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Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

The world has never been more connected. Yet never more divided. We yell at each other from inside our echo chambers. But change doesn’t happen inside an echo chamber. It’s time to get out, to stretch our legs, to step on some land mines. It's time to have an uncomfortable conversation with Josh Szeps.

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25 episodes
a few times a week
Avg 52 min
English

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Thursday · 26 min
Are Men Toxic?
A sex scandal involving star players for the Sydney Swans has rocked Australia. Coinciding with a spate of violence against women, the country is revisiting its all-too-familiar conversation about how “Men must do better”. What does that look like, exactly? How do we explain and reduce male misbehaviour against women? Ben Vasiliou is the CEO of Australia's leading preventative mental health charity for teenage boys, The Man Cave. He joins Josh to discuss loneliness, identity, women’s rights activism, male relationships and the influence of the manosphere. Ben’s new book is “Better Man: Reclaiming masculinity for good”.
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Monday · 1 hr 53 min
What is Elon Up To?: An Idiot’s Guide to Space and Why You Need to Pay Attention
You may not realise it, but humankind is on the cusp of an extraordinary space race. Are we about to become a multi-planetary civilisation? Do we really need a super-fuel-tanker floating in space? Just how many A.I. data centres does Elon want floating high above your head? Anthony Colangelo is a proud space nerd who knows anything and everything about the latest state of play between SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA and the Mars mission. He hosts two podcasts, Main Engine Cut Off and Off-Nominal, and he joins Josh for brain-tickling banter about why the space shuttle sucked, why satellite communication constellations like Starlink will become indispensable, and everything you need to know about the unfolding revolution in humanity’s adventures off the face of this planet.
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August 27 · 26 min
Glenn Loury: Are we censoring ourselves to death?
In this recording of a live event at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Josh hosts a one-on-one conversation with the legendary American intellectual, Glenn Loury. Loury is one of America's most influential thinkers about self-censorship, cancel culture, race relations and polarisation. As a Reagan conservative in the 1980s, he was a controversial dissenter from mainstream Black thought... but a hero to the likes of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Loury argues that self-censorship isn’t just a personal failure of nerve, but a social epidemic. Every society enforces norms. But have we become so intolerant of dissent that we’ve stopped being able to think freely in public? This episode is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to listen in to a sold-out event. Our thanks to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas for bringing Glenn to Sydney for this special Uncomfortable Conversations collaboration.
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August 24 · 30 min
Jason Arday, Suey Park & the Identity Hunger Games
Josh has been reflecting on what the tragedy of Cambridge University's youngest-ever Black professor reveals about the high-stakes identity game we've all been enlisted into. In this solo episode, he issues a call to arms to defy the whole sanctimonious circus and assert your own glorious human messiness. Be real, humans.
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August 20 · 22 min
How the Public Shaming Machine was Built with Jon Ronson
What should we make of the public shaming machine we have built? Following the death of the Cambridge academic Jason Arday, Josh checks in with the godfather of public shaming, Jon Ronson. His 2015 book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed was the first blockbuster analysis of what we now call “cancel culture”, and even inspired an episode of Black Mirror. Ronson was Louis Theroux before Louis Theroux. His BBC podcast, Things Fell Apart, is about the culture wars. He’s a contributor to This American Life, the New York Times Magazine, GQ and The Guardian UK. His TED Talk, Strange answers to the Psychopath Test, has nearly 60 million views. Jon joins Josh to to revisit his ideas about cancel culture; how the “shaming machine” has been weaponised; the new identitarian “woke right”... and to discuss the best sightseeing spots in Sydney. His new book is The Castle, and he’ll be touring the UK & Australia later this year.
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August 17 · 1 hr 35 min
The Case Against Israel with Peter Beinart
Peter Beinart is arguably the world’s most influential Jewish anti-Zionist. He’s a journalist and a professor of journalism and political science. But in American and Jewish cultural life, he’s far more than that -- a lightning rod, a traitor, a truth-speaker, a coward, a hero. Applauded, derided, beloved, loathed. Peter is an orthodox New York Jew who keeps kosher, attends synagogue, and sends his kids to Jewish schools. He was originally a pro-Iraq-War liberal hawk, who wrote muscular books like “The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror”. His worldview changed, especially regarding Israel, after numerous visits to the West Bank. He no longer argues for a two-state solution but for a single state between the river and the sea in which Jews and Palestinians live as equals. Is that pie-in-the-sky, or the only way out for Jews and Palestinians alike? Peter’s latest book is “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza”. Peter has written for Time, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books and is a contributing opinion columnist at The New York Times. On the eve of his trip to Australia to appear at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (where Josh will appear in conversation with Glenn Loury - stay tuned for that), Peter joins Josh to wrestle with Zionism, anti-Zionism, Palestinianism, Gaza, ethnic supremacy, and the future of the Jewish people.
