TRIGGERnometry - Inside the Bubble of Public Broadcasting

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00:00:30.860 Some producers who I've worked with have been required by management in various media organisations

00:00:35.740 to literally keep a spreadsheet, literally guessing whether or not a guest is gay,

00:00:40.260 because you're not going to go up to them and go, hey mate, are you a bit queer?

00:00:44.460 But there's no column for what's the economic background of this person?

00:00:49.200 What's their class? What's their ideology?

00:00:51.860 So you'll end up turning on the TV, and you'll have a panel,

00:00:55.760 and there'll be a Sikh woman, a transgender woman, a black woman, and an indigenous woman,

00:01:02.440 all saying the same fucking thing.

00:01:04.260 Well, how's that diversity?

00:01:06.560 Josh Zeps, all the way over from Australia, you haven't been there for a while.

00:01:10.520 I've just come back from there, so that will be an interesting chat for us to get into.

00:01:15.300 This is hilarious as well, because we've been going back and forth and back and forth for like 18 months,

00:01:18.860 and every single time I'm in the UK, you're in the US or somewhere, and then I was in Australia.

00:01:24.380 That's what happens when you're a star, mate.

00:01:26.740 And then finally, and now then I was here while you were in Australia,

00:01:30.140 and now this is like the one day, I'm going back to Australia tomorrow,

00:01:33.380 and then the overlap, the stars have finally aligned, and we're here for 24 hours in the same city.

00:01:38.720 That's right.

00:01:39.080 Well, so you were just in America, and Francis was there.

00:01:41.560 Yes.

00:01:41.840 I was just in Australia, I came back yesterday morning, and you're flying there tomorrow.

00:01:45.020 Exactly.

00:01:45.800 It was meant to be.

00:01:46.860 It was meant to be.

00:01:47.660 So it's good to have you on, man, and so much to talk about.

00:01:50.240 You had some very interesting things happen in your career with the equivalent of the BBC in Australia.

00:01:56.480 Yes.

00:01:56.740 We'll talk about that as well.

00:01:58.120 But just, I was curious to get your perspective on where you think Australia is in terms of comparing to the UK and the US,

00:02:05.480 in terms of the cultural stuff that we often talk about,

00:02:08.120 because my takeaway from having spent a couple of weeks there was like traveling 10 years into the past,

00:02:14.040 and in the past, that would have sounded like a hack joke about Australia being a backward place.

00:02:20.540 Today, I think it's kind of a compliment.

00:02:22.580 Like, things aren't as bad.

00:02:25.680 Do you know what I mean?

00:02:26.700 Well, I'm hoping that we don't have to follow exactly the same trajectory.

00:02:29.500 Me too.

00:02:29.840 I'm hoping there are some icebergs that we can avoid.

00:02:31.820 I mean, this is one of the benefits of being a medium-sized country that nobody pays attention to.

00:02:36.180 You get to learn from the mistakes of other countries,

00:02:38.200 and you get to see what the US and the UK are doing, and hopefully not do exactly that.

00:02:42.520 But, I mean, Australians are quite, we're pretty relaxed.

00:02:47.280 I mean, we're mostly pretty chilled out.

00:02:48.920 I feel like the volume on everything in America is turned up to 11.

00:02:52.500 I'm less familiar with where things are at at the moment right now in the UK.

00:02:56.460 I'm pretty familiar with, I mean, I've lived here when I was in my teens,

00:03:00.160 and it struck me that there's a kind of a,

00:03:02.380 there's a stiff upper lip sense of English compliance that is reminiscent of the Australian attitude.

00:03:08.300 And the United States just seems to have gone to a degree that is,

00:03:14.160 I don't know how you wind it back, especially in an era of social media

00:03:18.360 and coming artificial intelligence and, like, political polarisation

00:03:22.440 and the two fantastic candidates who we have for president,

00:03:26.740 both remarkable gentlemen in their own right.

00:03:29.480 But I think Australia has managed to kind of, you know,

00:03:34.280 tack as something of a middle course.

00:03:36.160 There is a wild social justice fringe, but it's not nearly as powerful or as vocal.

00:03:43.120 There is a right-wing, quasi-alt-right, semi-libertarian strain of moderate craziness,

00:03:51.000 but it's not as significant.

00:03:52.280 But what there is in Australia that I think goes unremarked upon there

00:03:57.080 is a kind of a soft, fluffy, kind consensus that is hard to shatter.

00:04:03.920 Like, why would you have conversations like the ones that you guys do?

00:04:07.880 Like, why not just let things be?

00:04:10.200 Why do you want to keep ruffling feathers?

00:04:11.920 Why do you want to keep making trouble?

00:04:13.340 Why do you want to keep kicking a hornet's nest?

00:04:15.280 You know, like, we know what the proper way of thinking is,

00:04:18.540 so let's just think the proper things.

00:04:20.120 And that's quite pervasive, I think.

00:04:22.720 And is this why you're no longer the ABC?

00:04:25.200 It may have something to do with it.

00:04:27.040 It may have something to do with it.

00:04:28.280 To tell everybody the story of what happened with you.

00:04:30.000 Well, look, there is no precipitating incident,

00:04:32.640 and I love the public broadcaster.

00:04:34.300 I think it's indispensable, I think.

00:04:35.960 We used to talk like this about five years ago.

00:04:37.960 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:04:39.260 You think I'm going to come around at some point?

00:04:41.780 Oh, I think you will.

00:04:42.480 Oh, I think you will.

00:04:42.500 I mean, I think.

00:04:43.100 It's not about you coming around.

00:04:44.460 It's about them changing.

00:04:45.820 That's what will happen.

00:04:46.580 Well, that is interesting.

00:04:47.720 I mean, you know, so how do you get that change,

00:04:50.200 and how do you restore trust in mainstream media institutions,

00:04:53.220 and how do those institutions and organisations earn the trust?

00:04:57.120 I mean, there has come to be a way of thinking about big subjects

00:05:02.720 where the people who are involved in reporting

00:05:05.160 don't necessarily even know that they're inside a bubble, right?

00:05:08.920 So it's not that there's, like, I think sometimes people

00:05:12.500 who are on the outside of media might suspect that there's, you know,

00:05:16.140 some kind of nefarious conspiracy that people know

00:05:18.660 that they're avoiding certain stories,

00:05:20.160 and we might be talking about, you know, transgender issues,

00:05:22.880 or we might be talking about, I don't know, the gender pay gap,

00:05:25.660 or we might be talking about race or Indigenous rights

00:05:27.900 or something like that.

00:05:29.100 And there can be a perception, oh, well, everyone's just saying

00:05:31.000 the same thing because they're all in on it,

00:05:32.680 or they're all, you know, they're not touching things

00:05:34.540 because they're co-opted in some way.

00:05:37.840 And it's less that and more, like, you know the old joke

00:05:42.520 about the two young fish who are swimming through the ocean

00:05:44.960 and an older, bigger fish swims past them and says,

00:05:48.160 how's the water today, guys?

00:05:50.220 And they swim on, and one of the young fish looks at the other one

00:05:53.060 and says, what's water?

00:05:55.460 You don't know the water unless you're outside of the water.

00:05:59.320 Like, you have to actually jump out of the pond

00:06:01.460 in order to see what you're swimming in.

00:06:03.200 And for me, there was just an increasing conflict

00:06:06.760 between the kinds of conversations that I want to have

00:06:09.020 on Uncomfortable Conversations, which is the name of my podcast

00:06:12.320 and which, by definition, are Uncomfortable Conversations,

00:06:15.640 which doesn't necessarily mean that I'm making the guest uncomfortable

00:06:18.320 or that we're going to have an argument

00:06:19.680 or that I'm going to confect some kind of controversy,

00:06:22.180 but it does mean that we're going to touch subjects

00:06:23.940 that would make people uncomfortable if people were to raise them

00:06:26.440 at a party or, you know, at the pub or at a barbie,

00:06:29.980 as the case would be in Australia.

00:06:31.180 Things where there's a certain kind of orthodoxy on both sides,

00:06:35.760 and you know that once you start talking about them,

00:06:38.120 there are eggshells that you have to tread on,

00:06:39.980 there are tripwires that you have to be careful not to trigger.

00:06:42.300 Trigger, no more tree, thank you very much.

00:06:44.600 And so my desire to sort of wrestle with those things on my podcast,

00:06:48.880 occasionally write newspaper articles about those sorts

00:06:51.380 of subjects, but came into conflict with a, you know,

00:06:57.620 justifiably, I would say, risk-averse corporation

00:07:01.000 and a cautious corporation that is struggling at the moment

00:07:04.980 in a battle between objectivity and diversity.

00:07:09.860 So, like, there's a whole diversity mantra that's taking place

00:07:13.240 at the moment in newsrooms where you want more diverse people

00:07:16.760 to come in and bring their whole selves to the story

00:07:19.920 and use their own lived experience and so on.

00:07:22.820 Well, how does that mesh with the quest

00:07:24.980 for an objective reporting, right?

00:07:28.280 I've always felt that in a position like the one that I had,

00:07:31.480 I hosted a three-hour-a-day talkback radio show

00:07:34.860 where we took calls, we interviewed politicians,

00:07:37.240 we interviewed cultural figures and so on,

00:07:39.980 I felt there should be some space for a kind of certain amount

00:07:43.160 of rambunctiousness, a certain amount of pushing the edges,

00:07:46.500 a certain amount of kind of playful interrogation

00:07:49.260 that sometimes rubbed people the wrong way.

00:07:53.460 I would want to see a public square that's as capacious as possible,

00:07:56.920 that's as vigorous as possible.

00:07:58.580 I think it's the only way we're going to survive the 21st century

00:08:00.860 if we manage to talk to each other in ways that are sometimes provocative

00:08:04.360 and sort of wrestle our way towards the truth.

00:08:06.500 But that does sometimes run counter to the mandates of objectivity,

00:08:12.420 which can sometimes get confused with mandates

00:08:15.580 for intellectual or ideological orthodoxy.

00:08:18.980 So when you say, how did it happen?

00:08:20.340 That's all a very long-winded way of saying,

00:08:22.340 basically, I wanted to write some newspaper articles

00:08:25.480 about various subjects that would consistently get knocked back

00:08:28.540 by management.

00:08:29.560 The canary in the coal mine for me was during gay pride last year.

00:08:37.220 Now I'm married to a guy.

00:08:39.020 I think I have my bona fides there.

00:08:41.360 That makes me pretty gay.

00:08:43.120 I'm a card-carrying member.

00:08:46.280 And yet I've always been a bit off about pride.

00:08:51.080 I mean, you know, it's 2024.

00:08:54.000 Will there ever come a point in the future where we can just say,

00:08:56.560 stick a fork in it, the turkey is done.

00:08:58.460 Like, it's done.

00:08:59.680 We won.

00:09:00.740 We won everything we asked for.

00:09:02.700 God bless all the people in the 60s and 70s,

00:09:05.240 the gay rights pioneers who endured police beatings

00:09:08.720 and campaigned for everything.

00:09:10.220 And now we have effectively total equality.

00:09:13.420 My life is miraculously boring, right?

00:09:16.340 You know, I have a mortgage.

00:09:17.420 I have kids.

00:09:18.080 I have a husband.

00:09:19.080 That's what they wanted.

00:09:20.900 And so I was invited by one of the broadsheet newspapers

00:09:24.100 in Sydney to write a piece about this

00:09:26.080 because the editor knew how I felt about it.

00:09:28.900 And unfortunately, when you are a host or presenter

00:09:32.500 on the public broadcaster and you're the public face,

00:09:35.500 everything has to go through management to get approved.

00:09:38.280 And this piece that was somewhat critical,

00:09:42.140 mildly critical of the idea of pride,

00:09:44.260 went up the chain and it was refused to be published.

00:09:47.740 Not even in the public broadcaster, right?

00:09:50.180 But published in a different publication.

00:09:52.700 So it wouldn't even have their imprimatur on it.

00:09:56.280 And the explanation was that, you know,

00:09:59.380 hosts on the network are not allowed to hold

00:10:02.100 or express opinions about controversial cultural issues.

00:10:07.180 This was at a time when the broadcaster was the official sponsor

00:10:13.940 of World Pride, which was the gay pride that was taking place.

00:10:18.480 There were huge rainbow flags hanging in the lobby.

00:10:21.460 Every other host on the station, all of whom are straight,

00:10:24.960 apart from me, are going rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, gay pride.

00:10:28.140 Every second promo in the ad breaks is for gay pride.

00:10:32.060 Pride. So I was like, you are allowed to have an opinion about pride.

00:10:37.520 It just has to be management's opinion about pride.

00:10:40.640 It can't be a dissenting opinion about pride.

00:10:43.380 And that's when I thought, okay,

00:10:45.520 we're going to run into some trouble here at some point.

00:10:48.360 And that trouble came to a head in various ways

00:10:51.100 towards the end of last year,

00:10:52.340 where I think the risk aversion of management was just like,

00:10:56.400 you know, pick a team, either you're with us or against us.

00:10:59.280 And I was like, okay, I guess I have to be against you, grudgingly so.

00:11:03.000 Josh, do you think that would have happened 10 years ago?

00:11:06.500 Do you think they would have been as strong on,

00:11:09.760 you need to adhere to the public message?

