Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

What is going on with Trump’s foreign policy? Attacking Iran, decapitating Venezuela, threatening Cuba. Is America flexing its greatness, or flailing? Is there a method to the madness? What is really going on inside the room where it happens?

Stephen Biegun was the United States Deputy Secretary of State in the first Trump Administration. He was also the special representative for North Korea, charged with overseeing America’s North Korea policy and running the first ever in-person negotiations between the two country’s leaders. While Trump was tweeting about “Rocket Man”, Biegun was trying to make history.

What was it like to work with Trump on complex foreign policy negotiations? What happened on last-minute sorties across the DMZ with the leader of the free world? And what has Stephen’s experience in seeing Trump’s worldview, first hand, taught him about strategy, Putin, Ukraine, and Iran?

Biegun worked in the George W. Bush administration as a member of the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice and was a senior executive at the Ford Motor Compnay. He joined Josh on a visit to Sydney to deliver a major lecture at the Lowy Institute, which kindly facilitated this conversation about American power, diplomacy, war, and the Trump you don’t see behind the scenes.

Cities that rock and cities that suck do a few things differently. They need to hit a bullseye on high-vs-low density, walkability, law and order, red tape, congestion pricing and a host of other things. Which cities nail it? And how can yours do better?

Eamon Waterford is a world expert on what the best cities get right. He's the chief executive of a think tank, the Committee for Sydney, that represents the interests of all the big players in Sydney’s economy: not just property developers but local councils, banks, architects, consultants, law firms, universities. He assesses how cities all over the world can evolve into the best version of themselves.

Eamon joined Josh to riff on Mamdani, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, Los Angeles; on the tension between low-density suburbs and walkability; between infrastructure and green spaces; between untrammelled development and too much risk aversion. If you want to live in the city of your dreams, listen up.

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Step away from the doomscrolling. Take a breath. Let the waves crash.

In this week's edition of Josh vs the News, Josh offers something different: a tonic for tumultuous times. Instead of dissecting the latest outrage or geopolitical crisis, he invites you to zoom out and remember what actually matters.

How do you find peace when artificial intelligence threatens widespread, fast, and traumatizing change across every sector of society? When the news cycle never stops? When even our political tribes have become echo chambers of certainty?

Consider this your permission to touch grass, smell the roses, and remember that the waves of the South Pacific will keep crashing long after today's outrage has faded.

How can a bunch of equations on a piece of paper reflect the deepest facts about reality? How is it that every single object, from a skyscraper to a black hole to your liver, obeys mathematical gobbledegook? And how do physicists deduce that gobbledegook just by solving written puzzles?

Today's episode will blow your mind with curiosities about the fabric of reality, the size of the biggest numbers, and how a simple probability problem, posed by a popular television game show, the Monty Hall Show, captivated America for years.

Adam Spencer is a former radio host, keynote speaker and the University of Sydney's ambassador for mathematics and science. His TED Talk was "Why I fell in love with monster prime numbers" and he has a new Substack, NerdNews by @adambspencer.

References from Adam:

John Searle’s article “Consciousness” (published in Annual Review of Neuroscience)

“Biological naturalism”

Anil K. Seth, “Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2026, Cambridge University Press).

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Everyone’s had something to say about Iran. But they're missing the most important piece.

In this week's powerful editorial, Josh invites you to shift focus away from the tsunami of hot takes, of Trump takedowns, of condemnations and victory proclamations and self-certainty on both sides.

Take a reprieve from the chatter and consider the question most commentators have skipped.