Decoding the Gurus - Decoding the Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

In this stunning crossover episode, Matt and Chris are joined by Australian 'media personality' and podcast host Josh Szeps for a joyful discussion of podcasts, gurusphere, and general media dynamics. As you might imagine, we discuss issues around the heterodox sphere, cultures of criticism, and the issues involved with 'platforming' controversial figures. We discuss the constantly surprising popularity of Lex Fridman and his unique interview style, how the heterodox respond to criticism, and rampant hypocrisy. Also, Matt is finally held to account for his food takes, and we find out the real story behind the Olympic mascot, Olly the Kookaburra.SourcesJosh's Substackistan podcast

Hello Hello and welcome to the coding the gurus crossover edition. You're about to hear a conversation between myself, the anthropologist of sorts, with Matthew Brown, the psychologist, and with Josh Depps, the Australian broadcaster and podcast host, resident of sub-Saharan Pakistan, and so on. So we talk about a bunch of different things, including the heterodox fear, the role of criticism, the responsibility when platforming people, et cetera, et cetera. And most importantly, his time as Ollie the Kukaburra during the Olympics. So join me and Matt and Josh, won't you, for decoding the uncomfortable conversations. Coming now. Yes, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how we're going to even manage the logistics of this since we have two completely different shows.

Decoding the uncomfortable conversations. Coding the uncomfortable conversations. Coding the uncomfortable conversations. Why don't we talk about Japan? I don't know, we should do. Japan's fabulous. This isn't like artifact of modern technology. Josh is actually here. I'm actually here.

If, if people aren't watching on the YouTube, then they should be aware that Chris and I are literally sitting shoulder to shoulder because Chris's technical capabilities were too poor to be able to figure out how to have a sitting across the table from one another. So we're huddled around a single microphone. And the microphone you might notice has black tape there. Yes, a bit of gaffer, literally gaffer tape and twine, holding this recording together in Tokyo. and Matt,

you're joining us from you at home. I'm at home in sunny Queensland. Sunny Queensland obviously not a great place for culinary exploits, given your controversial positions about how bad Australian food is, which can only be ascribed to you living in the wrong part of Australia. It was hilarious. I think it's fair to say I've been radicalized by regional Queensland when it comes to my opinions about...

But you know, the flip side is I've learned how to cook. And the flip side is even when you go to places that have a pretty poor baseline of median cuisine like the United States, you're wildly impressed. You're like, this isn't nearly as bad as the Chinese joint on the corner. I was impressed by the hamburgers. They do burgers. They do a good burger. We got feedback from the listeners when Matt was offering those steaks that two things and you're actually qualified to say whether it's true. One was that like Matt's steak is like that because he's in Bundaberg. Yes. that's the first thing. And the second was, Matt is a racing the diversity of Australia. He's just talking

about like, about why I mean, it was it's it's to listeners who are not familiar with the spat that I'm referring to on a previous episode of decoding the gurus. Matt had been gallivanting, I would say, around the fine United States and was extolling American food, which is an uncommon thing for an Australian to do when in America, usually confronted by sloppy plates of diner grits. And then there was a big backlash from Aussies saying, what on earth are you talking about? I didn't even take the bait.

I didn't even text you. I thought he's just trolling. He's either trolling or he's psychotic or he's just chosen the worst place in Australia to live because the median, you can just wander into any cafe in Sydney or Melbourne and the quality of the poached egg will far exceed the quality of the poached egg will far exceed the quality of a poached egg at an average American diner. Or, you know, pick any substitute.

Uncomfortable conversation about whether you say what you say. I'm not uncomfortable. I'm not uncomfortable. No, but that may well be true in the trendy bohemian inner-city leafy suburbs that you like to haunt there, Josh. But what about the rest of us? You know? But that's about I think this is what happens when people travel. They travel and then they go and eat at a different class of establishment than they

are used to. And then they think that that's emblematic of the whole. But if you went but of course we're talking about the fancy like the vast majority of Australians live in cosmopolitan environments, like 70% of the population lives in four cities or something. They don't live in Runderberg. I was even impressed by Waffle House. I like Waffle House. I mean, there is a certain, there is something deeply

impressive about the American commitment to quantity, salt, sugar, like it's a very hedonistic cuisine. It's true, you can go to a Waffle House and the number of waffles, and the fluffiness thereof, and the number of pieces of fried chicken smothered in maple syrup that will be spilling off that, that plate, that platter of waffles is impressive. But I think that's different from talking about the quality of the cuisine. Okay, okay. Look, enough about America.

You can't defend your team. He can't. He can't defend it. He's gotten too uncomfortable. He's backing away already. I think we all agree that where you guys are now is a pretty good place for casual eating. You could turn up somewhere with 1000 or 2000 yen and you will get something better than even Sydney. In Bundaberg. Better even than the local Bundaberg. By the way, I love Chris's pronunciation of Bundaberg. It makes it sound like it's somewhere in 1930s Germany. Is it not?

That's Bundesburg. No, it's Bundaberg. Bundaberg. Okay. But Bundaberg sounds more glamorous. Sounds like a place where you might be able to get a fondue or something. It was settled by Germans, obviously. Yeah, that's the thing.

Was it? Maybe I've got the original. And I think that explains some of the local culture, to be honest. I don't want to get into it. I'll get into more trouble. Yeah. Yeah. No, okay.

We're not going to shit on regional Queensland. Beautiful place. Beautiful place. Lovely people. Lovely. Lovely. If you want to find a kind-hearted racist, then Bundaberg is your place. That's right.

Nowhere has the kind of racist. Well, I mean, you've got one here. We've got one right here. On one head, they're a bit racist, but they're a colorful character. Yeah, they are. They're lovely. Okay, so we're going to talk about like what's happening to the media and podcasting and podcasters, Dan. You guys recently did an episode. Well, you've done many an episode about Lex Friedman, which, which tickles my fancy. Because if there's one thing I don't understand about this new media landscape,

it's Lex Friedman. It's I don't understand how a person I mean, I don't want to be uncommon. Go ahead, think of me as kind. This is the kind of the gurus. There are various strands of the emerging new media landscape and podcaster stand and like bro tech culture and the decline of the legacy media and the rise of independent media, which are worth teasing apart and bringing together and analyzing in, I suppose, with greater clarity and specificity than maybe we sometimes do. And all of them are exhibited in their worst form by Lex Friedman. Like here's the apotheosis of, um, motivated reasoning, blind spots, biased questioning, and what offends me the most as a craftsman of this form is just how bad an interviewer he is.

His main offense is one of style. I agree. I mean, you take Joe Rogan. I hate the guy, but I understand why he's popular. I get it. With, you know, Lex Rhythm will be sitting there talking to someone incredibly important and will say, so, do you like puppies? That's his... It's not that far from there. But you know, Josh sent a clip, but I think this is a good time to play up because it illustrates Lex's interview technique, you know, for people that might not be familiar. So, yeah, there's, I also have to say you say that you hate Joe.

Obviously, I love Joe, even though I don't, I think he's a pernicious force in the world. I love him as like I love a puppy dog. And I think he's an immensely talented raconteur and conversationalist, which is what Lex is not, which is why Lex baffles me in a way that Rogan doesn't. But so this clip is I actually played this on my show when I had the comic Mark Normand on my show. He's an increasingly successful American comic, very funny guy. And if you ever want an example of a guest who brings everything to an interview, he is it. He is just coming out with the gags at like a machine gun fire pace.

So if you're willing to dance and rumble with him, it can be an incredibly entertaining interview. And Mark had just been on Lex Friedman's show. And I listened to that as research before I interviewed Mark in case there was anything there. And it was so intriguing to hear the difference between what Mark was bringing to the conversation, and what Lex was bringing to the conversation, that I actually played this clip for Mark

live on my show to hear his reaction because I wanted to understand what his impression of Lex was. So have a listen to Mark throwing some zingers at Lex and Lex deftly tap dancing away. Are you married? No, single. Virgin?

Of course, yeah. I can't imagine. I bet you'd be great in bed. You're ripped. Best hairline in podcasting. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't tried yet. So we'll have to see. All right. Well, let me know. Pretty big hog on you. Yeah, I could see you packing a crazy, crazy tool downtown. That matters to girls? Apparently, yeah. That's all I hear about. Okay, New Orleans. You grew up in New Orleans. Yeah born and raised

Tremé outside the French Quarter you ever been? Yeah, don't remember it. Oh you drink. Yeah, I drink Oh course I drink. I don't know. I can't tell if you have fun No, not really, but rush I mean Russian of course I drink all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yes I don't know Okay beer was just labeled an alcoholic beverage in 2011 fun fact. What do you mean in Russia? It was just drinks. It was just like apple juice before it finally got declared legally as an alcoholic beverage Which means you can regulate it that kind of thing I guess so yeah, that's where your brain goes Yeah, I just go out these fucking ruskies. I didn't even know there's rules about drinking

Good. I'm learning about Russia from you. So What's the difficult memory experience from childhood in New Orleans that? made you The man you are today So so look this speaks to the mystery that you were referring to Josh like why Why what is the appeal of that? I? Have a suggestion please Please enlighten me. I'm I'm I'm me. I'm lost. I'm a little sparrow at sea, like flailing around. I'm comprehending. I mean, I think part of the aspect is your friend Joe

and Elon Musk, villain of the hour, but long before he, you know, was on his current villain arc, he gave Lex a leg up because Lex wrote a paper saying that Tesla's were. Yeah, but lots of people have been on Joe's show. I've done Joe's show seven times. I'm not interviewing Vladimir, but I'm not sitting there with Zelensky. He's not answering my calls. So you want, but did you have Elon Musk?

Right. So you did Musk and Rogogen, the multiplying factor. But the other thing is, so that's the initial thing, but that isn't gonna take you to the heights that Lex has risen to. So the other thing, and I think this is the key, my dick, is that it's unbridled sycophancy. Untold levels of sycophancy.

But that explains why people will do the show, why guests will do the show. But it doesn't explain why humans will listen to the show or why I even, but I mean, I only listen to the show because of the guests. I suppose it's like a self, it's like pulling yourself up by your shoelaces. How does it happen? I listen because I want to hear the guests. Yeah. And the guests are there because people listen,, it's a chicken and egg thing. How

people listen? How are people listening before he was talking to Zelensky? Why does anyone want to listen to that conversation with Mark Norman, when you can hear Mark Norman being interviewed by any number of human beings? No. Okay, so this is the thing. The one is that I think you're underestimating the level of sycopensy that people are going to be treated to. Like that is it's really high.

Like you think people you think the listener wants it? No, no, no. And so I think that like that explains, you know, the guests going on. But then we live in a culture and this is like part of the thing that we might talk about for fellow characters as well, where there's like a really pervasive atmosphere of admiration for people that are successful billionaires, podcasters, Andrew Tate, whatever. Like there's this desire for people to like receive wisdom from people or to find out

more about what makes them tick. So if you see like, oh, there's a four hour interview with this, this guy who's super successful and he's laying out, you know, his secrets. I think like once upon a time people would have been like more cynical and like, why the fuck they want to hear from some like billionaire about how, you know, his hard knocked life when, you know, he's getting around in jets, but the culture now seems to be like, yeah, let's get the wisdom. Like if we have a really...

There's a hero worship that he's indulging in, in a way. Yeah I suppose it's true that if you could, like, the best thing I can say about Lex is if you just removed him from the equation altogether, the interview wouldn't be much better if it was just a monologue. So like he's not doing any active harm in the sense that I could just like if he has, I suppose I'm interested in hearing Zelensky talk for three hours about his worldview. And I guess what Lex's show gives you is three, it's like, it's like he's just collecting a bunch of people who can give their own masterclass, like he's not

questioning them. He's not doing any journalism. He's given he's allowing the person a platform to espouse their worldview for three hours straight. And that's both there's a there is a utility in that if you want to hear the person talking for three hours, and there's no other context in which they would sit down in front of an open microphone and just talk for three hours. Okay, Josh, I think I can answer your question, because I think there's a reason that isn't apparent to cynical men of the world like us. And that is his style. You know, that foe, you know, like childlike wisdom, you know, this sort of blatant signaling of humility, that kind of thing, you know,

that that that light, like ultra philosophy of light stuff that he injects in there talking about love and death and meaning and stuff like that. And, and that kind of real, like to us, to me anyway, I don't want to speak for you guys, but it just sounds like utter saccharine bullshit. But to many people when he's talking about kindness and truth, and yeah, okay, they they go on right on. I like this. It's a bit Brené Brown. It's like, you know, it's like,

Brené Brown for men. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, he's the person who can make you feel like there is a pursuit of, yeah, of comedy and togetherness amidst the turmoil. And why do we I mean, his diagnosis of the problem with the media with the mainstream legacy media, which you guys addressed a bit in your recent episode about him, is almost exactly back to front. He seems to think that the problem with the legacy media is that everyone is too enthusiastic about being aggressive and negative.

And in fact, podcasting as well is too much about trying to go in for the on the attack. And we need to be less judgmental of other people's ideas and more understanding and hear them out. What universe is I mean, I understand that there's a problem of like glib, grandstanding journalists trying to ask gotcha questions in short eight minute interviews that they might get when they're interviewing the Treasury Secretary on, I don't know, I was going to say 60 minutes, but actually 60 minutes doesn't do that, but like an inferior version of 60 minutes. But the idea that the main hallmark of the media moment

that we live in is that people are too rigorous in their intellectual disagreements and not too sycophantic. And did he pay no attention to the interviews that Donald Trump was doing before the election? Did he pay no attention to the whole ecosystem of sort of back slapping, back scratching podcasts. And I don't, I guess maybe I'm just like living in an echo chamber of my own media diet.

But I think I'm like the only person in the universe who's making a serious attempt to engage agreeably, but controversially with substantive intellectual points when the guest raises it and actually push back on them in the way that any one of us would if you were at the at a bar or a restaurant or a friend's place, and someone said something that was patently stupid, like, we all in our I think social environments are much more tolerant of disagreeableness than we are in the media. It's like we have we're wearing kid gloves and treading on eggshells and being and so afraid of offending people. I don't understand where his worldview comes from that he's this lone voice of friendliness in a sea of animosity. Yeah. Well, you know, the backstory to this is, is kind of the story of social media and the internet, right?

