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Decoding the Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-16 03:09:39
Edited:
2025-04-16 05:07:19
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

In this stunning crossover episode, Matt and Chris are joined by Australian 'media personality' and podcast host Josh Szeps for a joyful discussion of podcasts, gurusphere, and general media dynamics. As you might imagine we discuss issues around the heterodox sphere, cultures of criticism, and the issues involved with 'platforming' controversial figures. We discuss the constantly surprising popularity of Lex Fridman and his unique interview style, how the heterodox respond to criticism, and rampant hypocrisy. Also Matt is finally held to account for his food takes and we find out the real story behind the Olympic mascot, Olly the Kookaburra.

Sources

Josh's Substackistan podcast

Comments

Lillie

Chris, there is no audio

Kyle Dun

I'm like a kid who ate his Easter egg before Easter...

Joshua McMonagle-Ihasz

The irony of Josh talking about lex in the way he does, then goes to talk highly of Joe. With a small disclaimer. Every description lex is the exact same for Joe. Why can't you guys push back on Josh more Joe platformed RFK. pernicious is a far too soft word for what Joe does. His platform is actively killing people. And causing harm. But hey he was nice to you a few times so you can give him a softball description of him

Tom Wheatley

Good episode lads. Hmm I’m torn on Josh. Don’t think I’m a big fan? Can’t quite put my finger on it though

Cee

Completely disagree with Josh's take on Candace Owen. She's a grifter/attention seeker chasing the likes and the money, like so many of these podcasters, and I don't think her trajectory left-right has any deeper, or more interesting reasons behind it than that. She may or may not believe what she spews, either way the outcomes are the same. And I'm not convinced platforming such polemical hucksters, even if you get in some gotcha moments, has any real world value at all.

kurdelis

I will listen to this to make myself remember that this guy, the CEO guy and the modern wise guy aren't the same person.

Damien

How would Lex NOT know that beer was classed as a soft drink in Russia until relatively recently?

Paul Ditta

Oh thank god! This is a cooling balm. A damp cloth on my fevered brow. I feel like I can face a whole eleven seconds of Lex Friedman without wanting to self harm…

pr

Yes! Do Gary’s economics. 😃

KBDaxio

I skew center right and I love listening to your decoding, even when I hear (to my ears) some of your center left assumptions presented as just *obvious* truths.

SHOUNAK SARKAR

Man, Szeps is rather full of himself isn’t he? Dude is such an arrogant, know it all, white guy podcaster, like an IDW lite version of Sam Harris & Douglas Murray. Murray isn’t just an Israeli propagandist, he’s also an Orban fanboy & of other far-right politicians. Just yesterday on Sky News Australia, he was gloating about Trump reading his book. Btw, it is hilarious how swiftly Szeps has changed his tune on independent media. He still remains a Rogan, Harris, Murray fanboy but at least wasn’t all gung ho about independent media like he was before. Although, his comment about crazy, conspiratorial people being more interesting is ridiculous. Can easily see why he was called an edgelord!

Ymirsdreams

Olly the Kookaburra's right to reply episode will be wild. "I said I had doubts about the vaccine schedule is all..."

Liz Tily

It’s hot when you guys thruple with a live guest who has a non American accent. Brings me back to the lab leak episode. An orgie of accents creating the most lovely cacophony of men explaining things.

Cole Rees

I feel like your interpersonal affinity for Josh along with Josh's Charisma blocked you from doing the pushback you guys were all congratulating yourselves for. Chris suggested that interviewing Candace Owen was just another opportunity for her to spew her crap, and his response was that his tens of thousands of hours of craftwork actually exposed her, and it ended there. Then he claimed right-wing figures were more interesting with more provocative ideas, and left-wing characters censored themselves and were fearful and hyper cautious. Matt suggested it's actually just that the truth is boring, and the interesting stuff is edgelord bullshit and conspiracy. But then Josh reframes Matt's argument to suggest that interviewing people that are wrong is not productive. Which wasn't the criticism at all, then you just move on. I appreciate that you raised the criticisms, but it didn't rise to the level of the mythical pushback, in my opinion.

Emma

Feel relieved that Josh has set Matt right about Australian food! Except we rate our cafes by their smashed avocado. Not eggs!

Unfitforpurpose

You do not, in fact, gotta hand it to Douglas Murray.

Tobbe lobben

Is Josh getting paid by rogan or is he like all those who try to defend Alex jones. Just defend Rogan with out listing to all the trash he releases.

Jake

Enjoying all the usual suspects having a meltdown over this episode on the subreddit.

Cole Rees

Josh criticizes other podcasters for lamenting mainstream media, and elites, saying they are often doing it to give themselves credibility. He defended himself doing it because it was valid in 2021. But after he did it to raise his profile and gain credibility, it's a tired trope, and no longer valid for others.

Cole Rees

Josh, using the Lex Friedman defense: it's okay to platform these people because I platform both sides

Dirtybird

Edgelord is what you are tho Josh

Dirtybird

The lack of pushback on this ep was disappointing, I get you guys are friends or whatever but pls save it for the bar

Tim Tripp

Josh is a mixed bag for me but I like the chance to hear what he has to say. However, I don't care what JP says when drunk, it is what he says in public that bothers me.

iffydonatello

Re: Speaking to a Nazi "I wouldn't begin by calling them a Nazi." Why not? At that time Nazi's didn't understand that Nazism was evil. The reasoning seemed to be: Hey, I think your justifications for your behavior are correct, is that right?

