Speaker 1: Hi, my Boris, and this is straight talk. When they
Speaker 1: write the book about Cancel Culture, there will be a
Speaker 1: page for this moment, which was Josh's welcome to Everything
Speaker 1: is messy. I think the only solution is conversations. To
Speaker 1: be on the right side of history at the moment,
Speaker 1: you have to adhere to a certain set of social
Speaker 1: justice dogmas or orthodoxies, and if you're stray from those,
Speaker 1: you get whacked. You're always asking the tricky questions. Mark,
Speaker 1: I mean, something's happening to our brains and the way
Speaker 1: that they're being hijacked that is making it increasingly difficult
Speaker 1: to have contrarian conversations. I honestly, I think that's the
Speaker 1: only way we're going to solve the problems of the
Speaker 1: twenty first century. Mark.
Speaker 2: You have been on Joe Rogan Show six or seven times,
Speaker 2: I can't remember now.
Speaker 1: Seven, don't short something?
Speaker 2: What the fuck's going on there? Josh Sheps, welcome to
Speaker 2: straight Talk for as such. And it's very nice to
Speaker 2: meet you, and actually a nice to meet you in person.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, I need.
Speaker 2: To tell you that I used to really love listening
Speaker 2: to you when you were relieving others in the morning and.
Speaker 1: Relieving others in the morning. When I was jerking off
Speaker 1: other gentlemen didn't morning six am, my alarm would go off.
Speaker 1: I'd go down to the bar, the local public restrooms
Speaker 1: and relieve a couple of frustrated thanks me or a locum.
Speaker 1: I was well. I mean, I did the breakfast show
Speaker 1: on ABC Radio Sydnet he for and I so listened
Speaker 1: to it a number of years, and.
Speaker 2: I see myself the grace respect at the ABC. Please
Speaker 2: don't get shitty with me. This guy's bloody smart. He's
Speaker 2: brought a bit of intellect to the show.
Speaker 1: In other words, it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't like like, literally, you know what I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the headlines or whatever. You actually put a bit of
Speaker 2: look like you're putting some research into Look like you're
Speaker 2: putting your own research into it.
Speaker 1: To me, Yeah, yeah, is okay, absolutely. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just I want to do the things that interest me,
Speaker 1: and I think that if you're actually interested in something,
Speaker 1: and then other people will follow you because your intellectual
Speaker 1: curiosity will carry them along. And it's way. There's nothing
Speaker 1: more delightful than turning on something that you expect to
Speaker 1: be one thing and then it's just slightly different or
Speaker 1: it's slightly skewing. I never thought about that way, or
Speaker 1: I never didn't know about about that, So it's now
Speaker 1: I've never been the type of person who joins an
Speaker 1: organization or an institution in order to just follow rules
Speaker 1: and do things exactly the way that I'm told to,
Speaker 1: because I think that's just a bit stale. It is
Speaker 1: because it's boring for you, boring for them, not boring
Speaker 1: for that. I mean, yes, of course is boring for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's some self interest in pursuing my
Speaker 1: own interests, but I think it's boring for the audience.
Speaker 1: I think I think there's and I think something that's
Speaker 1: happening in the media at the moment we can get
Speaker 1: to this is that a lot of stuff sounds basically
Speaker 1: the same with the same kinds of opinions that you
Speaker 1: know are the correct opinions to have about sensitive issues.
Speaker 1: So there's a whole whole suite of topics that if
Speaker 1: you turn on the ABC or you turn on Sky
Speaker 1: News after Dark or Fox News or something like that,
Speaker 1: pretty confident you could jot on the back of a
Speaker 1: napkin before anyone starts talking what they're going to sound
Speaker 1: like when they're talking about climate change or transgender athletes
Speaker 1: or you know, gay pride or Marti Gras or women's
Speaker 1: quality or Black Lives Matter or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And I'm just more interested in following my own curiosity
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out what's true and paying no
Speaker 1: heed to the way that you're supposed to talk about things.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't always mesh perfectly into an institution, you know,
Speaker 1: an institutional environment. It didn't for me.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about that then, since you've gone to
Speaker 2: that territory I listened to because my mum listened to
Speaker 2: the ABC and my mother had the abacy on all day,
Speaker 2: and I can go back to the ABC.
Speaker 1: What's Adam's saying, the mathematician Adam Spencer, Adam sincer, great guy.
Speaker 2: And it's sort of to me that the ABC stopp
Speaker 2: being the ABC went sort of around about when he left.
Speaker 1: To me, it changed, well, it became more the same.
Speaker 2: Issues were being talked about, which were outside the norm.
Speaker 2: There issues you just mentioned, some general quality, you know,
Speaker 2: no Palestine Israel, you know, and taking a position that
Speaker 2: they're not they're not in the middle, they're taking a
Speaker 2: position so they're not definitely one, they're definitely not reporting
Speaker 2: the news as a news as a as as as
Speaker 2: unbiased news. There's a bias, which is fine. I mean
Speaker 2: there's a bias everywhere, but they were expressing their bias
Speaker 2: in the news prior to that, around the Adam Spencer
Speaker 2: period and way beyond before that.
Speaker 1: It was very down the middle. To me.
Speaker 2: It was very not conservative base, but straightforward news about
Speaker 2: what's what's actually happened, without a view, without an opinion.
Speaker 2: There's no opinion associated with more about facts. And I
Speaker 2: think today, like you just said, I pretty much know
Speaker 2: what I'm going to get, just like when I listen to.
Speaker 1: Sky News at.
Speaker 2: Nine PM, I know exactly where I'm going to get
Speaker 2: it out of them too, so much so Josh that
Speaker 2: what I do is I still have the ABC in
Speaker 2: the morning and I get my.
Speaker 1: Full belly of.
Speaker 2: What would ordinarily be associated with the left and other
Speaker 2: groups that sort of fit within the left, Greens, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I get my full belly of that, and then in
Speaker 2: the night I put on Sky News so I can
Speaker 2: get my full belly.
Speaker 1: Of the right. You can go to bed sufficiently outraged
Speaker 1: at the.
Speaker 2: World, and then I can know it well, just sort
Speaker 2: of sometimes I am. But mostly what I do is
Speaker 2: I'm balanced, and I feel as though, well the news world,
Speaker 2: I justify one against the other. They're both sort of
Speaker 2: so far out on the edge of the spectrum that
Speaker 2: there's not that much in the middle anymore. Because I
Speaker 2: get that stuff in the middle. I get that fed
Speaker 2: to me by Instagram, Facebook, all the other mediums, and
Speaker 2: I know the news before it before its on.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, I mean, as we all do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's immensely frustrating to me to hear you say that
Speaker 1: that you know, you know what you're going to get
Speaker 1: from both sides, and therefore you have to put up
Speaker 1: with this level of kind of tacit unconscious bias that's
Speaker 1: coming from places that you ought to be able to trust,
Speaker 1: because I mean, what I'm trying to do in uncomfortable
Speaker 1: conversations and what I know you do every day is
Speaker 1: basically wrestle with big issues in ways that disregard the
Speaker 1: trip wires and the landmines and allow myself the punishment
Speaker 1: and the punishment I don't care about the punishment obviously,
Speaker 1: given that I ended up being sort of you know,
Speaker 1: my radio show ended up falling apart that I can't
Speaker 1: stomach the idea that we're to give away our ability
Speaker 1: to have complicated, uncomfortable conversations about the most important problems
Speaker 1: that we face in the twenty first century to people
Speaker 1: who have their thumb on the scale one way or another,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to individually try to grope our
Speaker 1: way towards whatever is true or rational or reasonable on
Speaker 1: the base of the on the basis of these two
Speaker 1: sort of biased interpretations that are coming to us through
Speaker 1: their own prisms, Like why not just do away with
Speaker 1: the prisms altogether and just get straight to the point
Speaker 1: and talk to each other like we're grown ups, and say,
Speaker 1: if I say something that comes across the wrong way
Speaker 1: or that defends you, tell me why it's wrong, tell
Speaker 1: me what's wrong about it, tell me where I've erd.
Speaker 1: Don't play a game of gotcha, don't try to get
Speaker 1: me fired because I said the wrong thing. There's so
Speaker 1: much timidity, there's so much caution, there's so much risk
Speaker 1: aversion in the media at the moment that I think,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the bias is not intentional bias.
Speaker 1: It's just it's coming from the soup that we swim in,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a part of this is to do
Speaker 1: with the welcome reaction to what had previously been a
Speaker 1: fairly straight, white male profession of journalism. Right. So, you know,
Speaker 1: over the past ten or twenty years, there's been a
Speaker 1: push for more diversity. I think that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: I think more people of color and more women should
Speaker 1: be in newsrooms. At the same time, they have to
Speaker 1: adhere to the original founding principles of institutional journalism, which
Speaker 1: is objectivity. You know, you can't come in saying I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell my own story, or like, as an
Speaker 1: Arab woman, I'm going to focus on Gaza in this
Speaker 1: particular way. No, no, no, as an Arab woman, you're
Speaker 1: going to be a bloody journalist and you're going to
Speaker 1: do your job as a journalist. That's what a newsroom
Speaker 1: is about. You're not going to come in and say,
Speaker 1: you know, say, well, you know you have to see
Speaker 1: things from my perspective. No, we're not going for perspectives. Yes,
Speaker 1: they'll always be biased. Yes, we always bring things to
Speaker 1: the table. No one has a position in heaven sit
Speaker 1: standing on the clouds looking at everything objectively. That's impossible.
Speaker 1: But you can use that as an aspiration. You can
Speaker 1: rely on facts, you can say I'm not going to
Speaker 1: allow my own background to influence this. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a fundamental tension between the desire for objectivity on
Speaker 1: the one hand, and this newer social justice desire to
Speaker 1: tell broader truths with a capital T that take down
Speaker 1: the man and that achieve some social justice in a point.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what people are smelling at the moment,
Speaker 1: that everything seems to be loaded, at least in the
Speaker 1: left wing press, with a social justice point instead of
Speaker 1: just giving people the facts. And I think we're just
Speaker 1: going to have to go through an adjustment period where
Speaker 1: newsrooms get back to being about the facts and then
Speaker 1: on the content side. So content is like the fancy
Speaker 1: broadcasting term for anything that's not journalism, right. So, I
Speaker 1: mean my show on the ABC was not a news show.
