Podcast
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps
Hosted by Josh Szeps · EN
The world has never been more connected. Yet never more divided. We yell at each other from inside our echo chambers. But change doesn’t happen inside an echo chamber. It’s time to get out, to stretch our legs, to step on some land mines. It's time to have an uncomfortable conversation with Josh Szeps.
A DM Podcast
47episodes
Episodes
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Have Kids Become Little Shits?
2w ago01:15:49Tap to summarizeScreen time. Free range parenting. Attention deficit disorder. Social media bans. And that little bastard on the plane kicking the back of your seat the whole flight. Are we losing control because of parenting advice that's overthought, overcomplicated bullshit?Today's guest says so. Ryan Martin is an educator who specialises in helping families navigate the wild terrain of raising challenging kids. He's been a school principal in the outback and a teacher in the big city. He joins Josh to provide real humour, wit and wisdom for parents, educators and the rest of us about how to raise better kids.Ryan's new book is "Little F*ckers: A book for parents of cranky, crazy, lazy, fabulous, amazing little humans".
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Race, ICE & the "Woke Right"
3w ago00:25:10Tap to summarizeHow do you stay enthusiastic about defending your opponents’ right to say things you hate? That’s the pickle of the free-speech defender in these crazy times.Whether it’s Trump dragging his enemies through courts, ICE agents kidnapping activists or the Florida government banning ‘wokeness’, David Volodzko - once a victim of left-wing cancel culture who now fights right-wing cancel culture, too - has his hands full.David is a journalist who spent much of his adult life in Asia. After reporting from countless hot spots and war zones, he became an editorial board member and columnist at The Seattle Times. He was fired less than two months later, after a social-media mob called him a Nazi.David is now a News Editor & Senior Writer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a free speech activist group, and his Substack is The Radicalist, where he writes about political extremism, philosophy, and history. He joined Josh to discuss the conversations around wokeness, "hate speech", Black crime... and the brouhaha over colourblind casting in ‘The Odyssey’.
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Is Morality Made Up?
3w ago01:37:08Tap to summarizeIs everything you believe about right and wrong just an accident of where you were born? Or is morality a universal truth waiting to be discovered?And if you dedicate your life to answering these questions, how would you feel if one of the greatest moral problems of our time unfolded around you?David Enoch is a world-leading ethicist and philosopher of law. He also happens to be an Israeli who's vocally critical of the Israeli government. David is a professor at Oxford University and holds a chair in the Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has spent time in a military jail in Israel for refusing to serve in the West Bank and been arrested for protesting Benjamin Netanyahu.David joins Josh to discuss how we know what's right and wrong, how politics should react to our moral conclusions, and how to judge Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the war in Gaza, and the international law that’s meant to govern both.
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Why We Don’t Believe Boys: Female Grooming & the Male Teen
4w ago00:17:36Tap to summarizeWhen Harry was thirteen, his stepmother initiated a sexual relationship with him that lasted for three years and made him a father at fifteen. The horror and confusion of feeling complicit, of being treated as the guilty party, of seeing bystanders gaslit and abusers exonerated, motivated Harry to launch a political campaign, #YourReferenceAintRelevant. Last month, he succeeded in changing the law to abolish "good character" references in criminal trials.Harry was generous enough to visit the Uncomfortable Conversations studio to talk Josh through the head-spinning dynamics of being seduced as a boy; how the sentencing of sexual and domestic violence abusers is broken; and how gender expectations affect how we think about teenage victims. His bestselling new memoir is "Transform Your Pain into Purpose".If you need a hand with any similar issues you might be going through, the 24/7 phone number for the sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service in Australia is 1-800-RESPECT. In the US, it's 1-800-656-HOPE, and in the UK 0808-500-2222.
