I think everyone feels that the penalties are too high for putting a foot wrong in talking
about things at the moment.
We have to be able to misspeak and make accidents and the only way we get towards the truth
is by wrestling with things in a messy way and sometimes making mistakes.
If every time you make a mistake you're hounded from the public square, that's no way to run
My big question for you today, my lovely listeners, is fear of saying the wrong thing, stopping
us from sharing our opinions.
Now why this is my big question is that I've recently found myself in a bit of a pickle
on social media, thinking do I share something, do I say something, do I stay quiet, what
And it made me wonder, I'm sure there's been times when you've found yourself in that position
as well, either saying something, not expecting that there'd be a pile on, or just watching
something happen when someone has said something, not intending to hurt anyone, but then there
are all these consequences that happen around you and I think more and more we want to be
having these difficult conversations rather than staying safe and quiet, but sometimes
because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, you don't quite know where to start.
So that is why this is my big question and I've got the perfect person to help me answer
Now it's Josh Zeps.
Now Josh is a journalist, humorist and broadcaster and he is someone who is never afraid to have
uncomfortable conversations.
In fact, he has a fabulous podcast called Uncomfortable Conversations.
He's also recently launched a YouTube show by the same name and he's about to embark
on a tour where he's going to be having these uncomfortable conversations with some pretty
inspiring people.
Now Josh, you may know, recently left the ABC saying he was too spicy for the national
broadcaster and if you're in Sydney like me, you might have listened to Josh.
Now I was a big fan of Josh, I'd be listening to him when I'd be on my way to school pick
up in the afternoons and he would always make me think.
So I'm really keen to know what your thoughts are on this conversation and this big question
that you're about to listen to.
Is fear of saying the wrong thing stopping us from sharing our opinions?
Josh, you are the perfect person to discuss this very idea because you are brave, you
are unlike many broadcasters and you go where a lot of us fear to tread.
Why do you do that?
I don't feel I have a choice.
I feel I'm drawn to that.
What draws you to it?
I was always the kid who when I was told not to touch something I would go and touch it
or when I was told you do things this way I would say why.
I want to get to the bottom of what is true and I want to live in a society that is sufficiently
rambunctious and lively and spirited that we're all capable, we're all grown-ups, I
believe in treating other people like they're grown-ups.
I respect everybody so I'm not going to pander to a point that's stupid, I'm not going to
play a language game just because we've all decided that this is the way that you're supposed
to talk about a particular issue.
So many things at the moment, whether it's gender relations or Israel and Gaza or transgender
athletes or whatever it is, where there's a particular type of way of talking about
this or race or indigenous affairs, there's a way of talking about things that we've all
agreed to talk about in a certain way.
You know that if you make a certain point where you're trying to delicately tread on
eggshells without triggering too many trip wires, to mix my metaphors, you're likely
to get piled on in the comments section of a Facebook post or you're likely to be taken
the wrong way if you say it at a party or a barbecue.
So you just shut up instead and I don't think that's conducive to a healthy society, I don't
think that's how you create a democracy.
And you're spot on but the thing is the consequence sometimes of voicing an unpopular decision
can be to be cancelled or to be piled on and also to be misinterpreted.
Yes, that's right.
I mean the forums in which we're talking at the moment, namely social media, are perfectly
conducive to not having rational conversations that are generous to other people's points
I mean I believe in having a maximally generous attitude towards my opponent's ideas.
And if they have to say it in 140 characters, it's very difficult to understand exactly
what they're getting at and it can become a game of one-upmanship where everyone's trying
That's why I'll sometimes do a podcast on uncomfortable conversations where I'm just
talking for an hour and a half by myself about something sensitive.
I've done one about gun laws in the United States, I've done one about anti-Semitism
and Gaza where I just have to hear myself try to flesh through things in a way that
is going to be recognisable to both sides.
Like a lot of the talking that we're doing to each other at the moment is talking that's
comprehensible to people who are inside our echo chamber but that sounds biased or blinkered
or at worst deranged to people who don't consume the same media that we do and don't think
the same way that we do.
So I regard my job as just teasing open by 10% our capacity to understand the other side.
So how in terms of people listening who have views, I mean you mentioned there Israel and
Gaza and I listened recently to your editorial on that and it opened my eyes to ways of thinking
that I hadn't considered.
Yes, it really did.
That's the highest compliment I can receive.
But it really did, but how I see myself is, I mean I'm a Champagne Socialist, I am, but
I'm a lefty, I always, I want to stand up for people and I have my entire life since
I was a little girl and I'd get teased about it and I keep standing up, standing up, but
then what I find now as I get older, I think I'm doing the right thing and then I'll get
And I suppose more recently, if we can talk about Israel and Gaza, where I live in a very
Jewish part of Sydney and I've got a lot of Jewish friends and so when the terrible events
of October happened, I retweeted a tweet about let's think about our Jewish friends during
this time and reach out.
So I did that, but then as things unfolded and of course all of us see these terrible
images and pictures from Gaza, I was thinking oh I'm conflicted, so then I retweeted something
about a ceasefire and humanity and things and then a number of people that I know then
reached out to me saying we need to have a coffee, we need to talk about your views on
this and then they would send me other imagery and things and I felt sort of under siege,
but then I sat down and I spoke with one of my best friends who is Jewish and she was
also upset by what I'd posted.
So I really listened to her and also I listened to what you had said.
I mean you speak openly, you're Jewish, your father fled Germany.
It gave me more of an idea of the nuance to what is going on, but at the same time I then
have Muslim friends who've contacted me and said why are you being silent on what's happening
I have a social media platform and I have retreated from sending tweets and those sorts
of things, but I don't know if that's the right thing.
Well I mean here's a news flash, like not everyone has to have an opinion about everything.
You're not obliged to.
Of course you're not, but I feel like I have a platform and I'm sure people listening to
are feeling conflicted about they're upset by what is happening.
They can't understand what human beings can possibly do to one another.
How can they make sense of it?
So what do we do?
Well my main goal is to turn the heat down on things by 10% at the same time as turning
understanding up by 10%.
So sometimes that will mean talking and sometimes that will mean shutting up.
I've been basically shutting up over the entire course of the Israel-Gaza thing with the exception
of saying my piece in one long editorial that a lot of people found really useful
because I tried to tease out my conflictedness.
I mean I'm broadly of the left, I want to support the underdog.
I think that Israel has been led horribly for decades by right wing, I don't want to
swear on this podcast, but people who I don't hold in high esteem.
I think Netanyahu is a corrupt hack and the tragedy that Palestinians find themselves
is just that, a complete tragedy.
And at the same time if you're out there marching around with banners that say by any means
necessary from the river to the sea, be careful that you know exactly what you're saying.
And that was an eye-opener for me.
Perhaps you could share that with our listeners, what that slogan in fact implies.
Yeah, I mean look the problem is that we inside everybody's echo chamber, what we're saying
sounds reasonable.
We're all the heroes of our own story, we all think that we're doing the right thing.
And we want to do the right thing.
And we want to do the right thing and I too have been contacted by lots of my friends
in the Instagram space saying, you see dead babies being pulled from the rubble in Gaza,
how can you not speak out against that?
Well newsflash, it's not a great moral insight that killing babies is wrong, like I'm already
I think we're all on that page, like I'm fully aware of that.
You don't need to go out and march and you don't need to make an Instagram video or a
TikTok about how bad it is to bomb babies.
The challenge is, a person who says from the river to the sea, or a person who wears a
Palestinian flag as some, I saw Qantas flight attendants were just reprimanded for doing
because they didn't understand what that might mean to some Jewish passengers, you know we
had the controversy about some performers wearing Palestinian flags at the curtain call
They think all they're doing is saying, why wouldn't you want to be nice to a dispossessed
You know, they deserve a state just like everybody else deserves a state.