So when social media first came along, it was obviously, you know, very nasty, a lot of, you know, aggression, people going off the handle for the same reason that people behave badly in cars, right? Because there's that social distancing and, you know, this became a trope, the bad faith straw manning type, all that bad stuff that sort of happens on on the internet. And, you know, that's all true. And then they sort of developed this kind of reverence for, you know, good faith conversations, how, you know, always assuming the best of intentions from the person you're talking to was like this, it became a real virtue

amongst a lot of people and having mixed amongst the, you know, the free speech and the heterodox crowd online, yeah, they still, and you know, they're right in a sense, but that virtue has become almost a parody of itself. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that good faith is precisely right. Like, there's probably a couple of things being conflated here. One thing that I do think is important is granting as much as you possibly can to your opponent such that you can attack the strongest version of their argument rather than the weakest one, you know, not straw manning them and trying to be as conciliatory as you can, not needlessly antagonizing people. So you're saying be nice to Nazis basically, right?

Be nice to, yeah, like, yes. Can you just demon the argument against that? Let me put it this way. If I was arguing with a Nazi in like the 1930s, I wouldn't start by saying, you're a fucking Nazi. I would start by saying, I understand that things are very difficult at the moment in your homeland of Germany. And there are lots of complicated reasons for that and you have an understandable desire to restore German greatness. However, some people have criticized Mr. Hitler for going slightly too far. Josh, there's a like, you know, Lex often raises the question of this is like his go-to question is can you still man the position for blah blah. And I'm, I'm in favor of what you said, like, you know, you shouldn't try to straw man someone's argument. And like, you can even grant a little bit more charity than it deserves in, in like, in some cases to make the attack better, right? Cause you can show that, look, I'm not, you know, if you want to criticize someone and you are, if you're just presenting the weakest version of it,

it's like, even if your goal is to take it down, it looks like you're kind of not doing a good job. But have you heard of the concept of star mining? No. So this is Eduardo, I forget his name, but he's a head of darksperson. I think associated withIRE, the organization that we need to not just steal man, but we should actually elevate the argument to like the best possible form. So that like it's immediately- So now we're superhero, we're superhero manning, we're super manning it.

Like there, I thought the issue is like, math may often waffle on, but there's perhaps too much in terms of like, you know, we're seeing it a bit too far in the positive direction, but like there's a value in academia and I think in journalism as well of the adversarial interaction and like the hard nosed interview, right? Like I think the difference between Kathy Newman or was it Kathy Young, the one who, Kathy Newman? Kathy Newman interviewed Jordan Peterson. I thought you were talking about someone else. That is in like, and I think with good reason,

that's like a sort of a hit piece attempt, right? Yes. Like a kind of gotcha question, but Helen Lewis. Helen Lewis's was perfect. Absolutely perfect. But for a lot of people online, especially like, and I would say like for Lex Friedman or, and for Jordan Peterson himself,

he saw that the same way as like a brutal attempt to like, I don't think they do. I don't, I don't believe that they genuinely do. I mean, I don't believe that they don't see a difference between they just like the fact that he that Jordan won one and lost the other and he lost the other because Helen is formidable and he won the other because Kathy is not but he's but Jordan and people like when I've heard Jordan talk about Helen multiple times, it sounds like he has a dart board. Of course he does, because he you know, he's so core to his own self identity is that he's this sage.

And for him to be shown up as a bit of an emperor with no clothes by some uppity journalist is insulting to his, his self-identification. But perhaps especially a feminist journalist, but in that case though, for Jordan, I don't think he's pretending that he thinks Helen is a, a bad faith interlocutor with like, uh, you know, I kind of agenda to take him down, like that she was acting maliciously by asking her questions and whatnot. He seems generally very upset with her as a person and the way she approaches things. He's talked about her being possessed by the, I don't know, the demon of anger or something

like this when he talks about it. So it seems to me that not just our audience, but them, and this applies to a lot of heterodox broadcasters as well. They genuinely take that as an attack and attempt to besmirch them, you know, asking those kinds of questions is doing the same thing as Kathy Newman. Hmm. I think they just say that. I think they just say that because they're embarrassed. I think if you got drunk with Jordan Peterson or high on

payloads or whatever, whatever else he was addicted to. And I think if you really interrogated him, you know, about it and asked him what he thinks that Helen was doing, I don't think that he would, I don't know, I doubt that he would be saying that she's demonically possessed and has the heart of an angry woman. I think you're wrong, Josh. has the heart of an angry woman. I think you're wrong, Josh.

I'm sorry. Really? I think we should experiment. We should get drunk. We should get drunk and see what. The thing that this made me think of is, so your interaction with Frogan, famously the myocarditis one, Matt, do you remember that?

Yeah, I remember that. OK. I have a clip here, which I'll play for people at home. OK. So if people don't know, in January of 2021, I went back on Rogan's show for the seventh time since 2014. And it was while he was in that snafu that people may remember the controversy about vaccine misinformation. And he said something that was not true. And it then became briefly a very viral

moment and everyone sort of like CNN was reporting it as if he got owned on his own show, which completely baffled me. But it was he did kind of but let the let the listener judge. I'll play the clip. Just remind us. For young boys in particular, there's an adverse risk associated with the vaccine. It's like a two to four fold increase in the instances of myocarditis. Yes. But you know what the hospitalization you know that there's an increased risk of myocarditis in among that age cohort from getting COVID as well, which exceeds the risk of myocarditis from

the vaccine. I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true. I don't know. I don't think it's true that there's an increased risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true. I don't know. I don't think it's true that there's an increased risk of myocarditis from people catching COVID that are young versus increased risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. No, there is. There's both. Well, let's look that up because I don't think that's true.

There's myocarditis more common after COVID-19 infection than vaccination. But is this with children? Yeah, we're talking about young people. Men and boys aged under 30 after this is what says here. With children is the issue. Well, no, we were talking about 15 year olds. Well, we're talking about young children. Male, age 12 to 17. 12 to 17, more likely to develop myocarditis with three months of catching COVID at a rate of 450 cases per million infection. This compares to 67 cases of myocarditis per million at the same time following our second dose of Pfizer. Yeah, so you're about eight times likelier to get

myocarditis from getting COVID than from getting the vaccine. That's interesting. Now that is not what I've read before, but also it's like, even when we're reading these things, it's like, what are we getting this from? Is was just from the VAERS report, but even from the VAERS reports, when they report this stuff, it's like the amount of people that report, the under-reporting. Josh, before you defend, Joe,

I'd mention, I know that you interviewed a relevant professional and like kind of highlighted the actual issues around that topic after. But the reason I wanted to mention this is because regardless of how you frame that and frame like Joe's follow up reactions to it, that is like a case where you are disagreeing with Joe, right? Friendly. But you're saying, no, I think that's wrong. And wait, no, but we were talking about 15 year olds, right? That's not, so you are like kind of not, not, you're calling about the way you were the friend, right? If you're arguing with them. Yeah.

