Candace Owens is one of the most popular commentators in the world. Initially critical of President Trump, she was a famous critic of Black Lives Matter and became the communications director for the conservative group Turning Point USA. Her talk show on the conservative website The Daily Wire, "Candace", was cancelled earlier this year after she m…

Do you drink too much? If there was a magic pill that made you not want a second drink, would you take it? You’d at least expect to have heard of it. That’s what the journalist Katie Herzog thought as she sat through AA meetings, feeling like a failure for boozing. Then, she found naltrexone. Josh hasn’t had a drink in four years after having a dif…

Imagine being an innocent YouTuber, tricked into receiving millions of dollars from Russia just because you're a Putin hack. That's what the U.S. Department of Justice alleges has been happening, and worse. How are the enemies of liberal democracy shaping the information you see online? Ross Anderson is an expert on right-wing YouTubers, the Life E…

Keith Urban is one of the world’s most popular musicians. He started out in Australia, moved to Nashville, worked his arse off, won a stack of Grammys and sold over 20 million albums. He’s about to start a residency in Las Vegas and he'll tour Australia in 2025. His new album is “HIGH”. Don’t miss the YouTube page to see Keith and Josh bantering in…

Can governments regulate “misinformation”? Or is that just a pretext for controlling what you can say? Were “the Twitter Files” a bombshell revelation of censorship, or a paranoid beat-up? How should Big Tech have grappled with issues like Russia, Covid, and the FBI? Andrew Lowenthal worked with Matt Taibbi for months on the Twitter Files. He helpe…

Missy Higgins is one of Australia's most successful musicians. She exploded onto the scene in 2004. Her debut single launched at No. 1, her first album debuted at No. 1, and, barely out of her teens, she won the ARIA, Australia's Grammy, for Best Pop Release. Tabloid speculation swirled about her sexuality. Josh wants to know how she now thinks abo…

In the lead-up to every U.S. election of the past 12 years, Chas Licciardello has hosted a national primetime television comedy show called Planet America, covering the ins and outs of American politics. He is a member of Australia's most famous comedy group, The Chaser, and starred in their satirical TV shows for nearly a quarter of a century: The…

Outside Australia, Alexander Downer is best known as the diplomat who kicked off the Mueller Investigation by alerting the FBI that one of Trump’s advisors, George Papadopoulos, said the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton over drinks in London. Downer was Australia’s ambassador to the UK at the time. Inside Australia, Downer is a household name. …

Our societies are more diverse than ever, yet we spend more of our time with people just like us. Are we losing a sense of common life? Maybe the far left and the far right aren't the cause of our division, but a consequence of it? Jon Yates is an entertaining, whip smart writer and activist who studies how to build a more united society. He says t…

Are we too focused on race? Have recent anti-racist movements like The Voice to Parliament and Black Lives Matter abandoned the colour-blind spirit of the civil rights pioneers? Josh took to the stage for a special one-night-only Uncomfortable Conversations live event with Coleman Hughes, one of America’s most prominent authors and thinkers on the …

"The debate over free speech, hate speech, online harms, algorithms and social media is tangling us up in knots. Let’s get back to first principles, because our ability to survive the 21st century depends on it." So wrote Josh in Australia's top newspapers on the weekend, linked below. He had gotten into a stoush on the national TV panel show Q+A w…

Andy is the producer The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling and previously of the New York Times' groundbreaking podcast The Daily. During the riots and racial reckoning after the killing of George Floyd, newsrooms were roiled by existential questions: Should journalists be activists? Do white male journalists hide behind "objectivity" to impose their bi…

Can great TV & movies help us overcome political polarisation? Is being creative the same as being open-minded? Why are artists sometimes blinkered? Emile Sherman is the Academy Award-winning producer of Heartstopper, Slow Horses, The King’s Speech, Top of the Lake, The Power of the Dog, Anthony Hopkins' latest film, One Life, and much more. His ne…

What should you make of comparisons between the present day and the 1930s? Is the greatest risk that we're sliding towards Nazi-style fascism? Or that we're being drawn into a civil war where half the country are villains? Dennis Glover has a PhD in History from King’s College Cambridge and works as a professional speechwriter and author. He has wr…

Two of the internet’s most intellectual contrarians sit down in a park with Josh. Magic ensues. Jesse is among the world's most astute analysts of internet nonsense. He became a lightning rod when his 2018 Atlantic cover story was the first deeply reported mainstream article to question child transgender medicine. His punishment was swift and sever…

Why do some people have strong moral opinions but don't act on them, while other people effect real change? It's a question Josh wanted to ask Australia's most influential athlete-turned-politican. David Pocock was a rugby champion who played for Australia's national team, one of the world's most iconic rugby sides. He then became the first senator…

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the presidency, has chosen her running mate… and it isn’t one of the swing-state governors her pollsters were recommending. Josh is surprised, impressed, and uncharacteristically chipper about what this means for Harris, for the election and for the future of the American left. Cheer up and…