Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Chris Uhlmann is one of the most experienced and well-known journalists Down Under. He worked for decades as either the host or the chief political reporter on many of the country's most respected news shows: The 7.30 Report, ABC News, Nine News, and ABC Radio's flagship current affairs show "A.M."

He's made the leap to Substack, and joined Josh to discuss his regrets as a leading journalist, objectivity, fairness, thought bubbles, the flaws of media (old and new), climate change, immigration, and what it was like to interview Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Watch this conversation on YouTube. And you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped over to the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.

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Over the weekend, the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play went to Eureka Day, a brave, hilarious satire of wokeness, vaccine denial, identity politics and social justice. Fresh from Broadway, the Sydney production is on now at the Seymour Centre. Its playwright, Jonathan Spector, joined Josh from California before his Tony triumph.

Eureka Day is playing in Sydney until the 21st June 2025 at the Seymour Centre. You can find out more here.

If you want to feel optimistic about the mind-boggling potential of the renewable energy revolution, listen to Saul Griffith, one of the world's leading experts in electrification, decarbonisation and renewable energy technologies. He's founded a dozen Silicon Valley technology companies, R&D labs, and non-partisan organizations, and he was instrumental in developing the Biden Administration's climate action plan.

Saul's U.S. research labs were recently eviscerated by Elon Musk's DOGE cuts. He begins this conversation in a gloomy mood about the state of American scientific research, but peps up about the potential for overhauling how we generate, deliver and manage clean electricity. It's a wild rebuke to the climate hysterics on both sides.

While the rest of the country argues about nuclear energy, solar panels and fossil fuels, enjoy this electrifying chat about how we could be on the brink of electrifying everything.

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While the showdown continues over Trump's military deployment against Los Angeles protestors, can we take heart from the resurgence of anti-Trump liberalism in Canada, Australia, the U.K. and Europe? Could the Democrats capture that energy? If the culture has moved on from "wokeness", then what's the next paradigm for the Left? How should we think about immigration, multiculturalism, infrastructure, abundance, Obama’s legacy, and big-vs-small government in the next chapter of American political life? And can it really be true that Mississippians are richer than Italians?

Yascha Mounk is one of Josh's favourite thinkers on how to hold liberal democracies together in a destabilising time.

Yascha will rejoin Josh on a Szeps Live Substack Livestream next Tuesday June 17th at 9pm ET to answer your questions about this conversation (11am Sydney-time on Wed 18th). Be sure you're subscribed to notifications here to stay abreast of all the additional content - it's free to watch (but comments are only for paid subscribers).

This interview was recorded before the Los Angeles protests. Enjoy this sanity-inducing chat about the state of liberalism in 2025 and beyond.

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At 26, Hannah Ferguson is one of the most influential young women in Australia. Her media company, Cheek Media, boasts an army of politically-engaged, progressive female fans. Ferguson co-hosts the smash hit podcast Big Small Talk, which breaks down politics and pop culture.

An unapologetic progressive, she recently interviewed the prime minister and earned the honour of speaking at one of Australia's most prestigious forums, the National Press Club address. Ferguson intends to run for the senate and to someday be prime minister.

She and Josh wrestle with new media and old, feminism, schisms in the online mediaverse, Rupert Murdoch, and holding guests - and themselves - to account.

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Andrew Sullivan is one of the most influential political writers of his generation.

He became the face of the gay marriage fight, after writing the first major American article arguing for it in 1989. His 1995 book, Virtually Normal, became a bible of the marriage equality movement.

Andrew had moved to America to get his PhD in politics from Harvard in the '80s, after studying at Oxford.

As a gay, British, Catholic conservative in America, he dominated debates - on television as well as in writing - on everything from AIDS to Iraq to Obama.

Andrew pioneered online journalism as one of the first superstar "bloggers". He wrote for the likes of London's Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, the Atlantic, Time magazine, the New York Times Magazine and New York magazine. He now publishes The Weekly Dish on Substack.

Josh and Andrew discuss his gay marriage fight, the opposition from gays, the transgender culture wars, HIV/AIDS, the "LGBTQ+ community", Andrew's college life in Reagan's America, and how he won over a conservative country to a radical agenda (and how liberals might do it again).

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Terms like "genocide" and "apartheid" are thrown around a lot by anti-Israel activists. But when a leading Israeli Holocaust historian declares his own country to be a genocidal apartheid state, we ought to listen.

Born and raised in Israel, Dr Goldberg is a professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the head of the university's Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry until last year.

Goldberg is a world-renowned expert on the cultural history of Jews during the Holocaust, in particular in the Warsaw Ghetto. He's been a visiting scholar at many of the top institutes for the study of genocide all over Europe and America, including at Cornell University and at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

These bona fides give Goldberg the authority to level devastating accusations against his homeland. He recently went viral after co-authoring an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, entitled "There's No Auschwitz in Gaza. But It's Still Genocide".

Professor Goldberg made time for Josh from his office in Jerusalem.

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How do you reconcile Trump's passion for American Greatness with his disengagement from international systems which America set up? What are the consequences so far of Trump's tariff flip-flops? Can Ukraine be resolved by the Great Powers alone? Do volatile bond markets predict the end of the U.S. dollar? Where does this all leave America in relation to the rest of the world? And what's the deal with Qatar's gift of a blingy Air Force One?

David Smith is an expert in American and international politics with the U.S. Studies Centre in Sydney. He's an Aussie who got his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.

Here, he helps us understand the real theory underpinning Trump's foreign policy, and how it's likely to shake out.

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We've got a special treat for you today. Josh sat down with the hosts of the "Changed My Mind" podcast, who interrogated him about whether it's really possible, in our divided times, to change someone's mind.

Josh shares his thoughts about the art of persuasion; reveals topics on which his position has changed; and wrestles with conundrums like factory farming, freedom of speech and abortion.

How persuadable are people, really? Josh is more hopeful than many.

"Changed My Mind" is hosted by Aidan Alexander and Thom Norman. 

You can check out the tool we discussed that Thom and Aidan's non-profit created to offset your diet's impact on animals at compassioncalculator.org, and if you use the code uncomfortable conversations you'll get your donation matched 100%.

Watch this conversation on YouTube. And you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped over to the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.

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Gurwinder rose to fame writing elaborately insightful Twitter threads about how to be human in the twenty-first century. He now publishes The Prism, on Substack, a guide to navigating the digital age.

Watch this conversation on YouTube. And you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped over to the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.

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