Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Ask Me Anything

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Ask Me Anything · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans. Welcome to the final episode of 2021. We did it. We're here. This year was a
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stinker, and we got through it. And we got through it with a lot of interesting conversations.
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42 episodes this year. I'm proud of us. I'm going to say I'm proud of myself, but it's really you
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who've been able to sustain the juggernaut that is uncomfortable conversations with Josh Seps.
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And I thank you for it. It's been there been ups and downs. I tell you what, especially in Australia,
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especially in the parts of Australia that we're in lockdown. Sydney and Melbourne in particular
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during Delta. That was a long time between drinks, ladies and gents. And we got through it and
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hopefully, hopefully, we're out the other side. Now, this isn't asking me anything episodes.
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So I'll get to COVID and I'll get to Australia in a moment. I'm not going to dwell on that.
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I will, if you are a confused American, not quite sure what to think about what's going on in Australia.
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I will address that next year. And when karma heads prevail, we can all sit back and have a cup of tea
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and figure out what went wrong in Australia and what went right. I will just note that
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some people on Twitter seem to believe that, you know, oh, if you actually look at the numbers,
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then Australia didn't do that much better than America. No, I looked at the numbers again today
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on a per capita and other people say, well, Australia is smaller. So of course,
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they have fewer COVID deaths. On a per capita basis, Australia has 96% fewer COVID deaths
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than the United States. Now, that doesn't mean that you should justify infringing people's
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human rights, but it doesn't mean that there is that side of the ledger to compare when you're
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comparing whether or not aggressive contact tracing and mandatory isolation for close contacts
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of infectious people should be countenanced. Anyway, that's a subject for another day. The subject
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for today is your questions, both audio and written, which I'm looking forward immensely to
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a pining on. Have a wonderful Christmas, a fabulous new year. We will have lots more uncomfortable
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conversations in the new year. So far, all of the conversations I've had have been fun. They've
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been enriching. They've been occasionally awkward. They've been stimulating and hopefully always
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just a little uncomfortable.
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Okay, let's dive right into this. Lots of great questions from you guys. The first one
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comes from Zach Gross in Melbourne. Hi, Josh. My name is Zach and I'm a
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lecturer at a university campus in Australia. From my personal experience and from what I've
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seen in the media, cancel culture pretty much doesn't exist in Australia, at least how you usually
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define it and they've talked about it on your podcast. I was wondering if, first of all, you
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agreed with this observation of mine that it seems to be confined mainly to university campuses
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in the US and UK and Australia seems to be excluded from this experience and secondly,
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if you have an explanation for why this is the case. Thanks, Zach. I think I do agree with you that
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cancel culture from, cancel culture in the way that we understand it in terms of like a widespread
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de-platforming of speakers at universities who have politically incorrect ideas or ideas that
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don't conform to a very woke agenda. Does not seem to be the same phenomenon in Australia as it is
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elsewhere. That being said, well, I should add, there is a certain form of cancel culture in
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Australia where people, the only people who really have gotten canceled in Australia are people
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on the left who have accidentally made jokes that outraged like the conservative Murdoch tabloids
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and the various radio hacks who feed on that kind of rhetoric. I won't go into specifics but
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there are well-known cases of people making jokes about it. Anzac Day on Twitter, which is our
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sort of remembrance day and then being finally getting impossible to essentially, I mean, just
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suffering such a torrent and barrage of online abuse that they, in one case, even had to leave
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the country. But I don't think that that means that the sort of currents that are causing
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cancel culture in America aren't functioning here in terms of the chilling of what you can say.
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There's definitely an inability to talk bluntly about important issues here. So I think the
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the specter of cancel culture looms over the country. There are small examples of like little
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things that get people upset like Australia's most popular brand of cheese, which was a national
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icon was called Koon Cheese and they changed their name. There was a beer called colonial beer and
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they changed their name because you wouldn't want to be associated with colonialism. There are
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conversations about the appropriateness of statues of Captain Cook and Governor Macquarie in the same
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way that there are a founding fathers in the United States. And of course, we do receive a lot of
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American cultural content. So, you know, when Netflix or whichever streaming app it was that
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removed one episode of faulty towers because it was racist, the classic British sitcom,
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that of course affects us here when they remove Chris Lilly's show where he was in blackface
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playing a like a Tongan kid. They remove that as well. Well, that was actually an Australian
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initiated cancellation. And of course, we get, you know, when I'm logged in as my kids on
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on whichever streaming app it is that has the jungle book and the jungle book too. I search for
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jungle book. It doesn't come up. It doesn't come up because it's considered to be mature content
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because it deals in like colonialism and racist tropes. So, I have to log out, log back in as
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myself. When we watch things that contain stereotypes of people on streaming apps like Disney Plus,
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they show this long boring finger wagging admonition before the movie starts about there are this
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contains stereotypes of people and they were wrong then and they are wrong now. This very kind
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of sanctimonious attitude that the perspective that we have on things right now is eternal and
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eternally good and can be retroactively fitted and superimposed onto everybody who ever lived in
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the past as if people in the future wouldn't be able to do exactly the same thing to us using the
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standards of the future. So there is still a bit of that, but I do agree with you broadly,
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Zach, that we don't have the fury of the American culture wars. And I've thought about that a lot,
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but I think it's just that Americans are just crazy in general. No offense Americans, but you take
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things very seriously and that's sometimes a great thing because the civil rights movement in
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the 1960s probably wouldn't have happened the way that it did if Americans didn't get carried away
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and the whole city's weren't burning and the president was shot and the, I mean at the beginning
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of the decade and then Martin Luther King was shot and then the president's brother who was running
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for president was shot. I mean, like things just seem to be higher stakes in America and I think
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that probably has something to do with ideological capture of certain communities. Maybe it has
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something to do with inequality. Certainly the current moment I think in America has something to
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has a lot to do with inequality. Australians are more egalitarian, live in more similar ways
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to each other. They're not ethnically more homogenous than Americans are. Australia, if anything,
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is more multicultural as a rule. We certainly have our higher proportion of the population who are
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migrants than America does. So we are at least as much of a melting pot. So it's not that we're all
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like just white Swedes or something, but economically speaking, it's easier to get ahead if you're
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poor or working class here. Everyone feels like they're roughly in the same boat. So I don't,
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there aren't just decades of inherited generational antipathy and a sense of not being able to get
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ahead as much here. That's not to deny the inequality that exists, but as much. I think those
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these are just by our nature raised to be not very fadish. We don't hop on board. We don't like
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labels. We don't really, like we do our team work in sports, like we're very tribal when it comes
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to superficial things. But yeah, I don't think that we jump on board ideological bandwagon's
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quite as easily as the extremes of the American political spectrum do. We haven't had the same
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entrenched far right parties that many European countries have had. We never had a major communist
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party here. We're certainly less geographically stratified than the United States. Like we just
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don't have the difference between Alabama and Oregon that America does. And I mean, the elephant
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in the room is we didn't have slavery. You know, Australia has had to reconcile itself to the
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tragedy of what the original white settlers did to First Nations Australians to Indigenous people
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who were here. And I think Australia has come an enormously long way in the past 20 years. It's
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a totally different conversation than it was when I left. I mean, now you can't go to a public
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event without or even hold a meeting without there being an acknowledgment of country and
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acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land and so on. That's now the norm here.
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But the reality is that Indigenous Australians are a much, much smaller proportion of the
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population than than black Americans are. So, you know, you're talking about less than 2% of
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the population. In the States, it's what, nudging 20% somewhat between 15 to 20% and the historical
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wrongs of slavery. I think are still carried and born right through Jim Crow and then into the
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explosions of the 1960s and are somewhat entrenched by the higher inequality in America. So I know
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I'm sort of rambling and throwing a lot into the pot, but that's those are some of the components
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that I think help to make Australians just less extreme than Americans regardless of what it is
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that you're talking about. Less susceptible to being swept up by ideology. And I wonder if that
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has something to do with our gentler version of cancel culture than you see in the States.
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Question number two is written question from Paul Livingston in Sydney. He writes,
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well, my question is why are the left afraid to laugh? Where's the next generation of
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fearless humorists hiding? Why are Pauline Hanson's one nation animated campaign ads the sharpest
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funniest satire seen in years? Alternative comedy of the 80s and 90s reveled in sending up political
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correctness. These days, I also no longer rolled in, sides remain unsplit, barely a sneaker.
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I'm not sure I agree with that, Paul. I mean, the left does laugh. I just think they laugh at
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very predictable things that you probably don't find funny. Like, people were laughing at Hennigad's
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special. It's just that as Dave Chappelle says, it wasn't funny. They were just pretending to have
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a good time because they thought it was very clever. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because like
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during the, during the heyday of the Daily Show with John Stuart, it was sort of quite common to
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hear people say, like, why don't conservatives have a sense of humor? Why isn't there a conservative
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satirical show? And it's true that the right, it's harder to do good satire from the right.
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And I've always assumed that that's because right wing beliefs are somewhat more obedient. I know
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that sounds funny in this climate where the right has become libertarian, I think because of COVID.
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But, you know, conservatives believe in hierarchy and authority. They don't believe in
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thumbing your nose at the at the elites. They believe in like sort of military rules. They like
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the police. They like order. And I think the left has been freer at, you know, taking a shit on
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the face of the, of the queen throwing shit at the wall, so to speak, which has enabled the left
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to be, to have a much better sense of humor traditionally. I think maybe what's happening now
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is that the sort of regressive left, as you might call it, the highly politically correct left.
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I mean, that strain has always been dour. You know, Marxists weren't funny either. They were as,
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they were as dour as Senator Joe McCarthy. Like, people who take things very, very seriously,
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and who think things are very, very important and that things oughtn't be joked about can be on
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the left or the right. It's just that at the moment, the left has become quite sensorious and
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smug and self-satisfied and seems to have no doubt that it's on the right side of history and that
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it's, it's, Farts don't stink. And that's probably feeding into it. I think it's just a cultural
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moment, Paul. The left will become funny again. Let's have another audio question. This one's from
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Shane. Hi, Josh. My name is Shane and I'm a lecturer in philosophy at Gonzaga University and my
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question for you is, how did you get so smart? I understand you basically to be a journalist and
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while I respect that profession and think there's lots of smart journalists, I notice you talk to
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a lot of intellectuals, philosophers, really smart people and you seem able to keep up and hold
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your own and you're really well informed and I just really respect and admire your mind a lot
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and I'm wondering what your intellectual background is. Do you just read a lot and have a lot of
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different interests or what? So I'm sort of curious about your intellectual background, your current
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diet of information and that sort of thing. Thanks. Bye. Thank you, Shane. That's a very sweet
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question. Perhaps undeserved. I mean, you got to remember, I spent all day talking to interesting
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people and smart people and picking their brains about things. So like my job is also a form of
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education, of self-education for myself and wrestling things through. I'm reminded of the analogy
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about the fox and the hedgehog. I don't know if you've heard of that. Like a fox, a fox like
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scurries around and knows many things and is wily but a hedgehog knows one big thing and I'm a
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bit of a fox by which I mean, I've just never really had an interest in getting really, really,
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really knowledgeable about one area unless it's like a hobby like, you know, frequent flyer programs
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or something like that, which I treat as a sort of a form of Sadoku or something or a crossword
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like figuring out the best way of hacking them. But in terms of actual things that are going on
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in the world, I've just always been very interested in things. I did read a lot as a kid. I think
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that helped. But I don't spend a huge amount of time reading to be honest. If you want to know what
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my media diet is, I have a subscription to autumn, a UDM, which is an app that reads to actual people
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reading. It's not an AI voice reading like this. It's actual people reading to some of the best
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articles from some of the best publications. They've got to deal with like the New Yorker and the
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New York Times and a lot of these big long form publications. So sometimes I'll just, I mean,
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when a new edition of the New Yorker comes out, they don't read the whole magazine, but they'll
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pick maybe four or five articles from it. And those New Yorker pieces are long. They like might be
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maybe an hour and an hour and a half for the narrator to read. And I consume a lot of that.