00:11:12.920 I don't know, because I had the good fortune

00:11:15.720 of not being in an organisation that robust.

00:11:19.820 It's hard to say.

00:11:20.880 I mean, look, echo chambers have always existed, right?

00:11:24.380 Like, you know, groupthink has always existed.

00:11:26.400 It's not like we've had a particularly courageous set

00:11:30.180 of contrarian institutions or organisations

00:11:33.360 going back into the past.

00:11:34.800 And there's certainly groupthink on the right as well.

00:11:38.060 I mean, I could be making the same criticisms

00:11:39.640 of other media outlets.

00:11:42.040 And I think on the whole, it's critically important

00:11:44.180 for us to still have the newsgathering institutions

00:11:46.360 of some of these places.

00:11:47.700 But would it have happened 10 years ago?

00:11:49.720 I mean, I think there'd probably be different blind spots.

00:11:53.200 I think the blind spots, I think it wouldn't be specific to that one

00:11:56.660 because the orthodoxy of what the elite establishment

00:11:59.380 regard as being taboo has shifted.

00:12:02.560 But there would have been other things

00:12:03.860 and there would have been other, you know,

00:12:05.720 how easy was it in the 1970s to, you know,

00:12:09.920 come out in favour of, I don't know,

00:12:12.300 name your social justice issue of the 1970s.

00:12:15.580 You know, you would have had, when the Life of Brian was released,

00:12:19.340 you know, the Christians were going nuts

00:12:20.800 and saying that it should be banned.

00:12:21.980 There's always people who believe

00:12:23.960 that they're on the right side of history

00:12:25.220 who want to silence other people.

00:12:27.940 And I'm not saying that that's what happened here.

00:12:30.260 I'm just saying that there's an effect

00:12:33.200 where when people feel like they're pretty certain

00:12:36.360 what the right solution, what the right answer is,

00:12:38.860 they don't want the questions to be asked.

00:12:40.640 And I think I believe, and you guys clearly believe,

00:12:43.760 that those questions still deserve to be asked

00:12:45.780 because we haven't settled on a final answer

00:12:48.360 to what's right and what's not.

00:12:50.080 I think as well, and push back on this if you disagree,

00:12:53.780 and the more I've been thinking about this,

00:12:55.620 mainly to do with the BBC,

00:12:57.400 the more I've come to this conclusion,

00:12:59.860 which is if the state-funded broadcaster

00:13:02.300 is not willing to entertain other points of view,

00:13:07.320 let's just call them a heterodox points of view,

00:13:09.240 then why should they be funded by the state?

00:13:13.220 Because there are people in that state

00:13:16.240 who have those opinions,

00:13:17.640 whether it's being pro-Brexit a few years ago,

00:13:20.840 or thinking that actually what we need

00:13:23.740 is some kind of more populist government.

00:13:26.320 We need stricter controls on immigration.

00:13:29.300 But if the mainstream broadcaster

00:13:31.860 is not prepared to entertain those points of view,

00:13:35.100 then is it really serving its public?

00:13:37.700 It's a tricky question.

00:13:38.820 I mean, the simple answer to that

00:13:40.760 is in news gathering, it should be.

00:13:43.420 I mean, in news gathering,

00:13:44.900 so you can divide kind of all media organizations

00:13:47.540 into the news department

00:13:48.800 and then what is sometimes called content,

00:13:51.220 which would be entertainment documentaries,

00:13:53.180 factual, and stuff like that.

00:13:55.140 I think it is absolutely indispensable

00:13:57.920 for us all to establish uniform facts about the world

00:14:01.700 and for us to be getting our news

00:14:03.440 from news organizations.

00:14:05.160 I think people who get their news

00:14:06.980 solely from podcasts and blogs

00:14:10.060 are at huge risk of being misled.

00:14:14.440 Subscribe now.

00:14:15.020 Subscribe now.

00:14:15.920 And subscribe to Uncomfortable Conversations,

00:14:17.520 which is launched on Substack

00:14:18.620 and a new YouTube page.

00:14:20.840 But, you know, I do think...

00:14:21.940 I so agree with you, by the way.

00:14:23.220 Yeah, it's like people who haven't worked in journalism

00:14:26.160 may not understand the sheer rigor of a real newsroom.

00:14:29.960 If you're at the New York Times

00:14:31.180 or if you're at the New Yorker

00:14:32.900 or if you're at the BBC or the ABC,

00:14:35.340 you will have an editor above you

00:14:38.540 if you're in a newsroom

00:14:39.400 who, when you come with a story,

00:14:41.280 will say,

00:14:41.940 great story,

00:14:43.020 you don't quite have it yet.

00:14:44.680 You need to get another two sources.

00:14:46.920 We need to fact check it.

00:14:48.000 We need to go through line by line

00:14:49.320 and make sure that it's true.

00:14:51.160 And does that always work?

00:14:53.120 No.

00:14:53.500 Do they sometimes make mistakes?

00:14:54.780 Of course they do.

00:14:55.620 And then they will correct those mistakes.

00:14:57.080 And in an ideal world,

00:14:58.760 you're aspiring towards a scenario

00:15:00.440 where you've set up an institution

00:15:02.820 that functions as a self-correcting mechanism

00:15:05.300 to try to arrive at the best possible representation

00:15:08.700 of the truth,

00:15:09.420 however hard that may be.

00:15:11.080 Then when you're talking about the content side of things,

00:15:13.420 so you might be talking about a BBC panel show,

00:15:15.440 for example,

00:15:15.900 you're talking about a chat show,

00:15:17.240 you're talking about a morning show

00:15:18.480 or something like that,

00:15:19.460 where it's not where you're going for your news

00:15:21.320 and it doesn't have editorial oversight in the same way,

00:15:24.200 it's more just like,

00:15:25.060 let's talk about the issues of the day,

00:15:26.560 then I completely agree with you.

00:15:28.360 Then you need the largest number of possible voices.

00:15:31.860 And what's happened is that you've got at the moment

00:15:33.960 this diversity mantra,

00:15:35.460 which focuses incredibly intensely

00:15:37.700 on the ethnicity and the religion

00:15:40.560 and the race and the sex and the sexuality

00:15:43.700 and the gender orientation of guests

00:15:45.960 to try to make sure that the net is cast

00:15:48.340 as widely as possible

00:15:49.600 with no focus on ideological diversity

00:15:52.160 or political diversity.

00:15:54.020 I mean, there would be panel shows.

00:15:55.300 So some producers who I've worked with

00:15:57.700 have been required by management

00:15:59.180 in various media organisations

00:16:00.840 to literally keep a spreadsheet

00:16:03.080 of all of the guests

00:16:04.780 with columns for their sex,

00:16:08.520 you know, sexual orientation.

00:16:10.220 I mean, they're literally guessing

00:16:11.640 whether or not a guest is gay

00:16:12.760 because you're not going to go up to them

00:16:13.800 and go, hey, mate,

00:16:14.780 are you a bit queer?

00:16:16.400 So, you know, they're guessing sexual orientation.

00:16:18.680 They're writing down that.

00:16:19.760 But there's no column for

00:16:21.480 what's the economic background of this person?

00:16:24.340 What was their class?

00:16:25.840 What's their ideology?

00:16:27.380 What's their political affiliation, if any?

00:16:29.940 So you'll end up turning on the TV

00:16:31.820 and you'll have a panel

00:16:33.500 and there'll be a Sikh woman,

00:16:36.200 a transgender woman,

00:16:37.820 a black woman and an indigenous woman

00:16:40.000 all saying the same fucking thing.

00:16:42.600 Well, how's that diversity?

00:16:44.360 So, yes, you know,

00:16:45.740 expand that as much as possible.

00:16:48.380 But I would never go so far

00:16:50.320 as to say that you shouldn't be funding,

00:16:51.740 you know, state funded media.

00:16:54.040 I think that's indispensable.

00:16:54.980 I think that the original idea,

00:16:56.600 if you want to get all philosophical,

00:16:57.840 like Habermas was the first guy

00:16:59.760 who kind of came up with this notion

00:17:01.980 that anytime you have corporate media,

00:17:04.640 it's going to be influenced by advertisers

00:17:06.380 and by big corporate money.

00:17:07.820 And anytime you have state media,

00:17:09.500 it's going to be influenced by politicians.

00:17:11.440 So you create a public sphere,

00:17:12.840 which is in the middle.

00:17:13.640 Which is not funded by corporations.

00:17:15.860 And although it's funded by the state,

00:17:17.300 it's completely free from interference by the state.

00:17:19.840 And the government has no ability

00:17:21.180 to instruct journalists or editors

00:17:22.700 about what they should or shouldn't be saying.

00:17:24.780 That's the ideal.

00:17:25.780 And I still think that that has merit.

00:17:27.680 I think that's a really good distinction,

00:17:29.120 actually, about the news side

00:17:30.460 and everything else,

00:17:31.620 because I think that's where

00:17:32.520 the BBC's got into trouble.

00:17:34.520 And I said that you sound like us five years ago.

00:17:37.820 And I think you misunderstood what I meant,

00:17:39.720 because the change that's happening,

00:17:42.060 certainly for us,

00:17:43.440 it's not that we have changed our opinion particularly.

00:17:45.680 It's just as you've seen the content side of the BBC

00:17:50.340 drive it consistently in the direction

00:17:53.100 that you're talking about.

00:17:54.200 At this point, it's kind of hard for us to argue

00:17:56.740 that that is something that should be funded by the public.

00:17:59.500 And I think from my conversations with people

00:18:02.400 who do still work at the ABC

00:18:04.300 and your experience too,

00:18:05.660 that is a direction that it seems to be heading in as well,

00:18:09.900 whereby the content side

00:18:11.540 is undermining people's trust in the news side.

00:18:14.940 I mean, the New York Times is a good example of this,

00:18:17.960 where, I mean, the New York Times

00:18:19.900 has been caught lying endlessly at this point.

00:18:23.400 And I agree with you that a podcast-

00:18:25.200 I'm not sure about that.

00:18:25.900 I'm sure I would sign on to lying endlessly.

00:18:29.360 Okay.

00:18:29.800 I suppose it depends on what your definition of lying is.

00:18:32.440 My view would be that the New York Times

00:18:34.920 is consistently representing a slanted view of the world

00:18:39.640 by pushing stories very hard that fulfill that view

00:18:43.280 and suppressing and not publishing stories that don't.

00:18:46.100 The end result of which is people are presented

00:18:48.220 with a false vision of what the truth is overall.

00:18:51.120 And that is intentional because that is what the people

00:18:54.120 in the organization want to push to the world, right?

00:18:57.900 So, I mean, well, there are two things going on.

00:18:59.420 One is the editorial direction

00:19:01.040 that they want a newspaper to have.

00:19:02.640 So the Wall Street Journal

00:19:03.520 has a self-consciously conservative op-ed page.

00:19:07.380 All of their columnists are, you know,

00:19:09.140 deeply, deeply conservative.

00:19:10.600 The New York Times has traditionally been on the left

00:19:12.280 and it's, you know, editorials will be slanted

00:19:15.500 in that direction.

00:19:16.660 Then there's the news side of things,

00:19:17.840 just to divide news and, you know,

00:19:19.300 opinion or content again.

00:19:21.120 And I'll take you, I'll grant to you

00:19:23.240 that certainly during the racial reckoning

00:19:25.880 of 2020 to 2021, there was an enormous amount

00:19:29.440 of trying to do the right thing

00:19:32.060 throughout through their news reporting

00:19:33.900 at the New York Times.

00:19:35.080 So, you know, oh, they weren't riots.

00:19:36.860 They were, you know, mostly peaceful protests

00:19:38.700 or, you know, in the early days

00:19:40.780 of the transgender issue,

00:19:42.240 it was all just about, you know,

00:19:43.600 respecting people's identity and so on.

00:19:45.340 But I think in the past 12 to 18 months,

00:19:47.420 the New York Times has done a good job

00:19:49.220 of bringing on board a bunch of dissenting voices

00:19:51.640 in the editorial side of things

00:19:53.320 with, you know, columnists

00:19:54.520 who are much more heterodox.

00:19:56.020 And even on the news side of things,

00:19:57.520 you've seen three big feature pieces

00:19:59.680 in the New York Times

00:20:00.500 in the past eight months or so

00:20:01.940 about the controversy

00:20:03.300 over transgender pediatric care

00:20:05.020 and things like that

00:20:05.740 you would never have seen

00:20:06.840 three or four years ago.

00:20:08.100 So I do think there's an ability

00:20:10.040 to right the ship.

00:20:11.360 I don't think you can call it lying.

00:20:12.900 Hold on, but this is precisely my point.

00:20:15.080 Look at transgender stuff, right?

00:20:18.100 The reason they are now doing this

00:20:19.840 is that people on podcasts

00:20:21.780 and everywhere else

00:20:22.680 have been basically saying,

00:20:24.420 guys, this is like,

00:20:25.400 this is a real issue

00:20:26.180 and it's serious

00:20:26.800 and people are being hurt

00:20:27.800 and blah, blah, blah.

00:20:28.880 And the New York Times

00:20:29.800 would have been writing pieces

00:20:31.020 at the time saying,

00:20:32.660 oh, these people are evil, right?

00:20:34.760 Yes.

