#767 - Josh Szeps - Is It Time For Gay Pride To Go Away?
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guess yesterday is josh seps is a broadcaster, podcast host and a journalist. What are the things you can't criticize?

What about gay pride in australia? What if you're a gay man? What about criticizing the cringe of the anti walked right?

Everyone is getting the heat today, including josh's x employer, the australian broadcasting CoOperation. Expect to learn what the difference is between getting cancelled by the left and the right. Why we feel the need to forensically pick through public figures lives, why so many people believe the world is ruined.

The problem with the anti anti woke, what J. K. Rolling has been up to, what happened to the indigenous australian people, apology trend and much more.

This monday, the first cinema ot. From our video wall podcast that we shot here in awesome texas, we d dr. Kate goes live and it's fantastic and IT looks beautiful and you shouldn't miss IT.

So make sure that you hit the subscribe button or you will miss episode des when they go up. And IT helps to spot the show and IT makes me very happy. So I navigate to spotify a wrapper podcasts impress the follow button. I thank you.

This episode .

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Such modern wisdom, and modern wisdom, a checkout. When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impact for ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones the easiest to read in, the most dense and interesting. But there wasn't a list of them. So I scattered and scoured and scoured, and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of one hundred of the best books that i've ever found, and you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory in your attention, just trying to get through a single page, go to Chris wills x dot com slash books to get my list completely free of one hundred books you should read for you time that Chris will x dot come flash books but now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome josh steps.

This is why you need to subscribe to to my newsletter. You suggest that i'm not describes your news letter. Are you no right? I'm going to read IT out to you fully.

great. This is the culture was shiny object cycle. Number one, some work news story hits the press.

Cats suffer from racial discrimination, or screwing in light bulbs needs to be recognized as a valued sexual kink or something. Number two, the right wing anti body response activates. Look at how insane these people are.

Not walsh, quote, tweet the article, cause IT of noxious. This is the problem with our convenient decade and tech tok society. Number three, this reaction caused the story to gain infinitely more traction than I ever we've done by signal boosting the original Frankh scenario into a much bigger event.

Now, before the left to encounter response activates, right wing is lose their minds of a one woman with a particularly dark cat. The daily why has a meltdown of an insignificant roll article? In times when the story is less insane, this includes a defensive of the original article.

Two cats actually can experience trauma. Minimizing is the real problem. Number five, the right wing re reaction kicks into you.

Apparently i'm insane for pushing back against catch roma. See, this is the problem. If we don't stand underground, these blue head idiots will take over the country.

Number six, finally, the touch grass matter reaction is steamin. Three issue is people talking about this issue. Look at how silly this whole thing is.

It's time to check out of the culture war. We should reconnect with what really matters. You should move to arrange next in holiday and have a fense posts the ground for the rest of time.

I sometimes participate in every single stage .

that we find ourselves, just .

however my happens to me, but I don't look. Twitter king of being banned by forty five guys. Where is this going? Like in jeans? Where's this going? Josh is married to a dude.

Is he also getting stuff on the side? Let's find out coming up on modern wisdom. No, I just interviewed on my podcast and comfortable conversations Angela White, who I don't know if you family, she's extremely successful adult performer.

She's an nazi, but she's huge in the states as well as like one of the bigger fans in the world and was actually super interesting and super smile in like he would dismantle every single person in that cycle who you were just talking about in terms of the kind of hypocrisy of people who criticize that form of sexual liberation, the kind of condensation towards like, women's interests basically. And like she's like she's massive, massive legs, huge legs and then that she's just basically of the opinion, you know what? You're all a bunch of appreciate.

I mean, everybody sort of like this. And i'm curious, i'm still fascinated by why people would like not just having six but having six like wild, the craft services guy is right next to you with a bunch of sandwich es for the crew and more like why there are is a lighting guy and a grip and the sad guy yeah standing right next to you. But you say that really the tRicky thing in that industry is the guys because it's hard. I mean.

there are times I sometimes times .

I M exactly. And sometimes that might be hard, but you might not get the money shot. Yeah so there's like a real craft to IT. The lady just sort of has to look pretty and go the guy has to genuinely perform.

But I think IT sex stuff aside, that cycle, which i've been thinking about for quite while is IT would mostly evident in the sort of right versus left talking points. And I know that you're about to go to a with Douglas unring. yes.

And I was Douglas at the auto arena in london that actually sort of really gave me this. So just around that, out of the cycles, banal, it's express ating the repetitive. So why does IT sustain our attention is basically every discussion follows the same cycle because each story is sprinkled with just enough novelty to give IT the illusion that this is a new event and IT IT legitimately to push back. We haven't seen this transfer g, which now includes people who got a glutenin tolerance before rush. So it's like the twenty season of lost where they're back on the island for the seventh time.

This time it's winter, right? People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that human beings like novelty, but we only like novelty up to a certain point. We like novelty that still reinforces things that we're used, certain things that we're familiar with.

It's like the, you know, the idea of they're being a hero story, right? That every movie tells the same story. Look, the number of movement movies and the number of dc movies detAiling the same story in slightly different ways.

And that's an interesting point. You make an advance thought about that. But the cycle of social media is essentially functioning the same way.

He's the art of a story. He's the evolution of how this thing is going to take place. H beat is different and yet exactly the same. So in the same style, there's enough novelty to keep IT interesting, but not so much novelty that, you know, I know, I know, yeah, I know the role that I to play. Yes.

this is what was talking about that some of the modest minds of our time and a lot of the domo ones to have had their attention captured arguing about whether men and men and women, women not over the last however many and um that and like explaining why is this cycle so predictable and so repetitive and also why does IT continue if IT is predictable and repetitive, banal, why does IT continue to capture our attention? And the argument basically being is there are not something more that we can argue about. And yet I find myself and I know that you do to you know you've said i've been each one of those six people know i've the signal booster have been the like, meta, touch, grasp, reactionary have the original outraged person i've been all of those different people um yeah it's just I mean, now i'm all just I mean and .

I think you might be as well just pretty much exclusively on the touch like let's talk about big shit phenomenon and like I don't anna necessary dismiss all of the things that some of the culture warriors are talking about like I wouldn't necessary put discussions about trans people into the same cycle as that.

Like there may be instances of cycles like that, but on that issue just just jump straight into the most of the potentially toxic A A conversation that we could have. I think everyone will can say, de, who's not a bigger, I believe that there are some people, some tiny minority of people who are born who, from a very, very early age, have a persistent sense that they're in the wrong sex. And the only way to deal with that is for those people to transition and for us to accord them all of the respect that they deserve and for them not to be discriminated against.

Um what you have now is a scenario in which many of my friends who are A A generation or half a generation older than me, who have children who are 40 or in the kind of progressive enclaves that people like me live in， in places like in the england, in the new york, will you know the two thirds of their classmates will be there in non be playing around with and anyone who asks questions about whether or not there's a phenomenon of social contagion or whether there's a phenomenon of some kind of fashion here or with a in a more kind of macao way. Maybe it's possible that Young a feet gay guys under certain circumstances get more cash from their peers and the hire in the social hierarchy. If they come out of trans girls, then they would being puy fat similarly, is IT possible.

There are some girls who feel awkward, who are on the outside of the group, who may be suffer from anxiety or depression, who may be on the auto prospect from somewhere, and who are lesbians who I like. You know what, i'm actually cool or if i'm a trends guy down, and when you try to ask questions, even if you're a professional psychiatrist, s mean, I I had a conversation, what I just got fired from more left doors of being vigors daily talk radio show in australia that I had on the public broadcaster, which was a big show. But nobody was touching this topic on the .

entire public public fully in the and I I only know you from sub stack and your podcast really like and you're writing and twitter. So for me you were just another one of us alternative means .

to generate yeah tell .

me tell me who you and then what happens now yes.

So let me just close the loop on the trans thing. Anytime you raise questions about, you know, this phenomenon of there being quite a lot of people, more people than you might expect statistically to be playing with their gender in their tens, you get accused of denying the first point that I made, which is that there are definitely transgender people. Yes, exactly. So you trans for no, can't we kind of have the new ask to be able to separate one case from the other? So but I don't necessarily with god all conversations about things like trans as being obviously subject to the the kind of toxic cycle of, of course, this is going on on social media, but there has to be a space in which we can also have that conversation in as bullshit free away as possible IT is not subjected .

to that kind of reflexive to and free right? Just a to introduce yes, I really enjoys writing yeah good friend he um uses this really great example and it's quite old now there's there's an interview being done with a father of lets say eight year old just go used to be a boy and um that talking about you know how does that feel now that little Jimmy is little jane or whatever he says honestly, i'm just so happy to not see my son missing around the garden anymore, right? So much of what I think is the trans movement is rehabilitated. However.

I mean, just let that land for a second. Yeah, that is black. I have child so as per I mean, i'm a gay guy, right? And and I have perhaps the good fortune of not having a particular way of talking, in a particular way of dressing, in a particular way of voting, in a particular way of thinking, in a particular way of dancing that immediately codes gay.

And I have friends who do and who are pretty sure that if instead of growing up in the eighties and nineties, they are growing up in the twenty twenties, that would be transitioning. I don't want those concerns to overwhelm the conversation and to exclude our compassion for people who, and I think that way, more gay people there are transport. Well, that s right, yes.

But I mean, I don't think the majority of gay people unnecessarily acceptable to that phenomenon. But some and I I hate when this conversation gets used by writting blow hards to justify laws that are genuinely discriminatory against trans people or the kind of rhetoric c that is dominating and dehumanizing to transact people on any many part of that. But I feel like it's hard to attack that nonsense on the right if you're not also affair incomers.

We say in australia, he would remains the straight shoot a or free of bullshit or just kind of streight down the line. Honest about the complexity of the actual issue. We're not going to get anywhere by just holding up flags and saying from women IT doesn't solve anything IT doesn't address the legitimate concerns of people who seeing two thirds of of a school class being gender queer. So yes, so my story as a tell me.

if you used to be mainstream media, I thought you would alternate of media generate. Yes, you have this ambiguous departure from your old life into this one.

What happened? I have a foot in both camps, and always something. So you many, many different respects. And look, I started out as a journalist, basically as a journalist who became a political saturday on radio, on doing like, I was good to doing voices and not good writing comedy, and so interested in, and I did a lot of improved.

