Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Why don't Palestinians have a state?

To answer "because Israel" is to treat Palestinians as props in a Western morality play, rather than as a people in a fight for survival. The true tale of Palestinian resistance is an incredible story of power, Zionism, Maoism, Algerian anti-colonialism, Islamic liberation and Arab nationalism.

Haviv Rettig Gur is an Israeli journalist and political analyst who's critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its war crimes in Gaza. But he's also deeply informed about the nature of Palestinian resistance. As the senior analyst at The Times of Israel and a Middle East analyst at The Free Press, he's covered the region for the better part of two decades. His podcast is Ask Haviv Anything.

This mind-blowing conversation could transform how you understand the Gaza War. If you respect Palestinians as agents in their fate, rather than as victims in a Westernised fable, you'll be gripped by Haviv's insights into what's gone wrong in the Middle East.

It’s 10 years since Britain voted to leave the EU, and their revolving door of Prime Ministers just keeps spinning.

Josh goes live to share his thoughts on the potential new Prime Minister, the New Left and Right, and where Britain goes from here…

Can we blame polarisation on right-wing internet crazies? Or is the whole online system shot?

The most valuable thing we produce online is anger. Not our data, our habits, or our clicks, but our anger.

Ed Coper is a progressive activist who wants us to understand how tech platforms farm anger on an industrial scale. He calls it angertainment: the machinery that turns outrage into clicks, clicks into money, and money into power.

Ed and Josh disagree on the politics of the problem, with Josh feeling Ed gives left-wing groupthink too much of a pass. Ed built digital political campaigning on the left in Australia, turning left-wing activist group GetUp into a political force. He’s advised everyone from Greta Thunberg to Malala Yousafzai.

This conversation is a fascinating rumble about how legacy institutions have failed people, which voices are amplified by the algorithm, and whether we can save the conversation without censorship.

Ed’s new book is “Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything”. He appears at The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on Wednesday 24 June.

The Reverend Josh breaks down Trump's surrender to (sorry, “memorandum of understanding with”) Iran; what Elon's trillion-dollar payday revealed about the far left, the far right, AI and prosperity; how we might interpret the rise of populist, anti-immigrant parties in the UK and Australia; and why you should spurn pessimism and tales of civilisational collapse, and have a weekend of grace. What a week!

What's the "queer community"? Who's "LGBTQIA+"? When did sexuality get hitched to a queer cultural movement aimed at deconstructing gender, colonialism and white male privilege? What happens when a boring old gay guy dissents?

Ben Appel found out.

Raised in a fundamentalist Christian community, he expected his Ivy League University experience to be one of liberation. Instead, he found the minds of queer college activists as closed as his pastor's.

Ben joins Josh to describe his run-ins and to ask whether the rights of gay people are served by an LGBTQIA+ coalition now as preoccupied with Gaza and trans ideology as it is with gay people themselves.

Ben's new memoir is Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic.