“The New Race to the Moon: China, MAGA, SpaceX & Mars” with Jeffrey Kluger
President Trump has nominated a billionaire to be the new head of NASA as the United States gears up for its most ambitious mission in decades: a return to the Moon. This time, the adversary to beat isn’t the Soviets, but China. And the players at the heart of the new space race are no longer just nation-states but private companies. Who are these visionaries, planning galactic domination? What are they cooking up? Is this a new dawn of exploration, or a bunch of rich kids with planet-sized egos? Jeffrey Kluger is Time magazine’s editor-at-large and the co-author of the book on which Apollo 13 was based, Lost Moon. He joins Josh to unpack the strange intersection of science, politics, and power shaping the new era in space. From Elon Musk’s embattled Starship plans, to China’s steady march toward a lunar landing, will the new space race be a platform for hare-brained geopolitical whims? Or is the human species deeply hardwired to take giant leaps for mankind?
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JUST JOSH: Dissecting Tucker Carlson
American conservatives are in a tizzy of in-fighting after one of their leading voices, Tucker Carlson, hosted a genial chat with a Holocaust-denying, Hitler-admiring, 27-year-old white-nationalist influencer, Nick Fuentes. Should your local upstanding conservative disavow King Tuck? Or is Tucker's aww-shucks, just-askin'-questions schtick too valuable to the foot soldiers of the New Right?To help us understand the fissure splitting MAGA right now, Josh conducts a forensic post-mortem on the speech Tucker Carlson gave on a recent trip to Australia. It lays bare Carlson's worldview, his rhetorical skills, his tricks as well as his insights.By understanding Tucker Carlson's tactics, we'll better understand Trump, anti-Semitism, wokeism, immigration, the degradation of the public square... and the impact that President Tucker Carlson (yes, Josh believes that's a strong possibility) could have on conservatism, America and the world.
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LIVE PANEL: "Who Really Influences Our Politicians?" with Senators Bridget McKenzie & David Pocock, and MP's Allegra Spender & Helen Haines
What happens when you put politicians in a room and ask them to talk honestly about who really influences their decisions? This bonus episode is a live recording from a one-of-a-kind gala in Canberra dreamed up by social-media firebrand (and friend of the show) Punters Politics. Instead of corporations buying access to ministers, everyday Australians bought the tables, and the proceeds went toward hiring a lobbyist to represent the public for a change. Josh hosted the flagship conversation of the night, joined by Senator Bridget McKenzie, Senator David Pocock, MP Allegra Spender and later MP Helen Haines, to tackle the taboo topic at the heart of Australian politics: how money, access and cosy fundraising circuits shape the worldviews of the people writing our laws.
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“Being a Satirist in Censorious Times” with cartoonist Jason Chatfield
Zohran Mamdani has just been elected mayor of New York, parachuting onto a political terrain more polarised and energised than it's been since the 1960s. How do you maintain an independent satirical voice in such vitriolic times? Joining Josh from NYC on a Substack Livestream the day after the mayoral election is Jason Chatfield, one of the world’s most successful cartoonists. Jason was implausibly young when he was tapped to run Australia’s longest-running and most iconic comic strip, Ginger Meggs. After moving to the States, he won acclaim for iconic cartoons in The New Yorker, Esquire, Variety and Mad Magazine, and he served as the president of the National Cartoonists Society. Now, he's independent, on Substack. In an age of algorithms, outrage and censorship, how far can creative people go? Politically, financially, and personal fulfillmentilly, it's a conundrum for anyone pursuing an independent creative life. Jason joined Josh from his home in Manhattan to talk Mamdani, Trump, satire, authenticity, perfectionism... and the future of free expression.
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“The Climate Change Solution So Crazy it Just Might Work” with Quico Toro
The conversation around climate change is so predictable. It's either depressing doom, science denialism, or ambitious summits that don't achieve much. Can't anyone think outside the box? Quico Toro does. He's the Director of Climate Repair at the Anthropocene Institute, a former journalist who's written for the New York Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic, and a Venezuelan-born thinker shaped by his homeland's slide into authoritarianism. He is deeply worried about climate chaos but believes the comfortable consensus about carbon must be shattered. There has always been a fringe of geo-engineers and techno-tinkerers with wild schemes to hack the sky or scrub the atmosphere. While most of those ideas deserve the scepticism they get, Toro's plan could, he hopes, literally save the world.
The world has never been more connected. Yet never more divided. We yell at each other from inside our echo chambers. But change doesn’t happen inside an echo chamber. It’s time to get out, to stretch our legs, to step on some land mines. It's time to have an uncomfortable conversation with Josh Szeps.
A DM Podcast
Australia