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Speaker 1: Hi, my Boris, and this is straight talk. When they

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Speaker 1: write the book about Cancel Culture, there will be a

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Speaker 1: page for this moment, which was Josh's welcome to Everything

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Speaker 1: is messy. I think the only solution is conversations. To

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Speaker 1: be on the right side of history at the moment,

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Speaker 1: you have to adhere to a certain set of social

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Speaker 1: justice dogmas or orthodoxies, and if you're stray from those,

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Speaker 1: you get whacked. You're always asking the tricky questions. Mark,

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Speaker 1: I mean, something's happening to our brains and the way

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Speaker 1: that they're being hijacked that is making it increasingly difficult

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Speaker 1: to have contrarian conversations. I honestly, I think that's the

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Speaker 1: only way we're going to solve the problems of the

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Speaker 1: twenty first century. Mark.

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Speaker 2: You have been on Joe Rogan Show six or seven times,

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Speaker 2: I can't remember now.

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Speaker 1: Seven, don't short something?

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Speaker 2: What the fuck's going on there? Josh Sheps, welcome to

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Speaker 2: straight Talk for as such. And it's very nice to

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Speaker 2: meet you, and actually a nice to meet you in person.

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Speaker 1: But more importantly, I need.

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Speaker 2: To tell you that I used to really love listening

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Speaker 2: to you when you were relieving others in the morning and.

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Speaker 1: Relieving others in the morning. When I was jerking off

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Speaker 1: other gentlemen didn't morning six am, my alarm would go off.

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Speaker 1: I'd go down to the bar, the local public restrooms

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Speaker 1: and relieve a couple of frustrated thanks me or a locum.

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Speaker 1: I was well. I mean, I did the breakfast show

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Speaker 1: on ABC Radio Sydnet he for and I so listened

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Speaker 1: to it a number of years, and.

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Speaker 2: I see myself the grace respect at the ABC. Please

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Speaker 2: don't get shitty with me. This guy's bloody smart. He's

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Speaker 2: brought a bit of intellect to the show.

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Speaker 1: In other words, it.

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Speaker 2: Wasn't like like, literally, you know what I'm talking about

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Speaker 2: the headlines or whatever. You actually put a bit of

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Speaker 2: look like you're putting some research into Look like you're

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Speaker 2: putting your own research into it.

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Speaker 1: To me, Yeah, yeah, is okay, absolutely. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: just I want to do the things that interest me,

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Speaker 1: and I think that if you're actually interested in something,

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Speaker 1: and then other people will follow you because your intellectual

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Speaker 1: curiosity will carry them along. And it's way. There's nothing

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Speaker 1: more delightful than turning on something that you expect to

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Speaker 1: be one thing and then it's just slightly different or

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Speaker 1: it's slightly skewing. I never thought about that way, or

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Speaker 1: I never didn't know about about that, So it's now

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Speaker 1: I've never been the type of person who joins an

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Speaker 1: organization or an institution in order to just follow rules

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Speaker 1: and do things exactly the way that I'm told to,

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Speaker 1: because I think that's just a bit stale. It is

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Speaker 1: because it's boring for you, boring for them, not boring

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Speaker 1: for that. I mean, yes, of course is boring for me.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's some self interest in pursuing my

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Speaker 1: own interests, but I think it's boring for the audience.

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Speaker 1: I think I think there's and I think something that's

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Speaker 1: happening in the media at the moment we can get

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Speaker 1: to this is that a lot of stuff sounds basically

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Speaker 1: the same with the same kinds of opinions that you

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Speaker 1: know are the correct opinions to have about sensitive issues.

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Speaker 1: So there's a whole whole suite of topics that if

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Speaker 1: you turn on the ABC or you turn on Sky

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Speaker 1: News after Dark or Fox News or something like that,

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Speaker 1: pretty confident you could jot on the back of a

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Speaker 1: napkin before anyone starts talking what they're going to sound

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Speaker 1: like when they're talking about climate change or transgender athletes

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Speaker 1: or you know, gay pride or Marti Gras or women's

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Speaker 1: quality or Black Lives Matter or whatever it might be.

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Speaker 1: And I'm just more interested in following my own curiosity

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Speaker 1: and trying to figure out what's true and paying no

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Speaker 1: heed to the way that you're supposed to talk about things.

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Speaker 1: And that doesn't always mesh perfectly into an institution, you know,

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Speaker 1: an institutional environment. It didn't for me.

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Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about that then, since you've gone to

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Speaker 2: that territory I listened to because my mum listened to

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Speaker 2: the ABC and my mother had the abacy on all day,

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Speaker 2: and I can go back to the ABC.

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Speaker 1: What's Adam's saying, the mathematician Adam Spencer, Adam sincer, great guy.

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Speaker 2: And it's sort of to me that the ABC stopp

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Speaker 2: being the ABC went sort of around about when he left.

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Speaker 1: To me, it changed, well, it became more the same.

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Speaker 2: Issues were being talked about, which were outside the norm.

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Speaker 2: There issues you just mentioned, some general quality, you know,

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Speaker 2: no Palestine Israel, you know, and taking a position that

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Speaker 2: they're not they're not in the middle, they're taking a

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Speaker 2: position so they're not definitely one, they're definitely not reporting

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Speaker 2: the news as a news as a as as as

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Speaker 2: unbiased news. There's a bias, which is fine. I mean

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Speaker 2: there's a bias everywhere, but they were expressing their bias

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Speaker 2: in the news prior to that, around the Adam Spencer

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Speaker 2: period and way beyond before that.

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Speaker 1: It was very down the middle. To me.

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Speaker 2: It was very not conservative base, but straightforward news about

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Speaker 2: what's what's actually happened, without a view, without an opinion.

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Speaker 2: There's no opinion associated with more about facts. And I

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Speaker 2: think today, like you just said, I pretty much know

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Speaker 2: what I'm going to get, just like when I listen to.

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Speaker 1: Sky News at.

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Speaker 2: Nine PM, I know exactly where I'm going to get

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Speaker 2: it out of them too, so much so Josh that

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Speaker 2: what I do is I still have the ABC in

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Speaker 2: the morning and I get my.

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Speaker 1: Full belly of.

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Speaker 2: What would ordinarily be associated with the left and other

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Speaker 2: groups that sort of fit within the left, Greens, et cetera.

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Speaker 2: I get my full belly of that, and then in

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Speaker 2: the night I put on Sky News so I can

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Speaker 2: get my full belly.

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Speaker 1: Of the right. You can go to bed sufficiently outraged

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Speaker 1: at the.

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Speaker 2: World, and then I can know it well, just sort

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Speaker 2: of sometimes I am. But mostly what I do is

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Speaker 2: I'm balanced, and I feel as though, well the news world,

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Speaker 2: I justify one against the other. They're both sort of

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Speaker 2: so far out on the edge of the spectrum that

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Speaker 2: there's not that much in the middle anymore. Because I

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Speaker 2: get that stuff in the middle. I get that fed

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Speaker 2: to me by Instagram, Facebook, all the other mediums, and

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Speaker 2: I know the news before it before its on.

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Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, I mean, as we all do. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's immensely frustrating to me to hear you say that

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Speaker 1: that you know, you know what you're going to get

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Speaker 1: from both sides, and therefore you have to put up

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Speaker 1: with this level of kind of tacit unconscious bias that's

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Speaker 1: coming from places that you ought to be able to trust,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, what I'm trying to do in uncomfortable

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Speaker 1: conversations and what I know you do every day is

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Speaker 1: basically wrestle with big issues in ways that disregard the

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Speaker 1: trip wires and the landmines and allow myself the punishment

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Speaker 1: and the punishment I don't care about the punishment obviously,

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Speaker 1: given that I ended up being sort of you know,

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Speaker 1: my radio show ended up falling apart that I can't

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Speaker 1: stomach the idea that we're to give away our ability

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Speaker 1: to have complicated, uncomfortable conversations about the most important problems

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Speaker 1: that we face in the twenty first century to people

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Speaker 1: who have their thumb on the scale one way or another,

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Speaker 1: and then we're going to individually try to grope our

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Speaker 1: way towards whatever is true or rational or reasonable on

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Speaker 1: the base of the on the basis of these two

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Speaker 1: sort of biased interpretations that are coming to us through

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Speaker 1: their own prisms, Like why not just do away with

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Speaker 1: the prisms altogether and just get straight to the point

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Speaker 1: and talk to each other like we're grown ups, and say,

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Speaker 1: if I say something that comes across the wrong way

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Speaker 1: or that defends you, tell me why it's wrong, tell

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Speaker 1: me what's wrong about it, tell me where I've erd.

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Speaker 1: Don't play a game of gotcha, don't try to get

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Speaker 1: me fired because I said the wrong thing. There's so

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Speaker 1: much timidity, there's so much caution, there's so much risk

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Speaker 1: aversion in the media at the moment that I think,

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Speaker 1: like a lot of the bias is not intentional bias.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's coming from the soup that we swim in,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's a part of this is to do

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Speaker 1: with the welcome reaction to what had previously been a

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Speaker 1: fairly straight, white male profession of journalism. Right. So, you know,

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Speaker 1: over the past ten or twenty years, there's been a

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Speaker 1: push for more diversity. I think that's a great thing.

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Speaker 1: I think more people of color and more women should

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Speaker 1: be in newsrooms. At the same time, they have to

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Speaker 1: adhere to the original founding principles of institutional journalism, which

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Speaker 1: is objectivity. You know, you can't come in saying I'm

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Speaker 1: going to tell my own story, or like, as an

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Speaker 1: Arab woman, I'm going to focus on Gaza in this

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Speaker 1: particular way. No, no, no, as an Arab woman, you're

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Speaker 1: going to be a bloody journalist and you're going to

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Speaker 1: do your job as a journalist. That's what a newsroom

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Speaker 1: is about. You're not going to come in and say,

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Speaker 1: you know, say, well, you know you have to see

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Speaker 1: things from my perspective. No, we're not going for perspectives. Yes,

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Speaker 1: they'll always be biased. Yes, we always bring things to

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Speaker 1: the table. No one has a position in heaven sit

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Speaker 1: standing on the clouds looking at everything objectively. That's impossible.

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Speaker 1: But you can use that as an aspiration. You can

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Speaker 1: rely on facts, you can say I'm not going to

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Speaker 1: allow my own background to influence this. And I think

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Speaker 1: there's a fundamental tension between the desire for objectivity on

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Speaker 1: the one hand, and this newer social justice desire to

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Speaker 1: tell broader truths with a capital T that take down

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Speaker 1: the man and that achieve some social justice in a point.

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Speaker 1: And I think that's what people are smelling at the moment,

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Speaker 1: that everything seems to be loaded, at least in the

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Speaker 1: left wing press, with a social justice point instead of

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Speaker 1: just giving people the facts. And I think we're just

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Speaker 1: going to have to go through an adjustment period where

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Speaker 1: newsrooms get back to being about the facts and then

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Speaker 1: on the content side. So content is like the fancy

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Speaker 1: broadcasting term for anything that's not journalism, right. So, I

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Speaker 1: mean my show on the ABC was not a news show.

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Speaker 1: It was on ABC Radio Sydney. It was talkback. We'd

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Speaker 1: sometimes talk to chefs about cooking, we'd sometimes you know,

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Speaker 1: you talk about everything, anything and everything, And in that sphere,

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Speaker 1: I actually think there should be more tolerance of and

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Speaker 1: respect for different opinions and having the opinion of the

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Speaker 1: presenter or the hosts come through. I don't think I

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Speaker 1: should be required to be as objective as the person

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Speaker 1: who's delivering the seven pm news if I'm hosting a

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Speaker 1: three hour long daily talkback radio show. So I think

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Speaker 1: at the moment, everything's in flux. People don't know where

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Speaker 1: they stand. Journalists feel like they're allowed to bring their

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Speaker 1: whole selves to work and tell their own stories in

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Speaker 1: ways that undermine objectivity, but commentators at the same time

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Speaker 1: feel impeded from going out on a limb and talking

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Speaker 1: about things in a bullshit free manner because they're afraid

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Speaker 1: that they're going to trigger a tripwire and all the

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Speaker 1: hell's going to break loose because they said the wrong

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Speaker 1: thing and they offended the social justice dogmas that they're

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Speaker 1: supposed to adhere to. But how did that happen? How

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Speaker 1: did I don't know?

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Speaker 2: I'm not a You may well be closer to be

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Speaker 2: an ABC story in yourself than I am. But what

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Speaker 2: happened at the ABC, for example, that created the current outcome?

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Speaker 2: And I just want to say this as well, Equally,

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Speaker 2: Sky News at a certain time of night has felt

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Speaker 2: the need to defend the other side, the other argument,

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Speaker 2: and there they are as they prosecute equally as hard,

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Speaker 2: but are on the opposite side of the fence.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, or harder. I mean, sky News has less

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Speaker 1: fidelity to I don't want this to seem like I'm

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Speaker 1: ragging on the ABC, because I actually think that the

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Speaker 1: public broadcaster is in a pickle. Is a national treasure

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Speaker 1: and needs to be sort of protected and defended. And

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it is currently so cowed,

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Speaker 1: I think, and so fearful and so cautious is because

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Speaker 1: it's under constant attack from disingenuous conservative politicians and Sky

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Speaker 1: News figures who are always on about how biased the

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Speaker 1: ABC is. Right, there has to be some space for

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Speaker 1: the ABC to be able to stand up and have

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Speaker 1: a backbone and go no, no, no, like just quit it.