But, and very recently, I don't know if you'll have had time to hear it yet, but Douglas Murray just went on to your room with- No, no, I didn't hear that. I heard Douglas on Lex. Oh, Douglas went on with Dave Smith. I saw that that happened. So it starts off and I just explain who Dave Smith is. So Dave Smith is a libertarian in America. He's a comic, right? He's a comic. And he basically got a profile boost from Rogan as well appearances there. And he's libertarian, very pro-Palestine in the Israel Gaza conflict and has also was kind of endorsing Trump before the election, right? So, and is quite isolationist and is this sort of. Yeah. I kind of like in the vein of the Noam Chomsky version of like Western imperialism is a lot of the problems in the world, right?

Yeah. So there's overlaps, right? And poor, poor Putin was just backed into a corner. Exactly. Yes. So you predicted that. Douglas Murray, fair to say, holds a lot of different geopolitical opinions on that, right? Very strong advocate for Israel. Some might say propagandists. I think we would all say too strong an advocate for Israel. And also, as we played in the recent thing, very strongly critical of Putin and people that offer apologetics. Now, in the Rogan episode that you haven't heard, remarkably, at the start,

he specifically calls out Joe at the very start of the interview and directly says, you've been having people on that aren't experts, that are very skewed to one side. And it's been going on for multiple years. And they have a 40 minute near back and forth with Douglas Murray being quite strong and direct at times like and it gets relatively heated including with Rogan and Dave Smith. It was obviously going to get heated between them but yeah right he calls out Rogan. Now Douglas Murray being Douglas Murray he ends up in a kind of difficult position because

he's saying you should have more people with actual expertise who have been to the region, who understand this conflict. At the same time that he's saying experts are consistently wrong about, he then goes on the lab leak and he talks about, you know, and they are saying, well, this is inconsistent. So you're saying we should hate that. Right. So he gets in trouble. But the whole thing for me was that the first part was very cathartic because it's one of the really rare times I've heard someone reuse criticism to Joe directly through his face. The same thing that happened when you were talking about the myocarditis. And I'm curious for your take as somebody that is more broadly sympathetic to the heterodox kind of ecosystem, why that is so verboten, given all the values that they say, that we

are for the marketplace of ideas, criticism is okay. And yet anytime it happens, you can see online now, everybody's in that absolute tizzy about this saying, Douglas Murray will never be invited back and so on. And the same thing happens, of course, with Sam Harris, right? When Sam Harris has a temerity to disagree publicly with any of them, everybody melts down and there are these, you know, essays being written on what's happened to Sam. So yeah, like it is a thing, right? Yeah, I mean, but people, I mean, firstly, I would not ascribe too much. I don't know how representative people

yelling online are. Like what's relevant to me as a player in the space rather than like someone who's just typing away on Twitter about what Joe Rogan is doing is the cowardice of the average guest. Really. I mean, what's remarkable is not that Douglas and I are willing to talk to Rogan as if he was a friend and colleague. What's remarkable is that so few people do. It's incredible the reaction that I got after that exchange with people saying, oh, that was like so bright. And like, honestly, I remember, I remember coming out of the studio and waiting for my Uber to go to the airport and doing a mental catalog of is any of this going to get me in the shit with my employer?

Is any of this going to blow up? And I sort of mentally went through the three hours thinking, are there any landmines here that I should be mindful of? And there were a few that I identified that didn't cause any kind of a ripple. And that one, I remember, did not come up at all in my brain. I like that didn't land. That didn't code for me at the time as being anything remarkable

whatsoever. And then that was the one that became a shit storm. I think just because people, then this may be partly an American thing. It may just be a cultural difference between Aussies and Americans. Americans are polite. Like Americans don't think they're polite. They think they're uncouth, but they're actually super polite. People think that British people are polite and that Americans are swaggering boobs.

But actually, in which country would you be more likely to find a family sitting down and saying grace before a meal or holding the door open for somebody behind them as they walk through or vomiting in the street, or you know, like, Brits and Aussies, we're much more likely to interrupt, we're much more likely to call people out. And I think there's a certain decorum that has developed in American podcasting where the norms are, are quite gracious, actually, and especially when a person has power, I guess they're also star fuckers more than we are. So they're more intimidated by the king in his lair and coming in and not wanting to, you know, challenge him in some way. And it maybe it's not a

coincidence that Douglas is a Brit and that I'm an Aussie, in the sense that, yeah, like who, who gives a shit? Aren't we here to have like an interesting conversation the way that you would with colleagues and friends in any other context? Constable Kesson is doing a good job of adopting that culture as a British person. I feel like he's, him and Andrew Gold, they're holding up the British side of the sycophantic strike.

Yeah, I mean, I'm also sometimes it's interesting that people, you know, in terms of platforming controversial people and like the, and why is Dave Smith, you know, being listened to, and shouldn't we be listening to experts and stuff. I obviously cop the critique of why do I have Douglas Murray on the edge, Candice Owens on the show. Why do I have Douglas Murray on the show? You know, every time I say anything about Israel or Palestine, someone will get into

my mentions and say this coming from the man who platforms the likes of Douglas Murray. And it's not even worth replying. Well, what about the Palestinians who I platform? Like, do you not see it? There's something contradictory about thinking that I endorse the views of every person who's on when I have people on who have wildly different views. Or Anthony Loewenstein, who was just on the show, who's the most anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist journalist I can think of.

And sort of balancing the, I'm basically just interested in people who have interesting ideas, and I'm interested in interrogating why those people have those ideas. That doesn't mean that I would have an unreconstructed fascist on the show, because those ideas probably wouldn't be very interesting.

Candace would be the closest, right? I mean, Candice, that's the borderline case. I have a question about that, because like, this would be my criticism of listening to that with Candice. It's like, I can understand, you know, I also even can understand Lex's argument for having Kanye. I know there, I think there's much bigger, like, you know, mental health possible issues as well. Right. Because Kanye generally seems unhinged. But but there is an aspect which overlaps. And it's like Candace Owens, as you covered in the episode a couple of times when you reference things for her.