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There's another app called Curio, which is shorter form articles from more Newsy publications,
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like the Financial Times. But the reason I love that is they include the Economist is one of
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their partners. So I mean, I honestly think that if you listen to highlight articles from the
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Economist and the New Yorker each week, a lot alone if you read the Economist and the New Yorker
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each week, you get such an enormous wide range of different things. They really are extremely
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broad in their interests. And sometimes you'll read just a totally random, long piece about
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like the mission to save the world's seeds for biodiversity by burying them under the ice
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flows in Scandinavia or something like something totally different than what the conversation
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in the conventional media is. So that's where I get a lot of that. I don't read a lot of sort of
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daily news unless I have to for my job. I think we've gotten to a point at which the news is coming
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out as too fast and we can't comprehend it all and it's not particularly useful. My general philosophy
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is if something isn't in the weekend New York Times, the Economist or the New Yorker,
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then it's not important enough to worry about. I don't spend a lot of time reading the daily
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newspapers. A weekly roundup is good enough. I spent my teenage years having a huge epiphany by
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devouring like science books. I didn't realize how much I loved it, but I guess when I was in my
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mid teens I discovered Richard Dawkins and then Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman. And some of their
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books are just like they blew my mind about how interesting and how much more interesting the
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world is than the things that most of us spend most of our time talking about. So if you have young
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people in your life, I would definitely encourage buying them books like that. And in terms of podcasts,
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the slate political gabfest is great for a wrap of American politics. Obviously Sam Harris's
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podcast I enjoy. And yeah, I think I, I don't think I have, I mean, look, if I'm to whatever extent
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I'm intelligent, that is just a function of genetics, I think. And I think there's a, I think
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I don't think anyone can do about that. But in terms of being like well read and consuming and
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being interested, really, I think being curious is the most key element. And anyone can be curious
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and then just finding ways of pulling off tugging on the little threads and seeing where they lead. That's
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why I am a journalist. I mean, I, I was, I share your disdain for journalism as a, as a profession.
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I mean, I tend not, I tend to try not to call myself a journalist. I might say I'm a broadcaster
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or I'm a commentator or I'm a creator or something like that because it's just such. I mean,
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the media, the news media and journalism is just such a failed institution at the moment. I just
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would, would so not want to be associated with some entertainment reporter who's just reporting on
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you know, some gossip about what some celebrity is, who some celebrity is fucking. It's not
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interesting to me. So I take your point. I kind of, and you know, some day I'll write a book and
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I'll actually be able to join the ranks of those people who have something to go on other people's
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shows to talk about. Stay tuned. Let's go to another audio question from Oscar.
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Hello, Josh. This is Oscar calling from Copenhagen Denmark. First of all, thank you for your
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podcast. I really enjoyed every episode of it. I've been hanging in there for three years,
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listening to a lot of your stuff. So thank you for that. Also, just a quick comment. I've heard
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you once in a podcast. I think it was with Sam Harris that you mentioned that the food in Denmark
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is horrible and all we use mayonnaise. And that is of course not true. I just want you to
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want to remind you that we actually have the two best restaurants in the world in Copenhagen.
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And that puts us up there with Japan and Switzerland as the country with most
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Michelin stars per capita. So just a reminder there. For my question, as a gay person who
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have been living both in New York and Sydney, have you experienced any cultural differences
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and differences in attitude between the two cities and also have you experienced
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a difference in attitude towards being gay, situation, and today in your contemporary life?
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Thank you very much. Thanks, Oscar. I should say
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he's caught me out, hasn't he? He's got these, you know, you don't think about people. People
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are going to be listening in these places that I talk about. I have to be more tactful. It is the
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case Oscar that Denmark and Copenhagen are one of my favorite countries in the entire world. In fact,
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just today I was saying a friend of mine who lives in Italy who's an English guy who spent most
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of his life in Germany and Greece asked me if you could have one European country that would basically
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rule all of Europe. Its culture, its cuisine, its politics, its taxes, it's everything. What would
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that country be? And we were going back and forth and back and forth about this. And I finally
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settled on it's got to be, I would say Denmark. A close second place would be the Netherlands
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because southern European countries have wonderful lifestyles but a total basket cases.
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Northern European countries, you know, the big ones, Germany, and then add to that the Nordic
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countries. They can be a little bit culture-less and overpriced and high-taxi and just, you know,
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not enough jouette of eve and maybe not enough tolerance. And Denmark really came out ahead. I
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lived in Copenhagen for a semester, went to Copenhagen Business School, studied globalization
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there, absolutely loved it. However, I'm not sure that the number of Michelin-starred restaurants
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per capita when you're talking about two restaurants in a small country is necessarily indicative
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of how the average person actually eats. I was thinking more about just the fast food on the streets
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and more about it just being peculiar to a person who isn't used to putting mayonnaise on a lot of
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things. There was a lot of mayonnaise. You got to admit, there's a lot of mayonnaise. It was
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unusual to me to get a hot dog and to stick to see the the Frankfurt being stuffed into a hollowed
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out bread roll into which mayonnaise had previously been squirted such that it oozed up out the
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sides of the bread roll all over the Frankfurt. And that was the hot dog. That's not a bad thing.
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That's fine. I'm sure it's quite delicious. It's just if you had to choose, if you were
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traveling around the south of France or Sicily and you stopped into a little tavern, I just do
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think that the general standard of food would be better than Nordic cuisine. But hey, everyone
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loves different things. That's totally fine. I love Denmark in so many different ways and you're
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right. The high end cuisine in Copenhagen is unbelievable. The difference between New York and
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Sydney in terms of gay rights. It's interesting. It was much more diverse and accepting in New York.