00:20:35.040 And now three years later,

00:20:36.460 they're like,

00:20:36.960 oh, actually, this is a big problem.

00:20:38.960 So if I'm one of the people

00:20:41.180 who's like Abigail Schreier

00:20:42.720 or Barry Weiss

00:20:43.600 or someone like that

00:20:44.320 who's been raising this issue

00:20:45.600 and being dismissed,

00:20:47.360 I think it's quite reasonable

00:20:48.300 in that situation to go,

00:20:49.860 well, it's great

00:20:50.400 that they've woken up to it,

00:20:51.880 but if every time an issue

00:20:53.480 doesn't fit their narrow vision,

00:20:56.140 the people who raise that issue

00:20:57.520 get destroyed

00:20:58.200 and then three years later,

00:20:59.160 they're like,

00:20:59.420 oh, actually, this is a real issue.

00:21:00.900 That's not how it should be.

00:21:02.240 Well, absolutely,

00:21:03.000 it's not how it should be.

00:21:03.940 And clearly,

00:21:04.700 I have faith in the ability

00:21:06.040 of podcasts

00:21:06.900 to bring to the mainstream media's attention

00:21:08.740 things that they ought

00:21:09.560 to be covering.

00:21:10.240 Otherwise, I wouldn't have gone out

00:21:11.320 on my own

00:21:11.760 and I wouldn't now be doing a podcast.

00:21:13.040 So you're right.

00:21:14.600 I think we have the freedom

00:21:15.640 in the independent media space

00:21:18.160 to notice things

00:21:19.300 that perhaps

00:21:20.000 the structures

00:21:21.000 of an editorial newsroom

00:21:22.180 aren't going to notice

00:21:23.040 and to push on them

00:21:24.360 in a way

00:21:25.100 that they wouldn't feel

00:21:26.060 comfortable pushing on them.

00:21:27.760 And I would just say

00:21:28.840 if they come around late,

00:21:30.580 then that's better

00:21:31.100 than never coming around at all.

00:21:33.020 I don't think it means

00:21:33.980 that they were lying

00:21:34.660 in the first place.

00:21:35.380 I think it means

00:21:35.820 that they had

00:21:36.380 a misallocation of focus.

00:21:38.060 It's also worth

00:21:39.900 bearing in mind as well

00:21:40.940 that I think

00:21:42.220 this is something

00:21:43.020 that happens

00:21:43.600 to every institution

00:21:45.040 where every institution

00:21:46.300 right-leaning media

00:21:47.300 will have blind spots

00:21:48.460 with issues

00:21:50.020 that the left

00:21:50.700 think are more important.

00:21:53.120 And also as well,

00:21:54.660 the things that can,

00:21:55.520 I would love to have

00:21:56.180 your opinion on this,

00:21:57.180 which is

00:21:57.680 the podcast space.

00:21:59.880 It's beautiful,

00:22:01.240 it's brilliant,

00:22:01.940 it's exciting,

00:22:02.780 but it's not also

00:22:04.500 without its pitfalls,

00:22:05.760 particularly when it comes

00:22:07.240 to things like

00:22:07.780 audience capture.

00:22:08.860 Yeah, absolutely.

00:22:09.860 I mean,

00:22:10.420 look at what's happened

00:22:11.600 over the course of,

00:22:12.440 since prior to COVID

00:22:13.800 to many people

00:22:15.200 who I regarded

00:22:15.780 as friends and colleagues

00:22:16.840 prior to that.

00:22:18.340 There is,

00:22:19.180 I mean,

00:22:19.440 you guys are at risk

00:22:20.220 of this as well, right?

00:22:21.100 I mean, you know.

00:22:21.600 No, we're not.

00:22:23.400 Do you know what?

00:22:24.260 We are genuinely

00:22:25.120 far too,

00:22:25.760 far too confrarian assholes

00:22:27.840 to be captured.

00:22:29.300 We like pissing

00:22:30.980 our audience off regularly.

00:22:32.460 Become part of our group.

00:22:33.520 No, fuck off.

00:22:34.180 I'm not part of any group.

00:22:35.080 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:35.900 It's the tribe.

00:22:36.380 I call my people

00:22:37.040 the tribe of the tribalists,

00:22:38.600 right?

00:22:38.720 You know,

00:22:39.080 we are proudly tribalists,

00:22:40.320 a tribalist tribe.

00:22:41.660 But, you know,

00:22:43.160 prior to,

00:22:44.140 back in,

00:22:45.100 what was it,

00:22:45.440 maybe 2018,

00:22:46.200 2019,

00:22:47.060 I moderated a live event

00:22:49.440 in Australia,

00:22:50.900 which was Sam Harris,

00:22:52.540 Douglas Murray,

00:22:53.760 Majid Nawaz,

00:22:55.080 Eric Weinstein,

00:22:56.020 and Brett Weinstein,

00:22:57.060 right?

00:22:57.980 Now,

00:22:58.260 of that group,

00:22:59.200 and I shan't mention

00:23:00.220 any names,

00:23:01.920 several are still

00:23:03.560 completely sane,

00:23:04.480 and several have gone

00:23:06.200 batshit crazy.

00:23:07.220 Do you know what's

00:23:07.680 interesting about this?

00:23:08.460 Sorry to interrupt,

00:23:09.120 Josh,

00:23:09.240 is Joe Rogan

00:23:11.100 has a great routine

00:23:12.500 about what happened

00:23:13.800 during COVID.

00:23:14.420 He says,

00:23:15.420 we lost so many people

00:23:16.360 during COVID

00:23:17.040 and most of them

00:23:17.620 are still alive.

00:23:18.940 Yeah.

00:23:19.000 And what's interesting

00:23:20.180 is which of those

00:23:23.400 five people

00:23:24.180 you would describe

00:23:25.320 as having been lost

00:23:26.540 and which you wouldn't

00:23:27.600 really depends on

00:23:28.820 where you've ended up

00:23:29.640 as a result.

00:23:30.200 There are some people

00:23:30.920 who would have

00:23:31.640 the exact opposite view

00:23:32.760 to you.

00:23:33.060 Those people would be wrong.

00:23:34.840 Only I am right.

00:23:37.000 I probably will find

00:23:38.660 myself agreeing

00:23:39.340 with your list

00:23:40.640 of who has lost

00:23:41.880 and who hasn't,

00:23:42.780 but I think

00:23:43.580 it's an interesting point

00:23:44.660 and this speaks actually

00:23:45.620 to the podcast capture thing.

00:23:46.980 Yeah, I mean,

00:23:47.720 there is something

00:23:48.480 that happens

00:23:49.220 in independent media

00:23:50.640 where if you're prone

00:23:52.880 to a certain type

00:23:54.080 of conspiratorial thinking

00:23:55.260 and you're prone

00:23:56.740 to appreciating

00:23:58.180 the feedback,

00:23:59.140 what you regard

00:23:59.720 as the feedback

00:24:00.220 of your audience,

00:24:01.560 which actually,

00:24:02.320 of course,

00:24:02.620 is the feedback

00:24:03.160 of the minority

00:24:04.100 of your audience

00:24:04.720 who can be bothered

00:24:05.460 emailing you

00:24:06.560 because they're sufficiently

00:24:07.300 outraged or passionate

00:24:08.260 and have enough time

00:24:09.040 on their hands to do so,

00:24:10.700 then you can find yourself

00:24:11.900 veering off

00:24:12.760 into cloud cuckoo land

00:24:15.100 and you can sometimes

00:24:16.180 also just find yourself

00:24:17.100 through guest selection

00:24:18.220 getting a bit misled.

00:24:20.840 Like, you know,

00:24:21.520 there's a challenge

00:24:22.240 about how much

00:24:22.920 do we use our platforms

00:24:24.720 to interrogate people

00:24:26.380 and how much

00:24:26.900 do we just hear

00:24:27.340 for a comfy chat?

00:24:28.700 Joe Rogan ran into this

00:24:29.920 in 2022 during COVID

00:24:31.920 when he was,

00:24:33.360 was that 2022

00:24:34.160 or 2021 when,

00:24:35.680 2022,

00:24:36.540 when he joined Spotify

00:24:37.680 and there was that backlash

00:24:38.740 and some musicians

00:24:39.640 were threatened to,

00:24:40.420 you know,

00:24:41.000 pull their music

00:24:41.720 from Spotify

00:24:42.340 because of vaccine

00:24:43.300 misinformation,

00:24:44.460 supposedly,

00:24:45.040 on Joe's show.

00:24:46.180 And part of the problem

00:24:47.080 there I think

00:24:47.580 was that Joe's style

00:24:49.180 and I'm familiar

00:24:50.200 with this

00:24:50.520 because I was on his show,

00:24:51.840 I've been on his show

00:24:52.560 like seven times

00:24:53.540 but the last time

00:24:54.320 was exactly during this

00:24:55.980 and he and I

00:24:56.500 had a bit of a,

00:24:57.240 a bit of biffo

00:24:58.340 about COVID

00:24:59.140 and about vaccines

00:24:59.940 at the time

00:25:00.480 that momentarily

00:25:01.020 went viral

00:25:01.640 but, you know,

00:25:03.020 his style

00:25:03.780 is just to have

00:25:04.620 a convivial conversation

00:25:05.660 with somebody.

00:25:06.120 He's not an interrogative journalist,

00:25:07.480 he's not an investigative journalist,

00:25:08.940 he just wants

00:25:09.360 to have a chat

00:25:10.080 and sometimes

00:25:11.860 if you have a chat

00:25:12.880 and give a platform,

00:25:14.860 although I kind of hate

00:25:15.520 the idea of platforming people,

00:25:18.340 you know,

00:25:18.800 if you just have a chat

00:25:20.100 with somebody

00:25:20.740 who actually does need

00:25:22.820 pushing back on,

00:25:24.280 then you can find yourself

00:25:25.480 increasingly listening

00:25:26.520 to people

00:25:27.080 who aren't necessarily

00:25:28.260 representing the best science,

00:25:29.620 who aren't necessarily

00:25:30.220 representing the best policy

00:25:31.460 and, yeah,

00:25:33.420 then you can find yourself

00:25:34.700 in both audience capture

00:25:36.080 and guest capture

00:25:37.520 and just I'm-in-the-prison-of-my-own-brain

00:25:40.560 capture,

00:25:41.320 which we all have

00:25:42.320 now that we get

00:25:42.880 so much of our information

00:25:43.940 from, you know,

00:25:45.840 supercomputers in our pocket

00:25:47.080 that are programmed

00:25:48.040 by 22-year-olds

00:25:49.380 with skateboards

00:25:50.080 in Silicon Valley

00:25:50.960 who are focused only

00:25:52.640 on how much time

00:25:53.380 you're spending on the app

00:25:54.720 and whether or not

00:25:55.220 you like it,

00:25:55.880 share it

00:25:56.320 and comment on it.

00:25:57.900 So that inevitably guides you

00:25:59.780 towards things

00:26:00.420 that are going to reinforce

00:26:01.500 what you already believe

00:26:02.760 and demonize

00:26:04.080 the kinds of things

00:26:04.980 and the people

00:26:05.420 who you don't already believe

00:26:06.880 because nuance

00:26:08.380 doesn't really inflame you.

00:26:10.800 It doesn't, you know,

00:26:11.420 it doesn't cause you

00:26:12.020 to engage with things.

00:26:13.260 So I think all of those things

00:26:14.360 are coming together.

00:26:15.240 Social media,

00:26:16.240 soon artificial intelligence,

00:26:18.080 audience capture,

00:26:19.260 the fracturing

00:26:19.860 of the media ecosystem,

00:26:21.480 the polarization

00:26:22.100 of our politics,

00:26:23.680 the polarization

00:26:24.180 of our demographies

00:26:25.300 as people move

00:26:26.220 into just areas

00:26:27.380 where there are

00:26:28.400 more like-minded people

00:26:29.560 and we're in this situation

00:26:30.940 where we're-

00:26:31.620 everything is sort of

00:26:32.460 conspiring

00:26:33.220 to narrow our focus

00:26:36.080 and to push us

00:26:36.940 into tighter

00:26:37.460 and tighter echo chambers

00:26:38.680 and I think the job

00:26:39.940 of Uncomfortable Conversations

00:26:41.260 and the job

00:26:41.780 of many podcasts

00:26:42.460 like yours

00:26:43.080 is to just try

00:26:44.600 to edge open

00:26:45.620 the-

00:26:46.200 just by 10%

00:26:47.160 the worldview

00:26:48.300 of the audience

00:26:49.660 from wherever they are.

00:26:50.760 I mean,

00:26:50.900 I don't expect my audience

00:26:51.700 to agree with me

00:26:52.420 about things

00:26:53.240 but I want them

00:26:54.080 to listen to me

00:26:54.680 and go,

00:26:55.740 well,

00:26:56.000 Josh is being fair.

00:26:57.320 He's not caricaturing

00:26:58.620 the other side.

00:26:59.480 He's not fighting straw men.

00:27:01.320 You know,

00:27:01.560 he-

00:27:01.800 I-

00:27:02.140 he disagrees with me

00:27:04.440 but at least he's-

00:27:05.360 he understands

00:27:06.020 the point of view

00:27:06.560 that I'm coming from

00:27:07.380 and, you know,

00:27:08.540 now I sort of understand

00:27:10.000 10% a bit better

00:27:11.180 what the other side thinks.