That's what those symbols and those slogans mean to them.
To other people, the idea that there should be a single Palestinian Arab state all the
way from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea implies that there's nowhere for Jews
to have anywhere safe to live.
We're talking about a tiny minority of people, 16 million people globally, who have been
hounded and persecuted and pillaged throughout all of history, who were finally given a place
And we can quibble about how unjust it was what they did to the other people who were
It's a pretty raw deal if your ancestors were living there.
But it's complicated.
I mean, Jews were driven out of all of the surrounding Arab countries.
The majority of Jews in the Middle East were not parachuted in from Europe after World
They come from surrounding Arab countries, which are incredibly hostile to Jews in a
way that Israel is not hostile to Palestinians and Arabs who live in Israel.
Again, I'm not an apologist for settlements, for the occupation of Palestinian land.
I'm asking that we all understand what the things that we're saying mean to the people
who aren't already on our page.
And if you're saying from the river to the sea to someone who thinks that there should
be a state for Jews in some version, in some capacity in the Middle East, that can sound
like you want to wipe out the Jews.
Now, you may not mean it that way, but have the leap of empathic imagination to understand
that in a hot environment where tempers are raw and people are feeling besieged on both
sides, it may actually be the right thing to shut up.
And you've said that very well, I think, but at the same time, for someone like myself
who feels I need to sort of stand up, I need to sort of say, hey, this is what I believe
in or this is wrong, it can be hard to be quiet when you see injustice.
But I suppose the point you're making is that things are always nuanced.
I mean, through what lens are we looking at the injustice?
So we also have to understand what a psychologist would call our priors, right?
Meaning the things that we're bringing to the table that we're using as assumptions
that we may not even be aware of.
So our unconscious bias.
Our unconscious bias, right?
I think we have a prior in Australia, and it's a worthy one, that in general, when you
see a conflict, if there are poor brown-skinned people, then they're probably in the right.
And if there are wealthy, whiter-skinned people wearing suits and speaking good English, they're
probably the colonial occupiers and they're probably morally questionable.
We have inherited this from our own terrible history of colonialism.
I think we've become more aware of it in recent decades because of the First Nations question
And we're hypersensitive.
We have this algorithm running in our heads, this heuristic that says rich, clean-looking
whitish person in suit, bad, poor brown-skinned person, probably better.
Let's just be aware of that when we're looking at conflicts.
It's not always true.
Because the poor brown-skinned person smashes across a border and starts violently raping
That's not a good thing to do.
So let's have a ledger on which we're understanding that there is moral culpability on both sides.
That doesn't mean that you can't call for a ceasefire.
It doesn't mean that you can't say that Israel has handled this terribly.
It doesn't mean that you can't say that Israel should never have been building settlements
the way that it does.
But it means let's have these conversations in ways that have empathy and nuance instead
of flag-waving, marching, pontificating in ways that I think only serve to actually alienate
us and divide us rather than bring us together.
So how do we do that, though?
How do we get over that fear, I have that, that fear of saying the wrong thing, to then
have better, more meaningful conversations that make us feel that we can enact change
or that we are moving forward?
I mean, maybe it's better to take an example of things where there are things that...
Like, so there are some issues that I think are so complicated that it's worth shutting
And I would probably put Israel and Gaza in that camp.
Like, unless you have skin in the game, I would tactfully suggest that people shut up.
Unless you're a Palestinian, unless you're actually a Palestinian or you're actually
a Jew, probably not your place to be trying to ferment violent unrest on that issue.
What some people then feel is, and I know it's very different, but they look at when
terrible things have happened, that's saying that it's when good people do nothing and
You just have to be bloody sure that you're the good person, right?
You just have to be bloody damn sure that you're on the right side.
How do we know that?
Well, let's take a simpler example where there are also still...
