JUST JOSH: L.A. On Fire

How can we flourish in 2025 in a world gripped by tribalism on the right and left? Friend-of-the-show Stan Grant returns to reflect on community, cancellation, wokeness and faith.   Stan was CNN's Senior International Correspondent based in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing, before returning to Australia as International Affairs Analyst for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.   He is arguably Australia's most experienced global journalist and the most famous Indigenous Australian. He resigned from the national public broadcaster last year in a national firestorm about racism.   Stan and Josh discuss racial slurs, changing norms, tribalism, the rootless global elite, and finding meaning outside religion.   P.S. Do yourself a favour and help Meghan Daum - upcoming guest, friend-of-the-show and all-round brilliant gal - to get back on her feet after losing her home in the L.A. fires. Subscribe to her Substack at www. theunspeakablepodcast.com... for her and, more importantly, for you.   Watch this conversation on YouTube. And you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped over to the Uncomfy Convos Substack page. http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations

As Los Angeles burns, our thoughts are with everyone in L.A. In this special episode, Josh reflects on natural disasters, leadership, and the anniversary of the Black Summer fires in Australia.    You can watch this conversation on YouTube, and you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped your details into the Uncomfy Convos Substack page. http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations

Artificial systems are about to revolutionise your workplace, your school, your home, your phone… and, most of all, your head.   How should we prepare for the inevitable human response?   Professor Joel Pearson is a psychologist and neuroscientist who runs the Future Minds Lab at the University of New South Wales as well as MindX, a consultancy that works with companies like Samsung, Pixar, Saatchi and Google to help tailor products to how people’s minds actually work.   Josh and Joel consider the current state of A.I., how far it came in 2024, what to expect from 2025... and how to arm yourself for the disruptions of a world grappling with new hyper-intelligent artificial systems.   You can watch this conversation on YouTube, and you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped your details into the Uncomfy Convos Substack page. http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations

For the first show of the year, an unexpected treat. A few months ago, Josh had an amazing conversation as a guest on a colleague's podcast. We bring this to you as a nice way to reset, to recalibrate, to reaffirm your mindset as we enter a fresh year.   The show is called "A Lot to Talk About" and it's hosted by Bradley Dryburgh, a young guy whose parents were told his Cystic Fibrosis would ruin his life. Instead, he became an ultra-marathon runner, podcaster and motivational speaker.   He invited Josh on his show shortly before the U.S. election, so forgive their brief exchange about presidential politics. It's interesting as an analysis of the 24-hour media cycle and how small events can have a big impact. Mostly, Josh and Bradley focus on clear thinking, courageous conversations, the legacy media, algorithms and how to stay sane in a hectic world.   Happy 2025, humans.   To get more content like this and to join in the fun of the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe http://youtube.com/@JoshSzeps_ http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations  

Happy new year, human. Remember the Year 2000, the turn of the millennium? Well, you're about to enter the century's second quarter. This Wednesday, we'll be closer to 2050 than to the last millennium. The final half of the twenty-first century will be nearer than the twentieth. What might the next quarter of a century have in store? Josh argued it out with the whimsical and surprisingly youthful public speaker on futurism, Dr Ben Hamer. He's done projects at the World Economic Forum and as a visiting scholar at Yale University, and hosts The ThinkerTank Podcast. Have a happy and safe new year. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this podcast possible in 2024.   To get more content like this and to join in the fun of the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe http://youtube.com/@JoshSzeps_ http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations

It's one of the biggest weeks of the year at the box office. What's your most overrated and underrated movie of the year? Today, comedian and film buff Alexei Toliopoulos joins secret cinema nerd Josh Szeps to reveal which flicks to delight in and which to avoid. Plus, honourable mentions, the worst film of the year, and what to look out for from Hollywood in 2025. Merry Christmas, humans.   Check out Alexei’s podcast ‘The Last Video Store’ HERE   Watch this conversation on YouTube. And you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped over to the Uncomfy Convos Substack page. http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations

One of the greatest characters Josh regularly interviews is Gary Kennedy, the iconoclastic food scientist who oversees international food safety protocols and can answer every weird, wonderful, arcane food question that has ever popped into your noggin.    How long can you leave a Christmas ham in the fridge after it sat on the table for three hours? Can you use just one chopping board for the whole feast? Will reheating Chinese fried rice kill you? Does a "best before" date mean anything? Is it more dangerous for Australians to eat stale prawns in the sun on or for Americans to eat marshmallow-slathered sweet potato mash?     You can watch this conversation on YouTube, and you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped your details into the Uncomfy Convos Substack page. http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations  

The full conversation is almost two hours long and sbolitely fascinating. Enjoy this free preview or, to hear the whole shebang, subscribe at Uncomfortableconversations.substack.com   "Woke” is such a tired word. Yet there remains a cultural elite which uses the language of social justice to gain power and status, without helping the disadvantaged. What’s going on?   Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor of sociology who studies how knowledge workers have improved their cultural power by deploying the language of social justice to justify their own influence -- and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality.   Far from being a right-wing anti-woke crusader, Musa is a Black Muslim academic who explores how we think about about social phenomena. His new book is “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite”.   Here, Musa and Josh wrestle with what the “Great Awokening” was really all about, how ideas are the currency of the knowledge economy, and how we can actually help the marginalised and disadvantaged. This episode is part of Permission to Think, a collaboration with the University of Technology, thanks to Professor Alan Davison.   As always, you should do yourself a favour and get all of Josh’s shows in full, ad-free, via Substack. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Follow Josh here: http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations  

After the slaying of one of America’s highest-flying health-insurance CEOs, the tenor of many reactions from the Online Left was: “Murder is never justified, BUT…”   The chattering classes are now busy condemning such hot takes for seeking to “understand” a killer’s motives; for excusing the inexcusable.   But neither reaction will convince the growing minority of Americans who believe that something is fundamentally broken, and that violence could be morally justified to fix it. Here, Josh dares to ask… could it ever, in fact, be okay to respond to corporate malfeasance with public violence? Can we use this moment to think a bit harder about our moral code?   Tim Dean is the Senior Philosopher at The Ethics Centre, a non-profit that fosters moral conversations about everyday life. He has a PhD in philosophy with an expertise in the evolution of morality, he runs philosophy and ethics workshops for businesses, and he's a public philosopher and science writer whose first book is How We Became Human, about how our evolved moral minds are out of step with the modern world.   You can watch this conversation on YouTube, and you’re missing out on our best ad-free content if you haven’t popped your details into the Uncomfy Convos Substack page.   http://twitter.com/joshzepps   http://instagram.com/joshszeps/   http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations  

How did the best satirists notice the comedic potential of “wokeness” in its earliest moments? And where does the evolution of the Left leave political satire now?   Andrew Doyle writes for the fictional parody characters Jonathan Pie and Titania McGrath. He invented Titania as a caricature of social-justice activists (her Twitter bio describes her as an ecosexual radical intersectionalist poet with variable pronouns) but many people believed she was real, falling for her absurdly worthy tweets.   Andrew has written a couple of terrific books, "Free Speech and Why It Matters" and "The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World".   Andrew and Josh sat down in London shortly before the 2024 U.S. presidential election to discuss satire, free speech, the working class, partisan politics, comedy and the future of the Left. You can also watch this interview in its pretty British glory on YouTube here.   Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com   To get more content like this and to join the Uncomfy Convos multiverse, hit the Substack page at https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/subscribe http://twitter.com/joshzepps http://instagram.com/joshszeps/ http://tiktok.com/@uncomfyconversations