Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Is the exhausted majority stuck choosing between two extremes that can’t be satisfied, and what happens when the far left and far right go head to head?

Josh chats with comedy writer and author of I Might Be Wrong, Jeff Maurer, live from a Washington, DC, hotel room, about why centrists keep losing the argument on both sides. They dig into the chaos in France, where a nation that riots over a modest rise in the retirement age may now face a runoff between an old-school communist and Marine Le Pen, and why Jeff thinks the far right wins that contest almost every time. They also cover the motte-and-bailey fallacy, Australia’s superannuation fix versus America’s looming Social Security cliff, why the left needs its own “Nixon goes to China” moment, the illiberal turn in progressive race politics, and the case for a really basic version of Medicare for All.

Is it more ethical to prosecute your moral beliefs, or to understand people who disagree? Who, exactly, is fomenting polarisation? Who is capable, potentially, of political violence?

Is it, perhaps, all of us? Especially those of us convinced we’re doing good?

Several months ago, Josh hosted an Uncomfortable Conversations panel event at a black-tie gala in the nation’s capital with the federal member of parliament Helen Haines. This week, Haines was intentionally rammed by a car. She has lost both her legs.

The prime minister is trying to soothe a shocked nation by encouraging “people in positions [of influence]… to join in the call to turn [the] temperature down.”

Josh knows a thing or two about fostering conversations across ideological divides. In this ad-libbed editorial from New York, Josh argues that telling other people to turn the temperature down is worse than useless.

Nobody thinks their own temperature is set too high. Rather, we believe that less passionate people are feckless or corrupt.

This points a way forward, towards how we all might participate in creating a more cohesive society.

Our thoughts are with Helen, her family and her loved ones. We hope that in some tiny way, this helps.

This episode is part of The Best Of series and was originally posted in 2021. Tim Urban’s first appearance on this show remains one of my all-time favourites.

Why are you here? Are we alone in the universe? Will we extinguish ourselves? Why do you procrastinate? And what does social media reveal about your chimpanzee mind? Tens of millions of viewers watch philosopher-blogger king Tim Urban wrestle with these questions in TED Talks and on his comic blog, 'Wait But Why'. Spark up a reefer and join Josh on a cosmic journey into a genius mind.

This episode is from the You’re A Good Kid podcast, featuring your humble host, Josh Szeps.

This is a candid look into the life and mind of a boy who grew up in Sydney's inner suburbs and how love, family, and creativity shaped his strong self-confidence.

This episode was originally published on the You’re A Good Kid podcast in July 2026.

A.I. is unleashing a “judgment day” on everything from algebra and geometry to probability and logic. What happens to human knowledge when it's dropped in our laps instead of being understood?
It was just days ago that OpenAI dumped 722 new mathematics papers online, claiming extraordinary mathematical breakthroughs. Professional mathematicians are stupefied. Many of them are worried that A.I. risks prematurely shutting down lines of inquiry. Will humans receive ready-made insights with no new techniques, questions or, ultimately, understanding?
One leading mathematician even needed to use A.I. to read the A.I.’s proof of the problem she spent years working on.
Adam Spencer is a mathematics communicator and broadcaster whose Substack, NerdNews, discusses math, A.I. and general geekiness. He joins Josh to describe the shockwaves in the field and to wrestle with the pros and cons of super-intelligent machines solving humankind's deepest questions for us.

Read Adam Spencer’s Substack https://adambspencer.substack.com/

A female university student visits a male frat house at night. She is drugged and raped, for seven hours, by seven male students. She reports it but the university authorities sweep it under the rug. No charges are laid.

That's the story that has lit up the media and sparked thousands of online arguments since the young woman filed a 101-page civil complaint. She names seven of the young men and seven organisations, including Cornell University itself. Seven rapists, seven hours, seven organisations.

Yesterday, Cornell students occupied a dining hall on campus in solidarity... for seven hours. The district attorney reopened the case. The state governor appointed a special prosecutor. A special committee was set up. A review was launched. The university's president says this is a turning point in Cornell’s history. Students are calling for his resignation.  

The story depicted above, though, of being drugged and gang raped, is not the accuser's own account of what happened. It's folklore being repeated by politicians, activists, celebrities and commentators. The woman's own story is more subtle, more intriguing, and more challenging.

Kat Rosenfield is a culture writer and podcaster on Substack and for the Free Press. She's an unflinching analyst of female sexuality, male violence, justice, and consent. Kat takes Josh to the heart of the profound but uncomfortable questions that usually make conversations about male violence and female safety so fraught. 

When does healthy scepticism become unhinged suspicion? How do you know if you’re being gullible or sensible? What are the cognitive traps that social media pulls us into? And why should you care?

As soon as news broke of a violent attack in the cockpit of a FlyDubai 737 en route to Tel Aviv, the internet pushed back. Something was fishy. There were anomalies in the official story. Viral videos from both the left and the right hinted at an Israeli plot.

Josh is on vacation, but he interrupted his important work reviewing Texas rodeos to bring you this emergency livestream. He reflects on the difference between clear thinking and muddled thinking about uncertain events.

Using Carl Sagan, The Simpsons and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he presents the FlyDubai incident as a lesson in how to protect the most valuable asset you own — your rationality.

Every human mind is a propaganda machine. It manufactures certainty, reinforces old narratives, and keeps us loyal to beliefs that no longer serve us. In an era of infinite information and AI-generated content, these internal distortions make it tricky to distinguish between insights and self-bullshit.
Owen Fitzpatrick is a social psychologist who's travelled to more than 100 countries and studied propaganda first-hand in places like North Korea, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. He now sees it operating insidiously at home, as well.
Owen joins Josh to discuss his new book "Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times". They wrestle with dictatorships, a free media, misinformation, echo chambers, polarisation, fragmentation... and how understanding our own stories can help us bridge divides, rather than deepen them.

What do we actually owe each other in a society trying to hold pluralism, free speech, and real religious and ethnic tension together at the same time?

Josh sits down with comedian, writer, and Crikey columnist Sami Shah, born Muslim in Pakistan, where his satirical writing on religious extremism drew death threats and a fatwa before he found his way to Australia. They cover an extraordinary amount of ground: the strange mirror-image psychology of ex-Muslims who drift right and anti-Zionist Jews who drift left, the conditional condolences that followed the Bondi terrorist attack, whether the Anti-Semitism Royal Commission was ever built to answer the question it was created for, and the big philosophical difference between America's individual-rights conception of free speech and Australia's more communitarian one.

When you read news about a data breach which might have exposed your information, do you even care? Who’s behind all this hacking: China, Russia, or a nerd in his parents’ basement? Are our water and electrical systems at risk? And is A.I. going to make things more secure, or will it destroy privacy altogether?

Assadi Youssef got into computer hacking as an eleven-year-old boy before becoming an “ethical hacker”, meaning he’d find vulnerabilities in supposedly impenetrable systems. He’s now an online security genius, advising banks and critical infrastructure companies on how to protect their systems from catastrophic attack.

He joins Josh to explore who’s doing all this hacking, whether you need a universal digital I.D, how A.I is changing the game, and whether you really even need two-factor authentication, after all.