Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / How my upbringing shaped my world view with Josh Szeps

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How my upbringing shaped my world view with Josh Szeps · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:03
  G'day humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:07
  And today's subject, the bear of dangerous ideas, is yours truly.
• 0:11
  This is a recording of another podcast and I've gotten a lot of feedback from people who absolutely loved it and said it was maybe the most revealing and thoughtful that they've ever heard me, thanks largely to the interviewers who were really, really good at putting their fingers on particular things in my past that had probably contributed to...
• 0:32
  My outlook today and my worldview and who I am, that this might be sort of the most personal and intimate interview that I've ever given, I thought it might be interesting for you.
• 0:41
  The interviewers are James, a clinical psychologist, and Nick, who is an audio engineer and musician and philosopher and all-round wonderful person.
• 0:50
  They have a show on which they interview people about how their childhoods shaped who they have become.
• 0:56
  And as I say, they're really, really talented at
• 1:00
  homing in on the key moments that shaped the guests' key beliefs.
• 1:04
  The show is called You're a Good Kid, and I hope you enjoy this episode with the one, the only, Josh Sips.
• 1:18
  How do you feel about uncomfortable conversations?
• 1:21
  While many of us instinctively avoid them at all cost, our next guest revels in them and has dedicated his career to diving headfirst into topics many of us dare not tread.
• 1:32
  Israel, Gaza, gender politics, wokeism, Josh Zeps is game and ready to talk.
• 1:39
  But unlike many commentators who cynically raise these issues to stir up division and fan the flames of a culture war,
• 1:46
  Josh is doing something radically different.
• 1:48
  He's trying to connect us, to help us talk to each other and dismantle the tribal lanes of identity politics that have made uncomfortable conversations seem almost impossible.
• 2:00
  Nick, I know you are very excited about this particular episode.
• 2:06
  Very excited.
• 2:07
  Yeah.
• 2:07
  Yeah.
• 2:08
  So Josh is, he's an internationally renowned media personality, a political satirist, a TV presenter, radio host.
• 2:16
  columnist and also podcaster.
• 2:18
  Now, I do share a somewhat embarrassing love letter to Josh at the start of this episode.
• 2:24
  So we don't need to cover that ground again here.
• 2:25
  I will explain why I love him.
• 2:28
  But what I would say is just encourage our audience to stick with this.
• 2:30
  What is a pretty long episode right to the end, because it's a lively and fascinating look into Josh.
• 2:37
  It also allowed us a rather unique opportunity, which was to explore the philosophy and the ideas behind our show as well, in contrast to Josh's mission.
• 2:44
  Yeah, that is so true.
• 2:45
  Yeah, we were so grateful and so lucky to have Josh.
• 2:48
  And as you said, you read a delightful love letter to him, which I'm looking forward to hearing again.
• 2:53
  Still can't believe I did that.
• 2:54
  But anyway.
• 2:55
  It happened.
• 2:56
  Hey, no judgment here.
• 2:57
  There are certain people, if we get them on this podcast, like the second Billy Joel is sitting across from me, I promise you, I'll sing him a love letter.
• 3:03
  Yeah, I bet you would.
• 3:06
  That's not a joke.
• 3:07
  No, it was nice to tell Josh face-to-face that I think he's great, but, you know, somewhat awkward.
• 3:13
  No, it's great.
• 3:14
  I'm glad you did.
• 3:14
  And it was a nice setup to the conversation.
• 3:17
  But no, I love this episode.
• 3:19
  And for so many reasons, Josh is really funny.
• 3:22
  So there's that.
• 3:22
  It's a very witty, bantery kind of episode, which was nice.
• 3:26
  But he went deep.
• 3:27
  He gave us a side of himself that I've never heard before.
• 3:31
  And he did.
• 3:32
  He interrogated himself and shared some really personal things that, yeah, you're about to hear, audience.
• 3:38
  So it's something to look forward to.
• 3:40
  But there is a note that we need to make here, Nick, that we are about to go on a little bit of a break.
• 3:46
  We are, and it's all your fault.
• 3:48
  It is all my fault.
• 3:49
  But it's also very exciting.
• 3:50
  So, yes, we had originally intended to release all of season two, back to back, week to week.
• 3:55
  We're going to have to take a pause until September, we're sorry to say.
• 3:59
  So it's an amazing opportunity if you've been enjoying our show to catch up on any episodes you've missed.
• 4:03
  Yes.
• 4:04
  But, James, I know you can't tell us everything.
• 4:06
  But something very exciting has happened.
• 4:08
  So why don't you paint the picture as well as you can?
• 4:10
  Yeah.
• 4:10
  Without hyperbole, this is up there with the best things that have ever happened to me.
• 4:15
  So, yeah, about a year ago, I got an email from someone who said that they had heard our podcast and had an opportunity and wondered if I'd like to be part of a new British TV show.
• 4:28
  And I thought, this is a scam.
• 4:30
  This is up there with a Nigerian prince offering me an inheritance.
• 4:34
  But no, it turns out it was actually legitimate.
• 4:37
  So last August, I was flown over to the UK.
• 4:41
  They did ask me first.
• 4:42
  I just was busy.
• 4:45
  It was actually addressed to both of us, but I deleted your name from the invitation.
• 4:49
  Sorry, carry on.
• 4:51
  No, I flew over last August and we shot the pilot episode.
• 4:55
  And sure enough, it has been picked up by a major British production company.
• 5:01
  So I just, yeah, I'm pinching myself.
• 5:03
  But next week I get to fly over again and we're going to shoot the entire series.
• 5:07
  This is me as a psychologist.
• 5:09
  I'm sorry, I can't give any more details just yet, but obviously those will be...
• 5:13
  Yeah.
• 5:32
  So yes, an exciting adventure, just a small break for us, but we will be back in September.
• 5:35
  Yes.
• 5:36
  Sorry, everybody.
• 5:36
  A little bit of a break in production, but hopefully you can catch up on the eight episodes that we've released so far.
• 5:41
  And please, if you wouldn't mind, share it with anyone you think might enjoy it.
• 5:45
  And of course, rate and review on Apple and Spotify.
• 5:49
  But Nick, let's dive into our mid-season finale.
• 5:52
  Let's do it.
• 5:53
  You're a Good Kid is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and is supported by Engage One-on-One Psychology, helping people engage with life.
• 6:03
  This podcast discusses mental health-related themes that may be triggering for some listeners.
• 6:08
  If anything in the episode causes distress, please contact your health professional, or if urgent, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
• 6:17
  My name is James van Kylenberg.
• 6:20
  I'm a clinical psychologist.
• 6:21
  And together with my brother Nick, we're going to hear stories from a diverse range of people about how their childhoods have shaped them.
• 6:29
  Our guests are invited to share a photo of themselves as kids, which you can see by following the link in the show notes.
• 6:36
  And at the end of each episode, you'll hear them read a letter to their child selves.
• 6:41
  If you could say anything to your child self, what would you say?
• 6:45
  Welcome to You're a Good Kid.
• 6:54
  Josh Zeps was born in 1977 in the Sydney suburb of Balmain.
• 6:59
  While Josh concedes that Balmain is now a prohibitively expensive, bougie suburb, in the 70s and 80s it was a working class area, with many young families and creatives moving in, and he remembers it as a very artistic, friendly and beautiful peninsula jutting out into Sydney Harbour.
• 7:15
  Josh has one brother who is four years older than him, and is someone he describes as extremely warm, smart and creative, who is a bit of a rebel, but also a family man deep down.
• 7:25
  He was a great older brother.
• 7:26
  I mean, he would occasionally sit on my face and fart, as all older brothers do, but he was very protective and warm, and we had a very close relationship coming up with all kinds of crazy imaginative games and role-playing with each other.
• 7:40
  Josh's mum was a model and actress who starred in a soap opera called Number 96.
• 7:46
  He recalls that she was a sought-after, beautiful, glamorous starlet who stopped working when Josh was born so that she could be a full-time mother.
• 7:53
  And as a mother, Josh remembers her as incredibly affectionate, dedicated, thoughtful and kind.
• 7:59
  Mum is an angel, the wisest person I know.
• 8:02
  She takes a lot after her mother, who was my favourite person in the world, probably, my grandmother.
• 8:07
  And mum is sort of stoic and wise and loving at the same time.
• 8:14
  Josh's father, who passed away recently, is someone he describes as a true force of nature.
• 8:20
  He was quite well known in the 80s and 90s for starring in the beloved Australian sitcom Mother and Son, but was also a successful theatre actor and someone Josh remembers as a true thespian.
• 8:31
  He always put family above career.
• 8:34
  He probably could have gone further had it not been for his dedication to us.
• 8:37
  He was very funny, very thoughtful, extremely philosophical, and was a deep, emotional, loving person within the family.
• 8:48
  So Josh grew up in an idyllic, creatively thriving community in Sydney, with well-known parents who were loving, attentive and wise, shielded by an older brother who drew some of his father's stern gaze, which in turn allowed Josh a lot of freedom to explore, learn and play.
• 9:05
  I was the jester of the family.
• 9:07
  I was precocious and a terribly enthusiastic reader and performer and showman and prankster and was good at doing voices and funny characters.
• 9:21
  Yeah, I was a fun-loving guy who didn't like rules, should we say.
• 9:31
  James...
• 9:33
  This is the episode maybe I've been most excited about, not to undermine all of our other guests, but you know how excited.
• 9:38
  They were saying how shit all the other guests were just before we started recording.
• 9:41
  That's not entirely true, but thank you.
• 9:44
  Yeah, only one or two.
• 9:46
  We won't say which ones.
• 9:48
  I think our listeners know.
• 9:49
  No.
• 9:49
  I was incredibly excited today because, Josh, I'm a massive fan.
• 9:54
  I listen to so many of your episodes.
• 9:57
  I actually wrote something that I wanted to read out at the start to explain to our listeners why I'm so excited, why I value you so much.
• 10:03
  Now that I'm sitting across from you, it feels very silly.
• 10:05
  It's probably too earnest and I'm going to embarrass myself.
• 10:08
  No, no, no.
• 10:08
  I want to hear the love letter.
• 10:09
  Do you like to be validated in real time?
• 10:10
  Yeah, of course.
• 10:11
  I need some ego stroking.
• 10:13
  Go for it.
• 10:13
  I'll say nice things.
• 10:14
  You'll laugh at me.
• 10:15
  I'll feel embarrassed.
• 10:15
  It'd better be really good now.
• 10:16
  I'm just going to set a high bar.
• 10:18
  Here we go.
• 10:19
  Here goes my little blurb.
• 10:21
  I absolutely love Josh.
• 10:24
  I truly believe he is one of the most important voices in our country at the moment.
• 10:28
  Josh helps people navigate the most divisive topics in our society with both class and humour.
• 10:33
  Yeah.
• 10:34
  He has the ability to speak with people who are particularly strident and emotionally entrenched in their positions, to respectfully converse with them, and presents an alternative perspective without insulting or alienating them.
• 10:45
  He encourages a radical empathy and understanding of where other people are coming from, and articulates opposing perspectives in the most generous and good-faith manner as possible, and as well as a person who is in the world.
• 10:54
  whilst also keeping his bullshit detector finely tuned.
• 10:58
  He explores and pushes the limits of acceptable discourse, he helps guide people out of their social media echo chambers, and hysterical tribal discourse towards a more reasoned, nuanced, and self-reflective position.
• 11:09
  On a more personal note, one of the reasons I have been quite drawn to Josh's work is because I have felt politically adrift for some time.
• 11:16
  As someone who traditionally identified with the left of politics for its ideals of empathy, kindness, free speech and universalism, only to see it morph into a more judgmental, antagonistic, self-righteous and preachy brand of identity politics, this has made me want to withdraw from public discourse, but hearing Josh wade into these waters fly the flag of openness and connectedness has been refreshing and comforting.
• 11:37
  Okay.
• 11:38
  So I'm incredibly excited, honored to share his story today with our guests and have him on our podcast.
• 11:44
  So welcome, Josh.
• 11:44
  That is so nice.
• 11:46
  I mean, can you be my publicist?
• 11:48
  Can we end this now?
• 11:49
  Because I can't top this.
• 11:51
  We can't get better than that.
• 11:51
  That's great.
• 11:52
  Everybody knows the best stuff about me.
• 11:54
  And now they don't have to judge me for what I actually say.
• 11:57
  that's really kind and yeah I mean that's what more can I add to that that is exactly what I'm trying to do so you must be doing it hugely gratifying that you get it yeah it's landing it's landing for me and I think it's really important I mean that great so keep doing it
• 12:12
  Thanks.
• 12:13
  I agree with all of what Nick said.
• 12:14
  I have a compliment for you too, but it's not the one you'll expect.
• 12:18
  Okay.
• 12:18
  You have encouraged me to believe in magical thinking in a way that I didn't expect because we wrote a list of people we'd love to talk to for this season, which you were high on the list.
• 12:30
  And pretty much the next day, your lovely PR person, Julia, got in contact with us and said, would you like to talk to Josh?
• 12:36
  Amazing.
• 12:37
  And I thought, manifestation works.
• 12:39
  You put it into the universe.
• 12:41
  Right.
• 12:41
  And I must admit some regret at not writing Paul McCartney instead.
• 12:46
  How dare you?
• 12:49
  But I'm pretty thrilled that it worked.
• 12:52
  I once bumped into Paul McCartney.
• 12:54
  You did?
• 12:55
  Yes.
• 12:55
  Tell me the story.
• 12:56
  It's a pretty lousy story, but I was at the airport lounge in Heathrow in the first class lounge.
• 13:02
  You literally just bumped into him in public.
• 13:04
  He comes in.
• 13:04
  No.
• 13:05
  Well, I mean, it's an exclusive space.
• 13:07
  You have to be flying first class.
• 13:09
  And I was using points.
• 13:10
  And he comes in with a few people, like a bodyguard and some younger woman who was probably a secretary or something like that.
• 13:17
  And it ruined the next 90 minutes, which I was really looking forward to in the first class lounge.
• 13:23
  Because instead of relaxing, I was just spending the whole time thinking –
• 13:27
  What is it that I can say that he hasn't heard a million times that will be so original and funny that it'll be memorable for him in not just annoying?
• 13:39
  And I ran out of time.
• 13:41
  The clock went out.
• 13:41
  Oh, so you didn't come up with anything?
• 13:42
  How could you?
• 13:44
  He's heard everything, every possible line that you could come up with about yellow submarines.
• 13:50
  Although I'd like to bet that you've got one ready to go because James is an unusual fan.
• 13:53
  James, what's the line?
• 13:54
  What should I have said?
• 13:55
  See, usually I would love to imagine I'd be eloquent and insightful, but I'd probably just say I love you in a squeaky voice.
• 14:02
  Yeah.
• 14:02
  And like, does he want to hear that?
• 14:04
  No.
• 14:04
  You know, he hears that a lot.
• 14:05
  I bet he hears it a lot.
• 14:06
  I love you.
• 14:07
  Yeah.
• 14:08
  How many squeaky voice little girls has he heard saying, I love you?
• 14:11
  He doesn't need one more in the form of James.
• 14:13
  I might go full, you know, 14-year-old girl, Beatlemania.
• 14:15
  Yeah.
• 14:16
  Yeah.
• 14:17
  So I have a chip on my shoulder about Paul McCartney.
• 14:19
  Sounds like you've ruined my visit to the Concord Room.
• 14:22
  At least you can say you've shared space.
• 14:24
  I mean...
• 14:24
  I breathed in his farts or breath or whatever it was.
• 14:27
  There's a story.