Speaker 1: It was on ABC Radio Sydney. It was talkback. We'd
Speaker 1: sometimes talk to chefs about cooking, we'd sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about everything, anything and everything, And in that sphere,
Speaker 1: I actually think there should be more tolerance of and
Speaker 1: respect for different opinions and having the opinion of the
Speaker 1: presenter or the hosts come through. I don't think I
Speaker 1: should be required to be as objective as the person
Speaker 1: who's delivering the seven pm news if I'm hosting a
Speaker 1: three hour long daily talkback radio show. So I think
Speaker 1: at the moment, everything's in flux. People don't know where
Speaker 1: they stand. Journalists feel like they're allowed to bring their
Speaker 1: whole selves to work and tell their own stories in
Speaker 1: ways that undermine objectivity, but commentators at the same time
Speaker 1: feel impeded from going out on a limb and talking
Speaker 1: about things in a bullshit free manner because they're afraid
Speaker 1: that they're going to trigger a tripwire and all the
Speaker 1: hell's going to break loose because they said the wrong
Speaker 1: thing and they offended the social justice dogmas that they're
Speaker 1: supposed to adhere to. But how did that happen? How
Speaker 1: did I don't know?
Speaker 2: I'm not a You may well be closer to be
Speaker 2: an ABC story in yourself than I am. But what
Speaker 2: happened at the ABC, for example, that created the current outcome?
Speaker 2: And I just want to say this as well, Equally,
Speaker 2: Sky News at a certain time of night has felt
Speaker 2: the need to defend the other side, the other argument,
Speaker 2: and there they are as they prosecute equally as hard,
Speaker 2: but are on the opposite side of the fence.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, or harder. I mean, sky News has less
Speaker 1: fidelity to I don't want this to seem like I'm
Speaker 1: ragging on the ABC, because I actually think that the
Speaker 1: public broadcaster is in a pickle. Is a national treasure
Speaker 1: and needs to be sort of protected and defended. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it is currently so cowed,
Speaker 1: I think, and so fearful and so cautious is because
Speaker 1: it's under constant attack from disingenuous conservative politicians and Sky
Speaker 1: News figures who are always on about how biased the
Speaker 1: ABC is. Right, there has to be some space for
Speaker 1: the ABC to be able to stand up and have
Speaker 1: a backbone and go no, no, no, like just quit it.
Speaker 1: The ABC still does great investigative journalism. It still has
Speaker 1: great journalists who are working there. I think that the
Speaker 1: how did it get here is really complicated and has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with changing viewing patterns, changing listening patterns.
Speaker 1: The democratization of the media, social media, YouTube like that
Speaker 1: stuff has meant that people no longer are tethered to
Speaker 1: a public broadcast of the way that they might have
Speaker 1: been even just ten years ago, let alone thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: And so now that you can get so much of
Speaker 1: your information from Joe Rogan or Peter Attire or whoever
Speaker 1: it might be, or a Josh Steps or Mark Burris,
Speaker 1: it's there's just more choice. And so then the airBC goes, well,
Speaker 1: what is the purpose of the ABC, And the purpose
Speaker 1: of the ABC really fundamentally should be to create a
Speaker 1: town square in which everybody feels like they're being given
Speaker 1: a fair shake, in which everybody feels like their voice
Speaker 1: is being heard, in which the most important issues of
Speaker 1: the day can be wrestled with without fear or favor.
Speaker 1: But that's going to piss people off by definition, because
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a whole bunch of voices. If you're
Speaker 1: actually doing that, then you wouldn't just be in lockstep
Speaker 1: with I don't know, just to pick an example of
Speaker 1: one fight that I got into with ABC management with
Speaker 1: Marti Gras for example, you know, I was in a
Speaker 1: position where I'm an openly gay guy. I'm married to
Speaker 1: a guy I was I wrote an ophead for the
Speaker 1: Sydney Morning Herald during World Pride, which was a big
Speaker 1: gay pride event last year. During Mardi Gras, just sort
Speaker 1: of I was just sort of saying, like, will there
Speaker 1: ever come a point at which we can turn the
Speaker 1: volume down instead of turning a volume up on our
Speaker 1: identitarian difference, like when it's not that important, Like how
Speaker 1: much equality will we have to get before we don't
Speaker 1: have to? You know, wear aarseless chaps and sit astride
Speaker 1: a giant inflatable penis on Oxford Street, you know, smothered
Speaker 1: in baby oil with waxed chests. You know, does there
Speaker 1: ever come a point at which we're just like, what
Speaker 1: I have achieved I mean through no thanks to me,
Speaker 1: but through the through giving thanks to the the early
Speaker 1: gay rights pioneers, the gay activists of the stonewaller of
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, what I've achieved is that everything
Speaker 1: they dreamed of, which is I've got a boring life.
Speaker 1: It's unremarkable, you know what I mean. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: I say, I tell someone I'm gay and I'm married
Speaker 1: to a guy, and they're like, okay, whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: really don't beat me up, you know. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: it's very privileged. I'm middle class, I'm white. Whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's different if you're you know, if you're growing
Speaker 1: up in a in a Muslim Australian household in the
Speaker 1: southwest of Sydney. But for me, we've achieved everything that
Speaker 1: we wanted to achieve. So my article was basically just saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, will therever come a point at which we
Speaker 1: actually achieve greater individual flourishing, greater sexual fulfillment by not
Speaker 1: really caring about labels and just falling in love with
Speaker 1: who you fall in love with, getting your rocks off
Speaker 1: with heavy, who you want, whoever you want to get
Speaker 1: your rocks off with, and if you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not impro So I tried to publish. I tried
Speaker 1: to publish this thing. And when you're a host, when
Speaker 1: you have a contract at any organization, any media organization,
Speaker 1: you have to get sign off from management for any
Speaker 1: external work to be approved. Where was it being published
Speaker 1: in the any Morning Herald right right? And this was
Speaker 1: going to be the opinion piece on the weekend of
Speaker 1: gay Pride that would have thrown a face. It was
Speaker 1: not bed yet and you know, it went all the
Speaker 1: way up the chain and management wouldn't allow it to
Speaker 1: be published because they said that hosts can't take positions
Speaker 1: on controversial cultural issues, right, which in principle is I
Speaker 1: suppose fair enough, it's a public broadcaster. You want me
Speaker 1: to see them impartial. You're not there to be an
Speaker 1: appearance of bias. The problem is, at the time the
Speaker 1: ABC was the official broadcast partner of World Pride and
Speaker 1: of Mardi Gras. In the lobby, they're a gigantic rainbow flag.
Speaker 1: Every other presenter, every other host on the station, all
Speaker 1: of them not gay or not to the best of
Speaker 1: my knowledge, is singing the praises of how fabulous it is.
Speaker 1: You know, join us tonight for our live streaming coverage
Speaker 1: of the parade. Every second promo is about the parade,
Speaker 1: is about how fabulous it is. We've got all these
Speaker 1: guests of diverse genders and sexualities and whatever. The one
Speaker 1: gay host is not allowed to pipe up and go
Speaker 1: do we really need it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So it struck me that it's not that hosts can't
Speaker 1: have an opinion about culturally provocative issues. It's just that
Speaker 1: it has to be management's position. Yeah, it has to
Speaker 1: be the right position. You have to be on the
Speaker 1: right side of history. Why does Josh keep wanting to
Speaker 1: kick a hornet's nest? Why does he keep wanting to
Speaker 1: upset the apple cart. Well, I don't know, because I'm
Speaker 1: interested in ideas, I'm interested in thinking things through. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in not being a conformer. So I'm interested in going, well, okay,
Speaker 1: why was Marti Grass so crucial? Will it ever not
Speaker 1: be crucial? At what point does that happen? Like, let's
Speaker 1: just talk about it. Let's just talk about it. But
Speaker 1: you can't talk about it because that transgresses an unspoken boundary,
Speaker 1: which is that to be on the right side of
Speaker 1: history at the moment, you have to adhere to a
Speaker 1: certain set of social justice dogmas or orthodoxies, and if
Speaker 1: you're stray from those, you get whacked. So who could
Speaker 1: But who?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm always been curious about this, But who
Speaker 2: creates these social justice dogmas? Like I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2: I often wonder myself, he is a group of people
Speaker 2: somewhere who are silent and we don't get to see them.
Speaker 2: Who actually, who actually are out there manipulating all these
Speaker 2: social justice dogmas?
Speaker 1: Are a blam et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a largely white, largely middle class,
Speaker 1: university educated elite of people who talk to each other
Speaker 1: in certain ways and who probably don't fit into any
Speaker 1: of the end to end the category. No, often they don't.
Speaker 1: Often they don't. You see, there's a lot in like
Speaker 1: the transgender Wars, which is probably the most toxic or
Speaker 1: sensitive vishue at the moment or even at the moment
Speaker 1: right right now.
Speaker 2: But so, and what I mean, I'm curious as to
Speaker 2: your opinion on these things.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt you thought about.
Speaker 2: It is a guilt based yeah's feeling guilty, yes, And
Speaker 2: it's just some way of them washing their guilt.
Speaker 1: Yes, and therefore it is dangerous. Well, it may not
Speaker 1: be dangerous. It may just be dull, and it may
Speaker 1: be conformist, and it may be dull to.
Speaker 2: You, dangerous to somebody who will be influenced by it potentially.
Speaker 1: Oh, you mean they think that it's dangerous to step
Speaker 1: outside the or you think.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's dangerous with people who people who
Speaker 2: might be watching it and following and being influenced by it,
Speaker 2: unnecessarily influenced people being able to make up their own opinion.
Speaker 1: Some people can't make you to draw their own opinions.
Speaker 1: You know that, right.
Speaker 2: They're heavily influenced by what other people say. What institutions
Speaker 2: say what individuals say. But maybe that's just maybe that's just.
Speaker 1: How the world is today.
Speaker 2: By the way, we might not be able to change it,
Speaker 2: but I think it's dangerous to people who are influenced
Speaker 2: by it, and I.
Speaker 1: Worry about that.
