Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Steven Pinker may be the world’s best-known cognitive psychologist, a public intellectual who for decades has used his fame to help us understand how we think, how we develop language, and how our behaviour is shaped by evolution and biology. He’s a professor of Psychology at Harvard and his most recent book is a hugely entertaining reflection on social norms, cooperation, outrage cycles, social media pile-ons, sudden political shifts, and moral panics. It’s called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, and Pinker joins Josh to discuss echo chambers, status hierarchies, and the corrosion of common ground.

There’s a lot of big events happening in the world at the start of the year, but between bushfires and flash flooding, Australia is grappling with the aftermath of the Bondi terror attack. Hate speech laws are being tabled in Federal Parliament, pro-Palestinian authors are Writer’s Festivals are being cancelled, and the question of whether Australia’s uniquely successful multiculturalism can survive, is lurking below the surface. Journalist and digital activist Andrew Lowenthal went live with Josh to discuss censorship, nationalism, identity politics, and the challenge of navigating free speech in a multicultural society.

It’s been an eventful start to the year. Josh went live to share his thoughts on Trump, Venezuela, and the end of American exceptionalism.

Is the success of the gay rights movement guaranteed? Or are there hints that, eventually, gay rights could be reversed? One of the most peculiar strategies of gay activist organisations has been to hitch their wagon to a revolutionary, non-binary, gender-fluid, LGBTQIA+ ideology. Is it time for gay rights and trans rights to quietly uncouple? Ronan McCrea is a Professor of Constitutional and European law at University College London whose new book is "The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom". He argues that the combination of the Christian right, socially conservative migrants, and backlash to LGBTQIA+ extremism is putting gay rights at risk. He joins Josh to propose a solution.

One of the most successful comedy performers on the planet, Eddie Izzard (who now goes by Suzy) has spent more than thirty years touring groundbreaking shows at sold-out venues like the Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden, the Sydney Opera House, London's O2 Arena and Radio City Music Hall. They've won two Emmys, performed stand-up specials in multiple languages, run dozens of marathons for charity, and even stood for parliament and for the mayoralty of London. In the US, they starred in television shows like The Riches, United States of Tara and Hannibal. Their film roles include Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Thirteen and Valkyrie. Izzard was on Uncomfortable Conversations briefly in 2021, in the persona of Eddie. Now living full-time as Suzy - and on the eve of a global tour of a one-person production of Hamlet(!) and a new stand-up special - it's time for Szeps and Izzard to finally connect in the flesh. Uncomfortable Conversations is chuffed to be a new Spotify Partner show, and even more grateful to the amazing folks at Spotify for welcoming us to their schmancy studios in London, where Izzard - recovering from a leg injury - hobbled in to discuss humour, wisdom, passion, gender, performativity and ambition. Tickets to Izzard's Sydney shows are available here [https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/theatre/izzard-hamlet]. Our thanks again to Spotify and the team at the Sydney Opera House for making this conversation possible.

Happy New Year, humans. Here's a funny, reflective start to 2026. Josh sits down with a stand-up comic who suffered a heart attack on stage at the age of 26 and emerged rawer than ever. Sammy Petersen joins Josh to chat about how comedians disarm audiences, whether "punching down" makes sense, and why humour can be both a shield and a form of truth-telling.

The show's community manager, Evan Pivonka, joins Josh to review 2025 through the lens of Uncomfortable Conversations' best, worst and weirdest episodes. They reveal the show's creative and editorial strategies, behind-the-scenes gossip, and Josh's expectations for 2026. Happy new year, humans.