00:27:12.660 And it's also as well

00:27:13.820 about that idea

00:27:15.880 of embracing discomfort

00:27:17.320 which is why

00:27:18.060 the title of your podcast

00:27:19.060 is so good

00:27:19.840 because some conversations

00:27:21.640 by their nature

00:27:22.600 are going to be uncomfortable

00:27:23.960 and we need to embrace that

00:27:26.320 because it's only

00:27:27.260 by embracing that

00:27:28.140 that we hope

00:27:28.680 to actually understand

00:27:29.920 the subject or issue

00:27:30.940 much better.

00:27:32.060 You can have someone

00:27:33.080 brilliant on

00:27:33.840 from the right

00:27:34.520 who will explain an issue

00:27:36.280 from a conservative

00:27:37.300 point of view

00:27:38.120 and everything they're saying

00:27:39.400 may be perfectly valid

00:27:40.480 but unless you get

00:27:41.340 somebody else on

00:27:42.620 from the left

00:27:43.400 to actually go,

00:27:44.840 well, look,

00:27:45.600 that may be right

00:27:46.420 but here's my opinion,

00:27:48.380 that's when you come

00:27:49.280 to a real understanding

00:27:51.000 of the issue.

00:27:51.780 Yeah.

00:27:52.160 Yeah.

00:27:52.440 I mean,

00:27:52.940 as I say,

00:27:54.180 that interaction

00:27:55.260 doesn't necessarily

00:27:55.820 have to be uncomfortable

00:27:56.800 but finding a way

00:27:58.880 to have those conversations

00:27:59.960 in a conciliatory fashion

00:28:02.000 and, you know,

00:28:03.320 without just allowing people

00:28:04.300 to sort of filibuster

00:28:05.080 on their own points

00:28:06.060 is kind of the goal.

00:28:07.680 Yeah.

00:28:07.900 Well, you know,

00:28:08.380 it's interesting.

00:28:09.740 Obviously,

00:28:10.540 everyone is subject

00:28:11.400 to the pressures of this.

00:28:13.380 Except for me.

00:28:14.060 I'm completely impartial.

00:28:15.460 I'm something of a god.

00:28:16.540 Exactly.

00:28:17.060 Well, me too.

00:28:17.600 That's where I was going.

00:28:18.940 But, you know,

00:28:19.760 I think Francis and I,

00:28:21.180 first of all,

00:28:21.480 the fact that there's two of us

00:28:22.580 really helps

00:28:23.440 and we have very different

00:28:24.440 perspectives on things

00:28:25.420 and also we're both,

00:28:26.860 I'm certainly

00:28:27.740 very highly disagreeable

00:28:29.460 and so we've had

00:28:30.540 several situations

00:28:32.040 where we spend

00:28:33.440 the entire summer

00:28:34.340 of BLM

00:28:35.020 as the racial reckoning

00:28:36.020 you call

00:28:36.420 are basically saying

00:28:37.140 this is completely wrong,

00:28:38.140 this is outrageous,

00:28:38.980 et cetera

00:28:39.280 and in the process

00:28:42.260 attracting a lot of

00:28:43.340 Trump fans to the channel

00:28:44.380 and then January the 6th

00:28:45.800 happened

00:28:46.140 and we were like

00:28:47.320 this is completely wrong

00:28:48.400 in exactly the same way

00:28:49.560 and outrageous

00:28:50.120 and people got pissed off

00:28:51.560 with us

00:28:51.860 and we had absolutely

00:28:53.540 no problem with that

00:28:54.400 because it's what

00:28:55.480 we believe to be wrong

00:28:56.380 or right

00:28:57.120 depending on

00:28:57.860 what the situation is

00:28:59.080 and I think

00:28:59.520 I always

00:29:02.020 I know so many people

00:29:03.780 now in the podcast space

00:29:04.880 who absolutely resent

00:29:06.020 and hate their own audience

00:29:07.060 because they have built one

00:29:08.920 and that doesn't really

00:29:10.360 reflect who they are

00:29:11.540 it reflects where

00:29:12.600 they think the clicks are

00:29:13.940 and you know

00:29:14.760 how do you avoid

00:29:15.520 getting negative comments

00:29:16.640 on your YouTube channel

00:29:17.540 yeah that's right

00:29:18.320 don't read them

00:29:18.940 the comments

00:29:19.340 is the answer to that

00:29:20.280 yeah don't worry about

00:29:21.120 how many negative comments

00:29:21.940 there are

00:29:22.280 and it's not really

00:29:23.160 reflective of

00:29:23.920 like if you look

00:29:24.760 at a video

00:29:25.240 that people will

00:29:26.720 destroy with comments

00:29:29.440 so to speak

00:29:29.940 you'll still have

00:29:30.940 85-90%

00:29:32.440 like to dislike

00:29:33.320 row show

00:29:33.820 right

00:29:34.140 so the overwhelming

00:29:35.240 majority of your audience

00:29:36.420 actually still enjoyed

00:29:37.500 the conversation

00:29:38.180 that you had

00:29:38.880 it's just a minority

00:29:40.580 of very angry people

00:29:41.760 who as you say

00:29:42.480 had a lot of time

00:29:43.460 on their hands

00:29:43.980 who may be creating

00:29:45.400 that false impression

00:29:46.260 it's really important

00:29:47.000 not to fall for that

00:29:48.000 I mean one of the good

00:29:48.780 things in a sense

00:29:49.520 about being a public figure

00:29:50.900 is you don't have

00:29:52.200 the luxury

00:29:53.020 of falling into

00:29:53.760 the trap

00:29:54.400 of caring about

00:29:55.480 what people

00:29:55.960 on social media think

00:29:57.080 because it would drive

00:29:57.980 you absolutely

00:29:58.820 bloody insane

00:30:00.020 I had Jimmy Carr

00:30:01.860 on the show

00:30:02.340 the comedian

00:30:02.880 yesterday

00:30:04.160 which will come out

00:30:05.020 in a few weeks

00:30:05.960 when his Netflix

00:30:06.540 special drops

00:30:07.280 he's coming up

00:30:07.800 on your show

00:30:08.220 as well I know

00:30:08.740 and you know

00:30:10.400 I was talking to him

00:30:10.960 about how much

00:30:11.720 how much crap

00:30:12.860 he gets on

00:30:13.600 on social media

00:30:14.940 he was like

00:30:15.440 I'm still selling out shows

00:30:17.040 who cares

00:30:18.140 why would I be caring

00:30:19.160 about what

00:30:19.800 buttface 77

00:30:20.780 has to say

00:30:21.560 you know

00:30:22.260 on Twitter

00:30:22.800 when I'm selling

00:30:23.840 tickets to my show

00:30:24.760 and I was like

00:30:25.480 yes absolutely

00:30:26.200 you do get to a point

00:30:27.640 at which

00:30:28.120 don't worry about it

00:30:29.300 it's you know

00:30:29.840 water off a duck's back

00:30:30.880 and if you're uncancellable

00:30:32.300 which is the good thing

00:30:33.020 about being independent

00:30:33.880 then it doesn't matter

00:30:35.820 the problem is

00:30:37.140 some of us

00:30:38.460 in the independent

00:30:39.400 media landscape

00:30:40.100 don't have that

00:30:41.600 fortitude I suppose

00:30:43.100 and are still

00:30:44.080 kind of focused

00:30:45.100 even in a subconscious

00:30:46.120 way maybe

00:30:46.880 about like

00:30:47.600 I'm wondering

00:30:48.900 what happens

00:30:49.520 to some of the people

00:30:50.560 who I think

00:30:50.940 have gone off

00:30:51.380 the rails

00:30:51.940 and whether

00:30:52.520 it's actually

00:30:53.100 that they're

00:30:54.100 reading tweets

00:30:55.240 and YouTube comments

00:30:56.300 or whether it's

00:30:56.960 just that

00:30:57.560 they notice

00:30:58.860 the numbers growing

00:31:00.260 when they do

00:31:01.080 certain types of things

00:31:02.240 when they have

00:31:02.940 certain types of

00:31:03.540 conversations

00:31:04.080 when they interview

00:31:05.340 certain types of people

00:31:06.440 and there's just

00:31:07.820 almost a subconscious

00:31:08.780 thing

00:31:09.720 of course

00:31:10.500 you kind of veer

00:31:11.420 towards the sunrise

00:31:13.140 you know

00:31:13.640 of course

00:31:14.060 you veer

00:31:14.540 you go towards

00:31:16.080 the flower bed

00:31:16.920 and if that flower bed

00:31:18.520 is full of

00:31:19.280 toxic bullshit

00:31:20.320 then you're going

00:31:21.580 to find yourself

00:31:22.300 off the rails

00:31:22.980 pretty quickly

00:31:23.700 to mix metaphors

00:31:25.240 but I think

00:31:25.840 there's a lesson

00:31:26.600 in this

00:31:26.920 even for people

00:31:27.860 who aren't

00:31:28.200 in the public eye

00:31:28.740 and who don't

00:31:29.080 have podcasts

00:31:30.400 that I guess

00:31:32.540 hitching your own

00:31:33.560 sense of validation

00:31:34.540 and what you should

00:31:35.500 be thinking

00:31:35.980 and what you should

00:31:36.620 be saying

00:31:37.140 to the opinions

00:31:38.720 of others

00:31:39.340 is extremely perilous

00:31:42.200 and is going to

00:31:43.240 lead you absolutely

00:31:43.820 nowhere

00:31:44.220 and I think

00:31:45.280 we can all feel

00:31:46.080 over the past

00:31:46.620 few years

00:31:47.100 that there's been

00:31:47.740 more and more

00:31:49.260 of that

00:31:49.600 because the opinions

00:31:50.360 of others

00:31:50.800 have become

00:31:51.340 so potentially

00:31:52.780 inflammatory

00:31:53.320 like it used

00:31:54.160 to be the case

00:31:54.680 that if you

00:31:55.160 said the wrong

00:31:56.260 thing at a party

00:31:57.920 then maybe

00:31:59.680 the person

00:32:00.100 you were talking

00:32:00.600 to just wouldn't

00:32:01.280 talk to you anymore

00:32:02.040 now there's a sense

00:32:03.680 that if you say

00:32:04.420 the wrong thing

00:32:05.280 they are going

00:32:06.040 to really believe

00:32:06.920 that you are evil

00:32:07.660 and they may

00:32:08.760 you know

00:32:09.160 maybe the mob

00:32:09.920 will come for you

00:32:10.800 at least in an

00:32:11.900 online fashion

00:32:12.560 or you might

00:32:13.100 lose your job

00:32:13.760 or something

00:32:14.040 like that

00:32:14.540 like there's

00:32:15.060 become this

00:32:15.560 increasing

00:32:16.020 censorious

00:32:16.660 and increasing

00:32:17.320 hysteria

00:32:18.240 whereby

00:32:19.200 you might

00:32:20.740 not even have

00:32:21.440 offended them

00:32:22.220 on precisely

00:32:22.840 the thing

00:32:23.200 that they care

00:32:23.740 about

00:32:24.060 but you said

00:32:24.640 something that

00:32:25.280 puts you

00:32:25.640 in a column

00:32:26.240 that they think

00:32:27.020 oh that means

00:32:27.680 that you're

00:32:28.100 in that particular

00:32:28.740 tribe

00:32:29.340 you know

00:32:29.900 it's sort of

00:32:30.260 crazy that

00:32:31.080 if you tell me

00:32:32.400 what you think

00:32:33.200 about climate

00:32:34.300 change

00:32:34.980 I can probably

00:32:36.100 predict what

00:32:36.720 you think

00:32:37.100 about corporate

00:32:37.660 taxation

00:32:38.280 well those two

00:32:40.500 things don't have

00:32:40.920 anything to do

00:32:41.360 with each other

00:32:41.940 right

00:32:42.460 so you know

00:32:43.360 you say one

00:32:44.120 thing the person

00:32:44.700 goes oh well

00:32:45.200 that person's

00:32:45.720 either you know

00:32:46.740 a Trumper

00:32:47.940 or a Brexiteer

00:32:49.000 or whatever

00:32:49.460 they might be

00:32:50.180 and all of a

00:32:51.200 sudden everything

00:32:51.500 else that you

00:32:51.900 have to say

00:32:52.500 just hits up

00:32:53.380 against a brick

00:32:54.460 wall

00:32:54.760 we have to find

00:32:55.560 a way to talk

00:32:56.020 to each other

00:32:56.540 in in

00:32:57.760 it's it's both

00:32:59.200 nuanced and also

00:33:00.020 heterodox where

00:33:00.800 you're like well

00:33:01.500 I'm just going to

00:33:01.860 take the most

00:33:02.280 reasonable position

00:33:03.000 on each issue

00:33:03.720 regardless of

00:33:04.600 where that leaves

00:33:05.220 me and if that

00:33:05.700 leaves me in a

00:33:06.340 flaming hodgepodge

00:33:07.740 then so be it

00:33:09.240 I just have to

00:33:09.700 sort of cop the

00:33:10.280 flack

00:33:10.640 not pay too

00:33:12.160 much attention

00:33:12.620 to feedback

00:33:13.180 and have you

00:33:14.600 know integrity

00:33:15.340 authenticity and

00:33:16.700 credibility as my

00:33:17.740 load stars and

00:33:18.740 pursue that

00:33:19.260 I've been thinking

00:33:20.020 about this a lot

00:33:20.900 do you think part

00:33:22.000 of the problem is

00:33:22.700 social media but

00:33:23.460 not social media in

00:33:24.300 the way where they're

00:33:24.780 discussing it but

00:33:25.500 social media in that

00:33:26.460 it's turned all of

00:33:27.780 us into celebrities

00:33:29.380 with our own little

00:33:30.880 followings and

00:33:31.640 audiences you know

00:33:32.660 however you know

00:33:33.640 hundreds of followers

00:33:34.460 or whoever they may

00:33:35.200 be and as a result

00:33:36.420 of that we now need

00:33:37.480 to have public

00:33:38.700 opinions or

00:33:39.480 stances on every

00:33:41.180 single issue when

00:33:42.660 the reality is we

00:33:44.500 don't have time to

00:33:46.660 research into every

00:33:47.980 issue dive into the

00:33:49.760 nuance of it read

00:33:50.960 about it and then as

00:33:52.280 a result of that come

00:33:53.280 out with a balanced

00:33:54.140 opinion so instead of

00:33:55.840 that we just go oh

00:33:56.920 let's take this opinion

00:33:57.820 off the shelf because I

00:33:59.100 need to have a public

00:34:00.180 stance on Israel

00:34:01.060 Palestine

00:34:01.540 yes absolutely it's

00:34:03.080 like everybody has to

00:34:04.240 give a decree about

00:34:05.720 what their opinion is

00:34:06.660 about something it's

00:34:07.540 like we're all little

00:34:08.240 Roman emperors like

00:34:09.360 you know announcing

00:34:10.100 what our position is

00:34:11.100 on everything nobody

00:34:11.960 gives a shit like

00:34:13.140 nobody gives a shit

00:34:13.900 apart from the

00:34:14.540 facile people who

00:34:15.560 gobble up that sort

00:34:16.500 of nonsense yeah I

00:34:18.500 completely agree the

00:34:19.520 amount of people who

00:34:20.960 have wildly passionate

00:34:22.440 opinions about Israel

00:34:24.240 and Palestine I saw a

00:34:25.340 screenshot of something

00:34:26.580 that someone had

00:34:27.140 posted of themselves in

00:34:28.320 Australia recently on

00:34:30.180 Instagram where they'd

00:34:31.620 taken this proud

00:34:32.440 stance they were at a

00:34:33.160 panel event in a

00:34:34.180 public forum and they

00:34:35.160 held up a card that

00:34:36.280 said ceasefire now

00:34:37.980 and they were doing

00:34:38.620 this as like a really

00:34:39.600 courageous thing and I

00:34:41.300 thought oh that's

00:34:42.860 great no one's thought

00:34:43.720 of that we never

00:34:45.060 thought of there being

00:34:45.840 a ceasefire thanks for

00:34:47.380 your enlightening

00:34:48.040 fucking insights you

00:34:49.140 know nobody ever

00:34:49.800 thought about might be a

00:34:50.800 good idea if you know

00:34:52.100 Hamas released the

00:34:53.260 hostages and Israel

00:34:54.340 stopped the shelling

00:34:55.280 that no no one's been

00:34:56.280 talking about that for

00:34:57.560 months and months and

00:34:58.500 months and months and

00:34:59.280 months behind the

00:35:00.000 scenes in negotiations in

00:35:01.460 Qatar nobody's been

00:35:02.740 trying to pursue exactly

00:35:04.100 that you know as

00:35:05.440 foreign dignitaries and

00:35:06.620 foreign ministers and

00:35:07.480 secretaries of state have

00:35:08.640 been flying around the

00:35:09.380 world trying to sort out

00:35:10.200 this mess like chill out

00:35:12.480 you're not an expert on

00:35:13.760 this you know what you're

00:35:14.620 talking about like it's

00:35:16.820 similar to like I heard

00:35:17.980 you talking about the

00:35:19.380 the Tucker Carlson

00:35:20.540 interview with Putin right

00:35:21.860 and you made a very good

00:35:23.440 point which was like if

00:35:24.940 you haven't watched the

00:35:25.720 entire two and a half

00:35:27.080 hours or whatever it is

00:35:28.120 don't have an opinion

00:35:29.440 about it and I was I was

00:35:31.460 like a breath of fresh air

00:35:32.440 for me to hear because I

00:35:33.580 didn't watch it I don't

00:35:34.600 want to watch it I don't

00:35:35.480 care about it I know what

00:35:36.720 I think of Tucker I know

00:35:37.900 what I think of Putin I'm

00:35:39.120 not that interested like go

00:35:40.280 go go at it but you will

00:35:41.760 never hear me comment about

00:35:43.560 why Tucker was right or

00:35:45.040 why Tucker was wrong you'll

00:35:46.360 never hear me tweet about

00:35:47.900 it you're not gonna hear me

00:35:48.800 comment on it because I

00:35:49.880 don't know like we need a

00:35:51.840 bit more of I don't know I

00:35:53.140 don't have an opinion about

00:35:54.140 this I have opinions about

00:35:55.460 the things that I know

00:35:56.200 about and if someone in

00:35:57.480 front of me has has a lot

00:35:58.520 of knowledge then I'll

00:35:59.700 interrogate them I'll tease

00:36:00.760 it out and I'll try to use

00:36:01.600 my bullshit detector to

00:36:02.700 figure out what's true

00:36:03.460 and what's false hopefully

00:36:04.780 my audience gets a lot of

00:36:05.960 you know insight out of

00:36:07.560 that but you're right why

00:36:09.460 do we all have to be

00:36:10.380 constantly broadcasting our

00:36:11.620 opinions to the world about

00:36:12.800 things that we're ignorant

00:36:13.540 on and not only is it kind

00:36:16.000 of corrosive to the

00:36:17.040 conversation because we're

00:36:18.920 being fed so many different

00:36:20.200 opinions hard to sort

00:36:21.220 through what is actually an

00:36:22.320 informed opinion and what

00:36:23.680 is just someone trying to

00:36:24.660 follow their tribe but I

00:36:26.740 think it's also corrosive to

00:36:28.220 the people who are

00:36:29.680 producing the opinions

00:36:30.960 aka all of us to

00:36:33.760 constantly be feeling like

00:36:35.340 every thought we have is

00:36:38.100 potentially auditioning as

00:36:40.340 being a piece of content

00:36:41.400 you know I mean this is sort

00:36:43.160 of a more spiritual or woo

00:36:44.480 woo thing if you want to go

00:36:45.520 there but I do feel like

00:36:46.680 there's a there's a way of

00:36:49.620 being in the world that we're

00:36:51.500 losing which is just being

00:36:53.400 present listening appreciating

00:36:58.200 contemplating musing like at

00:37:04.860 the risk of sounding like the

00:37:06.100 middle-aged guy when I was

00:37:08.600 young you made a plan to go

00:37:11.100 and meet a friend outside the

00:37:12.440 movie theater and you didn't

00:37:14.740 have a phone so you just stood

00:37:17.880 there if they were running

00:37:18.860 late and you watched people go

00:37:21.280 by and you looked at the

00:37:23.020 clouds you didn't pull a

00:37:24.940 supercomputer out of your

00:37:25.900 pocket to see what people

00:37:26.880 are arguing about on the

00:37:27.960 other side of the world and

00:37:29.940 there's something that

00:37:31.220 happens to your head when

00:37:33.260 you're constantly punctuating

00:37:34.700 time every time you sit down

00:37:36.440 on the toilet you're looking

00:37:37.620 at this stuff and you're not

00:37:39.500 just consuming it you're a

00:37:41.740 content creator all of us are

00:37:43.360 now so it's like you're

00:37:44.960 walking around with this

00:37:46.740 little version of you on

00:37:47.800 your shoulder who's saying

00:37:49.620 that's a nice sunset I

00:37:51.920 wonder if you could take a

00:37:52.920 photo of it and if it would

00:37:54.000 get some likes on Instagram

00:37:55.140 oh that's an interesting

00:37:56.000 thought I wonder if you

00:37:57.180 should broadcast that to the

00:37:58.680 world on Twitter oh that's

00:37:59.860 an interesting argument that

00:38:00.800 you could have you could

00:38:01.580 probably dunk on someone

00:38:02.620 really well by parachuting

00:38:04.300 back into that Facebook

00:38:05.180 comment thread and arguing

00:38:07.200 about it it's like instead

00:38:09.080 of living our lives we're

00:38:11.460 curators of an avatar of

00:38:14.060 ourselves that is an

00:38:15.680 artificial version of

00:38:16.740 ourselves that we're

00:38:18.040 producing for other

00:38:20.180 people like what does

00:38:21.960 that do to your head

00:38:22.800 it's not healthy

00:38:24.260 no it's not healthy

00:38:26.060 and there are some times

00:38:27.900 where you have a thought

00:38:29.240 and you go I'll tweet

00:38:30.340 that and then you go let

00:38:32.480 me just think about it for

00:38:33.860 a second and then an hour

00:38:35.440 later you go I'm really

00:38:38.640 glad I didn't say that