Speaker 2: So, you know, what's an example of the palest palace
Speaker 2: the university. So I was listening to admittedly it was
Speaker 2: top but I was listening to tu jib this morning,
Speaker 2: and you know, my male mate bands on there was
Speaker 2: I was young, and he was talking to some correspondent
Speaker 2: they have in the US and the US was talking
Speaker 2: about the university protest, let's call it protests riots are
Speaker 2: going on some of the universities, particular in Ohio. And
Speaker 2: he made the comment that isn't it funny that all
Speaker 2: the students from New York, Ohio and u c LA
Speaker 2: had exactly the same tents. They had somehow managed to garner,
Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of tents made by exactly the same company,
Speaker 2: look exactly the same, and these tents were all pitched
Speaker 2: on the lawns and it was all coordinated.
Speaker 1: And and the question then becomes, well do those how many.
Speaker 2: Of those people are actually students at the university, and
Speaker 2: it seems as though not a lot of them were
Speaker 2: not students, actual students of the university, and they're occupying territories,
Speaker 2: parts of the parts of the campuses, and they were
Speaker 2: protesting against Israel and in favor of Palestine, which is
Speaker 2: fair enough, that's an opinion, that's cool, But it looked
Speaker 2: like to me it was extraordinarily well organized. And the media,
Speaker 2: the way the media cover it is as if it's a.
Speaker 1: Truth, right or a spontaneously erupting shit's me yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know what happened to syn the university this week,
Speaker 2: but maybe it's the same thing. But this is organized
Speaker 2: disruption to create a problem that looks as though it's
Speaker 2: students freethinking, like student campuses used to be free thinking,
Speaker 2: like you were saying, let's have a discuss about it.
Speaker 2: But students have all got together, they've actually got a
Speaker 2: view when an actual fact, that's not the case. It's
Speaker 2: well organized by others outside of the university, and then
Speaker 2: the media has gone reported it as it being the truth.
Speaker 1: Yeah yea, And that kills me and well, and that's right,
Speaker 1: and that points to the sort of double standard as well,
Speaker 1: which is similar to the to the Mardi Graus gay
Speaker 1: rights thing in the sense that I just actually just
Speaker 1: finished doing my first live video talkback episode of Uncomfortable
Speaker 1: Conversations where the audience can actually join in, and one
Speaker 1: of the questions was about this was about the Columbia
Speaker 1: pro to Columbia University protests, and I made the point
Speaker 1: that if you had a group of people, so now
Speaker 1: you know some of these institutions over there, Jewish academics
Speaker 1: and Jewish students have been told by the police not
Speaker 1: to come to class because they're worried that they can't
Speaker 1: control of violence. You've got slogans which verge on being
Speaker 1: anti semitic. If not they're openly anti semitic, I would
Speaker 1: say they are. Yeah. And if any other group was
Speaker 1: conducting protests like this against a minority, just imagine that
Speaker 1: it's make America great again. You know, white dudes wearing
Speaker 1: red trucker hats and they're going off about how and
Speaker 1: they're going off against Black Lives Matter, for example, and
Speaker 1: intimidating black students. How much would the conversation be what
Speaker 1: it currently is, which is university academics very earnestly stroking
Speaker 1: their chins and going well, free speech is important on campus,
Speaker 1: and there's a great and venerable tradition of protest on campus.
Speaker 1: There would be none of that. They would have been
Speaker 1: out of there on the first day. There would be
Speaker 1: no conversation about the free speech rights of white people
Speaker 1: to harass and intimidate and question the existence of black Americans. Now,
Speaker 1: if that's the policy, then what's good for the goose
Speaker 1: is good for the gander, and those people should have
Speaker 1: been out of there as soon as they started protesting.
Speaker 2: So why were they Why do the mayor not call
Speaker 2: the police in or end or.
Speaker 1: What are the vices? I'm not saying they should. You
Speaker 1: could also take a free speech position that this is legitimate,
Speaker 1: and it would also be legitimate if you had right wingers,
Speaker 1: you know, beaning on about transgender students or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. But be consistent. So why is there an
Speaker 1: inconsistency comes back to that set of social justice dogmas
Speaker 1: and orthodoxies that have become insinuated into society and culture.
Speaker 1: And as you point it out, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: mostly Palestinians who are doing this on the Palestine issue,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's mostly transgender people who are
Speaker 1: doing it on the trans issue, and I don't think
Speaker 1: it's you know, mostly actually people of color who are
Speaker 1: doing it on the Black Lives Matter issue. I think
Speaker 1: it is a class of self congratulatory people. And I
Speaker 1: think guilt is an interesting thing for you to flag there,
Speaker 1: because it's something we don't talk about enough. But I
Speaker 1: think that we have evolved into this sort of postcolonial,
Speaker 1: anti racist mindset where and it's a laudable instinct, it's
Speaker 1: a laudable instinct to try to catch ourselves and go, well,
Speaker 1: all right, let's recognize our white privilege. That's recognized the
Speaker 1: evils of colonialism. But as a result, we're seeing the
Speaker 1: world through a frame where if you're poor and brown skinned,
Speaker 1: you're the good guy, and if you're standing up in
Speaker 1: a suit and you look like a white, straight male,
Speaker 1: you're by definition the bad guy. So complicated issues like
Speaker 1: Israel and Palestine get reduced into this very overly simplistic
Speaker 1: oppressor versus oppressed, colonizer versus colonized sort of binary, and
Speaker 1: living inside that trap, there's sort of no there's no
Speaker 1: way out. It's its own weird internal logic, even if
Speaker 1: it's orchestrated, like as you say, with the tents and
Speaker 1: so on, or not orchestrated just because it's a way
Speaker 1: of people making sense of the world. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it is just a lot of
Speaker 1: the group think is just a combination of people trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of a complicated world being handed an
Speaker 1: easy interpretation of the world, which is that men, white
Speaker 1: straight men have been piercing all over everybody for thousands
Speaker 1: of years, and now it's time for their come up,
Speaker 1: and so we need to give more diverse voices, allow
Speaker 1: more diverse voices to be heard. And then the other
Speaker 1: component of it is the backlash and the threat that
Speaker 1: you get from what we might call cancel culture, where
Speaker 1: if you step out of line, people don't come back
Speaker 1: to try to articulate why they think you're wrong. They
Speaker 1: go straight for the jugular and they try to destroy
Speaker 1: your life, whether that's on social media or by getting
Speaker 1: you fired, or by severing your relationships with your publisher
Speaker 1: or whatever, or your podcast network or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: So there's a kind of a hysteria, a sensoriousness, an oversimplification,
Speaker 1: And all I'm trying to do is have conversations that
Speaker 1: pay no heed to any of that and that makes
Speaker 1: sense that both sides could listen to and you might
Speaker 1: agree with me or disagree with me, but at least
Speaker 1: I'll be articulating your worldview in a way that is
Speaker 1: generous to you, and that makes sense to you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this is such a problem now, Mark, that
Speaker 1: we're demonizing the other side and caricaturing the other. So
Speaker 1: you ask something. You ask one of those protesters to
Speaker 1: articulate what the Zionist position is, they can't do it.
Speaker 1: And you ask a hard cores Ionist to articulate the
Speaker 1: Palastinian position, and they probably can't do it. And you
Speaker 1: can go through any number of different things. The left
Speaker 1: has become extremely sanctimonious on this stuff, so much so
Speaker 1: that it can't even see its own blind spots. They
Speaker 1: can't even see its own biases. Why wouldn't you just
Speaker 1: want to be nice to gay people? Why would you
Speaker 1: want to raise questions about Mardi Gras? You know, what
Speaker 1: are you trying to do here? It's like the old
Speaker 1: parable about the you know, the two fish swimming along
Speaker 1: in the water and the young fish and the big
Speaker 1: fish swims past them and goes, how's the water today, guys?
Speaker 1: And after the big fish swims away. One of the
Speaker 1: little fish turns to the other one and goes, what's water?
Speaker 1: You don't know water when you're in it. You don't
Speaker 1: know the norms that you've inherited, that are just part
Speaker 1: of the air that you breathe. There's a certain way
Speaker 1: of talking about this, there's a certain way of talking
Speaker 1: about that, you know, stop making I think is the
Speaker 1: overarching sentiment of that kind of social justice like elite
Speaker 1: clique can I ashue?
Speaker 2: Then, just on the topic of freedom of speech, for example,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a broad topic, I know, and it's
Speaker 2: got lots of constraints, but just on this blue that's
Speaker 2: sort of bubbling around between Alban Easy pitching up and
Speaker 2: sort of saying that he's going to take Musk on
Speaker 2: In relation to I think it relates to the more
Speaker 2: recent stabbing of the priest, the Orthodox priest out in
Speaker 2: the West sub of Sydney, and whether or not largely
Speaker 2: where the kids should be allowed to see, but really
Speaker 2: you know, whether anyone should be allowed to see it.
Speaker 2: And Musk's position, of course, as I understand a Musk
Speaker 2: position is it nodes and we should be allowed to
Speaker 2: see anything, and we should be censoring any of There's
Speaker 2: just a medium and people can put up whatever they
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Have a look at.
Speaker 2: What do you think about the governments? What do you
Speaker 2: think about governments taking a stand on something like that
Speaker 2: against forget about must position, but what do you think
Speaker 2: about governments taking.
Speaker 1: A stand on that? Well, in terms of representing us,
Speaker 1: the voters, it's complicated, like so much, I am, isn't
Speaker 1: it just simple? Well, what's the simple answer?
Speaker 2: Then it's free freedom speech? Not even it's not that
Speaker 2: it's not. This is a platform. If you don't want
Speaker 2: to look at it, don't don't open it up, right,
Speaker 2: And you're a parent, and if you're worried about your kids,
Speaker 2: don't let.
Speaker 1: Them look at it. Right job to some extent, yes,
Speaker 1: but I think where we get confused on social media.
Speaker 1: And I'm a big free speech advocate. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: spent most of my adult life in the United States,
Speaker 1: and I've sort of inherited their attitude towards a maximum
Speaker 1: amount of free speech. And I don't really believe in,
Speaker 1: you know, hate speech laws or coming after people and
Speaker 1: finding them because they said the wrong thing about you know,
Speaker 1: they accidentally use the wrong transgender pronoun or they you know,
Speaker 1: they spread vaccine misinformation when all we're trying to do
Speaker 1: was wrestle with what's true and what's not true in
Speaker 1: the middle of a public health emergency or whatever. But
Speaker 1: what's the thing about social media is the Elon Musks
Speaker 1: and the mark Zakaboos of the world will fall back on. Look,
Speaker 1: we're not publishers. We don't publish anything. You can't be
Speaker 1: held to account for any of the stuff that's on
Speaker 1: our platform. It's just a platform. It's cute, people just
Speaker 1: use it. Unfortunately, that's nonsense. It's it's a cute argument,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's nonsense because you've got the algorithm
Speaker 1: behind it. Like, if Facebook were what Facebook was when
Speaker 1: Facebook was created, they'd have a point, which was it
Speaker 1: used to be a reverse chronological feed of all of
Speaker 1: the things that either people you follow had put up.