• 14:27
  Whatever he was emitting, I was inhaling.
• 14:29
  Well, congratulations.
• 14:30
  Thank you very much.
• 14:31
  But you are a jet setter.
• 14:32
  You must be in a lot of lounges around the world.
• 14:34
  I am in a lot of lounges around the world.
• 14:36
  In fact...
• 14:37
  And not wanting to blow my own trumpet, but because I just did a big podcast tour where I was traveling around the world.
• 14:42
  The Josh Zeps World Tour.
• 14:43
  The Josh Zeps.
• 14:44
  Well, you can call it that if you want to.
• 14:45
  I think you called it that.
• 14:46
  It involved a man named Josh Zeps and he was going around the world.
• 14:48
  You definitely called it that.
• 14:50
  Well, I think it was called the Zeps Line Around the World Podcast Marathon.
• 14:54
  Okay, gotcha.
• 14:55
  Yeah.
• 14:55
  I think my title's better.
• 14:56
  Yours is better.
• 14:57
  Josh Zeps Gets on a Plane.
• 14:59
  It's your title.
• 15:00
  It smells farts.
• 15:01
  Yeah.
• 15:01
  Josh Zeps on a Plane smelling farts.
• 15:03
  Yeah.
• 15:03
  So tell us just briefly some of the – you talked to some of the biggest names in the world.
• 15:08
  Who were some of the people that you got to interview on this tour?
• 15:11
  Well, a lot of people who work in the same sort of space as Nick was just alluding to who try to make more sense.
• 15:18
  Sam Harris.
• 15:19
  who has been on the show before, and I've co-hosted his show a couple of times.
• 15:24
  Jimmy Carr is not exactly in that universe, but, you know, comedian and controversial and provocative.
• 15:28
  Nick Cave, the musician.
• 15:30
  And, yeah, just lots of people who I think are doing really interesting things and thinking about things in different ways, even if their names don't necessarily land with...
• 15:38
  Some very beloved names for us.
• 15:39
  Beloved names.
• 15:39
  Beloved names for you.
• 15:40
  For everybody.
• 15:41
  You're intellectual nerds, so you know these people.
• 15:43
  Thank you.
• 15:43
  We've followed Nick Cave closely as well.
• 15:45
  Been to several of his shows and movies along the way.
• 15:47
  We've gone together.
• 15:48
  Yeah, but Sam Harris, oh my gosh.
• 15:50
  Yeah, he's in my ears every morning as I do what he tells me to do.
• 15:53
  I need to create a meditation app so that I vault him in the number of minutes you spend listening to one of us.
• 16:00
  If you look at my stats on the app, I've logged a lot of hours.
• 16:01
  So you've got some work to do, but I'm open to it.
• 16:03
  Yeah, I'm a fan.
• 16:04
  But I raise that because, you know, the opportunity to speak to so many high profile, great thinkers around the world.
• 16:11
  You're, you know, a great interviewer yourself.
• 16:13
  But do you get the opportunity to be interviewed much, you know?
• 16:17
  Um, not that much.
• 16:19
  No, no, it's certainly a, certainly would certainly be a 100 to one ratio.
• 16:24
  Yeah.
• 16:25
  So we're really thrilled, Josh, that you've joined us.
• 16:27
  Thank you.
• 16:28
  Well, I'm delighted to have been invited, even though I invited myself.
• 16:31
  Yeah.
• 16:31
  Well, I mean, please do anytime.
• 16:33
  And, uh, I know you record a lot of podcasts, but you're here today to talk about your childhood.
• 16:38
  Did you know that?
• 16:39
  Don't worry.
• 16:39
  I'll be quietly judging you as we go through about your craft.
• 16:42
  I would love you to do that.
• 16:43
  Yeah, I do know.
• 16:44
  Do it out loud.
• 16:45
  We love it.
• 16:45
  I love it.
• 16:46
  To the listener before we started, they were like, do you know that this is a podcast about your childhood?
• 16:50
  I was like, does anyone show up at the studio not even knowing the basic premise of the show?
• 16:58
  And you guys were like, oh, yeah, happens all the time.
• 17:01
  And then I was like, people are fucking idiots, which is true.
• 17:03
  And they are.
• 17:04
  But I love them anyway.
• 17:05
  No, I was glad to hear you know that you're here to talk about your childhood.
• 17:07
  Yeah, I know what I'm here to do.
• 17:08
  But I don't know what I haven't prepared.
• 17:10
  Should I have prepared?
• 17:10
  I mean, I prepared a letter because you told me to prepare a letter, but I don't know what I need to talk about about my childhood.
• 17:15
  I will lead you.
• 17:16
  Don't worry.
• 17:16
  We'll get to the letter at the end.
• 17:17
  But what we would like to do is start with a photo if you brought one along.
• 17:21
  Yeah.
• 17:21
  And you can introduce us to...
• 17:23
  I brought nine photos.
• 17:24
  Right?
• 17:25
  Do you have a favorite or one or two?
• 17:26
  One at a time, please.
• 17:27
  I would need to see them first.
• 17:28
  It might take us several hours to get through the whole lot.
• 17:31
  I think I need to look at them.
• 17:32
  Do you want to pull one up on your phone and pass it around?
• 17:34
  Is that a good way to go?
• 17:35
  Yeah.
• 17:36
  Most of our podcasts are just people going through their phones.
• 17:41
  Or texting them, I'm going, can you send me a photo?
• 17:44
  Yeah, we'll do that one.
• 17:46
  Okay, excellent.
• 17:46
  Can you describe this photo for us, please?
• 17:48
  This is my brother and I in our backyard, and we've clearly been wrestling in the mud because we're both just completely drenched and covered in brown goo, which I certainly hope it's mud.
• 18:04
  Yeah.
• 18:06
  Oh, it looks fun.
• 18:06
  How old would you be here?
• 18:08
  I guess I must have been maybe three, four.
• 18:11
  Yeah.
• 18:12
  And your brother?
• 18:13
  He would have been seven or eight.
• 18:14
  Yeah.
• 18:15
  Okay.
• 18:16
  So what does this picture evoke for you, Josh?
• 18:19
  Sort of embodies childhood for me, and our childhood in particular, without wanting to sound like too much of an old fart, it was definitely a childhood defined by a lot of running around outside in the sunshine and climbing trees and wandering down to the park and jumping off the wharf and almost getting mauled by the ferry's propeller as it pulled away from the wharf and...
• 18:41
  Going fishing for leather jackets and, you know, trying to cut their heads off and almost cutting our fingers off while we're in the process and rolling around in the mud.
• 18:51
  And, yeah, going for swims in the tacky, cheap, above-ground outdoor pool and trying to create cyclones and whirlpools in there by running around as quickly as we possibly could.
• 19:01
  It was, you know…
• 19:02
  It was the era pre-video games and, you know, pre the norm of sitting down and watching television.
• 19:08
  Well, there was nothing to watch.
• 19:09
  What would I watch?
• 19:10
  Like, you know, it was all like the young and the restless or something like that.
• 19:13
  There was no like ABC kids to just turn on.
• 19:17
  Yeah, that's right.
• 19:17
  It's a very, very different world.
• 19:18
  Okay.
• 19:19
  Do you have another picture you want to share with us from the same era or somewhere else in childhood?
• 19:22
  Yeah, no, I wanted to share this one, which is about the same time, but it embodies for me what my dad meant.
• 19:30
  It's my brother and me and my dad, and we're all dressed as clowns with full face makeup and full clown outfits.
• 19:38
  I have no idea what the occasion was or why we were dressed as clowns, but that's like...
• 19:43
  Kind of a literal expression of the metaphorical clownishness of my father, who was very playful and a great joker, had a million jokes and practical jokes and was great with kids, always was great with kids, including really good with my kids as well, as a very playful grandfather when they were sort of two or three before he got dementia and started getting two out of it.
• 20:07
  And, yeah, so that just, for me, like...
• 20:10
  The literal expression of silliness is really nice.
• 20:14
  I love that.
• 20:15
  Both of those pictures are so evocative.
• 20:17
  Being in the mud and being a clown.
• 20:19
  I mean, interesting choices.
• 20:21
  Do you still feel like you're in the mud these days?
• 20:25
  As much as I can be.
• 20:26
  I want to be in the mud.
• 20:27
  I want to continue to be in the mud as much as possible.
• 20:30
  I don't think there's... Oh, look, there's one more photo that I'll also include, which is me and my brother, which I just think it's hilarious because his hairdo is so bad.
• 20:40
  He has like almost a Princess Leia hairdo, but without the buns on the side.
• 20:45
  It's a school photo.
• 20:47
  And for me, that just evokes how close we were and what a protective figure he was and is in my life.
• 20:53
  I love this.
• 20:54
  You know we can relate to this.
• 20:55
  Yeah, exactly.
• 20:56
  And I love that you shared three photos with your brother.
• 20:58
  Yeah.
• 20:59
  Yeah.
• 20:59
  I mean, he's definitely the most important person in my life apart from my husband and my parents.
• 21:06
  And it's really, really nice, as you guys know, to have a relationship that is sort of timeless and transcendent like that.
• 21:15
  Hi, everyone.
• 21:16
  So sorry for the interruption.
• 21:17
  We decided we didn't want to run ads in this season.
• 21:19
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• 21:24
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• 21:27
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• 21:34
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• 22:12
  Thank you, everybody.
• 22:13
  Back to the episode.
• 22:14
  So those adventures when you were young, just the two of you, parental supervision, I imagine, was nowhere to be found?
• 22:19
  No parental supervision, not necessary.
• 22:22
  As soon as I was aware of being alive, my brother was old enough, was sufficiently older than me that he could be there.
• 22:30
  protector.
• 22:31
  So I guess like by the time I was, you know, five or six, he was already nine or 10, which meant that he could play the parental role.
• 22:36
  Yeah.
• 22:36
  Yeah.
• 22:37
  Interesting.
• 22:38
  And humor, like the clowning around, you know, you've described yourself as a joker.
• 22:41
  How important was humor in your upbringing?
• 22:43
  Vital.
• 22:44
  Everything.
• 22:44
  For me, at least.
• 22:46
  Uh,
• 22:47
  And I think my dad, that was his natural way of connecting with people always.
• 22:53
  I mean, until his dying days, his obvious, like even once dad lost the capacity to communicate using words, he would just blow raspberries and like wink at people and, you know, try to pull funny faces and get a laugh.
• 23:06
  Like that was the go-to way to communicate.
• 23:08
  connect was through humor and silliness.
• 23:11
  And I guess that was like one half of my strong suits as a kid, but the other was that I was quite precocious and quite articulate and quite brainy.
• 23:23
  And so I knew that if I couldn't get a laugh, I could probably wow people with some bombo of some kind.
• 23:30
  Yeah.
• 23:31
  But were you frustrated then as a kid because you were bright and maybe a bit ahead of the curb?
• 23:35
  What was that like going through the school system for you?
• 23:40
  I was lucky enough, again, to be going through a school system that was still flexible enough, I think, to accommodate people like me.
• 23:47
  Like I was at a hippy-dippy artsy-fartsy creative in a west of Sydney primary school, a public primary school, and then I was at a selective school,
• 23:57
  public high school, which is well known in Sydney, Fort Street, which has produced high court justices and John Singleton, the ad man, and all kinds of weird and wonderful people, and was sort of renowned for being quite...
• 24:13
  you know, quite flexible and we didn't have to wear uniforms even though there was a uniform.
• 24:18
  And, you know, I remember an occasion where once I got to year 10, year 9 or 10, I was really good at writing essays and my English teacher was willing to allow me to stop writing essays and just to start doing comedy videos and submitting those.
• 24:37
  How old were you at this point?
• 24:38
  I would have been 15.
• 24:39
  Yeah, great.
• 24:40
  Yeah.
• 24:40
  Yeah.
• 24:41
  So I think I made about eight or nine comedy videos.
• 24:45
  And I went back to see her after leaving school maybe less than 10 years ago.
• 24:51
  And I said to her, thank you for allowing me to do that because it stoked this whole other creative side of me that would not have been satisfied had I just had to keep churning out essays.
• 25:00
  And she was like, oh, you're welcome.
• 25:01
  There's no way I could do it today.
• 25:03
  Yeah.
• 25:03
  I wouldn't be able to.
• 25:04
  The principal would, you know, I'd have to fill out so many forms and the department would want to know what I'm doing.
• 25:09
  But it was more the permission to do it.
• 25:11
  So it sounds like you had the belief in yourself though right from the start.
• 25:14
  Oh, I mean, I just thought it was fun.
• 25:16
  Yeah.
• 25:16
  Yeah.
• 25:17
  I think Nick's onto something that I'd like to explore too.
• 25:19
  Like you strike me as someone with a strong sense of self, you know, and in a belief that I can, you know, which we want our kids to have.
• 25:29
  I can't see anywhere in your story so far, you can tell me if this isn't true, where that wasn't there.
• 25:34
  It's like you had this innate I can from the beginning.
• 25:37
  Is that true?
• 25:38
  I mean, I can only compare myself to other people's experiences because the internal experience doesn't feel that way.
• 25:45
  What did it feel like?
• 25:46
  I mean, it felt like I...
• 25:47
  had no idea what was the correct way of doing things.
• 25:52
  And if it was the correct way of doing things, then why and why there was so much inconsistency and hypocrisy about the way things are done.
• 26:00
  You mean culturally or just in your family?
• 26:02
  Culturally.
• 26:03
  No, just broadly.
• 26:05
  We're talking about by the time I got to the questioning age, so early teens.
• 26:10
  But by then I just thought...
• 26:12
  It didn't land for me as like, I have a center.
• 26:15
  It landed for me as everything seems bloody stupid and I don't really understand why other people don't seem to get that and why...
• 26:27
  The absurdity of everything.
• 26:28
  Yeah.
• 26:28
  The absurdity of everything, the pointlessness.
• 26:31
  I mean, I think most 15 year olds, if they're of sound mind, have this sense to some extent like...
• 26:37
  all these stupid grown-ups with their stupid priorities and their stupid mortgages and their dumb, you know, jobs and all these conformist dickheads.
• 26:45
  Yeah, you could see that from an early age.
• 26:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 26:48
  And I think I just maybe, yeah, I guess your diagnosis is probably correct that I...
• 26:52
  had more of a center to be able to push back on it and ridicule it.
• 26:56
  But was it destabilizing for a period?
• 26:57
  Do you remember feeling confused and uncertain?
• 26:59
  Oh, yeah.
• 27:00
  I mean, what teenager doesn't?
• 27:01
  Right?
• 27:01
  Yeah.
• 27:02
  How did that manifest to you?
• 27:03
  Did you ever go through a period of feeling even like a bit depressed or low or anything like that?
• 27:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:08
  I didn't have a period where I had depression or anxiety, luckily.
• 27:13
  I have the good fortune to, I think, just be born like hormonally with a slightly sunny disposition.
• 27:20
  I just sort of have my baseline setting as reasonably happy.
• 27:25
  Mum and dad, they're the same?
• 27:26
  Yeah.
• 27:28
  Uh, mum, yes.
• 27:30
  I think dad was not, well, circumstance has so much to do with it as well.
• 27:34
  Like mum had to put up with a lot when dad was going through a period after we got back from the UK, we can get into this later perhaps, but where he really had to self-generate a lot of his work.
• 27:43
  So there was a lot of stress in terms of the career and in terms of where are we going to live and all this stuff.
• 27:47
  And I think during that time, mum was carrying a lot on her shoulders and along with having two young kids and, um, yeah, I think that
• 27:53
  So it's difficult to unpick what is environmental and, you know, circumstantial on the one hand versus what is temperamental on the other.
