35:44
  Yeah.
• 35:45
  Fuck on the kangaroo.
• 35:46
  Fucking the kangaroo.
• 35:47
  Uh, do you, when did people say, why do you spend so much time, you know, focusing
• 35:52
  on this issue?
• 35:53
  Yeah.
• 35:54
  Do you think you're good at answering that question and defending yourself?
• 35:56
  Yeah.
• 35:57
  I was actually working on that.
• 35:58
  Well, I don't.
• 35:59
  But anyway, you're defending yourself.
• 36:00
  And then I'll, uh, I'll criticize you.
• 36:01
  I was working on this on the book yesterday, and I think it's worth addressing.
• 36:05
  Um, I've also had friends ask me it, like respectfully, uh, I think like, as a journalist,
• 36:11
  you sometimes fall into certain stories and you're in a position where you can report
• 36:15
  on them more thoroughly than others have, uh, I've been on this one on and off for about
• 36:21
  a decade.
• 36:22
  Sometimes off.
• 36:23
  I mean, I wrote a whole book on other subjects, um, I think it's important.
• 36:26
  I think this raises really important questions about the state of our institutions, about
• 36:30
  medical research, about how medical research can go wrong, about the broader crisis of, of,
• 36:35
  you know, authority and expertise, trust and experts.
• 36:39
  Uh, so basically I think it's an important story.
• 36:41
  And once I write the book, I'm, I'm eager to move on because it's immensely toxic.
• 36:45
  I don't know.
• 36:46
  There's a really good book, um, by a guy named Dave Colin, Colin about Columbine.
• 36:51
  So Columbine was an incredibly high profile of that, at the end of the day, in world historically,
• 36:56
  Columbine is not important for that, but he spent, I think, a decade just trying to get
• 37:00
  to the, as much of the truth as he could about this one horrible school shooting.
• 37:05
  And I think no one would ask him, why is that important?
• 37:08
  Like it's just self evidently true that journalists looked into certain stories and they're
• 37:12
  not, by numbers of lives lost or affected the most important stories of them.
• 37:16
  No, but people are suspicious of stories where there's a vested interest from a particular
• 37:21
  group at, uh, exaggerating it, right?
• 37:23
  So the, the critique for you get is like, um, people on the right who want to denigrate,
• 37:30
  uh, trans people are going to be heartened by, by cherry picking instances of detransitionals
• 37:37
  and amplifying their stories and trying to create a frame in which it seems like being
• 37:42
  trans is illegitimate for suspect or something.
• 37:45
  Yeah.
• 37:46
  And so in the case of Columbine, it doesn't really, you know, the better analogy might be
• 37:49
  like someone who spends a lot of time questioning whether or not the, the number of six million
• 37:54
  Jews in the Holocaust is true.
• 37:55
  Like, yeah, a legitimate question, but also people raise their eyebrows when people keep
• 38:00
  banging on about asking that question, it's like there was, there are a bunch of people.
• 38:04
  I heard this, um, interview that you did with Lance, this, this, uh, this, this, this,
• 38:09
  this, right?
• 38:10
  It was a reason I could only lost about half an hour, unfortunately, because he was giving
• 38:14
  you a quote out of context.
• 38:15
  I lost about a half hour, unfortunately, half an hour would be great, though.
• 38:19
  I mean, half an hour would be wonderful at my age, are you kidding me, Jesse?
• 38:23
  Uh, but I think you were too kind in granting him too many points.
• 38:31
  His basic point seems to be psychologically speaking.
• 38:34
  I had to adopt a certain level of kindness so that I didn't, so you didn't,
• 38:37
  exaggerate him or explode.
• 38:39
  Yeah.
• 38:40
  He is the thing that critique seems to be, and it's one that I'm sure you get a lot because
• 38:46
  I hear it a lot about you.
• 38:48
  Why carry picking all of these examples of detransition?
• 38:52
  Is there one thing about that?
• 38:53
  Yes.
• 38:54
  Nobody, nobody knows the detransition rate, nobody, especially when it comes to later
• 38:57
  onset kids who don't have a childhood history of gender dysphoria, and they just, they
• 39:03
  just released a study of kids who transitioned at a very young age.
• 39:07
  And over a seven year span, 20% of them had at least one identity change, which the authors
• 39:13
  sort of, I think, presented as a fairly low number, but these are kids who are very
• 39:16
  gender non-conforming as kids, even they develop and change their identities over time.
• 39:23
  So kids who come out suddenly in adolescence, which is a phenomenon that happens, we have
• 39:27
  no data on that.
• 39:29
  And unfortunately, medical associations and some trans activists keep spreading this
• 39:33
  1% regret or 1% detransition figure, and it's just both.
• 39:38
  Look into the work of Ken and McKinnon McKinnon, who's a trans man living in Canada who researches
• 39:41
  this.
• 39:42
  It's not, it's not 1%.
• 39:43
  It's also, it doesn't the 1% come from a cohort of people who are self identified as trans
• 39:48
  people?
• 39:49
  No, that's a separate issue.
• 39:51
  One, there's just to clarify the problem with that would be obviously that you're only
• 39:56
  looking at the people who, successfully, there's another zombie statistic that only a small
• 40:03
  percentage of the people who detransition do so because of a change to their gender identity.
• 40:07
  That comes from a sample of people who currently identify as trans.
• 40:10
  So mythologically, that's a total zombie statistic.
• 40:14
  So all of which is to say, setting aside the fact that I'm much more interested in and
• 40:19
  have focused more on the medical evidence and how medical evidence gets communicated,
• 40:24
  in the detransition rate, I just think the premise that why are you cherry picking
• 40:28
  these rare examples, this protocol of taking a kid who does not have a lengthy childhood
• 40:35
  of gender dysphoria and putting them on blockers and hormones and sometimes giving them surgery,
• 40:39
  this is brand new.
• 40:40
  This is like the last 10 or 15 years.
• 40:42
  No one has collected good, long-term outcome data.
• 40:44
  The one team that has seems to be hiding some of it.