John Smith

I argue in bad faith rhetorically all the time. Often it's the only real way to deal with someone who's arguing in bad faith. Disclosing your actual thoughts to a bad faith debater is simply bad strategically. Like I may have multiple thoughts and responses to something they brought up. Because it's so wrong, it takes a long time to explain. When I do this, 100% of the time a bad faith actor will only respond with a mocking reply to the weakest point. It makes you look like an idiot, which was their actual entire point. Pretending at deference is also useful actually, because you can use it as a proof through contradiction. Pretend to accept their point, and then continue on that train of thought until you arrive at a contradiction. If you had been forthright and simply called their statement false, they would respond with the wounded bird pose, oh poor me, I just have challenging ideas, and yet you are so mean and intolerant to poor little old me, for absolutely no reason at all, you're just trying to smear my character, blah, blah, blah... typical narcissistic influencer garbage. If you pretend at deference, they have to accuse *you* of lying. And if they do so, *you* respond with the wounded bird pose. You have the advantage. They rarely expect or are prepared for it either, despite their constant accusations of lying, they *expect* liberals to argue in good faith, and all their tricks are designed with essentially no other purpose besides to trick you into humiliating yourself. It's an entire style of rhetoric constructed *against* the truth. In a land full of hucksters, one cannot simply tell the truth. The huckster will win. He's not playing the same game as you. To teach people the truth in the land of hucksters, one must be a huckster for truth. You must mislead people towards fact. Many of their brains are so rewired from all the manipulation that they will implicitly take fact as lies. Their brain detects a fact and immediately begins mistrusting it and grinning up a whole alternate reality to defend themselves. And so they build this while alternate reality where they have a counter narrative to just every single fact under the sun.

Rakish Tilt 🎩

Blackballing is a thing, originally in the Freemasons where votes were cast on new members using red and black balls. A single black ball would exclude a person from membership.

jubshit

Good episode. Josh is quite a conversationalist. The irony of him steel manning Jordan Peterson while having a conversation about steel manning is 🤌

Sonny

Gay. In a good way.

Andy

34:57 No, you aren't there to have interesting conversations. Most guests are there to promote something. Most podcasts today are just two-hour commercials for some new book or project, disguised as 'conversation'.

Tree

I liked what Josh suggested re the media. Less opinion in the news, and more wide raging opinions in commentary.

Linda Sears

I was kind of excited when I heard the words star manning as I immediately thought of David Bowie and “let all the children boogie.” Sadly, the concept was not Bowie related.

James Watts

Sid milly and Ollie definitely were a part of the games but were wildly overshadowed by the wombat fatso

Erik Althoff

Who is this.. quite annoying person. All I hear is justifications for him doing things that benefits him. Sure, correcting Rogan is good but everything else.. “Candance backstory is really interesting”? Is it? Like really? The exact same backstory as every other reactionary influencer… I mean platform her if you WANT to but there’s a reason every other podcast that does .. doesn’t bother making up some kind of intellectual reasoning. Keep up the good work but I get the sense from this comment section ..maybe this particular guy isn’t it.

Mark Francis

Lex is such a dilettante. Back in the mid 2000’s Bush tried to court Putin to join NATO and possibly the EU. It obliviously didn’t go anywhere because Russia would have to liberalize and kick out the oligarchs, root out corruption, strengthen the rule of law and other similar policies… other Eastern European Nato countries had to go thru these painful policies to join

Erik Althoff

Jeeeeesus. It got way way worse. His problem with journalists being of color or being a member of the lgbtq community? These groups are politicised! Or we can’t have white people writing about white people either I guess? Or is it fine for white men since they’re some kind of default? Someone in a wheelchair can’t be objective on accessibility issues? Can’t send a woman to report on women’s rights? And god forbid you hire a trans person because trans people can’t be trusted to be objective on trans issues. What a f**** idiot. Truly. Jesus f and a Christ on the side. Reactionary bs.

Trees

In defense of Matt's take on food, he did visit much more than major metros in the US. His itinerary included many cities I didn't recognize. Even in states I've visited a few times. I think he also wandered into places rather than studying Yelp reviews. I haven't visited Australia, much less Bundaberg, but I have visited 20+ countries and the US isn't exceptionally bad, just mediocre. Totally believable Australia is more mediocre. Japan is regularly being used as another benchmark, but is in a totally different league when it comes to restaurant quality depth of bench.

Meg

I don’t care about who platforms who but Candace Owens was never a leftist or even a liberal. Blocked and Reported covered her a couple times and from their telling she is an opportunist and also kinda stupid.

Matt Dear

"The censoriousness of the trans ideology... those things really did need to be called out, and the elites did a bad job, and the media did a bad job in being upfront, and nonsense-free about calling out those things, there was a lack of courage, and people were losing their jobs if they did call them out, in many cases" Interesting position. Total bollocks, but isn't it interesting that we can have a conversation with someone who holds these opinions. Maybe we could even learn more than if we talked to someone who wasn't pulling all their theories out their arse? Food for thought.

Sarah S

So aggravated I wasted time on this episode. This guy is ridiculous and brings nothing useful to the conversation.

Richard Massey

Needs more VBW. Then it could be called, decoding the very bad conversations

Kirin

In regards to the mystery of Lex's popularity. I'm a male who works in tech, which I assume is a core demographic of youtube viewers . I will routinely put up with Lex because there aren't many alternatives for watching Bjarne Stroustrup, John Carmack, Jim Keller, etc talk at length about a variety of software/tech topics.