I moved to new york straight out of college in the trial and went to use cb theater, which is a big, improved school, and trying to improve, and got A T V show on discovery science channel h, which was A A kind of a smile. Sy, look at science and tech news. So I would have a science nerd and a politics wong and, you know, a chicky little pixy.

And and that fell part. And having a post was launching a big online streaming network at the time called half post live. And I became a host of that in new york. That was great.

That was like the tech boom is in the in twenty tens ah and I mid twenty tens and I was awesome, got to interview tons of people live streaming video like three or four segments of thirty minute conversation just like this every day and that was the hybrid between mainstream and alternative right half post at the time was the most red online only news site in the world. IT was massive that had tons of money behind. So in that sense, IT was legit.

But in another sense, you could say whatever the fuck you wanted. And I encouraged IT because the click by algorithms, Mandy. And then I got married to a guy.

We had kids move back to australia about five years ago, and I went into a full mainstream. I was like, i'm a grown up now. None of this.

I was thought around on the internet. I got a great offer from the public broadcaster in australia, which is sort of like the BBC in australia. And I hosted the the weekend morning show on television for a year. And I got a radio show three hours a day, talk radio.

politics, cultures, exposure.

huge exposure. Huge .

exposure is gay.

gay peers. Are you just outing peers more .

to this day?

I mean, the thing is that, that gig is you can't be people more than on that gig. You have to be. It's more like N, P, R or the baby. Say, right? Mean, you have to be perfectly maybe not fluff y, but straight down the line. You cannot take a you cannot set foot into intellectual territory yeah where you're restful with things in a way that might seem like you're having an opinion or might alienate a certain number of people.

It's like just to interject, yeah, as someone who has opinions, who your podcasting is literally called uncomfortable, comfortable conversations, how does IT feel to mouth piece is to derogatory, but to kind of be the vessel through which something is pushed and your kind of they're more performing than you are engaging well, I you ever feel this? No, I didn't do. I felt .

pressure and I didn't do IT. And that's why I don't .

have a right. okay? I ve dropped ahead in the store to continue.

So IT became pretty clear. Like when you are a host on a mainstream network, that network has the right to to say yes or no to all external work requests as well. I was the A B C, the australian broadcasting CoOperation, which is idea, which is an absolute national treasures.

I have to say, like, I mean, from the heart, this is a much like the baby and much like I think many people failed towards well, there is really american um it's fundamental to australian democracy. Like i'm not shooting on the A B C as a CoOperation here at all. There are just different Mandates for different positions and different things that you can get away with different environments, right? And like one of the first situations was the transgender ation.

There was a moment where the biggest trans clinic in the U. K, the tavel ck, closed down. There was a huge national inquiry, massive news in the U. K, A, there was a basically a suggestion they weren't dealing with, you know, transgender juvenile issues as well as he wants .

to learn more about that time to think fantastic books or right, had the authority really just phenomenal is passionate a breakdown of everything that happened with the kids and the tavis stock clinic and .

all of that very, very good. So that so this raise question is in australia about whether or not so what that they could, they call a gender of firming care, which basically means that whoever IT comes to you saying that they have a they have genevra and they are in the wrong body.

You cannot question that took to do so is almost like, you know really like gay conversion therapy of old way used to you know try to persuade people, pray the guy um but it's not exactly that. Is that because this transform m is a much more malleable and seemingly flexible thing than sexuality seems to be. And um what happened was that no one at the broadcast or was covering the fact that this bombshell hod just taken place in the U.

K. One might have thought that perhaps you could take you something about the way that we're doing. Transgenic minister in australia as well, the psychiatric association of australia had long been saying that gender affirming care tie their hands and that if a thirteen year old girl comes to and said that she's a boy, the current practice was, you can ask questions about what are not there anything else going on psychologically for her? You're not supposed to ask about anxiety, you not supposed to ask about depression.

You not to ask about her friendship group to about all tim, you're supposed to follow the protocol of affirming that her claim is unquestionably true. Um no, I don't want to buy in to a scale campaign that that suddenly means that she's going to go into an Operation, she's going to have surgery going run off the rails. That's not how that happens. There is a certain leve of caution, but there is an incentive to enter a pipeline that frequently usually ends with transition.

That's correct. That's what came out of time to think. Yes, people block at the time to think is what it's supposed to be the run have time to give them time.

You have to just putting a pause on puberty. Yes, no, it's a very reliable set of train tracks. yeah.

The number of children that are put on puberty blockers that end up transitioning is unbelievable. High IT is not something that supports and it's also not reversible. It's like the the changes that are supposed to occur.

It's not like you just shift the entire puberty window a little bit later. Old, you can be correct. Yeah, be correct. So I was a bit curious .

about one almost covering this. And of course, we all knew I was covering this is it's because it's it's incredibly toxic and people who care very passionately about IT on the project side, many of, but not trans, by the way. And this is something that I want to get to in this conversation. There is an orthodoxy of social justice at the moment, which is a largely White, largely university educated, largely upper middle class pursuit, where there's a dogma that is being forest sted, even on communities who don't necessary agree with that, a latin x being force on you later ina communities, or till at least .

a lot of the americans listening, and a lot of the britz will think that this is largely a american phenomenon. What is the landscape of social justice? Like in australia, this show is bigger. By the way, the show is bigger per capital in australia than anywhere else, is more .

australian?

We did.

哦 yeah， that's right. So this is a lot of australian people listening. Yeah, excEllent. So if you're listening in australia, in outside of sydney is on there.

Was this blow up, right? And to be clear, the abc did nothing wrong at all here. In fact, they let me do. I was the only person who did a story interviewing the head of the psychiatric association, who the mind I got him on the on the radio said, this is such a relief. I've felt like i'm the girl at the ball or at the formal of the school dance who has never been used, never being asked to dance by any of the media and you the first person with, except for the conservative media, and you're the first person on the public broadcaster who's invited me to dance. So thank you.

We had a conversation for half an hour um his take on the tap stock closure and his sense that there should be a little more conservative m in the way that we deal with pediatric trans care and need us to say the complaints came in mostly not from trans people, mostly from people who are part of this kind of click of um social justice warriors. White nights, White nights and they're very good at don't send rents that not IT is they'll go through the transcripts theyll pick out every single thing he said off the cuff and they're fat chick, and they'll find some reason to claim that it's untrue and they're basically flood the zone with so many complaints that they know even if they know that the complaints not going to be upheld, they know that it's going to waste a half day of my time responding to IT. So the strategy is just impose a massive tax of attention and attacks of time on anyone who dares to question our orthodoxy.

And that way you'll scare off enough journalists who will go, you know, what is not worth the why am I gonna bother? Do I really want to spend the rest of the week talking to my manager and talking to the director and having the complaints department come back and forensically analyzed every single thing I bullying threat in a way exactly. It's kind of a heck less veto or a terrorist veto or something.

So I was cleared and they said there was that I didn't do anything wrong there. But IT was one of those moments where I thought, g, there's a cost to being in the mainstream media. And again, all credit to the abc.

They let me do that story. There was no push back what's ever from management about doing that story um they thought that was totally fine and IT was IT was cleared. This is just about the phenomenon of what happens when you speak up in an institution that cares about process. Right on this show we don't have to give a shoot about process uncomfortable conversations.

We have a shot up process, sometimes get things wrong will try to correct and then you know the audience can judge whether or or not where are we're telling the truth and and another thing happened last year, where when is that first incident that was so when was have a stock IT was probably about forty months. I'd be guessing probably yeah probably before last o then last year. I want to write a pace for the, but I am the main brought chat newspaper in sydney, hit me up and invited me to write a piece about world pride, which is a giant gay pride, which is like for the whole world.

Apparently, every two years there is a pride, inner city know that, and hosted IT, right? But there's there's a pride and they go this, sydney, pretty sydney has the biggest guy and less being festival in the world anyway, which is the modem b. But I had world pride to come in with this. And a the editor of one of the big broad shit newspapers knew that I was a little bit heat dogs on gay pride. Like I just feel like, haven't we sort of one like you will ever come a point at which we done have to make such a big deal out of IT? Like will they ever come a point at which it's actually more constructive to turn the volume down instead of up on our difference?

Yeah, one of Douglas is best insights on this. You know when you have reached full equality, when you have to put up with the same level of shit than everybody else does.

嗯， exact claim.

It's not special treatment. It's on special treatment, the genuine market. True equality.

right? exactly. And I look, I leave the most boring life a maginness in the sense I spouse, I A mortgage.

I, A couple of six year old twins go to school, you know, I makes and wages in the morning. I like, that is, that was what the gay pioneers were fighting for. That was what stone wall was all about, right? Total and complete inclusion into the community. No legal discrimination whatsoever. And so I just feel like if I, when I was in my tens and twenties, I found IT difficult to understand who I was, not because of homophily a, but because the images of gainers around me was so conformist that I was like, well, i'm obviously one of them. The last one, well enough.

And I I, I don't, you know, you know so for if you are a fifty in your old land and you you don't code as gay, but you fall in level, you have a crash on another guy, but you had a before, and now you kind of want to experiment with that. Does that help you? What does that impair you to have this annual celebration, which is all about guys in assist, chaps sitting a stride? Giant, influential paynes is going through, going on along a pride root.

What is, what is? I know you you don't speak for the entirety of the gay community, but as a pie, how does the gay community overall think about pride now, like most of your gay friends kind of go IT like, no.

I think most of them are still on board.

But is that because it's an opportunity to just have like, a really good party? Yes, right.

yes. probably. I think a lot of people think i'm just a small push.

Like just let us have fun. Don't have fun. That's fine. That's great.

But don't make IT about like the continuation of the perpetuation of a civil rights struggle that has as its raison detra, the picking of old gabs and the picking at old wounds and the perpetuation of a of a sense of divisiveness of us and them of join a team such that if you, anna, have the same six dalian, that's going to open up a pandora box of so many identity questions that you cease to even be you, right? Let's just just let you free flag. why? How you want to is my attitude.

How do you want to live your life? Live your life? That's fine. IT does, you know, have to take a box.

So friday comes along, and I write a pace for the newspaper articulating these ideas, just saying, like we will never ever come a time which we have done up to make such a big deal out of this. Now, at this moment in time, the public broadcasters is the official sponsor, the official broadcast partner of the festival, and. I can see where this is going.