• 28:00
  Yeah, fair enough.
• 28:01
  But I felt if there was a way in which my own sort of screwed upness manifested itself, it would have been in.
• 28:12
  probably an inability to understand my own interiority very well, which I still don't have.
• 28:18
  Like, I mean, you know, my partner, Sean, will just tease me and be like, you know, how are you doing?
• 28:22
  And I'll be like, I have absolutely no idea.
• 28:25
  I cannot interrogate the inside of myself.
• 28:27
  Are you speaking from an emotional point of view?
• 28:28
  Like, have you struggled to label and understand what's going on?
• 28:31
  That's right.
• 28:32
  Yeah.
• 28:32
  Yeah.
• 28:32
  I really don't.
• 28:33
  I can't,
• 28:35
  I don't have a wise or deep understanding of my own emotional life.
• 28:38
  That's interesting.
• 28:38
  I must say that feels surprising to me.
• 28:40
  Yeah.
• 28:41
  Given that you diagnose so much complexity outside of you and that's part of your thinking process.
• 28:46
  Yeah.
• 28:46
  You don't turn that inwards.
• 28:48
  I don't know how.
• 28:49
  I mean, I don't think it's an intellectual pursuit.
• 28:52
  Like I'm good at the intellectual stuff, but I'm sort of a brain in a vat.
• 28:57
  That's interesting.
• 28:57
  I don't feel deeply like connected to like the experience of grieving my father's death
• 29:05
  Like, am I doing it right?
• 29:06
  Is this going right?
• 29:07
  I think a lot of people ask themselves that.
• 29:08
  Is this how I'm supposed to do it?
• 29:09
  Yeah, there's a sense of how I should do this sort of stuff.
• 29:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:12
  And grief, obviously, can take many forms and express itself in a lot of different ways.
• 29:16
  And I was also... And I think I was an obstinate and weird kid in my level of obstinacy.
• 29:22
  Like, there were...
• 29:23
  The way it would express among my peer group would be not depression or anxiety, at least that I was aware of, but refusal to play other people's games.
• 29:34
  Yeah.
• 29:35
  So like I would, if I wasn't good at something, I have a terrible tendency to, instead of just chipping away at something and understanding that losing is part of life and that's part of the game...
• 29:45
  I think partly because of dad's ambition and his vision of the world as a place that has to be fought back and beaten and conquered.
• 29:55
  And, you know, it's going to, yeah, it's going to pull you down if you don't, if you give it half a chance.
• 30:00
  I think my brother and I both had a sense of like, if you're not, if I'm not good at something, then it must be a stupid thing.
• 30:06
  So don't bother.
• 30:07
  I'm not going to play handball if I'm not going to win every time.
• 30:10
  So I'll just sit on the sidelines and pretend I'm better than that.
• 30:13
  There's something about how we protect our sense of self here, right?
• 30:17
  Yes, that's right.
• 30:18
  That competitive instinct to be all or back out.
• 30:22
  I wonder if you were using humor as a kind of coping thing too.
• 30:25
  Definitely.
• 30:26
  Definitely.
• 30:26
  I knew I could get up in front of the school at an assembly when some student had been called upon to deliver some kind of speech and I would put myself forward for it.
• 30:35
  And I could nail that.
• 30:37
  I could get laughs and that was my lane.
• 30:41
  And as long as I was good at that, I didn't really need to...
• 30:43
  Yeah.
• 30:44
  do anything else.
• 30:46
  I mean, you clearly like whatever your internal world is, you know, you seem to manage it very nicely and are operating in the world in a fairly confident manner.
• 30:55
  But I wonder like if you perceive this to be something within yourself that's missing or that you wish you had or had more access to.
• 31:01
  Yeah, I do.
• 31:02
  Yeah.
• 31:04
  Can I ask then if you're not being reflective on your emotional states inside, what's your temperance like?
• 31:11
  Are you emotionally stable?
• 31:12
  Are you reactive?
• 31:13
  Yeah.
• 31:13
  Am I stable?
• 31:15
  Yes.
• 31:15
  Am I reactive?
• 31:16
  No.
• 31:16
  I'm very even keeled.
• 31:18
  I'm very, like even when I'm doing a lot of things that are going crazy around me, I'm like the duck paddling underwater but smooth sailing on top.
• 31:31
  I don't get emotionally aroused by things.
• 31:34
  I'm not reactive.
• 31:36
  I'm not activated by things.
• 31:38
  I just don't have a wide emotional...
• 31:42
  range.
• 31:42
  It just is what it is.
• 31:44
  But I'm curious about the part where you think, do you think, am I missing something in the kind of richness of experience?
• 31:50
  Yeah, I do.
• 31:50
  Yeah, I do.
• 31:51
  I wonder whether or not, I mean, I don't wonder.
• 31:53
  I know that there is a trade-off there.
• 31:55
  There is a, you know, nobody wants to be wildly hysterical, constantly swung around by the vagaries of life, where every time something good happens, they're hysterically happy, and every time something bad happens, they're morose.
• 32:09
  But nor do you want to be like an automaton who's like, what is currently happening to me is optimal.
• 32:14
  Do you think you're that?
• 32:15
  I do a bit.
• 32:16
  I think the dial is set probably, I don't want to say too far because that's judgmental.
• 32:23
  It is set further in that direction than it is for most people.
• 32:26
  And the upside is I have a less emotionally chaotic life.
• 32:29
  But the downside is that I'm probably less in touch with what's going on inside me.
• 32:33
  Yeah.
• 32:34
  What chips away at you?
• 32:35
  What gets through then?
• 32:37
  Since having kids, anything to do with kids.
• 32:40
  Yeah.
• 32:41
  Right?
• 32:41
  Anything, you know, the moment I had kids, all of a sudden I would be crying at a Kleenex commercial.
• 32:46
  I did want to ask this.
• 32:47
  So your kids do make you emotional.
• 32:49
  Yes.
• 32:49
  How do you go with news articles that involve suffering of children and stuff like that?
• 32:52
  Actually, that's fine.
• 32:54
  That's fine.
• 32:55
  I love a dead baby.
• 32:56
  Pretty good.
• 32:57
  I mean, I love a dead baby.
• 33:00
  No, you know, I...
• 33:02
  It's strange.
• 33:03
  That didn't go the way I thought it was going to.
• 33:06
  I don't want to sound callous, but I think just because I work in news and because I am a journalist, I've managed to compartmentalize the news as being a thing that has huge implications beyond the personal.
• 33:19
  So I actually...
• 33:20
  Actually, I've always felt, I even remember in journalism class when I was at university, there was an exercise where we were asked, if we were a newspaper editor, how would we rank these stories?
• 33:31
  And we were given like five hypothetical stories by the professor.
• 33:34
  And we had to discuss which one should be on the front page and which shouldn't.
• 33:39
  And I remember getting into an argument then that we shouldn't report at all on, you know, a baby fell out of a window and was killed in a street in a neighboring suburb.
• 33:49
  And the argument is, well, it happened in our neighborhood, you know, it's nearby.
• 33:54
  But I was like, I mean, I don't mean to sound callous, but babies are dying all over the place all the time.
• 33:59
  Like, why is it necessarily- That's a very rational point of view.
• 34:01
  Exactly.
• 34:02
  Here's my coming back to my brain in the vat.
• 34:03
  It's like- He's a factual- There are lots of babies in Africa who are dying.
• 34:07
  Why are we prioritizing this one?
• 34:09
  Because it was in the neighboring neighborhood.
• 34:10
  I didn't know the baby.
• 34:11
  I didn't know the baby's family.
• 34:13
  It doesn't teach us anything about anything.
• 34:15
  Unless there's a story about window safety or like, you know, about policy that we should change.
• 34:20
  Like for me, it's about big stuff.
• 34:23
  Like how are we running the world?
• 34:25
  How are we living our lives?
• 34:26
  Not like just some incident of some random bad thing happened.
• 34:30
  I think it gives insight into how you kind of use that as a sort of superpower in a way in your position of analyzing the world's conversations.
• 34:37
  You can cut through a lot of the crap.
• 34:38
  Yeah.
• 34:39
  Because you're not in it.
• 34:40
  You're not experiencing the kind of emotional wave maybe that others are.
• 34:43
  Maybe.
• 34:44
  And you're just like, no, let's focus on this part.
• 34:46
  I like your interpretation better than my critics who say that I'm a callous arsehole.
• 34:50
  Because, yes, I can just say I'm just more sophisticated.
• 34:54
  Right, right.
• 34:55
  Yeah.
• 34:55
  There was a wonderful book to that extent, Beyond Empathy.
• 34:57
  I can't remember who wrote it.
• 34:58
  Paul Bloom?
• 34:59
  Yeah, whose thesis was basically we should operate in the world with that approach.
• 35:05
  Yes.
• 35:06
  Paul's been on my show as well, so you should Google Paul Bloom uncomfortable conversations.
• 35:10
  This was obviously before you were a fan of the show.
• 35:13
  You can go back and listen to the back catalog.
• 35:14
  How embarrassing for you.
• 35:15
  It's shameful.
• 35:16
  Don't worry, he'll cut this out.
• 35:18
  Yeah, so I'm not hugely emotionally activated by news stories, but if you show me a Kleenex commercial in which a child, a dad's coming home or something, he's been away, he's an abalone fisherman, he's coming through the door for the first time in six weeks, the puppy comes and greets him, I'm a blubbering mess on the floor.
• 35:39
  This is all slow motion.
• 35:40
  Yeah, exactly, that's right.
• 35:41
  How come that gets to you?
• 35:42
  Because I look at that and go, this is cheesy.
• 35:44
  Yeah, it does nothing.
• 35:45
  What's happening there?
• 35:46
  I mean, I just...
• 35:49
  Something about like the innocence of youth and like the purity of that affection and just the simplicity of children's love is adorable.
• 36:03
  I'm a more emotional person than you, but maybe not by much.
• 36:06
  Wouldn't be hard.
• 36:06
  Right.
• 36:07
  Because I didn't cry a lot, you know, in my adolescence and early adulthood until we had to put the family dog down.
• 36:13
  Oof.
• 36:15
  Like cried for days.
• 36:16
  Horrendous.
• 36:18
  Then not again for quite a few years until my kids were born.
• 36:23
  And then I started crying all the time.
• 36:24
  And like emotional triggers that previously hadn't got me, like films and music.
• 36:30
  I could feel the tears much more available once the kids were around.
• 36:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:34
  And I have actively kind of pursued them because I want to be more connected because I think there's something cultural about that block that I had that, you know, boys don't cry.
• 36:45
  Yeah.
• 36:46
  And I was like, stuff that.
• 36:47
  I want the full experience.
• 36:48
  Like, do you find yourself doing anything like that?
• 36:50
  Like when you get it, when the Kleenex commercial comes on and you find the emotion welling up, do you lean into it?
• 36:57
  I want to, but I still have a block.
• 36:59
  Yeah.
• 37:00
  I can't quite I don't have the I don't have the dexterity on the accelerator on the brake the way that you do for me it just seems like it's out of my control interesting yeah yeah even some of your episodes have made me cry and I am an emotional person it's interesting to hear you're not on that that experience but yeah even the ideas sometimes
• 37:21
  Great.
• 37:22
  You are emotional.
• 37:23
  Do you remember any that come to mind?
• 37:25
  Yeah, look, okay.
• 37:27
  When you spoke about Alan Jones, and actually there was quite a nice synergy with what we're trying to do here, but you explained what it was like, what potentially it was like growing up, rural Queensland, I believe it was, in the 50s, in a homophobic area, and you just painted this picture of someone who's just never been welcomed into society, has always had roadblocks at every path.
• 37:48
  And you're like, how dare we judge him?
• 37:50
  Look what he's been through.
• 37:51
  And that just got me.
• 37:52
  Like that extra empathy that you extended and the understanding of someone that so many people are feeling judgmental towards.
• 37:58
  And to clarify for listeners who don't want to listen to an entire hour of me talking about Alan Jones,
• 38:04
  I wasn't implying that the law should not judge him nor that morality should not judge him on some grand cosmic scale.
• 38:12
  If crimes were committed, then they should be prosecuted.
• 38:15
  I was more talking about how corrosive it is to our own soul to engage in gleeful witch hunts against people.
• 38:21
  And that we were in the heat of a moment where that was very much the...
• 38:26
  And my instinct and my goal is always to try to buck whatever the mob is doing and ask the mob to be more reflective.
• 38:33
  And so I'm really glad.
• 38:34
  Why?
• 38:35
  Why do you want the mob to do that?
• 38:36
  Well, I think mobs are just dangerous and unhealthy.
• 38:39
  Groupthink.
• 38:40
  Yeah.
• 38:40
  So you're trying to break through groupthink and help us access what?
• 38:45
  I mean, I think nothing less than the fate of the 21st century hinges on whether or not we can figure out as a civilization how to talk to ourselves and to each other in an era of social media and the internet and soon artificial intelligence in ways that are coherent and make sense to the largest quorum of people.
• 39:05
  Yeah, we're not doing so well on that, are we?
• 39:06
  We're not.
• 39:07
  Yeah.
• 39:08
  I just think the main stumbling block is the cognitive biases that we all know that we have, which is that we would rather see and hear things that confirm what we already believe and demonize things that we don't like.
• 39:24
  So the word you haven't said there, maybe you're about to get to it, but you didn't say empathy.
• 39:27
  And I wonder how important that is to you.
• 39:31
  In a limited sense, it's extremely important, but I always add the adjective intellectual before I talk about the empathy that I'm talking about.
• 39:38
  Intellectual empathy.
• 39:40
  Empathy for another person's position, for their ideas, trying to expand your generosity towards why they might be thinking the way they think or feeling the way they feel.
• 39:53
  This is where we feel like we might have some crossover in our goals because, yeah, I guess you're probably familiar in psychology and counseling with something called unconditional positive regard that you try and have everyone that walks in the door.
• 40:03
  Because we hear, as you'd imagine, the most horrific stories and the worst things that there are.
• 40:08
  But when a person comes in, if they're willing and wanting to work on themselves, you start with the most generous read of whatever they bring in.
• 40:14
  Right.
• 40:14
  Right.
• 40:15
  And that's how Nick and I speak about the world and look at the world and try to anyway.
• 40:20
  Not always successfully, but we try.
• 40:22
  And we're trying to bring that into an interview setting.
• 40:25
  What is the context of people's beliefs, even if we don't think they're good?
• 40:28
  How have they got there?
• 40:31
  What does their childhood say about how they've arrived at that position?
• 40:34
  And how does that shape the person that then has this very strong emotional point of view?
• 40:38
  There's generally a good reason for them arriving there.
• 40:40
  But we rarely give people the benefit of asking that question or putting them in context or thinking about why they're saying what they're saying.
• 40:46
  Yeah.
• 40:47
  I mean, I think you're playing a deeper game than I am because you're dealing with the human side of it.
• 40:55
  Like, what are the emotional drivers of this person that has led them to the situation that they're in?
• 41:10
  if the risk is the degradation of civil society into sort of warring factions that is a kind of a tower of Babel where nobody can understand each other because we have so many such different views of the world, how can I nudge everybody 10% closer to comprehension of the other person's position, not just understanding why emotionally they might have gotten there, even though they're still wrong?
• 41:34
  Like your job could be...
• 41:36
  Let's understand how this person got there at the same time as not trying to evaluate the content of whatever it is that they've done or they think.
• 41:44
  I want to do that too.
• 41:45
  Oh, you want to do that too?
• 41:46
  Oh, absolutely.
• 41:47
  Because no change is possible, but we got to understand each other first.
