The Ned & Josh Podcast

Josh recounts a near-disaster involving a stray cat, his partner, and some very questionable advice given while half asleep. The conversation then shifts to Indiana Jones and a quick look at just how violent the franchise really is, before landing on the bizarre real history of Ötzi the prehistoric ice mummy. There's also a check-in on the current "ebb and flow" of Ned's relationship with his American Staffordshire. There's a worm-themed relationship thought exercise, plus a hot air balloon trust test that gets surprisingly deep.

Ned and Josh kick things off riding the high of the Knicks' first NBA championship win in decades before things take a turn when Josh confesses his step-sons gave him a brutal new nickname after catching him mid-photoshoot for work. From there the boys debate whether Ned is a coward or a cool guy, before diving into why YouTube Premium's $29.99 monthly fee might just be the most ballsy subscription on the planet. They also get into the surreal sight of a UFC octagon on the White House lawn, complete with claims about runway lighting issues for pilots nearby. A rollercoaster of sport, scandal, and circumstance.

Ned and Josh try, and immediately fail, to become cool, a bejewelled payment wand gets debated with more intensity than it deserves, and Josh reveals his deeply specific career goal of voicing a poker machine. A rumour about Taylor Swift getting married at Madison Square Garden sends the boys into the Harry Styles rafters problem, and the question of whether you'd invite Scooter Braun to your wedding purely to spite him gets a surprisingly warm reception.

Ned's upcoming trip to the Basque Country opens a leave request neither of them was prepared to file, Superman's powers get stress-tested against Josh's anxiety disorder, and industrial adhesive is held up as the definitive argument for paying attention in sex ed.

This week the boys are navigating public holidays, long weekends, and the very specific psychological damage of going back to a five-day working week when three days off felt like your actual natural state. Somewhere between debating whether a four-day week deserves a salary sacrifice, deciding what life stat you'd want confirmed at the pearly gates, and working out whether a brain chip is a medical miracle or an alien recruitment ad, Ned and Josh also get deeply invested in what Lenny the staffie is detecting on his neighbourhood walks, weigh up selling a $300,000 playoff ticket to someone who probably doesn't deserve it, and figure out why the golden era of band nicknames is never coming back.

An out-of-office reply becomes a full charity fundraising pitch, and the boys debate where the line is between being absent and just showing off. Producer Michael gets roped into a pronunciation test to settle whether South Australians genuinely say a word a way. Somewhere in there, someone skied in Japan without knowing bears existed there, and someone else is quietly vibrating at their desk after too many coffees.

The bear problem in Japan has gotten so bad they've built robot wolves to handle it, and the boys fully support this logic. Meanwhile, England's apex predator is possibly a badger, and Australia's solution to pest control was cane toads, which went about as well as expected. There's also a long detour into whether marathon runners need to calm down a little.

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If you live in a Scandinavian country and you're wondering what the ACT's public holiday situation looks like, this episode is practically a tourism brochure. Sardine maxing promises great skin but guaranteed social isolation, and someone in this podcast is prepared to argue that the Amish are living their best life off-grid. The Boaty McBoatface naming saga gets a proper post-mortem, Ned manages the office milk fridge so well he briefly considered a career change, and Captain Feathersword is apparently now being ranked in attractiveness brackets. A desk plant died and its owner is not seeking condolences.

The Enhanced Games have kicked off in Las Vegas, essentially a steroid-friendly Olympics with a $25 million prize pool, and the boys are curious whether it's the future of sport or just a very jacked experiment. There's also a deep dive into BBQ Shapes seasoning inconsistency, a revisit of whether taking the high road is actually worth it, and the Lego Batman game gets a full review from someone playing it unashamedly as a grown adult. Kevin Conroy's legacy comes up while discussing what our  own Batman voices would sound like, and producer Michael returns to run a game the show hasn't played in a long time.

The Michelle Obama mantra sounds great in theory but there's a reason people need to be told to follow it. This episode also gets into YouTube being increasingly taken over by AI narration that can't always handle abbreviations, the pliers-versus-hair-laser debate in airport security (which gets surprisingly heated), and the cursed dollar store amulet Josh is planning to hide inside a wall of his new house for future renovations to find. Plus: Cosmo's lazy behaviour, tradies drinking Monster on a concrete floor that now has a permanent stain, and a Colorado man stealing pies from an unmanned farm stand who has accidentally ended up with one of the worst criminal nicknames in recorded history.

The structural genius of a dog's nose, specifically the ridge that creates a snot delivery tunnel, was always there; we just weren't paying attention. This episode also makes time for the inflatable furniture era of the 1990s, which was physically dangerous and spiritually freeing, and for the charity auction experience category, where the corporate box to see Bruno Mars turns out to be very much purchasable by money, just at a significant markup. Grocery substitution logic gets stress-tested at the sugar-free lemonade intersection, teenage boys are identified as a generation that has permanently lost their 30-minute grocery window, and the idea of paying $9 million for lunch with Warren Buffett and Steph Curry is broken down into fractions of a cent. Also: Outlook wants a quick survey, and Joey Chestnut has lawyers involved.

In a week where three podcasts somehow got made, the boys kick things off with a wolf-emblazoned jumper that's receiving more compliments than anyone is comfortable with, a 60-year-old woman who absolutely lost her mind, and a dog groomer who once again had some very strong feelings about Cosmo's weight and work ethic. They also get into the hairline anxiety that hit one of them harder than expected, despite the volumising lotion situation being firmly under control and why a mutual friend's baldness struggles hit a little too close to home.