Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Are women's rights helped or hindered by hitching them to an intersectional alliance of climate justice, Gaza activism and transgender rights?
Professor Catharine Lumby founded the media departments at both of Sydney's big ivy-league universities, UNSW and Sydney University, where she remains the department chair.
An icon of the Australian left, Lumby started out as a fiery third-wave feminist writing extensively about the media, sex and social justice. She became a journalist, columnist and feature writer at Australia's biggest newspapers, and spent the 1990s in New York before doing her PhD about tabloid journalism.
Now a Professor in Media & Communications, Lumby joins Josh to reflect on university activism over the course of her career, changes to feminism, social justice, anti-Zionism and trans rights.
She respectfully requests that you not cancel her for this conversation.

Here she is!
Reem Ibrahim started out as a run-of-the-mill British pro-Corybn social democrat. Then she went to the London School of Economics and Political Science, passed through a phase of anarcho-capitalism, and has become a rising star of libertarian activism and consumer choice advocacy.
She joins Josh to debate the French protests, the UK’s National Health Service, A.I. regulation, welfare payments, public services, data centres, and why there’s no air-conditioning in Europe.

Trumpism is over. The Republican coalition is in tatters.
What’s next?
Democrats have a massive new congressional majority, including in deeply Republican areas. The last time they got this large a share of the popular vote for House candidates (in any election, midterm or otherwise) was after Watergate, half a century ago. Kansas has elected a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932.
But what, exactly, are voters demanding? Can Democrats provide it? And what do such large swings tell us about the responsiveness of the political system... and the stability of society as a whole?
Josh wasn’t going to opine on the midterms but the size of the swing, and the triumphalist coverage from the legacy media, nudged him into this thought-provoking editorial. It was delivered live on Substack on Wednesday evening, U.S.-time. Grab a brandy and a cigar, and enjoy.

As the US midterms unfold, take a moment to reflect on the bigger picture. While voters protest data centres and politicians quibble about A.I. regulations, you and I are left with a few questions.
What rules can constrain A.I.? What are the real risks? What's wrong with the black-&-white thinking of A.I. doomerism vs A.I. utopianism? Could a face-eating-zombie analogy help?
This editorial was delivered as a Substack Livestream at 7pm ET on election day, to help you focus a little less on the horse race and a little more on what matters. Let Josh take your hand for an enlivening stroll through the lush gardens of A.I. risk.

Is independent thinking sustainable for humans? Or will people always collapse into tribes, mandating beliefs and excommunicating heretics?
Is Josh a delusional optimist for believing in humanism, liberalism, pluralism and reason? Is it inevitable that people will sort themselves into comforting groups that increase polarization and cultural warfare? Is MAGA a cult? Is gender ideology? Is Zionism? Is multiculturalism?
Andrew Gold is one of Britain's most popular podcasters and YouTubers. A former mainstream journalist whose documentaries aired on HBO and the BBC, his work dried up in the late 2010s and early 2020s. He blames that era's insistence on diversity (another cult?), when it became almost impossible for a straight white male to successfully pitch a new show.
He now hosts Heretics, a wildly popular online TV show that's proudly heterodox and frequently anti-woke. Andrew was kind enough to invite Josh to his studios in North London to discuss groupthink, the culture wars, whether Britain is unravelling, and whether liberalism itself is contradictory.