173: Josh Zepps

Josh Zepps is a very talented Australian broadcaster based in West Hollywood in Los Angeles California.

He’s done many things over his extensive career however his latest project “We the people live” is a podcast focused on making debate healthy again.

In the last few years, you may have noticed online and elsewhere - especially in politics - that reasoned debate and discourse has vanished from the public space. Opposing viewpoints get shouted down from polarized positions, and utterly disregarded purely because they came out of the mouth of someone who identifies with a different part of the political spectrum as you.

So Josh is trying to bring debate back, and often has viewpoints on his show that are confronting - however he moderates the conversation in such a way that despite my initial knee-jerk reaction to hearing these things, I’m able to see past that and into the deeper concept behind what the person is talking about.

So right up front - right here - I will tell you this conversation will use words and phrases and cover concepts that we aren’t used to hearing.

To talk about the problem with debate it’s important to talk about the different parts of why debate is broken.

And part of that is restraining our initial reactions to hearing concepts and hypotheticals that aren’t entirely unimaginable but are still confronting to hear.

You’ll know what I’m talking about when we get there.

I highly recommend you check out Josh and find episodes he’s guested on other shows - particularly Joe Rogan’s incredible podcast where he often goes to dig deep into what is happening in the world at the moment.

This is a heavy political conversation - but it’s one I feel is healthy to have, and I don’t even mind if you do this one in chunks - listen to five minutes of it, go check an episode of the Dollop - come back here and listen to five minutes more.

You can find Josh on twitter @joshzepps.

We recorded this over Skype so a big thanks to my podcast producer Andy Maher for chopping it together and making magic out of a dog’s breakfast of audio files.

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