00:38:39.960 thing out loud because we

00:38:41.460 all think stupid things it

00:38:43.040 doesn't matter how smart you

00:38:44.200 are or how principled you are

00:38:46.260 you are human you are

00:38:47.340 fallible you are flawed and

00:38:49.440 you're gonna think dumb

00:38:50.440 stuff we all do and I

00:38:52.460 think one of the things a

00:38:53.480 lot of people haven't

00:38:54.340 considered and the bigger my

00:38:56.320 platform has got the more

00:38:59.480 the less I post and the more

00:39:01.660 careful I am about saying

00:39:03.040 what I'm saying because the

00:39:05.240 thing that I've really got

00:39:06.680 over the last couple of

00:39:07.940 years is everything you're

00:39:09.940 saying now I mean you don't

00:39:13.260 know where the world is going

00:39:14.720 five years from now no and

00:39:16.760 it's all in public and the

00:39:18.760 positions you take best to be

00:39:20.400 very carefully thought out

00:39:21.680 because three or four years

00:39:23.200 from now what you're saying

00:39:25.000 maybe you know maybe in

00:39:26.580 conflict with things that you

00:39:27.660 then believe and then what

00:39:28.640 are you going to do you know

00:39:29.860 a comedian once said to me

00:39:31.900 like he's always thinking

00:39:33.340 about what what clip could be

00:39:35.280 offensive in the future he was

00:39:36.580 like you know 10 years ago I

00:39:38.800 didn't know that it would be

00:39:39.480 offensive to do jokes about

00:39:40.920 like men dressing up in

00:39:42.580 women's clothes or something

00:39:43.640 like that but now of course

00:39:44.860 that would be considered

00:39:45.460 transphobic he's like you

00:39:46.580 know you fast forward 10

00:39:47.380 years into the future and

00:39:48.480 maybe everyone will regard

00:39:49.720 will treat it as being beyond

00:39:51.040 the pale to make fun of

00:39:52.000 clowns and he was like he

00:39:53.420 was doing jokes about

00:39:54.220 clowns you clown phobe and

00:39:56.240 he's like I didn't know we

00:39:57.060 didn't know in 2024 that it

00:39:58.540 was bad to make fun of

00:39:59.420 clowns it was just a thing

00:40:00.400 that we did yeah yeah and I

00:40:02.180 don't mean it from a being

00:40:03.520 offensive perspective I've got

00:40:05.220 no problem you know owning

00:40:06.620 the fact that this was like

00:40:08.120 you know friends is now

00:40:10.120 considered offensive and if I

00:40:11.360 had written friends I'd be

00:40:12.240 like fuck you I don't give a

00:40:13.140 shit you know look how look

00:40:14.600 how many people watched it at

00:40:15.840 the time it was probably you

00:40:17.620 know a good thing in its own

00:40:18.700 time what I mean is you know

00:40:20.840 I saw this with the war in

00:40:22.400 Ukraine which was a subject

00:40:24.380 that I knew more about than

00:40:25.620 most people in the West I just

00:40:27.060 happened to know more and I

00:40:28.640 had people call me up and ask

00:40:30.280 me my opinion and they didn't

00:40:31.540 know what their opinion was and

00:40:33.180 then I'd see the same person

00:40:34.220 like three days later having the

00:40:36.320 strongest possible opinion

00:40:37.620 about it in public and I was

00:40:38.800 going well if you agreed with

00:40:40.820 me you only agreed with me

00:40:42.420 because you heard me and you

00:40:44.120 heard my opinion but a lot of

00:40:45.660 these people didn't agree with

00:40:46.660 me because obviously they'd

00:40:47.500 gone to someone else and they

00:40:48.420 got a different opinion and I'm

00:40:49.920 going you three days ago you

00:40:51.760 were not qualified and now

00:40:53.760 you're qualified and three years

00:40:55.880 from now this is going to be a

00:40:57.700 whole different situation

00:40:58.520 there'll be another conflict

00:40:59.360 somewhere else and the stuff

00:41:00.280 you're saying is going to be in

00:41:01.240 complete opposite to what you're

00:41:03.200 now saying and it's just that

00:41:05.360 awareness of the everything we

00:41:08.360 say in public will can and will

00:41:10.820 be used against you rightly so

00:41:12.900 by the way like you're going to

00:41:14.440 be held accountable so because

00:41:16.200 people should think before

00:41:17.860 speaking in public should they

00:41:20.220 yeah they should absolutely yeah

00:41:22.340 isn't this what your argument was

00:41:24.040 about Joe I mean having people on

00:41:26.200 who say things that is part of a

00:41:29.440 conversation may end up hurting

00:41:31.300 people people should think about

00:41:32.840 how they speak in public I'm not

00:41:34.980 sure people should think about what

00:41:36.500 they say I think they should be

00:41:37.940 very careful that sounds a bit

00:41:40.200 Maoist to me no no no it sounds a

00:41:43.120 bit like I didn't no no I think

00:41:45.040 the Mao the Maoist part is you

00:41:47.020 should think about what you say in

00:41:48.140 public because you'll be punished

00:41:49.360 that's Maoist what I'm saying is you

00:41:51.700 should think about what you're

00:41:52.520 saying in public because the

00:41:53.380 chances are you're wrong right but

00:41:55.760 earlier you were saying you should

00:41:57.080 think about what you say in public

00:41:58.000 because in three years time people

00:41:59.480 might reevaluate no no you will

00:42:01.880 realize how wrong you were right

00:42:03.560 and then you're going to be in a

00:42:04.840 position where you're like oh shit I

00:42:06.280 said all this crap about this

00:42:07.800 conflict and now I'm I'm yeah yeah I

00:42:11.220 mean and then people will remind you

00:42:12.820 I think it's important for us to not

00:42:14.900 care so much about consistency as well

00:42:17.320 like I'm a big fan of not being

00:42:18.860 consistent over time it's regarded as

00:42:21.280 being the biggest slam dunk against

00:42:23.100 people especially politicians if they're

00:42:25.340 like if someone's like well hang on

00:42:26.980 you're for this policy now but five

00:42:28.660 years ago you weren't well you know as

00:42:31.420 a great man once said when the facts

00:42:33.060 change I changed my mind what do you

00:42:35.040 do but that's a different it's like I

00:42:36.580 understand what you're saying that

00:42:37.960 like you know be mindful of the fact

00:42:40.200 that the things that you're saying now

00:42:41.700 are provisional right and that they

00:42:43.680 that facts may change and that you may

00:42:45.500 have you may turn out to have been

00:42:46.840 wrong I agree that you need to sort of

00:42:50.440 pick your battles don't go out you know

00:42:53.640 fighting for some huge social justice

00:42:56.380 cause that you don't know anything

00:42:57.940 about or to save democracy if you don't

00:43:00.380 even understand the contours of the of

00:43:02.080 the battle especially if it's something

00:43:03.700 complicated and foreign like Gaza or

00:43:06.480 Ukraine on the other hand I do think we

00:43:09.560 need to have greater forgiveness both of

00:43:11.800 other people and ourselves about things

00:43:13.560 that we got wrong in the past and you

00:43:16.560 know we can't be held to account for

00:43:18.740 things that we tweeted eight years ago

00:43:21.220 that was a different climate it was a

00:43:23.140 different place the milieu was different

00:43:25.500 the taboos were different you know we've

00:43:28.340 reached a point where we have this kind

00:43:29.800 of outrage archaeology which is I know

00:43:31.800 what you weren't defending there but it

00:43:33.460 it's a difficult and nuanced thing to

00:43:35.460 tease out like how how careful we to be

00:43:38.280 about the things that we're saying now

00:43:39.980 versus how much justification or people

00:43:42.420 to have in the future for punishing us

00:43:44.200 for things that we're saying now because

00:43:45.880 those things no longer comport with the

00:43:48.300 norms of 2030 well I don't know the norms

00:43:51.460 of 2030 so I'm going to say what I'll say

00:43:53.320 now and so be it no no I agree with you

00:43:55.680 what I'm talking about is something

00:43:56.820 completely different and then you see

00:43:58.500 it now with the war in Ukraine and I

00:44:02.300 focus on it because it's interesting to

00:44:03.820 me and the war in Iraq I was against the

00:44:06.360 war in Iraq I was against our invasion

00:44:08.520 and there were so many people who were

00:44:10.340 for it who because they were for it and

00:44:13.400 they were so disappointed in their

00:44:15.960 cheerleading for that war and now like

00:44:18.360 I'm against all war well anyone should

00:44:20.780 be against all war but there are times

00:44:22.280 when you're going to find yourself in a

00:44:23.700 position where you have to defend

00:44:24.940 yourself you have to help someone else

00:44:26.420 defend themselves but a lot of people

00:44:28.380 Tucker being one one example of this

00:44:31.080 who cheer led that war because of the

00:44:34.440 you might call it you know if you want

00:44:36.060 to go into woo-woo conversation the

00:44:37.960 psychic damage they did to themselves by

00:44:40.260 cheerleading a conflict that they didn't

00:44:42.220 really fully understand because that's

00:44:44.020 what everyone else was doing they're

00:44:46.320 now in a completely different position

00:44:47.700 where they're overreacting in the

00:44:49.020 opposite direction that's interesting so

00:44:50.100 don't in other words don't learn the law

00:44:51.920 the wrong lesson from your mistakes in a

00:44:54.480 way like I remember at the time of the

00:44:58.060 Arab Spring when Syria was going up in

00:45:02.280 flames remember Obama was seriously

00:45:05.500 considering intervening there he had said

00:45:07.340 that chemical weapons would be a red line

00:45:09.040 and that the United States would do

00:45:10.780 something if Assad the dictator in Syria

00:45:13.340 used chemical weapons on his own people he

00:45:15.880 did Obama tried to get the UK involved and

00:45:19.900 the UK didn't do so so that was basically a

00:45:22.780 you know US didn't want to go it alone

00:45:24.180 thing I was interviewing Phil Donahue the

00:45:26.440 old American talk show host on HuffPost

00:45:28.460 Live when I was living in New York and he

00:45:30.220 was coming out strongly against intervention

00:45:33.160 in Syria I was pretty in favor of

00:45:36.040 intervening I thought the humanitarian

00:45:37.680 catastrophe justified intervention on you

00:45:41.160 know just moral grounds and I was saying to

00:45:43.900 him he was saying like you know Iraq we

00:45:46.780 haven't we learned the lessons of Iraq I was

00:45:48.540 like yeah but aren't we smart enough to

00:45:50.520 make distinctions between different kinds

00:45:52.240 of war no no like that and you know it's a

00:45:58.360 similar thing with COVID and with like you

00:46:00.300 know coming back looping that point that

00:46:02.400 you're making Constantine about the you

00:46:04.720 know the derangement of certain people who

00:46:06.820 are in Podcaster Stan as Sam calls it and

00:46:10.460 the lessons learned from COVID you know there

00:46:12.760 there are certain people who have

00:46:15.760 experiences of being traumatized by the

00:46:18.820 overreach of governments by government's

00:46:20.900 use you know certainly in the developing

00:46:22.940 world and in the Arab world of emergency

00:46:25.580 decrees in order to introduce you know

00:46:28.580 fundamentally to enslave the population and

00:46:30.900 introduce authoritarian regimes who when

00:46:33.420 COVID happened they were like oh this shit is

00:46:36.760 that I have to oppose every you know we can get

00:46:39.940 into all our arguments that we want to about

00:46:41.560 lockdowns and when they went too far and

00:46:43.340 whether Australia went too far and whatever

00:46:44.760 but as public health officials tried to

00:46:46.760 scramble to figure out what to do about a

00:46:48.540 global pandemic there were people who

00:46:50.700 regarded any inhibition on individual

00:46:53.160 liberty as being evidence of a police

00:46:55.740 state that was just around the corner they

00:46:57.660 were making they were learning the wrong

00:46:58.760 lessons from from the past we didn't end up

00:47:02.300 with a police state we are not currently

00:47:03.700 living in a police state Australia is not

00:47:05.240 currently a police state and it unwound all of

00:47:07.260 the all of the restrictions and similarly if

00:47:10.460 you've got an evolutionary biologist who you

00:47:13.640 know starts to sort of talk about how well

00:47:15.820 maybe ivermectin this and maybe the vaccines

00:47:18.400 are doing that or whatever it might be and

00:47:21.040 realizes that he was right about a few of those

00:47:23.840 early things not in the case of ivermectin but

00:47:25.940 in the case of I don't know side effects the

00:47:28.180 vaccines might have or whether or not it's

00:47:29.960 really necessary for young people to get

00:47:31.460 vaccinated then you can go oh because I was

00:47:34.740 right and the establishment was wrong about

00:47:37.180 this little thing that means that establishments

00:47:39.720 are always wrong and that the conspiratorial

00:47:42.120 contrarian point of view is always right

00:47:44.080 it's the wrong conclusion to draw so I mean

00:47:46.460 yes treat every individual you know example

00:47:50.120 that you're faced with in as rational a way

00:47:51.900 as possible learn from your mistakes but

00:47:55.260 don't create a kind of a paradigm or a filter

00:47:58.240 or a prism through which you henceforth filter

00:48:01.060 all of your information thinking well I made a

00:48:03.780 mistake last time therefore I'm never going to

00:48:05.080 make that same mistake again and it also ties

00:48:07.340 into the idea of identity because these

00:48:09.660 people then their identity is I'm the

00:48:12.000 heterodox guy yeah or I'm the guy who is you

00:48:15.440 know the covid guy who will come in and

00:48:17.180 explode the troops and show you what's really

00:48:19.140 going on and once you've got that identity

00:48:21.920 if if a fact comes to light which actually

00:48:26.220 shows a lot of your positions to be incorrect or

00:48:31.100 false or lacking in nuance then you're not

00:48:34.020 really going to accept those facts because

00:48:37.320 what it does is damage your identity your

00:48:40.280 brand and the way that you make money and

00:48:43.780 the way that you get invited onto other

00:48:46.200 podcasts or platforms yeah it's funny isn't

00:48:49.220 it we're all becoming sort of it's a little

00:48:52.040 bit like the social media avatar phenomenon

00:48:54.220 that I was talking about a moment ago we're

00:48:56.360 starting to inhabit more and more tribal

00:48:59.180 roles and maybe it was always thus like maybe

00:49:02.420 in prehistory it was more like that you know

00:49:05.220 things were more stratified things were more

00:49:07.440 predictable things were more feudal basically

00:49:10.120 like you knew your place and then post war

00:49:13.520 especially post 1960s and the civil rights

00:49:15.740 movement there was this great kind of flowering

00:49:17.760 of into individualism where everybody could you

00:49:20.460 know find their own jam however they wanted to

00:49:23.320 but it seems like social media is creating an

00:49:26.580 environment in which we're able to revert back

00:49:28.820 into more secure more stable more comforting

00:49:32.420 tribal identities so yeah I'm the covid contrarian

00:49:35.840 or I'm this type of person and we even do it in our

00:49:39.500 individual lives I mean the reason why I originally

00:49:42.380 went on Joe Rogan's show we were talking about this

00:49:45.020 Francis before before we were rolling was because

00:49:47.940 I was in I was a host of HuffPost Live which was this

00:49:52.220 you know streaming talk network in in the US and

00:49:57.200 there was a campaign a campaign came up to cancel

00:50:01.260 the Colbert rapport remember Stephen Colbert's

00:50:04.160 original show because he'd made a joke that was

00:50:07.260 allegedly racist it was remember the joke I do I do

00:50:12.540 you want me to tell it yeah yeah so it is a little

00:50:14.920 bit of backstory the Washington Redskins is a

00:50:18.020 sports team obviously Redskins is regarded as being

00:50:21.040 offensive so there was a furor about changing the name

00:50:23.340 of that team the owner didn't want to change it but

00:50:25.800 he wanted to prove that he wasn't racist so instead he

00:50:28.240 set up a charitable foundation for educating young

00:50:32.300 Native American people to say see I'm not racist I've got

00:50:36.480 my charitable foundation so Colbert comes on one night and

00:50:40.420 he goes you know I've been accused in the past of racism

00:50:43.940 towards Asians and he runs I believe a fake clip of old

00:50:48.320 pretend versions of him being racist towards Asians like

00:50:52.380 pretending to be an Asian wearing a Chinese pointy hat like all this sort

00:50:56.060 of stuff and he says so as a result I'm going to prove that I'm not racist

00:50:59.720 by creating the Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation for Orientals or whatever

00:51:04.560 that's very funny yeah

00:51:07.040 so people were trying to cancel him for that so outcomes an Asian American

00:51:12.140 activist she's young she's enthusiastic she creates a petition she

00:51:16.700 creates a campaign Comedy Central should get rid of the Colbert rapport and I she's lined

00:51:23.200 up to be interviewed on my show on HuffPost live and I try to explain

00:51:28.480 that what he's doing is satirical right he's satirizing this other guy who was doing a

00:51:37.380 thing that might be racist and he's trying to make the point that it's a facile and cynical

00:51:43.360 thing to do in other words he's not actually racist himself and she says something along

00:51:48.960 the lines of well it doesn't surprise me that a white man would have that opinion

00:51:53.780 and and so I interrupt her and I say hang on sorry this has nothing to do with the fact

00:51:57.860 that I'm a white man like I did you know I didn't give up my right to have an opinion