• 40:48
  So for anyone to stay with confidence, we know the detransition rate is low.
• 40:52
  I don't know where they're getting that.
• 40:55
  The response, I think, when someone accuses you of cherry picking detransition as stories
• 40:59
  and elevating them over the stories of happily transgender people.
• 41:04
  What happened in this recent exchange, the argument that you had with this guy who thinks
• 41:10
  that you're a raging transphobia was that you tried to point out to him that there
• 41:14
  actually were instances in the article in which you did cover happy transition as you
• 41:18
  tried to be balanced.
• 41:19
  And he said, well, yeah, but I mean, you can imagine that if I was doing a story about
• 41:24
  for example crime and all the people who I was reporting on were black, that might make
• 41:29
  it seem like I was prejudiced against black people.
• 41:32
  I think the correct thing for journalists to do, not to tell you how to do your job,
• 41:39
  but I don't know.
• 41:40
  I don't think being the person who has the adversarial interview a lot when I had my radio
• 41:44
  show is for you to say, I was choosing the detransition.
• 41:48
  It's because it's their story that I'm telling it.
• 41:51
  Yes, I am unashamed about the fact that there is a controversy about a particular policy,
• 41:56
  a set of policies that have been introduced recently.
• 41:59
  And there is a legitimate argument within the community of therapists and activists and
• 42:04
  the wider society at large about this thing.
• 42:06
  So it's actually not incumbent on me to be perfectly even handed about every single
• 42:11
  instance because I'm reporting on this thing before I'm telling the stories about this
• 42:15
  thing.
• 42:16
  There was an instance of an overwhelming spike in black crime and I talked about black
• 42:22
  crime.
• 42:23
  That would not be racist because I'm not equally talking about white crime.
• 42:26
  I'm reporting on the phenomenon of black crime and I'm reporting on the phenomenon
• 42:30
  of detransitioning.
• 42:31
  So if you want to do another story about another thing that you can, but like I'm not
• 42:34
  required to tell every single story in the universe what I'm trying to analyze a particular
• 42:38
  photo.
• 42:39
  And also it also reflects I think a misunderstanding of what journalism is.
• 42:43
  So this was, and I want obviously I'd like to eventually move on from this story, came
• 42:49
  out in a 2018, this Atlantic story, I very specifically, first of all, almost all the
• 42:55
  parts of it, I would do differently than just for people who aren't fully on the, the
• 43:00
  story we're talking about was the first being mainstream American magazine article ever
• 43:06
  on wrestling, to wrestle with whether or not the claims of the LGBTQIA activist movement
• 43:13
  were correct about the importance of affirmative care for transgender.
• 43:19
  Although, what I was, and yes, thank you for introducing the article for a talk about
• 43:23
  it because not everyone knows.
• 43:25
  I was much too deferential to the activists.
• 43:27
  If you read that, I frame it as, look, we know this works for most people, but there's
• 43:32
  some, for whom it's more complicated, let's focus on the complexity.
• 43:36
  I don't think we know, we don't know what percentage of people it works for because even
• 43:39
  all these years later, no one has collected the fucking data, which is really important.
• 43:44
  So I think to the extent I would do that story differently, I would have been more skeptical
• 43:49
  of the claims of trans activists, including I think I have the 1% statistic or something
• 43:54
  close to it.
• 43:55
  And I referenced a horrible study that I didn't at the time look closely enough.
• 43:59
  So, look, anyone who thinks this isn't a legitimate controversy probably just isn't
• 44:04
  going to read my book or listen to my podcast, that's fine.
• 44:07
  You had all worried that the amount of attention that was given to woken us and to amplifying
• 44:14
  the craziness of online stupidity for shows like your own could have contributed to the
• 44:19
  right-wing mega backlash?
• 44:22
  I mean, I don't know, if you're going to take that argument seriously, why not take the
• 44:28
  argument that the craziness itself was the problem?
• 44:30
  I sometimes encounter this thing where someone says something crazy, someone influential
• 44:35
  and important says something crazy, I point out it's crazy, it's like how dare you point
• 44:38
  that out, you're just giving the right fuel.
• 44:40
  And I think if we follow that logic to its conclusion, we just, we can't criticize anyone
• 44:45
  on the left.
• 44:46
  I would like to think that Boston reported in the eyes of conservatives, I mean totally
• 44:51
  idealistic here, maybe this is wrong, but we have conservative listeners, we have a small
• 44:55
  slice of Trump listeners, I'd like to think we are showing them that there are same people
• 44:59
  on the left, even just the discussion of like the importance of economic issues over more
• 45:04
  superficial identity issues, I think if that was the face of the left, the left wouldn't
• 45:09
  have the problems it has.
• 45:11
  So I'm not that sympathetic to that argument.
• 45:14
  If you're just joining us, we're sitting on a rooftop in New York City, where it's 155
• 45:19
  degrees in one shade, on Josh Sips and on uncomfortable conversations, we have
• 45:24
  a physical uncomfortable conversation, conversations that are not, not only about the most
• 45:29
  ugly issues that would make people uncomfortable, if they were to express a stride in opinion
• 45:33
  about the matter, cocktail parties such as trans issues, which is where we have the wonderful
• 45:37
  Jessie's single winners, but also I try to make the person physically uncomfortable by
• 45:41
  putting them in a very hot environment, that's not true, but every, almost every day for
• 45:44
  the next two weeks, we're traveling around the world on a Zeppes live world tour, sitting
• 45:48
  down with luminaries on the to end.
• 45:51
  It sounds like the name of an Austro one day, uptown thunders, uptown thunders.
• 45:55
  Why aren't you wearing a black shirt, amateur hour?
• 45:58
  Do you think the closings of hospitals in the last few weeks will stick or will it all
• 46:02
  just open back up after the Trump administration?
• 46:06
  Why aren't we wearing black shirts?
• 46:07
  I'm wearing a light green pastel shirt, and I'm Schvitz and Olova.