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Speaker 1: The ABC still does great investigative journalism. It still has

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Speaker 1: great journalists who are working there. I think that the

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Speaker 1: how did it get here is really complicated and has

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Speaker 1: a lot to do with changing viewing patterns, changing listening patterns.

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Speaker 1: The democratization of the media, social media, YouTube like that

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Speaker 1: stuff has meant that people no longer are tethered to

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Speaker 1: a public broadcast of the way that they might have

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Speaker 1: been even just ten years ago, let alone thirty years ago.

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Speaker 1: And so now that you can get so much of

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Speaker 1: your information from Joe Rogan or Peter Attire or whoever

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Speaker 1: it might be, or a Josh Steps or Mark Burris,

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Speaker 1: it's there's just more choice. And so then the airBC goes, well,

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Speaker 1: what is the purpose of the ABC, And the purpose

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Speaker 1: of the ABC really fundamentally should be to create a

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Speaker 1: town square in which everybody feels like they're being given

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Speaker 1: a fair shake, in which everybody feels like their voice

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Speaker 1: is being heard, in which the most important issues of

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Speaker 1: the day can be wrestled with without fear or favor.

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Speaker 1: But that's going to piss people off by definition, because

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Speaker 1: you're gonna have a whole bunch of voices. If you're

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Speaker 1: actually doing that, then you wouldn't just be in lockstep

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Speaker 1: with I don't know, just to pick an example of

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Speaker 1: one fight that I got into with ABC management with

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Speaker 1: Marti Gras for example, you know, I was in a

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Speaker 1: position where I'm an openly gay guy. I'm married to

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Speaker 1: a guy I was I wrote an ophead for the

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Speaker 1: Sydney Morning Herald during World Pride, which was a big

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Speaker 1: gay pride event last year. During Mardi Gras, just sort

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Speaker 1: of I was just sort of saying, like, will there

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Speaker 1: ever come a point at which we can turn the

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Speaker 1: volume down instead of turning a volume up on our

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Speaker 1: identitarian difference, like when it's not that important, Like how

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Speaker 1: much equality will we have to get before we don't

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Speaker 1: have to? You know, wear aarseless chaps and sit astride

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Speaker 1: a giant inflatable penis on Oxford Street, you know, smothered

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Speaker 1: in baby oil with waxed chests. You know, does there

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Speaker 1: ever come a point at which we're just like, what

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Speaker 1: I have achieved I mean through no thanks to me,

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Speaker 1: but through the through giving thanks to the the early

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Speaker 1: gay rights pioneers, the gay activists of the stonewaller of

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Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, what I've achieved is that everything

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Speaker 1: they dreamed of, which is I've got a boring life.

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Speaker 1: It's unremarkable, you know what I mean. Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: I say, I tell someone I'm gay and I'm married

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Speaker 1: to a guy, and they're like, okay, whatever. I don't

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Speaker 1: really don't beat me up, you know. I mean, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's very privileged. I'm middle class, I'm white. Whatever. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it's different if you're you know, if you're growing

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Speaker 1: up in a in a Muslim Australian household in the

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Speaker 1: southwest of Sydney. But for me, we've achieved everything that

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Speaker 1: we wanted to achieve. So my article was basically just saying, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, will therever come a point at which we

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Speaker 1: actually achieve greater individual flourishing, greater sexual fulfillment by not

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Speaker 1: really caring about labels and just falling in love with

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Speaker 1: who you fall in love with, getting your rocks off

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Speaker 1: with heavy, who you want, whoever you want to get

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Speaker 1: your rocks off with, and if you know what I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's not impro So I tried to publish. I tried

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Speaker 1: to publish this thing. And when you're a host, when

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Speaker 1: you have a contract at any organization, any media organization,

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Speaker 1: you have to get sign off from management for any

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Speaker 1: external work to be approved. Where was it being published

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Speaker 1: in the any Morning Herald right right? And this was

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Speaker 1: going to be the opinion piece on the weekend of

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Speaker 1: gay Pride that would have thrown a face. It was

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Speaker 1: not bed yet and you know, it went all the

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Speaker 1: way up the chain and management wouldn't allow it to

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Speaker 1: be published because they said that hosts can't take positions

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Speaker 1: on controversial cultural issues, right, which in principle is I

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Speaker 1: suppose fair enough, it's a public broadcaster. You want me

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Speaker 1: to see them impartial. You're not there to be an

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Speaker 1: appearance of bias. The problem is, at the time the

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Speaker 1: ABC was the official broadcast partner of World Pride and

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Speaker 1: of Mardi Gras. In the lobby, they're a gigantic rainbow flag.

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Speaker 1: Every other presenter, every other host on the station, all

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Speaker 1: of them not gay or not to the best of

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Speaker 1: my knowledge, is singing the praises of how fabulous it is.

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Speaker 1: You know, join us tonight for our live streaming coverage

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Speaker 1: of the parade. Every second promo is about the parade,

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Speaker 1: is about how fabulous it is. We've got all these

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Speaker 1: guests of diverse genders and sexualities and whatever. The one

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Speaker 1: gay host is not allowed to pipe up and go

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Speaker 1: do we really need it?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 1: So it struck me that it's not that hosts can't

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Speaker 1: have an opinion about culturally provocative issues. It's just that

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Speaker 1: it has to be management's position. Yeah, it has to

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Speaker 1: be the right position. You have to be on the

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Speaker 1: right side of history. Why does Josh keep wanting to

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Speaker 1: kick a hornet's nest? Why does he keep wanting to

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Speaker 1: upset the apple cart. Well, I don't know, because I'm

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Speaker 1: interested in ideas, I'm interested in thinking things through. I'm

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Speaker 1: interested in not being a conformer. So I'm interested in going, well, okay,

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Speaker 1: why was Marti Grass so crucial? Will it ever not

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Speaker 1: be crucial? At what point does that happen? Like, let's

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Speaker 1: just talk about it. Let's just talk about it. But

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Speaker 1: you can't talk about it because that transgresses an unspoken boundary,

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Speaker 1: which is that to be on the right side of

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Speaker 1: history at the moment, you have to adhere to a

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Speaker 1: certain set of social justice dogmas or orthodoxies, and if

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Speaker 1: you're stray from those, you get whacked. So who could

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Speaker 1: But who?

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Speaker 2: I mean, I'm always been curious about this, But who

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Speaker 2: creates these social justice dogmas? Like I mean, I mean,

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Speaker 2: I often wonder myself, he is a group of people

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Speaker 2: somewhere who are silent and we don't get to see them.

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Speaker 2: Who actually, who actually are out there manipulating all these

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Speaker 2: social justice dogmas?

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Speaker 1: Are a blam et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think it's it's a largely white, largely middle class,

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Speaker 1: university educated elite of people who talk to each other

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Speaker 1: in certain ways and who probably don't fit into any

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Speaker 1: of the end to end the category. No, often they don't.

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Speaker 1: Often they don't. You see, there's a lot in like

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Speaker 1: the transgender Wars, which is probably the most toxic or

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Speaker 1: sensitive vishue at the moment or even at the moment

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Speaker 1: right right now.

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Speaker 2: But so, and what I mean, I'm curious as to

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Speaker 2: your opinion on these things.

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Speaker 1: There's no doubt you thought about.

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Speaker 2: It is a guilt based yeah's feeling guilty, yes, And

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Speaker 2: it's just some way of them washing their guilt.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and therefore it is dangerous. Well, it may not

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Speaker 1: be dangerous. It may just be dull, and it may

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Speaker 1: be conformist, and it may be dull to.

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Speaker 2: You, dangerous to somebody who will be influenced by it potentially.

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Speaker 1: Oh, you mean they think that it's dangerous to step

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Speaker 1: outside the or you think.

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Speaker 2: No, I think it's dangerous with people who people who

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Speaker 2: might be watching it and following and being influenced by it,

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Speaker 2: unnecessarily influenced people being able to make up their own opinion.

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Speaker 1: Some people can't make you to draw their own opinions.

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Speaker 1: You know that, right.

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Speaker 2: They're heavily influenced by what other people say. What institutions

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Speaker 2: say what individuals say. But maybe that's just maybe that's just.

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Speaker 1: How the world is today.

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Speaker 2: By the way, we might not be able to change it,

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Speaker 2: but I think it's dangerous to people who are influenced

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Speaker 2: by it, and I.

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Speaker 1: Worry about that.

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Speaker 2: So, you know, what's an example of the palest palace

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Speaker 2: the university. So I was listening to admittedly it was

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Speaker 2: top but I was listening to tu jib this morning,

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Speaker 2: and you know, my male mate bands on there was

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Speaker 2: I was young, and he was talking to some correspondent

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Speaker 2: they have in the US and the US was talking

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Speaker 2: about the university protest, let's call it protests riots are

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Speaker 2: going on some of the universities, particular in Ohio. And

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Speaker 2: he made the comment that isn't it funny that all

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Speaker 2: the students from New York, Ohio and u c LA

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Speaker 2: had exactly the same tents. They had somehow managed to garner,

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Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of tents made by exactly the same company,

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Speaker 2: look exactly the same, and these tents were all pitched

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Speaker 2: on the lawns and it was all coordinated.

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Speaker 1: And and the question then becomes, well do those how many.

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Speaker 2: Of those people are actually students at the university, and

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Speaker 2: it seems as though not a lot of them were

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Speaker 2: not students, actual students of the university, and they're occupying territories,

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Speaker 2: parts of the parts of the campuses, and they were

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Speaker 2: protesting against Israel and in favor of Palestine, which is

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Speaker 2: fair enough, that's an opinion, that's cool, But it looked

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Speaker 2: like to me it was extraordinarily well organized. And the media,

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Speaker 2: the way the media cover it is as if it's a.

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Speaker 1: Truth, right or a spontaneously erupting shit's me yeah, yeah, I.

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Speaker 2: Don't know what happened to syn the university this week,

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Speaker 2: but maybe it's the same thing. But this is organized

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Speaker 2: disruption to create a problem that looks as though it's

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Speaker 2: students freethinking, like student campuses used to be free thinking,

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Speaker 2: like you were saying, let's have a discuss about it.

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Speaker 2: But students have all got together, they've actually got a

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Speaker 2: view when an actual fact, that's not the case. It's

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Speaker 2: well organized by others outside of the university, and then

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Speaker 2: the media has gone reported it as it being the truth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yea, And that kills me and well, and that's right,

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Speaker 1: and that points to the sort of double standard as well,

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Speaker 1: which is similar to the to the Mardi Graus gay

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Speaker 1: rights thing in the sense that I just actually just

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Speaker 1: finished doing my first live video talkback episode of Uncomfortable

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Speaker 1: Conversations where the audience can actually join in, and one

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Speaker 1: of the questions was about this was about the Columbia

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Speaker 1: pro to Columbia University protests, and I made the point

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Speaker 1: that if you had a group of people, so now

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Speaker 1: you know some of these institutions over there, Jewish academics

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Speaker 1: and Jewish students have been told by the police not

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Speaker 1: to come to class because they're worried that they can't

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Speaker 1: control of violence. You've got slogans which verge on being

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Speaker 1: anti semitic. If not they're openly anti semitic, I would

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Speaker 1: say they are. Yeah. And if any other group was

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Speaker 1: conducting protests like this against a minority, just imagine that

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Speaker 1: it's make America great again. You know, white dudes wearing

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Speaker 1: red trucker hats and they're going off about how and

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Speaker 1: they're going off against Black Lives Matter, for example, and

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Speaker 1: intimidating black students. How much would the conversation be what

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Speaker 1: it currently is, which is university academics very earnestly stroking

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Speaker 1: their chins and going well, free speech is important on campus,

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Speaker 1: and there's a great and venerable tradition of protest on campus.

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Speaker 1: There would be none of that. They would have been

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Speaker 1: out of there on the first day. There would be

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Speaker 1: no conversation about the free speech rights of white people

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Speaker 1: to harass and intimidate and question the existence of black Americans. Now,

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Speaker 1: if that's the policy, then what's good for the goose

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Speaker 1: is good for the gander, and those people should have

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Speaker 1: been out of there as soon as they started protesting.

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Speaker 2: So why were they Why do the mayor not call

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Speaker 2: the police in or end or.

433
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 1: What are the vices? I'm not saying they should. You

434
00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 1: could also take a free speech position that this is legitimate,

435
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:04,120
Speaker 1: and it would also be legitimate if you had right wingers,

436
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 1: you know, beaning on about transgender students or whatever it

437
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:09,960
Speaker 1: might be. But be consistent. So why is there an

438
00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:13,880
Speaker 1: inconsistency comes back to that set of social justice dogmas

439
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,080
Speaker 1: and orthodoxies that have become insinuated into society and culture.