It's not like she's just on the block and we don't know what her perspective is, right? Like we know from Candice being in the discourse sphere for many years that she is a conspiracy theorist, she is a polemical partisan, very like, loquacious, but she endorses like all manner of conspiracy theories and of a particular stripe Right, right particular anti-jury stripe more recently, but um, but she's not I would say somebody who demonstrates like a Capacity for doing detailed research or for she's good at talking. She's good to get an audience

so if you talk to her and you also know that she's like, she's a polished media person so she can give answers, right? It's not the first time she's heard someone say, aren't you an extremist? Like aren't you a conspiracy prone person? Isn't it the case that like you're basically just giving her like a little bit of a platform and giving her another chance to say the same shit that she's been saying for years? Well, hopefully not. Hopefully not, right? I think there is a craft. This is where sort of like without wanting to sound like a total wanker, craft does come in to some extent in the sense that it's very, there's no, you're

right that there's no point in doing a gotcha with a person like Candice, because she's so good in an adversarial debating environment that she will she can own anybody. But I do think there's something interesting about a person who started out very far left. She was like, she she founded a website that was apparently going to dox anybody who wasn't a social justice warrior. And then that fell apart because she didn't understand the internal logic of the social justice movement. And she thought she was being an ally when

in fact she wasn't and they turned on her. And so then she became, she started sort of flirting with this, you know, I'm a black person who stands up to black people orthodoxy, and then became an anti-Semite. And that's a really weird trajectory. And she has one of the most popular podcasts in the world. And so I think it's interesting, A, to interrogate what it's like to go on that journey, and then B, to try to expose her in ways that she's not going to find

confrontational or that she might not even be bright enough to understand a happening in the conversation. Like there's a good maxim in journalism, which I think podcasters could do more to appreciate, which is, if you want to, if you suspect that your guest is a liar, or you suspect that your guest is a hypocrite, or you suspect that your guest is operating in bad faith or is mistaken, don't say to your guest, are you a liar? Why are you a liar, sir? That is probably what Lex Friedman is responding to when he's saying that there are bad versions

of gotcha questions. That's just not a very good question. The best thing you could do if you suspect your guest is a liar is to reveal to the listener that they're lying in some way. If you think they're a hypocrite, then find a way of constructing a conversation such that the listener will go, huh, that guest sounds like a hypocrite. Or if you think they're mistaken, have a conversation in which the listener is going to go, surely that guest is mistaken. So my job with someone like Candice is to get as close as I can to making the accusation so that the listener understands that

the accusation is being made and to get her to reveal something about herself At the same time as not overtly alienating her so that she just shuts the conversation down or goes into antagonistic mode And there is a craft to that which you can only get from tens of thousands of hours of interviewing I think I have a clip Matt of Josh. He's always got a Canvas that will maybe be relevant at this point. So I'll play it for you to hear. Don't you sort of find what you're looking for? And if you keep hunting for ways in which the mainstream narrative about everything is corrupt, it could sort of send you around the bend. No, I just think that that's not like a small inconsistency. Like whether you were born a man or a woman. I don't know. I feel like that. And you're-

But this isn't just the only thing, Candice. I mean, we could play a bazillion clips or talk about a bazillion different things that whether it's about 9-11 or about Frankists or the Jews or COVID epidemiology or vaccine medicine or online doxing or transgenderism, you know, or World War Two, there would be a number of things that we could talk about where it strikes me that, you know, with the greatest respect, it might be a little bit like the experience you had initially with the social bullying thing, where there's a whole ecosystem that has its own internal rules and ways of operating. You come in unaware rules and ways of operating, you

come in unaware of them. I mean, you said at the beginning of this conversation that you were sort of blindsided by the way that that whole doxing and harassment, gamergate ecosystem worked. You proudly call things as you see them to your credit because you're, you know, powerful and independent minded, but you're sort of unfamiliar with the soup that you're swimming in. And then the people who are familiar with it point out to you the ways in which you're unfamiliar with it and the reasons why you're wrong and you regard them as being conspiratorial, you know, as imposing upon you, speech codes and, you know, harassment, and then you get to sort of play the victim, when in actual fact, it's just that you don't really know what

you're talking about. I don't think that's a fair assessment. I like that. I feel embarrassed even listening back to that, because you can hear me just trying to not say the thing for so long. I'm like, you're very intelligent and powerful, but also, okay, I'll just say it. You don't know what you're talking about. Have you considered that you don't know what you're talking about?

You know the point you made about whether or not you come from someone or not, whether it's useful to do that in an interview. And I take that point because like, I think that question there is a good illustration of it. But, you know, the streamer Destiny, he had Candace Owens on a bit before and it was back when he was more inclined to kind of reach across the aisle and try to, you know, speak to some people on the hard right. And he would argue with them, but he would do it politely. Right. And he's he's since moved away from that because he said that like, the way he took it was like he could have a conversation with them. But it was always him extending the kind of nice word or saying,

you know, you are a thoughtful person. And like then they would still endorse all their conspiracies, they would still do the thing and they would still present like the left constantly as a caricature, so it was all on his side. And then before the election, he had Bacchus, Ungar, Sagon from the free press. This is when he kind of had lost patience for that, right?

And she went on- She's a very Trump, she's the opinion editor of Newsweek. I had her on the show before the election as well on my show. And she is, yeah, probably the most articulate pro-Trump intellectual in journalism. Yeah, articulate. But like today, just today, she brought out a thing about how bad Barack Obama was and all the stuff that they did in 2008, one year before he became the president. He was like, remember when he passed all this legislation in 2008. But in any case, she went on with destiny.

And she just before a week before the election or something, she presented herself as I'm a liberal. I don't know who I'm voting for. And he he said, you know, you're not like you are. And he was rude. Like she he was basically said, you're you do know who you're voting for You're absolutely voting for Trump. We are not the same. We're not in the same team Hmm, and you know subsequently as it's went on it's very clear

She is like you said a very strong advocate for MAGA so destiny could have you know kind of been More interpersonally receptive there and said, oh yeah, look, we all agree that it is important. I would say two things about that. One is Destiny is playing in a different space. I think of Destiny as being like a left-wing version of Ben Shapiro or something, where the argumentation is the point. I love Destiny's content.

I think he's really interesting and he's a fascinating debater, but he's really not about, I don asking her about things that to defend things that she supported in Donald Trump. And she kept saying, she kept doing this rhetorical move that really irritates me where she would say like, if you go and talk to people in, you know, rural Pennsylvania, then what that then they feel betrayed. And I said, but like, I went in and I was like, at some point, you have to give up this schtick about saying like, the hoity toity elitist podcaster doesn't understand the little man, I'm asking you why you support this policy. I'm not asking you to be

a soothsayer who can, who's like a little man whisperer to whisper to me, like why the you know, what the what the people what the pop populace is feeling, I'm asking, I'm having an intellectual conversation with you about tariffs, stop telling me what people in middle America think about tariffs and start talking about tariffs. So like, yes, you sometimes need to course correct and go like, this is not what this conversation is not working for me, because we're not on an agreed, you know, but I don't think that this is rocket science, if you just take it out of the universe of an interview, and put it into the universe of a

pub. Like, I just don't think this I think we all know how to do this into personally like, well, most of us who are good at some of us don't some of us some of us just smash a glass and stab the broken glass into someone's face. But many of us know how to sort of, you know, gently navigate and negotiate disagreements with friends and colleagues. It's just we assume that the moment you turn the microphone on, it's the boat. Well, I was gonna say, I think broadly,

we totally agree because in the general principle of showing rather than telling. And it's far better if the people that are listening are coming to the conclusions themselves rather than being lectured to. So even with that stuff, I mean, we let it slip heaps, but we know what we ought to do, which is, you know, you show the material,

show the evidence, make the extremely uncontroversial deductions from that and let people decide for themselves. I mean, we could, I mean, we ultimately often do just, you know, let it rip just for fun, but that is much stronger than getting up on your high horse and ranting and raving. And what we've found is a lot of the other people who criticize the same people that we criticize, firstly, they're often doing it for different reasons, usually because they

just don't like their politics. So, you know, they're the enemy. We don't like that they're stupid mainly. So we have to print them. And also I feel like they're only preaching to the choir. You know what I mean? Like if you've got your little dedicated audience of haters, then they will love to hear you get very striving, but you're not convincing anyone else. So yeah, you know, a more laid back approach generally works. Something that we've noticed, right, is obviously because of the people that we usually cover, our audience skews left, right?