• 46:12
  The other person asked if I would evaporate by the end of the interview, I think I have
• 46:15
  too much body fat to foil, just be a puddle of like boiling fat.
• 46:20
  Be like the end.
• 46:21
  What was the movie with the meme or that came out a year or two?
• 46:24
  Substance.
• 46:25
  Be like the end of substance.
• 46:26
  Substance.
• 46:27
  I love it.
• 46:28
  I thought it was great.
• 46:29
  I thought it was really good.
• 46:30
  Difficult watch.
• 46:31
  But very good.
• 46:32
  I saw that with David Williams.
• 46:33
  Do you know David Williams?
• 46:34
  Right.
• 46:35
  He's really a little Brit comedian.
• 46:36
  Nice.
• 46:37
  And he was doing a tour of Australia and we were in New Zealand and we had nothing to
• 46:39
  do.
• 46:40
  Then we found a little art house theater in Wellington and just laughed our heads off at
• 46:45
  it.
• 46:46
  And so you can go back and listen to and watch the David Williams interview and we're
• 46:49
  going across from options, but just subscribe for a couple of conversations anyway and subscribe
• 46:54
  to blockchain reports, where Jesse and his boss co-host Katie Herzog only talked about
• 46:59
  maintenance.
• 47:00
  The question was, oh yeah, hospital's closing down there, use gender medicine offerings,
• 47:05
  here's a trumple, they opened that up.
• 47:07
  I have no particular insight here.
• 47:08
  I will say based on a little bit of reporting I've done, I suspect that within some of
• 47:15
  these hospitals, the like their general councils, their lawyers are maybe not, I'm happy
• 47:21
  that they are ending this kind of care.
• 47:22
  I think it's brought with it some legal liability and it would not shock me if these clinics
• 47:28
  don't reopen.
• 47:29
  I think the problem now is if you have a kid who's been on blockers or hormones for years
• 47:33
  and they're suddenly cut off from this medication, that's not the way to handle it.
• 47:38
  I mean to forcibly detransition and that's not.
• 47:42
  This is all of my reason, I think, like I and Katie, we've tried to carve out a way
• 47:46
  to talk about this, that isn't all or nothing, so that's not good.
• 47:50
  To cut kids off from medicine, they've been taking and they've been told this medicine
• 47:55
  will prevent you from killing themselves, which I think is a gross, disgusting exaggeration
• 47:59
  of the evidence, but then you just cut them off and you just let them forcibly detransition.
• 48:03
  This is a horrible outcome.
• 48:04
  I mean this does to non-Americans and maybe even to many Americans, this strikes us as
• 48:09
  a thing that America likes to do, which is swing from pole to pole and not you can imagine
• 48:15
  a way of gradually stepping down and reforming the treatment of transgender and pediatric medicine
• 48:22
  instead of just going wildly from one to the other.
• 48:25
  Do you think this is going to be like a sexy calendar of screenshots of the white thing
• 48:29
  we've done?
• 48:30
  Especially now that we've got AI, they're going to put you on the body of a live or not
• 48:36
  live, but just sweaty.
• 48:38
  Just like an Aussie firefighter about my face.
• 48:40
  Sure.
• 48:41
  We'll do that.
• 48:42
  We'll do that.
• 48:43
  I'm not uncomfortable conversations.
• 48:44
  Before I let you leave that point about whether or not we have any culpability for right-wing
• 48:49
  back lashes, I mean by the logic of what you're saying, which is, you know, we should
• 48:54
  criticize the person saying the stupid thing instead of the people calling up a person saying
• 48:58
  the stupid thing, wouldn't that mean that the Chris Rufo's and James Lindsay's and
• 49:04
  the libs of Tik Tok and people who devote their lives to amplifying the most random and
• 49:10
  inconsequential instances of woke bullshit in order to empower a right-wing backlash.
• 49:16
  Also have the same rationale.
• 49:17
  Oh, well, no.
• 49:18
  Lips of Tik Tok will take some random teacher with pink hair and make her a celebrity or
• 49:23
  usually their most celebrity from being crazy, see, right?
• 49:26
  But on the same argument that you just made, which is one I'll criticize the person doing
• 49:30
  stupid thing instead of the person calling up the stupid thing.
• 49:32
  Oh, because I'd like to think of him as a whole.
• 49:34
  Well, I think criticizing the stupid thing if the American Psychiatric Association puts
• 49:39
  out recommendations about hormones and surgery for teenagers that seem like they were ridden
• 49:46
  by an activist group.
• 49:47
  Okay.
• 49:48
  We'll then take it out.
• 49:49
  Yes.
• 49:50
  So that's a powerful organization.
• 49:51
  So you might add a caveat to that, which is this stupid thing has to be consequential
• 49:55
  or it has to be like a public service.
• 49:58
  The near look, again, we live in a small, incestuous world.
• 50:02
  In our cases, literally, because we're brothers and we do sex stuff at very the way Lotus.
• 50:09
  But something like whether or not a journalist like Donald MacKill Jr. or an editor like James
• 50:14
  Bennett can just work at the New York Times.
• 50:17
  No, but that's not all you talk about.
• 50:18
  I mean, I guess I'm talking.
• 50:19
  Let's talk about what we're talking about.
• 50:20
  Oh, we do random stories.
• 50:21
  Yeah.
• 50:22
  Like there's a cafe, you know, that is a communal cafe, you know, and you do a whole
• 50:26
  hour about how, how, how, how woke and crazy they got.
• 50:30
  Does that not feed into a, a cultural sense that the left is batshit crazy?
• 50:36
  And for some people, although not you and you wouldn't condone it, but for some people,
• 50:40
  that makes them more liable to go, ah, the hell with all, I'd rather, I'd rather a sane
• 50:45
  orange man.
• 50:46
  Well, an insane orange man who at least talks to me, uh, openly about his own corruption
• 50:52
  than a deranged stack of lunatics.
• 50:55
  I don't know.
• 50:56
  I mean, I don't, I think I don't think us, those sorts of like coffee shop blowups or
• 51:04
  theater blowups tend to do really well.