So I send the article up the chain and they decline, they decline the external work request for this article to be published sort of the eleven hour IT was gonna be the main opinion pace in the main broadsheet wspp er on the day of world pride and we go back and forth and back and fourth and they are like, no, it's a hard no why? Because people who present the public face of the public broadcaster hosts like myself are not allowed to express, uh, opinions about controversial cultural events. Okay, that's legit.

That's legit. But this is at a moment when there are dragani rainbow flags hanging in the lobby of the building. And every single other host, all of them straight, is singing the phases of world pride, having on people from world pride, talking about the fabulous ence of world pride.

Other radio promo in the ad breaks is about how great world pride is. Tune in world pride. You can hear IT on the station. So it's not that you're not allowed to have an opinion about a controversial cultural event IT just has to be management opinion.

And I was like, bright, okay, so there's, you know, the old gag about the the fish who the yet the two Young fish who are swim along in the ocean. And an older fish swims, passed and says how the water today, guys in the two Young fish swim on. And after all, all one of them tends the atanas. What's water? We are all in certain .

ellide .

circles in an ocean of water that we don't even recognize. Did the people, did my colleagues feel like they wanted to send some my political opinions? Not at all. What they wanted to do was prevent the dissemination of hate, prevent unnecessary controversy.

Why would you want to be on the side of gay people? Like why you being mean? Why you always try kick, hang its nest and cause trouble, like it's a party. Let's just be cool. Let's be cool with everything. So there's a kind of ideological conformism that doesn't even realize that IT has political positions because those political positions just land is so common sensical that it's just like an opposition to being mean or something like so I don't .

touch the trans issue places is the um as he primed IT early run the is going to write this thing and then the complaints are going to come and it's going .

to be an administrative burden. Yes, exactly. Well, that's true. Yeah yeah. So that was those were a couple of things where IT just became apparent that IT wasn't necessarily gonna as easy for me to maintain my integrity and autonomy and authenticity uh and credibility as I would have liked and ultimately then IT just became a process of them finding a way to get out of me really and luckily uncomfortable conversations my podcast, which is now my full time gig.

And we've just started a youtube channel and we're startings to live. Yes, exactly. I'm here with with the master giving some tips and they are doing life.

So there are lot of three lakes that is still at the podcast and the substances you can subscribe and get additional bioethical ent. And then there's um the youtube channel and then there's live turing. So Douglas is out first live to luckily, I had started doing the podcast before I signed my contract.

And so they weren't able to middle in that. So so I could do whatever I want one hundred and fifty. Yeah i've got ts and I talk to barriers and talk haris and talk to know you say things that are obviously not in line in line with the code of conduct of the public broadcaster.

But yeah, the wheels fell often. IT became an untainted situation at the central flash point IT like everything didn't anything that was just like a contract was up as so it's time to renegotiate contracts. You know, just laying you know there might be some know, the good game of musical chairs where you know that he might not be another, he might not be availability of her, a chair for you.

So you might want to know, think about that. Look at other cast this. When did you bring with this your broadcast? And that's another interesting thing, which is that my final, so I I resigned on air and then there were still gonna five or six week's left of broadcasting. And you like .

that guide the sex party.

just what you just hang out like a bad smile. And then in the final, in the final moments when I was doing some publicity for a, the podcast happened, there was a hate issa and I went on a date on a television show to talk about anti semitism in australia. And in the fact, and I hadn't been at work that day, so I hadn't been able to fill out uh a technical the external work request form.

Uh now you supposed to feel out the external work request form even if it's not work and you're not getting paid for IT, but if you're gna appear on any other outlet to do this show, yeah that's right. exactly. I would have to fill out next work request form, which is Normally just a piece of paperwork and for my formality but I wasn't at my computer inability to log into the internal internet to where I have to submit the form to go to.

So I did this show that was on a conservative network. IT was on sky news in australia, which is, you know, not friendly in australia, the public broadcaster ah, but I I explicated I was absolutely inundated with requests to talk about my departure, to talk about the public broadcast around, turn to throw them to the bus. After this all happened, and when I made my statements on the, I declined everything, I didn't want to be a bad loser.

We left on good terms. I love the place. I love the people I worked with there.

You know, I think that you is being run well. This is a just a fundamental sort of difference, opinion and priorities. So I did I didn't take anything. In fact, you know, I declined a number of media requests that would have been really, really useful uh, to amy big profiles in newspapers and stuff because I just knew that they end up serving IT in a way favorable to my former employers. And I didn't want to do that, but I did this thing about anti emma tis m and they use that as a pretext to say that because you didn't feel like your external work request you not welcome back to do your final show and say goodbye. Audience, so take .

the fun. Uh, what a bitter ending.

So every opportunity there was for a gust conciliation and for us both to be the bigger parties was of wander.

And the reality is.

I get that, you know, people are going to be cautious. People are going to be risk averse. People are going to cover their asses.

People, I want trouble. Not everybody has to be a trouble maker. I am. And it's so much Better. Now I feel like this, a White lifted off my shoulder.

I mean, my subjects was bribed as doubled instantly when I left, and then double again the week, the month after. And so financially I was happy. Now I get to just have rolled around and have conversations .

with people like mod with the rest of us so I learned this thing from Andrew shouts h not someone that you might a immediately think because I can insight into uh like philosophical wisdom of mainstream media. But he's a smart guy and he said, I came up with basically shut his eraser. It's not coordination, it's cowardice. So from the outside IT looks like a coordinated attempt to try transfer ds or to um deny some particular narrative. From the inside, IT just looks like people that are terrified of losing job yeah and IT may not .

even be called us. IT may be something more insidious, which is the water thing, which is a form of group think or echo chAmber fiction of like our minds right? It's so on some instances there will be coward like although that I mean even called this is too pejorative because if they thought that this was a really important issue to cover, they would have the courage to do IT.

And they show that every single day journalists, beautiful, blind. Yeah, it's like like all I spoke IT when I obviously have a bunch of of push back before doing the trends interview and the producers who would articulate their push back would say things like I mean, just not that very it's not interesting. It's like it's one of these kind of things that some people like to scratch that.

But like IT affects so few people. It's like a culture war thing people love to bang on about at all the time. But like there are so many more you know important things that we could be talking about, that's where their heads are at, right? So it's not that they are thinking this is a really important story, but i'm gna have to pay a Price.

They might be thinking a little bit or they might be thinking subliminally. It's more that we're developing an environment in which I think, in part thanks to social media and algorithms, were all living increasingly inside echo chAmbers, were being judged in directions because we're seeing content that is tailed by silicon valley to be the reaffirm what we already believe or of caricature what we don't believe. Stage two or stage four at the the object cycle, and even if you don't engage in objective cle, there also so many more media outlets now that, you know, it's not like everyone is reading the new york times anymore.

Every person has you know their own kind of collection, their own mosaic of different places that they are getting information from and thrown into that the algorithm, which is designed to a list IT some kind of reaction right skins designed to favor content that is gonna get you to either like IT or comment on IT or share IT or or something. And the kind of content that does that is not neutral new's content. Content that does that is content that reinforces what already believe or demonizes what you do.

So I think a lot of these people will be like, you know what? This is just not land. This issue is not landing for me in my media ecosystem as something is worth paying attention to, whether that's the criticism of, you know, aggressive gay pride or the criticism of pediatric transgender issues, or go on the verity equation, black lives matter minister made to move something like when you feel like the world is actually the know, the bubble that you live in is actually the entire world is very difficult to understand why anyone who wants to punch her that bubble, if they're just an ask all.

Can you describe for the non australians among us, us, what the current sort of cultural landscape is like with regards to culture? What stuff in australia because from the outside IT looks like youth and bogans and and and good day for a beer and and street is on cricket pitches and and barbecues but i'll see that lady on sky news who often speaks to Douglas or like we purposes peas Morgan's content and stuff and I think, okay, the only reason that there would be a market for that it's you like quite heavily anti wk, yes. You any reason that there would be a market for that is if there is a narrative to push up against in australia.

I mean, there is not I would say the culture war as much less hot in australia then is in the U S. Much less when you see the clips from things like sky new that is that has a vanishingly small audience. Um IT has nothing like the power of fox news.

It's a little bit of a hours like let's just keep this thing going and IT is not shaping well. I look like, of course, there are people who are very pledged into twitter and there are people were very plugged into podcasts, a stand and who like a very wild up, but a lot of its inherited. I think a lot of IT is kind of like, you know what they're seeing, what's going on with the craziness in america.

And it's very selective as well like. You is a bit like people have asked me, you know, is london now and now goes on because of muslim, you know, fascism and you know, I go to london. I'm like, no, it's not so you actually go to australia.

It's quite reasonable. The culture war is not hot. There are people who cynically want to manipulate things like the track of issue in order to sort of express a little bit of lightened bigot probably. But the what IT is is a highly conformist society. Like aussies have sold the world this crock out on day Stever an image that we're all ruggedly outdoors um you know who who buck conformism and where individual value is quite comply and orally on the side. Actually, the vast majority of the population live in just a handful of big luna s if anyone wants to look at the heat map.

fifty five little red dog middle.

it's total totally and um so you know these are places where lot sipping sling classes right there. You know the kangaroos work demonstrate now and and so that breeds a certain kind of, I don't know, I was love a rule. We love to follow a rule. We love to this, an ethos code sh'll be write, which is, this can be okay, like, no drama, you know, like done similar to .

stick up a lip. No.

if up a lip is has more backbone to a, you'll be right is more like and appreciation of mediocre in the interests of not not rough fling any .

feather that sound shit yeah like just not .

crappy right put in the the the nerve .

version of that yeah yeah so it's interesting that looking at especially covered is a good flash point for this. I think um first, those uptake in the U. K.

For adults was like ninety three percent. Ninety three percent of people may be even more ended up getting their first dozen and IT was in the eighties for both second and third. I guess it's probably .

something similar, massive inner street. We were in prison until we got fascinated. More of a incentive to do IT.

But so maybe the U. K, even more roads. But I find myself doing that. You know, I over to the U. S. And I spend time around here and like the in built I call IT like um like key desire that the british yeah want to stand in a key is so .

strong it's such a compulsion that .

but know IT speaks to a abroad. We quite elderly. We know our place yeah and we don't enough for any fathers yes and whether a built genetically IT is the project y of people from island that said, yeah lucky i'll got that both six so you just have that pinny spirit here. I not sure I I really is .

really interesting because um if you talk about the origins of australia, of course, a convict colony, it's a pain or colony. So you would expect that a bunch of criminals would be pretty out there as well. Yeah exactly.