Britain’s infrastructure is crumbling. Petty crime is part of daily life. Illegal immigration costs millions per day. The tax burden is the highest in peacetime history and the economy hasn't grown since 2008. That’s the argument of Konstantin Kisin, co-host of Trigonometry, one of the world's most popular podcasts. He’s held up as a poster boy for certain elements on the right following a viral speech against woke culture at Oxford, but his diagnosis of Britain's malaise cuts deeper than culture wars. He joins Josh to dissect what's broken, and debate the path forward. Watch Josh’s appearance on Triggernometry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgxizmt4bUU

For how many hours can you leave out a Christmas ham? Will turkey stuffing give you the runs? Is it okay to refrigerate hot take-away fried rice? Why does America have the world's worst E. coli? Can soft cheese really kill unborn babies? Why does asparagus make your pee smell? Every Christmas, families sit down to feasts... and Josh sits down with one of his favourite regular guests, Gary Kennedy. Gary is a food scientist who knows everything about the microbiology of what you eat, and what you shouldn't. Merry Christmas, humans. Bon appetit!

Josh takes questions about the news on his weekly livestream. No prizes for guessing the big story this week. That's right: The French Snail Robbery.

Sydney is shell-shocked after the deadliest terrorist attack ever on Australian soil. Sixteen people are dead and at least 40 wounded after gunmen executed Jewish families celebrating the first night of Hannukah at Australia's most famous beach. As his city picks up the pieces, Josh shares his feelings and his thoughts about extremism, free speech, Israel, Islam, anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, multiculturalism, liberalism and how to encourage a more peaceful future for us all.

The image of a singular political leader is misleading. Why? Because they can barely function without a team behind them. Chief among that team, being their Chief of Staff: part strategist, part consigliere, part javelin-catcher. But the real job is even stranger. They are the gatekeepers to presidents and prime ministers. The triage nurses for national crises. The confidantes who remind a leader to eat breakfast, steady them during massacres and terror attacks, and sometimes challenge them on the very policies they champion. Phoebe Saintilan-Stocks has interviewed the people behind Mandela, Blair, Gillard, Howard, Ardern, Trudeau and more, revealing a world of invisible power, professional intimacy, and the oddity of a system in which unelected aides can quietly influence the fate of nations. From the death of Princess Diana to 9/11, from Port Arthur to Christchurch, their stories show how leadership actually works when the stakes are existential. Phoebe joins Josh to unpack the hidden architecture of power, the personalities behind it, and what their experiences reveal about trust, loyalty, crisis, and the human frailty of the people we expect to carry entire countries on their shoulders. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

If you're ethically conflicted about industrial animal farming, this episode is a shot of hope. Shaming people into going vegan doesn't work. What does? Aidan Alexander is the co-founder of a non-profit that distributes money to a basket of effective charities creating cruelty-free options for millions of farmed animals each year. If you care about whether pigs and hens endure agonising lives simply to shave a few cents off each pound of their flesh, here's your practical solution. FarmKind, Aidan's organisation, is independently funded through philanthropy. It takes no cut of any donations -- they pass it all directly to six of the best charities working to fix factory farming. Until the end of 2025, all donations using the code "josh" will be matched 100% by FarmKind so your dollar goes twice as far. (If this reads like an ad, it's not. We're not paid for this; we just believe in fixing factory farming so Josh can have his steak and eat it too.) Go to FarmKind.giving and use the code "josh" before the new year, to double your contribution. Or follow the link below: https://www.farmkind.giving/giving-season-2025?promo=josh Aidan joins Josh to discuss why animal-rights activism hasn't worked, the problems of preaching veganism, the sentience of different species, the strangely elevated status of cats and dogs, the negative externalities of industrial agriculture, and practical ways we all can solve this fixable problem. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

Bluffing, double-crossing, predicting, testing your enemy. The mind games of international relations are wildly complex. And at the end of the day, the outcome of the next major conflict will be decided not by military questions but by psychological ones. Why did France lose to the Nazis, despite having more tanks, troops, and guns? How did Ukraine stand firm against Russia? Why was Winston Churchill right and Neville Chamberlain wrong? How do you know if you can trust an ally? Will the logic of nuclear mutually-assured destruction hold? How will technology shape the future of war? What will happen if China goes for Taiwan? In an era of asymmetric warfare, of killer drones and bunker-busting bombs, it’s more important than ever to tease out the psychological games of conflict. Dr Nicholas Wright is a leading neuroscientist who advises the Pentagon and the UK Cabinet Office on psychological strategy. His new book is Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain. He joins Josh to explain how all wars come down to psychology, to prediction, to second-guessing, to mental games... and how we in the West might master them. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