• 51:07
  People really like just, it's, it's basically gossip.
• 51:10
  And usually there's an element of ideology or wokeness, but I think people are in it for
• 51:15
  the drama.
• 51:16
  Like there's entire subreddits devoted to drama in different communities.
• 51:19
  So I think anyone who's like, I'm going to become conservative or pro Trump because
• 51:24
  a random Chicago theater troupe melted down like, but it's not that simple, isn't I mean,
• 51:29
  I'm asking this because I copped that criticism as well, like people being like, you know
• 51:34
  what, there are ways that I feel it in the Jewish community as well where like my criticisms
• 51:39
  of Israel, Jews will say, like, let's have this conversation in house.
• 51:42
  Let's not go spraying our criticisms of our own community out into the wild to be misused
• 51:49
  by bad actors.
• 51:50
  I mean, which is similarly with woke, I don't know.
• 51:53
  I'm more on your side, but it's not something that I don't wrestle with where people have
• 51:57
  said to me, like, you know, you want to have a conversation about like how stupid it is
• 52:01
  to put transgender pronouns in our email signatures if we're working at a multinational
• 52:05
  company.
• 52:06
  Like let's talk about that internally within the left and try to figure out how much we're
• 52:11
  committed to that rather than hysterically amplifying our stupidity.
• 52:16
  One of them is there was a lot of stuff that was just like imposed on other people like
• 52:21
  it.
• 52:22
  Right.
• 52:23
  So Mike Pascha gets fired by slate or PJ vote who co-hosts in my favorite podcast
• 52:27
  reply all gets driven out of gimwit under insane circumstances.
• 52:31
  Luckily, you know, I have another great question, which is excellent.
• 52:34
  Yeah.
• 52:35
  The idea that I'm, these are like firmly in my wheelhouse in terms of media criticism,
• 52:40
  drama.
• 52:41
  What's the argument for why I shouldn't cover them because it'll give fuel to the right?
• 52:45
  Less or like that.
• 52:46
  No, I think in those cases, there's a public interest.
• 52:50
  You can fall back on the same issue that you would use for, you know, the American
• 52:54
  Medical Association or something, which is that these are major media companies misbehaved.
• 52:58
  It also could just be that there's 15 or 20% of our stories that are about small-scarable
• 53:02
  shit because we do a podcast on small-scarable shit.
• 53:06
  Also, any journalist or content creator who spends any time being like, I wonder if the net
• 53:13
  effect of my work will drive people to the right or the left.
• 53:16
  I can't imagine a worse use of your timer or a worse rate to just create unlistenable
• 53:23
  or unreadable track.
• 53:24
  I mean, this is one of my, I do stand by the Atlantic article and I'm proud of it.
• 53:29
  But we did, we spent thousands of words of that article proving not a transfer, not a
• 53:34
  transfer, not a transfer.
• 53:35
  It's just, you shouldn't need to worry that much.
• 53:39
  Like if people think you're a monster, they're going to think you're a monster, and you
• 53:42
  can say what have I said, that's monstrous, either they have the goods or they don't.
• 53:46
  And even, I mean, then they can also take things out of context as it happens to me all
• 53:50
  the time.
• 53:51
  I'm writing newspaper articles where the first two thirds is all throat clearing, is all
• 53:54
  me saying, let me grant as much as I possibly can to the other side.
• 53:58
  And then also this, and people only focus on the this and pretend that you didn't say
• 54:02
  any of the other side.
• 54:03
  And I would say, I'm not in the business of saying whose fault it is, it's like the
• 54:08
  person who voted for Trump, whose phone the election is not someone who's listening
• 54:12
  to a block and reported or reading the New York Times.
• 54:14
  It's a very different population we have very little contact with.
• 54:18
  That's my first argument.
• 54:19
  But if we're going to play that game of which media drives people in which directions,
• 54:24
  block and report it in the free press versus something like, you know, just to name one
• 54:28
  name, Jamel Bowie, after Trump got elected the first time, Slate, there's no such thing
• 54:32
  as a good Trump voter, or the entire cottage industry of trying to prove that conservative
• 54:36
  or Trump voters aren't just wrong, which I think they are, but have some sort of pathology
• 54:41
  or driven by racism.
• 54:43
  That's an entire cottage industry of liberal, academic and journalistic output.
• 54:48
  And if you're going to play this game of comparing what drives people to the right, that
• 54:53
  or blocked and reported in the free press and might pesca, to me, that would be a no-brainer.
• 54:57
  But I'm just not interested in playing that game at all.
• 54:59
  Are we getting more divided?
• 55:00
  Oh, yeah, to movie.
• 55:02
  Although, actually, there's been like a temporarily, I think Trump brings like a center
• 55:08
  right to fairly far left coalition together and some issues, like especially the most
• 55:12
  grotesque stuff, like the deportation stuff, or, you know, the Epstein stuff.
• 55:17
  I think as soon as the left, I'm not saying the left is like re-unified, it will always
• 55:21
  eat fractured and look for excuses.
• 55:23
  Have you been intrigued by the left's response to Trump because prior to Trump, I was saying
• 55:27
  that the main reason why people might be considering Trump, because they're anti-woke,
• 55:33
  should not vote for Trump, is because he will supercharge the left's arrangement, because
• 55:37
  the left will go much more votes because the left's just so good at manipulating us.
• 55:42
  And that hasn't happened, actually.
• 55:43
  I mean, they've been, they've been, they've been, they're cordoned off on blue sky.
• 55:48
  Right.
• 55:49
  I think, like, if you go to that, but I've never been to blue sky, and nobody, nobody
• 55:51
  is saying as far as I can tell, has been to blue sky.
• 55:54
  So like the, in 2020, in 2021, the center of gravity of, you know, of center left opinion
• 56:03
  in the United States was extremely orthodox and extremely dogmatic about a set of social
• 56:08
  justice issues when it came to immigration, trans issues, sexuality, the MeToo movement,
• 56:13
  you know, name your cultural, media tripwire.