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But not because New Yorkers are necessarily nicer about it. I think Aussies hearts are in the
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right place. It just seems a bit newer here for people to be, same-sex couples to be married and
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have kids and stuff. It's almost like New York is where all 300 and whatever million Americans have
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been going along with San Francisco for a long time to express themselves. So even before there was
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any legal marriage, people were just adopting. They were figuring out ways of doing it. They were
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doing surrogacy on the side. It's just been a thing in certain circles in New York. And New York
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is just such an eclectic place anyway. It's just such a weird hodgepodge. You feel much more
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liberated about being weird in New York than you do in Sydney, I think. And the only thing about
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Sydney's gay population is Sydney has prided itself for decades on being one of the gayest cities
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in the world. I mean, when I grew up, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was and continues to be
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the biggest gay festival in the world. Sydney was proud. Sydney was proud of its reputation as being
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a glittering, shimmering gay harbor city of full of parties and so do me. But I felt that that was very,
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I mean, one reason why I didn't really feel comfortable calling myself gay until I was in my 20s
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was not because I was ashamed of it or because I thought, because I was in the closet anyway,
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it's because I really didn't think that my brand of sexuality and sexual attraction put me into
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the same category as the people who were wearing leather arseless chaps riding on a giant inflatable
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penis through the city of Sydney. Like that's what I thought gay was. And the gay community to some
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extent was responsible for that almost as much as the sort of straight bigots were at creating an
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image in a young 14 year old boy's mind when I was that age that there were two types of human
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being. There were straight people and gay people and gay people had a certain fashion, a certain
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style, a certain way of walking, a certain way of talking, a certain politics. I clearly wasn't
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any of that. So I just assumed that finding charming people charming and charismatic people charismatic
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and attractive people attractive was just something that everybody probably felt to differing
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degrees and that I was particularly curious and open-minded to be interested in guys as well as
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girls. That was the bottom line. It wasn't until I fell in love with a guy when I was in my early
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20s late teens maybe that I realized oh this might be something different and maybe maybe the
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category of gay is capacious enough to include me after all. Whereas I think that question might
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not have come up if I'd been a really a bang New York kid. I think maybe it would have just been
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more fluid. Times have changed to come to the second part of your question. Times have changed since
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since I grew up. Yeah I think today I mean I would love to see a future and I think it's beginning
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to happen in which the whole category of gay and straight just seems passé and you know it's
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for a 15 year old rugby start at high school to start dating another guy would just be like wow
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okay that's one thing and then if he starts dating a girl again for it not to be like but wait
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a second is he isn't he what is he who is he what's the label like it will be much better if it
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was just like well okay that's that's just what he's doing and that's no big deal. So that's
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what I that was that's my sort of load star and in fact if you want to hear more about me
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apining about this I actually speak for a whole hour about my coming out story and what I think
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about labels and gayness with my husband with whom I disagree a lot about this who also has a
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podcast which is called come out wherever you are it's interviews with people about their coming
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out stories and I was the last guest on season one of that so search for come out wherever you
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are Sean Zeps is the is the presenter if you want more information about about my story
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yeah so time to have changed things would probably be different if I was growing up today but
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I was lucky I mean I grew up in a progressive city in a progressive family so pretty much
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as soon as I knew something was up it only took a couple of years for me to be able to come out
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about it and I also had the benefit of having a person who I was in love with to be able to talk
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about it so it didn't have to be an abstract thing of like I'm gay I was able to just be like well
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I almost made out with this guy and we have feelings for each other so I'm just letting you know
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that that's the thing that I'm grappling with and that's that that seemed to be an easy way of
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kind of landing the conversation I do hope Sydney becomes as diverse and as crazy as New York City
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but I find that hard to believe next question from Delilah Garrett on Twitter what do you think
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about the UFO UAP issue UAP being unidentified aerial phenomena yeah I don't know man I mean that's
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it's a biggie clearly something is there something is unidentified there are unidentified things
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in the sky with sufficient regularity that there's a phenomenon I don't know if that means that
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there are actual objects flying around I think it's got to be almost certain that there are
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alien civilizations out there for more on that you can listen to my episode with Tim Urban
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which was the 38th episode of 2021 I'm not sure what number it was listed as but it's fantastic
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one of my favorite episodes ever he goes into the question of why we're not seeing more
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extraterrestrial life more evidence of alien civilizations among other mind-expanding things
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that he talks about if you haven't listened to that go right now and like mark that as the next