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August 13 · 16 min
How Branding Replaced Facts in Politics
What unites Trump and Obama, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, the far right and the far left? They’re all brilliant at defining their brands. They have a clear narrative. They can tell a compelling story about the world and their place in it. So much of life, of business, of social media, of political parties and social movements is shaped, these days, not by facts but by “alternative facts”, by feelings, by storylines. You, yourself, may even have a personal brand: the disrupter, the carer, the loyalist, the contrarian, the lover. Matt Jones was a political strategist and speechwriter for the British Conservative party in the early 2000s. He went on to deploy his brand expertise in the private sector, where he co-created a small gin company which was sold for a fortune less than a decade later on the strength of its brand reputation. Matt joins Josh to explore how storytelling is shaping your life more than you realise, from the supermarket to the ballot box, and how we might bring sanity back to public life. Matt’s new podcast is StoryWork.
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August 10 · 1 hr 14 min
How to be a Dissident
What does it mean to be a dissident? If you join a protest march, are you dissenting… or conforming? How should you push back against leaders who wield fear and intimidation; against digital technology that dehumanises you and flattens us all? Gal Beckerman is a staff writer at The Atlantic who worked for six years at the New York Times Book Review. His first book was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post, and his latest is How to Be a Dissident, a guide to living with integrity in an age of conformity and authoritarian drift. Gal joins Josh to discuss ICE agents, Jimmy Kimmel, Putin’s dissidents, Jews defending Gaza, communist Czechoslovakia, the quiet, task-by-task incursion of algorithmic media into your life… and what the most courageous dissidents reveal about how to find your moral compass in a dizzying age.
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August 6 · 17 min
Are Jews Okay? (with baklava)
Is Israel making Jews safer, or less safe? Does pro-Palestinian activism feed antisemitism, or is that a Zionist lie? And why are Greek men so hunky? Two of Josh’s favourite gals, ChayaLeah and Yael from the “Ask a Jew” podcast, join Josh from California and Greece for a funny but forthright catch-up about freedom, terrorism, Palestine and felafel. Enjoy.
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August 5 · 48 min
Josh vs the News: Why Everyone is Wrong About A.I.
Fable this. Deepseek that. As fascinating as each new A.I. model breakthrough (or breakout) is, are we missing the forest for the trees? The Reverend Josh believes so. In this scintillating Substack Livestream, he leads us to the Promised Land the way all great Messiahs do: with a four-point bureaucratic plan. Along the way, he’ll answer your questions about Israel, sun protection, and how much he can bench.
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August 3 · 1 hr 32 min
Why is Trump Building a Secret Ballroom Bunker?
Exploding pagers! Enigma codes! Sexy Israeli spies! J Edgar Hoover's boyfriend's remote-controlled window opener! And, yes, Trump's top-secret ballroom bunker. It's all told with impeccable style by Matt Bevan, the host of If You're Listening, which is one of Josh’s favourite shows about international intrigue. The show's companion book, If You're Listening: Declassified, explores how history is a patchwork of conflicting accounts, misremembered details and outright myths. Matt regales Josh with the most amazing anecdotes of espionage... and to explain what Hezbollah's exploding pagers have in common with the bunker which Dick Cheney hid in on 9/11. Help us improve the show! Share your thoughts and have your say, take the Uncomfortable Conversations Audience Survey: https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/p/have-your-say-to-shape-the-show
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July 30 · 18 min
Buckle Up for “the Manosphere 2.0” - Helen Lewis
What’s up with boys? Or, more importantly, what’s up with the men who use “what’s up with boys?” to crush women? It’s not just a rag-tag fringe of young male influencers who are reviving sexism. There’s a professional movement of influential Christian nationalists whose long-term agenda is to return women to their rightful place, as homebound subjects of their husbands. Helen Lewis’ reporting on gender, politics, and internet culture has made her one of the sharpest voices on the culture wars. She became a viral sensation when she bested Jordan Peterson in a 2018 debate about gender roles for British GQ. She’s now a staff writer at The Atlantic, where her recent cover feature was “The New Gender War”. Helen and Josh unpack the evolving backlash to feminism and liberalism, the furore around surrogacy and transgender rights, Andrew Tate… and what the World Cup had to do with all of it.
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July 27 · 32 min
Josh vs the News: How The Odyssey Broke the Internet
The way culture-war ideologues have hijacked The Odyssey reveals how social media ruins everything. As go the arguments about the film, so go our conversations about fairness, gender, race and immigration. And so go our elections. Josh recounts the online sh**storm, and draws a long bow from Homer to Christopher Nolan to how civilisations like ours collapse. Read Josh’s column in the Australian Financial Review here: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/culture-war-ideologues-have-hijacked-christopher-nolan-s-odyssey-20260720-p60gpr and David French’s NYT column here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/odyssey-christopher-nolan-greek-gods.html Oh, and go back and watch “Just Josh: The Woke Catastrophe of Snow White” here: https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/p/just-josh-the-woke-catastrophe-of?utm_source=publication-search
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July 23 · 47 min
Is this Child Psychiatrist "Anti-Trans"?