440
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 1: And as you point it out, I don't think it's

441
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:23,359
Speaker 1: mostly Palestinians who are doing this on the Palestine issue,

442
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:25,199
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's mostly transgender people who are

443
00:23:25,200 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: doing it on the trans issue, and I don't think

444
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:29,199
Speaker 1: it's you know, mostly actually people of color who are

445
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:32,360
Speaker 1: doing it on the Black Lives Matter issue. I think

446
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 1: it is a class of self congratulatory people. And I

447
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 1: think guilt is an interesting thing for you to flag there,

448
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,919
Speaker 1: because it's something we don't talk about enough. But I

449
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:49,000
Speaker 1: think that we have evolved into this sort of postcolonial,

450
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: anti racist mindset where and it's a laudable instinct, it's

451
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: a laudable instinct to try to catch ourselves and go, well,

452
00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:01,200
Speaker 1: all right, let's recognize our white privilege. That's recognized the

453
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 1: evils of colonialism. But as a result, we're seeing the

454
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: world through a frame where if you're poor and brown skinned,

455
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:13,280
Speaker 1: you're the good guy, and if you're standing up in

456
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:16,119
Speaker 1: a suit and you look like a white, straight male,

457
00:24:16,320 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 1: you're by definition the bad guy. So complicated issues like

458
00:24:21,160 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: Israel and Palestine get reduced into this very overly simplistic

459
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:32,240
Speaker 1: oppressor versus oppressed, colonizer versus colonized sort of binary, and

460
00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:35,399
Speaker 1: living inside that trap, there's sort of no there's no

461
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:39,119
Speaker 1: way out. It's its own weird internal logic, even if

462
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: it's orchestrated, like as you say, with the tents and

463
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: so on, or not orchestrated just because it's a way

464
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: of people making sense of the world. I mean, I

465
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,359
Speaker 1: think a lot of it is just a lot of

466
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 1: the group think is just a combination of people trying

467
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: to make sense of a complicated world being handed an

468
00:24:56,080 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: easy interpretation of the world, which is that men, white

469
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 1: straight men have been piercing all over everybody for thousands

470
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 1: of years, and now it's time for their come up,

471
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:10,520
Speaker 1: and so we need to give more diverse voices, allow

472
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 1: more diverse voices to be heard. And then the other

473
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,320
Speaker 1: component of it is the backlash and the threat that

474
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: you get from what we might call cancel culture, where

475
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: if you step out of line, people don't come back

476
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 1: to try to articulate why they think you're wrong. They

477
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 1: go straight for the jugular and they try to destroy

478
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: your life, whether that's on social media or by getting

479
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 1: you fired, or by severing your relationships with your publisher

480
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 1: or whatever, or your podcast network or whatever it might be.

481
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:41,200
Speaker 1: So there's a kind of a hysteria, a sensoriousness, an oversimplification,

482
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: And all I'm trying to do is have conversations that

483
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: pay no heed to any of that and that makes

484
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 1: sense that both sides could listen to and you might

485
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: agree with me or disagree with me, but at least

486
00:25:50,280 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 1: I'll be articulating your worldview in a way that is

487
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:55,119
Speaker 1: generous to you, and that makes sense to you. I mean,

488
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:57,240
Speaker 1: I think this is such a problem now, Mark, that

489
00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: we're demonizing the other side and caricaturing the other. So

490
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,879
Speaker 1: you ask something. You ask one of those protesters to

491
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: articulate what the Zionist position is, they can't do it.

492
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 1: And you ask a hard cores Ionist to articulate the

493
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:15,199
Speaker 1: Palastinian position, and they probably can't do it. And you

494
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:18,359
Speaker 1: can go through any number of different things. The left

495
00:26:18,400 --> 00:26:23,440
Speaker 1: has become extremely sanctimonious on this stuff, so much so

496
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: that it can't even see its own blind spots. They

497
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: can't even see its own biases. Why wouldn't you just

498
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 1: want to be nice to gay people? Why would you

499
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:31,399
Speaker 1: want to raise questions about Mardi Gras? You know, what

500
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:33,920
Speaker 1: are you trying to do here? It's like the old

501
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: parable about the you know, the two fish swimming along

502
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: in the water and the young fish and the big

503
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 1: fish swims past them and goes, how's the water today, guys?

504
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 1: And after the big fish swims away. One of the

505
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: little fish turns to the other one and goes, what's water?

506
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: You don't know water when you're in it. You don't

507
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,680
Speaker 1: know the norms that you've inherited, that are just part

508
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: of the air that you breathe. There's a certain way

509
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: of talking about this, there's a certain way of talking

510
00:26:57,080 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: about that, you know, stop making I think is the

511
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: overarching sentiment of that kind of social justice like elite

512
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:07,960
Speaker 1: clique can I ashue?

513
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 2: Then, just on the topic of freedom of speech, for example,

514
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:14,640
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a broad topic, I know, and it's

515
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 2: got lots of constraints, but just on this blue that's

516
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 2: sort of bubbling around between Alban Easy pitching up and

517
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 2: sort of saying that he's going to take Musk on

518
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:31,480
Speaker 2: In relation to I think it relates to the more

519
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 2: recent stabbing of the priest, the Orthodox priest out in

520
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 2: the West sub of Sydney, and whether or not largely

521
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 2: where the kids should be allowed to see, but really

522
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 2: you know, whether anyone should be allowed to see it.

523
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 2: And Musk's position, of course, as I understand a Musk

524
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 2: position is it nodes and we should be allowed to

525
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:51,120
Speaker 2: see anything, and we should be censoring any of There's

526
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:53,239
Speaker 2: just a medium and people can put up whatever they

527
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 2: want to.

528
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:53,959
Speaker 1: Have a look at.

529
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 2: What do you think about the governments? What do you

530
00:27:58,200 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 2: think about governments taking a stand on something like that

531
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 2: against forget about must position, but what do you think

532
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 2: about governments taking.

533
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:08,400
Speaker 1: A stand on that? Well, in terms of representing us,

534
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: the voters, it's complicated, like so much, I am, isn't

535
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 1: it just simple? Well, what's the simple answer?

536
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:22,959
Speaker 2: Then it's free freedom speech? Not even it's not that

537
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:25,760
Speaker 2: it's not. This is a platform. If you don't want

538
00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 2: to look at it, don't don't open it up, right,

539
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:30,639
Speaker 2: And you're a parent, and if you're worried about your kids,

540
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 2: don't let.

541
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 1: Them look at it. Right job to some extent, yes,

542
00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:39,800
Speaker 1: but I think where we get confused on social media.

543
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: And I'm a big free speech advocate. I mean, I've

544
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: spent most of my adult life in the United States,

545
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: and I've sort of inherited their attitude towards a maximum

546
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: amount of free speech. And I don't really believe in,

547
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: you know, hate speech laws or coming after people and

548
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: finding them because they said the wrong thing about you know,

549
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: they accidentally use the wrong transgender pronoun or they you know,

550
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 1: they spread vaccine misinformation when all we're trying to do

551
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: was wrestle with what's true and what's not true in

552
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:04,960
Speaker 1: the middle of a public health emergency or whatever. But

553
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: what's the thing about social media is the Elon Musks

554
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 1: and the mark Zakaboos of the world will fall back on. Look,

555
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: we're not publishers. We don't publish anything. You can't be

556
00:29:15,840 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: held to account for any of the stuff that's on

557
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: our platform. It's just a platform. It's cute, people just

558
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: use it. Unfortunately, that's nonsense. It's it's a cute argument,

559
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's nonsense because you've got the algorithm

560
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: behind it. Like, if Facebook were what Facebook was when

561
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 1: Facebook was created, they'd have a point, which was it

562
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: used to be a reverse chronological feed of all of

563
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: the things that either people you follow had put up.

564
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: There was no like button, there was no infinite scroll,

565
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: there was no algorithmically delivered content that is tailor made

566
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 1: to your attention, to your favorites. And well, exactly that's

567
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: right now they've got you know, everything is about engagement.

568
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: Everything is about trying to get something that is going

569
00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: to have you hover over that video for as long

570
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: as possible, and or share it or comment based on

571
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: what they know you like. So there's this idea that

572
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: they're not publishing is, as you say, cute, it's a

573
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: bit twee. I mean, you are publishing because everything that's

574
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: coming into this fire hose of a system that you've

575
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 1: got is being cranked out by Silicon Valley engineers, many

576
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 1: of whom are twenty two years I was riding skateboards

577
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: in Menlo Park, who are brilliant at finding a way

578
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 1: to mass in engineering. That's right to entice your neurological

579
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: system to respond as with as much reptilian angst and

580
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: kind of addiction as it possibly can to whatever it

581
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: is that they're showing you. So I don't think it's

582
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: actually a free speech versus anti free speech thing. I

583
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: think it's about managing information flows and the idea that

584
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: we as a people just have to be held hostage

585
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: to whatever ingenious junk food Zuckerberg and Musk can throw

586
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: at us, with no mechanism to push back other than

587
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 1: to tell our children not to go on those websites,

588
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 1: which is tricky. I think is a bit rich. Like

589
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,240
Speaker 1: I'm extremely leary of government control over what canon can't

590
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: be said. But I think that in fifty years time,

591
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 1: we'll look back on this period and go, that was

592
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 1: a crazy wild West and we had no idea. We'd

593
00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: just given everyone a machine gun, and we didn't know

594
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: how to regulate it or how to figure it out.

595
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: And I think there'll be a more nuanced collaboration, should

596
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: we say, between the people, through their governments democratically elected,

597
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: and AI companies and social media companies to manage that

598
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: flow of information. Because just like those tents came up

599
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 1: miraculously on the lawns of all of those American universities,

600
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: so too do the videos of gars and babies with

601
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: their limbs blown off go up on TikTok in a

602
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: way that is suspiciously well curated. I don't know what

603
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party, how they manage the TikTok algorithms.

604
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: I don't know what role the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has

605
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:18,239
Speaker 1: in coaching the quote unquote journalists, the citizen journalists who

606
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 1: are in Gaza, about how to tailor social media information

607
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 1: so that it'll go well on Instagram. But these are

608
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: not dummies. We saw ISIS in its first incarnation get

609
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: quite good at social media. I mean, remember the US

610
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 1: air men in orange jumpsuits trapped in a cage and

611
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 1: the desert being being set on fire and stuff like

612
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 1: these huge spectacles, these big displays. They've gotten pretty good

613
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: at it, Like jihadists. They know what they're doing. So

614
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 1: you open that app and it's like you've got the

615
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: whatever company is supplying those tents is also supplying your

616
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: information about steroids on steroids. So the idea that you know,

617
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 1: the Australian government didn't play a role in softening that understanding,

618
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: that mitigating that, I think is crazy. We've got to

619
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: get our arms around it somehow.

620
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:10,480
Speaker 2: Who appoints the cabal of people who actually made the decisions.

621
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: In the government. You're always asking the tricky questions, Mark,

622
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: I mean, or they'll appoint themselves. They'll appoint themselves, won't they.

623
00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 2: And then we're going to get fed exactly what they

624
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 2: want us to see and not see.

625
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: I mean part of the promise of public broadcasting. Just

626
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: to get a bit wonky for a second and a

627
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: bit philosophical, since you've been banging on about poetry earlier

628
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 1: on in the show harbor Mass, you're going to harbor

629
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,520
Speaker 1: mask the philosopher who came up with the idea of

630
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:46,360
Speaker 1: public broadcasting with basically saying the only way that you're

631
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:51,760
Speaker 1: going to get true, impartial information is by freeing it

632
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: from the two core biases that can derange the information product.

633
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:03,240
Speaker 1: One is capitalism, where you don't want corporations and powerful

634
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: people who have all the money to be influencing what

635
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:09,799
Speaker 1: stories get told. And the other is governments. You don't

636
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:13,120
Speaker 1: want people with all the guns to be deciding what

637
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:15,920
Speaker 1: gets told. The idea of the public sphere was that

638
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:18,840
Speaker 1: the government would fund it but would have no control

639
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 1: over it politically, and we've got pretty good at that.

640
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:25,280
Speaker 1: I mean, the ABC and the BBC are pretty good

641
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:29,239
Speaker 1: at having carved out a sphere of conversation that is

642
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: independent of whatever party happens to be in power. And

643
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 1: so maybe that's a model for regulating this stuff. You

644
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: certainly don't want government partisans from the political party that

645
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: happens to be in power telling us what we can

646
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 1: and can't see on social media. But can you create

647
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:49,360
Speaker 1: a regulatory framework about what algorithms can and can't do

648
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: that is overseen by people who are as impartial as

649
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: our public health bureaucrats. You'd want them to be, or

650
00:34:58,120 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: the chairman of the ABC you'd want them to be.

651
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:02,319
Speaker 1: Maybe it's early days.

652
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 2: I'm going to be fascinating. But for me, this whole

653
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 2: program is fast. Not what you and I talking about,

654
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 2: but the whole program of how it is going to

655
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 2: roll at is quite.

656
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 1: You're talking about. It is even more fascinating. Mark, don't

657
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: say yourself, this is the right here. I want to change.

658
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,879
Speaker 2: Second, my producer told me you have been on Joe

659
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 2: Rogan show six or seven times? I can't remember now seven,

660
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:34,399
Speaker 2: don't short something? What the fuck's going on there?