28:13
podcast that you should listen to so I suspect there are other alien civilizations out there
28:17
I doubt that they've come here the this the distances are too vast and they're obviously far
28:22
enough away that we haven't seen any evidence of them so that would be unlikely it's certainly not
28:28
the most simple or parsimonious explanation for seeing things in the sky or for tales of alien
28:34
abduction it is interesting that over the past decade or two as phone cameras have become ubiquitous
28:41
nobody has caught images of unidentified flying objects like it used to in the 70s it was
28:48
easier to say oh well you know there was a shiny lightness going up the farm the farmer would come
28:53
out well I came down and they took me and they start something up my butt there would that seem
28:58
to be the sort of thing that would happen every six months or so well where where are the images
29:02
of this happening now that we've all got cameras on us so I don't think there's much going on
29:07
there I don't believe tales of alien abduction the simplest explanation for what the military
29:14
are seeing I think would have to be either other military stuff that is top secret it could be that
29:24
or it could be just artifacts you know if there are there are common artifacts of sight that people
29:30
are reflections of light that are operating in certain ways and that once you see to the idea
29:35
of such a thing you're more likely to see it all of this is just a way of saying I have no idea
29:42
anyone who claims to is lying let's take an audio question from Tess hey Josh I hear you talk a lot
29:50
about left and right politically or ideologically or whatever and I wanted to ask what you thought
29:58
about a quote that my dad often uses it was something that his dad used to say to him when he was a
30:05
pretty hardcore lefty in his 20s and that is if you're not liberal in your 20s then you're
30:10
heartless and if you are not conservative by the time you're in your 40s then you've got no head
30:16
yeah so just want to know what your take on that was thanks thank you Tess yes that's a funny
30:22
classic old saying I mean there's a certain amount of truth to it isn't there like the idealism
30:27
of youth usually expresses itself in terms of believing in highly impractical but humanitarian
30:33
humanistic revolutions and things the young people tend to be disdainful of things that came
30:39
before them and perhaps underappreciative of the legacy of civilization that has sort of permitted
30:46
them to come into existence everything is new for them so they don't need to have respect for the
30:50
old it's all about forging forward so bold ideas and audacious concepts and revolutions sound
30:56
like a great idea if you're young and if you're compassionate then of course you want everyone in
31:00
the world to be equal and then as you get older it's often the trajectory that you know the cynical
31:06
take of why people get more conservative is they get more selfish because they earn more and
31:10
they want to cling to their property more they want to cling to their money and they become
31:14
more cold-hearted I don't think that's the right explanation I think the the explanation that's
31:18
sort of pointed out in that in that saying is that people become more appreciative of what has
31:25
come before them more humble in their belief in their own ability to change the world more
31:32
suspicious of revolutionaries and radical and radicalism more invested in the status quo in ways
31:39
that might be bad and corrupt and sort of self-serving but in ways that equally might be genuinely
31:44
appreciative of all the incredible institutions that have been established by their forebears to
31:49
to create the world that we live in today and obviously maybe the fire of of of passionate change
31:58
dwindles and you become more conservative it doesn't always happen that way it didn't happen
32:02
that way for me when I was in my teens someone gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Anne Rand
32:09
and and I loved PJ O'Rourke the conservative humorist in the American conservative humorist
32:17
and so I was pretty right well I was pretty libertarian when I was in my teens and then I gradually
32:24
realized that the trade-offs of social democracy were not that bad like it's not true that every time
32:32
you give the government the power to take a bit of money from wealthy people and you know give
32:37
healthcare to poor people that will lead inexorably to a slide into authoritarianism or communism
32:42
that's just not the way it works there are lots of stable social democratic countries and frankly
32:46
the standard of living there on the whole is better than in the more right wing author it right
32:52
wing like libertarian countries I would rather if I was going to be dropped into any country in the
32:58
world and I was going to have the the the the Rawlsian blindfold on meaning that I wouldn't know
33:03
you know who I was going to be or what money I was had would have or what race I would be or
33:07
anything and I was just going to be plonged down randomly I'd rather be I'd rather be plonged down
33:12
into a country with a strong social safety net like Germany or Australia or Canada than I
33:18
than into the United States for example and that's not because the United States is too left wing
33:23
so yeah it can go either way but I mean I sort of like there's another saying which I like a
33:29
bit more which is a conservative is a progressive who's been robbed and a libertarian is a conservative
33:37
who's been arrested that'll do let's take another audio question this one's from Peter Lam
33:45
G'day Josh Peter here just curious what is the most common uncomfortable conversation that you
33:52
tend to have in your life and do you like having this uncomfortable conversation or do you prefer
33:59
that it would just die a slow and painful death Peter where are you is it was there piano playing
34:06
in the background were you in a cigar lounge are you drinking whiskey Peter listen a bit
34:10
let me just hear that again listen to this G'day Josh Peter what's playing in the background
34:14
Peter yes what is the most what is are you playing the piano I'm comfortable conversation that
34:19
you tend to someone else playing the piano and do you in a royal place having this uncomfortable
34:24
conversation or do you prefer that it would just die a slow and I want to be aware of a PLM is
34:29
but thank you for the question Peter the most common uncomfortable conversation that I have at
34:35
the moment is the most boring conversation I've ever had in my life which has to do with Australia's
34:39
response to the pandemic and trying to swat away Twitter bros who think they're coming to save
34:46
Australia from authoritarianism that's uncomfortable because it's just so deeply stupid and annoying
34:53
but you're right that I'm bored of it but that's only because we happen to be living in this
34:56
particular moment if you pan out from the pandemic then the most common uncomfortable conversation
35:04
is probably around like diversity quotas and that's probably because I work in an institution that
35:12
has them where every single segment that we do on my show on my radio show has to keep a record
35:20
in a spreadsheet of the gender and ethnicity and like sexuality of guests to basically make sure
35:30
that we hit certain targets and the conversation that I find unfruitful is the one around like is
35:42
the problem of a lack of diversity a problem of bigotry from the people who are like booking the
35:48
guests or hiring the staff or is it a problem of a dearth of people of different like a misallocation
35:59
of interests and talents throughout the population so that some identities and some demographics are
36:06
just you know less suited to taking certain guest roles or taking certain parts I went to the
36:12
theater last night saw the opening night of a new production of death of a salesman in Sydney
36:17
one of my favorite plays brilliant play it's sort of colorblind casting so there's a there's the
36:26
son of the neighbor is like this very smart character he's a good kid and he ends up
36:35
becoming a lawyer who is arguing before the Supreme Court and Willie Lohmann the tragic salesman
36:42
figure it sort of wishes that his kids could be as successful as this kid and that was that was
36:47
cast with a black Australian actor very good actor I must say in a sort of colorblind casting role
36:56
and like Willie Lohmann's boss is an Asian Australian guy and there's a narrator character who