Speaker 1: There was no like button, there was no infinite scroll,
Speaker 1: there was no algorithmically delivered content that is tailor made
Speaker 1: to your attention, to your favorites. And well, exactly that's
Speaker 1: right now they've got you know, everything is about engagement.
Speaker 1: Everything is about trying to get something that is going
Speaker 1: to have you hover over that video for as long
Speaker 1: as possible, and or share it or comment based on
Speaker 1: what they know you like. So there's this idea that
Speaker 1: they're not publishing is, as you say, cute, it's a
Speaker 1: bit twee. I mean, you are publishing because everything that's
Speaker 1: coming into this fire hose of a system that you've
Speaker 1: got is being cranked out by Silicon Valley engineers, many
Speaker 1: of whom are twenty two years I was riding skateboards
Speaker 1: in Menlo Park, who are brilliant at finding a way
Speaker 1: to mass in engineering. That's right to entice your neurological
Speaker 1: system to respond as with as much reptilian angst and
Speaker 1: kind of addiction as it possibly can to whatever it
Speaker 1: is that they're showing you. So I don't think it's
Speaker 1: actually a free speech versus anti free speech thing. I
Speaker 1: think it's about managing information flows and the idea that
Speaker 1: we as a people just have to be held hostage
Speaker 1: to whatever ingenious junk food Zuckerberg and Musk can throw
Speaker 1: at us, with no mechanism to push back other than
Speaker 1: to tell our children not to go on those websites,
Speaker 1: which is tricky. I think is a bit rich. Like
Speaker 1: I'm extremely leary of government control over what canon can't
Speaker 1: be said. But I think that in fifty years time,
Speaker 1: we'll look back on this period and go, that was
Speaker 1: a crazy wild West and we had no idea. We'd
Speaker 1: just given everyone a machine gun, and we didn't know
Speaker 1: how to regulate it or how to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And I think there'll be a more nuanced collaboration, should
Speaker 1: we say, between the people, through their governments democratically elected,
Speaker 1: and AI companies and social media companies to manage that
Speaker 1: flow of information. Because just like those tents came up
Speaker 1: miraculously on the lawns of all of those American universities,
Speaker 1: so too do the videos of gars and babies with
Speaker 1: their limbs blown off go up on TikTok in a
Speaker 1: way that is suspiciously well curated. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party, how they manage the TikTok algorithms.
Speaker 1: I don't know what role the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has
Speaker 1: in coaching the quote unquote journalists, the citizen journalists who
Speaker 1: are in Gaza, about how to tailor social media information
Speaker 1: so that it'll go well on Instagram. But these are
Speaker 1: not dummies. We saw ISIS in its first incarnation get
Speaker 1: quite good at social media. I mean, remember the US
Speaker 1: air men in orange jumpsuits trapped in a cage and
Speaker 1: the desert being being set on fire and stuff like
Speaker 1: these huge spectacles, these big displays. They've gotten pretty good
Speaker 1: at it, Like jihadists. They know what they're doing. So
Speaker 1: you open that app and it's like you've got the
Speaker 1: whatever company is supplying those tents is also supplying your
Speaker 1: information about steroids on steroids. So the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: the Australian government didn't play a role in softening that understanding,
Speaker 1: that mitigating that, I think is crazy. We've got to
Speaker 1: get our arms around it somehow.
Speaker 2: Who appoints the cabal of people who actually made the decisions.
Speaker 1: In the government. You're always asking the tricky questions, Mark,
Speaker 1: I mean, or they'll appoint themselves. They'll appoint themselves, won't they.
Speaker 2: And then we're going to get fed exactly what they
Speaker 2: want us to see and not see.
Speaker 1: I mean part of the promise of public broadcasting. Just
Speaker 1: to get a bit wonky for a second and a
Speaker 1: bit philosophical, since you've been banging on about poetry earlier
Speaker 1: on in the show harbor Mass, you're going to harbor
Speaker 1: mask the philosopher who came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: public broadcasting with basically saying the only way that you're
Speaker 1: going to get true, impartial information is by freeing it
Speaker 1: from the two core biases that can derange the information product.
Speaker 1: One is capitalism, where you don't want corporations and powerful
Speaker 1: people who have all the money to be influencing what
Speaker 1: stories get told. And the other is governments. You don't
Speaker 1: want people with all the guns to be deciding what
Speaker 1: gets told. The idea of the public sphere was that
Speaker 1: the government would fund it but would have no control
Speaker 1: over it politically, and we've got pretty good at that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the ABC and the BBC are pretty good
Speaker 1: at having carved out a sphere of conversation that is
Speaker 1: independent of whatever party happens to be in power. And
Speaker 1: so maybe that's a model for regulating this stuff. You
Speaker 1: certainly don't want government partisans from the political party that
Speaker 1: happens to be in power telling us what we can
Speaker 1: and can't see on social media. But can you create
Speaker 1: a regulatory framework about what algorithms can and can't do
Speaker 1: that is overseen by people who are as impartial as
Speaker 1: our public health bureaucrats. You'd want them to be, or
Speaker 1: the chairman of the ABC you'd want them to be.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's early days.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be fascinating. But for me, this whole
Speaker 2: program is fast. Not what you and I talking about,
Speaker 2: but the whole program of how it is going to
Speaker 2: roll at is quite.
Speaker 1: You're talking about. It is even more fascinating. Mark, don't
Speaker 1: say yourself, this is the right here. I want to change.
Speaker 2: Second, my producer told me you have been on Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan show six or seven times? I can't remember now seven,
Speaker 2: don't short something? What the fuck's going on there?
Speaker 1: Hey tell me that. How do you know Joe? Because
Speaker 1: of both comedians? No, no, no, no, I never got
Speaker 1: to anything like his level of success. I mean I
Speaker 1: did a bit of stand up when I first got
Speaker 1: to New York, just to sharpen my chops and you know,
Speaker 1: get a feel for a live or Yeah. Pretty scary, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in a town like New York where you know
Speaker 1: audiences can be it can be brutal. But it's good.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good training. I mean, it's once you
Speaker 1: get into a television studio then having had the experience of.
Speaker 2: Shooting your pants because no one's going to you can
Speaker 2: put it that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly gives you a keener keen of moving away.
Speaker 1: But just what was your what was your what what.
Speaker 2: Was your stick like in terms of your comedy act.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, it was mostly I mean it was pretty intellectual,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, it was observations. I mean, at
Speaker 1: the time I was pretty good at impressions. So really, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I moved over there, it was George W. Bush
Speaker 1: was still president, so I do quite a lot of
Speaker 1: Bush stuff. Did you learn how to duck from as
Speaker 1: I was just standing out the delivery? Yeah? No, I
Speaker 1: mean so yeah, and fair bit about like Cheney and
Speaker 1: the Iraq War and and you know, the religious right,
Speaker 1: and you know, just poking holes in in things. It
Speaker 1: was good fun and it was well, it was well received.
Speaker 1: But and I think Americans kind of like having a foreigner,
Speaker 1: you know, chiefly take the piss out of them, especially
Speaker 1: and I you know, you're non threatening, you know you're coming,
Speaker 1: you're coming with goodwill, but you're also willing to highlight
Speaker 1: to them the ways that they know they're ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: so it was actually I was my first big job
Speaker 1: was the Huffington Post was at the time the most
Speaker 1: read online only news website in the world. This is
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. I remember that period, yeah, and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of bars behind it, and they basically decided
Speaker 1: that they wanted to do to television what they'd done
Speaker 1: to newspapers and destroy them completely and find a new
Speaker 1: way of having conversations. And so they launched half Post Live,
Speaker 1: which was a twelve hour day streaming television network online
Speaker 1: and I was one of the founding hosts and producers
Speaker 1: of that. So I would host, you know, four to
Speaker 1: six half hour shows every single day with Newsmade, you know,
Speaker 1: Thomas Friedman and Michael Moore and Robert F. Kennedy Junior
Speaker 1: or whoever it might be. And there was one moment
Speaker 1: that Joe saw go viral. It was one of the
Speaker 1: first I think if when they write the book about
Speaker 1: Cancel Culture, there will be a page for this moment,
Speaker 1: which was Stephen Colbert was doing his satirical show still
Speaker 1: this was before let Himan retired, so you remember he
Speaker 1: was doing the Colbert Rapport, and he did a joke
Speaker 1: that an Asian American activist felt was racist against Asians,
Speaker 1: but it was satirical, and she was lined up at
Speaker 1: this activist that is as a guest on my show
Speaker 1: the following day in a kind of rap of the
Speaker 1: news and everything's going on. And we started talking and
Speaker 1: she started interrupting me and saying like, well, I would
Speaker 1: certainly expect that a white man would enjoy talking down
Speaker 1: to me. And I was like, well, hang on a second.
Speaker 1: We're just having a convers like I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: what your attitude to live on air. Yeah, streaming live.
Speaker 1: That's cool, it's good, that's good. Yeah, challenge, it's a
Speaker 1: challenge exactly. I mean there's no mistakes or when there
Speaker 1: are mistakes, that's just part of you know, live TV.
Speaker 1: I said, hang away, we're just having a conversation, like
Speaker 1: and she said, well, yeah, you know, as a white man,
Speaker 1: you probably feel like it's your like it's your right
Speaker 1: to talk down to women of color. I was like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about, Like when I was being
Speaker 1: born with balls doesn't give me, It doesn't It doesn't
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that I don't have the right to have
Speaker 1: an opinion about satire. Like, you know, she's you know,
Speaker 1: she says, she goes on like this and like it
Speaker 1: basically just standed in a you know, flame flaming heap,
Speaker 1: and I was I was just like, well, okay, I
Speaker 1: mean all right, so yeah, yeah, yeah, if you don't
Speaker 1: want to talk to me, and we do much to
Speaker 1: talk about. It was this weird experience mark that I've
Speaker 1: had many times since, but I've never had it before then,
Speaker 1: and that was probably twenty fourteen. So this was just
Speaker 1: as like the kind of social justice reckoning was about
Speaker 1: to happen, right where you're talking to someone and you
Speaker 1: realize they're not actually talking back to me as a human.