And and we certainly don't have the british sense of what we don't line up as well as the bridge to I go to say. But there's a thing where there's just like there is a sense of so there's a thing that sociologists to talk about, which is horizontal trust verses vertical trust in the society. Some societies have very strong horizontal st, meaning that you have trust in your peers, you have trust in your in strangers, you have trust in other people.

And vertical trust is trust in a hierarch, or trust in authority, instruction, the government and institutions. Yeah, you can imagine societies that have a lot of horizontal trust, but not a lot of vertical trust. So like the greeks for example, um you know will have though you can leave your door open and expect that you are going to get robed.

But the moment authority is involved you have any trust whatsoever. The opposite would be any stage an country like maybe china, where you wouldn't trust another persons on the streets where you could throw them, but you have absolutely trust in the hierarchy. authority? yes.

Steady government. Steady government. exactly. And what was weird during out of IT is he sort of noticed that australia and new zealand kind of inherited a bit of an a station outlook.

I don't know how that happens exactly. I mean, lot, right? Whether were acceptable to the chinese yle.

So yeah, we did. We were extremely obedient. I think there was a whole thing I don't go IT to revisit.

The entire history covered the people vaguely recognized me from a moment on joe rogan, if I don't already know me where we had, you know, I I love you. Thank you. Yes, i'm glad that I did not show seven times I was when I was on hop post life. He saw something that I did, which was a funny of, like social justice run in with a very old person where I was just like basically saying, like SHE was saying that of course, of course, and I would disagree with hope because i'm a White men and White men love disagreeing with women of color. Hi, I didn't give up my right to have a rational point of view just because I was born with balls and like, i've born what were talking about, talk to me like i'm a national human, a cardboard cutout of some identity.

And SHE hung up. We don't have nothing to sexy points, right? right? White.

gay men.

straight of L, G, B world. White, black.

Yeah, yeah. It's true. It's true. But I do like to, if people use the apple, the identity card, I can always, just, at least i've got that least I can say like, I find your homophily a icky you like we were just going about politics.

I'm like I I see through I I see you. But so joe saw that like back in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen and invited me on a show. And then I basically had an open invitation for the wellow was in the states and went on seven times. But the last time that I was on was during the heat of coverage. And I was right at that moment when there was a spot west spottier y and some artists were pushing back against jao because of alleged misinformation and there was a moment where he was saying something that was A A A appoint an article of faith potentially among the activation cine community which um was not true in the way that I was being presented and so looked up and turned out I was right on organizations cynically and of a football and they're like, you know australian slams joe on his own show which is not what happened at all or having an amicable conversations.

Just two guys they get on and hand.

People would hit me up and go, wow, like, it's so brave to, like, stand up to joe rogue and in his own there. And i'm like what the fucker is talking about. I mean, with friends, my attitude towards friendship is on quality, on bullshit.

IT was perfectly amicable. It's like if you say something is not true, is I like that's not sure i'm going to sit there. I just IT shows us how little balls everybody else has. If I think that the commerce means without a person and be a higher position of power in that context means that you have to sit there and shot up and agree with.

don't forget as well that there is no such thing as a well meaning disagreement on the internet yeah every disagreement on especially twitter as as ground zero. But pretty much anywhere, no one ever says amen. I think that you're wrong on this point.

Let me just let me just take you through this or another car that even more rare is that's out of order like you can. You don't get to say that. Yes, everything is this sonic cutting, passive aggression. I'm cool than you. Nothing can get to me.

Yeah I I that time on on online I fucking hate I very much just want to say the thing as IT is the club promote and for fifteen years someone wasn't coming in the night club because you too drunk me right? You don't have guess this is because we're fall. It's because the ticket you bought the ticket for the wrong evening that's not my i'm sorry, that's yours.

whatever might be.

But online it's all about trying to i'm cooler than you with my funny little comment is a quote tweet about something that you said this you question mark at all. It's all about so this of dunk pn doesn't have any room in IT for people who disagree on certain things to be friends on others. IT doesn't have any attitude at all for people to disagree in a way that they could get on afterward, uh, or to disagree in an honest man. It's like honesty ness is what very, very absent from all of this is all sadi s so cast is like the worst british comedy, just permanently back and between yeah.

that's interesting. And then you add on top of that this other thing of like you don't have standing to talk about this because you're not from the community, also add on to that if you talking about the social right. So I think the right is very good at this kind of sonic, not not wink wink shit posting kind of like dunning on everything like not taking anything seriously, which I great is actually really dangerous.

is not just annoying. It's actually the left a lot. His entire taner on his show is a very sort of passive aggressive.

Just second, i've got a thing to this, like people get locked into corners with questions that are purposefully done to try make them looks. David doesn't end that way for me. That's interesting.

He he did a number of time i've seen IT. I think that maybe because he doesn't see you as activating his antibody, and prince is. One of the examples was I referred to the bill and riots as the bill and riots.

He said, right, it's so sorry. sorry. right? I is, is that actually I haven't heard anybody outside of news maxa A N N call IT that I like. We yeah talking about the same were burning. We talking about the same.

Mostly peaceful yeah protest.

yeah. Um so shop fronts were smashed. The David David lost. And then he he did a couple of city moves after the tragicomedy interview. And unfortunate he IT was like, just I said, I kind of thought he was Better than may be. I am enough day.

maybe a couple of off day maybe. I mean, I generally like David, but I listen to his content for is like not on again. It's about being on a tame just to I don't want be on a tame like i'm the tribe of the I want to be one of the leaders of the tribe of the tribalist like people who just feel like, I mean just .

just gonna playing that too .

much exactly I know. Um yeah, that's an joke about that Chris carver, hello Chris, love you. Um but I mean I just be yeah where were we before we talk about packman yeah that's right.

So in addition to the kiney, there's a on the left, there's a highly sensorial kind of historical attitude about you don't have standing talk like shot. Read the room. Read the room, bro.

Yeah, like, you know you, we don't. This isn't your time. This isn't.

Yes, exactly. This is a time for you to be listening. Yes, not time for you to be speaking.

I mean, the other day I was talking about IT just happened to be gay pride martire de in australia again. So this came up against sales. I come obsess with this issue, not just happens to have happened.

Get of cops. Oh, so this is what also happened. So this is a funny story like this.

For the past quarter of a century the um uniformed police in sydney have had a flesh in the photographs again and let's be a police officers have had their own float in the grab as a way in float. Gay they are on right. They wearing the uniforms .

for the Normal uniforms, uniforms.

the very regular. And in the light nineties, this was a watershed moment, because IT was a way of taking the gay, taking gay rights and gay pride from being a fringe ed group that only freaks and perverts were into for the state local body. Yeah, exactly.

This is legit. You know, this is now a part of a kind of a community celebration that involves everybody. This is universal. Even the people who had previously been beating gain lesbians in the riots of the thousand nine hundred and sixties and seventies now were not the individual people, but the people who represent the institution that was prejudice towards gays and lesbians.

They now much then in the twenty tens, the police force officially apologized to the L, G, B T, Q, I A plus one, say, community, uh for the historical wrongs for the hard harms that have been done by police uh against gain lesbians so everyone a kissed and made up and then at the recent guy pride, which we call multigrade a week or two prior um a gay couple who were reasonable prominent socialists in sydney were killed, allegedly murdered, allegedly by someone who they knew who was a Young guy who was either in x or just a stalker but we had known one of them um this was a tragic, tragic domestic violence situation essentially where allegedly I mean you've disappeared a the guy the guy then headed himself in to the police the wrinkle is he was a cup. He only had a firearm because he was a cup. He wasn't on duty.

Uh, IT wasn't a case of police brutality. IT was a case of domestic violence where a one individual went robe. And as a result, the organizers of gay pride, the medi grab board a, convened an emergency meeting and uninvited the police from holding their float, because IT would be too hurtful and trigger ing to to other participants to see police officers involved in motivate.

Now there will be police officers there, or I mean, they're gonna. They are gonna like it's a huge event, so they will b uniform police are no long duty, but they won't be ones. So apparently those aren't trigger ing, but the ones who are standing on the giant from the giant pano. So whatever is I new dress .

Normally.

So this caused a fuel essentially and an argument about whether or not the mainstream of of guy and less by an institutional activist class has become too identity an and too fragile and too, I suppose, obsessed with a narratives of victimization instead of pride in like to sanda when you read this a little bit um so my iphone lit up with the phone calls from the opinion editors of all the big newspapers saying, what do you think can you want to write something for this and so I wrote something um basically saying the cops should be allowed to participate.

This person wasn't not functioning in his capacity as a police officer not not cops I mean litter, not s right and not only cops he wasn't even being a cop when he was doing this thing and the police force responded exactly as you'd want them to and was equally horrified and has the guy in custody um and my basic argument was like. Why are we sort of leaning into a narrative of our own fragile ity and victimization like as if we're incapable, we're onna be trigger and traumatize and it's going to make us feel unsafe to witness this stuff when the original virtue of civil rise in the one thousand nine hundred and sixties and seventies, not just forget, but for black people as well, and all other minorities and women and feminism, the idea was an idea of universal ism. There was an idea that all people should be try treated equally regardless of their sex or enda or job uniform.

And that seems we've been replaced now by an ethos of identity, an ism and tribal ism, where IT was sort of picking goodies and baddies on the basis of whether they're in our own group or out group. So I was basically writing a peace arguing, can't we re claim the universalism, the optimism in a sense of power? Can we take pride in powerful fulness instead of powerlessness? yeah. And stop scratching at the wounds of the past and be inclusive and try to embrace in the best.

Because I got me a huge and shit, i'm sure IT did. Yeah, if if I was a gay australian person, the last thing that I would want is this like gay fragile ity, right? Like, I don't want even know if this, like White fragility ity that's IT almost been transplanted onto. Well we must title around and we must yeah and common hues new book uh the end of raised politics um really .

yeah actually I just SAT down with common yesterday in new york and just I recorded IT for my youtube. So people should check out the youtube as well because i'm starting to do like rather than just record things in the studio or via zone, I also want to make IT a bit more fun and do some stuff outside that sort of feels a bit lot more like comedians and cars getting coffee and they have us walk on the, uh, he and I caught up and we just went to ride a side park and just SAT outside and chat and water around grants term and talk and Jesse, right? So the three of us hang out so I know that video will all be is not up yet but that's all coming to this one.

