Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Happy new year, human. Remember the Year 2000, the turn of the millennium? Well, you're about to enter the century's second quarter. This Wednesday, we'll be closer to 2050 than to the last millennium. The final half of the twenty-first century will be nearer than the twentieth.

What might the next quarter of a century have in store? Josh argued it out with the whimsical and surprisingly youthful public speaker on futurism, Dr Ben Hamer. He's done projects at the World Economic Forum and as a visiting scholar at Yale University, and hosts The ThinkerTank Podcast. Have a happy and safe new year. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this podcast possible in 2024.

 

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It's one of the biggest weeks of the year at the box office. What's your most overrated and underrated movie of the year? Today, comedian and film buff Alexei Toliopoulos joins secret cinema nerd Josh Szeps to reveal which flicks to delight in and which to avoid. Plus, honourable mentions, the worst film of the year, and what to look out for from Hollywood in 2025. Merry Christmas, humans.

 

Check out Alexei’s podcast ‘The Last Video Store’ HERE

 

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One of the greatest characters Josh regularly interviews is Gary Kennedy, the iconoclastic food scientist who oversees international food safety protocols and can answer every weird, wonderful, arcane food question that has ever popped into your noggin. 

 

How long can you leave a Christmas ham in the fridge after it sat on the table for three hours? Can you use just one chopping board for the whole feast? Will reheating Chinese fried rice kill you? Does a "best before" date mean anything? Is it more dangerous for Australians to eat stale prawns in the sun on or for Americans to eat marshmallow-slathered sweet potato mash?

 

 

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The full conversation is almost two hours long and sbolitely fascinating. Enjoy this free preview or, to hear the whole shebang, subscribe at Uncomfortableconversations.substack.com

 

"Woke” is such a tired word. Yet there remains a cultural elite which uses the language of social justice to gain power and status, without helping the disadvantaged. What’s going on?

 

Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor of sociology who studies how knowledge workers have improved their cultural power by deploying the language of social justice to justify their own influence -- and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality.

 

Far from being a right-wing anti-woke crusader, Musa is a Black Muslim academic who explores how we think about about social phenomena. His new book is “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite”.

 

Here, Musa and Josh wrestle with what the “Great Awokening” was really all about, how ideas are the currency of the knowledge economy, and how we can actually help the marginalised and disadvantaged. This episode is part of Permission to Think, a collaboration with the University of Technology, thanks to Professor Alan Davison.

 

As always, you should do yourself a favour and get all of Josh’s shows in full, ad-free, via Substack. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Follow Josh here:

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After the slaying of one of America’s highest-flying health-insurance CEOs, the tenor of many reactions from the Online Left was: “Murder is never justified, BUT…”

 

The chattering classes are now busy condemning such hot takes for seeking to “understand” a killer’s motives; for excusing the inexcusable.

 

But neither reaction will convince the growing minority of Americans who believe that something is fundamentally broken, and that violence could be morally justified to fix it. Here, Josh dares to ask… could it ever, in fact, be okay to respond to corporate malfeasance with public violence? Can we use this moment to think a bit harder about our moral code?

 

Tim Dean is the Senior Philosopher at The Ethics Centre, a non-profit that fosters moral conversations about everyday life. He has a PhD in philosophy with an expertise in the evolution of morality, he runs philosophy and ethics workshops for businesses, and he's a public philosopher and science writer whose first book is How We Became Human, about how our evolved moral minds are out of step with the modern world.

 

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How did the best satirists notice the comedic potential of “wokeness” in its earliest moments? And where does the evolution of the Left leave political satire now?

 

Andrew Doyle writes for the fictional parody characters Jonathan Pie and Titania McGrath. He invented Titania as a caricature of social-justice activists (her Twitter bio describes her as an ecosexual radical intersectionalist poet with variable pronouns) but many people believed she was real, falling for her absurdly worthy tweets.

 

Andrew has written a couple of terrific books, "Free Speech and Why It Matters" and "The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World".

 

Andrew and Josh sat down in London shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election to discuss satire, free speech, the working class, partisan politics, comedy and the future of the Left. You can also watch this interview in its pretty British glory on YouTube here.

 

Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com

 

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As Syria transforms, as Trump returns, as Putin prepares for victory, as China lies in wait, and as we all look towards a new year, Josh sits down with one of the smartest analysts of liberal democracy.

 

Stan Grant was CNN's Senior International Correspondent based in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing, before returning to Australia as International Affairs Analyst for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

 

He is arguably Australia's most experienced global journalist and the most famous Indigenous Australian. He resigned from the national public broadcaster last year in a national firestorm about racism.

 

He and Josh discuss the future of the global order, whether Enlightenment values are up to the task, and the role of public broadcasters like the ABC.

 

Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com

 

 

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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What should the role of America be? In their new book, "The Myth of American idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World", Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson present a litany of American foreign policy missteps. 

 

Nathan is the founder of Current Affairs magazine, of which he is the editor-in-chief, and the author of Why You Should Be a Socialist. 

 

Here, Josh picks Nathan's brain... on the contrasts between Trump's populism and Bernie Sanders', the Ukraine War, Medicare-for-all, and the role of the United Nations in world affairs.

 

Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com

 

To hear the rest of this chat and join in the fun of the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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What happens to politicians when they're openly bribed -- *ahem*, sorry, "assisted" -- by a hugely powerful corporation? The saga of how Qantas peddles influence, wins subsidies, escapes regulation, and secures Australian government protection by showering politicians with first-class upgrades and secret airport club memberships is, frankly, bonkers.

The legendary financial journalist Joe Aston, formerly a political staffer and Qantas communications man himself, spills the beans in his explosive new book, "The Chairman's Lounge: The inside story of how Qantas sold us out". It's a universal parable about what happens to capitalism and democracy when any one company gets too powerful... and its political favours too luxurious to resist.

 

Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com

 

 

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As Israel and Hezbollah cautiously observe a ceasefire, the prospect of a Palestinian state feels as remote as ever. But there are people working tirelessly to bring one about, impeded by radicals on both sides who see this as a war between Goodies and Baddies.

 

Omar Dajani is one of the visionaries. As a Palestinian-American professor, he and Josh disagree about much regarding the culpability and dysfunction of Gaza's misery. Omar was a negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization and attended the Camp David Summit with President Clinton in 2000.

 

But he now argues for a new type of two-state solution that would enable Israelis and Palestinians to live and work on both sides of the 1967 Green Line. As the co-chair of the non-profit A Land for All, he wants to shift our thinking from a model of separation to one of power sharing.

 

In this episode, Josh has a frank and heartfelt conversation with a senior Palestinian thinker that offers a glimpse of a better future.

 

This episode was recorded prior to the recent Lebanon ceasefire.

 

To hear the full episode 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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