661
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: Hey tell me that. How do you know Joe? Because

662
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: of both comedians? No, no, no, no, I never got

663
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 1: to anything like his level of success. I mean I

664
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:45,839
Speaker 1: did a bit of stand up when I first got

665
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: to New York, just to sharpen my chops and you know,

666
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:51,319
Speaker 1: get a feel for a live or Yeah. Pretty scary, yeah,

667
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: especially in a town like New York where you know

668
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 1: audiences can be it can be brutal. But it's good.

669
00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good training. I mean, it's once you

670
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 1: get into a television studio then having had the experience of.

671
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 2: Shooting your pants because no one's going to you can

672
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:08,839
Speaker 2: put it that way.

673
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly gives you a keener keen of moving away.

674
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:16,280
Speaker 1: But just what was your what was your what what.

675
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:19,879
Speaker 2: Was your stick like in terms of your comedy act.

676
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, it was mostly I mean it was pretty intellectual,

677
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, it was observations. I mean, at

678
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: the time I was pretty good at impressions. So really, yeah,

679
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: when I moved over there, it was George W. Bush

680
00:36:33,719 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: was still president, so I do quite a lot of

681
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 1: Bush stuff. Did you learn how to duck from as

682
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: I was just standing out the delivery? Yeah? No, I

683
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: mean so yeah, and fair bit about like Cheney and

684
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 1: the Iraq War and and you know, the religious right,

685
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:55,799
Speaker 1: and you know, just poking holes in in things. It

686
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,120
Speaker 1: was good fun and it was well, it was well received.

687
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: But and I think Americans kind of like having a foreigner,

688
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:05,800
Speaker 1: you know, chiefly take the piss out of them, especially

689
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 1: and I you know, you're non threatening, you know you're coming,

690
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 1: you're coming with goodwill, but you're also willing to highlight

691
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 1: to them the ways that they know they're ridiculous. And

692
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 1: so it was actually I was my first big job

693
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:23,319
Speaker 1: was the Huffington Post was at the time the most

694
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 1: read online only news website in the world. This is

695
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. I remember that period, yeah, and there was

696
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: a lot of bars behind it, and they basically decided

697
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: that they wanted to do to television what they'd done

698
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: to newspapers and destroy them completely and find a new

699
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: way of having conversations. And so they launched half Post Live,

700
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:48,319
Speaker 1: which was a twelve hour day streaming television network online

701
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: and I was one of the founding hosts and producers

702
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: of that. So I would host, you know, four to

703
00:37:55,640 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: six half hour shows every single day with Newsmade, you know,

704
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:04,439
Speaker 1: Thomas Friedman and Michael Moore and Robert F. Kennedy Junior

705
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:07,720
Speaker 1: or whoever it might be. And there was one moment

706
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 1: that Joe saw go viral. It was one of the

707
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: first I think if when they write the book about

708
00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 1: Cancel Culture, there will be a page for this moment,

709
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:24,439
Speaker 1: which was Stephen Colbert was doing his satirical show still

710
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: this was before let Himan retired, so you remember he

711
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: was doing the Colbert Rapport, and he did a joke

712
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: that an Asian American activist felt was racist against Asians,

713
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:39,919
Speaker 1: but it was satirical, and she was lined up at

714
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 1: this activist that is as a guest on my show

715
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 1: the following day in a kind of rap of the

716
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: news and everything's going on. And we started talking and

717
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,479
Speaker 1: she started interrupting me and saying like, well, I would

718
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: certainly expect that a white man would enjoy talking down

719
00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,279
Speaker 1: to me. And I was like, well, hang on a second.

720
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: We're just having a convers like I'm trying to understand

721
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: what your attitude to live on air. Yeah, streaming live.

722
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: That's cool, it's good, that's good. Yeah, challenge, it's a

723
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: challenge exactly. I mean there's no mistakes or when there

724
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:13,120
Speaker 1: are mistakes, that's just part of you know, live TV.

725
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: I said, hang away, we're just having a conversation, like

726
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 1: and she said, well, yeah, you know, as a white man,

727
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: you probably feel like it's your like it's your right

728
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: to talk down to women of color. I was like,

729
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 1: what are you talking about, Like when I was being

730
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: born with balls doesn't give me, It doesn't It doesn't

731
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that I don't have the right to have

732
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: an opinion about satire. Like, you know, she's you know,

733
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: she says, she goes on like this and like it

734
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: basically just standed in a you know, flame flaming heap,

735
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 1: and I was I was just like, well, okay, I

736
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:42,359
Speaker 1: mean all right, so yeah, yeah, yeah, if you don't

737
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 1: want to talk to me, and we do much to

738
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: talk about. It was this weird experience mark that I've

739
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 1: had many times since, but I've never had it before then,

740
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: and that was probably twenty fourteen. So this was just

741
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:55,560
Speaker 1: as like the kind of social justice reckoning was about

742
00:39:55,560 --> 00:40:00,080
Speaker 1: to happen, right where you're talking to someone and you

743
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:04,800
Speaker 1: realize they're not actually talking back to me as a human.

744
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: They're talking to me as a cardboard cutout avatar of

745
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: white maleness, and they're expecting me to talk to them

746
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: as a representative of some abstraction, some identity group, some

747
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: oppressed minority, Like we're supposed to be talking about comedy, satire, offense,

748
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: cancelation because she wanted to get Colbert canceled that a

749
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 1: whole petition about it, and instead of having a conversation

750
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: where we treat each other as equals, we're having a

751
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:43,760
Speaker 1: conversation where two cardboard cutouts of different identity groups are sparring.

752
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: And that went momentarily viral. Joe saw it. Someone texted

753
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: me that he'd played it on his show, and so

754
00:40:52,360 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 1: I think I just DMed him on Twitter or he

755
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: hit me up and somehow said, next time you're in La,

756
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:02,360
Speaker 1: why don't you come on the show? So I said, oh,

757
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:04,320
Speaker 1: I just happened to be in LA in a few weeks,

758
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:09,280
Speaker 1: quickly booked my tickets just so I could have that experience,

759
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: and they and I hit it off. And then I

760
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:13,120
Speaker 1: sort of had had a standing into invitation whenever I

761
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 1: was in town. A conversation about the Joe the show

762
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 1: with Joe well, I mean everything, you know what his shows.

763
00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:20,360
Speaker 1: I like, you sit down for three hours and you

764
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: talk about anything and everything. You just go wherever. So

765
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 1: and he was cool, Oh he's great. I mean I

766
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: love Joe. And then he was he was the reason

767
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:30,719
Speaker 1: I have a podcast. He's been you know, he really

768
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 1: is the podfather. You know, he has been really caring

769
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:37,160
Speaker 1: and generous and supportive. You know. He just pulled me

770
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: aside after one of the shows, I remember where it was,

771
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:40,799
Speaker 1: the first or second or third. He was like, what

772
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: are you doing with these dummies? Getting Peter p Check?

773
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,280
Speaker 1: Going do your own thing? And I was like, yeah, okay,

774
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: I think I will. And I started the precursor to

775
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: uncomfortable conversations.

776
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 2: So tell me about uncomfortable conversations. So what's the format?

777
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:55,240
Speaker 1: The format is through the format now yep. The format

778
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: started as a one on one interview with a guest

779
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:02,399
Speaker 1: about some issue that we find difficult to talk about

780
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: in a faired income one.

781
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:05,239
Speaker 2: With the guests or with the guests the guests. But

782
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 2: what I remember there's the guest finds it difficult to

783
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 2: talk about it.

784
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: No, guest doesn't have to. So sometimes people will listen

785
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 1: to uncomfortable conversations, so they'll go, oh, that wasn't actually

786
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable conversation at all, which is fine. The point

787
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: is not to make the guest uncomfortable or to create

788
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: or to confect, you know, intentionally uncomfortable scenarios or anything.

789
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,240
Speaker 1: Sometimes that'll arise because I disagree with the guest on something,

790
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: But the point is to have conversations about topics that

791
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:34,320
Speaker 1: if someone were to raise it at the pub or

792
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: at a barbie or at work, everyone would just pucker

793
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:39,280
Speaker 1: up their bombas a little bit and fear a little

794
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: you know, oh are we going here? Are we? You know,

795
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:46,000
Speaker 1: there'd be it'd be create an uncomfortable situation. I want

796
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: to create a safe space for dangerous ideas, a safe

797
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: space for people to air those kinds of conversations. So

798
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: that's the main thing. My first episode was with Stan

799
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: Grant a couple of years ago. Now I understand how

800
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: the drama this, no, this is before that. Yeah, so

801
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 1: it was only any exits last year. He was pretty

802
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:05,399
Speaker 1: recent and Stan and I are still mates and he

803
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 1: has been a great supporter of mine as well, because

804
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 1: you know, we were actually getting real about race, not

805
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: just talking not mouthing the usual talking points about white guilt,

806
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: but recognizing that there are difficult identity questions here and

807
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:29,720
Speaker 1: you know asking It's like I will be accused of being,

808
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,800
Speaker 1: you know, some white fascist if I raise a question

809
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: about whether or not it's really necessary for four white,

810
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:40,360
Speaker 1: middle aged women who are on a zoom call about

811
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: HR to be doing acknowledgments of country before they start

812
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 1: talking about the human resources issue, Like, what do you

813
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 1: say about that? I'd love to know, because he's he's

814
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:49,399
Speaker 1: on the same page.

815
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 2: Tells me a bit like, you know, arrive on an

816
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:56,719
Speaker 2: aeroplane and landed from Sydney to Brisbane and yeah, I'm

817
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 2: getting asked to think that, you.

818
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, the Lances yeah, that's cool.

819
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:03,800
Speaker 2: But like I already and then I go to my meeting,

820
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:06,240
Speaker 2: and that's how we start off. One of my staff

821
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 2: will start the meeting off, and I'm hang on, like,

822
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 2: what a stance about that?

823
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:15,319
Speaker 1: He's not a huge fan of I mean, I don't

824
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: want to speak for him. Let's just say that I

825
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: get the impression from him that he's not in lockstep

826
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:25,279
Speaker 1: with what what the correct way of doing indigenous rights is?

827
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: You know, but that doesn't help indigenous rights. And well exactly,

828
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:30,920
Speaker 1: I mean the party comes back to your point about guilt, right.

829
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: I think it's got this, you know, we've got this.

830
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: It's a way for this class of mostly whit it's

831
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 1: almost exclusively white, middle class, university educated people to signal

832
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:44,799
Speaker 1: to each other that they're on the right side, that

833
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 1: they're on the right team.

834
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 2: Right.

835
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like putting he him in your

836
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 1: email signature or she her, you know, like, don't worry, Gary,

837
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 1: No one was in any doubt that you're a dude,

838
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: you know, like we all know you, Gary. Yeah, yeah,

839
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 1: that care. There was no ambiguity. But it's it's a

840
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: way of saying I care, right, I care, which is

841
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 1: all very well until it becomes a conformist lockstep mandatory

842
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: thing that if you decline to participate in, you're regarded

843
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: as being a bad guy. So anyway, we were having

844
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,719
Speaker 1: these kinds of conversations with with Stan and then I

845
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:25,640
Speaker 1: expanded it out to talk to I mean anyone and everyone,

846
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: Malcolm Turnbull or you know, yeah, that's right, and just

847
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,399
Speaker 1: talking about it. Actually in that period, Yeah, I think

848
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 1: you might. I might have had him on the AB

849
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 1: side the ABC. It did. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And

850
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 1: so yeah, and now Uncomfortable, now that my show at

851
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 1: the ABC has fallen apart, Uncomfortable Conversations is going gangbusters

852
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 1: because I can devote all my time to it instead

853
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:53,759
Speaker 1: of it being a side hustle. And so now we're

854
00:45:53,800 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 1: expanding into doing things like live talkback, video segments, audience, yeah,

855
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: inviting the audience, in doing panel segments. Our last panel

856
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: is with Ben Fordham. You just mentioned Ben and Antoinette Latouf.

857
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,640
Speaker 1: So like having spar, having people who spar a little

858
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 1: bit on the couch and that's all going up on

859
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: YouTube and interviewing people like Jimmy Carr who just had

860
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: on the show, and you know, comedians and stuff like

861
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: that rather than just going straight for the culture war Juggueller.

862
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 1: I love he's a good man.

863
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 2: Although sometimes they go, oh, I'm watching him.

864
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 1: Mother the fuck? That's the point, isn't it.

865
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:28,879
Speaker 2: It is the point, But he does it with such

866
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,719
Speaker 2: I can ask a questions. Do you think he does

867
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 2: it and uses comedy and satire as an excuse for

868
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 2: what he's just done as a backdoor, or is he

869
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 2: doing it for social awareness for people to think about

870
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 2: what it is he's saying and to have a debate

871
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 2: perhaps after the show, or he's just doing for gags

872
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:54,840
Speaker 2: because he knows the audience is his Cheersquad.

873
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: Gags, GGS gags. He's a comic and I think he

874
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: would say that make him laugh, that's the.

875
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 2: Rules, but it's his cheerleaders only, like I don't know,

876
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 2: maybe it happens occasionally, but most of the people come

877
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 2: to listen to him a lot, and a live audience

878
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,439
Speaker 2: sensible to him are.

