Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps9 Syys 2025

Josh Visits the South Pacific: Climate Chaos, Chinese Bribes & Mosquitoes

What can a stunningly beautiful, dirt-poor, corrupt, tropical-island nation teach us about the battle between China and the West... and about how climate chaos will affect you?

A lot, it turns out. In this bonus episode, Josh is on the ground in Solomon Islands, where leaders from across the Pacific are currently attending the 54th Pacific Islands Forum Meeting. Beneath all the happy-talk about foreign aid is a deeper subtext. The big rich players (i.e. Australia) are trying to bribe their tiny South Pacific neighbours into siding with the West instead of China.

Josh visits a freshwater spring in the jungle with one of Australia's leading hydro-geologists, Sam Buchanan, who's stationed in Solomon Islands to manage its long-term water projects. Sam works for the principal scientific and technical organisation in the Pacific region, The Pacific Community, and is a world-leading expert on water security and climate resilience in small island developing states. He's also one of Josh's oldest friends, who brought to Josh's attention this amazing story in a forgotten tropical battleground.

Josh and Sam drive around Guadalcanal, the country's main island (and the site of the famous WWII battle in which a young naval officer named John F Kennedy made his name), discussing how the country gets its water, how it gets energy, how foreign aid is distributed, how geophysicists are using MRI technology to scan for underground water, and what this all has to do with DOGE, Trump, and subsidence in the Central Valley of California.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

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Is this Child Psychiatrist "Anti-Trans"?

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. No...

23 Heinä 0s

How Evolution Shaped Men vs Women

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 ou...

20 Heinä 0s

Do Not Speak Ill of Lindsey Graham's Butthole (and other advice for America)

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 respe...

16 Heinä 13min

Have Kids Become Little Shits?

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 ...

13 Heinä 1h 15min

Race, ICE & the "Woke Right"

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...

9 Heinä 25min

Is Morality Made Up?

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 q...

6 Heinä 1h 37min

Why We Don’t Believe Boys: Female Grooming & the Male Teen

When Harry was thirteen, his stepmother initiated a sexual relationship with him that lasted for three years and made him a father at fifteen. The horror and confusion of feeling complicit, of being t...

2 Heinä 17min

Josh vs the News: The TODAY Show, Cancel Culture, and Karl's Free Speech

Australia's most famous TV host has just been cancelled… but has he really? The "Matt Lauer of Down Under", Karl Stefanovic, hosted the TODAY Show for more than two decades. Suddenly, he was fired o...

29 Kesä 1h 38min