Because I'd like to think I'm a good person.
You are a good person, Jess.
And you're a good person.
We're both good people.
So then why can't we say something?
Well, so take an issue where I think it's clearer that there is a truth or a right position
that you can't talk about.
So it might be something like, you know, just to kick up the obvious hornet's nest that
involves the greatest difficulty in talking about without getting hounded, which is transgender
Suppose you want to simply make the point that there's something uniquely special about
as a girl in a sexist world and that intrinsic to the idea of womanhood is that you grew
up as a girl and you then went through puberty as a girl.
This implies that there are two biological sexes that broadly map onto gender.
Now you can hold that position at the same time as you also hold the position that there
is this phenomenon of transgenderism that we've seen in almost all places over almost
all time that some people from a very, very early age insist that they were born into
the wrong body and those people should be able to avail themselves of all the medical
treatment that they want to in order to be able to transition and we should respect them
and not discriminate against them.
But there is still a huge penalty even just to saying what I just said, because the orthodoxy
amongst polite progressive circles at the moment is that trans women are women.
Trans women are women.
But what do you mean by trans women are women?
That's a tautology.
Of course trans women are women if you call women is the category that includes trans
Then let's agree with that.
Is there anything special about the cisgender women who grew up as girls?
To me, I don't think so.
Is it transphobic to say that?
To say what I've said?
To say what I said.
Is it transphobic?
Because I'm just saying what for example Jermaine Greer would say, which is that as a feminist
it's a betrayal of women.
And probably J.K.
Rowling would say too.
I would say yes, a lot of people would say what you've said is transphobic.
And so this is where we start getting into problems I think, because transphobia or some
other accusation of bigotry becomes an all purpose bludgeon with which you can stop conversation.
You don't even have to engage with the question, right?
You can just say that's nonsense.
You can say well only a transphobe would say that or only a racist would question why we
do welcomes to country, why a bunch of white middle managers on a Zoom call are doing an
acknowledgement of country before they have their marketing meeting.
If someone says well hang on, is this actually the best way to achieve reconciliation, well
only a racist would question why we're doing this.
But hang on, maybe we're doing a catechism.
Maybe we're achieving nothing.
Maybe there are ways in which white university educated progressives pat each other on the
and feel good without actually enacting any real economic sacrifice.
Isn't it a start?
This is kind of where I sort of struggle a bit where my sense of always sort of standing
up for people and I think for so long we haven't stood up enough and when it then swings the
other way, too far one way, that's then when there's the problem.
Because I've found sometimes when things have swung back on me, I've been like but I thought
you were my people.
Why are you being so awful to me?
Well it depends who you're standing up for, right?
So you can stand up for the transgender person and let's not even say that this is the transgender
You can stand up for the activist who is very exercised by the transgender issue, which
may be different from, I mean I have a lot of trans friends who are as sceptical towards
as JK Rowling might be and they're not necessarily on board as much as my most activist socialist
friends would be about pushing what you might call a transgender agenda.
So you can be on the side of the transgender activist or you could be on the side of the
15 year old female athlete who is getting beaten all the time by people who were born
But wait a minute, how often does that happen?
Well does it matter?
Isn't it a matter of principle?
No, no, but it's a matter of facts.
Like there's not all of these transgender gold medal winning Olympians who are sort
of at the top of all their sports.
That doesn't happen.
But why does the number matter?
Isn't it a matter of principle?
It's not the number.
It's actually is this true or not?
Well it is true that if you're a weightlifter and you go through puberty as a boy you will
forever be a better weightlifter on average than a girl.
But we're not seeing that happen.
But we would if the transgender ideologues won.
But we actually are seeing it.
I mean in the States there actually are a lot of examples of it.
Again, I don't quite understand why the number matters.
Well the number matters in the sense of is it true or not?
It's easy for people to say oh my goodness.
It is a fact that there would be an unfair advantage for a person who went through puberty
as a male in a swimming pool.