• 41:50
  And if we don't do that generous read because of our negativity biases or our tribal inclinations,
• 41:57
  it's blocking any possibility of kind of positive shift.
• 42:00
  We're just going to put people in their camps and not be able to communicate.
• 42:03
  No, I get it.
• 42:04
  But I mean, if someone, if, if like a, like it's not the lack of judgment or of critiquing.
• 42:11
  No, I understand.
• 42:11
  But if, like, suppose an Islamist is in the room with you, then your job is not to presumably persuade him to be... Oh, sorry, you're talking about specifically counselling.
• 42:22
  Yeah.
• 42:22
  That's a different project to...
• 42:23
  Sorry, I'm talking about counselling.
• 42:24
  Yeah, gotcha.
• 42:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:26
  No, that's right.
• 42:26
  No, I'm not there to challenge their beliefs.
• 42:28
  No, exactly.
• 42:28
  Yeah, no, I gotcha.
• 42:29
  I don't think we're here to challenge their beliefs here either.
• 42:31
  No, not necessarily, yeah.
• 42:33
  No.
• 42:34
  But also, if we can... Is this an intervention?
• 42:35
  Are you about to spring something on me?
• 42:37
  Are you familiar with our saviour, Lord Jesus Christ?
• 42:39
  Yeah.
• 42:40
  Not at all, but I think we do want to get a diverse range of guests, and I would be very excited, honestly, to get people of all persuasions so that we can understand them better, understand where they're coming from.
• 42:50
  And it's not about judging what they... That's true.
• 42:52
  It's not about judging their ideas, but honestly, when you paint the picture of how someone arrives at it, it becomes pretty clear a lot of the time.
• 42:58
  Yeah, but see, I'm playing a different game, which is I do want to judge their ideas, and I do want them to...
• 43:03
  I want us to understand them, but I also want them to shift...
• 43:07
  10% towards us.
• 43:08
  Like I want to interrogate.
• 43:10
  I mean, they don't have to.
• 43:11
  It's not always the case.
• 43:12
  Like some of my best conversations are with people who I know are going to be implacable and the only purpose of the conversation is to model for the audience how two people who are obviously going to disagree can wrestle with the ways in which they disagree in a humane and civil way rather than just holding up placards and yelling at each other and chanting slogans about how the other people are awful.
• 43:32
  But I do think that I am still in the game of like...
• 43:36
  actually shifting hearts and minds rather than simply validating the emotional basis for how people are feeling.
• 43:44
  But yeah, I guess there's a curiosity for me.
• 43:46
  If you feel like there's a kind of deficit of sorts with the emotional range that you have within yourself, do you think it's also there in your read of other people?
• 43:57
  My partner would say so.
• 43:58
  Because isn't that a disadvantage?
• 44:02
  So would my mother.
• 44:04
  Well...
• 44:06
  I, the way, here's how it occurs for me, and this may be totally self-delusional.
• 44:09
  I just think I don't care very much.
• 44:14
  So I have been known to quote unquote misread social situations.
• 44:20
  I'm a bit sort of aspy.
• 44:22
  I'm like a little bit, I mean, I shouldn't probably shouldn't joke about that because it's a serious topic.
• 44:26
  So you haven't been diagnosed.
• 44:27
  I have not been diagnosed, but I, I exhibit the characteristics of kind of,
• 44:33
  In non-comprehension towards the emotional subtleties of social norms and cultural cues, I'm just very sort of like, I'm a brain talking to another brain.
• 44:44
  Why would you be offended by the fact, you know, the dress doesn't look good on you.
• 44:47
  What do you want me to say?
• 44:49
  Because you've gone there, I want to know the negative implications.
• 44:52
  Like you do so well at what you do.
• 44:54
  You have profound conversations all over the world.
• 44:57
  Talk about the blowback.
• 44:58
  And if you do misread social cues and sometimes get yourself in hot water you didn't even mean to, how do you manage that?
• 45:04
  I mean, it's rare that I get myself into hot water that I couldn't have foreseen.
• 45:08
  I think that when I misread social cues, it's not actually a misreading.
• 45:15
  Like I'm aware of the rule that I'm...
• 45:17
  breaching i just think it's a stupid rule and we should all get over ourselves like what why am i why are we all playing along with this thing it's like i'm just a i don't like rules i don't like arbitrary systems i don't like being a widget in somebody else's machine like why are we playing this stupid game i'm just realizing why i like you so much and you remind me of and you're like a version of larry david
• 45:38
  Yeah, a little bit.
• 45:39
  And like, I love Larry.
• 45:40
  Yeah.
• 45:41
  Like, why are we all doing this stupid?
• 45:43
  This is so, so much stupid.
• 45:44
  Maybe it's still, I never grew out of being 15.
• 45:47
  Yeah.
• 45:48
  When you're young, you think that there are grownups running the world.
• 45:51
  Yeah.
• 45:51
  And then you gradually realize in your teens that nobody's running the shop.
• 45:55
  The whole thing's held together with sticky tape and twine.
• 45:59
  The whole, nobody knows what they're doing.
• 46:00
  Yeah, Emperor's got no clothes.
• 46:01
  Yeah, and Amber's got no clothes, totally buck naked.
• 46:04
  And I've just sort of proudly maintained that sensibility going through my life, which is alienating to some people because if people care about the way that things are done properly...
• 46:13
  And this is a source of conflict in my own marriage as well and in my own life because I'm married to somebody who does like the proper way of doing things.
• 46:19
  And to his credit, he cares a lot about how other people feel and he cares a lot about ensuring that the correct cultural context is established for other people to feel comfortable and for them to respect us and for us to respect them.
• 46:31
  And that's just not…
• 46:34
  not natural to me at all.
• 46:35
  I mean, you know, we had the kid's birthday and like we're cleaning the house before my son's seven-year-old friends come over.
• 46:42
  Why do we care about whether the seven-year-old friends think the house is untidy?
• 46:45
  Are you serious?
• 46:46
  We're going to spend more than one second?
• 46:49
  You're like trying to impress a bunch of seven-year-olds.
• 46:52
  Isn't it their parents you're more worried about?
• 46:54
  Well, that was the justification that my partner gave.
• 46:56
  But no parents even came inside the house.
• 46:58
  They were just peering through the door.
• 47:00
  Just clean out one little passageway that they can see from the door.
• 47:04
  Or is Sean just trying to make it special for your children?
• 47:06
  Yes, of course.
• 47:07
  I mean, of course.
• 47:08
  He's just a much nicer person than I am.
• 47:10
  So as far as he's concerned, why wouldn't you do the thing that you're supposed to do before an event?
• 47:17
  Which is you tidy up.
• 47:19
  You don't ask questions about why the world has this norm.
• 47:23
  It's like, what are you doing, Josh?
• 47:25
  Just clean the fucking couch.
• 47:27
  It doesn't make it.
• 47:28
  There's no, what difference does it make?
• 47:30
  I would posit like we're more emotional than we are rational, right?
• 47:33
  That we would like to be rational.
• 47:36
  We strive for rationality.
• 47:37
  We're trying to tap into it.
• 47:38
  But I think we're pretty primal, emotional people.
• 47:41
  Yeah.
• 47:41
  And there's a swamp to navigate before we can kind of get through to our rational self.
• 47:45
  Whereas you don't seem burdened by as much of the emotional noise.
• 47:50
  No, that's right.
• 47:51
  And so what does that do to your perception of the world?
• 47:53
  Yeah.
• 47:54
  Frustrating.
• 47:55
  Oh, you were asking about blowback as well, which is a related thing, right?
• 47:58
  So, yes, it's frustrating.
• 48:00
  I'm constantly frustrated, a la Larry David, by the world.
• 48:06
  And I am probably not sufficiently humble about my own shortcomings walking through that world.
• 48:13
  And in terms of the blowback, it's interesting.
• 48:16
  I get a lot of blowback and I almost universally don't care because I've consciously made a choice not to care because I would either be crazy if I did care or I'd have to go into another line of work.
• 48:29
  I was complaining recently to a friend on an American podcast about the blowback that I got from an article that I'd written in The Age and The Herald.
• 48:37
  And he was like, dude, your show is literally called Uncomfortable Conversations.
• 48:41
  What was the title of that one?
• 48:42
  Do you remember?
• 48:42
  Yeah.
• 48:43
  Of that episode?
• 48:44
  The article.
• 48:45
  Oh, the article.
• 48:46
  No, I don't.
• 48:46
  But I remember it was a very inflammatory article.
• 48:48
  It was something like, my grandmother survived the Holocaust.
• 48:52
  It's time for Jews to abandon Israel.
• 48:54
  Yes.
• 48:55
  And I read that one.
• 48:56
  Many, many people thought that that was an anti-Zionist screed.
• 49:00
  Well, many Jews felt like I was arguing that...
• 49:04
  There should be no state of Israel.
• 49:05
  Without going down a whole rabbit hole on that, I was simply – what I intended to say, and I think I made a mistake in my wording, was that diaspora Jews, non-Israeli Jews, should stop carrying water for the Israel that actually exists.
• 49:18
  That it's all fine to have in your head this vision of a Yisrael in the clouds, which is the homeland sometimes.
• 49:24
  That is woven into the fabric of Israel.
• 49:26
  Jewish culture and faith for thousands of years.
• 49:29
  But this actual existing Israeli state right now, we should not be expected to, and we just should resist the impulse to reflexively defend it.
• 49:37
  That's what I was saying.
• 49:38
  I wasn't saying that Israeli Jews shouldn't have a state or that there's no right for that country to exist in some form, which is the way that, unfortunately, many Jews took it.
• 49:47
  Just very quickly to close the buttonhole, that point about the blowback,
• 49:53
  Generally, I don't care about the blowback because generally I'm able to A, partition it and B, attribute it to people who I have contempt for.
• 50:02
  Because I'm generally getting blowback from people who are insulted or offended at the fact that I'm being reasonable.
• 50:10
  And you don't respect that emotional response.
• 50:12
  No.
• 50:13
  Well, I don't respect any – yeah.
• 50:14
  I mean they're allowed to have their emotional response.
• 50:18
  But I remember I think it was Christopher Hitchens who was in a debate about atheism or something and a religious person saying, I find that offensive.
• 50:28
  Yeah, I remember.
• 50:28
  He left a long pause and just said, I'm still waiting for an answer.
• 50:31
  I'm still waiting for you to make a point.
• 50:32
  Yeah, that's right.
• 50:33
  And I just feel that about most people who get angry at me for transgressing some taboo.
• 50:39
  I'm like, okay, you guys were being bullies.
• 50:42
  Like most people who are enforcing taboos are being bullies.
• 50:44
  They think of themselves as not being bullies.
• 50:46
  They think of themselves generally as being on the right side of history or as standing up for traditionally marginalized communities or whatever it might be.
• 50:53
  However they want to frame it.
• 50:55
  Every bully has always thought of themselves as being besieged.
• 50:58
  Yeah.
• 50:59
  You know, everyone who's ever committed a genocide has thought that they were the besieged ones who are under threat by some upstarty community that had it coming.
• 51:07
  And so I've generally felt, no, fuck you.
• 51:10
  If you're angry at me, go fuck yourself.
• 51:12
  But sometimes, sometimes.
• 51:15
  It's harder.
• 51:15
  Yeah.
• 51:16
  it is hard if I have respect for the people.
• 51:18
  And that was the case with the fallout from that Israel piece.
• 51:21
  Because it was friends, right?
• 51:23
  Yes, people who, and also people who are hurting.
• 51:26
  Like Jews are hurting at the moment.
• 51:28
  It's not an easy time.
• 51:30
  They feel totally besieged, completely misunderstood, and like nobody has their back.
• 51:35
  And so for them to, for me to leave myself vulnerable to being misunderstood in that way was painful.
• 51:42
  Yeah, I bet.
• 51:43
  Necessary, I think, but...
• 51:44
  So you don't regret saying it?
• 51:45
  It's just...
• 51:46
  I regret saying it the way that I did.
• 51:47
  Yeah, fair enough.
• 51:48
  Look, whenever you're writing, you've got two things that you're trying to do.
• 51:53
  On the one hand, you're trying to be crystal clear in a way that could never be misunderstood.
• 51:58
  But on the other, you want to write in a way that punches people in the chest and has them fall off their chair and go, holy hell, that was an amazing piece.
• 52:05
  Um...
• 52:06
  I should have said, you know, it's time for Australian Jews to stop carrying water for Israel, which is what I think it was clear in the context of the 1200 words I was saying.
• 52:19
  But when you can be taken out of context that way, it was heedless to phrase it.
• 52:23
  But I mean, that's an ugly sentence.
• 52:25
  Even as I say it, it's like an ugly sentence.
• 52:27
  Yeah.
• 52:27
  You don't.
• 52:28
  The word abandoned sounds like a biblical exodus.
• 52:30
  It's like there's something in that that's very loaded.
• 52:32
  Yeah, yeah.
• 52:33
  But honestly, you read the article in the context, in my opinion, it did come across clearly.
• 52:37
  Yes, I think if you actually read the article, not skim it, if you actually have every sentence land, it's impossible to get to that final line and not understand what I'm saying.
• 52:47
  Yeah.
• 52:47
  Yeah, I find it interesting that the response of the Jewish community might affect you more.
• 52:51
  I wonder if with your pieces about pride, have you had a similar kind of feeling of vulnerability that you've upset a community or a group of people that you would feel?
• 52:58
  No, absolutely not.
• 52:59
  Can you add context there?
• 53:00
  Because that's important.
• 53:01
  Well, perhaps Josh, you might add some context.
• 53:02
  Yeah.
• 53:03
  Yeah, I have written a couple of pieces questioning whether there will ever come a time at which we don't need pride, like whether or not we've reached a point at which in big progressive Western democratic cities like Sydney and, well, like any Australian, any large Australian city,
• 53:21
  Whether it has become actually less conducive to the flourishing of human sexuality and freedom to keep perpetuating quite stereotyped caricatures of what a gay person is and whether it's time to start turning the volume down on our difference in terms of sexuality.
• 53:43
  As in the lobbying has been successful...
• 53:46
  Yeah, we've achieved everything that the brave people who fought for gay rights in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s were fighting for has been achieved.
• 53:55
  It's against the law to discriminate against gay people.
• 53:57
  We have the final piece of the puzzle in marriage.
• 54:01
  Yeah.
• 54:02
  In terms of, you know, people will always then shift the bar.
• 54:04
  You know, the lobby groups always then move the goalposts and say, oh, yeah, but what about the violence against trans women of color?
• 54:10
  Yeah.
• 54:11
  Absolutely.
• 54:11
  That's terrible.
• 54:13
  There's also lots of violence against autistic Sri Lankan women.
• 54:16
  There's lots of violence against all kinds of people.
• 54:19
  There's lots of domestic violence.
• 54:20
  There's lots of male-on-male violence.
• 54:22
  I mean, life isn't perfect.
• 54:24
  But I think we've reached a point at which for the majority of people, the level of homophobia that is ambient in big Australian cities and throughout most of the Western world,
• 54:35
  is low enough that what you gain by amplifying gayness as an identity that has a certain way of walking and talking and voting and thinking, you lose in requiring every person who wants to have a same-sex relationship to sign up to a whole list of things that may not feel like them and that may feel inauthentic.
• 54:59
  And is it true that this viewpoint was part of what soured your relationship with the ABC?
• 55:03
  Yeah, that's true, yeah.
• 55:06
  The Fairfax Press, the agent, the Herald, commissioned me to write a piece for World Pride, which was on a couple of years ago.