Speaker 1: They're talking to me as a cardboard cutout avatar of
Speaker 1: white maleness, and they're expecting me to talk to them
Speaker 1: as a representative of some abstraction, some identity group, some
Speaker 1: oppressed minority, Like we're supposed to be talking about comedy, satire, offense,
Speaker 1: cancelation because she wanted to get Colbert canceled that a
Speaker 1: whole petition about it, and instead of having a conversation
Speaker 1: where we treat each other as equals, we're having a
Speaker 1: conversation where two cardboard cutouts of different identity groups are sparring.
Speaker 1: And that went momentarily viral. Joe saw it. Someone texted
Speaker 1: me that he'd played it on his show, and so
Speaker 1: I think I just DMed him on Twitter or he
Speaker 1: hit me up and somehow said, next time you're in La,
Speaker 1: why don't you come on the show? So I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I just happened to be in LA in a few weeks,
Speaker 1: quickly booked my tickets just so I could have that experience,
Speaker 1: and they and I hit it off. And then I
Speaker 1: sort of had had a standing into invitation whenever I
Speaker 1: was in town. A conversation about the Joe the show
Speaker 1: with Joe well, I mean everything, you know what his shows.
Speaker 1: I like, you sit down for three hours and you
Speaker 1: talk about anything and everything. You just go wherever. So
Speaker 1: and he was cool, Oh he's great. I mean I
Speaker 1: love Joe. And then he was he was the reason
Speaker 1: I have a podcast. He's been you know, he really
Speaker 1: is the podfather. You know, he has been really caring
Speaker 1: and generous and supportive. You know. He just pulled me
Speaker 1: aside after one of the shows, I remember where it was,
Speaker 1: the first or second or third. He was like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing with these dummies? Getting Peter p Check?
Speaker 1: Going do your own thing? And I was like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I think I will. And I started the precursor to
Speaker 1: uncomfortable conversations.
Speaker 2: So tell me about uncomfortable conversations. So what's the format?
Speaker 1: The format is through the format now yep. The format
Speaker 1: started as a one on one interview with a guest
Speaker 1: about some issue that we find difficult to talk about
Speaker 1: in a faired income one.
Speaker 2: With the guests or with the guests the guests. But
Speaker 2: what I remember there's the guest finds it difficult to
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 1: No, guest doesn't have to. So sometimes people will listen
Speaker 1: to uncomfortable conversations, so they'll go, oh, that wasn't actually
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable conversation at all, which is fine. The point
Speaker 1: is not to make the guest uncomfortable or to create
Speaker 1: or to confect, you know, intentionally uncomfortable scenarios or anything.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that'll arise because I disagree with the guest on something,
Speaker 1: But the point is to have conversations about topics that
Speaker 1: if someone were to raise it at the pub or
Speaker 1: at a barbie or at work, everyone would just pucker
Speaker 1: up their bombas a little bit and fear a little
Speaker 1: you know, oh are we going here? Are we? You know,
Speaker 1: there'd be it'd be create an uncomfortable situation. I want
Speaker 1: to create a safe space for dangerous ideas, a safe
Speaker 1: space for people to air those kinds of conversations. So
Speaker 1: that's the main thing. My first episode was with Stan
Speaker 1: Grant a couple of years ago. Now I understand how
Speaker 1: the drama this, no, this is before that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was only any exits last year. He was pretty
Speaker 1: recent and Stan and I are still mates and he
Speaker 1: has been a great supporter of mine as well, because
Speaker 1: you know, we were actually getting real about race, not
Speaker 1: just talking not mouthing the usual talking points about white guilt,
Speaker 1: but recognizing that there are difficult identity questions here and
Speaker 1: you know asking It's like I will be accused of being,
Speaker 1: you know, some white fascist if I raise a question
Speaker 1: about whether or not it's really necessary for four white,
Speaker 1: middle aged women who are on a zoom call about
Speaker 1: HR to be doing acknowledgments of country before they start
Speaker 1: talking about the human resources issue, Like, what do you
Speaker 1: say about that? I'd love to know, because he's he's
Speaker 1: on the same page.
Speaker 2: Tells me a bit like, you know, arrive on an
Speaker 2: aeroplane and landed from Sydney to Brisbane and yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: getting asked to think that, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, the Lances yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2: But like I already and then I go to my meeting,
Speaker 2: and that's how we start off. One of my staff
Speaker 2: will start the meeting off, and I'm hang on, like,
Speaker 2: what a stance about that?
Speaker 1: He's not a huge fan of I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: want to speak for him. Let's just say that I
Speaker 1: get the impression from him that he's not in lockstep
Speaker 1: with what what the correct way of doing indigenous rights is?
Speaker 1: You know, but that doesn't help indigenous rights. And well exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean the party comes back to your point about guilt, right.
Speaker 1: I think it's got this, you know, we've got this.
Speaker 1: It's a way for this class of mostly whit it's
Speaker 1: almost exclusively white, middle class, university educated people to signal
Speaker 1: to each other that they're on the right side, that
Speaker 1: they're on the right team.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like putting he him in your
Speaker 1: email signature or she her, you know, like, don't worry, Gary,
Speaker 1: No one was in any doubt that you're a dude,
Speaker 1: you know, like we all know you, Gary. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that care. There was no ambiguity. But it's it's a
Speaker 1: way of saying I care, right, I care, which is
Speaker 1: all very well until it becomes a conformist lockstep mandatory
Speaker 1: thing that if you decline to participate in, you're regarded
Speaker 1: as being a bad guy. So anyway, we were having
Speaker 1: these kinds of conversations with with Stan and then I
Speaker 1: expanded it out to talk to I mean anyone and everyone,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Turnbull or you know, yeah, that's right, and just
Speaker 1: talking about it. Actually in that period, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you might. I might have had him on the AB
Speaker 1: side the ABC. It did. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, and now Uncomfortable, now that my show at
Speaker 1: the ABC has fallen apart, Uncomfortable Conversations is going gangbusters
Speaker 1: because I can devote all my time to it instead
Speaker 1: of it being a side hustle. And so now we're
Speaker 1: expanding into doing things like live talkback, video segments, audience, yeah,
Speaker 1: inviting the audience, in doing panel segments. Our last panel
Speaker 1: is with Ben Fordham. You just mentioned Ben and Antoinette Latouf.
Speaker 1: So like having spar, having people who spar a little
Speaker 1: bit on the couch and that's all going up on
Speaker 1: YouTube and interviewing people like Jimmy Carr who just had
Speaker 1: on the show, and you know, comedians and stuff like
Speaker 1: that rather than just going straight for the culture war Juggueller.
Speaker 1: I love he's a good man.
Speaker 2: Although sometimes they go, oh, I'm watching him.
Speaker 1: Mother the fuck? That's the point, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is the point, But he does it with such
Speaker 2: I can ask a questions. Do you think he does
Speaker 2: it and uses comedy and satire as an excuse for
Speaker 2: what he's just done as a backdoor, or is he
Speaker 2: doing it for social awareness for people to think about
Speaker 2: what it is he's saying and to have a debate
Speaker 2: perhaps after the show, or he's just doing for gags
Speaker 2: because he knows the audience is his Cheersquad.
Speaker 1: Gags, GGS gags. He's a comic and I think he
Speaker 1: would say that make him laugh, that's the.
Speaker 2: Rules, but it's his cheerleaders only, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it happens occasionally, but most of the people come
Speaker 2: to listen to him a lot, and a live audience
Speaker 2: sensible to him are.
Speaker 1: There because they like him, like what he says, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I asked him on that and people should
Speaker 1: listen to the episode or watched on YouTube because it's
Speaker 1: interesting and he talked I asked him about this, you
Speaker 1: know about haters on Twitter, and he was like, what
Speaker 1: happens is that people who weren't at the show get
Speaker 1: angry about it on social media, but there is no
Speaker 1: controversy about it at the show. I mean, the people
Speaker 1: who come to see a Jimmy Carr show, people who
Speaker 1: are cool with Jimmy Carr, right, and they want to
Speaker 1: you know, so, I mean he said something interesting. This
Speaker 1: was actually the first video I just joined TikTok well
Speaker 1: after the time you know I have just now. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is all within the past few with the program,
Speaker 1: if even TikTok. So just my first TikTok video that
Speaker 1: went past a million was was Jimmy Carr making an
Speaker 1: interesting point where he goes, whatever it is that's going
Speaker 1: to get me canceled, I said it ten years ago.
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can say now that's going to be
Speaker 1: worse than the things that you can dredge up, which
Speaker 1: points to this other phenomenon that I talk about. I
Speaker 1: did to show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival just before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, which was about why social media was ruining everything,
Speaker 1: and I made the point that there's this whole phenomena
Speaker 1: of what I call outrage archaeology where you know, people
Speaker 1: go back through your past tweets or you the things
Speaker 1: you said in the past, or your old podcast like archaeologists,
Speaker 1: like they're trying to hunt for the jewel, you know,
Speaker 1: of the most offensive thing, like who's the comic? Who
Speaker 1: was Kevin?
Speaker 2: He was?
Speaker 1: Anyway, he's going to host the Academy Awards the year
Speaker 1: before last, And they went back and they found that
Speaker 1: nine years before, he tweeted something homophobic, which he'd apologized for.
Speaker 1: You know, he says something in a routine that he
Speaker 1: ended up tweeting that it ended up on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: you know, he ended up being uninvited from hosting the
Speaker 1: Academy Awards, a pretty big gig because some outrage archaeologist
Speaker 1: has gone back and found something out of context from
Speaker 1: a previous time when norms were a bit different. And
Speaker 1: as far as Jimmy, Jimmy's concerned, I mean, he's right,
Speaker 1: We've all got the paper trail behind us. Now. I've
Speaker 1: been talking for long enough in years now that there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of things that I've said that I'm
Speaker 1: sure that if you go over it with a fine
Speaker 1: tooth comb, you could create an outrage. Do you worry
Speaker 1: about the about no, I don't anymo because I don't
Speaker 1: have an employer. But did you worry about it? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: and thank god I don't have to do anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: you remember probably his name. He used to say, you
Speaker 1: know what I hate? You know what I hate?
