Stay ConnectedThe 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.
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Copyright: © 2024 Josh Szeps 224787
Bluffing, double-crossing, predicting, testing your enemy. The mind games of international relations are wildly complex. And at the end of the day, the outcome of the next major conflict will be decided not by military questions but by psychological ones.
Why did France lose to the Nazis, despite having more tanks, troops, and guns? How did Ukraine stand firm against Russia? Why was Winston Churchill right and Neville Chamberlain wrong? How do you know if you can trust an ally? Will the logic of nuclear mutually-assured destruction hold? How will technology shape the future of war? What will happen if China goes for Taiwan?
In an era of asymmetric warfare, of killer drones and bunker-busting bombs, it’s more important than ever to tease out the psychological games of conflict.
Dr Nicholas Wright is a leading neuroscientist who advises the Pentagon and the UK Cabinet Office on psychological strategy. His new book is Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain. He joins Josh to explain how all wars come down to psychology, to prediction, to second-guessing, to mental games... and how we in the West might master them.
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Josh takes a look at the week’s news, and tries to make sense of it. A
Is faith in our economic system cracking up?
From Mayor Mamdani's win to Elon's trillion-dollar payday, from Instagram infuluencers embracing communism to Bernie and AOC, from Trump's tariffs to Chinese communism. Critiques abound of the neoliberal order that has dominated the past half century.
But those assumptions - not just about policies, like free trade and low taxes, but about the very structure of we live our lives, how we produce stuff, and get stuff; assumptions like the existence of money and markets and wages - are not inescapable facts of reality. They evolved, over the course of the last thousand years. They made us very rich. And they could've been otherwise.
Professor Sven Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard University and one of the world's leading historians of capitalism. He's not a free-market cheerleader, not a libertarian economist defending unfettered capitalism. He's a historian who studies how, in the real world, violence, coercion and empire were foundational to capitalism's rise... but how capitalism remains the indispensable system that made you richer than most people who ever lived.
Beckert got his PhD in history from Columbia University and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. His new book is Capitalism: A Global History, and he joined Josh to shed light on what capitalism is, how it came about, and how might we re-anchor capitalism in moral and ecological limits... without extinguishing the creativity that has made it the most productive engine of all time.
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Tony Abbott was the 28th Prime Minister of Australia. Here, he visits Josh for an Uncomfortable Conversation about his government’s policy of “turning back” asylum-seeker boats; about climate change (as PM, he abolished Australia’s short-lived tax on carbon); and about his view of the historical treatment of First Nations Australians.
Josh and Tony wrestle with the challenges facing the U.K. and the U.S. from right-wing populism, illegal immigration, multiculturalism, and the fate of Western democracy.
His new book is “Australia: A History“.
The difference between America's last two consequential presidents (sorry, Joe) couldn't be starker. How did the same country - sometimes even the same voters - endorse an urbane, professorial, hopey-changey Black man and a foul-mouthed, regressive clown? Is there some deep American contradiction that explains them both?
That's the claim of Paul Starr, a Pulitzer-winner who co-founded the iconic magazine The American Prospect. He worked in the Clinton administration and is now a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.
Starr's new book is "American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now". He joined Josh to explain how, from MLK to Nixon to Gingrich to NAFTA to tariffs to wokeness, we find ourselves in the latest cycle of a grand American battle between revenge, fear and freedom.
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The left has become increasingly uncomfortable about arguing for the moral superiority of the United States, let alone for the exercise of American dominance around the world. But is the American Empire something which even left-wingers should, in fact, fight for?
Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post who opposed the Iraq War and supported Bernie Sanders. An Arab-Muslim American, he lived in Jordan on a Fulbright Scholarship and got his PhD in political science from Oxford University. He's not your average neo-conservative.
Shadi and Josh debate American influence, American decline, the Gaza War, democracies, dictatorships, China, Russia, Ukraine, Trump, and the future of the American Empire.
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What does it mean to do the right thing, and how do we know when we’re doing wrong? Is it ever okay to lie? To exact vengeance? To eat meat? To abort a foetus? To pamper your kids when that money could save a poor child's life overseas?
All of our most uncomfortable conversations stem, at their heart, from a conflict about what we ought to do. And the basis of our modern morality, in secular Western culture at least, is utilitarianism: the pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Its most important living advocate, Peter Singer, has shaped how generations think about ethics, from animal rights to abortion, foreign aid, euthanasia, religion and more.
But what if your utilitarian assumptions are wrong? "Spectacularly and extravagantly wrong", in the words of today's guest?
Bo Winegard is a social psychologist whose essay, Against Singerism, is an audacious critique of our basic moral framework. Josh and Bo unpack the appeal and limits of utilitarianism, the traps of moral absolutism, and what it means to lead a good life. If "the greatest good" isn't the ultimate moral goal, then... what is?
President Trump has nominated a billionaire to be the new head of NASA as the United States gears up for its most ambitious mission in decades: a return to the Moon. This time, the adversary to beat isn’t the Soviets, but China. And the players at the heart of the new space race are no longer just nation-states but private companies.
Who are these visionaries, planning galactic domination? What are they cooking up? Is this a new dawn of exploration, or a bunch of rich kids with planet-sized egos?
Jeffrey Kluger is Time magazine’s editor-at-large and the co-author of the book on which Apollo 13 was based, Lost Moon. He joins Josh to unpack the strange intersection of science, politics, and power shaping the new era in space. From Elon Musk’s embattled Starship plans, to China’s steady march toward a lunar landing, will the new space race be a platform for hare-brained geopolitical whims? Or is the human species deeply hardwired to take giant leaps for mankind?
American conservatives are in a tizzy of in-fighting after one of their leading voices, Tucker Carlson, hosted a genial chat with a Holocaust-denying, Hitler-admiring, 27-year-old white-nationalist influencer, Nick Fuentes. Should your local upstanding conservative disavow King Tuck? Or is Tucker's aww-shucks, just-askin'-questions schtick too valuable to the foot soldiers of the New Right?
To help us understand the fissure splitting MAGA right now, Josh conducts a forensic post-mortem on the speech Tucker Carlson gave on a recent trip to Australia. It lays bare Carlson's worldview, his rhetorical skills, his tricks as well as his insights.
By understanding Tucker Carlson's tactics, we'll better understand Trump, anti-Semitism, wokeism, immigration, the degradation of the public square... and the impact that President Tucker Carlson (yes, Josh believes that's a strong possibility) could have on conservatism, America and the world.
What happens when you put politicians in a room and ask them to talk honestly about who really influences their decisions?
This bonus episode is a live recording from a one-of-a-kind gala in Canberra dreamed up by social-media firebrand (and friend of the show) Punters Politics. Instead of corporations buying access to ministers, everyday Australians bought the tables, and the proceeds went toward hiring a lobbyist to represent the public for a change.
Josh hosted the flagship conversation of the night, joined by Senator Bridget McKenzie, Senator David Pocock, MP Allegra Spender and later MP Helen Haines, to tackle the taboo topic at the heart of Australian politics: how money, access and cosy fundraising circuits shape the worldviews of the people writing our laws.
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