• 56:17
  Um, now I feel like the mainstream left is a deer in the headlights, not quite sure what
• 56:26
  to do about Trump, but is quite sure, I think, that doubling down on sensoriousness and
• 56:32
  finger wagging and purity is not the answer, which I'm mildly impressed by maybe.
• 56:40
  I think the people who tried to make life miserable for like journalists who are a few inches
• 56:46
  to the right of them, but so on the left, they're so on blue sky, this, they're so raging
• 56:49
  about everything.
• 56:50
  There's so in places like the nation, the American prospect, but I think they have less cultural
• 56:54
  power than they have for a long time.
• 56:56
  And I, I would not, if I could pull a lever and have Harris win instead of Trump and
• 57:01
  still have to deal with them, or I would take that trade in an instant, but the tiniest
• 57:05
  of silver linings is that I think mainstream liberal democratic types, understand there's
• 57:12
  a subset of people who are too crazy and annoying and a good, stand blue sky.
• 57:16
  That's fine.
• 57:17
  If you're just tuning in, Jesse single is with us for just another 10 minutes in the,
• 57:20
  in the baking, yeah, and insufferable humidity.
• 57:23
  Oh, questions from New York City, we're on a lovely balcony in Brooklyn, you probably
• 57:27
  can't make out the Manhattan skyline behind us, but it is rather pretty because I think
• 57:32
  this would be a beautiful balcony if they were to turn down the heat a little bit.
• 57:34
  Yeah.
• 57:35
  I know.
• 57:36
  Talk to God.
• 57:37
  And I'm Jewish.
• 57:38
  I control the weather.
• 57:39
  That's right.
• 57:40
  Space lasers.
• 57:41
  This is a, Jesse's podcast is blocked and reported with the fabulous K. He has a, we also
• 57:45
  love subscribe to block the reported, subscribe to Jesse's sub stack.
• 57:49
  If you're coming through this sub stack and you're going to know who the hell is that.
• 57:51
  I'm old Zepsy, Josh Zepsy, subscribe to uncomfortable conversations because this is the first
• 57:55
  instalment of our Zepsy live world tour on the world, first and by far, the guests will
• 58:01
  get better.
• 58:02
  You'll get us.
• 58:03
  Honest.
• 58:04
  Can you walk?
• 58:05
  Yeah.
• 58:06
  Get the, he's going out the sunscreen again.
• 58:07
  Yeah.
• 58:08
  But he's putting it on my face now.
• 58:09
  This is nice.
• 58:10
  That's great.
• 58:11
  Oh, he's actually rubbing it.
• 58:12
  And these, and these hands had anything dirty on them lately.
• 58:13
  Yes.
• 58:14
  Okay.
• 58:15
  Good.
• 58:16
  So he's rubbing a combination of semen and sunscreen on to my face live on the sub stack.
• 58:21
  So I subscribe.
• 58:22
  This is not like that of sales at page.
• 58:24
  There's never been a porno.
• 58:26
  Any of these balconies felt about it.
• 58:28
  Someone was telling me that I'm going to dinner next week in West Hollywood at the site
• 58:32
  of one of the first American bath houses, like a gay.
• 58:37
  So it's all like it's not bad anymore now.
• 58:39
  It's a fancy restaurant apparently that you can still.
• 58:41
  Those walls could talk.
• 58:42
  Yeah.
• 58:43
  This wall in those walls could talk.
• 58:45
  The gomma, yeah, it's just dripping off the walls.
• 58:49
  So yeah, subscribe to follow the uncomfortable conversation sub stack if you want to get notified
• 58:53
  as we're talking to Sam Harris and all these other people over the course of the next
• 58:56
  couple of weeks we're bouncing around the around the world, literally going around the
• 59:00
  world.
• 59:01
  No, literally.
• 59:02
  Yeah, literally around the world around the whole world, California, and then I guess
• 59:08
  you don't know.
• 59:09
  Then we're going back to Australia, California to Europe, Australia.
• 59:12
  Yeah.
• 59:13
  Who wrote it?
• 59:14
  It doesn't make any sense.
• 59:15
  It's an idiotic rallying that I wanted to be hearing you all.
• 59:17
  Yeah.
• 59:18
  Also, on Tuesday night, we can talk about this on Tuesday night.
• 59:22
  We're going to the comedy seller at 6 p.m. Tuesday, the 29th of July.
• 59:25
  Am I a part of it?
• 59:26
  I still don't understand.
• 59:27
  Am I a part of it?
• 59:28
  I invited you and say you said maybe.
• 59:29
  Yeah.
• 59:30
  You're welcome to come.
• 59:31
  But it'll be Coleman Hughes, Michael Moynihan, Camille Foster, Matt Welch.
• 59:34
  Look at him.
• 59:35
  No, I'm dormant.
• 59:36
  And now Jesse's single apparently.
• 59:37
  I mean, do I have, is there a slot for me to like talk?
• 59:39
  Yeah.
• 59:40
  Well, I don't know what we're doing yet.
• 59:41
  I need 20 minutes just to myself.
• 59:42
  Just have that.
• 59:43
  That's right.
• 59:44
  Is there an after party?
• 59:45
  Yeah.
• 59:46
  Yeah.
• 59:47
  I don't know.
• 59:48
  No, I don't want to tell people now.
• 59:49
  But I haven't worked it out yet.
• 59:51
  I'll be there.
• 59:52
  My father died the day before yesterday.
• 59:54
  That's not a joke.
• 59:55
  And I've been a little distracted.
• 59:57
  So why haven't we talked about this over?
• 59:59
  Whatever that show is, it will be a fabulous thing.
• 1:00:02
  So go to the comedy seller website and buy tickets to the Tuesday night show.
• 1:00:05
  When my mom died, I did not use it enough to drive engagements.
• 1:00:10
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:00:11
  I mean, I'm so grateful that he died when he did.
• 1:00:14
  Because now I get to milk his memory for my own clicks.
• 1:00:18
  So this is great.
• 1:00:19
  Milk his memory.
