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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Sam Jay is an Emmy-nominated comedian and former writer on Saturday Night Live. She walked away from becoming an SNL cast member to host her own HBO talk show about uncomfortable conversations called 'Pause with Sam Jay'. She has a Netflix stand-up special, an HBO stand-up special, and her latest show is We The People, nominated for Best Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards last year.
This is the final episode of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians.
Sam joins Josh to wrestle with her gayness, her blackness, her americanness, her creativeness, her differentness and sameness.
Donald ‘Taco’ Trump has once again lived up to his nickname. After weeks of escalating threats to obliterate Iran's power plants, bomb them back to the Stone Age, and declare that "a whole civilization will die tonight," the President has blinked. Again.
Josh breaks down the entire chaotic timeline of Trump's Iran strategy, and argues that these past two weeks may have written Trump's political epitaph. The crudeness, the bombast, the "you crazy bastards" diplomacy has become so unseemly that Trumpism itself may finally be toast.
Plus: Why the Artemis moon mission matters (stop asking why we're going back), what Survivor teaches us about coalition building, and why jihadists really shouldn't get nukes.
Thank f*ck for Taco.
Dave Hughes is a legend of Australian television, radio and stand-up comedy. He has been so ubiquitous on TV and radio for the past 30 years that almost every Australian has a Dave Hughes impersonation.
This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You’ll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.
He joined Josh to discuss being poor, being rich, getting famous, and insulting the radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands.
Steve Vizard is Australia's Johnny Carson. Tonight Live with Steve Vizard was Australia's Tonight Show in the 1990s, after Vizard had previously created two of Australia's biggest-ever sketch comedy shows.
This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You'll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.
Steve joined Josh to recount tales of the golden age of late-night television, the mishaps of hosting a live show every night, Kimmel, Colbert and how broadcast TV is evolving… and Andy Lee interrupts the podcast briefly.
Zainab Johnson is a black muslim female New Yorker with a half-million instagram fans and the title of Variety magazine’s Top 10 Comics to Watch.
This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You'll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.
Zainab joined Josh to school him on comedy, Islam, and marsupial reproductive biology.
Her Amazon Prime special is ‘Hijabs Off’
Think of Tom Ballard as a young John Oliver, who hosted Australia's national nightly satirical news television show ,"Tonightly with Tom Ballard".
He returns to the show to discuss his getting cancelled for doing a Nazi salute, punching down, anti-semitism, Gaza & Zionism, cancel culture and offensive comedy.
This episode is part of the Uncomfortable Conversations Comedy Festival extravaganza. Josh headed to Melbourne for a ten-hour Substack Live marathon with five of the greatest comedians. You'll get a new episode every 48 hours for the first two weeks of the biggest comedy festival in the world.
Ballard's stand-up show is ‘Be Funny Challenge (Impossible)’ and his play about stand-up and cancel culture is ‘JKS: a Comedy(?)’
Tickets at comedyfestival.com.au
Across the West, young people are finding it harder to build their careers, afford homes, and start families. But have we assumed they’re all the same, and been so busy treating the symptoms of their unhappiness that we've accidentally made them more miserable?
A major new study has divided young Australians into six "tribes": from far-left student activists to family-oriented nationalists, from pragmatic strivers to the affluent and already comfortable. They have almost nothing in common politically, but they all want the same things: financial security, home ownership, meaningful work, a family.
The difference between them isn't money or politics, but whether they believe the barriers in their way are within their control.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is a columnist at the Sydney Morning Herald and a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. She’s previously worked for the Australian Liberals, our conservative centre-right party, and the German Greens.
She joins Josh to explain the six tribes she identifies in her report, ‘Generation Trapped: Housing, handouts, and the collapse of young Australians’ life satisfaction’, and why understanding them is key to resolving the tensions simmering across the West, from intergenerational equity and immigration to the rise of populism.
Everything is awesome humans. Well at least it is when Uncomfortable Conversations Community Manager (and resident Tocqueville expert) Evan Pivonka joins us.
Josh and Evan went live to answer your questions and explore some underreported stories: Ozempic zombies, insider trading allegations, humans about to return to the moon, and the lost art of talking to strangers.
What is going on with Trump’s foreign policy? Attacking Iran, decapitating Venezuela, threatening Cuba. Is America flexing its greatness, or flailing? Is there a method to the madness? What is really going on inside the room where it happens?
Stephen Biegun was the United States Deputy Secretary of State in the first Trump Administration. He was also the special representative for North Korea, charged with overseeing America’s North Korea policy and running the first ever in-person negotiations between the two country’s leaders. While Trump was tweeting about “Rocket Man”, Biegun was trying to make history.
What was it like to work with Trump on complex foreign policy negotiations? What happened on last-minute sorties across the DMZ with the leader of the free world? And what has Stephen’s experience in seeing Trump’s worldview, first hand, taught him about strategy, Putin, Ukraine, and Iran?
Biegun worked in the George W. Bush administration as a member of the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice and was a senior executive at the Ford Motor Compnay. He joined Josh on a visit to Sydney to deliver a major lecture at the Lowy Institute, which kindly facilitated this conversation about American power, diplomacy, war, and the Trump you don’t see behind the scenes.
Cities that rock and cities that suck do a few things differently. They need to hit a bullseye on high-vs-low density, walkability, law and order, red tape, congestion pricing and a host of other things. Which cities nail it? And how can yours do better?
Eamon Waterford is a world expert on what the best cities get right. He's the chief executive of a think tank, the Committee for Sydney, that represents the interests of all the big players in Sydney’s economy: not just property developers but local councils, banks, architects, consultants, law firms, universities. He assesses how cities all over the world can evolve into the best version of themselves.
Eamon joined Josh to riff on Mamdani, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, Los Angeles; on the tension between low-density suburbs and walkability; between infrastructure and green spaces; between untrammelled development and too much risk aversion. If you want to live in the city of your dreams, listen up.
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