Josh takes a look at the week’s news, and tries to make sense of it. A

Is faith in our economic system cracking up? From Mayor Mamdani's win to Elon's trillion-dollar payday, from Instagram infuluencers embracing communism to Bernie and AOC, from Trump's tariffs to Chinese communism. Critiques abound of the neoliberal order that has dominated the past half century. But those assumptions - not just about policies, like free trade and low taxes, but about the very structure of we live our lives, how we produce stuff, and get stuff; assumptions like the existence of money and markets and wages - are not inescapable facts of reality. They evolved, over the course of the last thousand years. They made us very rich. And they could've been otherwise. Professor Sven Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard University and one of the world's leading historians of capitalism. He's not a free-market cheerleader, not a libertarian economist defending unfettered capitalism. He's a historian who studies how, in the real world, violence, coercion and empire were foundational to capitalism's rise... but how capitalism remains the indispensable system that made you richer than most people who ever lived. Beckert got his PhD in history from Columbia University and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. His new book is Capitalism: A Global History, and he joined Josh to shed light on what capitalism is, how it came about, and how might we re-anchor capitalism in moral and ecological limits... without extinguishing the creativity that has made it the most productive engine of all time. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

Tony Abbott was the 28th Prime Minister of Australia. Here, he visits Josh for an Uncomfortable Conversation about his government’s policy of “turning back” asylum-seeker boats; about climate change (as PM, he abolished Australia’s short-lived tax on carbon); and about his view of the historical treatment of First Nations Australians. Josh and Tony wrestle with the challenges facing the U.K. and the U.S. from right-wing populism, illegal immigration, multiculturalism, and the fate of Western democracy. His new book is “Australia: A History“.

The difference between America's last two consequential presidents (sorry, Joe) couldn't be starker. How did the same country - sometimes even the same voters - endorse an urbane, professorial, hopey-changey Black man and a foul-mouthed, regressive clown? Is there some deep American contradiction that explains them both? That's the claim of Paul Starr, a Pulitzer-winner who co-founded the iconic magazine The American Prospect. He worked in the Clinton administration and is now a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. Starr's new book is "American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now". He joined Josh to explain how, from MLK to Nixon to Gingrich to NAFTA to tariffs to wokeness, we find ourselves in the latest cycle of a grand American battle between revenge, fear and freedom. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

The left has become increasingly uncomfortable about arguing for the moral superiority of the United States, let alone for the exercise of American dominance around the world. But is the American Empire something which even left-wingers should, in fact, fight for? Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post who opposed the Iraq War and supported Bernie Sanders. An Arab-Muslim American, he lived in Jordan on a Fulbright Scholarship and got his PhD in political science from Oxford University. He's not your average neo-conservative. Shadi and Josh debate American influence, American decline, the Gaza War, democracies, dictatorships, China, Russia, Ukraine, Trump, and the future of the American Empire. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

What does it mean to do the right thing, and how do we know when we’re doing wrong? Is it ever okay to lie? To exact vengeance? To eat meat? To abort a foetus? To pamper your kids when that money could save a poor child's life overseas?  All of our most uncomfortable conversations stem, at their heart, from a conflict about what we ought to do. And the basis of our modern morality, in secular Western culture at least, is utilitarianism: the pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Its most important living advocate, Peter Singer, has shaped how generations think about ethics, from animal rights to abortion, foreign aid, euthanasia, religion and more.  But what if your utilitarian assumptions are wrong? "Spectacularly and extravagantly wrong", in the words of today's guest? Bo Winegard is a social psychologist whose essay, Against Singerism, is an audacious critique of our basic moral framework. Josh and Bo unpack the appeal and limits of utilitarianism, the traps of moral absolutism, and what it means to lead a good life. If "the greatest good" isn't the ultimate moral goal, then... what is?