This is why we have segregated sports.
But do you really believe that or are you just being contrarian?
Well that's part of my shtick isn't it?
You never quite know the difference.
I'm kicking a hornet's nest because I think it's useful for us to interrogate why we believe
the things we believe.
But it's only useful if it doesn't then reinforce prejudice.
So what I find for me, what I find uncomfortable, say with what you're saying, is if that then
encourages people to just be more prejudicial and just awful in their views, I don't think
that's a great thing to be saying.
I get it completely.
I completely agree.
My opinion would be the exact opposite which is that the way that you will achieve an end
to prejudice against transgender people is by being fair dinkum about gender and by not
sounding like you're full of bullshit to people who aren't already on your team.
So saying there are certain people who feel like they're in the wrong body, they should
absolutely be able to present as the opposite sex, we should give them all the respect and
not discriminate against them.
But if you insist that my aunt has to agree that there's no such thing really as men and
women and that there are no biological differences between the sexes, she's not going to come
on board with being nice towards transgender people, you know what I mean?
Like you have to sort of have to sound reasonable.
Somewhere in the middle.
Somewhere in the middle, yeah.
You have to be, you have to hear the criticisms of your opponents and not just say, I'm going
to lie about this thing because I think that the world is going to be a nicer place if
everyone just believed this lie.
If everyone just believed there was no biological differences between the sexes, then the world
would be a great place and the lions would sleep with the lambs and the rivers would
flow with milk and honey and the postman would be hugging the St Bernard dog.
But we don't live in that world where everyone's going to buy your fiction just in the interests
of being nice to a minority.
The way to honour minorities, the way to honour social justice is to have conversations that
are both respectful but also fair dinkum and to be as bullshit-free as we can in the way
we talk about things.
So perhaps that's the word then, respectful conversations, that that is how we can get
over that fear of saying the wrong thing, that as long as we are respectful with our
differing opinions.
And that is my almost bug-barrel concern sometimes that when we do have these conversations,
people aren't respectful and that they can say hateful things that are incredibly hurtful
and can have long-lasting consequences for the people that they're targeting.
I mean, absolutely, and I would also just indict social media here.
We've handed over to 22-year-old tech bros in Silicon Valley who ride skateboards to
work the ability to shape through the algorithms that they design what information we're presented
with and what is on your feed.
I mean, when you open Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok, you are not seeing
an impartial presentation of everything that your friends are posting.
I mean, this is algorithmically tweaked to elicit a reaction from you and the things
that elicit a reaction, you know, the measurement, the metrics here, whether or not you comment
or like or share or hover over a video for longer, and it will present you with things
that you're likely to engage with longer to increase the time that you spend on the app,
And it's going to favour things that either pander to what you already believe or demonise
things that you don't believe.
So you're going to see shocking things that are perpetrated by people who disagree with
you, and you're going to see quite reasonable looking things from people who agree with
So those echo chambers.
Yes, we're all in those echo chambers.
So like put the phone down as a start, I don't think we would have nearly as much heat on
these toxic culture war issues if people were off social media and we were having conversations
like the one that you and I are having now where we had the time and space to tease out
what we really believe and what we're really up to.
Because I think everyone is basically on the same page, that we want to live in a society
that is, yes, respectful, but also not a Stalinist thought crime chamber.
I think everyone feels that the penalties are too high for putting a foot wrong in talking
about things at the moment.
We have to be able to misspeak and make accidents, and the only way we get towards the truth
is by wrestling with things in a messy way and sometimes making mistakes.
If every time you make a mistake you're hounded from the public square, that's no way to run
But to me as well getting back to consequences from speaking out, what I've found too is
sometimes what will happen is with my girls on their social media, they will then get
stuff directed at them about me and do you know your mother supports da da da da da.
And so that also has made me more, I suppose, fearful of voicing my opinion on things because
I think, oh, is that going to be the wrong thing, even though I'm well intentioned?