00:52:02.460 about comedy and satire because I was born with balls and white skin

00:52:07.140 and uh she says well you know I would expect a white man to enjoy talking over a woman of color

00:52:13.020 that's you know that's uh that's something that you like to do it went up in flames and like

00:52:18.000 ultimately I was like well I mean if they you know if we're not going to be able to talk to

00:52:21.760 each other then we're not going to be able to talk to each other um and we ended the interview early

00:52:25.620 I was going to say that I feel like it's incredibly patronizing for you to paint these

00:52:29.260 questions this way especially as a white man I don't expect you to be able to understand what

00:52:33.200 people of color are actually saying with regards to cancel Colbert he has a history of making jokes

00:52:38.320 Suri being a white man doesn't give me doesn't prevent me from being able to think and doesn't

00:52:42.620 prevent me from being able to have uh have thought reasoned perspectives on things I don't I didn't

00:52:47.040 give up my right to be able to have an intellectual conversation when I was born I know but oh well

00:52:51.940 white men definitely feel like they're entitled to talk over me they definitely feel like they're

00:52:55.320 entitled to kind of minimalize my experiences and they definitely feel like they are somehow exempt

00:53:00.140 and so logical compared to women who are painted as emotional right no no one's minimalizing your

00:53:05.280 your experiences no one's minimalizing your right to have an opinion it's just a stupid opinion I

00:53:09.380 mean it's it's a it's a misunderstanding of what you just called my opinion stupid you just called my

00:53:16.380 opinion stupid that's incredibly unproductive and I don't think I'm going to enact the labor of

00:53:21.060 having to explain to you why that's incredibly offensive and patronizing explain I just told you I

00:53:27.580 wouldn't enact that labor okay thanks for being with us Sui so Joe Rogan saw that he played it on

00:53:34.860 his podcast and that was how my friendship with Joe began but what reminded me why he reminded me of

00:53:40.280 that Francis was the experience of talking to this person was an experience of talking not to another

00:53:47.180 human being not to another rational mind but to a cardboard cutout of an identity who is treating me

00:53:57.220 as a cardboard cutout of an identity she is woman of color I am white man right you try to talk about

00:54:06.360 the actual thing you're talking about you try to talk about the joke you try to talk about satire you

00:54:09.840 try to talk about where is the boundary where is too far where is not far enough you know do Asians

00:54:13.740 get picked on in particular or if you did it about a black person maybe it wouldn't be acceptable all

00:54:17.760 kinds of interesting things that could be talked about none of which are being talked about because

00:54:21.580 we've got our roles we've got our fucking you know sort of avatars that we have to inhabit like that's

00:54:27.700 no way to live your life I am operating from the place of being a spokesperson for my identity group

00:54:33.740 and the more we do that the more likely it is that the 21st century is going to devolve into some kind of

00:54:40.320 low-grade cultural civil war or not so low-grade cultural civil war and it worries the hell out of me

00:54:46.400 like we have to be able to talk to each other as human beings regardless of where we come from

00:54:49.800 not as a bunch of check boxes on some diversity tick list the reason people do that and it is it does

00:54:55.940 when you are on the other end of it as you have been it feels like you're arguing with a tape recorder

00:54:59.860 because it's just playing specific lines and response that you know are coming anyway but the

00:55:05.120 reason people do it is it's it's very powerful tool it's a weapon they forge this identitarian weapon

00:55:10.080 that they use which takes us back to Australia how do you feel that uh you guys are doing on that front

00:55:18.240 because you just had the voice referendum which was quite comprehensively rejected by the Australian

00:55:23.260 public and the idea of it was you'll correct me if I miss misrepresent it but it was essentially about

00:55:28.300 um embedding what I would say is identity politics at the constitutional level right saying essentially

00:55:35.160 aboriginal people should have an extra way of being heard and it was quite unspecified as part of the

00:55:41.820 various legal uh conversations that are being had and the Australians rejected it quite overwhelmingly

00:55:47.100 uh and I've just just been there it's a very multi-ethnic society uh and uh people talk very

00:55:53.460 proudly in Australia about being a a the world's most successful multicultural nation do you think

00:55:59.480 what do you think of all yes I think I think that's true I mean I think uh it's a source of enormous

00:56:03.840 pride for Australians that um that we are one of the most successful multi-ethnic and one of the most

00:56:09.020 multi-ethnic countries in the world were one of the highest rates of immigration per capita

00:56:12.420 either the first or second number one or number two country in the world for refugee resettlement

00:56:17.520 um the voice um and remind me to come back to the point about multiculturalism because there's an

00:56:23.780 interesting point to be made about immigration and Brexit and Trump and Australia's multiculturalism

00:56:28.260 um but on on the voice so yeah let me give the most generous articulation of the voice just to

00:56:34.780 steel man for a moment so you had in the 1700s the world's most powerful empire in the British empire

00:56:42.380 crash into the greatest traditional civilizations in the world the Australian Aborigines have been

00:56:48.900 around for the longest period of time they're the long they're the oldest continuous civilization in

00:56:53.940 the world because even in Africa there have been a number of changes as far as anthropologists are

00:56:58.820 concerned there's something very unique and very special about a bunch of civilizations and they really

00:57:03.920 were a bunch of civilizations speaking different languages with different practices all over a

00:57:08.260 continent that is the same size as the contiguous United States living in incredibly harsh environments with

00:57:13.740 enough wisdom to last for many many many tens of thousands of years but obviously that was going

00:57:20.220 to be an irreconcilable clash between the gunboats of the British empire and those civilizations and as

00:57:27.840 recently as the 19 as the middle of the 20th century let's say you had policies that were incredibly brutal I

00:57:35.980 mean you had indigenous children being ripped away from their families in order to be raised the proper way

00:57:42.000 by real proper white people by you know often harsh nuns in convents and things like that I mean imagine the

00:57:48.700 experience you know you're a father of having your child ripped away from you because of your race

00:57:52.600 so it's been difficult to find progress on a lot of money's been thrown at the problem uh you know

00:57:59.480 a lot of attempts at affirmative action and and equality have been thrown at it the consensus that

00:58:06.540 came out of uh a forum that was held a little over a decade ago was that it would be useful to have

00:58:13.260 a single cohesive body that could articulate the first nation's point of view on legislation that

00:58:22.040 parliament was considering that would affect indigenous people and at the moment it was a

00:58:26.060 bit too haphazard it was a bit too random or the voices were all a bit too scattered uh you needed to

00:58:30.560 coordinate them somehow so the idea that was come up with was you'd create a body called the voice and

00:58:36.160 it would give voice to first nations people those its advice wouldn't be binding parliament would be free

00:58:41.720 to ignore it um but it would be a place of collecting the those those voices um perhaps foolishly

00:58:50.700 the government decided instead of just creating this thing and these things have been created

00:58:54.700 at a state level in australia just through legislation australia is a federation like the

00:58:58.560 united states so you know our hospitals and our um uh you know police and schooling are done on a

00:59:04.460 state level not a national level so some state governments have actually tried this and you could

00:59:08.900 have done this at a federal level just by creating it just by parliament passing it but the government

00:59:14.940 decided instead to try to embed it in the constitution which requires a referendum to literally

00:59:20.560 change the nation's founding document um that's a big ask that requires a majority of states as

00:59:27.220 well as just a majority of voters in other words a majority of voters in a majority of states it didn't

00:59:32.080 even get anywhere close to that because there were legitimate worries i mean why are you embedding

00:59:37.620 something that is supposedly trying to remedy a temporary inequality one hopes that it's a temporary

00:59:43.860 inequality one hopes that in a thousand years time if we're all still here there won't be a

00:59:48.500 disparity between first nations health outcomes and education outcomes and the rest of the population

00:59:53.300 in which case why do you still have this thing that's going to be in the constitution forever

00:59:58.280 and then as you say constantine there's that sort of egalitarian thing of like well hang on

01:00:04.040 more than half the australian population has arrived since the second world war

01:00:08.440 we have this huge multi-ethnic society why does a working-class chinese australian shopkeeper

01:00:15.560 not get a say but a first nations person does just because they're a descendant of people who were

01:00:22.300 wronged so it became a real culture war clash there was a lot of misinformation about about it um

01:00:29.220 and it went down in flames it was an interesting time because it was interesting how blinkered and

01:00:36.860 blinded people were on both sides about well especially on the pro you know on the left progressive side

01:00:43.100 about the reasons why people might have reservations for it i mean so many of my colleagues would just

01:00:48.100 say something like oh it's just bloody obvious don't be a dick you know just vote for it you know

01:00:54.720 throw them a bone you know they've got a hard life uh you know why wouldn't you well maybe people

01:01:02.040 have reservations about changing the founding document if they don't know what the ultimate legal

01:01:06.940 consequences are going to be maybe people have reservations about how much it's going to cost maybe

01:01:10.920 people have reservations about whether or not it's going to be truly representative maybe they don't

01:01:14.500 know where these people are going to be chosen from and whether they're going to come from you know

01:01:18.180 an elite kind of social justice oriented university class or whether they'll actually represent the

01:01:23.280 interests of first nations people on the ground it was amazing in the wake of the referendum when it

01:01:27.920 went down i was i still had my radio show at the time i would be interviewing very learned

01:01:32.640 academics and learned journalists about it and you know one of them said to me uh i think the reason why

01:01:37.940 you know it failed was because a lot of australians who live in big cities uh they don't know a lot of

01:01:43.700 first nations people now i pointed out to her actually the places in australia where wealthy elites who

01:01:53.040 don't know a lot of indigenous people live are the ones that voted most in favor of the the voice body

01:02:00.140 the places that made it fail were largely rural and regional electorates where in fact i think the

01:02:07.080 two electorates with the largest number of first nations people were the ones that went most strongly

01:02:12.060 against it now you could say oh well that's because you know white racists live amongst the

01:02:17.340 first nations people whatever it it's clearly not true that it was people who don't know

01:02:23.240 indigenous people who were voting against it so i explained that to her and she said oh yeah but in

01:02:28.320 the big cities where they voted yes they go to art galleries and they appreciate indigenous art

01:02:32.100 so that's why that's probably why they were voting yes i was like bubble much echo chamber much like

01:02:41.520 group think much you don't think that there's it's possible that there are people who are just

01:02:46.000 you know the idea that you had to be a racist in order to have reservations about this is what drove

01:02:53.520 more people against it if you'd been less elitist and sort of dogmatic and condescending towards

01:03:00.420 people who had questions about whether or not this was the right way to address inequality racial

01:03:04.240 inequality in australia then maybe there would have been a potential to cut across the aisle and

01:03:08.480 convince some people um and on the question of multiculturalism i mean it's a really interesting

01:03:13.480 one again in the same way the question of creating a sort of a quorum of support for a particular policy

01:03:21.780 right how do you get the largest buy-in i mean this is something that i'm interested in

01:03:25.160 on uncomfortable conversations i want to speak to the winnable middle i want to speak to people who

01:03:30.480 still regard themselves as being rational thoughtful uh you know i'm never going to win over the far

01:03:37.080 left i'm never going to win over the far right i'm hoping that there are people on the fringes who

01:03:41.000 will join us in a kind of a radical centrism so to speak so what australia's multiculturalism has to

01:03:47.860 teach i think the uk and the us is that you can get enormous public buy-in for very high rates of

01:03:56.500 immigration even into a very white country which australia was in the 1950s if people feel that they

01:04:03.820 have control over the borders that was the deal after the second world war the first ever immigration

01:04:10.400 minister arthur caldwell said you know we need to make sure that the borders are secure in order to

01:04:16.820 reassure australians that we know exactly who's coming here and that we're making we've got a

01:04:20.980 good selection criterion for it and that has basically persisted the entire way through i mean

01:04:26.140 i know you had tony abbott the former australian prime minister on this show um i'm not a fan not a

01:04:31.060 huge fan of tony's i think his border policies were unnecessarily harsh nonetheless it remains the

01:04:37.340 case in australia that if you embark on now of course we have the good fortune to be an island so you

01:04:42.000 know it's not exactly the same as the united states you can't walk we have that fortune here too

01:04:45.680 we have tens of thousands of people coming in legally yeah yeah and so you know what australia

01:04:50.360 why do you say it was unnecessarily harsh because the year before uh abbott's government implemented

01:04:56.120 operations of sovereign borders that you had about i can't remember it was either 12 or 17 000 people

01:05:02.180 come illegally yeah today it's 74 people so it solved the problem uh yes so there are there are ways and

01:05:09.980 there are ways right like i think that i say it's unnecessarily harsh because so just for people

01:05:14.780 who aren't across the entire thing what australia basically did um and this was a solution that was

01:05:19.960 actually devised in the early 2000s pre-toni abbott by john howard the basic contours of this

01:05:25.040 were was that if you try to come to australia illegally in other words if you get on a boat

01:05:30.000 there are very sophisticated people smuggling rings or there were through southeast asia that would funnel

01:05:34.460 people from south asia through indonesia you get on a boat in indonesia come down into australia

01:05:39.000 as soon as you're on australian soil of course then you can declare refugee status and australia

01:05:44.720 has to process you the idea was find the boats before they get there before they have the right

01:05:49.320 to claim asylum in australia and make the promise that if you try to come to australia illegally you

