Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

As the Hantavirus and Ebola pop up in the news, what did we get wrong during Covid?

Dr Nick Coatsworth was the Australian government’s deputy chief medical officer during the pandemic’s first wave, when he regularly appeared on radio and TV to provide the public with information. He became the face of the vaccine rollout. Today, he’s more reflective. He shuns vaccine mandates, wants a national Covid inquiry, and opposes policies that would ban health “misinformation”.

Earlier in his career, as an expert in infectious and respiratory diseases, Nick led humanitarian teams in the Congo and in Darfur for Medicins Sans Frontiers - an experience so horrifying it left him with PTSD. He’s now a resident medical expert at the Nine Network on Australian TV, as well as a practising doctor at Canberra Hospital, where he was previously its director of infectious diseases.

Nick and Josh bring you up to speed on Hantavirus & Ebola, and wrestle with lockdowns, lab leaks, contact tracing, quarantine, misinformation, vaccine mandates, and what we need to learn from a pandemic we don’t reflect on enough.

The world is seemingly on fire. Iran, Ukraine, China, Trump, AI, climate, antisemitism, the Australian budget. It’s an avalanche of bad news, until Reverend Szeps arrives on the scene to put it all into perspective.

Plus: Shakira vs the Spanish government, might be the most inspiring thing you’ll read this week.

Hey! Politicians! Stop talking like cardboard cutouts (if you're mainstream) or lunatics (if you're not).

If politicians can't figure out how to have uncomfortable conversations, voters will elect populists who can.

Last Thursday, Australia's flagship current affairs TV show grilled the opposition leader, Angus Taylor. It wasn't pretty. Obfuscations, snarkiness, waffling, pre-rehearsed speechifying, evasions. Why???

Few people are more experienced at navigating uncomfortable conversations than ole Szepsie. Here, in a selfless public service, Josh plays back the interview and interjects with his thoughtful advice.

This is a fascinating post mortem of how politicians can do better, how political personas are constructed, how political interviews work, how to succeed at them, and what all this reveals about our unique political moment.

Trump is in China, and you need to know what he and Xi are up to. What new world order are they creating?

Today, Josh sits down with a senior US former national security official to understand how three men - Trump, Xi and Putin - are remaking the world.

Tom Wright was a special assistant to President Biden and the Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the US National Security Council, where he helped to shape US policy on Ukraine, Taiwan, semiconductors, and the China relationship as it lurched from confrontation, to managed competition, and back again. Now, from the outside, he's trying to make sense of what Trump, Xi and Putin are building together, and what it means for every country they don't run (yet).

Josh probes Tom about the night he learned about the famous Chinese spy balloon in US airspace, about President Biden's mental decline, the Kamala Harris campaign, and how medium-sized powers might navigate a brave new world.

Tom is a scholar of international relations by training, originally from Ireland. He's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute and a contributing writer to The Atlantic. He joined Josh at the Uncomfortable Conversations studio during a tour of Australia to discuss the Trump-Xi summit, Putin in Ukraine, nuclear submarines, and why you shouldn’t buy a Chinese EV.

His new paper for the Lowy Institute is ‘Inflection Point: Biden, Trump and the Future World Order.’ Our thanks to the Lowy Institute for facilitating this conversation.

It’s the biggest day in a generation for Australian economic reform (and for those of you abroad observing our friendly foreign land). From house prices to entrepreneurship to the far right to the abundance agenda Josh brings you everything you need to know about the 2026 Budget but were afraid to ask.

Is anything too offensive for our post-cancel-culture world? When Trump & Elon wield "freedom of speech" as a way to silence their enemies, who's defending unpopular voices? When anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia can be weapons, how do we decide what's beyond the pale?

John Safran is Australia's Michael Moore, a provocateur and writer whose new documentary is ‘Shut Your Big Fat Mouth’. As a Jew, he interviews neo-Nazis, conspiracists and porn stars to understand what open expression means in a chaotic and hostile world.

'Shut Your Big Fat Mouth John Safran’ premieres Sunday 24 May at 7:30pm on SBS, and streams free on SBS On Demand.

Does nationalism have to be xenophobic or racist? What would it mean to be a nationalist who isn’t a blood-&-soil bigot but a pluralistic liberal? How can multicultural societies like ours sustain strong national identities? Could we actually reinvigorate democracy with a big ole dose of chest-thumping and flag-flying?

David Moscrop, is a Canadian writer, academic and public intellectual. He has a PhD in Political Science and was a regular contributor for The Washington Post.

He joined Josh ahead of a trip to Australia to discuss national identity on a dog-eat-dog planet, the left’s overreach in the culture wars, Canadian truckers, right-wing anti-vaxxers, multiculturalism, jingoism, how all of us can be more coherent as a democratic unit, and most importantly, why Love Actually is a terrible film.

David Moscrop appears at Melbourne Writers Festival (7-10 May) and Sydney Writers' Festival (17-24 May).

The latest chaotic development under “Operation Epic Fury” has continued to show the catastrophic strategic position the United States has found itself in. But it could be worse! It’s not like the Iranians know about the midterms, and the impending electoral annihilation coming for Trump if this latest oil shock isn’t resolved. Oh wait…

Josh breaks down the the failure of “Project Freedom”, how Iran has discovered an asset even more valuable than nuclear weapons, and why the rest of the world is about to pay a tremendous price for America's miscalculation.

Jimmy Carr is one of the most successful stand-up comics on earth (and one of our most recurring guests).

His hilarious, brutal crowd work is a viral sensation, and his television credits include hosting some of the UK’s longest running panel shows such as 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Big Fat Quiz Of The Year and his smash-hit Netflix specials, Natural Born Killer, and His Dark Material.

Whilst touring Australia for his latest live show, JIMMY CARR: LAUGHS FUNNY, he joined Josh in the flesh at the Uncomfortable Conversations studio to discuss revolution, A.I, fame, hair transplants, and why some things just can’t be fixed.

His new podcast is ‘Jimmy Carr: Crowd Work’ (https://open.spotify.com/show/72DxXJcIZGKEjX5hOoE2hk?si=e216f378b7b84f3f).

Life’s biggest decisions are always the most Uncomfortable. Should you have a baby? Should you quit your job? Should you move to a new country? Should you drop acid?

Anytime you’re faced with a decision that is likely to change who you are, you’re faced with a unique conundrum: The person you’ll be - who’ll judge whether you made the right call or the wrong one - is future you.

They’re a different person than Future You would be if present-day You had made the opposite decision. Still with me?

How are we supposed to decide how to lead a good life, if we can only ever know what we know right now (but we need to make decisions now that will affect who we become in the future)?

Laurie Paul is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University who’s a leading expert on the counterfactual analysis of causation and the concept of transformative experience.

She joins Josh to discuss how we judge whether to become a parent, how your preferences get scrambled by addiction, why atheists and religious people are secretly terrified of each other’s epiphanies, what cochlear implants tell us about identity, A.I., psychedelics, and what it means to make a choice in a state of radical ignorance… about who you’ll be once you’ve made it.