• 55:14
  And the public broadcaster didn't want that published because it was supposedly prohibited for...
• 55:21
  I mean, I had a full-time show there, so if you're a personality there, you have to run everything else that you do up the chain...
• 55:26
  And the answer was that it's not permissible for faces of the public broadcaster to take positions on controversial cultural events.
• 55:35
  This is at a time at which every other presenter who are all straight are all talking constantly about how fabulous gay pride is and how great Mardi Gras is and tune in on Saturday night for our coverage of the Mardi Gras parade.
• 55:47
  Expressing a very strong opinion.
• 55:49
  Yeah.
• 55:49
  I mean, that was the organization's opinion.
• 55:57
  there's just a kind of internal self-perpetuating tribal groupthink logic to activist groups that never want to relinquish control of the narrative long after they've won all of the goals that they set for themselves or their forefathers set for themselves decades ago.
• 56:13
  But that doesn't upset you to comment.
• 56:15
  So the reason why they push back to that doesn't upset me is because only people who are little Hitlers
• 56:21
  would care.
• 56:22
  Only people who want to force other people into their vision of what the way things have to be would be offended by it.
• 56:29
  Most of my gay friends don't care.
• 56:31
  I get tons of support from...
• 56:36
  regular, everyday gay people, and quietly in hushed tones.
• 56:41
  It's the same with the Jewish thing, by the way.
• 56:42
  A lot of people saying, thank God you said that, which is the best thing that someone can say to me.
• 56:48
  So it felt more like a lens of kind of guilt and virtue signaling that was like you were pushing back against.
• 56:52
  It's more than virtue signaling.
• 56:55
  I mean, I think it's actually...
• 56:58
  It's actually control.
• 56:59
  I think, I mean, I'm only half joking about mini-Hitlers.
• 57:02
  Like, there is a... With what intention?
• 57:05
  What's the control about?
• 57:06
  I think that people who don't interrogate their positions very closely assume that they're on the right side of things.
• 57:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 57:13
  And so the control just lands for them as spreading goodwill.
• 57:16
  Why does Josh have to be such an obstinate stickler about everything, asking his stupid, uncomfortable questions all the time?
• 57:23
  Like, just join the party.
• 57:24
  So that one didn't hurt, personally.
• 57:26
  Like, even though it had significant implications for your career.
• 57:29
  And I know that, look, you've gone out on your own, you've started Uncomfortable Conversations, you're touring the world, speaking on every major podcast there is.
• 57:37
  So you're not doing too bad.
• 57:38
  Let's put it that way.
• 57:39
  Yeah, especially this one.
• 57:40
  Do you miss it?
• 57:40
  Do you miss working with...
• 57:41
  I do.
• 57:42
  I mean, I love the ABC.
• 57:43
  I think it's a national treasure.
• 57:45
  Yeah.
• 57:45
  And I miss my colleagues.
• 57:47
  I wonder now that we've heard some of these ideas that you've talked about with Pride in the Community, I wonder if we could backtrack a little bit and go back to young Josh and just tell us about the role that sexuality played in your development.
• 57:57
  Because as I said, you spoke beautifully about putting Alan in context and you talked to Stephen Fry about what it was like for him growing up as a gay person in a very homophobic place.
• 58:05
  I know it's different now, but what was your experience like?
• 58:07
  Yeah.
• 58:08
  Mine was curious because I don't have many of the outward affects of what is stereotypically gay, which is one reason why I think I have this native antipathy towards the assumption that keeps getting pushed, that there is a particular, you know, that it... A way you have to be.
• 58:25
  Yeah, that we're encouraging self-expression by requiring everyone to stand and applaud as a bunch of greased up, like, muscle boys...
• 58:35
  stand astride a giant inflatable penis going down the main street.
• 58:40
  So for me it was, what was weird about my coming out, which was pretty late because I had a couple of good relationships with girls in my teens and early 20s and
• 58:54
  The way that it landed for me was just, I just thought, obviously everybody finds charismatic and attractive and charming people, charismatic and attractive and charming by definition.
• 59:05
  Obviously guys are aware that other guys are hot because they're constantly trying to emulate each other.
• 59:10
  They're all working out together.
• 59:12
  They're like footballers all, you know, having gang bangs with one girl with their dicks flying around in each other's faces.
• 59:17
  Like there's not no... That's very familiar, but sure.
• 59:20
  Yeah, but yeah.
• 59:22
  Like, I mean, you know, you look at Paris in the 19th century or Pacific Island countries or ancient Greece or all these stories.
• 59:28
  Like, there's so much cultural stuff that's going on with how we contextualize our sexuality.
• 59:34
  Yeah.
• 59:35
  And brands, you know, are putting up, the way they sell underwear to teenage males is by putting up huge billboards of the torso of another young male.
• 59:46
  Yeah.
• 59:47
  And for that, what I'm not saying is that, like, oh, everybody's secretly gay.
• 59:52
  Whatever that yearning is that is drawing the 15-year-old to buy that pair of underwear in a different cultural context could probably cause the boundaries of his own sexuality to be less rigid than they are in a world in which there is just gay and straight and never the twain shall meet.
• 1:00:12
  And so that was the way that I contextualised the fact that I was fooling around with both sexes.
• 1:00:17
  I just thought...
• 1:00:18
  I'm more honoured coming back to breaking rules and probably being insufficiently self-aware of my own limitations.
• 1:00:27
  Did you have the ancient Greeks in mind at the time?
• 1:00:31
  I did.
• 1:00:32
  I'm this philosopher child who's been planted into Sydney in the 1990s without it.
• 1:00:39
  But I'm so learned that I'm able to be more adventurous and exploratory than my peers are willing to be.
• 1:00:46
  And so that's where it landed for me.
• 1:00:47
  But they were teenage boys with elderly scholars.
• 1:00:50
  Who?
• 1:00:51
  The ancient Greeks.
• 1:00:52
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:53
  No, that's right.
• 1:00:53
  I didn't have my elderly scholar.
• 1:00:55
  Don't get too personal, though, Nick.
• 1:00:58
  I'm just saying here.
• 1:00:59
  It's another story.
• 1:00:59
  You're not quite a socrates.
• 1:01:01
  No.
• 1:01:02
  No, but I mean, I just thought that I was more enlightened than... That's the story.
• 1:01:06
  And I probably was somewhat more enlightened than the gay pride activists who I disdained.
• 1:01:14
  And what then happened...
• 1:01:16
  was that I actually sort of fell in love with a guy.
• 1:01:21
  And I was actually dating a girl at the time.
• 1:01:24
  And that first experience of having the sort of skies open up and the clouds part and like the Sparrows Twitter and like that was then like... Clean-Ex commercial.
• 1:01:36
  Yeah, the Clean-Ex commercial, exactly.
• 1:01:37
  Yeah, the puppy dog running across the floor.
• 1:01:39
  Then that I think, then I was like, oh, okay, well, this is...
• 1:01:44
  different.
• 1:01:44
  It's not just about, oh, everybody, I suppose, could close their eyes and think of London if they wanted to get through some sexual experience with a member of the same sex.
• 1:01:53
  It's more like...
• 1:01:55
  It was less I am like this thing called gay and it was more, oh, everybody else is not whatever this thing is.
• 1:02:04
  All of my friends are not.
• 1:02:06
  I'm sure they would have told me if they'd felt this.
• 1:02:08
  It was a category shift.
• 1:02:09
  It was a category shift.
• 1:02:10
  It was like a holographic flip.
• 1:02:13
  And out of curiosity, what did it feel like to fall in love with?
• 1:02:19
  Frustrating, like weird, tumultuous, passionate, infuriating.
• 1:02:27
  I didn't find it to be an unalloyed good.
• 1:02:31
  Yeah.
• 1:02:32
  I guess I'm just wondering, you know, given what you said about your emotional range earlier.
• 1:02:36
  If you get the butterflies and the dopamine and the adrenaline.
• 1:02:40
  Yeah, I mean, the best life experience was falling in love with the guy who is now my husband, Sean, where, you know, that really was a relatively uncomplicated just period of ecstatic glee while we were able to.
• 1:02:56
  So in life's critical moments, you wouldn't say there's a deficit there.
• 1:02:59
  Like you're able to fully be present and live in that moment and feel it.
• 1:03:04
  Yes.
• 1:03:04
  Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  I mean, I just, I experienced emotion the perfect amount, James.
• 1:03:09
  The perfectly appropriate amount that is rationally mandated of me.
• 1:03:14
  Well done.
• 1:03:15
  Congratulations.
• 1:03:16
  So what about the rational case for emotion filling in a gap beyond the limits of our reasons?
• 1:03:21
  And I know that might sound like an airy-fairy thing, but I come at it as... Nick Cave said recently something quite similar to you.
• 1:03:27
  I think a lot of strands of philosophy might talk to that.
• 1:03:30
  You know, here's our rational limitations.
• 1:03:31
  We understand that there is more beyond our comprehension and sometimes emotion, intuition...
• 1:03:37
  I'm not saying it's descriptive, but being open to experience in that way, as a way of educating yourself as well.
• 1:03:43
  What do you say for the rational case of emotion?
• 1:03:44
  Well, I was with you up until you said as a way of educating yourself as well.
• 1:03:49
  Experientially.
• 1:03:50
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:51
  And then you code it intellectually and you interpret it, but...
• 1:03:54
  Well, I'm not sure that you...
• 1:03:56
  Yes, you can educate yourself on the different ways that human beings can have cognitive and emotional states.
• 1:04:05
  I'm not sure that you can come to conclusions about the way the cosmos is structured or what happened thousands of years ago in the Middle East or anything else much about it.
• 1:04:15
  But I'm with you that I don't...
• 1:04:19
  I tease myself about being a brain in a jar, but I do have a deep sense of wonder and mystery.
• 1:04:26
  I mean, I think I'm more present than perhaps more emotionally volatile people to the weirdness of...
• 1:04:38
  what the hell the cosmos is and how matter has been ejected from stars in order to coalesce into human brains that are now capable of looking out on the world.
• 1:04:49
  And I find psychedelics really interesting.
• 1:04:52
  I find the research into psychedelics really interesting.
• 1:04:55
  I've had incredibly profound experiences on psychedelics.
• 1:04:59
  I haven't done them in ages, but...
• 1:05:02
  I'm super interested in meditation and its possibilities, although, again, I don't practice it, but should.
• 1:05:11
  I mean, so, yeah, I don't...
• 1:05:14
  I think that a tranquil, introspective sense of wonder and the limitations of our own knowledge is perfectly consistent with my form of rationality.
• 1:05:26
  What I object to is...
• 1:05:30
  Well, I suppose dogmatism hiding, pretending to be skepticism or wonder.
• 1:05:37
  And the control hidden within.
• 1:05:39
  Yeah, well, the religious instinct to be like, oh, scientists are so arrogant.
• 1:05:42
  They claim to know everything about the world, but the universe is full of mysteries.
• 1:05:47
  I'm sorry, are you the same person who's saying you know what happens after we die?
• 1:05:51
  Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Are you the same person who's saying you know what happened bodily to the body of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago?
• 1:05:58
  Get out of here.
• 1:05:59
  How dare you accuse scientists of being arrogant?
• 1:06:02
  Scientists are saying we have absolutely no idea.
• 1:06:04
  The best we can tell when you die, it might be the same as before you were born, but we don't really know.
• 1:06:11
  We don't really understand consciousness or how it works or what the whole universe is here for.
• 1:06:16
  So I'm, yeah, I don't think you need to inject like,
• 1:06:22
  some kind of understanding into that.
• 1:06:25
  I'm just happy to let the space be open and... Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:29
  I mean, everyone speaks to their self, I guess.
• 1:06:30
  It's just when you speak about that, that tranquil introspective experience.
• 1:06:34
  For me, the experience of that can sometimes push over towards something that is...
• 1:06:40
  It's kind of like a love and it is that that wonder tips into an emotive state.
• 1:06:45
  That wonder has a tinge of just, yeah, the beauty.
• 1:06:49
  It's a gentleness.
• 1:06:51
  It's a gentleness, but it's also it's impactful.
• 1:06:53
  It's an impactful emotion.
• 1:06:54
  I don't quite know how to describe it well.
• 1:06:56
  But I think talking to you and like your, if I may, your sharp edges, I think you use them well.
• 1:07:02
  And I think that they are really great at cutting through.
• 1:07:05
  But yeah, I think sometimes maybe it lacks some of that gentleness that you could experience for yourself that might be healing or helpful.
• 1:07:12
  Yes, I'm sure that's true.
• 1:07:14
  Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  But I mean, it sounds like you're talking about a kind of transcendence.
• 1:07:17
  Yeah.
• 1:07:18
  Yeah.
• 1:07:18
  Without any spiritual bullshit on top of it.
• 1:07:21
  Just from the experiential.
• 1:07:22
  Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  No, I mean, as a creative person, you know, if I'm playing the piano or writing something and I'm just lost and I'm in a flow state, then you get, then I get that.
• 1:07:33
  Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  Great.
• 1:07:34
  If I'm sitting on top of a volcano in the South Pacific, gazing out at the sun rising over Easter Island as I,
• 1:07:40
  as I was once, then I get that.
• 1:07:46
  That's why I mentioned psychedelics, that almost surreal cosmic sense of being touched by something more profound than whatever is in your head.
• 1:07:58
  So going almost full circle, back to the start of our conversation where I was saying I perceived this kind of confidence in you or this innate self-belief.
• 1:08:07
  when do you think you really did start to feel that sense of, I've got this, like with regards to the world and taking it on?
• 1:08:13
  Because I think you have displayed a lot of courage.
• 1:08:15
  You've thrown yourself into, you know, experiences that have helped your career take off, but you've had to be brave.
• 1:08:21
  You've had to be courageous.
• 1:08:23
  When did that moment happen for you, if it was a moment where you're like, I'm ready, let's go.
• 1:08:27
  I honestly feel like it's very recent.
• 1:08:28
  Right.
• 1:08:29
  I feel like it's, we're talking months, not decades.
• 1:08:33
  Interesting.
• 1:08:33
  What do you mean by that?
• 1:08:34
  I think so.
• 1:08:35
  I think... What we might call self-actualising.
• 1:08:39
  Yeah, well, I just think... Well, it goes in stages.
• 1:08:43
  So, you know, there's your teens and then you realise that everybody else is... You know, the world is full of shit and nobody knows what they're doing.
• 1:08:51
  And you conclude that you know or I concluded that I know everything and everybody else is an idiot at the age of 18.
• 1:08:57
  And then when I was 22, I realized that's not true.
• 1:09:00
  There's lots that my parents know that I don't know.
• 1:09:04
  And so by the time I was in my late 20s, I was like, oh my God, I don't know anything actually.
• 1:09:12
  There's lots of my parents don't know that I don't know.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah.
• 1:09:14
  Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  Right.
• 1:09:16
  And I'm about to be 30, which is so, so old that I've basically lived my life already and I've wasted my entire life.
• 1:09:22
  And I'm going to be in like the end is I'm about to die at the age of 30.
• 1:09:26
  And then...
• 1:09:27
  My 30s were great because I got some career success.
• 1:09:31
  And I think that was the point at which I started to feel like I knew what I was doing.
• 1:09:37
  Not with my life necessarily, but I felt competent.
• 1:09:40
  I felt like assured that I knew how to do this one thing, which was broadcasting.
• 1:09:47
  Yeah.
• 1:09:47
  And could talk to anyone.
• 1:09:49
  Yes, basically.
• 1:09:50
  And there was nothing that could go wrong that I wouldn't be able to turn into a joke.
• 1:09:55
  Yeah, that's great.