Speaker 2: Who was that famous comedian, like twenty thirty years ago?
Speaker 1: Shit, I come reader.
Speaker 2: He had a routine, you know, and I ate I
Speaker 2: hate it and he was he talked about haters and
Speaker 2: he was and he took the piss out of everyone
Speaker 2: and ever.
Speaker 1: I mean I said love.
Speaker 2: I used to love listening to him anyway, And this
Speaker 2: is twenty years ago, and he got a radio show
Speaker 2: for a little while and then they cut him out
Speaker 2: of He's on to day if and will triple in
Speaker 2: one of those things, and they cut him because he
Speaker 2: just upset so many people at the time. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't Red Simon's, No, it wasn't Red, but it was
Speaker 2: around Red's time. It was, Uh, it doesn't matter, but irrespective,
Speaker 2: people have been taking the piss in comedy about social
Speaker 2: the way society operates for so fucking long, and he
Speaker 2: was basically just reflecting.
Speaker 1: How we are. We all everyone say, oh, I can
Speaker 1: hate that. I hate.
Speaker 2: End up you get the haters. Some people just hate everything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: professional haters. They sit with him and they told age,
Speaker 2: you went to school with the Mew year twelve, with
Speaker 2: them center for twenty two years, and you sit down
Speaker 2: with them and they just fucking complain about everything, and
Speaker 2: they fucking hate everything. Don't they use the word hate,
Speaker 2: But they just dislike everything. They've got no positive they
Speaker 2: don't have a new thought on any issue. And I
Speaker 2: think people have been doing that for a long time.
Speaker 2: But this guy, he ended up getting canceled. But Rodney Rude,
Speaker 2: Oh I remember, right, Roddy Rude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's literally right there in his name,
Speaker 1: mark Rude, Rodney Rude, and.
Speaker 2: That was his That was the routine, you know. And
Speaker 2: but he ended up getting canceled. But it took a
Speaker 2: long time to get canceled. But society didn't cancel them.
Speaker 2: Some dude, like somebody like a management management or somebody
Speaker 2: at the top of the tree got rid of him
Speaker 2: because somebody would have prot him a little bit and
Speaker 2: probabcly of that guys like he's upsetting too many people.
Speaker 1: But today you.
Speaker 2: Get canceled by the numbers and like hordes of people
Speaker 2: will all have an opinion on whether or not Josh
Speaker 2: Epps should be saying what he's saying. Why do you
Speaker 2: think all of a sudden there is there are audiences
Speaker 2: of all of a sudden got to say that management
Speaker 2: ordinarily would have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they're loud and angry. I mean there are
Speaker 1: professional Umbridge takers who will take umbrage at whatever it
Speaker 1: is that they can find, and we'll try to coerce
Speaker 1: cowardly management. So that's the issue. I think that's the issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and management is too jumpy and they understand by people
Speaker 1: enough is it? Because everybody wants the management want to
Speaker 1: be liked. We all want to be like. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think they're afraid of the optics of seeming like they're
Speaker 1: not taking seriously the concerns about the microaggressions and the
Speaker 1: victimization and that they're not on board with again this
Speaker 1: kind of orthodoxy of social justice, and like they want
Speaker 1: to seem like they're the good guys. They don't want
Speaker 1: to seem like out of touch. There's nothing. No one
Speaker 1: is more woke, just to use that problematic term. No
Speaker 1: one is more woke than a terrified, like white, straight,
Speaker 1: middle aged man who is trying to do the right
Speaker 1: thing by the kids who are coming with pitchforks and
Speaker 1: flaming tortures.
Speaker 2: You know, But I'd like to understand what your view is.
Speaker 2: Is it about not being disliked they don't want to
Speaker 2: be disliked, or is it more about I want to
Speaker 2: be liked because and I want to go right back
Speaker 2: to Facebook in a Facebook Instagram. They've created this light
Speaker 2: thing and they've worked out or their scientists have worked
Speaker 2: out that, in an evolutionary sense, for us to survive,
Speaker 2: we're going to be liked by a community, because if
Speaker 2: we get fucked over by a community, we won't survive.
Speaker 2: That's an evolutionary instinct in our brain. And they've worked
Speaker 2: this stuff out, and that's why everybody wants you to
Speaker 2: press the like on your Instagram page or Facebook page,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They've created this like world.
Speaker 2: And I've often wanted to myself the decision makers who
Speaker 2: make these decisions about when they're getting pressured by groups.
Speaker 2: Is it they're doing it because they don't want to
Speaker 2: be disliked or is it because they want to be
Speaker 2: seen as being liked?
Speaker 1: As an organization? So let's cook with the ABC.
Speaker 2: ABC wants to be liked as an organization by its audience.
Speaker 1: Have you ever thought that through? Like? No, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. Tease it out for me. Why is it
Speaker 1: important to you the distinction between avoiding dislike and clamoring
Speaker 1: for like. I don't have.
Speaker 2: I don't have a particular view. I just see that
Speaker 2: as I see it as binary, because there are and
Speaker 2: I've often I don't see I've often wondered, is there
Speaker 2: an instinct within us, in our brain somewhere that don't
Speaker 2: be disliked?
Speaker 1: It doesn't. It's not the same as being liked. But
Speaker 1: you can't be dislike because you're disliked. I think that's it.
Speaker 1: You're on the outside. I think that's it. Yes, don't
Speaker 1: be excluded. Don't be exclus exactly. That's right?
Speaker 2: And why is it you don't care? Why does Josh
Speaker 2: Zepps doesn't care whether he's dislike? So so in an
Speaker 2: evolutionary sense, why do you think that you've chosen not
Speaker 2: to care?
Speaker 1: Is it because if you disliked?
Speaker 2: Is it because Josh also realizes he can create his
Speaker 2: own community of people who are going to like him
Speaker 2: for not caring about being disliked and therefore you've got
Speaker 2: your own community.
Speaker 1: I don't now you're protected. I'm a trouble maker. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a trouble maker before the before the community of
Speaker 1: troublemakers follows me. I mean I would I would sooner
Speaker 1: be alone, outsider with no friends but my own internal credibility,
Speaker 1: and just have faith that at some point people are
Speaker 1: going to value authenticity, credibility, and straight talk more than
Speaker 1: they do sycophancy and conformism. And honestly, whether a tribe
Speaker 1: is with me or not is secondary to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just I'm just a sucker for like intellectual honesty.
Speaker 1: I don't really, it's not even really, it doesn't even
Speaker 1: feel like a choice to me. It feels like a drive.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like it because I just want to quickly
Speaker 2: I'm getting wound up here, but I want to keep
Speaker 2: going on about this a little bit, if you don't mind, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to do.
Speaker 1: A Joe Rogan three hour on you don't worry.
Speaker 2: But because for me, I've always had this view on
Speaker 2: instinct versus intellect, and I sometimes feel as though most
Speaker 2: of society operates on instinct, which is the like or
Speaker 2: dislike argument, and whereas intellect takes me to another level.
Speaker 2: And when I say in a lot, I don't mean
Speaker 2: better or worse them, and it just takes me to
Speaker 2: a different level, a different universe whereby I override my
Speaker 2: instincts with intellect. And that's not just in relation to
Speaker 2: commentary on what society is doing, the sorts of things
Speaker 2: you and I do, but it's also like temptation, you know,
Speaker 2: knock myself around, take drugs, and drugs mean, I always
Speaker 2: take the view.
Speaker 1: I like to take the view, and I.
Speaker 2: Don't always achieve it personally, but I like to say
Speaker 2: the view that my intellect is always greater than my instincts.
Speaker 1: Sometimes my instincts do overtake.
Speaker 2: And I've really tried hard over my sixty years to
Speaker 2: fucking work out work that out, and I fight my
Speaker 2: intellect tries to fight back. But I'm a I'm a real,
Speaker 2: a big I'm quite interested in this instinct versus intellect
Speaker 2: and how.
Speaker 1: They I mean, I'm highly intellectual to an almost like
Speaker 1: Aspergers you degree, and I can see that. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: terms of being, it doesn't come naturally to meet to me,
Speaker 1: to meet other people empathically, you know, wherever they are
Speaker 1: instinct instinct is bad being right, I don't have a set.
Speaker 1: I don't have that sensitivity. For example, what my partner
Speaker 1: does who he's very very good at tuning into people's
Speaker 1: emotional wavelength. I'm not. I'll just go straight to the
Speaker 1: brain and.
Speaker 2: Go else in the world like that, because I know
Speaker 2: I forget criticized of being this by people in a
Speaker 2: personal level, by people who know me closely. You that
Speaker 2: people think that I lack the empathy. Someone might send
Speaker 2: a Texas says I love you, and I might go, oh,
Speaker 2: thank you, right, yeah, yeah, because I don't really see
Speaker 2: the fucking point of the word. I mean, it's the
Speaker 2: dumbest fucking word in the fucking you because I love
Speaker 2: my dog, I love food, I love the fuck you know,
Speaker 2: like it just articulated a little bit more like you know,
Speaker 2: like because I don't even know how to respond to it.
Speaker 1: I don't. I sort of do that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 2: I know it's a sign it would how to respond
Speaker 2: to it, But in terms of how I really feel
Speaker 2: about it, I think it's just a dumb fucking word.
Speaker 1: Are you so? Are you motivated by being liked or avoiding? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right now, I wonder whether or not. That sensibility which
Speaker 1: you and I share, if you want to get psychoanalytic
Speaker 1: about it, is driven. Like the flattering interpretation to us
Speaker 1: is to say where galaxy brains who can override our
Speaker 1: base instincts with our minds. The less flattering interpretation, which
Speaker 1: comports with your thesis that people are generally driven by
Speaker 1: a desire to be liked, would be where the types
Speaker 1: of people who, maybe when we were younger, didn't fit
Speaker 1: in and didn't find it easy to fit into the
Speaker 1: cool kids club, and therefore took a posture of you
Speaker 1: know what, any club that would have me as a member,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be part of anyway. And so
Speaker 1: you know I'm different. I'm special. I don't need to
Speaker 1: a you adapt, I'm a contrarian, so you adapt. I think.
Speaker 1: So that's probably Do you think that was that you
Speaker 1: were you that kid? Yeah? Probably? Yeah, I probably was too.