Like obviously, Matt and I are academics, you know, left leaning academics, right? So that will inevitably attract an audience that skews that way. But as a result, if we cover Yuval Noah Harari or someone like that, not really any issue. Also, even Jonathan Haidt people didn't care that much, like us being critical. Right. That's fine. If we cover Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, who's the most recent one, Naomi Klein. Right?

Like every time that happens, throw it yeah but like this is one of the differences is that you know there's various friends on reddit or there's people Matt and Chris haven't studied Marxist economics they like the thing works except when they cover people that we like but it uh it's the thing that I find is like, people are talking, you know, when that happens, does that make you not want to cover those kinds of people because you're going to get blowback or whatever? And it might be Matt Knight's personality or character. But when that happens, I'm like, I'm going to do this literally more. Yes.

I'm going to annoy people, but for us, it isn't intended as like a political podcast. No, no. Yeah, exactly. I mean, why does everything have to be politicized? It is interesting. I mean, I don't have quite that luxury, I suppose. I do have to be more mindful of it now a bit because I I just find that there are in my guest selection there are frequently more interesting people who are more willing to say more provocative and unusual things who are who I'm drawn to getting in the ring with who are on the right than on the left. I think maybe the social justice ethos of hypercaution and censoriousness and fear of being pilloried has led people to be much less keen to, even in politics, there's an Australian election coming up. And the conservative side of the aisle

are fairly willing to come on the show. And you know, the governing Labour Party don't seem to be quite so keen. And I don't know what that split is, but it does make me wary. Like, one newspaper called me an edgelord. I really offended me last year. I was like, it's such an unfair way. I want to be Helen Lewis. I don't want to be an edgelord. Are you going to take your chances on that? Yes, because I sympathize with you. But on the other hand, it could be the case that the more interesting and fun types of

views are just wrong. Right. Like, like, often the truth is boring. Right. And, you know, this is this is one thing, you know, just in research and science and stuff, you know, like, you know, we have a little replication crisis and stuff like that. And, you know, if you're a psychologist, you want to get something published and it's going to be sexy. It's going to be amazing. This changes everything. You know, it's a bright, sparkling, exciting thing.

And you just read the title and you go, I'm 99% sure this is bullshit. Before you even, before you even look at the methods, right. Then you confirm that. So, I mean, I think, um, you know, and I think, hang on, but you, are you, but you're embedding in that critique and assumption that a wrong a person who holds a wrong idea is a less, that conversation with that person is going to be a less constructive, less illuminating conversation than a conversation with someone who's right.

It may be the reverse. Yeah, no, I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't go as far as that. I wouldn't say this. That's bad to talk to them. Just, just pointing out that they could more often be crazy people. But I mean, take the Douglas Murray example, just because you know, you'd raise him Chris, you know, I did a tour in Australia with him because and we booked it before October 7, some people thought it was in response to October 7. But you know, I think he's interesting.

Like we also invited Slavo Zizek, who was going to come and then had health problems on a tour. Right. And so like, you know, both of those people, I think are really interesting. Anthony Loewenstein also is a really interesting journalist, lived in East Jerusalem, is, you know, a fiercely anti Zionist critic of Israel. These are interesting people who it's interesting for me to talk to.

And one of the most interesting things about my tour with Douglas was every night, him and me arguing in a slightly different way about Israel. No, it's not like I was sitting there like Lex Friedman, just saying, the floor is yours. What's New Orleans like? I was pushing back. I was like, how can you say that it's in the interests, you know, the long-term interests of the Jewish people to have this state hanging around their neck like

an albatross? Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Look, I just think we need to get you back on Rogan and you can talk to him about the structures underneath the pyramids. I think that's all we were talking about this morning when I met him. Two miles into the bed. Josh, this is a question. It's probably, I feel that this is the comfortable question. You haven't been back on Rogan since that interaction. No, that's true.

But I don't live in the United States anymore. And I've only been back there once since at which point I did send him a text. But I mean, he's gone from when I was first on the show in 2014. He was a big fucking deal. But he wasn't like the most powerful person in media. I think, and I get asked this sometimes, like, would he have me back on the show? Or has he blackballed me or banned me? Um, blacklisted me.

What's blackballed? What is blackballed? Black blackmailed. Is that a term? Or is that just my romantic fantasy about Jireen? Um, it's, but I think that if I had, I suspect that if like I had a book out that was, you know, that he found interesting. And if I if he still checks the phone, his

number I have, then he would have me back on. I don't think he's petty. He tweeted after that thing, something very nice about me and said like, he thinks the whole blow up is silly. Yeah, hello. He who knows? Who knows? I mean, it's impossible to say. Yeah, the Douglas Murray with Dave Smith, there was a bit in that. I mean, this was the thing because like, we had this experience already with Douglas Murray when he was talking to Lex, because like he was very good on pushing back on you. Hello. He did that thing. Where what you're talking about with politeness that like, you can't say directly to Lex,

Lex, your opinion on this is naive. The things that you have said, like Russia joining NATO is ridiculous, right? And so what Douglas does for iPad interview is, some people have argued, and this is a naive position, right? And then Lex is also responding saying, but there are people who others call naive who are actually very smart.

Yeah, he literally said, but are actually very smart. Yeah, and what we proved in the long run to be correct and that kind of thing. But like, Douglas Murray said to Rogan and Dave Smith, when they were talking about the mainstream media and the power that the mainstream media has these experts on, they're doing all these things and they get things wrong. And Douglas Murray said to them, you guys have power. This is power. You have the biggest podcast. You have an influential podcast. You have power now. And we are often talking about the alternative media is better than the legacy, but we have to then admit that what we do makes I'm starting to talk like, that's right, what do we do? But I was like, yes, yes, that's right.

You know, that's the thing that like, if you are going to talk every episode. We just covered Chris Williamson and Joe Rogan. And I'm friendly with Chris Williamson, but I've said this to him intrapresently as well, that they were like, the legacy media is dying. And it just spends all its time talking about alternative media. And like, we are the, you know, the kind of new kingdicks on the street. That was the general message. And I consume a lot of alternative media.

It is rare that I hear an alternative media episode that doesn't mention the mainstream media in some part to complain about it or to cover stories from him. So like they presented it that the mainstream media is parasitic on the alternative media. But like from my perspective, the alternative media cannot shut up about mainstream media. And, but even as it steals stories completely.