• 1:09:56
  And like...
• 1:09:57
  I think that's an important part of broadcasting, whether it's radio or television, is for the audience to just feel that they're in capable hands and that if something goes totally awry, the person's not going to freak out.
• 1:10:10
  That's just so not a given.
• 1:10:11
  That capacity to walk into a room and trust, I'll be okay, on the world stage with the biggest names there are.
• 1:10:18
  It's quite impressive.
• 1:10:19
  And I guess I wonder how much of that comes, in your opinion, from a loving, stable, humorous family.
• 1:10:25
  Doesn't hurt.
• 1:10:27
  It doesn't hurt.
• 1:10:29
  A lot of it.
• 1:10:29
  A lot of it comes from the modeling that... Yeah, a lot of it...
• 1:10:33
  I mean, the unconditional love of my mother...
• 1:10:36
  And the modeling of creative intellectual life of my father and like the stable unit that was provided between the two of them and my brother's, you know, love and leadership, I think, is intrinsic.
• 1:10:49
  But then there's just a lot of...
• 1:10:51
  doing it as well.
• 1:10:52
  And there's just a lot of falling over and failing and going to auditions and them not working and doing pilots that don't work out and then getting gigs and them not working out.
• 1:11:00
  Like, you know, it's just that there's a lot of failure is a great teacher.
• 1:11:05
  Yeah.
• 1:11:05
  But did that ever throw you confidence?
• 1:11:07
  Or did you... Yeah, that's what I thought.
• 1:11:09
  Yeah.
• 1:11:10
  Like when you're a teenager, you just kept on doing the same thing that you were good at.
• 1:11:12
  Exactly.
• 1:11:12
  And you just got better and better.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah.
• 1:11:14
  And also, I had a father who was an actor and my mother had been an actress and my brother was an actor when he was fresh out of university and I just...
• 1:11:21
  I knew the game better than most people who are going into the creative arts.
• 1:11:25
  I knew that it's all a numbers game.
• 1:11:27
  You're going to go to 100 things and you're going to get 10 callbacks and then you'll book one of them.
• 1:11:31
  So you just have to go through the 100.
• 1:11:33
  And dad was always extremely contemptuous and disdainful of creatives who would be like, oh, I've got this audition for a thing and I'm having a meeting with this person.
• 1:11:46
  He's like, show me the work.
• 1:11:49
  Everyone takes meetings.
• 1:11:50
  Everyone goes to auditions.
• 1:11:51
  That's fine.
• 1:11:52
  That's the job.
• 1:11:53
  Like, you get up in the morning and you go to the audition.
• 1:11:55
  That's what you do.
• 1:11:56
  Did you feel a desire to impress your dad?
• 1:11:59
  Yes.
• 1:12:00
  How did that play out for you in terms of the setbacks and then the wins?
• 1:12:04
  You know, how did you experience it?
• 1:12:07
  I felt like he was always proud of... Well, I guess I hid the setbacks so that he would only be proud of the wins.
• 1:12:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:21
  Yeah.
• 1:12:21
  So that's one of those I won't play if I'm not going to win kind of scenarios.
• 1:12:24
  Basically.
• 1:12:25
  Yeah, a little bit self-protective to a degree.
• 1:12:27
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:12:27
  And keep up, you know, put on a good front.
• 1:12:30
  Yeah.
• 1:12:30
  And make sure he's not worried.
• 1:12:34
  Not that you would regret this, but do you wish in some sense you could counsel younger you to not worry about sharing the failures as well as the wins?
• 1:12:41
  Oh, definitely.
• 1:12:42
  Yeah.
• 1:12:42
  Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  That's definitely a flaw in my character.
• 1:12:45
  And the other would be...
• 1:12:48
  Which is sort of the same thing, just have a go at stuff and be cool with it not being perfect.
• 1:12:53
  You know, I definitely have perfectionist syndrome where, you know, the thing that is in my head is always better than the way it will be in reality.
• 1:13:01
  So I spend a long time waiting and perfecting it in my head so that it doesn't have to face the cruel reality of existing.
• 1:13:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:08
  And as a result, was much less sort of focused and productive than some of my peers when I was younger.
• 1:13:15
  And it took me, I think, a lot longer than it needed to to achieve success.
• 1:13:19
  But now that you understand this about yourself, have you thrown yourself into new ventures?
• 1:13:23
  No, I still struggle with it.
• 1:13:25
  Things you might be bad at.
• 1:13:27
  Yeah, totally.
• 1:13:28
  Even things I'm good at, I struggle with getting them out of my head.
• 1:13:31
  What would you do?
• 1:13:31
  Things you might be bad at that you would like to do?
• 1:13:36
  Um...
• 1:13:39
  I mean, they're mostly creative pursuits that I would not be bad at, that I would be good at, but not as good as I want to be.
• 1:13:45
  Right.
• 1:13:45
  You know, write a sitcom, write a novel.
• 1:13:49
  Yeah.
• 1:13:53
  Do more music, play more piano, compose maybe.
• 1:13:56
  Right.
• 1:13:59
  Does it feel more available then?
• 1:14:00
  Like with you who's arrived in the last few months at a certain self-belief or inner contentment?
• 1:14:06
  No, not really.
• 1:14:07
  Not really.
• 1:14:08
  I don't know why.
• 1:14:09
  When I say that I now feel I have self-belief, I basically feel like I'm now in my prime in my own skin.
• 1:14:17
  Like it's just partly a consequence of being old but not so old that it hurts to get around.
• 1:14:22
  You know, like I feel as agile and well as I did when I was young.
• 1:14:26
  Uh-huh.
• 1:14:27
  But I've just walked through so many airports that I'm not wondering where the gates are and how you take your laptop out of the bag.
• 1:14:36
  And I just see everybody else in the world and they seem like they're doing everything for the first time.
• 1:14:41
  They're opening car doors in a really clunky way.
• 1:14:43
  I'm just like, come on.
• 1:14:45
  You've done this a lot.
• 1:14:46
  It's just a car door.
• 1:14:47
  Get out.
• 1:14:48
  Okay, so your inner contendment has led to more frustration with other people.
• 1:14:52
  Yeah, but it's a joyful Larry David frustration.
• 1:14:55
  I'm just like, come on, people.
• 1:14:57
  I'm the only one who knows how things are supposed to work.
• 1:15:00
  I drive better than everybody else.
• 1:15:01
  I take my laptop out of my bag.
• 1:15:02
  Airport security better than everybody else.
• 1:15:05
  So do you have anything left to learn?
• 1:15:07
  Oh, heaps.
• 1:15:09
  I mean heaps.
• 1:15:09
  What do you want?
• 1:15:11
  What's next?
• 1:15:11
  I don't know.
• 1:15:12
  If I knew what I had to learn, James, then I'd know it.
• 1:15:15
  Right.
• 1:15:15
  Because I would have gone and found it out.
• 1:15:17
  But do you have a wish list of things, there's the top of the mountain for me, or not quite, nothing so specific?
• 1:15:27
  Well, I don't think that life works.
• 1:15:32
  Yeah.
• 1:15:33
  I don't think life has tops of mountains.
• 1:15:35
  I think it just has mountain ranges that you just keep plowing up.
• 1:15:38
  I don't even know if I believe in the question.
• 1:15:40
  Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  Like at some point, I mean...
• 1:15:43
  There are definitely mountains.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah.
• 1:15:45
  There are mountains.
• 1:15:46
  Mountains exist?
• 1:15:47
  Yeah.
• 1:15:47
  Okay.
• 1:15:48
  Good to know.
• 1:15:48
  Good to know.
• 1:15:49
  I just think you just sort of try to...
• 1:15:52
  do your best.
• 1:15:53
  And then eventually one day there's no more time left and you die.
• 1:15:58
  And hopefully you got, hopefully like the mosaic of days over the course of your life have amounted to something that was constructive and that was better than the world would be had you not existed.
• 1:16:10
  I think that's about as good as you can hope for.
• 1:16:14
  I think other...
• 1:16:16
  trying to climb the mountain, it just smells a bit Elon Musk to me.
• 1:16:21
  It's like too much Uber mention for my liking.
• 1:16:24
  It's like...
• 1:16:24
  The sense of constant progression.
• 1:16:26
  Yeah.
• 1:16:27
  And I am in that state at the moment in my life where I have opportunities where I have to think like, how much do I want to pursue my ambitions?
• 1:16:36
  And how much do I want to...
• 1:16:38
  Hang out with my kids.
• 1:16:39
  Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  I have eight-year-old kids and they're never going to be eight again.
• 1:16:42
  Yep.
• 1:16:45
  Yeah.
• 1:16:46
  And your dad was ambitious as well, right?
• 1:16:48
  Yes, but I would say he had an appropriate balance of family appreciation and ambition.
• 1:16:58
  Do you find yourself channeling him then in the way you parent?
• 1:17:00
  Yes.
• 1:17:01
  Hopefully not.
• 1:17:03
  What does that mean?
• 1:17:05
  He was doing his best, but he was not the world's most consistent or sensitive parent.
• 1:17:11
  He was quite, I think he really had an old fashioned kind of almost Eastern European migrant attitude that children are inherently devils who have to be, you know, corralled into, you have to create the child into a resilient and, and good environment.
• 1:17:29
  person.
• 1:17:31
  And so there was way too much arbitrary and haphazard interference in our behavior, I think, just in terms of, you know, we were smacked, not frequently, but like he thought that was a good idea.
• 1:17:42
  And he thought that then it was very hard to know exactly what was expected of us because it felt inconsistent.
• 1:17:48
  to ask the rules, but I'm sure in his brain it all made perfect sense in the kind of like Rube Goldberg machine of like the way the world is supposed to be.
• 1:17:55
  Yep.
• 1:17:56
  But I strive to be, I mean both of us do, strive to be parents who are consistent and firm, but mostly just loving and playful.
• 1:18:11
  Yeah.
• 1:18:12
  And dad was, well, dad was both those things, but...
• 1:18:16
  always with an edge of not quite knowing whether or not you were going to do something.
• 1:18:22
  Sounds like he played right up to that as well.
• 1:18:24
  Yeah.
• 1:18:25
  Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  Did you push back against that and his rules?
• 1:18:28
  I did.
• 1:18:29
  Didn't go well.
• 1:18:29
  Yeah.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah.
• 1:18:31
  You're never going to win that.
• 1:18:32
  You're not going to win.
• 1:18:33
  The 13-year-old Josh is not going to win against a 40-year-old father.
• 1:18:36
  No.
• 1:18:37
  So is there some sadness there?
• 1:18:42
  Hmm.
• 1:18:43
  There's a bit of...
• 1:18:46
  wistfulness about what it would have been like if he had...
• 1:18:53
  He was a very loving person.
• 1:18:54
  Like, I mean, he told us that he loved us a lot every day.
• 1:18:57
  Yeah.
• 1:18:59
  But it is interesting to imagine what it would have been like had he been more even keeled.
• 1:19:06
  Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  Yeah.
• 1:19:07
  More of his fun side more often, maybe?
• 1:19:10
  Yes, and maybe...
• 1:19:12
  I think he could never quite shake the sense that you don't want these kids to be coddled and naive about things.
• 1:19:23
  You know, they need to understand.
• 1:19:25
  And there's some value in that.
• 1:19:26
  Yeah, that they have to be.
• 1:19:28
  You know, that life is rough.
• 1:19:31
  He was very inspiring.
• 1:19:32
  He wasn't negative.
• 1:19:33
  He was like, he had...
• 1:19:36
  great inspirational visions of what was possible.
• 1:19:42
  But it was always coming back to, maybe this is my antipathy to the mountain analogy.
• 1:19:46
  It's a bit like Uber mention-y.
• 1:19:48
  It's a bit sort of like, just calm down, bro.
• 1:19:52
  He was a bit like that.
• 1:19:53
  No, no, I'm saying to him, calm down, bro, a little bit.
• 1:19:57
  He was a bit mountain-y.
• 1:19:57
  Yeah, a little bit mountain-y.
• 1:19:59
  Not everything has to be such a battle.
• 1:20:01
  Nietzsche would have done well to calm down as well.
• 1:20:03
  He was very dramatic.
• 1:20:04
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:04
  I mean, it's just... A bit over the top.
• 1:20:06
  And you know what?
• 1:20:07
  There's an interesting phenomenon that I've found as I've...
• 1:20:10
  I was going to say become more successful, but in addition to becoming more successful, it's also that I've noticed in my proximity to other people who are very successful or powerful, which is that actual top level people are quite conciliatory and just want to get things done.
• 1:20:29
  And so they're quite collaborative and they're quite...
• 1:20:33
  cooperative.
• 1:20:34
  And efficient.
• 1:20:35
  And they're quite efficient.
• 1:20:36
  They're actually not...
• 1:20:38
  So not very successful people think that successful people are sharks, are snakes, that they're constantly on the attack, that they're always trying to find a way to screw everybody else.
• 1:20:49
  You actually meet really successful people.
• 1:20:52
  They just want to make a deal.
• 1:20:53
  They want to get things done.
• 1:20:55
  They're usually coming from a place of yes, instead of how can I screw this other person?
• 1:20:59
  It's like the...
• 1:21:01
  It's the dodgy middle manager who wants to screw everybody.
• 1:21:04
  The really successful people, in my experience, are not obsessed with fighting their way to the top.
• 1:21:12
  They just want to make good stuff and get things done.
• 1:21:15
  And I think that was dad's blind spot.
• 1:21:17
  So we should touch on this just quickly because I know that you've recently shared your eulogy for your dad publicly, which was beautiful, by the way.
• 1:21:24
  Thank you.
• 1:21:26
  Yeah, reflecting on childhood and dad's huge role in it and the fact that you've just gone through this massive transition of losing dad.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah, what's it like just reflecting on the story and thinking about dad and his impact that he's had on you?
• 1:21:42
  I mean...
• 1:21:46
  It's just weird being in a universe that doesn't contain a parent.
• 1:21:53
  Yep.
• 1:21:55
  What makes it strange is that it's so predictable and everybody is going to go through it if they're lucky and yet it still seems weird.
• 1:22:02
  But actually...
• 1:22:04
  What was weirder was having the human being still alive, but the person gone.
• 1:22:12
  Your dad had dementia.
• 1:22:13
  Yeah, he had Alzheimer's.
• 1:22:16
  And that was much more difficult than his being dead.
• 1:22:20
  The gradual loss of the man.
• 1:22:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:22
  Yeah.
• 1:22:23
  So it's actually been really nice after he died having him resurrected as the best version of him.
• 1:22:31
  Celebrating that version of him.
• 1:22:32
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:22:33
  I've been dreaming about him quite a lot in his heyday.
• 1:22:36
  I'd imagine there's some relief too that that suffering is gone for him.
• 1:22:40
  Yes, that's right.
• 1:22:41
  And I'm not even sure if he was suffering.
• 1:22:44
  I mean, towards the very end he was suffering.
• 1:22:45
  But just the fact that, you know, if having a father means having someone who you can confide in, who you can joke with, who you can have conversations with, who you can text and say, oh, I just saw this thing, then I hadn't had that for years.
• 1:23:03
  And so to extinguish the flesh is not a huge deal.
• 1:23:08
  Yeah.
• 1:23:08
  Yeah.
• 1:23:10
  So towards the end of our conversations, we do often like to ask as a parent now yourself, how much your childhood informs how you parent?
• 1:23:20
  And I guess you've alluded to this a little bit in terms of, you know, some of the thoughts around dad and what he did well and maybe sometimes not so well.
• 1:23:27
  But yeah, what kind of dad do you try and be?