But with commons new thing you he kind of highlights the like patronizing nature of assuming that a black people are very fragile um and that we must you we must step on eggshells around them which is a kind of soft bigotry. Yeah way yes and it's the same thing with you again, true equalities when you have to put up with the same left of shit to everybody else .

yeah yeah and in terms and in terms of who gets to talk about this stuff just looping back. Like who has standing and like, you know, read the room and kind of, you know, now is the time to be quiet and just to listen when I when I wrote that, of course, the reason why the three a newspaper at that is called me because because I identify as gay. But the arguments that I was making really have nothing to do with my own gainers.

I have a special pedestal, because I happened to be married to a man, and I was in a room talking to another bunch of people, people. And they were all sharing my my sense about this, that kind of agreeing with me. And one of the guys said, well, thank god you can say and I was like, you actually can say IT, yes, a strike guy.

You actually are allowed to say IT. And I actually am allowed to have an opinion about the way that black and wants to get a along in society, even though i'm not black. And I actually am allowed to have an opinion about how we should be dealing with children with gender is oria.

Even I am not trans. And I actually, you know, like we all live in this vacant society. This is a demos where in a democracy we get to hash up, we get to have conversations, we get to rest with the shit. I want a capac, ous public square that is, and bunches, and fun, and funny and playful, and when IT needs to be earnest and serious, and that wrestles with things that you are not allowed to wrestle with, because that's the only way that we going to progress.

I what your lived experience will have informed some of the insights that you have about pride and yeah and global pride day. But presumably a sufficiently smart, while recent person could have got pretty close to that without having to.

they could, I mean, they could look, you, if what you investigating is what IT feels like to be in the closet, i'll come out of the closet. Or what IT feels like to walk through the world as a pakistani woman, or what IT feels like, you know, to be a five year old transgender person with one leg, then you need to talk to those people to get a sense of what IT feels like. But if what you're talking about is like how society should respond and think about ah the way that that structures itself, the way that that talks to itself and the way that IT deals with grievances, then that's something which we all have a sake including straight White males. Talk to his beer on other.

Talk to me about the um problem with the anti walke because you know again of being a part of your tribes stripe uh presumable you ve got problems with both a step number four, which is like the left wing we response, but also a step number .

two which is yes so there is this industry of anti walk rotten ing shit wards really who will use the specter of council culture as an excuse to push um belief that they always had in the first place. Cancel culture is something that really began with the right, was perfected by the right. Mcafee m, was cancel culture, the censoriousness of the religious right against pornography? And you know, the hysteria of a the war on drugs like these were all right wing ry potter, when a Harry potter, first, Harry potter was, yes, exactly because I was demon .

ic band book, most band back at the twenty century and not banned by the left. No, not by the that ladies thing .

that which actually people should listen to the stations. But so we was going with that the antibody standing um there's a cynical m toward there's a kind of like um I kind of what got you and what did you just say there was we've got the .

sort of left doing story goes out the right wing response to that what IT causes downstream yep, is for the shit was industry to spend up right? And then the world council .

culture specular. I was thinking of there was monty python, right? Monty python comes out with the life of brian.

And of course, it's the right way that doesn't want, you know they absolutely losing their shit. They've got their tits in a tangle because ah it's saatchi zed in Christianity. So the right perfected council culture. And what's happened what's happened recently is that the left has lost its focus on the britain bottle of the left, which is uplifting working people and striving for equality and caring about class essentially and wanting economic justice, to becoming obsessed with the nassim of small differences between our tribes and color of and you to live with and someone. And in so doing, they become as censorious as an historical as the right always used to be.

And that has now triggered some bad actors, many bad actors, on the right to take the moral high ground and, you know, complain constantly about cancel culture, a cancelled culture, that they themselves have been complicated, and or their movement been complicated for bloody decades. I am talk, let's talk about mechanical ism, right? And you know the sorry history, I know what? Oh, sorry.

So in the one thousand and fifteen, the in cold war, a senator, joe, a Cathy, wanted to crack down on communism in amErica and basically created show trials for anyone who was suspected of being a communist, many of whom were just innocent leftwing ing people, and basically black listed half of hollywood and a half of the creative arts in this country in a witch hunt of communists. Um IT was devastating. IT was sort of soviet style.

IT was sTyler ist. IT was incredibly intrusive. And the right loved IT because they thought communism is essential threat, and you couldn't express any, you know, really progressive ideas without potentially being considered an enemy of the state.

That was a sorry chapter in american history. And many people who would have been, who would have been champions of that would now be complaining about the cancel culture. People you even see IT in real time.

We will have some conservative publications, you know who who are championing of free speech supposedly and their anti work and their ti council culture. And the moment somebody says, are you I don't know, anti zona says something, propane tinian all of the time there in favor of that person losing their job. One, hang on a fucker.

And second, excuse me, like my parents were all local survivors. I'm a conflicted know. Sometimes anti zn is, sometimes zn is definitely think the palestinians should have a state think it's I was tragic that the palestinian situation that they're in, but also deeply uncomfortable with the extremities of some of the anti sonos reera, which I think is bordering on anti semitism.

It's complicated. If you're not finding IT complicated, you're in the wrong. I'm sorry, the world is extremely messy, extremely complicated. If you're not confused by IT, if you're confused by IT, then you're on the right track. I would say these are very messy, complicated things. And the only way to resolve them, in fact, the only way to survive the twenty first century, in an era of algorithm, artificial intelligence and climate chaos, is gonna be for us all to get on the same page by having conversations, by having on come to conversations, by talking to each other and restful through these things.

So don't give me this bullshit if you're on the right by saying that, you know, cancel cultures is coming for us and endlessly amplifying sort of Cherry picked examples of the extremism of the left, the kind of libs of tiktok phenomenon where, oh my god, look at this ridiculous protests on some random university campus in the united states. This is the most important thing that we have to focus on every hour of of the day. And then the moment someone gets censured for having a position that you disagree with, you palon as well.

And you participate in a council culture from the outside, just stop IT like, stop IT. We have to engage with people on the base of ideas. Don't punish people for their ideas. If they're saying something stupid or hateful or wrong, then counter that by saying something right.

The solution to a bad idea is a good idea is not getting the person who has the bad idea fired, you know, wapping up a mobile ne, social media to try to take them down, storming corporate officers with kind of metaphorical pitch, folks to try to rule in people's lives. I might come out know. I, in fact, in support of my enemies, my ideological enemies, to say that they shouldn't have.

You have been petitions in australia to have certain people who I veramente disagree with, who I think are doing real damage, to have their contracts with their publishers cancelled, or to pressure behind the scenes for them to lose a podcast, or, or rather. And i've actively said to my colleagues and friends, don't do IT don't go down this path. You don't want to open this door.

You don't want to end up living in a society where everybody is trading on each shows, unable to say what I think, worried about trigger ing trip wires, worried about the mob coming for them and we, I mean, it's gonna come for you. You'll rep the world wind. You will read the fucking and wellwood. And even if you don't rep IT personally, you will rep having to live in a world in which people feel stifled and suppressed and afraid.

Speaking of protests at live talks, do you see kissing is in australia at the moment?

And a shame i'm just missing him something up, but I can break .

the door down. What you not seen this .

video I haven't seen, i've been traveling for the past weeks.

so I I be on you should be locked into the main frame, should be directly I V so constantly is at what looks like some prestigious university, big vaulted holes. And he's giving some sort of a talk up on stage and these big wooden doors, huge arched mother fuckers, and the banging and chanting and nights, and obviously trying to break in.

And this woman goes over with a blanket, puts a blanket at the bottom of the door to, like, just drawn out a little bit more of the sound, maybe is a bit of gap or whatever, puts a little bit thing consent and take IT something. Everything continues. But doug's mary as well and it's gonna a lot.

You've yeah talk to me. You know you've got constant in russian immigrant living in the U. K. And you've Douglas going over to australia. What is the what what's happened with your tour so far as the petition for, yes, live shows to, we want this to happen.

not in our city. No hate man. No hate Chris.

Why in favor of hate? Why in favor of Douglas spreading his hate? Douglas George spreading the spreading hate? I don't know, man, it's something's happening. Something's happening in the world. And links since covered friends and colleagues of mine who were on the heterodox side of things, have korean completely off the rails into far right conspiracy land.

And on the left, friends and colleagues of mine have current off the rails into, if you disagree with us, then by definition, your peddling ideas that are so bad that you shouldn't be allowed to say them. And yet we live at a time when everybody has more ability to counter ideas than we've ever had, right? Everybody, sure, not everybody can write an opinion piece for the newspaper or have abilities of podcast listeners as we have the good fortune to do.

But we didn't get there from from because I was born there, right I mean, we earn IT and anybody can earn IT. Now um you have the capacity to push back against bad ideas, but there's something on the left at the moment which is. Censorious hysterically, it's a group thing and IT is brought into an idea about what discourse is supposed to be that is completely detached from the values of traditional liberalism and the enlightenment.

Like it's like these people are not aware of jumpsuit mill and not aware of the idea that the best way to progress as a society is to have a maximum large conversation about things, so that together you can weed out what's true and what's not true, what's useful and not useful, what's hateful and not hateful, and community, collectively, you can sort of arrive at Better and Better ideas of what the enlightenment was. That's why we're surrounded by the prosperity that we are. Basically because a few scots mostly came up with the idea that human beings should be maximum tolerant of other ideas and respectful of each other's property and including intellectual property, and engage with them rationally on the basis of science and reason, instead of on the basis of superstition and prejudice.

That's why the west has achieved what the west has achieved, essentially, along with the industrial revolution, which was largely, you know, generated by those same principles. And yet there's now a push that is almost messianic and like itself certainty. It's like people who like, we don't need this trouble.

Some talking. We already have the answers. We know that Douglas murray is a faster design ist.

We know that he says in tolerable things about muslims he's in islamabad, bled march in the streets going, get Joshua Douglas, no hate, no hate in sydney. Get rid of the hate. Well, it's very convenient, isn't that? That everyone you don't like is just hate.

