Perhaps the most dangerous idea is what to do about dangerous ideas.

A spate of anti-semitic attacks has led to new laws that will punish Australians for "hate speech". But are hate-speech laws a band-aid over deeper problems like ethnic bigotry, religious conservatism, historical ignorance, social media, migrant integration, university bias, and Islamism - problems which may have been addressed if we'd spoken more openly about them in the first place?

That's the argument of Professor Alan Davison, the incoming president of Australia's Free Speech Union. He and Josh discuss free speech, diversity, journalistic integrity, critical thinking, and who gets to speak for minority groups.

Is it time to speak more fearlessly, not less? Or is the free-speech position just an excuse for more division and hate?

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How should medium-sized countries respond when they're bullied by a superpower? The question applies as much to Canada dealing with President Trump as to Australia reacting to China.

Last Friday, the pilot of a Virgin Australia flight from Australia to New Zealand noticed a flash of weapons from a Chinese warship just a few hundred miles off the coast of Sydney. Other passenger planes suddenly got mid-air warnings to divert course. The Australian government scrambled to reassure citizens that nothing was amiss.

But this is the first time China has sent naval assets so far south down the Australian coast. It's the first time they've conducted live-fire exercises so close to Australia, inside its exclusive economic zone, in a busy flight corridor linking the region's only two Western democracies.

What's going on? How should we react? Is a China-U.S. war in the 21st century inevitable?

Sam Roggeveen is a former intelligence officer and a foreign policy analyst who now heads the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, Australia's preeminent international policy think tank.

He and Josh discuss China's belligerence, the Australia-U.S. alliance, Trumpist isolationism, Taiwan, NATO, and immigration. His book is The Echidna Strategy, an argument for developing an independent security strategy.

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Imagine posing as a drug dealer and going undercover into a Chinese drug lab. That's what Ben Westhoff did to report on how fentanyl -- which kills about 75,000 Americans every year -- gets made.

Will Trump's crackdowns at the Mexican border stanch the flow? Why are other rich countries less affected by opioids? How did fentanyl cause the worst drug crisis in American history. Is the problem getting any better?

Ben is a best-selling investigative journalist who's written about the fentanyl crisis for The New York Times, The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Times. His book is "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" and his story of heading to China to meet fentanyl's manufacturers is unmissable.

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