Episodes

  • 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
  • Is this Child Psychiatrist "Anti-Trans"?

    Is this Child Psychiatrist "Anti-Trans"?
    Jul 23 2026
    Dr Jillian Spencer is a senior child and adolescent psychiatrist who was fired three years ago after publicly criticising how puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were being prescribed to kids. Now, her employer, one of the biggest health care providers in the country, has issued a bombshell statement. Children's Health Queensland has announced that it is withdrawing its misconduct allegations against her, and effectively admits that her concerns were legitimate all along. It’s a potential turning point in the transgender debate. Dr Spencer flew from Brisbane to Sydney to join Josh in the Uncomfortable Conversations studio and tell an extraordinary story of groupthink, institutional pressure and medical integrity.
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    48 mins
  • How Evolution Shaped Men vs Women

    How Evolution Shaped Men vs Women
    Jul 20 2026
    Are men innately more violent? Are women innately more people-focused? What explains gay people, campness, transgenderism? How much of the sex differences are cultural, and how much is hardwired by our evolutionary psychology? The science of the sexes has come a long way. Steve Stewart Williams is a psychology professor who wrote the groundbreaking book The Ape That Understood the Universe and whose new book is A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women. Steve joins Josh to explore the science of the sexes, from aggression to promiscuity to parenting, and what recent research reveals about how, and why, men and women behave the way we do.
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    1 hr and 49 mins
  • Do Not Speak Ill of Lindsey Graham's Butthole (and other advice for America)

    Do Not Speak Ill of Lindsey Graham's Butthole (and other advice for America)
    Jul 16 2026
    Journalist and ne’er-do-well Michael C. Moynihan joins Josh for a Substack livestream about the state of American politics, far-left candidates, far-right ICE agents, and the importance of being respectful, in this time of mourning, towards the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s butthole.
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    13 mins
  • Have Kids Become Little Shits?

    Have Kids Become Little Shits?
    Jul 13 2026
    Screen time. Free range parenting. Attention deficit disorder. Social media bans. And that little bastard on the plane kicking the back of your seat the whole flight. Are we losing control because of parenting advice that's overthought, overcomplicated bullshit? Today's guest says so. Ryan Martin is an educator who specialises in helping families navigate the wild terrain of raising challenging kids. He's been a school principal in the outback and a teacher in the big city. He joins Josh to provide real humour, wit and wisdom for parents, educators and the rest of us about how to raise better kids. Ryan's new book is "Little F*ckers: A book for parents of cranky, crazy, lazy, fabulous, amazing little humans".
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Race, ICE & the "Woke Right"

    Race, ICE & the "Woke Right"
    Jul 9 2026
    How do you stay enthusiastic about defending your opponents’ right to say things you hate? That’s the pickle of the free-speech defender in these crazy times. Whether it’s Trump dragging his enemies through courts, ICE agents kidnapping activists or the Florida government banning ‘wokeness’, David Volodzko - once a victim of left-wing cancel culture who now fights right-wing cancel culture, too - has his hands full. David is a journalist who spent much of his adult life in Asia. After reporting from countless hot spots and war zones, he became an editorial board member and columnist at The Seattle Times. He was fired less than two months later, after a social-media mob called him a Nazi. David is now a News Editor & Senior Writer at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a free speech activist group, and his Substack is The Radicalist, where he writes about political extremism, philosophy, and history. He joined Josh to discuss the conversations around wokeness, "hate speech", Black crime... and the brouhaha over colourblind casting in ‘The Odyssey’.
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    25 mins
  • Is Morality Made Up?

    Is Morality Made Up?
    Jul 6 2026
    Is everything you believe about right and wrong just an accident of where you were born? Or is morality a universal truth waiting to be discovered? And if you dedicate your life to answering these questions, how would you feel if one of the greatest moral problems of our time unfolded around you? David Enoch is a world-leading ethicist and philosopher of law. He also happens to be an Israeli who's vocally critical of the Israeli government. David is a professor at Oxford University and holds a chair in the Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has spent time in a military jail in Israel for refusing to serve in the West Bank and been arrested for protesting Benjamin Netanyahu. David joins Josh to discuss how we know what's right and wrong, how politics should react to our moral conclusions, and how to judge Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the war in Gaza, and the international law that’s meant to govern both.
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    1 hr and 37 mins