Like what did you talk about? How would we know whether is wrong unless you hear him? And when you do here, push back, telling me is wrong, I mean, and then the counter argument always end up, would you platform not see, what if I was someone saying that we should kill all the juice? No, I wouldn't platform such a person because that's not interesting point you and it's likely to get lots and lots of people immediately hurt. But let's set the bar a little higher than a rather that a feet intellectual englishman who has accurately predicted some of the some of the roiling social issues and cultural sis isms that emerged over the past to many years.

He does an idea for my friend, window gl called a semantic stop sign. One way people end discussions is by disguising descriptions as explanations. For instance, the word evil is used to explain behavior, but really only describes IT. IT resolves the question not by creating understanding, but by killing curiosity. And that the same as, like, no hate, yes.

semantic stop sign, right? right? yep. And when you call the B, L, M riots, riots, you are also engaging in the hate. In a sense.

Yes, it's like the the bubble is in escaped and mean, this is something I am also cautious about in the expanding uncomfortable conversations from podcast into youtube into live events that I too don't get caught in a bubble. You know I don't want to IT. Yeah there's this phenomenon of audience capture where you think that the audience wants something and so you keep on fading IT to them. I'm very wary of that past.

Very hard, man. I mean, yeah, you know you you are .

you want .

to make things that add value to the world. You want to embrace your own curiosity, and that's what you do. You are following your instincts.

That's something that super, super important. Yes, it's your best impacted advantage. Uh, it's the way that you can stay ahead of trends.

It's the way that you come across the unique and it's also the most enjoyable thing for you to do is just natural outpouring of what if you're interested. But you also want to do things like it's not just your pet project. This isn't a fucking hobby.

It's so I between business enterprise, an environmental impact movement, a wait to nudge world and leave behind some sort of legacy that you think is, at least that, you know, one tiny fucked in microscope movement of culture was done maybe by one conversation for one family of people that I had. So I can see you audience capture being basically puppets by throwing red meat to your audience to only give them what they want and what they going to agree with. And on the up opposite side, being like some dude yelling about whatever is interested in his basement that no one listens to. Like on that spectrum.

there is A A middle ground that you want to trying achieve. yes. Well, I mean, guy, he seems to be interested. Definitely not my aspiration.

I do think some dude talking in his basement about some of the most important issues and with some of the most intriguing intellect in the world are in ways that are considered to booo and in ways that could not get you in trouble in the mainstream institution. IT has an appeal, and the in order, maintain the integrity of that. Actually, the best sort of low style, the best light on hill, is still my own sense of integrity, interest and authenticity ity.

Because the problem with listening too much to your audience is that the kinds is that the tiny fraction of your audience who actually reaches out to and tells you what they like and don't like, do you tend to be the most invested. And it's a soft selecting group. I learned this in talk radio.

You know, sometimes I started as as a talk radio producer when I was, when I was just starting out. And the the host of the radio show would like sometimes to do something and say, look at this, the boards lighting up, everyone's calling in. And i'd be like, well, yeah, but the board has eight lines on IT.

There are three hundred thousand people listening, right? So the measurement of how many people are calling in is just a measured of is there are sufficiently invested minority of people who willing to pick up the phone and talk to me. Doesn't nessa meant the other three hundred? A thousand people find that particularly interesting.

And similarly, it's important to know that the people who really, really, really, you know, you're throwing red meat too because they super ultra fans, that's fabulous. God lesson, I love you doing time subscribe. But nonetheless, at the end of the day, i'm not gona give you exactly what you want.

I think there's a bigger pool of people. I can have a reasonable senta. And I should add here, when I say santa, some people must understand that.

And I think all josh is just a kind of person who positions himself between two polls and whatever the left does and whatever the right does, just going to sit comfortably in the middle and shout up both them. That's not what I mean by the center. What I mean by and maybe center is the wrong time.

I something about the radical center. What I mean is a position where I try to evaluate what the most reasonable position is, regardless of whether or not the left or the right happen to agree with that thing. Sometimes to put me on the left, sometime to put me on the right. The average is going to end up being the problem .

that you have there is, I think most ideological beliefs aren't about what you believe there are about shows a filter to your, the other. And what people see in someone that they can't predict is an unreliable ally. Yes, this is why I am an a huge problem.

You know, if we know, don't no need to worry about josh. He's on board with the trans stuff, is on board with the gay stuff, is on board with the abortion stuff board, immigration stuff, gun control and the the taxation and all the rest of IT. If I know one of your views, and from that I can accurate predict everything else, then we don't need to worry about him.

And this is, you know, people have got lots of problems with some Harris, but one of the biggest ones that no one really ever talks about is that he's one of the most unreliable allies that you are never gonna. And I have to presume that sam believes the things is very easy to say he's confused or he captured or he's dragged in somewhere or is what whatever thing. Because for sam to arrive at a lot of the positions that he holds, he pays like a pretty high Price for them.

He regularly loses huge sweats of his audience. He regularly gets made fun of online and twitter. And stuff like that would be way easier for him to either not comment or to comply.

You know what? What's the like one the outfit that i'm a part of and I just sort of slaughter next view in on the end of that. So the incentive to do something that pisses off any group.

And this is the same for IT demand. If you knock at a pocket anything like you're at work and someone brings up something and you just find yourself the compulsion to just go, yeah, yeah, I know. Isn't IT is awful?

I don't think that, I don't think, I don't think isn't IT awful. I think I completely understand why that thing happened. All the reverse.

The human compulsion for compliance in many people, I am one of them is unbelievable strong yeah and I understand that we've got guys like Douglas or a bench peo whatever who just like effortlessly sit in tow kelling cinch debate and and seem to revalue IT like pigs and mud cool that's not I think most people uh and for the you know the silent majority of people pleases out there yeah understanding there there are these polls, there are these sort of a compulsions and and desires that your in a state has to just just smooth the water. Do you feel comfortable in that date? No, no. I being disagreeable, uh, both in personal life, uh, on the show, is something i'm actively having to work unbelievably harder .

disagreeable in a personal, a exchange like we're having now or disagreable about an abstract idea when you publishing IT on social media elsewhere. First one.

bright first one, if you know that position that I had about like the this fucking shiny object cycle that I think sits somewhere in the middle, a bunch of things. But it's going to pissed off a lot of people because I I know or IT is right, just we do need to be able to be putting ched back against this. I'm fine to do that.

It's also into personal. yeah. So for me to you know if I was around the water.

and I don't think sam has that either, and I don't think I have that either, but he and I both share, and I think you do as well, if I want to you a desire to scratch behind the surface of what's really going on in a way that, you know is gonna pass people off just to get to the intellectual juice with what finally have.

I think it's largely a fight between a, your discomfort and upsetting people on one side and you're desire for intellectual satisfaction on the other. yes. Oh.

is what is you? yes. And it's interesting you say that you would be easier if the sahara is to think of strategically panda a particular groups. Of course, that's not true at all, because I know I am well. And he would find IT incredibly difficult to betray himself, immense integrity and authenticity.

So the easiest thing for him to do is the thing that he is doing, which is to be true to himself and to have credibility in his own eyes, and to get up in the morning and look in the mir and respect himself. And so the anti ally thing is interesting. Yes, of course you're not an to the tribes as they currently constructed in society, to the rush and to social justice lift, but you are an ally to people who value integrity.

And I suspect there's a lot of those people actually, people will disagree with me on particular issues. My gamble here is that they will always value the fact that I am free from bullshit, that I am authentic and that I have integrity. right? I'm an airline on that.

So yeah not going to be an on your fucking pet issue. And I don't comment me because I said the wrong thing about about xyz ad, but you know that I will be arriving at that conclusion rationally and reasonably. I'll be respecting my people who I disagree with are not going be demonizing them, not going to be straw manding them, and be trying to articulate that I disagree with in as generous way as possible.

I'm going to be a python o logically humble and try to understand the limitations of my own knowledge and always headed a little bit and say, on the other hand, I do understand that you know other people are the reasonable people can disagree on this particular issue and i'm an ally on that. I'm an yeah Richard dorkings once said something about people who get offended when he criticized their religion. He said, I respect you too much to pretend to respect your stupid beliefs.

That's how I feel about everything, everything. Don't comment me and tell me that you are offended because of what i'm saying. It's a sign of respect to you to believe that you are capable of hearing what i'm articulating.

And if it's wrong, tell me why don't try let me find IT. Tell me why it's wrong, and I will respect your position. I mean, if it's a really stupid position, then I I want, of course, I won't respect IT, but I will use the yard sticks of reason and rationality to try to understand you.

And I will always have you back on that. I will always be an ally of people who do that. I just won't be part of your tribe.

And it's body ridiculous what you are saying about how you can predict opinions on things on the basis of other opinions like IT. If you tell me what you think about corporate tax rates, I can predict with some certainty what you think about climate change. That two completely different, different ideas.

Why can I make that prediction? Because you've gone down a bloody checklist of of, yes, alright, this is what my tribe tells me to believe, you know, on something. You take immigration. I think part of, I think one of the reasons why I was initially successful in the united states to the X I was, was because americans are actually quite open to hearing.

And I wonder if this is your experiences as well, hearing kind of advice from a friendly foreigners, or like the take of an from abroad who sees things differently, that I ve never understood, why it's a crazy idea to secure the southern border and to bias amErica A S immigration policy towards migrants from who you choose from all over the world. Like I, I love migrants, I love living in sydney, which is incredibly multiple of multiethnic cities in the I you know, i'm a huge fan of immigration, and australia picks its people very, very specifically. And in fact, after the second world war, australia made a conscious decision that the Price to pay to increase the population massively and have one of the highest per capital immigration rates in the world.

And I think it's number one on the refugee resettlement or two, three know the Price you have to pay to get the populist to agree with that is to have a bloody, brutal border policy, which is obvious easier if you're in an island, then if you have a physical border. But you have to make this faster impact where you go if the people feel that they're in total control, then you give them the freedom to be generous towards foreigners. And you can have A A high immigration right, and a highly multi cultural society with very little push back.

The reason why you have anti immigration sentiment as highs, that is in the united states and in the U. K, U, K, U, K. As well. And I believe the reason why I I had breaks IT and the reason why you had to trump was in part because people felt like things was building out of control. They felt like there was demographic change that they couldn't handle, that nobody who's in control of there were hordes coming in from somewhere or other.