I mean we have to cultivate a culture of not giving a stuff.
That's hard though.
How do you find that though, Josh?
Well it's a collective action problem, isn't it?
I mean if I'm the only person out there doing it, then I get stabbed with a thousand spears
and everybody else gets to go home and have a nice lunch.
Does it bother you?
So how do you manage that then?
Stiff up a lip and just keep going?
Stiff up a lip and believe that I'm fighting the good fight, that I honestly believe we're
not going to get through the 21st century as a civilisation if we can't solve this conundrum.
We're not going to be able to cohere like as a demos, as a people who share a country
and share a philosophy and a way of life.
If we succumb to the forces, both algorithmic on social media at the moment, pandered to
by the mainstream media, you know, you can open a particular newspaper or you can turn
on a particular channel and you pretty much know the point of view that you're going to
You kind of know the slant that you're going to get.
Increasingly, if you tell me which columnists you like, or if you tell me what your opinion
is about the corporate tax rate, I can conclude whether or not you believe in climate change.
Now, those two things have nothing to do with each other, but they're check boxes that you
tick on a particular tribal affiliation.
And I do worry that with identity politics on the left, sort of moving away from the
traditional left wing concern with economic justice and towards a, you know, finite pie,
cutting over a slice of the pie between warring identity factions.
So you've got the, you know, you've got your gays, you've got your transes, you've got
your people of colour, you've got your women, and we're all just identity groups at war
with each other, that that on the left and the increasing hostility and racism and bigotry
of the far right will conspire to rip us apart if we don't all just do a better job of being
a little bit more fearless about what we say and a little bit more generous when other
people say the wrong thing.
And respectful, I think, when we have those conversations. So not either shouting people
down and using sort of hate to then make people who feel like they don't have a voice.
Deal with the actual issue, I would say. Like respect can sometimes be a code word for don't
say anything at all or be anodyne or, you know, and that's not what I'm arguing for.
Respect to me means grappling with the actual issue that they're raising rather than trying
to get them fired or demonised or excluded or otherwise penalised for holding an opinion
that you think is beyond the pale.
I think it's important for us to interrogate why we believe what we believe. I think it's
important for us to take generously other people who are trying to interrogate why we
believe what we believe. And the worst move that you can make is to excommunicate somebody,
to push them out of the family, to want to not talk to them again, to want to get them
banned or fired or something because they're on the wrong team. Because what that fails
to recognise is that you two are on a team, you two are in an echo chamber, you two believe
things that they regard as being ridiculous. I'm not saying that there isn't good and
there isn't bad ideas, but the way to understand them is to actually interrogate the ideas
themselves, not to attack the person who holds the idea.
And then that is how we can move forward. Is your frustration over not being able to
interrogate those ideas, why you wanted to leave the ABC and why you've left the ABC?
Partly, yes. I mean, partly it's about echo chambers and about how much are we up to having,
yes, I would call it boisterous and uncomfortable and rambunctious and penetrating conversations
about provocative issues. There's a lot of challenges that we face at the moment from
artificial intelligence to climate chaos to whatever else. And we're going to have to
all be rational and we're going to have to all believe in the same facts broadly. And
it's just not good enough for us to keep trotting along in safe spaces where the assumption
is that the people who we're speaking to broadly share our worldview. We have to be able to
reach out to people who don't share our worldview and sound reasonable to those people as well.
And I felt that that's just with the growth of independent media and the growth of podcasting,
I was like, I can do so much on my podcast and so much now on my YouTube channel, which
I didn't have time to do and so much in live events by bringing luminaries who I disagree
with and agree with onto stages around Australia. But I was like, let's just try that. I mean,
this is clearly the future of broadcasting anyway. It's not clear to me that in five
or 10 years, there'll be a big difference between watching television and watching something
streaming on YouTube, if there is already anyway for people under the age of 30 at least.