37:03
isn't really in the play but insists on reading out all the stage directions to the play in a
37:08
mildly annoying manner and that's a woman of color and far bit from me to begrudge any of this
37:13
like it's great that we're seeing more diversity on Australian stages but I didn't need the narrator
37:19
character a little part of everybody is kind of thinking have they just done this so they can get
37:24
a woman of color onto the stage somehow because it just wouldn't fit for Willie Lohmann's wife to be
37:29
a woman of color then does it really actually make all that much sense that Willie Lohmann's boss
37:37
in the 1950s or 1960s is an Asian American I mean maybe but it doesn't really pass the smell test
37:43
and then the idea of a young person in this working class neighborhood in Brooklyn whose father is
37:51
white being himself black we don't see the mother so maybe it's assumed that she's black but
37:56
that there's no mention of this I mean you know many neighborhoods in Brooklyn in the 50s and
38:01
60s were redlined meaning that black people couldn't even live in them even if they could live in
38:06
them an interracial marriage would have raised a lot of eyebrows it would have been something that
38:09
you would presumably address the fact that he then went on to be arguing before the Supreme Court
38:15
I mean how many black lawyers were arguing before the Supreme Court in the 50s and 60s like
38:21
it just injects a lot of a lot of artistically unnecessary questions into into a project and
38:29
I'm sure that one could probably listen back on this conversation with myself in 20 years time
38:34
and go oh my god I can't believe you're such a dinosaur everything's color
38:37
colorblind now colorblind casting but in a way I'd sort of rather the whole thing be colorblind
38:42
and just make Willie Lohmann black that might be an interesting choice like the the evaporation
38:46
of the American dream out of the hands of of a black family could be a really interesting twist
38:52
in the same way that Hamilton is a fascinating twist on American history it's a metaphor it doesn't
38:55
have to be literal but when you start mixing the literal with sort of you know well-meaning diversity
39:02
quotas I can't help but feel that half the audience is just sitting there thinking about the
39:06
diversity quotas and wondering why they're watching it this way and maybe that's just a hump
39:11
that we need to get over in order to get to a more equal world but it doesn't seem like the most
39:16
judicious way of getting there to me so coming back to this question of like booking guests who are
39:23
diverse if what you're doing is trying to have a conversation about how you know the population of
39:30
Sydney feels about a policy for example then I think it's absolutely imperative to have people who
39:35
come from different communities I don't really care what the color of their skin is but I do
39:38
definitely care that they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds from different religious
39:43
backgrounds from different ways of seeing the world so that you're not always talking to people
39:46
over the same experience and that is probably going to mean that they have to have a range of
39:52
different sexualities and races and backgrounds and nationalities and faiths that's great where I
39:59
get bored and where the conversation becomes uncomfortable needlessly is in an insistence that any
40:07
disparity in when you're talking about for example expert opinion like you know there are some
40:13
what I used to have a TV show on the weekends in Australia the the weekend breakfast show
40:19
we would probably primarily be interviewing experts in fields I mean we would need experts it wasn't
40:24
like you know tell me what you think of this policy it was like he has been assigned to big breakthrough
40:28
let's find someone who really understands the genetics of this to explain it now if I have to cast
40:33
a perfectly equal proportion of indigenous women in that role as I do white men unfortunately for
40:42
many complicated historical reasons many of which are horrendous and racist and bigoted but not
40:48
all of which are there are fewer indigenous female brain surgeons than there are you know even as
40:55
a proportion of their population then there are white men and it's it becomes a bit boring to me to
41:02
to talk about diversity of appearance in the media as being only a question of these old fashioned
41:09
media institutions expressing their traditional white bigotry and kind of misogyny and and sexism
41:16
and patriarchy upon an innocent public that is clamoring for diversity because frequently when you
41:22
do add a lot of diversity in if you're not keeping the standards up if you're doing some tokenistic
41:28
bullshit where you're just wheeling out of a minority and and patting them on the head and saying
41:34
here you go we're giving you a leg up even though we know that you're not the right person the
41:38
perfectly right person to be talking to about this thing I find that patronizing I find it
41:42
condescending I'd like to talk to people from all walks of life about all kinds of things not
41:48
because they are representatives of some identity I'd like to talk to them because they're interesting
41:51
human beings and there's this sort of false binary that either it's because the people who are
41:57
doing the hiring and doing the booking are bigots or you know right wingers will sometimes say well
42:03
it's just it's a pipeline problem I mean they're just aren't enough you know there aren't enough
42:08
good actors of color in Australia therefore we can't cast them I don't buy that either I mean
42:13
there are tons of talented people they just have to have to be unearthed but let's unearth them in
42:17
ways that actually honor them as creators and individuals and and don't doesn't tokenistically
42:22
sort of just put them up on a on a pedestal so that we can feel good about ourselves and
42:26
telegraph to all of our friends and neighbors how worthy we are there's this kind of you know
42:31
sanctimonious left-wing game that we're all playing and it's really hard to talk about like I'm
42:35
even nervous about having said what I just said about the cast of death of a salesman because
42:39
I can imagine it being taken out of context by people and miss and willfully misunderstood and
42:43
misrepresented because that's the kind of climate we live in so that's the uncomfortable conversation
42:47
that I encounter the most at least when it's banging around in my own head and it's the one
42:51
that seems to be the the most intractable and currently exhausting next question is a written
42:58
question from Ryan Price in Honolulu Aloha Ryan he says I've been thinking a lot about the idea
43:03
of identity as a concept and how this is perhaps the source of virtually all the world's conflict
43:07
religious political national racial etc i'm curious if you think that perhaps the modern push
43:13
to place undue import on one's identity is what's driving the particularly cantanker's environment
43:19
and if we shouldn't just push to issue all notions of identity altogether insofar as that's
43:23
possible in short is identity itself the bad guy the answer to that question Ryan is yes
43:31
next question is an audio question from Sasha hey Uncle Josh or is that professor zeps
43:40
just had a question for you for your ask me anything segment having been born and raised in a
43:47
high control religious cult that I escaped from in my late 30s in my case the Jehovah's Witnesses
43:53
just wondering what your thoughts are about having uncomfortable conversations and challenging
43:59
belief structures of religions particularly when they have doctrines or practices that can prove
44:05
to be toxic or harmful to people do we ever write to question these things should we be able to
44:11
push back on religions or do they get a pass in society just love your thoughts on that
44:18
cheers mate thanks so much for the podcast we love every episode thanks Sasha that's a great question
44:24
I do think you have to push back on religion yeah it's very hard to do I used to think it was
44:30
fruitless I used to believe I heard someone say you can't reason someone out of the position they
44:36
didn't reason themselves into which I thought was very profound so if you're a person of faith you
44:42
inherited that faith you never reasoned your way into it you can't reason your way out of it it
44:45
just is it just is inside you and that may be true for some people but I think you only have to
44:52
