Episodes

  • The Case Against Israel with Peter Beinart

    The Case Against Israel with Peter Beinart
    Aug 17 2026
    Peter Beinart is arguably the world’s most influential Jewish anti-Zionist. He’s a journalist and a professor of journalism and political science. But in American and Jewish cultural life, he’s far more than that -- a lightning rod, a traitor, a truth-speaker, a coward, a hero. Applauded, derided, beloved, loathed. Peter is an orthodox New York Jew who keeps kosher, attends synagogue, and sends his kids to Jewish schools. He was originally a pro-Iraq-War liberal hawk, who wrote muscular books like “The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror”. His worldview changed, especially regarding Israel, after numerous visits to the West Bank. He no longer argues for a two-state solution but for a single state between the river and the sea in which Jews and Palestinians live as equals. Is that pie-in-the-sky, or the only way out for Jews and Palestinians alike? Peter’s latest book is “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza”. Peter has written for Time, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books and is a contributing opinion columnist at The New York Times. On the eve of his trip to Australia to appear at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (where Josh will appear in conversation with Glenn Loury - stay tuned for that), Peter joins Josh to wrestle with Zionism, anti-Zionism, Palestinianism, Gaza, ethnic supremacy, and the future of the Jewish people.
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    1 hr and 35 mins
  • How Branding Replaced Facts in Politics

    How Branding Replaced Facts in Politics
    Aug 13 2026
    What unites Trump and Obama, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, the far right and the far left? They’re all brilliant at defining their brands. They have a clear narrative. They can tell a compelling story about the world and their place in it. So much of life, of business, of social media, of political parties and social movements is shaped, these days, not by facts but by “alternative facts”, by feelings, by storylines. You, yourself, may even have a personal brand: the disrupter, the carer, the loyalist, the contrarian, the lover. Matt Jones was a political strategist and speechwriter for the British Conservative party in the early 2000s. He went on to deploy his brand expertise in the private sector, where he co-created a small gin company which was sold for a fortune less than a decade later on the strength of its brand reputation. Matt joins Josh to explore how storytelling is shaping your life more than you realise, from the supermarket to the ballot box, and how we might bring sanity back to public life. Matt’s new podcast is StoryWork.
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    17 mins
  • How to be a Dissident

    How to be a Dissident
    Aug 10 2026
    What does it mean to be a dissident? If you join a protest march, are you dissenting… or conforming? How should you push back against leaders who wield fear and intimidation; against digital technology that dehumanises you and flattens us all? Gal Beckerman is a staff writer at The Atlantic who worked for six years at the New York Times Book Review. His first book was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post, and his latest is How to Be a Dissident, a guide to living with integrity in an age of conformity and authoritarian drift. Gal joins Josh to discuss ICE agents, Jimmy Kimmel, Putin’s dissidents, Jews defending Gaza, communist Czechoslovakia, the quiet, task-by-task incursion of algorithmic media into your life… and what the most courageous dissidents reveal about how to find your moral compass in a dizzying age.
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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Are Jews Okay? (with baklava)

    Are Jews Okay? (with baklava)
    Aug 6 2026
    Is Israel making Jews safer, or less safe? Does pro-Palestinian activism feed antisemitism, or is that a Zionist lie? And why are Greek men so hunky? Two of Josh’s favourite gals, ChayaLeah and Yael from the “Ask a Jew” podcast, join Josh from California and Greece for a funny but forthright catch-up about freedom, terrorism, Palestine and felafel. Enjoy.
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    17 mins
  • Josh vs the News: Why Everyone is Wrong About A.I.

    Josh vs the News: Why Everyone is Wrong About A.I.
    Aug 5 2026
    Fable this. Deepseek that. As fascinating as each new A.I. model breakthrough (or breakout) is, are we missing the forest for the trees? The Reverend Josh believes so. In this scintillating Substack Livestream, he leads us to the Promised Land the way all great Messiahs do: with a four-point bureaucratic plan. Along the way, he’ll answer your questions about Israel, sun protection, and how much he can bench.
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    48 mins
  • Why is Trump Building a Secret Ballroom Bunker?

    Why is Trump Building a Secret Ballroom Bunker?
    Aug 3 2026
    Exploding pagers! Enigma codes! Sexy Israeli spies! J Edgar Hoover's boyfriend's remote-controlled window opener! And, yes, Trump's top-secret ballroom bunker. It's all told with impeccable style by Matt Bevan, the host of If You're Listening, which is one of Josh’s favourite shows about international intrigue. The show's companion book, If You're Listening: Declassified, explores how history is a patchwork of conflicting accounts, misremembered details and outright myths. Matt regales Josh with the most amazing anecdotes of espionage... and to explain what Hezbollah's exploding pagers have in common with the bunker which Dick Cheney hid in on 9/11. Help us improve the show! Share your thoughts and have your say, take the Uncomfortable Conversations Audience Survey: https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/p/have-your-say-to-shape-the-show
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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Buckle Up for “the Manosphere 2.0” - Helen Lewis

    Buckle Up for “the Manosphere 2.0” - Helen Lewis
    Jul 30 2026
    What’s up with boys? Or, more importantly, what’s up with the men who use “what’s up with boys?” to crush women? It’s not just a rag-tag fringe of young male influencers who are reviving sexism. There’s a professional movement of influential Christian nationalists whose long-term agenda is to return women to their rightful place, as homebound subjects of their husbands. Helen Lewis’ reporting on gender, politics, and internet culture has made her one of the sharpest voices on the culture wars. She became a viral sensation when she bested Jordan Peterson in a 2018 debate about gender roles for British GQ. She’s now a staff writer at The Atlantic, where her recent cover feature was “The New Gender War”. Helen and Josh unpack the evolving backlash to feminism and liberalism, the furore around surrogacy and transgender rights, Andrew Tate… and what the World Cup had to do with all of it.
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    19 mins
  • Josh vs the News: How The Odyssey Broke the Internet

    Josh vs the News: How The Odyssey Broke the Internet
    Jul 27 2026
    The way culture-war ideologues have hijacked The Odyssey reveals how social media ruins everything. As go the arguments about the film, so go our conversations about fairness, gender, race and immigration. And so go our elections. Josh recounts the online sh**storm, and draws a long bow from Homer to Christopher Nolan to how civilisations like ours collapse. Read Josh’s column in the Australian Financial Review here: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/culture-war-ideologues-have-hijacked-christopher-nolan-s-odyssey-20260720-p60gpr and David French’s NYT column here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/odyssey-christopher-nolan-greek-gods.html Oh, and go back and watch “Just Josh: The Woke Catastrophe of Snow White” here: https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/p/just-josh-the-woke-catastrophe-of?utm_source=publication-search
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    33 mins