Speaker 2: I wasn't I wasn't pushed out of groups or I
Speaker 2: wasn't not accepted into groups. But at the same time
Speaker 2: I didn't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did. Are you sure you didn't? Are you
Speaker 1: sure that the not caring wasn't a consequence of exclusion.
Speaker 1: I don't really remember being excluded as such.
Speaker 2: I mean, like most things I did, I did quite well,
Speaker 2: like sport and blah blah blah in footy teams and yeah,
Speaker 2: well school academically and stuff. I don't think so I
Speaker 2: do believe I just didn't care like my mates would
Speaker 2: ring them up. And so we're all going to meet
Speaker 2: down the road when we're fifteen, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know I don't steal stuff off cars and stuff.
Speaker 2: And I not that I had a moral position, but
Speaker 2: I can't people I'm not coming, you know. I was
Speaker 2: rather stay home, read my book or whatever. So my
Speaker 2: my position is here in viewing me now. But my
Speaker 2: position is I don't know if I could well have
Speaker 2: had that somewhere my background, I don't really know.
Speaker 1: I haven't done as analytic sort of exis on it.
Speaker 2: But but it's interesting because that's why I sort of
Speaker 2: warmed to you without even having met you.
Speaker 1: Listening to you on radio. I liked listening to on
Speaker 1: the radio.
Speaker 2: That's why I like I like listening to Adam because
Speaker 2: he's a bit odd too, not to say we're odd,
Speaker 2: but he's bit different.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I like it. I'll take god, it's
Speaker 1: a compliment to me. For me, it's good too, weird, odd,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about things in a strange way. You know,
Speaker 1: this is part of what I worry about, just going
Speaker 1: back to the likes on social media versus the likes
Speaker 1: in the real world, where you can touch the grass
Speaker 1: and actually, you know, have conversations with people that aren't
Speaker 1: limited by the number of characters you can put in
Speaker 1: a tweet like. Part of what's corrosive about the way
Speaker 1: that we're living is so much of our social groups
Speaker 1: and so much of our likes, and you know, strokes,
Speaker 1: our social strokes are coming from coming mediated through machines
Speaker 1: where not only are you chasing the wrong kinds of
Speaker 1: respect because mostly it's conformism, like the way that the
Speaker 1: other side either side exactly. The easiest way to get
Speaker 1: a lot of likes on social media is to go
Speaker 1: on and say, I stand with the people of Gaza,
Speaker 1: I stand with my trans allies, I stand with the
Speaker 1: women of Australia against domestic violel Oh, bravo, what a
Speaker 1: brave position. You don't believe that men should beat and
Speaker 1: murder their wives. How enlightening? This is incredible. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about this moral revelation this epiphany that you've had.
Speaker 1: It's so bloody facile, and yet that is actually the
Speaker 1: currency that we're swimming in, and it's distracting us, it's
Speaker 1: capturing our attention. It's a bit like it's a bit
Speaker 1: like you're walking around with another version of Josh Zeps
Speaker 1: on your shoulder who's constantly monitoring your life and looking
Speaker 1: at your life and saying, is that thought something that
Speaker 1: you should be broadcasting that would get you likes? Is that,
Speaker 1: you know, coffee, something that you should put on Instagram
Speaker 1: and would get likes. Something from something as facile as
Speaker 1: a meal that you've had going on Instagram, to something
Speaker 1: as complicated as making a geopolitical commentary about the most
Speaker 1: intractable conflict in the world in Israel on Gaza. It's
Speaker 1: all being filtered through this kind of meta experience of
Speaker 1: witnessing yourself having experiences and then pushing those experiences through
Speaker 1: the algorithm and the filter of going, am I going
Speaker 1: to get more likes and followers and strokes by disseminating
Speaker 1: this to the world. So it's like I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: for me personally, I don't use social media anymore. I
Speaker 1: use it as a broadcasting platform. To push out my content,
Speaker 1: but I no longer engage with it, and we only
Speaker 1: get one life. As far as we know, this is
Speaker 1: actually it. Today is the actual day. When you're experiencing today,
Speaker 1: You're never going to get today back. You're never going
Speaker 1: to get to interface with reality and touch the grass
Speaker 1: and look at people and wrestle with ideas in this
Speaker 1: moment again. And yet most of us spend that moment,
Speaker 1: whether we know it or not, with a little editor
Speaker 1: in the back of our brain who works for Meta
Speaker 1: or Elon saying is this content? Is this content that
Speaker 1: can get me the social cutos that if we weren't
Speaker 1: embedded in social media, would come from actually sitting down
Speaker 1: and having a cup of tea with somebody and talking
Speaker 1: to them like something's happening to the what to our
Speaker 1: brains and the way that they're being hijacked that is
Speaker 1: making it increasingly difficult to have interesting, unusual, innovative, contrarian
Speaker 1: conversations and is dialing up the reward for having facile,
Speaker 1: conformist ones. So do you think that is actually being
Speaker 1: consciously done? No, I think it's just the algorithm doing
Speaker 1: what algorithms do. That's what our attention. You know by definition,
Speaker 1: you're going to engage with things that either reinforce what
Speaker 1: you already believe or demonize what you don't already believe.
Speaker 1: The messy, muddy space of wrestling with things in a complicated,
Speaker 1: nuanced way is not an instantaneous dopamine hit, right. It
Speaker 1: takes more thought, energy, It takes energy. It's hard, I mean.
Speaker 1: And people who value that are my audience. Like, if
Speaker 1: you value that, come and subscribe to uncomfortable conversations. Be
Speaker 1: part of the team, be part of the journey. And
Speaker 1: it is a tribe of the tribalist. It is a
Speaker 1: tribe of people who just want to talk about things
Speaker 1: without caring about whether or not they tick the correct
Speaker 1: checkbox on a preset list of opinions that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to have in order to make you a good progressive
Speaker 1: or a good conservative, Like I just want to be
Speaker 1: all over the map. I want to be as heterodox
Speaker 1: as possible because I want to be as honest as possible,
Speaker 1: and neither side has a monopoly on the truth.
Speaker 2: Do you think that part of the success of your podcast,
Speaker 2: your show is your.
Speaker 1: I'll call it amazing control of.
Speaker 2: Your literate brain and your ability to articulate in such a.
Speaker 1: I won't call it polish, but quite beautiful way. Like
Speaker 1: you speak very well.
Speaker 2: I mean on one of the things I remember, listen
Speaker 2: to me, right, I thought, this dude can put a
Speaker 2: sentence together. You know, your command of the English language
Speaker 2: is very good. But you do it in you don't
Speaker 2: do it in a poshway or a pompous way. It's
Speaker 2: sort of just works. How important is that to you?
Speaker 1: Is everything? I mean, it's my bread and butter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't hurt. Put it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and un blessed because it's I mean, it's natural. It's natural.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I am really really grateful. There
Speaker 1: is so much to be grateful about. Grateful that I'm
Speaker 1: born in Australia, you know, grateful for so many things.
Speaker 1: But you know, whatever it is that you've got in
Speaker 1: your toolkit, that's that one thing that you can really
Speaker 1: lean on. If I could tell young people anything, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be like, you know, I find the thing
Speaker 1: that you I mean, it sounds facile, but it's only
Speaker 1: you have to reach middle age before you realize that
Speaker 1: it's profound, because it sounds stupid when you're in your twenties.
Speaker 1: But like, find the one thing that you're a lot
Speaker 1: better at than other people are, and they'll always almost
Speaker 1: always be something. And then the trick is in monetizing that. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: there might not be a job. You know what kind
Speaker 1: of a job is radio host? There aren't a lot
Speaker 1: of them around. It's a rarefied spot to get to,
Speaker 1: especially like intellectual radio host who's required to have half
Speaker 1: hour long, you know, high fluton conversations about something. So
Speaker 1: if you can't get that, then just make your own thing.
Speaker 1: And that's what the podcast is basically. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about whether or not management thinks it's
Speaker 1: okay to question Mardi Gras and gay pride and I
Speaker 1: don't care.
Speaker 2: And I got to ask you a bit of a
Speaker 2: personal question, but are your parents still around?
Speaker 1: Yes, dad's got Alzheimer's, so he's half around. What do
Speaker 1: they think of their son? Oh?
Speaker 2: Very proud in doing these in doing what you're doing
Speaker 2: now and what you've done the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very proud, very proud there. You know, dad was
Speaker 1: a Dad was born in a refugee camp in Switzerland
Speaker 1: during the war to Jewish parents, you know, and means
Speaker 1: he's Jewish, which means he's Jewish. Yeah, and so he
Speaker 1: has an incredible story of escape and his mum. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was raised in Paris and actually spent his seventh
Speaker 1: birthday in an orphanage in Paris when his mum was sick,
Speaker 1: but was raised when he was very young by a
Speaker 1: staunch Lutheran family in Switzerland who took him in out
Speaker 1: of the refugee camp. He was born in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: three and his mum marriged to scrounge up enough money
Speaker 1: to bring him and his sister out to get out
Speaker 1: of Europe. And she had been a penniless, you know,
Speaker 1: Jewish refugee from Poland who spent the war fleeing the
Speaker 1: Nazis in France. And she got to the she got
Speaker 1: to the port in France where they were loading these
Speaker 1: huge refugee boats to go to the New World. And
Speaker 1: she went up to the clerk who was signing people in,
Speaker 1: and the clerk said, you can go to the United States,
Speaker 1: or Canada or Australia. And she had no understanding of geography,
Speaker 1: so she just said, which one's further from here. He
Speaker 1: put down Australia and they came out to Australia, and
Speaker 1: so Dad has always had an extreme reverence I would
Speaker 1: say for contrarianism, for pushing through. You know, he's got
Speaker 1: a refugee spirit. You know, it's someone who doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: take no. And Mum is just this fabulous font of
Speaker 1: love and wisdom who as long as I'm happy, she'll
Speaker 1: be happy.
Speaker 2: It's dedicated to her son's Yeah, yeah, and I mean
Speaker 2: that's cool.
Speaker 1: Like at the end of the look, if I was
Speaker 1: making a living being a neo Nazi, she might she
Speaker 1: might draw the line. But I don't think I'm doing anything.