• 1:23:33
  I'd like to be an adventurous and playful and present dad.
• 1:23:41
  I could do better at the present stuff.
• 1:23:45
  I think a lot of parents probably share my self-recrimination about my relationship to devices around the kids and being distracted on my phone or being distracted by work.
• 1:23:58
  How are you going with that?
• 1:23:59
  It's getting better as the kids get older because they're less annoying.
• 1:24:05
  It's very hard not to succumb to the device when you're having to make conversation with a five-year-old.
• 1:24:11
  Because five-year-olds are pretty boring and facile after five minutes.
• 1:24:16
  Eight-year-olds you can talk about stuff in ways that are actually interesting for half an hour.
• 1:24:23
  And so I think it's getting better.
• 1:24:25
  Yeah.
• 1:24:25
  you know, I'm doing the obvious stupid things like charging my phone downstairs so that it's not next to my bed.
• 1:24:30
  Trying to put some restrictions in for yourself.
• 1:24:32
  Yeah.
• 1:24:32
  And I luckily have been able to migrate away from social media over the past few years.
• 1:24:36
  So I don't even have the apps on my phone anymore.
• 1:24:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:24:39
  Um,
• 1:24:41
  It is reasonably difficult being self-employed and having my own enterprise because every minute that I'm not checking emails.
• 1:24:48
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:24:49
  I feel bad about I should be doing more.
• 1:24:55
  I think it's insane that we used to live in a world where you just went to work and you had a computer that sat on your desk and then you turned it off at 5pm and you went home and there was no way anyone,
• 1:25:09
  could send you a query or a memo or anything or set up a meeting for the oh we have to we need you in at 8 a.m for something no there was no they couldn't reach you all they need to call a landline like that that didn't happen you were just off you were with your kids yeah or you were at the pub drinking but whatever you know whatever it was you were not constantly pulling a supercomputer out of your pocket and seeing what you're missing out on so you're striving for a bit of that
• 1:25:35
  Yeah, so I'd love that.
• 1:25:36
  I would love to figure that out.
• 1:25:38
  That's probably the next mountain, actually.
• 1:25:40
  If there was a mountain that I could really pick off, it would be to manage my own attention in a thoughtful, in a mindful way and to direct it as much as possible towards the kids.
• 1:25:52
  Yeah.
• 1:25:52
  It's so difficult, isn't it?
• 1:25:53
  It's like a very addictive thing that we've all subscribed to.
• 1:25:57
  We've all got our own battles with it and stuff.
• 1:26:00
  Yeah, it's very challenging.
• 1:26:01
  So, yeah, full respect.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah.
• 1:26:03
  I mean, look, the only thing I know how to do is to crowd out my time with activities that the kids like that I also like.
• 1:26:13
  That can be expensive because, like, my son will go, let's go to virtual reality or something like that.
• 1:26:19
  Or, like, let's go to, you know, the video arcade or whatever.
• 1:26:21
  Let's go to the movies or whatever.
• 1:26:23
  It's never let's go and climb a tree.
• 1:26:25
  Although I could probably foster that as well.
• 1:26:28
  Speaking of, I mean, you did speak very nostalgically about climbing trees and jumping in rivers and unsupervised play.
• 1:26:33
  Yes.
• 1:26:33
  Do you try and do that with your kids at all?
• 1:26:35
  Not really.
• 1:26:36
  I wish I did.
• 1:26:37
  I mean, I wish I allowed them...
• 1:26:42
  Or rather required them to entertain themselves.
• 1:26:46
  It is hard when there are video games and TVs and all that to insist that they remain in a backyard that has nothing to do for an hour.
• 1:26:58
  Yeah, and yet it's so good for them.
• 1:26:59
  Yeah.
• 1:27:00
  Yeah.
• 1:27:01
  But I mean, I try to travel a lot with them.
• 1:27:03
  I try to, you know, go on little road trips and go to zoos and wildlife parks with my son.
• 1:27:11
  That's good.
• 1:27:13
  Find little adventures that I will also enjoy that they can do because I do think there was a certain...
• 1:27:19
  And coming back to rules and like rigidity There was a certain way of doing things in my dad's view of the world Where I remember one occasion where when mum was overseas And my brother and I suggested to dad that we go up to the central coast by train And like go to some wildlife park or something Or maybe just go for a picnic or whatever We were so excited about it
• 1:27:43
  And dad was like, okay, well, we're going to have to make a packed lunch.
• 1:27:45
  So he starts making the packed lunch.
• 1:27:48
  And like an hour and 15 minutes later, we're still organizing all the things that you need to do a day away.
• 1:27:53
  And the sparkle has gone.
• 1:27:55
  And we're kind of over the idea of going all the way to Central Station and getting on a train for an hour.
• 1:27:59
  By then, we just sort of want to bounce on the trampoline by that point.
• 1:28:02
  Yeah.
• 1:28:02
  Yeah.
• 1:28:02
  And I remember, I still remember that way of being that he had, which is like, you need to, what will we do if we get there and we don't have sandwiches?
• 1:28:10
  Yeah.
• 1:28:10
  This is the way it's done.
• 1:28:11
  This is the way it's done.
• 1:28:12
  This is the way you follow the rules.
• 1:28:13
  This is the proper thing to do.
• 1:28:15
  If you're going to go on a train trip to the central coast, you take your packed lunch and I'm trying not to be that.
• 1:28:22
  Yeah.
• 1:28:22
  So you let the kids make more decisions.
• 1:28:24
  Yeah.
• 1:28:25
  Well, and also just we'll figure it out when we get there.
• 1:28:27
  I'm a grown-ass man.
• 1:28:28
  I'll find a way.
• 1:28:29
  Yeah.
• 1:28:30
  The world is not, you know, devoid.
• 1:28:34
  Well, yeah, or devoid of ways to get sustenance if we need it.
• 1:28:36
  Do you watch Much Blue Week with your kids?
• 1:28:38
  Yeah.
• 1:28:39
  Yeah.
• 1:28:39
  You know the episode where Bandit takes the kids to the pool, you know, and Dad takes them and it's all like, ah, it'll be fine.
• 1:28:44
  Don't worry about Mom and all their organization.
• 1:28:46
  They get there and they don't have the sunscreen.
• 1:28:49
  That's me.
• 1:28:51
  Absolutely.
• 1:28:52
  And then Mom has to come and bring all the things and they're like,
• 1:28:55
  Mom!
• 1:28:57
  Just totally didn't have anything.
• 1:28:59
  That's absolutely me.
• 1:29:00
  I mean, I was, yeah, I was, even when they were babies, I would go out without a change of nappy.
• 1:29:05
  Because I'd be like, mostly they don't need it.
• 1:29:09
  Yeah.
• 1:29:09
  When they need it, then I'm going to be in deep shit.
• 1:29:12
  Yeah, literally.
• 1:29:12
  Literally, yeah.
• 1:29:13
  Some of my memories would be like, gosh, I'm glad I had that nappy.
• 1:29:16
  Yeah.
• 1:29:18
  So we're nearly out of time and you've been so generous to speak to us this long.
• 1:29:22
  It's been a pleasure.
• 1:29:23
  Thank you so much.
• 1:29:24
  But I love to ask this and I'm curious what you'll say.
• 1:29:28
  Invoking your younger self and thinking back to him and the impact that he's had on becoming you.
• 1:29:33
  You know, how do you feel towards younger Josh?
• 1:29:43
  Loving.
• 1:29:44
  Impressed.
• 1:29:47
  Sympathetic.
• 1:29:52
  Yeah, compassionate Because there was probably a lot of bluster And a lot of needless Showing off To hide What he thought needed to be hidden And in actual fact It would have just been fine to Not be perfect at everything But in a lot of ways he sounds like a pretty impressive kid I've got to be honest And the fact that you figured out Like your bullshit detector kicked in pretty early
• 1:30:18
  I wish I'd had that.
• 1:30:20
  I wish I could give that to my younger self.
• 1:30:22
  About the world?
• 1:30:23
  Yeah, I do.
• 1:30:24
  Because we grew up in a churchy family.
• 1:30:27
  And so, you know, and I don't resent that.
• 1:30:29
  And I'm not angry about it.
• 1:30:31
  And a lot of good came out of it too.
• 1:30:33
  But it did mean my bullshit detector took a little longer to kick in.
• 1:30:37
  Right.
• 1:30:37
  Yeah.
• 1:30:38
  Religion's good that way.
• 1:30:38
  Yeah.
• 1:30:39
  You can turn down the bullshit detector.
• 1:30:40
  Pretty much.
• 1:30:41
  And when I hear you say that you had that early, I'm like, oh, that would have been nice.
• 1:30:45
  In some ways, I think it helped us, though, because it gave us a pretty easy target in some ways.
• 1:30:49
  Some of the lessons, it's like, hang on.
• 1:30:51
  You're telling me that that's the way?
• 1:30:53
  And so in some ways, I think it helped the critical worldview.
• 1:30:57
  I think there was a willful delusion for a long time to be in the in-group and those we were being told this is true.
• 1:31:02
  And it's like, okay, well, I'll try my best, you know, whereas you were free of that.
• 1:31:05
  You didn't need to do that.
• 1:31:06
  And it seems like it created a kind of clarity for you to, you know.
• 1:31:10
  It's a really interesting point, though, that Nick makes about religion provides a very large bullseye for the critical young person to express their dissatisfaction with adult hypocrisy and rules and systems and institutions through.
• 1:31:30
  It's probably harder when you're living in a secular, chaotic, hippie-dippie, like, heathen world.
• 1:31:37
  environment to figure out exactly what you're objecting to about the institutional hypocrisy of the world.
• 1:31:43
  Because like the United Nations combined with the geopolitics of a post-Cold War era, you know, in conjunction with a heteronormative culture and colonialism is like a more difficult target.
• 1:31:57
  than sure a bunch of hypocrites sure sure but i just i think i just like the clarity of it and i wouldn't say that it became a target for challenging until i was much older like i just lived in a delusional state you know experiencing unhelpful guilt for a really long time um whereas being free and and a lot of joy as well but you know that i now look back and say yeah well that was inauthentic and disingenuous but anyway that's you know that's me whose therapy session is this exactly anyway
• 1:32:22
  But what I'm saying is, I guess, you know, I think that's great that you had that young and you've been able to build on that and now using it so beautifully to, you know, challenge us to have better conversations and spreading the good word.
• 1:32:34
  Well, thanks.
• 1:32:35
  Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  New version of the good word.
• 1:32:37
  Pretty much.
• 1:32:38
  The one I like.
• 1:32:40
  Josh, thank you so much.
• 1:32:42
  Last question.
• 1:32:43
  Did you ever figure out what you want to say to Paul McCartney?
• 1:32:46
  Because he might be listening, so maybe you should say it now.
• 1:32:49
  Paul...
• 1:32:54
  Were you ever afraid that you were going to fall off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theatre when you were playing your iconic gig?
• 1:33:03
  In the mid-2000s, we're talking about that.
• 1:33:05
  No, that was a callback to, he went on Letterman and did it, to their first appearance on national television in the United States.
• 1:33:13
  They didn't go on the roof the first time.
• 1:33:15
  Maybe it wasn't on the, yeah.
• 1:33:18
  No?
• 1:33:18
  Are you mixing your stories?
• 1:33:19
  They went on the roof.
• 1:33:20
  No, I think the second time was an homage to something they did.
• 1:33:23
  You're right.
• 1:33:23
  It might have been the first time they were on the Ed Sullivan Show.
• 1:33:25
  But in the 60s, I think they played on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Show.
• 1:33:28
  Amazing.
• 1:33:29
  You might have hit a gap in my knowledge.
• 1:33:32
  I didn't think they played on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Show.
• 1:33:34
  See, this would have been a great conversation with Paul McCartney.
• 1:33:36
  Not me.
• 1:33:36
  I would have said that and he would have been like, Did I?
• 1:33:39
  Are you high?
• 1:33:40
  Well, that's amazing.
• 1:33:42
  I never did that.
• 1:33:45
  And you would have skulked up into the corner and like, sorry, Mr. McCartney.
• 1:33:50
  I thought I remembered.
• 1:33:52
  That's brilliant.
• 1:33:54
  Yeah.
• 1:33:54
  You're so brilliant that you found the hole in James' Beatles knowledge.
• 1:33:57
  Yeah.
• 1:33:57
  Keep the good work up.
• 1:33:58
  Or maybe it's wrong.
• 1:34:00
  I'm going to immediately Google that right now.
• 1:34:02
  We'll fact check in the show notes for the episode.
• 1:34:05
  Well, thank you.
• 1:34:05
  It's a great pleasure to be here.
• 1:34:07
  Thank you, Josh.
• 1:34:07
  Appreciate the invitation.
• 1:34:08
  Thank you.
• 1:34:09
  And we'll look forward to hearing your child letter next.
• 1:34:24
  Well, Nick, they say you shouldn't meet your heroes.
• 1:34:26
  How are you feeling right now?
• 1:34:28
  Yep.
• 1:34:28
  I regret the whole thing.
• 1:34:29
  Yeah.
• 1:34:30
  Me too.
• 1:34:31
  Let's just count it.
• 1:34:32
  Yeah.
• 1:34:34
  A long episode.
• 1:34:35
  Just unimpressive.
• 1:34:36
  Right.
• 1:34:37
  Not who I thought he was.
• 1:34:38
  Right.
• 1:34:39
  Yeah.
• 1:34:39
  But he's actually so much more.
• 1:34:41
  Yeah.
• 1:34:42
  No, that was so fun and so great.
• 1:34:44
  Yeah.
• 1:34:45
  Wasn't that a rich experience?
• 1:34:47
  And if anything, like meeting a hero of ours was, yeah, even more enlightening because now I just feel like I know the human so much better.
• 1:34:54
  Yeah, that's what we're hoping to achieve on this show.
• 1:34:56
  And I feel like we got that.
• 1:34:57
  Yeah.
• 1:34:57
  Some kind of deep and revealing chats.
• 1:35:00
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:35:02
  Yeah.
• 1:35:02
  So, you know, it's a long episode.
• 1:35:04
  We don't want to be too long here in our debrief.
• 1:35:06
  So many themes, of course, we could dig into.
• 1:35:08
  Some that I think we should probably even just dedicate full episodes to in the future.
• 1:35:11
  Yes.
• 1:35:11
  Yes.
• 1:35:12
  So maybe one we could touch on briefly was just what an opportunity it was to kind of further clarify a little bit of what we're trying to achieve here.
• 1:35:19
  Yeah.
• 1:35:19
  I wonder how you felt off the back of that.
• 1:35:21
  But I was kind of realizing as we're going that I've been slowly shifting a little bit in terms of, for one, what I think the ideal guest is and maybe even what our intention is.
• 1:35:31
  And I found that a little clarifying.
• 1:35:33
  So do you tell?
• 1:35:34
  Yeah.
• 1:35:34
  Well, just that, okay, for one, I used to think that I would love to get people who are really, really different on the show, maybe even some divisive, toxic personalities, just to understand the context of them better.
• 1:35:47
  But the more we get people on here and we hear wisdom, I kind of just want to share people that we are aligned with to the extent that I think that, you know, the other people are amplified enough in society.
• 1:35:56
  Let's lean into values that we share.
• 1:35:59
  What do you think of that?
• 1:36:00
  I hear what you're saying.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah.
• 1:36:01
  Like at risk of, I guess, staying in the bubble is the risk of what you're describing there.
• 1:36:07
  You just want to broadcast good and helpful ideas that align with good psychology and good thinking.
• 1:36:15
  Yeah.
• 1:36:15
  That are helpful to people.