879
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,879
Speaker 1: There because they like him, like what he says, right, Yeah,

880
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:15,760
Speaker 1: I mean I asked him on that and people should

881
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: listen to the episode or watched on YouTube because it's

882
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 1: interesting and he talked I asked him about this, you

883
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 1: know about haters on Twitter, and he was like, what

884
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: happens is that people who weren't at the show get

885
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: angry about it on social media, but there is no

886
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 1: controversy about it at the show. I mean, the people

887
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: who come to see a Jimmy Carr show, people who

888
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 1: are cool with Jimmy Carr, right, and they want to

889
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: you know, so, I mean he said something interesting. This

890
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 1: was actually the first video I just joined TikTok well

891
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:46,440
Speaker 1: after the time you know I have just now. I mean,

892
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 1: this is all within the past few with the program,

893
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: if even TikTok. So just my first TikTok video that

894
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: went past a million was was Jimmy Carr making an

895
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 1: interesting point where he goes, whatever it is that's going

896
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:04,799
Speaker 1: to get me canceled, I said it ten years ago.

897
00:48:06,120 --> 00:48:07,840
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can say now that's going to be

898
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 1: worse than the things that you can dredge up, which

899
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 1: points to this other phenomenon that I talk about. I

900
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: did to show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival just before

901
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: the pandemic, which was about why social media was ruining everything,

902
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: and I made the point that there's this whole phenomena

903
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: of what I call outrage archaeology where you know, people

904
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:29,799
Speaker 1: go back through your past tweets or you the things

905
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: you said in the past, or your old podcast like archaeologists,

906
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:35,319
Speaker 1: like they're trying to hunt for the jewel, you know,

907
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: of the most offensive thing, like who's the comic? Who

908
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 1: was Kevin?

909
00:48:41,800 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 2: He was?

910
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 1: Anyway, he's going to host the Academy Awards the year

911
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 1: before last, And they went back and they found that

912
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: nine years before, he tweeted something homophobic, which he'd apologized for.

913
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: You know, he says something in a routine that he

914
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:55,359
Speaker 1: ended up tweeting that it ended up on Twitter, and

915
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:57,360
Speaker 1: you know, he ended up being uninvited from hosting the

916
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: Academy Awards, a pretty big gig because some outrage archaeologist

917
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 1: has gone back and found something out of context from

918
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:06,439
Speaker 1: a previous time when norms were a bit different. And

919
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: as far as Jimmy, Jimmy's concerned, I mean, he's right,

920
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: We've all got the paper trail behind us. Now. I've

921
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:14,839
Speaker 1: been talking for long enough in years now that there

922
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:16,279
Speaker 1: are all kinds of things that I've said that I'm

923
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: sure that if you go over it with a fine

924
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:20,359
Speaker 1: tooth comb, you could create an outrage. Do you worry

925
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:22,399
Speaker 1: about the about no, I don't anymo because I don't

926
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:26,479
Speaker 1: have an employer. But did you worry about it? Yes? Yes,

927
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,000
Speaker 1: and thank god I don't have to do anymore. I mean,

928
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: you remember probably his name. He used to say, you

929
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 1: know what I hate? You know what I hate?

930
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:35,959
Speaker 2: Who was that famous comedian, like twenty thirty years ago?

931
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:38,399
Speaker 1: Shit, I come reader.

932
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:41,359
Speaker 2: He had a routine, you know, and I ate I

933
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 2: hate it and he was he talked about haters and

934
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:45,480
Speaker 2: he was and he took the piss out of everyone

935
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 2: and ever.

936
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:46,439
Speaker 1: I mean I said love.

937
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 2: I used to love listening to him anyway, And this

938
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:51,359
Speaker 2: is twenty years ago, and he got a radio show

939
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 2: for a little while and then they cut him out

940
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:54,800
Speaker 2: of He's on to day if and will triple in

941
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 2: one of those things, and they cut him because he

942
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:58,920
Speaker 2: just upset so many people at the time. But it

943
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 2: wasn't Red Simon's, No, it wasn't Red, but it was

944
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:07,919
Speaker 2: around Red's time. It was, Uh, it doesn't matter, but irrespective,

945
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:14,360
Speaker 2: people have been taking the piss in comedy about social

946
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,920
Speaker 2: the way society operates for so fucking long, and he

947
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 2: was basically just reflecting.

948
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:22,719
Speaker 1: How we are. We all everyone say, oh, I can

949
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 1: hate that. I hate.

950
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 2: End up you get the haters. Some people just hate everything. Yeah,

951
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 2: professional haters. They sit with him and they told age,

952
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:31,800
Speaker 2: you went to school with the Mew year twelve, with

953
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,279
Speaker 2: them center for twenty two years, and you sit down

954
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 2: with them and they just fucking complain about everything, and

955
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 2: they fucking hate everything. Don't they use the word hate,

956
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 2: But they just dislike everything. They've got no positive they

957
00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 2: don't have a new thought on any issue. And I

958
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 2: think people have been doing that for a long time.

959
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 2: But this guy, he ended up getting canceled. But Rodney Rude,

960
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 2: Oh I remember, right, Roddy Rude.

961
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's literally right there in his name,

962
00:50:57,320 --> 00:50:59,439
Speaker 1: mark Rude, Rodney Rude, and.

963
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 2: That was his That was the routine, you know. And

964
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:04,440
Speaker 2: but he ended up getting canceled. But it took a

965
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 2: long time to get canceled. But society didn't cancel them.

966
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:11,600
Speaker 2: Some dude, like somebody like a management management or somebody

967
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:13,359
Speaker 2: at the top of the tree got rid of him

968
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 2: because somebody would have prot him a little bit and

969
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:17,760
Speaker 2: probabcly of that guys like he's upsetting too many people.

970
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: But today you.

971
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:24,680
Speaker 2: Get canceled by the numbers and like hordes of people

972
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:27,840
Speaker 2: will all have an opinion on whether or not Josh

973
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 2: Epps should be saying what he's saying. Why do you

974
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 2: think all of a sudden there is there are audiences

975
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,440
Speaker 2: of all of a sudden got to say that management

976
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 2: ordinarily would have.

977
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they're loud and angry. I mean there are

978
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:46,319
Speaker 1: professional Umbridge takers who will take umbrage at whatever it

979
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: is that they can find, and we'll try to coerce

980
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: cowardly management. So that's the issue. I think that's the issue. Yeah,

981
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:55,959
Speaker 1: and management is too jumpy and they understand by people

982
00:51:56,040 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: enough is it? Because everybody wants the management want to

983
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: be liked. We all want to be like. Yes, I

984
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:02,799
Speaker 1: think they're afraid of the optics of seeming like they're

985
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,799
Speaker 1: not taking seriously the concerns about the microaggressions and the

986
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: victimization and that they're not on board with again this

987
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 1: kind of orthodoxy of social justice, and like they want

988
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 1: to seem like they're the good guys. They don't want

989
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:19,200
Speaker 1: to seem like out of touch. There's nothing. No one

990
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:22,360
Speaker 1: is more woke, just to use that problematic term. No

991
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: one is more woke than a terrified, like white, straight,

992
00:52:27,360 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 1: middle aged man who is trying to do the right

993
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:32,759
Speaker 1: thing by the kids who are coming with pitchforks and

994
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:33,640
Speaker 1: flaming tortures.

995
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 2: You know, But I'd like to understand what your view is.

996
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 2: Is it about not being disliked they don't want to

997
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 2: be disliked, or is it more about I want to

998
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:45,799
Speaker 2: be liked because and I want to go right back

999
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 2: to Facebook in a Facebook Instagram. They've created this light

1000
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 2: thing and they've worked out or their scientists have worked

1001
00:52:51,680 --> 00:52:55,280
Speaker 2: out that, in an evolutionary sense, for us to survive,

1002
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 2: we're going to be liked by a community, because if

1003
00:52:57,760 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 2: we get fucked over by a community, we won't survive.

1004
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:03,479
Speaker 2: That's an evolutionary instinct in our brain. And they've worked

1005
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 2: this stuff out, and that's why everybody wants you to

1006
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 2: press the like on your Instagram page or Facebook page,

1007
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:10,400
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera.

1008
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:11,840
Speaker 1: They've created this like world.

1009
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:15,719
Speaker 2: And I've often wanted to myself the decision makers who

1010
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:20,240
Speaker 2: make these decisions about when they're getting pressured by groups.

1011
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 2: Is it they're doing it because they don't want to

1012
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 2: be disliked or is it because they want to be

1013
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 2: seen as being liked?

1014
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:28,120
Speaker 1: As an organization? So let's cook with the ABC.

1015
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 2: ABC wants to be liked as an organization by its audience.

1016
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: Have you ever thought that through? Like? No, it's an

1017
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:37,480
Speaker 1: interesting question. Tease it out for me. Why is it

1018
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:43,560
Speaker 1: important to you the distinction between avoiding dislike and clamoring

1019
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: for like. I don't have.

1020
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:48,680
Speaker 2: I don't have a particular view. I just see that

1021
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:52,759
Speaker 2: as I see it as binary, because there are and

1022
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 2: I've often I don't see I've often wondered, is there

1023
00:53:56,120 --> 00:53:59,320
Speaker 2: an instinct within us, in our brain somewhere that don't

1024
00:53:59,320 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 2: be disliked?

1025
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:02,520
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It's not the same as being liked. But

1026
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 1: you can't be dislike because you're disliked. I think that's it.

1027
00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:07,160
Speaker 1: You're on the outside. I think that's it. Yes, don't

1028
00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: be excluded. Don't be exclus exactly. That's right?

1029
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 2: And why is it you don't care? Why does Josh

1030
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 2: Zepps doesn't care whether he's dislike? So so in an

1031
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 2: evolutionary sense, why do you think that you've chosen not

1032
00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:23,439
Speaker 2: to care?

1033
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: Is it because if you disliked?

1034
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 2: Is it because Josh also realizes he can create his

1035
00:54:28,120 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 2: own community of people who are going to like him

1036
00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 2: for not caring about being disliked and therefore you've got

1037
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 2: your own community.

1038
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: I don't now you're protected. I'm a trouble maker. I mean,

1039
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:43,920
Speaker 1: I'm a trouble maker before the before the community of

1040
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:46,720
Speaker 1: troublemakers follows me. I mean I would I would sooner

1041
00:54:46,760 --> 00:54:53,759
Speaker 1: be alone, outsider with no friends but my own internal credibility,

1042
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: and just have faith that at some point people are

1043
00:54:56,920 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 1: going to value authenticity, credibility, and straight talk more than

1044
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: they do sycophancy and conformism. And honestly, whether a tribe

1045
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: is with me or not is secondary to me. I mean,

1046
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 1: I just I'm just a sucker for like intellectual honesty.

1047
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 1: I don't really, it's not even really, it doesn't even

1048
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,160
Speaker 1: feel like a choice to me. It feels like a drive.

1049
00:55:19,520 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 2: Okay, I like it because I just want to quickly

1050
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 2: I'm getting wound up here, but I want to keep

1051
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:25,319
Speaker 2: going on about this a little bit, if you don't mind, Yeah,

1052
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:25,840
Speaker 2: I want to do.

1053
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:27,759
Speaker 1: A Joe Rogan three hour on you don't worry.

1054
00:55:28,120 --> 00:55:32,719
Speaker 2: But because for me, I've always had this view on

1055
00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 2: instinct versus intellect, and I sometimes feel as though most

1056
00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 2: of society operates on instinct, which is the like or

1057
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:48,959
Speaker 2: dislike argument, and whereas intellect takes me to another level.

1058
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 2: And when I say in a lot, I don't mean

1059
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:52,560
Speaker 2: better or worse them, and it just takes me to

1060
00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:57,120
Speaker 2: a different level, a different universe whereby I override my

1061
00:55:57,160 --> 00:56:00,759
Speaker 2: instincts with intellect. And that's not just in relation to

1062
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:03,560
Speaker 2: commentary on what society is doing, the sorts of things

1063
00:56:03,600 --> 00:56:08,400
Speaker 2: you and I do, but it's also like temptation, you know,

1064
00:56:09,080 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 2: knock myself around, take drugs, and drugs mean, I always

1065
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:12,680
Speaker 2: take the view.

1066
00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:14,319
Speaker 1: I like to take the view, and I.

1067
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:16,759
Speaker 2: Don't always achieve it personally, but I like to say

1068
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:19,320
Speaker 2: the view that my intellect is always greater than my instincts.

1069
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: Sometimes my instincts do overtake.

1070
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:24,960
Speaker 2: And I've really tried hard over my sixty years to

1071
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:28,360
Speaker 2: fucking work out work that out, and I fight my

1072
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:32,279
Speaker 2: intellect tries to fight back. But I'm a I'm a real,

1073
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:37,360
Speaker 2: a big I'm quite interested in this instinct versus intellect

1074
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 2: and how.

1075
00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:41,040
Speaker 1: They I mean, I'm highly intellectual to an almost like

1076
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: Aspergers you degree, and I can see that. Yeah, in

1077
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 1: terms of being, it doesn't come naturally to meet to me,

1078
00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:50,839
Speaker 1: to meet other people empathically, you know, wherever they are

1079
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:54,480
Speaker 1: instinct instinct is bad being right, I don't have a set.