Speaker 1: You know, if in any other scenario there would be
Speaker 1: respect for people who I mean, look, I suppose we've
Speaker 1: always been a minority, like the kind of Chris for
Speaker 1: Hitchens as of the world, the people who are always
Speaker 1: trying to find the angle that is against what the
Speaker 1: mainstream think. But it's an honorable tradition and it's just
Speaker 1: upsetting to me that now progressives who think they're on
Speaker 1: the right side of history, you have inherited a censoriousness
Speaker 1: and an intolerance which traditionally was associated with the right.
Speaker 1: Like you know, the right bangs on a lot about
Speaker 1: free speech and cancel culture. And wokeness these days. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty hypocritical because you know, when Monty Python was
Speaker 1: releasing The Life of Brian, it wasn't the left that
Speaker 1: was calling for it to be canceled. It was the
Speaker 1: religious conservatives, you know, McCarthyism in the United States, the
Speaker 1: anti communist crackdowns and the witch hunts. That was the right.
Speaker 1: The right mastered cancel culture long before the left got
Speaker 1: wind of it. And it's just in the past decade
Speaker 1: or so I suppose that the left has unfortunately taken
Speaker 1: up the tactics of the old right in creating a
Speaker 1: kind of a purity test and like, these are the
Speaker 1: things that we believe, we hold sacred, and you know,
Speaker 1: there is a certain sanctity around the opinions that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to have about racial inequality, about gender inequality, about
Speaker 1: gender identity, and if you transgress those, now the left
Speaker 1: goes batshit crazy, the same way that the right used
Speaker 1: to go crazy if you transgressed, you know, if you
Speaker 1: were offensive or if you were blasphemous in some way.
Speaker 1: I just think the volume needs to be turned down
Speaker 1: all over and we need to rediscover a small lel
Speaker 1: liberal tolerance towards a plurality of views and try to
Speaker 1: cast the net of acceptable conversation as wide as possible. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that's the only way we're going to solve the problems
Speaker 1: of the twenty first entry. Tone it down, just well,
Speaker 1: tone it down and expand the expand the landscape. Like,
Speaker 1: the twenty first century is going to be really, really tricky,
Speaker 1: the intersection of artificial intelligence, climate chaos and the rise
Speaker 1: of China and disruptions to liberal democracy and the alternative
Speaker 1: path of you know, whatever new world order putin wants
Speaker 1: to introduce, or dictatorships, dictatorships in general, Like, it's going
Speaker 1: to be hard to manage, and you can't know what
Speaker 1: the correct path is unless you have the maximum number
Speaker 1: of voices all arguing about it and chipping in so
Speaker 1: that you can grope towards what the best course is.
Speaker 1: If you carve out you know, if you make it
Speaker 1: forbidden to talk about race or sex or sexuality or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be in advance, If you earmark a
Speaker 1: certain set of opinions as being beyond the pale before
Speaker 1: you even talk about them, how are you going to
Speaker 1: know what's true.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the greatest form of censorship. I want my
Speaker 2: last question, I'd just like to ask you if you
Speaker 2: don't mind, of course, and I haven't had anybody ever
Speaker 2: asked this question of for a long time.
Speaker 1: Do you think.
Speaker 2: That Australia should have a bill of rights for its
Speaker 2: citizens similar to what they have in the USA and
Speaker 2: talk about things like freedom of speech and et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 1: I go back and forth on it. At the moment time,
Speaker 1: I know, because at the moment if you built, if
Speaker 1: you wrote a bill of rights.
Speaker 2: A modern bill of rights, should say not the American
Speaker 2: Bill of Rights because it's out of date.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But if you wrote it now, then the social
Speaker 1: justice warriors would get in there and they'd make everyone
Speaker 1: have a right to not have their gender questioned, which
Speaker 1: would mean that people, you know, for example, feminists like
Speaker 1: Jermaine Greer, you know, or comedians like Barry Humphries who
Speaker 1: took the position that there's such a thing as biological
Speaker 1: males and biological females, could be in breach of the
Speaker 1: Bill of rights. But if what you mean is a
Speaker 1: bill of rights that enshrines freedom of speech in some respects,
Speaker 1: I feel like the absolutism of the American approach causes
Speaker 1: more problems than it solves.
Speaker 2: The reason I say it is because during the COVID period,
Speaker 2: I kept thinking to myself, we governments can actually do
Speaker 2: whatever they want, and I thought it was we don't
Speaker 2: really have a bill of rights here. We have there
Speaker 2: is a legislation which says you can't do this, you
Speaker 2: can't do that. We to protect people's rights. There's rights
Speaker 2: protection legislation which sort of therefore by definition is sort
Speaker 2: of like.
Speaker 1: A number of bills or bills of rights.
Speaker 2: But during the COPIAR I thought of myself, there we
Speaker 2: don't have one in Australia, and my rights are being
Speaker 2: determined by other parties based on epidemiological studies and models
Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff, which to something that
Speaker 2: I didn't agree with. I'm talking about the modeling, the
Speaker 2: mathematics of the modeling. I'm talking about them. I'm not
Speaker 2: talking about protecting people from getting COVID. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: how they modeled these things, because models, by definition always wrong.
Speaker 1: You're talking to somebody, by the way, who wrote an
Speaker 1: opinion piece at the end of twenty twenty one in
Speaker 1: the City Morning Herald saying, you know, is it time
Speaker 1: to start thinking of having a national conversation about the
Speaker 1: human rights implications. So I don't know that, but that's
Speaker 1: that's my position. I literally, you know, I literally wrote
Speaker 1: the article. It's at a time when it was extremely
Speaker 1: unpopular because everybody felt like that was killing grandma. But
Speaker 1: I interviewed on my absuit right well, at the time
Speaker 1: at the top, this is the end of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: when we were basically all vaccinated, and we still had
Speaker 1: ridiculous scenarios like a woman who I interviewed who flew
Speaker 1: from Melbourne to Adelaide with her family to see her family,
Speaker 1: with her little kids, to see her family for the
Speaker 1: first time since the lockdowns began. There was one person
Speaker 1: on her flight who tested positive for COVID the next day,
Speaker 1: so the police came to her hotel in Adelaide and
Speaker 1: took the whole family and locked them up and wanted
Speaker 1: to lock them up for two weeks. And after five
Speaker 1: days she made such a fuss that she was driven
Speaker 1: in police convoy to the border of South Australia and
Speaker 1: dumped out into the border of Victoria onto the Victorian
Speaker 1: side of the border after having been incarcerated for five days.
Speaker 1: All of them were COVID negative, but just because she'd
Speaker 1: been on the same plane as someone who had COVID.
Speaker 1: And I used that as a way of saying, like,
Speaker 1: at what point do we start asking do we start
Speaker 1: saying the human rights of this woman are more important
Speaker 1: than whatever epidemiological solution you thought you were achieving in
Speaker 1: terms of tracking and tracing that that disease. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, or.
Speaker 2: Is it a conversation that maybe perhaps maybe not, somebody's
Speaker 2: just going to get his the bill. Maybe that's probably
Speaker 2: a certain way putting it. But should there be a
Speaker 2: conversation around this.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there would certainly be a conversation. Well, which
Speaker 1: is offered it? No, that's true. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would have. I mean, we need to get ahead of
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. We need to get ahead of AI.
Speaker 1: We need to get ahead of the next pandemic which
Speaker 1: will come and it'll be worse, I mean a pandemic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the next one always will be worse because they adapt, right, right,
Speaker 2: because it's there to control the host exactly, that's right,
Speaker 2: So it will do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and there may be smaller ones, but there
Speaker 1: will be bigger ones. And yeah, so I think that
Speaker 1: would be a good idea having some kind of a
Speaker 1: national round table where you know people could come together
Speaker 1: or do you think it's not possible? No, I think
Speaker 1: it's possible. Do do you think it's possible to settle
Speaker 1: on something?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 1: I have to have faith in democracy, Mark, we're grown up.
Speaker 2: So but do you think it's going to be Anthony
Speaker 2: ABERNIZI or it's going to be the you know, is it?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be Chris Means? I mean is
Speaker 1: what do you think?
Speaker 2: Do you think that we have the capacity to do
Speaker 2: to sales?
Speaker 1: I think you could have. Yeah, I think you could
Speaker 1: have a national cabinet where the Premier sit down with
Speaker 1: the Attorney General, with the federal Attorney General and Health
Speaker 1: Minister and Prime minister, and you get academics together, and
Speaker 1: you get human rights people together and you just hammer
Speaker 1: out even if it's not a Bill of rights, a
Speaker 1: set of a one pager about like a discussion page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what we expect as Australians. This is what
Speaker 1: we expect of our government, sort of like a code
Speaker 1: of conduct. Yeah, exactly, that's right.
Speaker 2: As opposed to a bill where you can you know,
Speaker 2: you can you know you can talk about that. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to answer that question because I've got a bill,
Speaker 2: there's a been somebody.
Speaker 1: Well exactly, yeah, that's right, I mean, it's it's everything
Speaker 1: is messy. Basically, I think the only solution is conversations.
Speaker 1: I don't think any bill of rights or any I mean,
Speaker 1: constitutions are worth the worth the paper they're written on
Speaker 1: unless they're enforced by courts, and courts aren't worth their
Speaker 1: salt unless they're backed up by the good faith of
Speaker 1: the political process. And the political process isn't worth its
Speaker 1: salt unless the military obeys what the politicians tell it
Speaker 1: to do. And you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: everything is a conversation. Everything, everything is trust as a story,
Speaker 1: really right, It's like, you know what's money? You know, money,
Speaker 1: money is nothing money, money, money is relationships, right, money
Speaker 1: is you know, investments in things. So yeah, to me,
Speaker 1: looking for that one thing that's going to save us,
Speaker 1: like the Bill of rights or something is a bit
Speaker 1: of a fool's Errand like my mission is to have
Speaker 1: a platform uncomfortable conversations where people can have conversations about
Speaker 1: uncomfortable things in ways that are as inclusive and as
Speaker 1: interesting and satisfied people's intellectual curiosity as much as possible,
Speaker 1: and I just hope that that is one piece of
Speaker 1: a larger mosaic, like one piece of a jigsaw that
Speaker 1: can contribute to a sane and prosperous future. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna be the whole answer, but I'm pretty convinced that
Speaker 1: that landscape of having conversations in an honest and generous
Speaker 1: way is the easiest. Like that's the path of least
Speaker 1: resistance to our success as a culture. Josh Epps, to
Speaker 1: use a controversial word, I loved it. Good on you, mate,
Speaker 1: Thank you