• 1:00:20
  So you just to be clear.
• 1:00:22
  Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  Your dad died.
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:00:25
  And then you had a pre-play and trip to flee.
• 1:00:27
  That's right.
• 1:00:28
  This was in Australia.
• 1:00:29
  This was in Australia.
• 1:00:30
  And then you were suddenly on a plane elsewhere.
• 1:00:31
  And then I was suddenly on a plane.
• 1:00:32
  And you're not returning the same day.
• 1:00:33
  And you're not returning the same day.
• 1:00:34
  So the police seeking interview closest to the next of kin.
• 1:00:37
  I'm not here.
• 1:00:38
  I'm not here.
• 1:00:39
  I'm sorry.
• 1:00:40
  I'm not saying I'm trying to track me down if you want to.
• 1:00:41
  Well, I'm not going to be happy to track me down.
• 1:00:43
  You're basically doing it back here every single day.
• 1:00:47
  I'm doing live streams.
• 1:00:48
  Sydney Opera House.
• 1:00:49
  I'm still here, mate.
• 1:00:50
  Still here, mate.
• 1:00:51
  That's right.
• 1:00:52
  I'm here doing live streams from a different location.
• 1:00:54
  So they're never going to be able to track me.
• 1:00:55
  Even if they got in touch with the NYPD, by the time they got
• 1:00:59
  their ass together, I'd be on a different state.
• 1:01:02
  You know what I'm saying?
• 1:01:04
  This is how I think, man.
• 1:01:05
  This is how I think.
• 1:01:06
  I don't mean to be seen.
• 1:01:07
  What are they going to do?
• 1:01:08
  I'm sorry about your dad, by the way.
• 1:01:09
  Thank you very much.
• 1:01:10
  We talked about it.
• 1:01:11
  Sorry.
• 1:01:12
  We talked about it before.
• 1:01:13
  We went live.
• 1:01:14
  I don't know.
• 1:01:15
  I'm not supposed to look at the camera.
• 1:01:16
  He was very sympathetic.
• 1:01:17
  I was.
• 1:01:18
  Yeah, he was very.
• 1:01:19
  He's a very kind gentleman.
• 1:01:20
  I was like, if it'll make you feel better, I'll rub you down during the live stream as
• 1:01:24
  many times as you want.
• 1:01:25
  And he said, do it a lot.
• 1:01:27
  He's been gently masturbating me with banana boat sport sunscreen all hour long.
• 1:01:32
  If I get, if I actually get someone from this, I'm suing you and you have your own company
• 1:01:37
  or do you work at my own company, you can't see me.
• 1:01:40
  Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  So when do we get out, your personal savings?
• 1:01:43
  Is your husband rich?
• 1:01:45
  Yeah, but he works for the company too.
• 1:01:47
  I say, yeah, he's rich.
• 1:01:48
  He's like, you're not rich.
• 1:01:49
  We don't find him.
• 1:01:50
  He's from Massachusetts.
• 1:01:51
  He's fine.
• 1:01:52
  He's from New Hampshire.
• 1:01:53
  He's from New Hampshire.
• 1:01:54
  New Hampshire.
• 1:01:56
  Platforming is the last thing that I want to get you.
• 1:01:58
  No one should be platformed.
• 1:01:59
  No one should be platformed.
• 1:02:00
  Actually, you know what?
• 1:02:01
  I know this is a rapid fire.
• 1:02:02
  I think he's only had a few minutes.
• 1:02:04
  So this is a dizzy or fast rapid fire in the hot seat with Jesse Sandler.
• 1:02:09
  You all thought it's about how to decide whether or not it's worth talking to somebody
• 1:02:18
  and elevating their opinions.
• 1:02:20
  It's totally context dependent.
• 1:02:25
  I could imagine a situation where if I knew a lot about white nationalism and race science,
• 1:02:31
  I would do an adversarial interview with someone who promoted those positions.
• 1:02:36
  The flashlight on my phone is on, which is the oldest person thing that I've done accidentally.
• 1:02:41
  Let's talk about that.
• 1:02:42
  Actually, having your flashlight on your phone.
• 1:02:44
  Let me turn mine on too.
• 1:02:45
  Just to make it feel a little bit better.
• 1:02:47
  I think there's no easy answer.
• 1:02:48
  I think oftentimes people use no platforming.
• 1:02:52
  So I did this interview.
• 1:02:53
  We mentioned earlier this guy lands from the surface.
• 1:02:56
  People can watch that.
• 1:02:57
  That was the first time someone with any meaningful platform had agreed to talk to me about our disagreements.
• 1:03:05
  I think usually no platforming attempts come from people who are scared of debating what are actually mainstream issues.
• 1:03:13
  I think in other cases, like public universities, the fact of the matter is according to the First Amendment,
• 1:03:18
  a student group can invite whoever they want.
• 1:03:20
  So I'm generally not in favor of no platforming now.
• 1:03:24
  The problem is, if you had someone who's even more white supremacist than me,
• 1:03:29
  and you hadn't done your homework.
• 1:03:32
  And you left them...
• 1:03:33
  Hitler.
• 1:03:34
  Hitler.
• 1:03:35
  Who do I think it was even more...
• 1:03:38
  Not Goebbels, maybe Goering.
• 1:03:40
  Do you think Coleman Shoes and Hitler would be a good debate?
• 1:03:43
  That would be good.
• 1:03:45
  I don't think he's really a word in Edgewise.
• 1:03:48
  He was a bit of a gabber.
• 1:03:49
  He loved his own voice.
• 1:03:51
  I think if you have someone on just for the sake of controversy and you let them steamroll you,
• 1:03:55
  and you don't know how to push back.
• 1:03:56
  That's the thing about platforming.
• 1:03:57
  Yes.
• 1:03:59
  Are you having an adversarial...
• 1:04:02
  The problem is he's actually a croft to be able to have an adversarial interview.
• 1:04:06
  Not a lot of people can't do it or work it or do it.
• 1:04:08
  So then they just have to put a snott and then they just let them to it.