1080
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:57,120
Speaker 1: I don't have that sensitivity. For example, what my partner

1081
00:56:57,160 --> 00:56:59,560
Speaker 1: does who he's very very good at tuning into people's

1082
00:56:59,560 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: emotional wavelength. I'm not. I'll just go straight to the

1083
00:57:01,640 --> 00:57:02,080
Speaker 1: brain and.

1084
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:04,319
Speaker 2: Go else in the world like that, because I know

1085
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:06,360
Speaker 2: I forget criticized of being this by people in a

1086
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 2: personal level, by people who know me closely. You that

1087
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:15,719
Speaker 2: people think that I lack the empathy. Someone might send

1088
00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 2: a Texas says I love you, and I might go, oh,

1089
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 2: thank you, right, yeah, yeah, because I don't really see

1090
00:57:22,120 --> 00:57:24,240
Speaker 2: the fucking point of the word. I mean, it's the

1091
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 2: dumbest fucking word in the fucking you because I love

1092
00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 2: my dog, I love food, I love the fuck you know,

1093
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 2: like it just articulated a little bit more like you know,

1094
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:35,840
Speaker 2: like because I don't even know how to respond to it.

1095
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:37,960
Speaker 1: I don't. I sort of do that, you know what

1096
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: I mean.

1097
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:40,280
Speaker 2: I know it's a sign it would how to respond

1098
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:43,400
Speaker 2: to it, But in terms of how I really feel

1099
00:57:43,440 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 2: about it, I think it's just a dumb fucking word.

1100
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:49,200
Speaker 1: Are you so? Are you motivated by being liked or avoiding? Yeah?

1101
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 1: Right now, I wonder whether or not. That sensibility which

1102
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: you and I share, if you want to get psychoanalytic

1103
00:57:54,840 --> 00:58:01,640
Speaker 1: about it, is driven. Like the flattering interpretation to us

1104
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:05,800
Speaker 1: is to say where galaxy brains who can override our

1105
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:13,920
Speaker 1: base instincts with our minds. The less flattering interpretation, which

1106
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:17,560
Speaker 1: comports with your thesis that people are generally driven by

1107
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 1: a desire to be liked, would be where the types

1108
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:23,960
Speaker 1: of people who, maybe when we were younger, didn't fit

1109
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:26,720
Speaker 1: in and didn't find it easy to fit into the

1110
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 1: cool kids club, and therefore took a posture of you

1111
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:33,280
Speaker 1: know what, any club that would have me as a member,

1112
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:34,920
Speaker 1: I don't want to be part of anyway. And so

1113
00:58:35,560 --> 00:58:37,760
Speaker 1: you know I'm different. I'm special. I don't need to

1114
00:58:37,760 --> 00:58:40,800
Speaker 1: a you adapt, I'm a contrarian, so you adapt. I think.

1115
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:42,600
Speaker 1: So that's probably Do you think that was that you

1116
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:46,760
Speaker 1: were you that kid? Yeah? Probably? Yeah, I probably was too.

1117
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:50,600
Speaker 2: I wasn't I wasn't pushed out of groups or I

1118
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:53,640
Speaker 2: wasn't not accepted into groups. But at the same time

1119
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 2: I didn't care.

1120
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: Yeah I did. Are you sure you didn't? Are you

1121
00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:02,080
Speaker 1: sure that the not caring wasn't a consequence of exclusion.

1122
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:05,120
Speaker 1: I don't really remember being excluded as such.

1123
00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:08,040
Speaker 2: I mean, like most things I did, I did quite well,

1124
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:11,600
Speaker 2: like sport and blah blah blah in footy teams and yeah,

1125
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 2: well school academically and stuff. I don't think so I

1126
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:18,800
Speaker 2: do believe I just didn't care like my mates would

1127
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:21,040
Speaker 2: ring them up. And so we're all going to meet

1128
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:23,080
Speaker 2: down the road when we're fifteen, you know.

1129
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: And you know I don't steal stuff off cars and stuff.

1130
00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:27,920
Speaker 2: And I not that I had a moral position, but

1131
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:30,200
Speaker 2: I can't people I'm not coming, you know. I was

1132
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 2: rather stay home, read my book or whatever. So my

1133
00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:36,800
Speaker 2: my position is here in viewing me now. But my

1134
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 2: position is I don't know if I could well have

1135
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:43,160
Speaker 2: had that somewhere my background, I don't really know.

1136
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:46,080
Speaker 1: I haven't done as analytic sort of exis on it.

1137
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:48,920
Speaker 2: But but it's interesting because that's why I sort of

1138
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 2: warmed to you without even having met you.

1139
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:53,360
Speaker 1: Listening to you on radio. I liked listening to on

1140
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:53,760
Speaker 1: the radio.

1141
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:56,640
Speaker 2: That's why I like I like listening to Adam because

1142
00:59:56,680 --> 00:59:59,480
Speaker 2: he's a bit odd too, not to say we're odd,

1143
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:00,560
Speaker 2: but he's bit different.

1144
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:02,760
Speaker 1: No, I mean I like it. I'll take god, it's

1145
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:06,680
Speaker 1: a compliment to me. For me, it's good too, weird, odd,

1146
01:00:06,840 --> 01:00:10,000
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about things in a strange way. You know,

1147
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:13,080
Speaker 1: this is part of what I worry about, just going

1148
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:15,480
Speaker 1: back to the likes on social media versus the likes

1149
01:00:15,520 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: in the real world, where you can touch the grass

1150
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:20,360
Speaker 1: and actually, you know, have conversations with people that aren't

1151
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:22,440
Speaker 1: limited by the number of characters you can put in

1152
01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:26,160
Speaker 1: a tweet like. Part of what's corrosive about the way

1153
01:00:26,200 --> 01:00:30,520
Speaker 1: that we're living is so much of our social groups

1154
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:34,360
Speaker 1: and so much of our likes, and you know, strokes,

1155
01:00:34,520 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 1: our social strokes are coming from coming mediated through machines

1156
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: where not only are you chasing the wrong kinds of

1157
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 1: respect because mostly it's conformism, like the way that the

1158
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:50,120
Speaker 1: other side either side exactly. The easiest way to get

1159
01:00:50,160 --> 01:00:52,480
Speaker 1: a lot of likes on social media is to go

1160
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:55,080
Speaker 1: on and say, I stand with the people of Gaza,

1161
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:58,200
Speaker 1: I stand with my trans allies, I stand with the

1162
01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:02,520
Speaker 1: women of Australia against domestic violel Oh, bravo, what a

1163
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,360
Speaker 1: brave position. You don't believe that men should beat and

1164
01:01:05,560 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 1: murder their wives. How enlightening? This is incredible. Talk to

1165
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:12,000
Speaker 1: me about this moral revelation this epiphany that you've had.

1166
01:01:12,200 --> 01:01:15,480
Speaker 1: It's so bloody facile, and yet that is actually the

1167
01:01:15,520 --> 01:01:21,280
Speaker 1: currency that we're swimming in, and it's distracting us, it's

1168
01:01:21,480 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 1: capturing our attention. It's a bit like it's a bit

1169
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:30,360
Speaker 1: like you're walking around with another version of Josh Zeps

1170
01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: on your shoulder who's constantly monitoring your life and looking

1171
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:39,520
Speaker 1: at your life and saying, is that thought something that

1172
01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:42,959
Speaker 1: you should be broadcasting that would get you likes? Is that,

1173
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:46,200
Speaker 1: you know, coffee, something that you should put on Instagram

1174
01:01:46,240 --> 01:01:50,000
Speaker 1: and would get likes. Something from something as facile as

1175
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 1: a meal that you've had going on Instagram, to something

1176
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:57,200
Speaker 1: as complicated as making a geopolitical commentary about the most

1177
01:01:57,240 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: intractable conflict in the world in Israel on Gaza. It's

1178
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:06,240
Speaker 1: all being filtered through this kind of meta experience of

1179
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 1: witnessing yourself having experiences and then pushing those experiences through

1180
01:02:11,480 --> 01:02:13,560
Speaker 1: the algorithm and the filter of going, am I going

1181
01:02:13,640 --> 01:02:17,840
Speaker 1: to get more likes and followers and strokes by disseminating

1182
01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:22,840
Speaker 1: this to the world. So it's like I think, I mean,

1183
01:02:22,880 --> 01:02:25,920
Speaker 1: for me personally, I don't use social media anymore. I

1184
01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: use it as a broadcasting platform. To push out my content,

1185
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:33,480
Speaker 1: but I no longer engage with it, and we only

1186
01:02:33,520 --> 01:02:36,720
Speaker 1: get one life. As far as we know, this is

1187
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:41,280
Speaker 1: actually it. Today is the actual day. When you're experiencing today,

1188
01:02:41,960 --> 01:02:44,560
Speaker 1: You're never going to get today back. You're never going

1189
01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:48,000
Speaker 1: to get to interface with reality and touch the grass

1190
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:50,800
Speaker 1: and look at people and wrestle with ideas in this

1191
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:57,000
Speaker 1: moment again. And yet most of us spend that moment,

1192
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:01,040
Speaker 1: whether we know it or not, with a little editor

1193
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:04,320
Speaker 1: in the back of our brain who works for Meta

1194
01:03:05,560 --> 01:03:10,960
Speaker 1: or Elon saying is this content? Is this content that

1195
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:15,600
Speaker 1: can get me the social cutos that if we weren't

1196
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:18,479
Speaker 1: embedded in social media, would come from actually sitting down

1197
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:20,600
Speaker 1: and having a cup of tea with somebody and talking

1198
01:03:20,680 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 1: to them like something's happening to the what to our

1199
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:26,920
Speaker 1: brains and the way that they're being hijacked that is

1200
01:03:26,920 --> 01:03:33,080
Speaker 1: making it increasingly difficult to have interesting, unusual, innovative, contrarian

1201
01:03:33,240 --> 01:03:38,320
Speaker 1: conversations and is dialing up the reward for having facile,

1202
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:43,480
Speaker 1: conformist ones. So do you think that is actually being

1203
01:03:43,560 --> 01:03:46,800
Speaker 1: consciously done? No, I think it's just the algorithm doing

1204
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:50,560
Speaker 1: what algorithms do. That's what our attention. You know by definition,

1205
01:03:50,600 --> 01:03:53,120
Speaker 1: you're going to engage with things that either reinforce what

1206
01:03:53,120 --> 01:03:56,160
Speaker 1: you already believe or demonize what you don't already believe.

1207
01:03:56,960 --> 01:04:00,880
Speaker 1: The messy, muddy space of wrestling with things in a complicated,

1208
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 1: nuanced way is not an instantaneous dopamine hit, right. It

1209
01:04:04,960 --> 01:04:09,080
Speaker 1: takes more thought, energy, It takes energy. It's hard, I mean.

1210
01:04:09,160 --> 01:04:11,880
Speaker 1: And people who value that are my audience. Like, if

1211
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:14,960
Speaker 1: you value that, come and subscribe to uncomfortable conversations. Be

1212
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 1: part of the team, be part of the journey. And

1213
01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 1: it is a tribe of the tribalist. It is a

1214
01:04:18,920 --> 01:04:20,960
Speaker 1: tribe of people who just want to talk about things

1215
01:04:21,240 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: without caring about whether or not they tick the correct

1216
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:26,680
Speaker 1: checkbox on a preset list of opinions that you're supposed

1217
01:04:26,680 --> 01:04:28,960
Speaker 1: to have in order to make you a good progressive

1218
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:30,880
Speaker 1: or a good conservative, Like I just want to be

1219
01:04:30,920 --> 01:04:32,440
Speaker 1: all over the map. I want to be as heterodox

1220
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:34,560
Speaker 1: as possible because I want to be as honest as possible,

1221
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 1: and neither side has a monopoly on the truth.

1222
01:04:38,080 --> 01:04:43,040
Speaker 2: Do you think that part of the success of your podcast,

1223
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:45,280
Speaker 2: your show is your.

1224
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 1: I'll call it amazing control of.

1225
01:04:54,600 --> 01:05:01,640
Speaker 2: Your literate brain and your ability to articulate in such a.

1226
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:07,960
Speaker 1: I won't call it polish, but quite beautiful way. Like

1227
01:05:08,040 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 1: you speak very well.

1228
01:05:09,600 --> 01:05:10,800
Speaker 2: I mean on one of the things I remember, listen

1229
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:12,520
Speaker 2: to me, right, I thought, this dude can put a

1230
01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:16,640
Speaker 2: sentence together. You know, your command of the English language

1231
01:05:16,680 --> 01:05:19,800
Speaker 2: is very good. But you do it in you don't

1232
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:21,680
Speaker 2: do it in a poshway or a pompous way. It's

1233
01:05:21,720 --> 01:05:24,600
Speaker 2: sort of just works. How important is that to you?

1234
01:05:24,800 --> 01:05:27,080
Speaker 1: Is everything? I mean, it's my bread and butter. Yeah,

1235
01:05:27,080 --> 01:05:30,000
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't hurt. Put it that way. Yeah,

1236
01:05:30,040 --> 01:05:33,840
Speaker 1: and un blessed because it's I mean, it's natural. It's natural.

1237
01:05:33,920 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I am really really grateful. There

1238
01:05:36,720 --> 01:05:39,000
Speaker 1: is so much to be grateful about. Grateful that I'm

1239
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:42,400
Speaker 1: born in Australia, you know, grateful for so many things.