Dr Jillian Spencer is a senior child and adolescent psychiatrist who was fired three years ago after publicly criticising how puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were being prescribed to kids. Now, her employer, one of the biggest health care providers in the country, has issued a bombshell statement. Children's Health Queensland has announced that it is withdrawing its misconduct allegations against her, and effectively admits that her concerns were legitimate all along. It’s a potential turning point in the transgender debate. Dr Spencer flew from Brisbane to Sydney to join Josh in the Uncomfortable Conversations studio and tell an extraordinary story of groupthink, institutional pressure and medical integrity.
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July 20 · 1 hr 49 min
How Evolution Shaped Men vs Women
Are men innately more violent? Are women innately more people-focused? What explains gay people, campness, transgenderism? How much of the sex differences are cultural, and how much is hardwired by our evolutionary psychology? The science of the sexes has come a long way. Steve Stewart Williams is a psychology professor who wrote the groundbreaking book The Ape That Understood the Universe and whose new book is A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women. Steve joins Josh to explore the science of the sexes, from aggression to promiscuity to parenting, and what recent research reveals about how, and why, men and women behave the way we do.
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July 16 · 13 min
Do Not Speak Ill of Lindsey Graham's Butthole (and other advice for America)
Journalist and ne’er-do-well Michael C. Moynihan joins Josh for a Substack livestream about the state of American politics, far-left candidates, far-right ICE agents, and the importance of being respectful, in this time of mourning, towards the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s butthole.
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July 13 · 1 hr 15 min
Have Kids Become Little Shits?
Screen time. Free range parenting. Attention deficit disorder. Social media bans. And that little bastard on the plane kicking the back of your seat the whole flight. Are we losing control because of parenting advice that's overthought, overcomplicated bullshit? Today's guest says so. Ryan Martin is an educator who specialises in helping families navigate the wild terrain of raising challenging kids. He's been a school principal in the outback and a teacher in the big city. He joins Josh to provide real humour, wit and wisdom for parents, educators and the rest of us about how to raise better kids. Ryan's new book is "Little F*ckers: A book for parents of cranky, crazy, lazy, fabulous, amazing little humans".
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July 9 · 25 min
Race, ICE & the "Woke Right"
How do you stay enthusiastic about defending your opponents’ right to say things you hate? That’s the pickle of the free-speech defender in these crazy times. Whether it’s Trump dragging his enemies through courts, ICE agents kidnapping activists or the Florida government banning ‘wokeness’, David Volodzko - once a victim of left-wing cancel culture who now fights right-wing cancel culture, too - has his hands full. David is a journalist who spent much of his adult life in Asia. After reporting from countless hot spots and war zones, he became an editorial board member and columnist at The Seattle Times. He was fired less than two months later, after a social-media mob called him a Nazi. David is now a News Editor & Senior Writer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a free speech activist group, and his Substack is The Radicalist, where he writes about political extremism, philosophy, and history. He joined Josh to discuss the conversations around wokeness, "hate speech", Black crime... and the brouhaha over colourblind casting in ‘The Odyssey’.
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July 6 · 1 hr 37 min
Is Morality Made Up?
Is everything you believe about right and wrong just an accident of where you were born? Or is morality a universal truth waiting to be discovered? And if you dedicate your life to answering these questions, how would you feel if one of the greatest moral problems of our time unfolded around you? David Enoch is a world-leading ethicist and philosopher of law. He also happens to be an Israeli who's vocally critical of the Israeli government. David is a professor at Oxford University and holds a chair in the Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has spent time in a military jail in Israel for refusing to serve in the West Bank and been arrested for protesting Benjamin Netanyahu. David joins Josh to discuss how we know what's right and wrong, how politics should react to our moral conclusions, and how to judge Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the war in Gaza, and the international law that’s meant to govern both.
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July 2 · 17 min
Why We Don’t Believe Boys: Female Grooming & the Male Teen
When Harry was thirteen, his stepmother initiated a sexual relationship with him that lasted for three years and made him a father at fifteen. The horror and confusion of feeling complicit, of being treated as the guilty party, of seeing bystanders gaslit and abusers exonerated, motivated Harry to launch a political campaign, #YourReferenceAintRelevant. Last month, he succeeded in changing the law to abolish "good character" references in criminal trials. Harry was generous enough to visit the Uncomfortable Conversations studio to talk Josh through the head-spinning dynamics of being seduced as a boy; how the sentencing of sexual and domestic violence abusers is broken; and how gender expectations affect how we think about teenage victims. His bestselling new memoir is "Transform Your Pain into Purpose". If you need a hand with any similar issues you might be going through, the 24/7 phone number for the sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service in Australia is 1-800-RESPECT. In the US, it's 1-800-656-HOPE, and in the UK 0808-500-2222.
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