Gooday, humans. Welcome to the show that goes where others don't, the show that rejects

partisan squabbling and tribal groupthink. I'm Josh Zips. I'm your humble warrior princess,

hunting down the world's most fascinating minds to wrestle with one provocative question each

week.

Much of modern culture and politics and media is tailor-made, especially social media,

tailor-made to pander to what we already believe and distort what we don't, to reinforce our biases and exaggerate our differences.

But change doesn't happen in an echo chamber. to reinforce our biases and exaggerate our differences.

But change doesn't happen in an echo chamber.

It's time to leave the mental comfort zone,

to flex our minds and step on some landmines, folks.

It's time to have uncomfortable conversations.

Today on the show, an almost perfect guest on an almost perfect topic at an almost perfect time for our first episode.

And I only say almost perfect because nothing's entirely perfect on this fallen orb,

young lads and lasses. We're all a bit grubby, ain't we? And that's sort of the purpose of this

show, to point that out, to have a little bit of intellectual humility and to avoid the kind of

purity tests and the self-certainty that has become so commonplace in our

conversations with each other. I want to wrestle towards something better. I want to have a time

out from having to choose between two poles in culture with right-wing blowhards on one side

and on the other side a rag-tag bunch of cancel culture outrage

peddlers. I want neither of them. I want to reach across the aisle and share a cigarette in

no man's land on Christmas Day. Or not a cigarette, that's probably politically incorrect as well.

Can we share something else? Can we share a, how about a vegan bowl,

...