They know who these people were as a pro immigration person, I was was on the kind of conservative side of this, even though I am on the left. So so people would find that hard to pig when I got here. And I think americans can appreciated that he a foreign.

I remember I I we were talking about voter I D laws in the united states, which for people who don't know if they're outside the states, some states introduce identification, the requirement to show ID when you vote at the voting poll. Normally you don't have to show any I D just go up and you your name and you vote. So they say to secure the polls by requiring people to show I D now some states must use this and abuse at by saying that you can show a gun license, ed, you can't show a student card in order that a Cherry.

I pick the kinds of demographic demographics who I want to vote, but the fundamental principle, everybody else at a half post and all my left wing colleagues were like, this is a way of suppressing people of color. Because people of color tend not to have, have, you know, up to date. They move more.

They basically the areas the poor of people move more. And a less likely to have ideas. And poor of people are black. Of course they never say the poor bit. They just claim that it's ris a racist st policy essentially blind to class problems and economic problems unless the right, unless they raise problems. Was um so I just went on in the area.

I was like, I mean, sorry for not telling the party line here, but who doesn't have an idea like you've ve never driven a car, you've never been to a bar, you have never got on a plane, like who these people who now I am sure this is a very pro list thing, i'm sure people have, but the fact that I could say that and and make that, that makes me an enemy to the left, right. But i'm also an enemy to the right, because i'm not saying for the same reason that they are, I want to secure the board and I want to take a lot more people. I want a lot more bangladesh in america. Why do bank issues get discriminated against just because .

I can't walk across the real grand? yes. But isn't IT interesting that the you've able to get with saying that is not having the a left or right right Price opposition requirement of somebody that was born in this contact.

So oh, he's able to ask that question because he doesn't know. So he's able to ask that question because just interest. yes.

And it's a rational question to us, but I do IT and state as well even where I am native and just I will last on that point about sort of building up flexing the muscle of being disagreeable in one of one communications. I don't think it's necessary for everybody to fight.

Every fight I think is necessary in the office when someone says something that you regard as being trivialised, or that is evidence of them being trapped in echo chAmber, for you to go to the wall on that, I think I can be dragon. Jordan Peterson was in australia and he waited when his plane landed. It's a big thing in australia now has bit a background to do, uh, a land acknowledge or an acknowledged of country before you do anything, right? This has become part of the culture.

So this is way of saying up of first nations australians that the land that were now on is, and you named the tribe of the land, or whatever IT is OK. It's a way of signaling IT IT. Look at started out a bit virtue signalling, I think in the U.

S. Is still highly virtue signalling because I hadn't hasn't become mainstreaming yet but in australia, IT is completely Normalized to begin a meeting by saying just one respect the traditional owner of the land, the so so people um now that can get a bit ridiculous, silly ounds really silly. I take what's really silly is when you're like in a zoom meeting with four White middle ladies who are from H.

R. And they all try to do IT like, then it's like what we do. Is this a mutual mastermaid club or all just telegraphing to each other that we're on the correct page like it's a staging thing?

No more less the airlines in australia now do that. You land and they go, you know, welcome to melbourne, you know, the traditional, you know, place of the same side. People, so, john patient, tweet out.

Stop this virtual signaling nonsense. common. I don't want to have this shut down. My and I like Brown, love you picky battles, picky battles, you know you do so you're not gonna win IT and that sounds pretty not everything is an existence al fight. So I would say like don't become the assets who tried to call .

everyone out. But I I understand the the compulsions and you know I see I explain this on A Q and a recently about how I I really enjoy the fact that I have this unreasonably reasonable audience for the most part. But as you brought up, we don't know what that compels people to comment.

And whatever IT is is unified, at least across some subset of people that are comment is so comments always kind of have the same tanit to them. A lot of them sort of converge onto a few broad buckets of whatever they are talking about um but as the channel grows because you remember the insults, not the compliments, uh, any increase in channel size doesn't feel like an increase in support. You just feels like an increase in hate because you start to accumulate more of these outlier event whether people find a thing that they think is reprehensible. And I started to have start to notice maybe the last six months, at least the beginning of why people of whatever Jordan size or whoever said could be motivated to like, see. Conflict everywhere because they .

are so .

used to just this borage yeah of bullshit online and .

some the problem of .

with a barge of bullshit is that there is probably some streets of piece that you could have paid attention to yeah in that bullshit. And the whole thing is just washed to one side. So what do you do? You see everything is an attack.

Everything is something that you can go for. Uh, you should go up against picking your battles when you're in the middle. A war is unbelievably difficult.

IT is. But it's so necessary, it's actually so necessary because .

you're arranged by your experience of the world if you become everybody is so and you know, fucked in champagne. Ms, yeah, I get IT. Like this is the job you chose. This is the platform like a boohoo underd, I agree, but that doesn't fix the dynamic that we're talking about. The dynamic is still going to persist, whether you or me or anybody believes that IT should would be that way .

or IT shouldn't be that right. You have to be enough to thirty thousand foot view and go. That dynamic is also taking place on the other side. So people on the other side of politics, you know, my opponents, are also receiving the same kind of crazy bullshit from people who would regard themselves as being on my side. Therefore, were both trapped in mirror image, echo chAmbers of of hate that are rache, that are extremists ying us.

The algorithms are are also, you know, load that on, plus load on the fracturing of the media landscape, plus load on the canadians and group think of mainstream media institutions that are fAiling to restore adequately with some of the issues that that you want to talk about. And you have a recipe for a self reflective feedback loop of ever greater polzer, which is only going to lead to, ultimately, I do fear tarring society apart into some kind of low grade cultural, genuine civil war, which could mean, you know, at least the temporary collapse. Give me ization and the to any verse century.

So you can't participate in IT. You got ta find a way I sometimes regard my job as i'm not going to necessarily you necessary to agree with me, but I wanna talk in such a way that I can nudge both sides ten percent closer to understanding each other. And if i've done that, then i've done my job.

I don't want to be going ten percent further away. And all the incentives, as you say, are pulling pulling me ten percent further away. They're try to radicalize this.

It's our job to resist them. It's a our job to make sure that we are as generous as possible towards people who disagree with us. We don't exaggerate minor slides. We play a big game. We talk about the big stuff, and we talk about in ways that everybody who's listening, unless they literally batch IT crazy, can sort of understand that we're being we're being .

fairly reasonable about took me through what you'd see for the next five or ten years when IT comes to culture and and the the landscape of a conversation and stuff like that know I fundamentally disagree with the demoralising the world is ruined, everything's going hl in a hand basket uh perspective.

I fundamentally disagree with IT because I think that people are super agents and the ability for people both individually, collectively to adapt and to come together in different ways is essentially unpredictable. But IT does seem to be becoming increasingly predictable. Tribal, this is the, you know, classic cycle of shiny objects.

Sync me that we're gone to see. What do you think? Run me through your prediction.

The next, I mean, it's so hard to know. It's like, may I tend to agree where the guy I had on uncomfortable conversations called toby walsh, who is today as leading artificial intelligence researcher. He runs the A I lab at the university, even south wales, who says he thinks everything's gonna be fine, in fact, great ultimately.

And the next twenty or thirty years are gonna be really rough. What is time to be alive until we figure out what's going on? And I I say that because, I mean, you're a good example of the potential of the agent's person, right? Transformation, self reliance kind of putting in place.

And anyone who's had this experience is aware that, that is available to us. And in the first year of the pandemic, I put on about ten kilos, like more than twenty pounds ice cream and watching netflix. And then in the second year of the pandemic, I lost like fifty pounds, like twenty kilos right? And i've maintained that three way since.

Yeah and I are working out, I dating properly and I started giving a shit. Um and anyone who's had that experience sort of reasonably radical and fast, that's absolutely wonderful thing that you do. And I think it's a wonderful thing that joe does to the extent that his content is about that as well.

I mean, joe is one of the reasons why I have a podcast. I went on those show before I had a podcast, and after the showing he was like, why you don't? With his dumb, dumpy half post there cast, I was like, I will give you a shot.

He's an inspiring person, is a person who helps people. He's a person who has done an enormous amount for everybody in the community, always be appreciative and grateful. So and he gave me exposure, like massive exposure, when I wasn't the person who deserved IT.

But maybe I deserved IT, but I didn't had had no other avenue for IT. And so yes, to the extent that people can get into that can look into that fabulous, do most people in practice look into radical transformation of themselves on a daily basis? They don't.

So the temptation, the sort of cookie jar that's in the kitchen always looking at you, and the temptation to take the cookie, which is this supercomputer in your pocket, with apps that design, with algorithms, to just be constantly begging for your attention, using the principles of, like poker machines, like intimate rewards, that will time your notifications on precisely the number of micro seconds, milliseconds, that the engineers know a likeliest to come inside with when you are most vulnerable and acceptable, to responding to that notification, to looking at IT and therefore grabbing your attention and dragged you back into the multiverse of madness. Those temptations are very hard to to count her artificial intelligence is this other ranch in the works that is, gonna have untold ramifications. I mean, now we have video that's just being brought out.

And the, you know, when IT is, when there is no barrier to disseminating bullshit, you, what's that gonna like, how long is IT gna take human kind to figure out how to regulate this and how to think about this. I mean, I hope that in the future will look back on this period as if IT was an era where, like, I can't believe everyone was just walk around with the collection. Acs, but we didn't regulate collective, just like, hey, we invent of the of that uh let's all have one.

And at some point in the future, I mean, i'm Larry about governments in regulating things because they're usually so bad at doing IT. But there has to be some kind of break on the way that artificial intelligence is going to intersect with algorithms to be able to devise maximum addictive and maximum draining uh content. And I can see how the average person is going to be able to yeah resisted regardless of the alive .

I smoking this sort of laws that are coming in and basically what what it's been deemed is that even though this isn't illegal, IT is able to hack the human system in such a compelling way that basically people don't have full control of themselves. Therefore, daddy government needs to come in and a system toward an outcome that we think on baLance, is probably best for everybody.

Your phone is way stronger of an intrinsic drug dealer than a vapors, right? Think about how many times you've been SAT on a plane, you pull your phone out and unlock IT and cycle through a bunch of apps before you realize that you thirty five thousand feet in the it's dict ous compulsion. It's so hard, and I you know to the biggest still for me now, so many, I think, I had with Kayla, who was a guy that created the light phone, which is known its second or third generation, as is six years ago, been thinking about this Christ and Harris.