And clearly, I mean, we can consume podcasts as easily as we can consume radio. So what
job is old school legacy media doing at this point? I mean, I am a huge fan of public broadcasting.
I love the ABC. I want the ABC to be as successful as it can possibly be. And to the extent that
I'm constructive in steering it in that direction, great. And to the extent that that is not
a welcome force, you know, in the eyes of particular people at the ABC, that's a shame.
And were you told you can't say particular things?
No, it's never that blunt. No, when you're under a contract, they can give the okay or
they can decline any other outside work that you might do. So that might be writing an
opinion piece for a newspaper or something like that. And they run a tight ship. They're
risk averse. They're cautious, understandably so. They cop a lot of needless nonsense from
the right. You know, nobody likes being hauled up by, you know, pontificating populist right
wing senators in some Senate estimates and being grilled about why play school had a
gay person on it or something. Like, there's a lot of nonsense about the ABC that it has
to endure. So I get their timidity. But I don't think that there's a path for public
broadcasting in Australia that doesn't involve growing a pair, you know, to some extent.
So it's not about no, I was never I didn't feel I have no gripe with the ABC. I just
have a gripe with the way that we're having conversations in this country more broadly.
And was that also why you did tweet and you put on your Instagram support of Antoinette
Latouf, who was filling in on ABC radio, and she had tweeted some pro-Palestinian views.
But she then lost her job at the ABC as a result.
Yeah, she and I disagree completely about Palestine. But I regard her as being a person
who is willing to sit down and have a conversation and not sling mud. And there's too little
of that in Australia at the moment. It's too easy to just sit inside our echo chambers
and, you know, talk in ways that are not going to ruffle any feathers. We have to ruffle
more feathers. And I like people who ruffle feathers. So even if there are people like
her who are on the opposite position of an extremely hot issue, for me, if they're ruffling
feathers in good faith, and I know that they'll listen to reason and then walk away from it,
maybe still disagreeing with me, but having heard me out and having been heard by me,
yes, let's all jump into this big mud pit. You know, that's fun. That's a lot more interesting
than never being challenged.
You say, let's all jump into this mud pit. There's a part of me, though, that goes, oh!
I can see you relish that. I'm someone, though, who I don't like conflict. I don't like upsetting
people. I like to keep people happy.
Yeah. I think we get a bit confused about the mud pit. I don't want a mud pit where
people are flinging handfuls of mud into each other's eyes willy-nilly. I want a mud pit
with rules, Jess. I want mud wrestling where there's an umpire, where we can have a little
bit of a wrestle and then have a time out and have some beverages and then get back
into the ring. There's a weird thing that's happening at the moment where the hostility
and intransigence and hatefulness is happening at the same time as we're becoming less interesting
in the ways that we talk to each other. It's like there are these parallel tracks, right?
On the one hand, you've got the conversations that we have becoming more banal, I would say,
and more sort of soft and genteel and safe, yes. And then you've got these eruptions of
hostility on social media and cancellations and extreme heat. And I think the two things
are related. I think the way you turn down the heat on the personal attacks is by making
everybody feel like there is an open and safe terrain in which they can articulate
their disagreements. And where is that, though?
On my podcast, Uncomfortable Conversations. Absolutely on your podcast. But in terms of,
more generally, I'm off Twitter now. I don't go on to Twitter anymore because I just thought,
no, I don't even need to go there. And I do my Insta, which I love, and TikTok. But whenever
things get too nasty, I just then back away from it for a while. But where else can we have these
conversations? In real life. In real life. Like, there's no substitute for real life. There's no
substitute for, you know, having a connection to your community. There's some psychological
phenomenon that I can't remember the name of, and I'm sure a listener will know, which posits that
happiness is correlated to locating your focus of attention and concern on those fears in your life
that are within your control. And the extent to which you focus on things that are outside
your control is correlated to unhappiness. And we tend to be spending a lot of time focusing on
big global issues, national politics, is Trump going to get re-elected? What's going to happen
about China? You know, what's happening with the war in Ukraine? It's all making us miserable.