• 1:04:11
  Okay.
• 1:04:12
  This is like I said.
• 1:04:13
  This is the rapid font.
• 1:04:14
  Okay, most underrated American city.
• 1:04:19
  Goddamn.
• 1:04:20
  Comments down.
• 1:04:21
  Well, no it was properly rated.
• 1:04:23
  I was the most underrated.
• 1:04:24
  I really like Columbus, Ohio.
• 1:04:25
  When I was here for my Atlantic sort.
• 1:04:27
  That's great.
• 1:04:27
  That is amazing.
• 1:04:28
  What the best sport?
• 1:04:30
  Basketball.
• 1:04:32
  What's going to happen to you when you die?
• 1:04:35
  This was actually a source of recent.
• 1:04:38
  Discute was someone I cared about.
• 1:04:40
  I think nothing,
• 1:04:42
  Nothing.
• 1:04:43
  But second place, either nothing, one of my few non-materialistic, atheistic beliefs
• 1:04:49
  is that I think there's like some of the reincarnation stories are just, and even Carl
• 1:04:53
  Sagan thought this, Jesse Barron looking at his work too.
• 1:04:56
  They're just crazy enough that maybe there's something there.
• 1:04:59
  So zero, nothing, or like two percent chance reincarnation.
• 1:05:03
  Like a reincarnation in real time to a baby who's just being born?
• 1:05:08
  Or a baby who's born.
• 1:05:09
  There's like a apparently a period where you just like hang out.
• 1:05:11
  Like I think it's at the comedy seller.
• 1:05:13
  Okay.
• 1:05:14
  On Tuesday night, 20 or 29, 20 or 29.
• 1:05:16
  It's a comedy seller no matter who's performing.
• 1:05:19
  And then a baby.
• 1:05:20
  Okay.
• 1:05:21
  If you can go, you can go, you can go, you can go, you can go to the past.
• 1:05:23
  Where do you go?
• 1:05:24
  Oh, fuck, Jesus Christ.
• 1:05:26
  Then you're like vaccinated and stuff.
• 1:05:30
  And you have a gum or something.
• 1:05:31
  I don't, this isn't obvious.
• 1:05:33
  Okay.
• 1:05:34
  One obvious answer is see one of the great, excellent.
• 1:05:36
  I know this is supposed to be a lightning round.
• 1:05:37
  I'm just going to draw it out.
• 1:05:38
  I just love the attention.
• 1:05:40
  Obviously, like some great Bronze Age civilization
• 1:05:43
  know nothing about it, like the height of the commuter empire,
• 1:05:46
  ancient Rome ancient Greece.
• 1:05:48
  But also like, if I'm a Germany before things went to shit,
• 1:05:52
  like Berlin, Berlin, I mean, like, yeah, incredible.
• 1:05:55
  I like it.
• 1:05:55
  I like it.
• 1:05:56
  I like that one.
• 1:05:57
  Thank you.
• 1:05:58
  I'm going to cabaret tonight on Broadway.
• 1:05:59
  Do you want to say why?
• 1:06:01
  Yes, because my dad, who was famous and beloved actor in Australia,
• 1:06:06
  you are suspected, but not wanted for questioning.
• 1:06:10
  I'm wondering for questioning.
• 1:06:11
  I mean, I'm a person of interest.
• 1:06:13
  It assists police with their infuaries
• 1:06:15
  into his untimely death at the age of 81.
• 1:06:17
  From Alzheimer's?
• 1:06:18
  From Alzheimer's.
• 1:06:19
  In nursing home.
• 1:06:21
  He died on Wednesday and so he was one of my favorite roles
• 1:06:28
  that he did was in this big chore of cabaret.
• 1:06:33
  There was the Australian version of the Alan Cumming version
• 1:06:36
  that was directed by Sam Mendez.
• 1:06:38
  And he was in that role.
• 1:06:39
  When you say role he did, he was in the audience
• 1:06:41
  and he would get up on stage and try to enjoy the point of his career.
• 1:06:44
  He had a role.
• 1:06:45
  No, no, no.
• 1:06:46
  He played a great role, which is not in the movie,
• 1:06:50
  but which is in the play, which is Herschutz.
• 1:06:54
  And had this fabulous number about the,
• 1:06:58
  it's called a pineapple song, or I call a pineapple song,
• 1:07:00
  where he wants to buy a gift for a woman he's in love with.
• 1:07:04
  And the most lavish and expensive thing
• 1:07:07
  that a penniless man in 1930s Berlin could think of was a pineapple
• 1:07:12
  that has been imported from the tropics.
• 1:07:13
  Didn't look like Tori has like passed him around his teeth.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:07:17
  And so there's this whole great number about a pineapple
• 1:07:19
  and like the pineapples come down to see it anyway.
• 1:07:21
  So I wanted to see that again.
• 1:07:22
  So I'm going tonight to see the Broadway production
• 1:07:24
  at the Kidcat Club in Manhattan.
• 1:07:27
  I'm sure that you've got yourself.
• 1:07:29
  Yeah, that'll be there.
• 1:07:30
  If you want to assassinate me.
• 1:07:32
  Or I'm Australian police want to.
• 1:07:33
  That's exactly the best.
• 1:07:36
  The best president who's not Lincoln.
• 1:07:39
  I mean, oh, God, I'm so bad on American history.
• 1:07:44
  Let me, I'm just not, some of you get mad.
• 1:07:46
  I will say, I'm just going to keep it present.
• 1:07:52
  As more time has passed since then,
• 1:07:54
  I have come to appreciate more Obama's gifts,
• 1:07:57
  especially the unifying thing,
• 1:07:59
  especially the letting certain things slide thing.
• 1:08:02
  I know there's all sorts of critiques
• 1:08:04
  that are in from the left.
• 1:08:05
  I just, I yearn for that sort of reason.
• 1:08:08
  Because as I've gotten old, I realized,
• 1:08:09
  you don't get the president you want perfectly ideologically.
• 1:08:13
  We're country of 30 million people.