• 1:36:17
  And that's kind of highlighted by that discussion of, are we here to judge the ideas or not?
• 1:36:21
  Because if we're getting potentially divisive people on here, well, part of the role, of course, is to push back and judge.
• 1:36:28
  Now, we're not, you know, this isn't a debate show and we want to be respectful to our guests, push back gently.
• 1:36:33
  Of course, in the debriefs is where we can kind of flex our own opinions a little bit more.
• 1:36:37
  Yeah.
• 1:36:37
  But how are you feeling about that in terms of the role of judgment in this type of show?
• 1:36:41
  Yeah.
• 1:36:42
  I mean, we talked about the concept of unconditional positive regard, and that remains true for me.
• 1:36:47
  You know, like what is the most generous read of another person that you can ever give?
• 1:36:50
  So if it's someone who fundamentally disagrees with everything you say or someone who agrees with a lot of what you say, that principle still applies.
• 1:36:58
  And I think that will be true going forward.
• 1:37:01
  But yeah, ideas are there to be challenged.
• 1:37:04
  And Josh is a wonderful example of someone, I think, doing that really, really well in a really nuanced, intelligent way.
• 1:37:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:12
  But our version of that, I guess, is just painting really detailed pictures and letting our audience draw their own conclusions.
• 1:37:18
  Yeah.
• 1:37:18
  And the childhood lens.
• 1:37:20
  I just always have enjoyed that particular focal point to put our childhoods in context and bring it to the fore and ask the question, what does this story look like in totality that helps this person get to this place in their life or the way they're reflecting or experiencing this thing?
• 1:37:36
  I just think that's a really helpful lens.
• 1:37:38
  Yeah.
• 1:37:38
  Well, yeah, it's a revealing lens, but I suppose the addition that I'm discovering on top of that is this idea of reparenting in order to be healthier versions of ourselves, to be able to give back to others more.
• 1:37:49
  And that doesn't just come back from judgment.
• 1:37:51
  That's like a bit more of a broader mental health mission, I think.
• 1:37:54
  Yeah.
• 1:37:55
  And look, that's been one that you and I have had some push and pull on in these episodes, like how much we sort of believe in that concept or the capacity to change our neurology or our habits or our inner critic.
• 1:38:07
  You know, I think that will continue to be a really interesting discussion point.
• 1:38:10
  Yeah.
• 1:38:10
  Awesome.
• 1:38:11
  Yeah.
• 1:38:11
  So, what other topics did you want to talk about from the episode today?
• 1:38:16
  I mean, I find so much about Josh interesting.
• 1:38:18
  Yeah.
• 1:38:18
  One thing, we've touched on his resilience.
• 1:38:20
  So, this man's ability to go into heated environments and just be level-headed and cool.
• 1:38:25
  It's one thing I've been thinking about a little bit from Dr. Billy's episode as well.
• 1:38:29
  This is stuff that he speaks about.
• 1:38:31
  You know, some people...
• 1:38:32
  We'll think back to childhood and maybe attribute to a chaotic childhood someone's resilience.
• 1:38:38
  So the fact that they've overcome obstacles and been independent.
• 1:38:42
  But, you know, Billy speaks about chaos in terms of dysregulation as something that really doesn't breed resilience.
• 1:38:48
  If anything, it's a major hurdle to resilience.
• 1:38:51
  I was mindful of that listening to Josh because, of course, his environment growing up was so nurturing, loving, protective.
• 1:38:58
  You need challenges, but you also need the appropriate amount of challenge with support network behind.
• 1:39:04
  Josh's superpower of resilience, maybe that amplifies what Billy was saying.
• 1:39:09
  I guess it does.
• 1:39:10
  But as you say that, I think back to Queen Kong.
• 1:39:12
  And I think that Queen's experience growing up, there was obviously terrible trauma for those who heard that episode.
• 1:39:18
  But I think Queen's strength did in part come through those experiences.
• 1:39:22
  And of course, the nurturing people in her life as well.
• 1:39:26
  But I guess my thought is one size doesn't fit all, but I totally understand what Billie was getting at and what Queen was sort of getting at.
• 1:39:34
  So
• 1:39:34
  Yeah.
• 1:39:35
  Yeah.
• 1:39:36
  Resilience is one of those things that emerges sometimes because of and sometimes in spite of your upbringing.
• 1:39:43
  Okay.
• 1:39:44
  It's not that I disagree with Billy.
• 1:39:46
  I know exactly where he's coming from.
• 1:39:47
  But, you know, as we said, we put people's thoughts in context and Billy had a really difficult upbringing.
• 1:39:53
  And I think in part, he's speaking to his own experience.
• 1:39:56
  You know, he's looking back.
• 1:39:58
  at his own trauma and how that informed who he is.
• 1:40:01
  And he's very aware of the wounds that created and his resilience has had to come from somewhere else.
• 1:40:06
  I get it.
• 1:40:07
  That makes sense.
• 1:40:08
  Yeah, well, that's all super interesting.
• 1:40:10
  And I suppose just the last thing to touch on was that really interesting...
• 1:40:14
  chat around the role of understanding your own interiority, the role that emotion plays in our perceptions and what role emotional volatility or lack of experience.
• 1:40:26
  Yeah.
• 1:40:26
  What were your thoughts around that part?
• 1:40:28
  I loved this part of the chat and this was the most revealing and surprising aspect to me that Josh acknowledged to us that he sometimes really struggles to interrogate his inner world and that emotion can sometimes be a bit of a blind spot for him.
• 1:40:41
  Yeah.
• 1:40:41
  So, yeah, it got me thinking, I guess, about the role of emotion for all of us and that natural tension between us as emotional creatures and us as logical, rational creatures.
• 1:40:52
  Yeah.
• 1:40:52
  And that these are obviously, they vary person to person and our instinct will depend on how you've been raised and what you naturally lean towards.
• 1:41:01
  But in Josh's case, you know, what you could describe as potentially a deficit in one area, as he calls it.
• 1:41:08
  has ended up being one of his greatest strengths in terms of how he navigates his professional life, maybe less so in his personal life, again, as he described with his husband, Sean, who, of course, we interviewed two weeks ago.
• 1:41:21
  And aren't they a fascinating contrast, by the way?
• 1:41:25
  Yeah, what do they say?
• 1:41:26
  Opposites attract.
• 1:41:27
  Yeah.
• 1:41:27
  Yeah.
• 1:41:29
  Very nice balance that they have, let's say that.
• 1:41:31
  Totally, totally.
• 1:41:32
  And clearly very much in love.
• 1:41:33
  So, it works, whatever they've got going on.
• 1:41:35
  But gosh, they're different.
• 1:41:38
  Especially when you think about, you know, the queer community that Sean speaks of.
• 1:41:42
  And then Josh is like, I'm not part of a community.
• 1:41:43
  Yeah.
• 1:41:44
  But look, I guess, where was I going with that?
• 1:41:47
  It just made me think about that.
• 1:41:48
  But, you know, I probably, as a more emotional, I think, person perhaps than Josh, at least on the exterior, lean towards emotional reasoning sometimes and embrace that.
• 1:42:00
  Yeah.
• 1:42:00
  But also, yeah, of course, really value the rational and the cognitive and the, yeah, the ability to dissect ideas and follow with your head.
• 1:42:09
  Yeah.
• 1:42:09
  My instinct says a balance of the two is probably healthiest.
• 1:42:12
  What do you think?
• 1:42:13
  I mean, I agree.
• 1:42:14
  I think most people would agree with that.
• 1:42:16
  There was something in the chat, you know, we got into a bit more philosophical territory there for a bit and we're talking about emotion as an orientation in light of our rational limitations.
• 1:42:27
  And that's the one I think I would just signal that maybe we could have further chats on in the future.
• 1:42:31
  This goes to Stoic philosophy, the kind of the beginnings of CBT.
• 1:42:34
  There's so much in that.
• 1:42:36
  emotions role and link to mindfulness and introspection.
• 1:42:40
  We're not talking about flippant emotions that, of course, you know, will dissipate the more mindful you become and you understand their role in perception.
• 1:42:49
  But, you know, I think what we were hinting at there a little bit in the
• 1:42:54
  emotional residue in mindfulness.
• 1:42:57
  Yeah.
• 1:42:58
  As you're speaking now, I guess, you know, one of the thoughts that comes to mind is that emotion is a wonderful part of the human experience that enriches things and adds depth and nuance and helps us tap into something beyond the rational.
• 1:43:12
  But also, if there's too much of it, it overwhelms the rational and becomes problematic and difficult.
• 1:43:17
  So, a lot of my job as a psychologist is helping people manage the intense emotion that overwhelms their better judgment.
• 1:43:25
  And you often do that by reframing.
• 1:43:28
  So, by rationally recategorizing.
• 1:43:31
  Yeah.
• 1:43:31
  But for someone like Josh, you know, were I working with someone like him, it would be about trying to tap into the richness of emotion and maybe naming it more and inviting more emotion into the conversation, potentially, if that were part of his therapeutic goals.
• 1:43:45
  Not that Josh wants or needs to change that necessarily, but yeah, I think you take my point.
• 1:43:49
  Yeah, totally.
• 1:43:50
  And on that, I just wanted to share just one brief thing from the previously mentioned Sam Harris, who we've mentioned on a few episodes now.
• 1:43:58
  We love Sam.
• 1:43:59
  Love Sam.
• 1:44:00
  Sam, if you're listening, come on our pod.
• 1:44:03
  Quick little quote for him, just to kind of extend this conversation.
• 1:44:06
  Yeah.
• 1:44:06
  As you learn to be mindful, as you learn to break the spell of the story you're telling yourself about your experience, and simply pay attention to the moods and emotions and thoughts themselves, the half-life of any negative mental state is remarkably short.
• 1:44:19
  And just noticing that beyond any other insight you might have into the nature of consciousness is incredibly freeing.
• 1:44:25
  And I think that freedom, that tranquility, that the orientation and the emotional residue of that wisdom that you're directing towards, I think is a little bit of what we were pointing there when the chat got a bit deeper.
• 1:44:37
  And just something to ponder off the back of that really interesting chat with Josh.
• 1:44:41
  And you're right.
• 1:44:42
  We will continue to interrogate that and think about it as we progress on this podcast.
• 1:44:47
  But Nick, we have arrived at our mid-season break.
• 1:44:50
  Yeah.
• 1:44:52
  Our unintended mid-season break.
• 1:44:53
  Yes.
• 1:44:54
  Yeah.
• 1:44:54
  Through the opportunity of a lifetime.
• 1:44:56
  But just thank you everyone so much.
• 1:44:58
  I can't share our gratitude enough.
• 1:45:00
  Nick and I love producing this show.
• 1:45:03
  Yeah.
• 1:45:03
  Just knowing that so many of you are out there listening and enjoying it just means the world to us.
• 1:45:07
  So, thank you very much.
• 1:45:08
  Yeah.
• 1:45:08
  We love it.
• 1:45:09
  And we're so grateful to anyone, you know, little independent podcasts.
• 1:45:12
  So,
• 1:45:13
  Yeah, we want to keep going.
• 1:45:14
  A reminder that we do need people to do the simple things like following and subscribing and liking and reviewing.
• 1:45:22
  Specifically, I think the reviews on Apple are really helpful.
• 1:45:25
  So if you haven't done that yet, just jump over to the Apple podcast page and leave us a review.
• 1:45:30
  All right.
• 1:45:30
  Until next time.
• 1:45:31
  Enjoy the break.
• 1:45:32
  Yes.
• 1:45:33
  And you too, Nick.
• 1:45:34
  And as for you, travel well.
• 1:45:36
  Thank you.
• 1:45:37
  Say wise things on TV and can't wait to hear all about it.
• 1:45:40
  Well, maybe we can do some kind of travel blog bonus episode during these couple of months.
• 1:45:45
  You guys, we could get together on a Zoom call or something.
• 1:45:48
  Or I could just take over the RSS feed, get other guests in here and you won't be able to stop me.
• 1:45:51
  You'll be on the other side of the world.
• 1:45:52
  You're absolutely right.
• 1:45:53
  I couldn't go.
• 1:45:54
  Good luck with that.
• 1:45:54
  Yeah, I don't want to do that, but I could.
• 1:45:57
  No, Nick, this has been fun.
• 1:45:59
  Eight weeks in, yeah, quite the roller coaster and just what incredible humans we've been able to talk to so far.
• 1:46:05
  So, yeah, thanks for all your hard work.
• 1:46:07
  Yours too.
• 1:46:08
  Yeah, it's great.
• 1:46:09
  Of course, we've still got Josh's letter.
• 1:46:11
  So let's leave everyone with that now.
• 1:46:14
  This is a letter to my teenage self.
• 1:46:18
  First, the bad news.
• 1:46:20
  You do not grow up to be David Letterman.
• 1:46:23
  This turned out to be a biological impossibility.
• 1:46:27
  Your plan to bribe television networks $10 million to air your talk show if they didn't want it hit three snags.
• 1:46:35
  First, that's not how anything works.
• 1:46:38
  Second, until you've done the things that would make a network want to air your talk show, your talk show will not be very good.
• 1:46:47
  Three, you do not have $10 million.
• 1:46:50
  David Letterman has $10 million, but C.1 above.
• 1:46:55
  What I ought to do in writing this letter is to tell you the same things all boring old people think all young people should know.
• 1:47:04
  Don't care so much what other people think of you.
• 1:47:06
  Don't worry about your body fat or your muscles.
• 1:47:09
  You're fine and nobody else cares.
• 1:47:10
  And if they do, avoid them.
• 1:47:13
  Take time to enjoy your youth while you've got it.
• 1:47:16
  Be generous to other people, if only because it serves you best in the long run.
• 1:47:20
  Be diligent and focused and just do what you can.
• 1:47:25
  But I won't tell you all those things, because you won't understand them until you've lived long enough to not need to be told them.
• 1:47:35
  The trouble with life is you can only understand it backwards, but you have to live it forwards.
• 1:47:41
  If I tell you there are no shortcuts to getting the body and the job and the people and the life you want, you'll roll your eyes, because that's what stupid old people like me always say.
• 1:47:51
  And you'll keep hunting for the shortcut until you're old enough to see the truth, at which point you'll be me now, and the space-time continuum will collapse.
• 1:48:02
  The good news is, despite the ups and downs, everything turns out kind of great.
• 1:48:08
  You don't get to visit Mars as soon as you'd hoped, but you don't perish in quicksand either.
• 1:48:14
  In fact, most of the things you fear, an alien invasion, mutant dinosaurs, a zombie apocalypse, turn out to be less of a threat than you think.
• 1:48:25
  And your dad is right when he says that life is like bashing your head against a brick wall
• 1:48:31
  But the amazing thing is, if you bash it long enough, it's the wall that breaks, not your head.
• 1:48:38
  Life is a numbers game.
• 1:48:41
  Practice makes perfect.
• 1:48:43
  Keep pumping out your craft and be gentle with yourself.
• 1:48:47
  And buy a thousand Bitcoin in 2010.
• 1:48:50
  So you don't need to pay a network to buy your stupid show, you can just buy the network.
• 1:48:57
  Things are unfolding as they should.
• 1:49:05
  You're a Good Kid is produced by Nick and James Van Kylenberg, recorded at Whitehall Sound in Melbourne, Australia, with artwork by Dirty Puppet.
• 1:49:14
  We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was recorded and recognise their continuing connection to lands, waters and community.
• 1:49:24
  We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to the elders past, present and emerging.
• 1:49:32
  If anything in this podcast has raised concerns related to mental health, please contact your health professional or, if urgent, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.