These are things that generally are not actually affecting our lives. That, yes, absolutely do
constructive activism if you think so. If you think you want to. But hopping onto Instagram
and posting a video wagging your finger at everybody for not writing angry letters to Penny Wong
to do something about Gaza is actually not doing anything. That's slacktivism, as they call it.
That's like sitting in your living room, posting a video, making other people feel bad for their
own inadequacies. Focus on the fears of your life that are within your control, your community,
your school, your local politics, your neighbours, your family. You know, it's very glamorous and
fulfilling to go out and try to change the world. But like, pull your neck in revolutionaries,
you know, Instagram warriors, go home, make a peanut butter sandwich for the kids, talk to
your neighbour and have the conversations that you feel nervous about having online with real
human beings and they'll probably go fine. Just don't have them on Instagram. Yes, I'm going to
do that. Do it. You make me look at things differently and often in unexpected ways. And
I think sometimes we have these ideas that if you're this particular way, that will be your
viewpoint. But that isn't always the way. And I think to be surprising is exciting. And that's
what you are with your sort of views. Just finally though, where would you say you are happiest when
you have these conversations? Talking to really interesting, smart people who I disagree with a
bit and having the two of us wrestle towards a common understanding of something. I mean,
that's my happy place. And that can be Stan Grant or I'm just thinking off the top of my head
about people who I've interviewed, Russell Brand, people who I have very significant differences
with. But the repartee, the thrust and parry, the kind of sense of, yes, the mud pit. And I also
have some very close friends who we might take a weekend away and go somewhere and just sit on a
porch or find a little pub and talk and allow the conversation to go wherever it will go. Those are
my happiest moments, I think. Well, thank you for sharing some of that with us, Josh. It has been
a joy and I'm going to miss you in the afternoons, ABC radio in Sydney. Well, listen, why don't I
send you a text message at 12.30 every day? And instead of turning on the radio, you can just listen
to my podcast and you can pretend that it's a radio show. I will do that. Well, I've already
subscribed to your YouTube channel. Fabulous. Thanks, Jess. Thank you.
So what a conversation, hey. My mind is still spinning. Josh has that tendency to do that
to you and for you. And I really encourage you to subscribe to his podcast, Uncomfortable
Conversations. As well, he has a YouTube show, which you can subscribe to. I'm a new subscriber
on that. And as well, he's going to be taking his Uncomfortable Conversations on tour. And that
will be quite a show. We've got all of the links for all of that in our show notes, so head there.
And for more big conversations like this, if you haven't already subscribed and followed me,
the Jess Rowe Big Talk Show podcast, go on, get on board. And also, if there's someone in your life
who you think you'd like to have these sorts of conversations with, but aren't sure where to start,
why not get them on board, get them to subscribe to the show? Because we love our podcast community
and we really want to grow it more and more this year. And if you enjoyed this chat with Josh,
I reckon you'll love my chat with his husband, Sean Zeps.
When you're growing up and you can't see yourself, it's impossible to be yourself.
So there wasn't a lot of hope. And I lived for such a long period of my life, feeling like there's
just no way in hell I'm going to make it that far. I will not become an adult, you know? And I guess
the beauty, the great gift of that is that now when I get up each day and I like decide
decide, you know, what are you going to do today? What are you going to write in your book? And what
stories are you going to tell online? And what are you going to do on your podcast? And like,
how are you going to make the world a better place for the next generation of queer kids?
Well, I'm able to look back at that little kid and go, do it for him.
The Jess Rowe Big Talk Show is hosted by me, Jess Rowe, executive producer, Nick McClure. She's a
wonderful leopard lady, audio imager, Nat Marshall, supervising producer, Sam Kavanagh.
Until next time, remember to live big. Life is just too crazy and glorious to waste time
on the stuff that doesn't matter.