Look at the whole, the way that controversy about the British Pakistani grooming gangs went down where Elon basically co-opted that and was talking as if this was a story that nobody had ever covered. Even though it was the tireless work of legacy media journalists in the UK who have official government reviews on the topic as well. So this happens all the time. I mean, I think one thing that's important to note in this whole conversation about the fate of the legacy media and the rise of new media is the importance of investigative journalism from legacy media sources.

There is just no substitute in the new media for the kind of investment that you need to hold politicians accountable by investigating like possible corruption or having a foreign bureau who can actually be on the ground. So investigative journalism reporting, all that stuff, I think will never be replaced or not anytime soon. Like the legacy media excels there.

The concern is that in the opinion analysis, commentary, panel conversation, interview space, that there it has become a bit stale, a bit too talking pointy. Everyone is like everyone sort of knows you can basically predict if I give you the name of a news outlet and then I give you the particular topic, be that transgender athletes or the Me Too movement or indigenous rights in Australia or climate change or something like that, you can jot on the back of a napkin in advance what roughly you're gonna hear,

the kind of talking points that you're gonna hear. And that's what people are rejecting and why they tune into shows like mine, I suppose. Yeah, I got a question for you actually about the ABC and the BBC. But I just have to mention to yes, Andrew a bit like I, it's unpleasant, but often I find that when I'm reading an article from a standard newspaper, yeah, it's often like when they're talking about something I know about, like, you know, this is generally a bit more online. It's kind of embarrassing how lazy it is, and just how so many things have been gotten wrong. Like one example was a Guardian article I read, and it was about AI, right? AI, you know, the AI wars and, you know, destroying artists and stuff like that. And you know the Hayao Miyazaki quote,

he talks about the AI as being, like a threat to human dignity or something like that. And the thing is that like the quote was completely taken out of context, which you can find out. There's no mention of the fact that Hayao Miyazaki is a bit of a freak frankly, there's no reason why. Anyway, and in general,, the summary was just this, like by the numbers, you know, basically AI, anything to do with AI or AI art is bad, you know,

think of the poor artists. It was just a boring conventional take. So yeah, there's that. But I wanted to ask you, so what do you think about the like publicly funded outlets like the BBC and the ABC? Well, I think they're crucial. I think they have to I don't think I absolutely disagree with people who think that they've lost so much credibility that we should defund them or do away with them. I think we should reform them and reinvigorate them and fund them properly. Because I think a lot of the

problem is that they've suffered so many funding cuts and so many attacks from the Murdoch press and from others and from unscrupulous politicians that they've ended up hunkering down. I mean, I think this was why my tenure at the ABC left was that there was just a management structure that was extremely risk averse and was exhausted by, you know, and was just in a mode of hypercautiousness. And so people who were a little bit more spicy like me, you know, triggered the immune system of the organization. But I think you need to I don't think that means that you punish the

organization and strip away its funding. It means that like, that's part of the problem is that you've been punishing it and stripping away its funding. Like, I think it needs I don't I look at the landscape in the United States, and I just think, like, there, but for its funding. Like, I think it needs, I don't, I look at the landscape in the United States, and I just think, like, there, but for the grace of God, I did not want to go there in terms of how divided the media is, I think everyone having a, having a common source of news of just information, you know, you can go out and you can talk about all that I think there needs to be a much so I mean, my

advice to public broadcasters is reinstitute a firewall between news and opinion clamp down hard on activist journalists, especially younger activist journalists, usually of color, who keep talking or like from the LGBTQIA plus community who keep talking about, you know, how we have to share the stories of the lived experiences of people in the new No, that's not for news. That's not for news. Get back to the light on the lived experiences of people in the news. No, that's not for news. That's not for news. Get back the light on the hill as being like some kind of objective journalism in the news pages.

Do away with jargon. Don't allow yourself, like in the news pages of the ABC, I mean, the most obvious example lately is just LGBTQIA plus stuff. It's so obviously in the push the push for diversity, and it's important to diversify newsrooms, and it's good, it's a good thing that they're not all staffed by middle aged white straight males anymore. But my argument, I wrote a piece recently, arguing that diversity should be done in a story agnostic way, so that you

should hire a diverse newsroom and then be agnostic way, so that you should hire a diverse newsroom and then be agnostic about the stories that an editor assigns. Whereas what's happened is that it's inconceivable that you would have a like quote unquote queer story written by anyone other than the queer staffers. And it's inconceivable that you would have a story about race written by anyone other than a journalist of color.

And I think that has got to stop. I think that is just leading. It's pushing audiences away because so much of the coverage is written in a jargonistic style that doesn't actually raise any of the little niggling concerns that the reader might have if they're not already on the team. So it actually makes it harder to be critical,

for example, of President Trump's executive order on gender, because the reporting is written from such an obviously partisan perspective, using terms like affirmation care instead of, I don't know, gender transition or something like that. It's just not written the way that human beings talk. It's written the way that activists talk. And so I think stripping that out of newsrooms, getting newsrooms back to being just about the bread and butter of what

happened, and then having actually a much more generous first person attitude towards commentary towards what's technically called content, which is a horrible word, but that's what the ABC calls it at least. My fate was sealed because I was straddling those two worlds where technically I was in the content division because I was hosting a three hour a day talkback radio show, which is not in the news division. So you're supposed to have more latitude. But there's an informal assumption that you're gonna pull your neck in and tow a certain line of caution. And I think the muddiness of exactly of the rules around that and the,

you know, the uncertainty on the part of a viewer or a listener or a reader about like, is what I'm reading support or watching supposed to be just the facts ma'am? Or is this also allowed to have some spin? And if it's allowed to have some spin, then it should be allowed to have tons of spin from all kinds of different directions. And I think the public broadcaster should be more courageous about allowing a much wider range of views, whether that's against COVID lockdowns, or, you know, floating ideas about the lab leak, or whatever it might be, it should be a much more rambunctious space in the commentary realm, and a much less, like personal fields feelsy kind of activist space in the news realm.

That would be what I would do if I was emperor of the world. Yeah, yeah, that sounds fair, that sounds fair. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of universities where they've kind of become more corporatized, become more cautious and risk averse. And I think I like little scared little puppies rather than sort of independent institutions with a strong voice.

And I'm actually more keen to clamp down on academics who are inconvenient in terms of the reputation of the university. I'm a good boy. I'm a good boy. Anyone from my university who's listening? I'm very... Actually, I guess you made me think about, I guess sometimes the messaging around that the activism stuff can be counterproductive. There was a thing that came across my feed recently, which was like it was from an activist organization

that was pro, you know, gay adoption and parenting. But the graphic was too, like it was probably AI generated or something, but it was too extremely muscly, oiled up, shaved, guys, like naked, like holding a baby, holding a baby. They don't look like any parents. Wow. Like that's not helpful. I mean, you haven't seen my partner and I naked Matt.

We can put on a show. We can put on a show if you want. We'll be giving Chris a private dance later on. I know how it goes, I know how it goes. Like I thought, you know, the things like, you know, the Flint dibble, I don't know if you know him, but like the archaeologist that had the debate with Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan show. And it was like a free hour thing.

