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
44episodes
Episodes
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Why We Don’t Believe Boys: Female Grooming & the Male Teen
2d 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
6d ago01:38:32Tap 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
1w ago01:44:40Tap 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
2w ago00:34:57Tap 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
2w ago00:16:51Tap 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
2w ago00:59:46Tap 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+"
3w ago01:33:08Tap 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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WTF? Gladiator Battles on the White House Lawn: How MMA & the Manosphere Took Over America (& the White House)
3w ago00:13:53Tap to summarizeOn Sunday, mixed martial arts fighters will beat the crap out of each other in a 90-foot-tall Ultimate Fighting Championship cage on the South Lawn of the White House. Senator John McCain once denounced the sport as "human cockfighting". President Trump loves it so much he's made it a centrepiece of the United States' 250th birthday celebrations.Trump isn't alone. Not long ago, MMA was considered too violent even to be offered alongside pornographic movies on pay-per-view cable. Now, it's a mainstream juggernaut. How did this happen? The story is an insane saga involving Las Vegas, Covid, Joe Rogan, MAGA and the spectacular ambition of one man: Dana White. White, who built the UFC, is on the cover of TIME magazine this week. His profile was written by TIME's senior sports correspondent, Sean Gregory, who visited with White, Trump and legendary Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel for his piece.Sean Gregory joins Josh to explain the wild origins of MMA, the alliances that turbocharged it, Dana White's role in delivering young men to MAGA, and what the UFC tells us about masculinity, the manosphere, and where America finds itself today.
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"Smile! Civilisation is Collapsing" with Sarah Wilson
4w ago01:12:06Tap to summarizeIn a world of catastrophic fires, record floods, collapsing democracies and rising unrest, our lives have rarely felt more precarious. So how do we keep living meaningfully through it? And if (or when) it all comes apart, what kind of people do we want to be?Sarah Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author, whose new book, ‘I Eat the Stars’, chronicles how we might live meaningfully, sanely, and hopefully, survive the end of civilisation.Live at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, Sarah sits down with Josh to discuss how we face difficult truths without succumbing to doom, whether rumours of humanity’s death are greatly exaggerated, and how oddly liberating it is to recognise you are useless to capitalism.
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Matt Taibbi, America's Top Gonzo Journalist, on How the Media Lost Its Mind
Jun 101:41:49Tap to summarizeGet 30% OFF an Annual Uncomfortable Conversations Subscription at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe/sanityWhat happened to the news media? What does it have to do with why Hillary Clinton couldn’t fill a room, while Trump filled stadiums? Did diversity kill objective journalism? And what does a journalist who lived in the Soviet Union think of free speech in the West today?Matt Taibbi became a rockstar reporter covering Trump’s first election campaign for Rolling Stone. He went on to cover huge stories like Twitter’s pre-Elon censorship regime and the misinformation around Trump’s ties to Russia. Matt joins Josh in New York City for this in-the-flesh livestream about American politics, algorithms and why, despite it all, he’s optimistic about what comes next.
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