I said that I heard him on sama Harris show the nominal interesting guy talking about variable schedule reward and how how the human psychology gets olympic hijacked to stay on time, screen time and stuff like that, all of this stuff six years later, and still only marginally Better with my phone iws than I was back then IT is, do you have the apps on your phone in a social media? I have two phones, so I have one cocaine phone in a cae, cocaine phone has got all of the stuff on. What you really need is three, you really need a third phone, so you need one, which is that my take about phone, that is, people that really need me have got that number.

And it's got uber and kindle and audible and maybe youtube if you want and IT means get about and do whatever. Second one, which is uh messaging for most people that's the number that almost everybody has that he rings gram that's whatever just that should be on a and then the optional third phone, which is uh meditation timer. Um you the stuff that you .

do PS off .

my phone about .

a year ago and it's been dramatic, dramatically improved my life. I mean, I don't yes, if I really want to, I can open a browser and I can go like and log in and I can check something if I need to. But eliza brain remembers that that's one point of friction. And IT doesn't want again.

if you tell us about there doesn't OPPO, which is like a bit bit more of a scheduled intense screen time uh, thing and opel's fantastic. I've been using that for about six months now. Mean, all of my, we can use to a series on the show called life acts.

Yes, yeah, no. Like twenty five episodes maybe if this is fucking life acts only and fifty significance tion. This show is based on these effects.

And it's like I got this new recipe for making a toasted, but this is the very particular sandwich maker that you need and you need to get the four fifty, not the four hundred, because the four hundred and has like a the drive trade. This is a new meditation APP that we're using. All this is A I once found, I still do find, I think it's gate thirty five d in amsterdam.

Skipper airport is the only set of benches in all of astm port that doesn't have hAndrails between. So if you need to have a nap at some point now, you often get packed in photos from people like a thirty five six do. So lad, you .

there's a website as well. Acquire miles cheap ly and then spend them on expensive things. I'm always flying and you singapore alias first class.

instead of using the, we can tell the. About IT, we can say luck. He's a new thing that i'm using.

But until it's past the six months, mark, IT doesn't count that being a viable hack. So waiting for the six month window but OPPO past the six month dow. So that oppole just is a practical thing for people.

And then the second one is cold turkey um which is the equivalent essentially for mac. So you downland call turkey and you set up schedule throughout the day. You can block any website you want. You can also block apps. And for me, it's like twitter, instagram blocked and the only way if you want, you can set IT to the only way that you can get around is to donate money to charity.

So if you donate a dollar to charity is just link to your car um donate money to charity and you yet to look at twelve for five minutes so whatever you really, really need to do IT, that's great. So that's that's been part of my solution. But no, I don't disagree.

It's A A dragging time where people have basically got a hacker, a human system, human O S. Hacker, SAT in a pocket. I do one of my smart as friends as a question that says what will be studied by historians but is ignored by the media, right? And I think that the proliferation of dopamine hacking olympics, yeah, smart phones in everyone's pocket is probably going to be up.

I mean, that's a beautiful line. May I say what will be studied by historians that are being ignored by the media? I mean, that exemplifies why i've gone independent with comfortable conversations, really, because I don't want to be chasing and I don't want to be a cat with the laser pointer who's chasing the latest story or the latest outrage, the latest news cycle.

I do, anna, be someone who is in some sense, writing the first draft of history as the best we can as it's going on. And so that's why a lot of my guest like will not necessarily a line with the usual heat dox, like there's a kind of we all know the guests who keep showing up on some of the same podcast over and over and over again. I don't spend the majority of my time doing that.

I'll also, I mean, you know, I recently had on this indigenous academic who is this wonderful guy who skeptical about, like all of these kind of virtues, signally kind, you know why to save a type practices that have emerged around the wisdom of the native truths, not everything. And yet, as an indian bloke himself, he's not like is not a kind of anti woke like dissidence. He is very much a spiritual person who draws a lot of meaning from the traditions and spirituality of this ancient culture.

So like, that is not about for me. It's not about dunning and shading. And like, well, why is everything going crazy? It's about like this.

Let's understand as best we can where everybody is coming from. Quite a part, thrilling. It's just really interesting. I mean, this is more and more interesting way to live than to constantly be slighting and to see.

you know, to observe conflict. Whether isn't Denny, you can very much uh, down regulate whatever another person, even the most sort of aggressive, agreeable and saw this in in nightlife like a drunk person that can get into a club with their friends. You know there's that.

And then only above that is a mother protecting her child, like the level of intensity that you have. And you know so much of the d escalate tion involves just like getting the other person to, mostly through questions, understand why you are. So you know, if someone says something like it's been looking at how many episodes done this year and there's only been x percent of them or women or something like that, okay, which women would you like to see on the show?

Please send me suggestions. And immediately, almost without fail, people go, oh uh, actually had this person but thank you for the suggestion. I can gently appreciate the suggestion. Yeah really deescalate IT. So are the reason the escalation well is that people are waiting for the cutting down fest yeah throw back um but yeah I don't know. I think I really hope that I hope that our lives, that my lifespan, your lifespan, everyone listening isn't some bizarre like prelude to an delic future where we are forced to pay the costs like those women that we're making watches with truckin radium, we just didn't know the side effects, we just didn't know them back then, and that all of us are going to live in this weird, mentally drained, try ballistic olympics hijacked world, and then we die. And then two generations from now, it's like, that may be the .

Price we pay. My dad was born in a refugee camp during water, water in switzerland of jewish parents who fled from parlin in one thousand nine hundred and thirty eight and lived. My grandmother lived her know entire first twenty years of her life, being hunted by now seas and almost being sent to ashford, and all the rest of her family were wiped out.

And at that moment I was the the stakes were high enough that reasonable people got their shot together, and they built a fuck on a bombs and a fuck on a bombers. And I blew the noses out of the water. And, you know, decent societies like australia and america, and, you know, the UK in canada welcomed in people like my grandmother, my grandmother, my grandmother went after the war.

He went the port in france, where they were loading refugees onto boats to go to the new world. And the person who was signing people in to get on to allocate people particular ships said, uh, you can go to the united states or canada or australia, which one do you want to go to? And he said, which ones further from here? Every generation puts up with its traumas in order to aid the eventual progress of human civilization.

I'm an optimist about the long game. I think human resilience and ingenuity is strong enough that will triumph. And every era, you know, sometimes there are just blessed generations, the boom is got Lucy will born at a time where nothing really happened, they got to watch sign film and watch bill clinton ton play the sexy phone and then retire rich after the biggest property booming the history of the world.

And I suspect that now fate, or maybe our children's fate, will be trickier. I mean, we are quite part from anything, even if you sceptical about climate chaos. IT is a near certainty that the world is going to get get a lot more chaotic.

IT is gonna get a lot more unpredictable storms, getting more intense, drives are getting more intense. Harricane are getting more intense, but I is getting more intense. At the very least, even if you don't regard that as an essential threat, it's going to be it's going to enormous ly expensive pain.

We're going to have to rebuild constantly. The flights are constantly going to be delayed because of fun, more thunderstorms. You know, it's just gonna be enormously expensive and annoying.

And you add that stress to the stresses of the hydrogen of olympics system and to the stresses of society not knowing what's true, what's false, because anybody can generate an image of president biden being assassinated. And it's completely convincing. And I can be disseminated online IT.

Like when A I has the ability to move markets which IT already does by producing some bullshit. Like, if you can, manufacturer convincing example of an airplane crashing, and the A I itself can go short on airlines and then make a profit in the thirty seconds after IT pots, the airline crashing. And even if we can correct that in ninety seconds, the I is still made killing.

Like what are the incentives that we are blunder ing into? I can't see how it's not extremely stressful for us and out children to figure out what to do about all this. We need wise heads to prevail.

We need to knock get caught up in nonsensical culture war bats on social media. We need to not worry too much if an airline, you know, gives a not to indigenous people. When IT lands, there are bigger games to play.

I don't think that the thing we need to be worrying about is a marxist woke takeover of universities. And I don't think that thing we need to be worrying about is transaction of screaming our children, like both sides, the extremes of both sides ying off the rails there in echo chAmbers of their own are the victims. Essentially, I think to echo chAmbers, we need to remain even killed.

I mean, and the last thing i'd say about the chAllenge of this moment, which still relate to algorithms, is that it's not just that you got an addictive supercomputer in your pocket, which is tugging at your attention, is also that you're being encouraged to create your own life in real time. So it's like there's a there's a constant sort of demand on your shoulder that is whispering in your area to say, like, is this meal that you are having, uh, I sufficiently tly pretty that you should be posted on instagram. Where is that thought that you just had sufficiently waited to post IT on to posted to twitter? So you're in the process of like kind of this is funny thing we're like.

And of course, this predate social media packing around india in the wilds of the healey's when with a couple of most of mine, when we're in our twenties, and we climb to the top of this mountain, where there was a budget temple to watch the monks prepare for the day. And I was sitting there on, you know, outside this temple watching the sunrise. And he was struck by just how incredibly wild that situation was on how incredibly beautiful IT was, and how real IT was.

And my two friends are aid or photographers, and so they had their wisping cameras, and they are scrambling all over there mountain, scrambling all over the temple, and they are getting the right photo in the iron. And after the sun's reason, we climb all away back down and they're comparing their cameras. And I you look at this one, and that's a great one that's going going to come up really great understanding.

They go on. You miss you. You miss you, you miss the moment you got the photo and you didn't get what I got.

Consciousness is like precious.

This is a brief window of time that way here. The corrosive impact .

of having these .

supercomputers in our pocket is not just that they're distracting our attention from living our lives. It's that the actual living of life becomes more difficult, becomes sometimes impossible. If you're always thinking about whether IT can be a piece of content, that's why i'm pretty clear about keeping my content, my content and my life, my life experiences life. Don't document your life. Resist the shiny object.

Resist the shiny object.

Live man. Live josh laps, ladies and gentleman, josh.

I appreciate you. I'm really, really glad that you came through me to find .

time to do that. Me too, too. It's a makes great. Why should people go to keep up today with all comes to the conversations, the substate is probably easier place to start and comes to the conversations to dot com.

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