• 1:08:14
  There's two parties, but I miss the Obama and Trump soon.
• 1:08:17
  There are the critiques from the left,
• 1:08:18
  associate, but because you do what you can in politics.
• 1:08:22
  Like, you know, Obama came was passed with one vote.
• 1:08:25
  Yeah, it's like, what do you, yeah, your version
• 1:08:28
  of healthcare reform was better?
• 1:08:29
  Great.
• 1:08:30
  Did you have the votes?
• 1:08:31
  Absolutely not.
• 1:08:32
  He got the vote.
• 1:08:32
  He did what he could with the votes that he had.
• 1:08:35
  Okay, fast, this is like a Rorschach test.
• 1:08:37
  I'm just going to give you one word, okay?
• 1:08:39
  And you can just give me a one word answer,
• 1:08:40
  but no more than a few words, okay?
• 1:08:42
  One word or no more than a few?
• 1:08:43
  No more than a few.
• 1:08:44
  But ideally, in Australia, there's a few three.
• 1:08:47
  I would say three to four, yeah.
• 1:08:50
  Marvel movies.
• 1:08:52
  Not fucking interested.
• 1:08:54
  Dancing.
• 1:08:56
  I wish I was better, neurodivergence, both of us.
• 1:09:02
  American universities, hot beds of sexuality.
• 1:09:09
  Well, in.
• 1:09:12
  I love it because you lived there, right?
• 1:09:15
  A little for a little bit.
• 1:09:16
  A resilience.
• 1:09:17
  I like it entirely.
• 1:09:20
  Sexy people don't talk to me.
• 1:09:23
  They don't talk to me.
• 1:09:24
  That also don't talk to me.
• 1:09:26
  And Joe Rogan.
• 1:09:28
  I wish he was less crazy.
• 1:09:29
  He's a good guy.
• 1:09:31
  Power social relationships.
• 1:09:33
  They can be fraught.
• 1:09:35
  Blue sky.
• 1:09:37
  A den of the high mobility.
• 1:09:39
  Twitter.
• 1:09:40
  The high of white supremacy.
• 1:09:42
  The Democratic party.
• 1:09:44
  Pathetic losers.
• 1:09:45
  Why I always vote for.
• 1:09:46
  Got one, Harris.
• 1:09:47
  Pathetic losers.
• 1:09:48
  Why voted for?
• 1:09:49
  Brooklyn.
• 1:09:50
  Over it.
• 1:09:52
  Over it.
• 1:09:53
  Where next?
• 1:09:54
  I don't know.
• 1:09:55
  A few more suggestions where I should move.
• 1:09:57
  I like going to move in with Katie.
• 1:09:58
  And it'd be so nice.
• 1:09:59
  Should I show up?
• 1:10:00
  What about you and your family?
• 1:10:02
  Can I be your, um, health care?
• 1:10:04
  Yeah, just come with us.
• 1:10:05
  Yeah, be.
• 1:10:06
  Yes.
• 1:10:07
  Absolutely.
• 1:10:08
  Well, you're going away for a while.
• 1:10:09
  So your husband is going to need a soup.
• 1:10:10
  I'm, I'm on the road for two weeks doing this live.
• 1:10:12
  No, I'm not legally.
• 1:10:13
  Oh, right.
• 1:10:14
  When the inquest is complete.
• 1:10:15
  Because into my father's demise.
• 1:10:19
  Princeton University.
• 1:10:21
  Uh, uh, very grateful.
• 1:10:25
  I went to grad school.
• 1:10:26
  I love the guys at what grads work.
• 1:10:27
  I guess it's the kind of professional psychiatry.
• 1:10:30
  Up and downs.
• 1:10:34
  Clickbait.
• 1:10:35
  Where?
• 1:10:37
  Oh, uh, uh, uh, Gaza.
• 1:10:43
  Uh, I think some of our congees have a blind spot on that.
• 1:10:47
  I'm saying that right at the end of the, uh,
• 1:10:49
  hmm.
• 1:10:50
  That's, that's interesting.
• 1:10:51
  Uh, Elon Musk.
• 1:10:52
  Um, um, increasingly monstrous.
• 1:10:54
  Katie's dog moose.
• 1:10:56
  Increasingly adorable.
• 1:10:58
  Okay.
• 1:10:59
  You want to say anything about Gaza before you leave it before we leave?
• 1:11:01
  We need something to trouble.
• 1:11:02
  Yeah.
• 1:11:03
  I mean, that's enough.
• 1:11:04
  A couple of people can.
• 1:11:05
  Right.
• 1:11:06
  That's enough trouble.
• 1:11:07
  Thank you so much, Jesse.
• 1:11:08
  It's lovely to, uh, lovely.
• 1:11:09
  I have you.
• 1:11:10
  It was a long last.
• 1:11:11
  This is all you left for your right now.
• 1:11:12
  Let's do a double spray.
• 1:11:13
  Okay.
• 1:11:14
  Double spray with sunscreen.
• 1:11:15
  That's a, uh, subscribe to Blocked and reported.
• 1:11:17
  That's, uh, Jesse's fabulous.
• 1:11:18
  Hello.
• 1:11:19
  Hello.
• 1:11:20
  Hello.
• 1:11:21
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:22
  The wonderful John O is here.
• 1:11:23
  Thank you for doing your job.
• 1:11:24
  Um, um, your men's work meeting everything around.
• 1:11:26
  I know.
• 1:11:27
  Keeping us.
• 1:11:28
  Keeping us not cold.
• 1:11:29
  But it will just slightly less boiling.
• 1:11:31
  That's reliable.
• 1:11:32
  I've had to be.
• 1:11:33
  Uh, Jesse's, uh, um, sub stack is single-minded.
• 1:11:37
  Uh, and if you don't know me, subscribe to uncomfortable conversations
• 1:11:40
  because every day for the next couple of weeks we're going to be bouncing from
• 1:11:43
  videos that need to talk during live streams with fascinating people.
• 1:11:46
  Thank you, Jesse.
• 1:11:47
  Thank you.