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Josh vs the News: The TODAY Show, Cancel Culture, and Karl's Free Speech
Jun 2901:38:32Tap to summarizeAustralia's most famous TV host has just been cancelled… but has he really?The "Matt Lauer of Down Under", Karl Stefanovic, hosted the TODAY Show for more than two decades. Suddenly, he was fired on Friday after a chummy interview on his new independent podcast with the British anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson. The podcast only launched four months ago.Is this cancel culture? An attack on free speech? Or was Karl inviting his exit by modelling himself on Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson?Josh has been inundated with requests for a hot take, as someone who was cancelled from his own show during Peak Woke. In this improvised live editorial, he shares his analysis of the furious debate that the controversy has ignited about free speech, editorial independence, partisanship, media fragmentatiom... and the future of healthy conversations.
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Why don't Palestinians have a state? Haviv Rettig Gur on the True Tale of Palestinian Resistance
Jun 2601:44:40Tap to summarizeWhy don't Palestinians have a state?To answer "because Israel" is to treat Palestinians as props in a Western morality play, rather than as a people in a fight for survival. The true tale of Palestinian resistance is an incredible story of power, Zionism, Maoism, Algerian anti-colonialism, Islamic liberation and Arab nationalism.Haviv Rettig Gur is an Israeli journalist and political analyst who's critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its war crimes in Gaza. But he's also deeply informed about the nature of Palestinian resistance. As the senior analyst at The Times of Israel and a Middle East analyst at The Free Press, he's covered the region for the better part of two decades. His podcast is Ask Haviv Anything.This mind-blowing conversation could transform how you understand the Gaza War. If you respect Palestinians as agents in their fate, rather than as victims in a Westernised fable, you'll be gripped by Haviv's insights into what's gone wrong in the Middle East.
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Just Josh: a New UK PM, the New Left, New Right, & Brexit 10 Years On
Jun 2400:34:57Tap to summarizeIt’s 10 years since Britain voted to leave the EU, and their revolving door of Prime Ministers just keeps spinning.Josh goes live to share his thoughts on the potential new Prime Minister, the New Left and Right, and where Britain goes from here…
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Angertainment: How Online Outrage Ruined Everything
Jun 2200:16:51Tap to summarizeCan we blame polarisation on right-wing internet crazies? Or is the whole online system shot?The most valuable thing we produce online is anger. Not our data, our habits, or our clicks, but our anger.Ed Coper is a progressive activist who wants us to understand how tech platforms farm anger on an industrial scale. He calls it angertainment: the machinery that turns outrage into clicks, clicks into money, and money into power.Ed and Josh disagree on the politics of the problem, with Josh feeling Ed gives left-wing groupthink too much of a pass. Ed built digital political campaigning on the left in Australia, turning left-wing activist group GetUp into a political force. He’s advised everyone from Greta Thunberg to Malala Yousafzai.This conversation is a fascinating rumble about how legacy institutions have failed people, which voices are amplified by the algorithm, and whether we can save the conversation without censorship.Ed’s new book is “Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything”. He appears at The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on Wednesday 24 June.
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Just Josh: Iran's Billions & Elon's Trillion
Jun 1900:59:46Tap to summarizeThe Reverend Josh breaks down Trump's surrender to (sorry, “memorandum of understanding with”) Iran; what Elon's trillion-dollar payday revealed about the far left, the far right, AI and prosperity; how we might interpret the rise of populist, anti-immigrant parties in the UK and Australia; and why you should spurn pessimism and tales of civilisational collapse, and have a weekend of grace. What a week!
Transcribe →The Gays Who Reject "LGBTQ+"
Jun 1501:33:08Tap to summarizeWhat's the "queer community"? Who's "LGBTQIA+"? When did sexuality get hitched to a queer cultural movement aimed at deconstructing gender, colonialism and white male privilege? What happens when a boring old gay guy dissents?Ben Appel found out.Raised in a fundamentalist Christian community, he expected his Ivy League University experience to be one of liberation. Instead, he found the minds of queer college activists as closed as his pastor's.Ben joins Josh to describe his run-ins and to ask whether the rights of gay people are served by an LGBTQIA+ coalition now as preoccupied with Gaza and trans ideology as it is with gay people themselves.Ben's new memoir is Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic.
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