01:05:54.700 will never ever set foot in australia guaranteed signed sealed and delivered we'll ship you off to a

01:06:00.360 south pacific island nation that we're bribing to build concentration camps to house you in

01:06:04.600 in the hot desert until someone else will take you and then we just sort of find other partner

01:06:11.960 countries that we can disperse those people to it's harsh because do you need to be keeping them

01:06:19.060 in the conditions that they're in which are actually quite opaque and it's very difficult to

01:06:22.560 find out what's going on in those places but they're run by private prison companies and by all

01:06:27.780 accounts they're absolutely awful there have been cases of people on starvation diets there there

01:06:32.280 have been cases of people sewing their lips closed there there have been cases there was one award

01:06:37.020 winning australian podcast that was recorded by an inmate there who was able to smuggle have a

01:06:42.500 recording device smuggled in it's all very cloak and dagger i think that once someone is in your care

01:06:49.280 you have a duty of care like yes you can always say oh but what about the these thousands of other

01:06:55.880 hypothetical people who might have drowned at sea you know trying to get there who were stopping

01:07:00.440 because of the deterrent effect of what we're doing to this small number of people on this pacific

01:07:05.000 island nation well great in some global moral calculus when you're finally at the pearly gates

01:07:10.720 maybe they'll tally up all the lives you saved and you know you'll get to go to heaven but in the

01:07:15.020 meantime you're brutalizing people and you're brutalizing them to make an example of individual

01:07:19.760 human beings including women and children in order to deter other people there's got to be a way of

01:07:24.220 doing it that's somewhat less barbaric but also provides the deterrent effect i think but just to

01:07:29.500 the general gist i do think is that in immigration when you have rich wealthy prosperous countries

01:07:36.660 where it's great to live and you have a lot of countries where it's not so great to live

01:07:41.380 there's gonna be some kind of brutality along the way and filtering out who can come and who can't

01:07:48.120 even if that's just saying you have to stay back in your shithole in bangladesh and australia has

01:07:54.260 chosen the path of we're going to be particularly uh brutal and particularly kind of firm about the

01:08:02.220 border and as a result you have massive public support for immigration now of course there's

01:08:09.040 still a bit of worry about immigration because as you get pressure on infrastructure pressure on

01:08:13.300 public schools pressure on the health system you know and so on and so forth people say do we need to

01:08:17.300 be letting in like half a million people every year could we make it half that or whatever

01:08:20.980 but you don't see brexit and you don't see donald trump and i do think a part of that not to not to

01:08:26.800 blame both of those things entirely on immigration but i think it's a significant i don't think you

01:08:31.780 could get those without a sense from the public of immigration being out of control and they're just

01:08:37.140 being chaos fundamentally definitely the reason it's interesting we've got to wrap up but i'll ask

01:08:43.220 you this last question before we do the usual one is about the multi-ethnic versus multicultural

01:08:47.540 because i asked you about multiculturalism and you immediately went to multi-ethnic which i think

01:08:51.880 is the right way of talking about it and the reason is that in europe during periods of mass legal not

01:08:58.960 illegal but legal immigration uh several people who none nobody would describe as culture warriors or far

01:09:05.340 right or anything like that including people like angela merkel david cameron were forced to concede

01:09:11.620 that multiculturalism has failed in europe um and that's kind of was a little bit of my worry with

01:09:18.280 australia in the sense that i think that there may be we talked earlier about how it's like going back

01:09:24.800 10 years in the past it i just got that little bit of sense the illegal immigration issue is different

01:09:30.380 that there's a little bit of complacency about that because when you have large waves of immigration

01:09:36.620 come in from different cultures from different religious backgrounds and you don't encourage

01:09:41.280 assimilation you are gonna create problems that then will result in a brexit trump style response

01:09:47.700 maybe yeah i don't think it's i don't think it's a non-issue i do you're right that i specifically

01:09:54.660 chose the word multi-ethnic because i'm in europe uh uk man i think it's in europe but you know in my

01:09:59.840 brain it is and i do think the word has different valence here largely because probably of that angela

01:10:05.680 merkel speech where she was talking about multiculturalism um i think i don't believe

01:10:12.100 that we should be aggressively trying to get people to abandon their home cultures i believe in

01:10:17.740 multiculturalism in the sense that i love living in a melting pot i love being close to a neighborhood

01:10:24.600 where i can go go to and you know the signs are in mandarin and then the translation underneath the

01:10:30.880 mandarin is in korean and there's no english translation at all like i i like that i like

01:10:36.340 living in in a place where the food is incredibly authentic and it feels like you're bumping into the

01:10:41.540 chaos of humanity where i think you have to draw the line is that there are fundamental principles that

01:10:48.360 we all agree on in this country right men and women are treated equally gay poop it's fine to be

01:10:54.380 gay you know basically sort of universal small l liberal principles and if you come from a culture

01:11:00.940 where that's not the case you don't get to continue to live that culture in australia and continue to

01:11:07.400 insist that your women wear burqas against their will or you know that you don't think those two

01:11:12.920 things are incredibly connected and unavoidably so if people live in a community in which they speak

01:11:18.100 the language they spoke in the country from which their grandparents came if people live in those

01:11:22.560 societies where they're not fully integrated then the cultural heritage including social values

01:11:28.820 will be passed down inevitably and in the uk that's what we see we see second and third generation

01:11:34.740 people who whose parents and grandparents came here who are more socially conservative including

01:11:39.560 on those issues are they yeah that that's not the way that it works in australia i mean or america

01:11:44.060 actually it gets less it gets diluted with each generation maybe because of the different types of

01:11:48.080 people that you allow in it could be i mean i i think i mean if we're talking about

01:11:52.000 conservative muslims which i think is probably the subtext then uh you know the first generation

01:11:56.700 comes over and they have their ways of doing things and in general the the next generation

01:12:01.060 just through by necessity bumps into more people from more different cultures and more local

01:12:07.040 australians they consume the public news they like it there is a there is a first generation

01:12:12.340 there is a filtering effect and gas the jews outside the sydney opera house um i mean uh there there is

01:12:20.580 no way of avoiding the fact that there is going to be a radical uh you know subset a tiny radical

01:12:26.060 subset of people um i don't think that was the overwhelming uh sentiment like is there a so i suppose the

01:12:33.300 question really is is there a is there a maximum kind of cap on the number of people who you would bring

01:12:39.380 in from particular cultures because the pace of dilution of their conservatism is too slow

01:12:45.940 for you know a liberal democracy to be able to sustain assuming that dilution is going to continue

01:12:51.760 over long periods of time as their percentage of the population grows rapidly yes yes uh that's not

01:12:58.760 necessarily the case i mean people are talking in this country about an islamic party now right

01:13:04.260 an islamic party is not going to be socially liberal i don't imagine do you see what i'm saying

01:13:08.940 uh well i don't know i mean if it's an islamist party it's obviously not going to be socially

01:13:12.360 liberal uh you know if it was to represent british muslims broadly then who knows um

01:13:17.400 this isn't just about islam like my my in-laws are socially conservative orthodox christians yeah

01:13:29.920 there was an orthodox christianity party of britain they would be socially conservative

01:13:34.380 definitely but you didn't say an orthodox muslim party you just said a muslim party an islam an

01:13:40.520 islamic party islamic party yeah i mean i i'm yeah look maybe i know too many moderate muslims in

01:13:46.120 australia and i have rose-tinted glasses about muslims it's it's a conversation about uh whether

01:13:51.140 you are able to integrate people when they're large waves of immigration while encouraging them to

01:13:57.820 retain entirely their language and their culture without really working hard to integrate yeah i

01:14:02.560 mean like look it may be the case that australia just has more covert assimilationist policies than

01:14:07.140 the uk and the us do is that we talk a big game about multiculturalism but actually if you call

01:14:12.400 through to the government helpline you're going to have to have rudimentary english in order to

01:14:15.760 understand it that's very different it's possible that here you know you can press number 16 for arabic

01:14:20.320 and number 17 for uh you know pashtun or urdu or something and you don't have that in australia so i

01:14:26.340 think yeah i think there's a probably a that's interesting there's a there's a balance to be

01:14:29.800 struck between an overt kind of you know philosophy of welcoming multiculturalism but also a practical

01:14:36.500 recognition that in order to get by and in order to be socially tolerated really you're gonna have to

01:14:41.960 join the mainstream will everybody no but the force is strong enough the centrifugal force to pull you

01:14:47.560 out of the the the bunker and into mainstream australia i have sufficient faith in that that i think that

01:14:53.400 we can yeah australia can do it all right we're all moving to australia then excellent come on down

01:14:58.260 come on down so and the question the the question that we always end our interviews with is what's

01:15:04.820 the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be before josh answers make sure to head on

01:15:10.340 over to locals after the interview is over to see this i don't see how you can be so comfortable with

01:15:16.580 australia's response to the pandemic avoiding section 92 of the constitution police brutality detention of

01:15:22.720 citizens who committed no crimes and removal of basic natural rights none of which was based on

01:15:28.000 any evidence some people are talking about it but artificial intelligence is on my mind uh more and

01:15:34.740 more um i think we are about to enter a different world well i know we're about to enter a different

01:15:42.980 world where we're talking all the time and hearing from all the time creatures that are in our pockets

01:15:54.540 that seem to be i'm not implying that they are sentient but they'll they'll land for us as if they

01:16:01.380 are and that's going to be a change at least as big as the change of the smartphone i mean just to put

01:16:07.440 the smartphone in context for this thought experiment when 9 11 happened which doesn't feel like totally

01:16:14.140 ancient history to certain people of a certain age old people like me uh when 9 11 happened the ipod

01:16:23.940 didn't exist yet remember the original white ipod that held like 15 songs and weighed four bricks

01:16:31.500 uh and with the scroll button that was released in october of 2001 so when the 2007 election happened

01:16:39.840 in australia i don't know what the equivalent would be here but that's a big marker in australia

01:16:43.420 because it was a big landslide elections but let's say the erection of the erection let's say the

01:16:48.260 erection of barack obama in the united states right and it was a big one well yeah it was a big one

01:16:53.760 when that happened you didn't have uh like facebook and you know uh you didn't you didn't have

01:16:59.940 mobile uh device in fact you didn't have the iphone so the entire history if you'd told us

01:17:06.820 just 15 years ago there were blackberries right but there weren't there weren't smartphones if you'd

01:17:11.960 told us 15 years ago that it would be completely normalized for people to be walking around with

01:17:18.180 supercomputers in their pockets that they used in every spare moment of the day to parachute into

01:17:23.260 conversations news that was being tailored for them and there were there were as many versions of those

01:17:29.360 news feeds as there were people in the world because there were computer programs that were

01:17:34.720 learning exactly what you liked hovering over and the number of milliseconds that you spent looking at

01:17:39.680 a particular video before moving on and that the chinese communist party had the most popular version

01:17:46.460 of these things and the most young people were getting their news and information from a from the

01:17:50.900 chinese communist party's computer programs that were trying to determine exactly what each individual

01:17:57.140 liked and didn't like that would seem like a weird and dystopian future and if you fast forward the same

01:18:04.240 amount into the future from now i think we'll look back on this moment where we're all sitting here today

01:18:11.180 and go i can't believe that was a time when we weren't just constantly talking to things all around us

01:18:20.440 cracking jokes to them having them laugh having them crack jokes back to us and having basically

01:18:27.200 creatures all around us in artificial form that were helping us do everything we will all have a personal

01:18:33.960 assistant we will all have a lawyer we will all have an accountant and they will all be virtual

01:18:39.840 sooner than we realize and the impact that that's going to have like we talk a lot about job loss or

01:18:45.400 something from ai or misinformation all of that's very important but i think just the psychology

01:18:50.500 of what we're about to embark on social media was basically a gigantic experiment in which none of us

01:18:58.180 enrolled but we will all find ourselves in well that will look like a walk in the park in comparison to

01:19:04.660 the kind of global psychological experiment that's about to happen josh zeps check out uncomfortable

01:19:10.500 conversations and head over to locals for the bonus questions having been brave enough to make his

01:19:16.880 position as clear as possible to those who only see one side of the israel hamas war has josh had

01:19:22.420 feedback from his audience that shows there has been a change in understanding or attitude

01:19:40.500 of expressing our behavior so and with these kinds of things these people are a strength in쉬 litter video

01:19:43.000 because of those who don't care about how leak it is today so it's oliver it and change his

01:19:44.420 stuff because they started to be of configuration also from this company i but i think you know

01:19:46.420 that you're going to have the gente to see two different properties but i met in terms of

01:19:47.520 you know if you here use one side i work we're gonna act as well but i need to adopt welcome

01:19:49.600 this kind of thing and if the black lineage and my wife you know what and i'm letting you

01:19:51.100 give the right on the herd it she sign in and it doesn't say a lot of chance in

01:19:53.040 tu amtes reading the emails and and chat.

01:19:55.040 And the identities of oppression I have been able to forgive him so i can think of

01:19:55.840 but she gets下olog from the top living room and I have things that I want to deny you

01:19:57.840 Thank you.

01:20:27.840 Thank you.

01:20:57.840 Thank you.

01:21:27.840 Thank you.

01:21:57.840 Thank you.

TRIGGERnometry - March 17, 2024

Inside the Bubble of Public Broadcasting - Josh Szeps

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