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.
A DM Podcast
Copyright: © 2024 Josh Szeps 224787
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Vaccine mandates. Wokeness in Hollywood. The female pay gap. Race protests. Diversity programs. Covid lockdowns. #metoo. The so-called intellectual dark web tackled it all. A loose grouping of dissenting intellectuals and commentators, they sought to buck taboos and open minds.
What happened? Who went down the rabbit hole to crazy town, and who maintained thier heads? And where is the space for sane dissent today?
Dr Jamie Roberts is a political philosopher and university lecturer who has ruffled feathers by openly admiring some of what the IDW was trying to do -- and even teaching college classes on it. His new book is "The Way of the Intellectual Dark Web: What Joe Rogan and his associates can teach us about political dialogue". He and Josh perform a real-time post mortem on a still-metastasising movement.
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Have you ever wondered what’s up with Earth? Seriously. What the actual heck. Of all those trillions of space rocks, this one is all leafy and watery and lifey. What is it, this spaceship we’re on, this pale blue dot? Might it be a kind of living thing itself?
This old hippy idea has been wrestled into a more fascinating, harder-headed thesis by the scientist and journalist Ferris Jabr. He's written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, National Geographic, Wired and The Los Angeles Review of Books; and he’s a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. His new book is “Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life”.
If your idea of a good time is listening to a couple of nerds geeking out on evolution, the cosmos, consciousness, and what happened to woolly mammoths, this is the episode for you, baby.
To get more content like this and to join in the fun of the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
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Project 2025, technically the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, is a set of sweeping policy changes to be enacted on Day One of the next conservative administration. If Trump wins, that’s January 20th, 2025. Skye Perryman is one of the project’s leading opponents.
She’s the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a non-profit that promotes democracy through court cases, lobbying and education. Washingtonian magazine named her one of this year’s Most Influential People Shaping Policy and her legal work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Skye and Josh debate what really matters in the stoush over Project 2025 and what Trump Round Two might look like.
This episode is a taste of a longer conversation. To hear the full chat and get more Uncomfortable Conversations content, head to: https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
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How do you escape the shaming of the mob when you're a public figure with original ideas?
Tim Minchin is one of the most successful creatives Australia has ever produced. He wrote the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical, which won more Olivier Awards than any other show in history at the time. Now in its 13th year, the show continues to sell out on the West End. The Broadway production was nominated for a stash of Tonys. The 2022 movie version is a riot.
Minchin went on to write the Broadway stage musical Groundhog Day, which scored seven Tony Award nominations and won the Olivier for Best New Musical.
Tim has starred in massive arena shows like Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, and sells out stadiums with his own blend of music, comedy, and musical comedy. He co-wrote and starred in the hit television comedy show Upright and he's a staple on the biggest TV talk shows.
But he's been most influential as a thinker, rationalist and activist -- as a New Atheist, a Defender of the Enlightenment and a Renaissance Man. He often finds himself at odds with the progressive wing of the artistic scene... cautious about being cancelled, but compelled to call out the bullshit he sees.
Due to copyright, we aren’t able to include the full versions of the songs mentioned in this podcast, but I urge you to listen if you’re unfamiliar with Tim’s work:
White Wine In The Sun
https://youtu.be/fCNvZqpa-7Q?si=dTedPJk58G54Ikza
When I Grow Up
https://youtu.be/6Y82wktAEmQ?si=gVaVtvQIO1f8jCEB
Woody Allen Jesus
https://youtu.be/_SFdUJLebzU?si=1-rBM5ht7xt85V1S
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First things first: The Uncomfortable Conversations LIVE touring empire is expanding, with live shows in Sydney and Melbourne in August with the inimitable Coleman Hughes. Tickets are selling fast. Get yours now. Don’t miss out:
Sydney https://bit.ly/Coleman-Szeps-Syd
Melbourne https://bit.ly/Coleman-Szeps-Melb
Meanwhile, the new YouTube page is going gangbusters. The episode you're listening to was shot as an outdoor TV interview on an early spring day in a Manhattan park. Check it out and subscribe to YouTube for more cool videos to come: https://bit.ly/UC_Videos
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a New Yorker who lives in Paris. He's the son of a Black father from the segregated South and a white mother from the West. He himself is the father of two white-looking children. Straddling the USA and Europe has given him a fascinating insight into identity, diversity and life as a Black man in America and in France. His memoir, Self–Portrait in Black and White, is a must-read.
As Thomas and Josh chat on a chilly but sunny New York day, they wrestle with the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks, Islamism, blood-and-soil right-wingers, George Floyd’s murder, racial profiling, and much more.
To get more content like this and to join the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
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When Sydney's biggest broadsheet newspaper published an opinion piece by Josh on the occasion of the Mardi Gras Gay Pride Parade, it triggered a backlash from some in the LGBT+ community. One of Josh's attackers was a prominent activist, Alastair Lawrie, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Justice and Equity Centre.
Instead of arguing with Alastair on Twitter, Josh invited him on the show to hash out their differences and discuss what challenges the LGBTQ+ community still faces.
To get more content like this and to join in the fun of the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
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Well, what happens now? Does Donald Trump win? Does he lose? To whom? What are we all in for?
On the eve of Trump’s coronation as the Republican presidential candidate at the party’s National Convention this week, he was narrowly shot in an apparent assassination attempt at a rally.
Is this the most dramatic election of our lives? David Frum is one of the most influential anti-Trumpers to come out of a Republican White House. As President George W Bush’s speechwriter, he's credited with the famous phrase the "axis of evil". He wrote the first insider account of the Bush presidency. Frum is now a senior editor at The Atlantic.
David and Josh sat down shortly before the Trump shooting for the occasion of the Republican National Convention. They discuss Trump’s plans, Biden’s options, the fate of both parties… and of America.
In the first half-hour of this episode, Josh reflects on how to process this moment, and how the assassination attempt and response have already begun to shape what the future will hold for this campaign as well as American democracy at large.
To reinvigorate the biggest issues from Josh’s refreshing perspective, get ad-free episodes and extra shows by signing up at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
"Transsexual" sounds like an old-fashioned term. But it describes a real medical condition in which your brain has the opposite sex from your body. Are transsexuals threatened by newer gender-queer, non-binary theories of sex?
Dr Dana Beyer says so. She's one of the most influential and effective trans activists in history. A medical doctor and self-described transsexual, she's been striding the hallways of power since the 1970s meeting with the likes of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden to achieve landmark wins for LGBT rights. Today, she believes modern gender theory is harming transsexuals like herself.
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Boomers. Millennials. Gen X. Gen Z. Are you actually in control of your feelings about gender fluidity, social media, streaming television, laptops, jumbo jets and the pill, or have you absorbed the norms of your generation?
Dr Jean Twenge is a psychology professor who's been studying large, national surveys of young people for decades, teasing out how the generations differ. Her books include an analysis of millennials ("Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled―And More Miserable Than Ever Before"), Gen Z ("iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy―and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood―and What That Means for the Rest of Us") and most recently, a study of every single one of us in "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future".
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Europe is holding its breath ahead of France’s parliamentary elections, in which a “far right” party could win power for the first time since WWII.
The hero of 21st-century right-wing European triumphalism is Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Many European far-right candidtaes are his devoted fan boys, as are farther-flung admirers like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.
This week, Hungary assumed the rotating leadership of the European Union presidency. Orbán’s first move was to swoop into Kyiv to tell the Ukrainian President to stop fighting and get along better with those nice Russkies.
How has this anti-Western, anti-democratic strongman upended a European democracy? What’s happened to Hungary? And could it happen here?
To subscribe to Josh’s premium podcast feed, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe
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