1240
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:45,720
Speaker 1: But you know, whatever it is that you've got in

1241
01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:49,439
Speaker 1: your toolkit, that's that one thing that you can really

1242
01:05:49,560 --> 01:05:52,800
Speaker 1: lean on. If I could tell young people anything, I mean,

1243
01:05:52,800 --> 01:05:55,200
Speaker 1: it would be like, you know, I find the thing

1244
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:57,880
Speaker 1: that you I mean, it sounds facile, but it's only

1245
01:05:58,000 --> 01:05:59,800
Speaker 1: you have to reach middle age before you realize that

1246
01:05:59,840 --> 01:06:02,360
Speaker 1: it's profound, because it sounds stupid when you're in your twenties.

1247
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:05,200
Speaker 1: But like, find the one thing that you're a lot

1248
01:06:05,240 --> 01:06:08,520
Speaker 1: better at than other people are, and they'll always almost

1249
01:06:08,520 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 1: always be something. And then the trick is in monetizing that. Yeah, right,

1250
01:06:13,200 --> 01:06:15,800
Speaker 1: there might not be a job. You know what kind

1251
01:06:15,840 --> 01:06:19,120
Speaker 1: of a job is radio host? There aren't a lot

1252
01:06:19,120 --> 01:06:22,360
Speaker 1: of them around. It's a rarefied spot to get to,

1253
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:25,919
Speaker 1: especially like intellectual radio host who's required to have half

1254
01:06:25,960 --> 01:06:30,440
Speaker 1: hour long, you know, high fluton conversations about something. So

1255
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:34,320
Speaker 1: if you can't get that, then just make your own thing.

1256
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:37,680
Speaker 1: And that's what the podcast is basically. Now, I don't

1257
01:06:37,720 --> 01:06:39,720
Speaker 1: have to worry about whether or not management thinks it's

1258
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 1: okay to question Mardi Gras and gay pride and I

1259
01:06:43,680 --> 01:06:44,160
Speaker 1: don't care.

1260
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:47,720
Speaker 2: And I got to ask you a bit of a

1261
01:06:47,800 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 2: personal question, but are your parents still around?

1262
01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: Yes, dad's got Alzheimer's, so he's half around. What do

1263
01:06:54,160 --> 01:06:55,960
Speaker 1: they think of their son? Oh?

1264
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:58,560
Speaker 2: Very proud in doing these in doing what you're doing

1265
01:06:58,560 --> 01:06:59,560
Speaker 2: now and what you've done the past.

1266
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:02,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, very proud, very proud there. You know, dad was

1267
01:07:02,640 --> 01:07:04,920
Speaker 1: a Dad was born in a refugee camp in Switzerland

1268
01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:09,000
Speaker 1: during the war to Jewish parents, you know, and means

1269
01:07:09,040 --> 01:07:13,360
Speaker 1: he's Jewish, which means he's Jewish. Yeah, and so he

1270
01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:19,000
Speaker 1: has an incredible story of escape and his mum. Yeah.

1271
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:22,240
Speaker 1: He was raised in Paris and actually spent his seventh

1272
01:07:22,240 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: birthday in an orphanage in Paris when his mum was sick,

1273
01:07:24,600 --> 01:07:26,640
Speaker 1: but was raised when he was very young by a

1274
01:07:26,680 --> 01:07:29,320
Speaker 1: staunch Lutheran family in Switzerland who took him in out

1275
01:07:29,320 --> 01:07:31,240
Speaker 1: of the refugee camp. He was born in nineteen forty

1276
01:07:31,240 --> 01:07:36,720
Speaker 1: three and his mum marriged to scrounge up enough money

1277
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:39,760
Speaker 1: to bring him and his sister out to get out

1278
01:07:39,760 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: of Europe. And she had been a penniless, you know,

1279
01:07:43,640 --> 01:07:46,320
Speaker 1: Jewish refugee from Poland who spent the war fleeing the

1280
01:07:46,360 --> 01:07:50,000
Speaker 1: Nazis in France. And she got to the she got

1281
01:07:50,000 --> 01:07:52,440
Speaker 1: to the port in France where they were loading these

1282
01:07:52,520 --> 01:07:55,400
Speaker 1: huge refugee boats to go to the New World. And

1283
01:07:55,440 --> 01:07:58,960
Speaker 1: she went up to the clerk who was signing people in,

1284
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:01,560
Speaker 1: and the clerk said, you can go to the United States,

1285
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:04,920
Speaker 1: or Canada or Australia. And she had no understanding of geography,

1286
01:08:04,960 --> 01:08:07,680
Speaker 1: so she just said, which one's further from here. He

1287
01:08:07,760 --> 01:08:12,000
Speaker 1: put down Australia and they came out to Australia, and

1288
01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:15,800
Speaker 1: so Dad has always had an extreme reverence I would

1289
01:08:15,800 --> 01:08:21,519
Speaker 1: say for contrarianism, for pushing through. You know, he's got

1290
01:08:21,520 --> 01:08:24,559
Speaker 1: a refugee spirit. You know, it's someone who doesn't doesn't

1291
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:29,040
Speaker 1: take no. And Mum is just this fabulous font of

1292
01:08:29,280 --> 01:08:33,320
Speaker 1: love and wisdom who as long as I'm happy, she'll

1293
01:08:33,360 --> 01:08:34,439
Speaker 1: be happy.

1294
01:08:35,120 --> 01:08:41,000
Speaker 2: It's dedicated to her son's Yeah, yeah, and I mean

1295
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:42,040
Speaker 2: that's cool.

1296
01:08:42,360 --> 01:08:44,080
Speaker 1: Like at the end of the look, if I was

1297
01:08:44,160 --> 01:08:47,240
Speaker 1: making a living being a neo Nazi, she might she

1298
01:08:47,400 --> 01:08:49,799
Speaker 1: might draw the line. But I don't think I'm doing anything.

1299
01:08:50,240 --> 01:08:54,240
Speaker 1: You know, if in any other scenario there would be

1300
01:08:54,400 --> 01:08:57,920
Speaker 1: respect for people who I mean, look, I suppose we've

1301
01:08:57,920 --> 01:09:00,240
Speaker 1: always been a minority, like the kind of Chris for

1302
01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:03,080
Speaker 1: Hitchens as of the world, the people who are always

1303
01:09:03,120 --> 01:09:05,600
Speaker 1: trying to find the angle that is against what the

1304
01:09:05,640 --> 01:09:10,720
Speaker 1: mainstream think. But it's an honorable tradition and it's just

1305
01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:14,240
Speaker 1: upsetting to me that now progressives who think they're on

1306
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:18,520
Speaker 1: the right side of history, you have inherited a censoriousness

1307
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:21,880
Speaker 1: and an intolerance which traditionally was associated with the right.

1308
01:09:22,360 --> 01:09:24,160
Speaker 1: Like you know, the right bangs on a lot about

1309
01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:27,720
Speaker 1: free speech and cancel culture. And wokeness these days. But

1310
01:09:27,800 --> 01:09:31,760
Speaker 1: it's pretty hypocritical because you know, when Monty Python was

1311
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:34,040
Speaker 1: releasing The Life of Brian, it wasn't the left that

1312
01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:36,200
Speaker 1: was calling for it to be canceled. It was the

1313
01:09:36,240 --> 01:09:39,640
Speaker 1: religious conservatives, you know, McCarthyism in the United States, the

1314
01:09:39,680 --> 01:09:43,040
Speaker 1: anti communist crackdowns and the witch hunts. That was the right.

1315
01:09:43,200 --> 01:09:47,280
Speaker 1: The right mastered cancel culture long before the left got

1316
01:09:47,280 --> 01:09:49,879
Speaker 1: wind of it. And it's just in the past decade

1317
01:09:49,960 --> 01:09:54,200
Speaker 1: or so I suppose that the left has unfortunately taken

1318
01:09:54,280 --> 01:09:57,080
Speaker 1: up the tactics of the old right in creating a

1319
01:09:57,160 --> 01:09:59,120
Speaker 1: kind of a purity test and like, these are the

1320
01:09:59,160 --> 01:10:01,760
Speaker 1: things that we believe, we hold sacred, and you know,

1321
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:04,040
Speaker 1: there is a certain sanctity around the opinions that you're

1322
01:10:04,040 --> 01:10:07,759
Speaker 1: supposed to have about racial inequality, about gender inequality, about

1323
01:10:07,760 --> 01:10:12,519
Speaker 1: gender identity, and if you transgress those, now the left

1324
01:10:12,600 --> 01:10:15,479
Speaker 1: goes batshit crazy, the same way that the right used

1325
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:17,720
Speaker 1: to go crazy if you transgressed, you know, if you

1326
01:10:17,720 --> 01:10:20,120
Speaker 1: were offensive or if you were blasphemous in some way.

1327
01:10:20,520 --> 01:10:22,479
Speaker 1: I just think the volume needs to be turned down

1328
01:10:23,000 --> 01:10:25,639
Speaker 1: all over and we need to rediscover a small lel

1329
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:30,160
Speaker 1: liberal tolerance towards a plurality of views and try to

1330
01:10:30,200 --> 01:10:34,400
Speaker 1: cast the net of acceptable conversation as wide as possible. Honestly,

1331
01:10:34,560 --> 01:10:35,960
Speaker 1: that's the only way we're going to solve the problems

1332
01:10:35,960 --> 01:10:38,360
Speaker 1: of the twenty first entry. Tone it down, just well,

1333
01:10:38,560 --> 01:10:42,320
Speaker 1: tone it down and expand the expand the landscape. Like,

1334
01:10:42,920 --> 01:10:45,479
Speaker 1: the twenty first century is going to be really, really tricky,

1335
01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:51,000
Speaker 1: the intersection of artificial intelligence, climate chaos and the rise

1336
01:10:51,040 --> 01:10:53,800
Speaker 1: of China and disruptions to liberal democracy and the alternative

1337
01:10:53,840 --> 01:10:56,639
Speaker 1: path of you know, whatever new world order putin wants

1338
01:10:56,680 --> 01:10:59,840
Speaker 1: to introduce, or dictatorships, dictatorships in general, Like, it's going

1339
01:10:59,920 --> 01:11:04,800
Speaker 1: to be hard to manage, and you can't know what

1340
01:11:04,840 --> 01:11:07,639
Speaker 1: the correct path is unless you have the maximum number

1341
01:11:07,640 --> 01:11:10,400
Speaker 1: of voices all arguing about it and chipping in so

1342
01:11:10,439 --> 01:11:13,360
Speaker 1: that you can grope towards what the best course is.

1343
01:11:14,040 --> 01:11:16,439
Speaker 1: If you carve out you know, if you make it

1344
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:21,720
Speaker 1: forbidden to talk about race or sex or sexuality or

1345
01:11:21,720 --> 01:11:25,559
Speaker 1: whatever it might be in advance, If you earmark a

1346
01:11:25,560 --> 01:11:29,360
Speaker 1: certain set of opinions as being beyond the pale before

1347
01:11:29,360 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 1: you even talk about them, how are you going to

1348
01:11:31,360 --> 01:11:31,920
Speaker 1: know what's true.

1349
01:11:32,240 --> 01:11:34,600
Speaker 2: Well, that's the greatest form of censorship. I want my

1350
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:36,800
Speaker 2: last question, I'd just like to ask you if you

1351
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:39,439
Speaker 2: don't mind, of course, and I haven't had anybody ever

1352
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:41,160
Speaker 2: asked this question of for a long time.

1353
01:11:42,439 --> 01:11:43,280
Speaker 1: Do you think.

1354
01:11:45,160 --> 01:11:50,360
Speaker 2: That Australia should have a bill of rights for its

1355
01:11:50,360 --> 01:11:52,960
Speaker 2: citizens similar to what they have in the USA and

1356
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:55,000
Speaker 2: talk about things like freedom of speech and et cetera,

1357
01:11:55,000 --> 01:11:55,360
Speaker 2: et cetera.

1358
01:11:55,960 --> 01:11:58,479
Speaker 1: I go back and forth on it. At the moment time,

1359
01:11:58,479 --> 01:12:01,240
Speaker 1: I know, because at the moment if you built, if

1360
01:12:01,280 --> 01:12:02,680
Speaker 1: you wrote a bill of rights.

1361
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 2: A modern bill of rights, should say not the American

1362
01:12:04,439 --> 01:12:06,080
Speaker 2: Bill of Rights because it's out of date.

1363
01:12:06,200 --> 01:12:08,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, But if you wrote it now, then the social

1364
01:12:08,680 --> 01:12:11,240
Speaker 1: justice warriors would get in there and they'd make everyone

1365
01:12:11,320 --> 01:12:14,439
Speaker 1: have a right to not have their gender questioned, which

1366
01:12:14,439 --> 01:12:18,040
Speaker 1: would mean that people, you know, for example, feminists like

1367
01:12:18,120 --> 01:12:21,599
Speaker 1: Jermaine Greer, you know, or comedians like Barry Humphries who

1368
01:12:21,600 --> 01:12:24,240
Speaker 1: took the position that there's such a thing as biological

1369
01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:26,800
Speaker 1: males and biological females, could be in breach of the

1370
01:12:26,800 --> 01:12:30,040
Speaker 1: Bill of rights. But if what you mean is a

1371
01:12:30,080 --> 01:12:38,320
Speaker 1: bill of rights that enshrines freedom of speech in some respects,

1372
01:12:38,360 --> 01:12:42,000
Speaker 1: I feel like the absolutism of the American approach causes

1373
01:12:42,040 --> 01:12:43,320
Speaker 1: more problems than it solves.