He gave a, like a PowerPoint presentation, right. And I particularly enjoyed it because he made Graham Hancock look like a fool, but that would not be a format that fits, you know, like a BBC. I don't know the ABC, but I'm thinking the BBC. They wouldn't like that format because of, you know, uh, I think Graham Hancock alone, like they, they did give him series, uh, before channel four. But the thing to me is like, when people talk about the podcasting space and alternative medium, whatever they are usually like singling out that they mean. They don't like Joe Rogan. They are usually like singly night that they mean they don't like

Joe Rogan, they don't like Sam Harris, they don't like Tim Poole, you know, this the kind of ecosystem there. But like what they do like if they're critical of those kind of things is they will like QAnon anonymous, Conspiraturality, they might like Mary Hassan's channel, you know, and they're not, they're not kind of putting them into the same bracket. I'm not saying they're all of equal, like levels of, you know, standards or quality, but I mean that the independent media is a big wide array of things that allows a whole bunch of things that we like, you know, history podcasts or like random podcasts like ours, the coding, the gurus or yours. Right. But I don't see why. I mean, I guess I see from the viewing things as zero something, but like,

Mad and me make a podcast about gurus. We talk for hours about obscure people and play clips of them. Right. And there's an audience for that, but I've never been like, you know, the mainstream media, they can't do what I'm doing. I'm just like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a whole shtick, isn't there? Of which I've probably been guilty like three or four years ago, because I think it needed to be said to them. But now it's become a tiresome cliche about elites, you know, sort of not listening and not being responsive. Like, I think there was a real thing in 2021, where, you know, the school closures during COVID in the United States, the kind of

punitive attitude of the post George Floyd moment on race relations, the, the censoriousness of the trans ideology, you know, that those things really did need to be called out. And elites did a bad job and the media did a bad job in being upfront and nonsense free about calling out those things. And there was a lack of courage and people losing their jobs if they did call them out in many cases. Now, that's just become a trope. It's just like, you know, the claim that the elites are betraying us and don't know anything has just become, you're not allowed to talk about this, Josh, stupid, stupid, stupid point that that people make usually to feather

their own nests or give increased credibility to their independent media, media sphere. So I don't I don't bang on I mean, people, regular listeners of mine will notice that I don't bang on about that anymore. I mean, I don't talk about how elites have lost the trust of, of the little man or something like that. I think we need more elites, not less. And I mean, even as you say, Chris, the, the difference in the media landscape is vast in podcaster stand, even the three people who you mentioned, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, and Tim Poole, I mean, could not be more different. You know, Tim Poole's a fucking idiot. Joe Rogan is a Joe

Rogan is a is a really is a really is a really curious and talented conversationalist. And Sam Harris is like a rigorous and courageous genius you know, and none of them is without their flaws as... I agree. I agree. I agree. But yes, it's a very large landscape. I think what people are talking about when they're talking about, you know, podcasters, Stan, as a phenomenon is a particular type of...

I mean, you guys covered this well on your show, which is like the weird combination of conspiracy mindedness mixed with credulity, mixed with skepticism, like intense skeptic like you know how the conspiracy theorist is also really credulous about certain things and I think that's that's kind of what we're talking about like a kind of dude bro podcaster dumb guy smart guy like what a dumb person thinks a smart person is talking to people in a really uncritical but professorial kind of contemplative way about bullshit without

much pushback. There's one thing that I meant to mention and that like it ties this I know we should wrap up soon, Mark, because we're gonna go like eat nice sushi We're gonna go eat food. That's better than Australian and American food It's gonna be pearls before swine he wouldn't even recognize he'd be like this wasn't as good as my local Bundaberg but the That's so we recently covered the Chris Williamson's appearance on Rogan. And one of the things that got to me a lot, I've expressed it quite clearly on the episodes,

but was that there was this lamenting about how partisan people had got, how people bond together over hatreds of art groups and how, you know, kind of like Lex, you know, the platitude in this, shouldn't we all be more charitable? Shouldn't we be? And within one minute, they had moved to talk about how the Tesla attacks were being funded by USC and NGOs and academics were like corrupted by China to promote communism. And they were then they would switch back and be like yeah and these guys just demonize our groups and they they fall over hatred you can't do this

it can't be like what I want is like someone there like in that case it happened to be Douglas Murray not about a super fond of but he you know someone that says hold up guys aren't we? bonding over hatred of my group and it just seems like that is unfortunately like rare and Yeah, so if you could do that But it's all it's also it's particularly fatuous because it's true that we are bonding over I mean you guys literally have a show in which you just shit on other people like you know, it's also it's particularly fatuous because it's true that we are bonding over I mean you guys literally have a show in which you just shit on other people like, you know, it's like It's like we are but that's fine. Like that's fine

There's a place in the world for that and that and analysis analysis does often involve shitting on other people That's why it's analysis and not sycophancy. Yeah Uh, but yeah, I mean it's it's not sick of fancy. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's it's style. Anyway, yes, I think I think the point has been made. Should we go and eat sushi then? Yes. Oh, though the very last thing that that Matt last time that we had you on, he had like this really important question that he wanted to ask. He wrote it down.

He forgot to ask it. Okay. Matt's shaking his head. No, no, Matt. I've got it for you. I know you were talking to me about it on the phone. I didn't bring this up to Josh. I didn't like, wasn't there a Kookaburra that you wanted to ask him about? The mascot from the Olympics. What? Why do you remember this? I'll explain it to you. I can explain it to you, just on the basis of the word Kookaburra. During the 2000 Olympic game, in the 1990s when I was in high school, I was a voice actor, and I got cast as one of the mascots in the Sydney Olympic, as the voice of one of the

mascots in the Sydney Olympic games, whose name was Ollielly the kookaburra for the 2000 Olympics, as a teenager. And then they kind of just sidelined it. By the way, you don't get in the suit. There are dancers, and the voice actors are in the studio pre-recording it. And the only thing that we, they kind of shied away from the idea of using mascots at all, because it was a bit cheesy. So that didn't really appear. I don't even think they appeared in the opening ceremony. But, you know, the biggest thing that we ever did was an album called Sid, Millie and Ollie, who were the three mascots, sing your favorite Olympic tunes. And the one country where it sold massively was Japan. where it sold massively was Japan. Wow.

The Japanese love Sid Miliadoli, sing your favorite Olympic tunes, because it was a platypus, a kookaburra, and an echidna in front of a cartoon opera house. Wow. Maybe the sushi restaurant, they should ask if they have a sushi team. I only remember one track which went Olympic Games, Olympic Games,

we're having fun at the Olympic Games, Olympic Games, track which which went Olympic Games Olympic Games were having fun at the Olympic Games Olympic Games Olympic Games Sydney Olympic Games. Those were the works. Wow. Well, what a remarkable career you've had, Josh, and that's what you ended on. You picked there. Who would have thought that that high school student who was singing as a kookaburra about the Olympic Games would someday go on to be sitting with the likes of YouTube. Dreams can come true kids.

All right. Enjoy your sushi guys. Thank you very much. Lovely. Thanks for having me or me having you I don't know what this is. Uncomfortable decodings will continue. And perhaps one more squeaky cheers. Ciao. I'm going to be back. Music