look at the feedback that these movements get from people who were previously deeply conservative
44:58
religiously who have fallen out of faith I think some people just need a nudge and you have to
45:05
use your own judgment about who those people are and what that nudge is I mean it may be certainly
45:10
denigrating someone's faith is never going to work you know denigrating anyone as you know if
45:14
you're a fan of mine I'm always about trying to find the middle ground because I think people
45:18
are easier to sway well not just because I think people are easier to sway because I think
45:22
that it's the most humane way to live your life and the most intellectually honest and rigorous
45:26
thing to do but quite a part from anything if you if you're even if your object was was not your own
45:32
heart and soul and intellect and credibility even if your only object was to cynically try to
45:37
move other people's opinions the best way to do it would not be to try to force them to to conclude
45:42
that they are believing stupid things but to coax them into questioning aspects of their own
45:49
beliefs that are illogical or inconsistent and sometimes you can do that yourself and sometimes
45:55
it might just take a book I mean Sam Harris's book The End of Faith is a wonderful a wonderful
46:00
book against religion and letter to a Christian nation is good specifically for Christians
46:05
it's a very short book it's it's probably the best place to start for a Christian who might be
46:09
wavering who you think you know is open to considering atheism because we need more people in the
46:15
free thinking movement we need more people who are openly and generously agnostic and atheist not
46:21
dogmatically doctrinaire about it but who are just like you know what's going to happen to me
46:26
after I die is definitely something that we don't know and I mean we are absolute we are all certain
46:31
that anybody who claims to know what happens after you die is full of shit like we just don't we
46:36
don't know that we don't know what's going to happen anyone who claims to is obviously lying they
46:41
haven't died and they've never spoken to anyone who's died so they don't know what happens after
46:47
you die is probably much like what happened before you were born or it might be completely different
46:53
it's unlikely to have been predicted in texts that were written thousands of years ago by people
46:58
who didn't know the first thing about how the world works so I think we can safely say that
47:04
but yeah I think that has to be part of the conversation about reason and faith
47:11
another written question from Jacob Vernon in Melbourne our recent emergence from lockdowns is
47:17
nice but the possibility of dangerous variants means we may well return so one in contrast with
47:23
top-down restrictions could a bottom bottom up informed consent risk model work to effectively
47:29
manage living with covid with innovative tools to facilitate individuals understanding their
47:33
risk in each situation and leaving it up to them to determine their precautions and two what are
47:38
some of your favorite books and which would you recommend to others that's interesting yeah I think
47:44
once covid is endemic and this is part of the misunderstanding about what's going on in parts of
47:48
Australia at the moment which I actually do think is is ridiculous overreach the what the Northern
47:52
Territory in South Australia are doing at the moment is crazy where well it's not crazy it's far
47:59
too cautious not in the sense of assisting indigenous communities to escape the sweltering
48:07
heat in the middle of the desert hundreds of miles from any health care where they're unable to
48:11
isolate so they don't all get decimated many of them living with comorbidities by housing them
48:18
in air conditioned Howard Springs bungalows but which you know we can have a conversation about
48:26
whether or not that's an infringement of human rights or not I think that's perfectly legitimate
48:29
especially if the community leaders themselves condone it but there are instances of people like I
48:34
spoke the the other day to a woman from Melbourne who was with her eight-month-old and her I think
48:38
it was a five-year-old child and her husband they were flying to see family in Adelaide there was one
48:43
confirmed case of covid on the plane and they were incarcerated for a week because they even though
48:48
they tested negative because in Adelaide because they were you know they were a close contact
48:54
I say incarcerated it wasn't a jail it was a hotel room but there were no windows and there
48:58
are you know they've got kids and they just thought they were going for a holiday they were
49:03
eventually forced to drive to the border under police escort and then the police got turned
49:08
around at the border I mean that's hundreds of miles from Adelaide to the to the Victorian border
49:12
to get out of the jurisdiction and you know there are cases of people in the Northern Territory who
49:17
close contacts who are being you know taken against their will to Howard Springs I think at this
49:22
stage of the pandemic even though I understand the caution about indigenous communities and then
49:26
wanting to keep case numbers low I don't think you can justify that sort of infringement on
49:30
on individual rights just using the tradeoff of public health as your justification however
49:37
as you say Jacob you know wearing this for the long haul once we've got vaccination rates up in
49:42
each of these jurisdictions to the sorts of levels that they are in Sydney's state of New South Wales
49:47
and once COVID is sort of endemic in communities then obviously there's going to be zero
49:52
justification for any of that stuff and I think there'll be zero public acceptance of it so yeah
49:58
could you have you know some kind of AI system measuring risk all the time and you could make your
50:03
own choices about it I like that I mean the more empowered individuals can be the better
50:08
what are some of my favorite books and what would I recommend most to others when I was
50:13
young so when I was a kid I devoured all of royal dials books if you're American you don't know
50:19
royal dial one of the greatest children's writers of all time a British writer he wrote Charlie
50:25
in the chocolate factory James the giant peach a great many other books fantastic for your kids
50:31
when I was in my teens I devoured pretty much every Stephen King novel and the king is one of the
50:36
underrated writers like you know everyone knows him everyone loves him but they think of him as
50:42
being sort of just you know the kind of thing you buy at an airport bookstore to read on the on
50:46
the plane that has no literary merit I think he does have literary merit he's an amazing writer
50:50
and he probably gave me much of my appreciation for storytelling my favorite books the favorite
50:57
books of the like the past well the past of the past 10 years I'll pick two one is Jonathan
51:03
friends and the corrections which is brilliant all the friends and books are great and the other is
51:09
David Mitchell's cloud atlas especially if you haven't seen the film which is a bit of a turkey
51:15
by the Macausky brothers or sisters as they now may be cloud atlas is just such a beautiful book
51:21
and and the corrections is just such a perfect sort of portrait of modern American malaise and
51:27
but but coming back to the question about rationality and reason and the impact that
51:32
that science writers had in my teens I would point out two books one maybe three
51:40
cosmos by Carl Sagan is one of the greatest books ever written it's a history of all of scientific
51:46
knowledge which is really just a history of knowledge but it's not long and it's not boring and
51:50
it's not data full of data it's a gripping tale of people who thought enormous thoughts and
51:56
had incredible breakthroughs from Galileo all the way up to the present day cosmos is absolutely
52:01
wonderful the book by Carl Sagan he wrote another amazing book which is a much easier read and a
52:06
much more sort of prescient book for someone to have been writing in I guess it was the 70s
52:12
called a demon haunted world and I think the subtitle this science as a candle in the dark
52:19
and it is unbelievable I've reread some passages that went viral on social media from that book
52:25
about the present day and he pretty much predicts the rise of social media and a Trump like figure
52:32
and misinformation he's like I worry about a world in which people are so
52:38
wedded to what they want to be true and so unmoored from from the facts that they're going to be