1374
01:12:44,040 --> 01:12:46,519
Speaker 2: The reason I say it is because during the COVID period,

1375
01:12:47,720 --> 01:12:51,439
Speaker 2: I kept thinking to myself, we governments can actually do

1376
01:12:51,479 --> 01:12:54,960
Speaker 2: whatever they want, and I thought it was we don't

1377
01:12:55,000 --> 01:12:56,599
Speaker 2: really have a bill of rights here. We have there

1378
01:12:56,640 --> 01:12:58,080
Speaker 2: is a legislation which says you can't do this, you

1379
01:12:58,120 --> 01:13:01,799
Speaker 2: can't do that. We to protect people's rights. There's rights

1380
01:13:01,880 --> 01:13:08,240
Speaker 2: protection legislation which sort of therefore by definition is sort

1381
01:13:08,280 --> 01:13:08,599
Speaker 2: of like.

1382
01:13:09,120 --> 01:13:10,840
Speaker 1: A number of bills or bills of rights.

1383
01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:14,840
Speaker 2: But during the COPIAR I thought of myself, there we

1384
01:13:14,960 --> 01:13:20,200
Speaker 2: don't have one in Australia, and my rights are being

1385
01:13:21,439 --> 01:13:27,479
Speaker 2: determined by other parties based on epidemiological studies and models

1386
01:13:27,520 --> 01:13:29,680
Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff, which to something that

1387
01:13:29,800 --> 01:13:32,600
Speaker 2: I didn't agree with. I'm talking about the modeling, the

1388
01:13:32,600 --> 01:13:34,720
Speaker 2: mathematics of the modeling. I'm talking about them. I'm not

1389
01:13:34,760 --> 01:13:38,360
Speaker 2: talking about protecting people from getting COVID. I'm talking about

1390
01:13:38,400 --> 01:13:41,599
Speaker 2: how they modeled these things, because models, by definition always wrong.

1391
01:13:41,680 --> 01:13:43,439
Speaker 1: You're talking to somebody, by the way, who wrote an

1392
01:13:43,479 --> 01:13:45,400
Speaker 1: opinion piece at the end of twenty twenty one in

1393
01:13:45,400 --> 01:13:48,040
Speaker 1: the City Morning Herald saying, you know, is it time

1394
01:13:48,040 --> 01:13:51,360
Speaker 1: to start thinking of having a national conversation about the

1395
01:13:51,520 --> 01:13:54,040
Speaker 1: human rights implications. So I don't know that, but that's

1396
01:13:54,160 --> 01:13:56,559
Speaker 1: that's my position. I literally, you know, I literally wrote

1397
01:13:56,560 --> 01:13:59,080
Speaker 1: the article. It's at a time when it was extremely

1398
01:13:59,160 --> 01:14:03,040
Speaker 1: unpopular because everybody felt like that was killing grandma. But

1399
01:14:03,200 --> 01:14:07,759
Speaker 1: I interviewed on my absuit right well, at the time

1400
01:14:08,040 --> 01:14:09,760
Speaker 1: at the top, this is the end of twenty twenty one,

1401
01:14:09,800 --> 01:14:12,800
Speaker 1: when we were basically all vaccinated, and we still had

1402
01:14:12,920 --> 01:14:17,400
Speaker 1: ridiculous scenarios like a woman who I interviewed who flew

1403
01:14:17,439 --> 01:14:20,400
Speaker 1: from Melbourne to Adelaide with her family to see her family,

1404
01:14:20,439 --> 01:14:22,280
Speaker 1: with her little kids, to see her family for the

1405
01:14:22,320 --> 01:14:26,280
Speaker 1: first time since the lockdowns began. There was one person

1406
01:14:26,320 --> 01:14:29,479
Speaker 1: on her flight who tested positive for COVID the next day,

1407
01:14:29,920 --> 01:14:32,479
Speaker 1: so the police came to her hotel in Adelaide and

1408
01:14:32,520 --> 01:14:34,760
Speaker 1: took the whole family and locked them up and wanted

1409
01:14:34,760 --> 01:14:36,280
Speaker 1: to lock them up for two weeks. And after five

1410
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:38,759
Speaker 1: days she made such a fuss that she was driven

1411
01:14:38,800 --> 01:14:41,160
Speaker 1: in police convoy to the border of South Australia and

1412
01:14:41,200 --> 01:14:43,519
Speaker 1: dumped out into the border of Victoria onto the Victorian

1413
01:14:43,600 --> 01:14:47,559
Speaker 1: side of the border after having been incarcerated for five days.

1414
01:14:47,840 --> 01:14:49,960
Speaker 1: All of them were COVID negative, but just because she'd

1415
01:14:49,960 --> 01:14:51,799
Speaker 1: been on the same plane as someone who had COVID.

1416
01:14:51,920 --> 01:14:54,439
Speaker 1: And I used that as a way of saying, like,

1417
01:14:54,760 --> 01:14:57,000
Speaker 1: at what point do we start asking do we start

1418
01:14:57,080 --> 01:15:00,200
Speaker 1: saying the human rights of this woman are more important

1419
01:15:00,439 --> 01:15:05,000
Speaker 1: than whatever epidemiological solution you thought you were achieving in

1420
01:15:05,080 --> 01:15:08,519
Speaker 1: terms of tracking and tracing that that disease. So, yeah,

1421
01:15:08,600 --> 01:15:10,559
Speaker 1: I mean, or.

1422
01:15:10,520 --> 01:15:13,000
Speaker 2: Is it a conversation that maybe perhaps maybe not, somebody's

1423
01:15:13,000 --> 01:15:14,920
Speaker 2: just going to get his the bill. Maybe that's probably

1424
01:15:14,960 --> 01:15:17,080
Speaker 2: a certain way putting it. But should there be a

1425
01:15:17,080 --> 01:15:18,240
Speaker 2: conversation around this.

1426
01:15:18,240 --> 01:15:20,439
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there would certainly be a conversation. Well, which

1427
01:15:20,600 --> 01:15:22,560
Speaker 1: is offered it? No, that's true. I mean, yeah, I

1428
01:15:22,880 --> 01:15:24,559
Speaker 1: would have. I mean, we need to get ahead of

1429
01:15:25,120 --> 01:15:27,080
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. We need to get ahead of AI.

1430
01:15:27,240 --> 01:15:29,920
Speaker 1: We need to get ahead of the next pandemic which

1431
01:15:29,920 --> 01:15:32,879
Speaker 1: will come and it'll be worse, I mean a pandemic.

1432
01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:37,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, the next one always will be worse because they adapt, right, right,

1433
01:15:37,720 --> 01:15:42,120
Speaker 2: because it's there to control the host exactly, that's right,

1434
01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:43,479
Speaker 2: So it will do it.

1435
01:15:43,640 --> 01:15:45,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and there may be smaller ones, but there

1436
01:15:45,640 --> 01:15:48,120
Speaker 1: will be bigger ones. And yeah, so I think that

1437
01:15:48,160 --> 01:15:50,680
Speaker 1: would be a good idea having some kind of a

1438
01:15:50,800 --> 01:15:53,840
Speaker 1: national round table where you know people could come together

1439
01:15:54,000 --> 01:15:55,760
Speaker 1: or do you think it's not possible? No, I think

1440
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:57,800
Speaker 1: it's possible. Do do you think it's possible to settle

1441
01:15:57,840 --> 01:15:58,200
Speaker 1: on something?

1442
01:15:58,200 --> 01:15:58,400
Speaker 2: Though?

1443
01:16:00,800 --> 01:16:03,920
Speaker 1: I have to have faith in democracy, Mark, we're grown up.

1444
01:16:04,040 --> 01:16:05,880
Speaker 2: So but do you think it's going to be Anthony

1445
01:16:05,920 --> 01:16:10,920
Speaker 2: ABERNIZI or it's going to be the you know, is it?

1446
01:16:11,680 --> 01:16:13,040
Speaker 1: Is it going to be Chris Means? I mean is

1447
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:13,880
Speaker 1: what do you think?

1448
01:16:13,920 --> 01:16:16,720
Speaker 2: Do you think that we have the capacity to do

1449
01:16:16,920 --> 01:16:17,360
Speaker 2: to sales?

1450
01:16:17,439 --> 01:16:18,920
Speaker 1: I think you could have. Yeah, I think you could

1451
01:16:18,960 --> 01:16:21,120
Speaker 1: have a national cabinet where the Premier sit down with

1452
01:16:22,000 --> 01:16:25,000
Speaker 1: the Attorney General, with the federal Attorney General and Health

1453
01:16:25,040 --> 01:16:27,800
Speaker 1: Minister and Prime minister, and you get academics together, and

1454
01:16:27,840 --> 01:16:30,040
Speaker 1: you get human rights people together and you just hammer

1455
01:16:30,080 --> 01:16:32,080
Speaker 1: out even if it's not a Bill of rights, a

1456
01:16:32,120 --> 01:16:35,800
Speaker 1: set of a one pager about like a discussion page. Yeah,

1457
01:16:35,840 --> 01:16:37,920
Speaker 1: this is what we expect as Australians. This is what

1458
01:16:37,960 --> 01:16:39,960
Speaker 1: we expect of our government, sort of like a code

1459
01:16:39,960 --> 01:16:41,559
Speaker 1: of conduct. Yeah, exactly, that's right.

1460
01:16:41,600 --> 01:16:43,439
Speaker 2: As opposed to a bill where you can you know,

1461
01:16:43,479 --> 01:16:45,439
Speaker 2: you can you know you can talk about that. I'm

1462
01:16:45,439 --> 01:16:47,200
Speaker 2: not going to answer that question because I've got a bill,

1463
01:16:47,280 --> 01:16:48,000
Speaker 2: there's a been somebody.

1464
01:16:48,240 --> 01:16:51,120
Speaker 1: Well exactly, yeah, that's right, I mean, it's it's everything

1465
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:55,040
Speaker 1: is messy. Basically, I think the only solution is conversations.

1466
01:16:55,360 --> 01:16:57,240
Speaker 1: I don't think any bill of rights or any I mean,

1467
01:16:57,280 --> 01:16:59,880
Speaker 1: constitutions are worth the worth the paper they're written on

1468
01:17:00,240 --> 01:17:03,679
Speaker 1: unless they're enforced by courts, and courts aren't worth their

1469
01:17:03,760 --> 01:17:06,320
Speaker 1: salt unless they're backed up by the good faith of

1470
01:17:06,320 --> 01:17:08,960
Speaker 1: the political process. And the political process isn't worth its

1471
01:17:08,960 --> 01:17:12,000
Speaker 1: salt unless the military obeys what the politicians tell it

1472
01:17:12,040 --> 01:17:14,160
Speaker 1: to do. And you know, at the end of the day,

1473
01:17:14,320 --> 01:17:19,120
Speaker 1: everything is a conversation. Everything, everything is trust as a story,

1474
01:17:19,280 --> 01:17:22,759
Speaker 1: really right, It's like, you know what's money? You know, money,

1475
01:17:22,840 --> 01:17:26,439
Speaker 1: money is nothing money, money, money is relationships, right, money

1476
01:17:26,479 --> 01:17:30,519
Speaker 1: is you know, investments in things. So yeah, to me,

1477
01:17:31,439 --> 01:17:34,160
Speaker 1: looking for that one thing that's going to save us,

1478
01:17:34,200 --> 01:17:36,040
Speaker 1: like the Bill of rights or something is a bit

1479
01:17:36,040 --> 01:17:39,920
Speaker 1: of a fool's Errand like my mission is to have

1480
01:17:40,080 --> 01:17:43,200
Speaker 1: a platform uncomfortable conversations where people can have conversations about

1481
01:17:43,280 --> 01:17:46,320
Speaker 1: uncomfortable things in ways that are as inclusive and as

1482
01:17:46,360 --> 01:17:49,960
Speaker 1: interesting and satisfied people's intellectual curiosity as much as possible,

1483
01:17:50,080 --> 01:17:51,800
Speaker 1: and I just hope that that is one piece of

1484
01:17:51,800 --> 01:17:55,120
Speaker 1: a larger mosaic, like one piece of a jigsaw that

1485
01:17:55,200 --> 01:17:58,920
Speaker 1: can contribute to a sane and prosperous future. It's not

1486
01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:01,640
Speaker 1: gonna be the whole answer, but I'm pretty convinced that

1487
01:18:01,640 --> 01:18:05,400
Speaker 1: that landscape of having conversations in an honest and generous

1488
01:18:05,439 --> 01:18:09,280
Speaker 1: way is the easiest. Like that's the path of least

1489
01:18:09,320 --> 01:18:13,000
Speaker 1: resistance to our success as a culture. Josh Epps, to

1490
01:18:13,120 --> 01:18:15,960
Speaker 1: use a controversial word, I loved it. Good on you, mate,

1491
01:18:16,000 --> 01:18:18,679
Speaker 1: Thank you