52:43
more susceptible to someone who proudly pedals bullshit because they've lost faith in a shared
52:48
agreement about trusting the institutions of truth it's an amazing it's an amazing book and a
52:54
similarly amazing book that changed my life was one of Richard Dawkins's books an unusual book
53:00
for him most of his books are about science this is his most poetic book it's called Unweaving the
53:04
Rainbow which is a reference to when the first person split light into using a prism using a
53:13
glass prism into all the colors of the rainbow in order to understand what a rainbow was and then
53:19
finally understood that white light isn't just isn't just this ambient thing that we're living
53:22
amongst is this incredible radiant thing that's full of all these different colors and if you put
53:26
it through a prism at just this thing then a splay of rainbow colors go exploding from this prism
53:32
just because of the different wavelengths and explaining the wavelengths of light this
53:35
you know scientist to come and breathe name whoever discovered this an incredible breakthrough
53:39
and it was some person of faith some religious bishop or something who said you know the scientists
53:45
will stoop to all new lows going so low as to unweave the rainbow as if as if there was something
53:53
sort of profane or anti majestic about an act of knowledge about an act of understanding what
54:02
a rainbow is as if there was something something useful or beautiful or to be cherished about
54:07
being ignorant of what a rainbow is and this is Richard Dawkins attempt to say no no no no no no
54:13
the world is so much more incredible if you do understand what's going on that's a whole point
54:17
of knowledge that's a whole point of science there's nothing admiral admirable about going up
54:21
well we don't know and therefore you know you shouldn't try to know it's also weird that that
54:27
kind of religious attitude is so often coupled to a claim that they do know the most important
54:32
and outrageous things that nobody could know like i was saying a moment ago like what happens to
54:35
you after you die i'm sorry you don't want to know what what causes a rainbow but you say you do
54:40
know what the purpose of the universe is and how old it is exactly and that someone walked on water
54:46
two thousand years ago with no evidence and what happens after i die i mean that is rich
54:51
who's the arrogant one the scientist who's unweaving the rainbow so that's a great book those
54:57
would be my recommendations time for a quick fire round just a few questions before we wrap
55:04
question one what's your favorite podcast i would say the slate political gab fest question two
55:08
what's your number one wet dream guest i didn't read wet i didn't read guest there i said what's
55:13
your number one wet dream i want to answer that guest for uncomfortable conversations um
55:20
if i believed that i could ask them anything and they would be honest about it and that they
55:25
wouldn't be glib the whole time then i think davel letterman would be my number one guest
55:32
and maybe like gobbles i would have said hitler but hitler's a bit predictable like
55:38
someone who really believed because gobbles was a good propaganda like i'd really like to get
55:42
inside his head and and understand why he thought what he was doing was right because i think
55:47
he can think that gassing six million Jews is right like what does that tell us about how mistaken
55:54
we can be about our own beliefs i think that would be interesting however i think gobbles would be
56:00
evasive and davel letterman would be glib but so in that context i'll go back to Carl Sagan and
56:06
Richard Feynman who i think would be just wonderful guests question three lab leak or wet market
56:13
i don't know nobody does well not nobody someone probably does but nobody who is telling you that
56:18
they know does question four what's the best person who's the best person to follow on twitter
56:24
and why no one the best thing to do would be to delete twitter question five what's your favorite
56:28
interview that you've ever done and why rossel brand on half post live you can find it online i think
56:34
it was amazing i mean when you watch it you won't need an explanation why question six favorite
56:41
item on the christmas lunch spread and most overrated item on the christmas lunch spread
56:48
Sydney rock oysters are one of the most delicious delectable romantic succulent things in the
56:54
universe so i would put that on my christmas lunch spread just a fresh oyster freshly shocked
56:59
just a little squeeze of lemon nothing else on it most overrated item on the christmas lunch spread
57:04
well do they do this in america christmas or is it only thanksgiving where they like mash up sweet
57:09
potato add like cinnamon and sugar to it and then pile marshmallow whip on top and bake it
57:14
it is fucking disgusting it's just sugar and goo uh no it's that's torture to the poor sweet potato
57:22
come on just pop a sweet potato in the microwave stab it a few times uh put some butter or
57:25
sour cream on it and some salt and pepper beautiful uh question seven tips on the best way to drop
57:31
i've interviewed Richard Dawkins into a conversation with the stranger uh that's rich since i've just
57:37
talked about Richard Dawkins so much i think the best way to drop i've interviewed Richard Dawkins
57:40
into a conversation with the stranger is not to mention it but to be wearing a baseball cap that says
57:46
i've interviewed Richard Dawkins on it in neon flashing while you're talking to them uh and last
57:53
question how do the culture wars end answer a a cult an actual war be technologically induced universal
58:01
empathy see climate change ends them for us d none of the above then how yeah i don't think the
58:07
culture wars do end uh but they change i think they will go away because they'll morph into some
58:13
other disagreement they will modify themselves because we will lose interest in the particular
58:18
fads and to the extent that workness fosters greater compassion and diversity for minority identities
58:26
that will get absorbed by the rest of the culture as long as it doesn't spark uh backlash because
58:30
it's gone too far which it probably will so i believe in a sort of hagelian dialectic that swings
58:36
back and forth between extremes and finds a center my concern is that social media is making the
58:42
swings so much wider and so much stronger and so much more extreme and so much more partisan
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that it'll just swing swing swing in the bottle capsize i don't know what that looks like i don't
58:51
think it looks like actual actual war war but it could lead to the disintegration of of civil society
58:59
especially in the united states i could imagine an anarchic uh country in which there's just a
59:08
lot of crime that gets responded to with a lot of police heavy handedness and brutality and sort of
59:15
a quasi authoritarian quasi democratic almost like sort of i don't know russia style state i can
59:21
imagine that but um i think in general liberalism and western democracy will prevail they've
59:29
done they've had a pretty good run i think people are to the extent that we can make people
59:35
generally wealthy and generally well and governments generally responsive to their needs the way that
59:40
they are i think broadly in western europe and australia and canada i think we will be okay
59:46
thank you so much for listening to this thank you for being a listen to the podcast i when i
59:52
look at the episode list of 2021 i can't believe it we did 42 episodes with some of the some
59:56
amazing people eddies are john houston the former opposition leader of australia Malcolm turnable
1:00:00
former prime minister megan down and rudentin our greatest comedian and broadcaster arguably
1:00:05
tim mentioned jessie single toad samson tim flanery norma donalds i and her c le tim urban as i
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mentioned anyway it's been an absolute joy have a wonderful and safe christmas we'll be back
1:00:17
in the second or third week of january i don't have a calendar right in front of me but uh
1:00:21
we'll be back with more uncomfortable conversations then have a happy new year i love you bye
1:00:31
uncomfortable conversations is produced by stefan posthuma follow me josh leps on twitter and
1:00:36
instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful your mind humble your enemies generous
1:00:43
and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable