Senator David Pocock on "How to Be a Senator & World-Cup Athlete"

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education, Comedy

4.6 • 863 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 not aligned with any major political party to represent the Australian Capital Territory. He was one of the most prominent faces in a tsunami of independents who annihilated the ruling conservative government. The billionaire backer of that political revolution, Simon Holmes à Court, had a fascinating conversation on this show which you should listen to here

You don't neeeeed to hear Holmes à Court before listening to this episode, but it's a bloody great chat so you might as well.

Josh's conversation with The MeatEater, Steven Rinella, which Senator Pocock refers to at the start, can be heard here

Senator Pocock grew up in a white family in Zimbabwe in the 1990s before moving to Australia in his teens. He and Josh discuss his anti-racism, his activism, why Aussies gamble so much, what the purpose of sport is, and whether it's time to do away with the two-party system.

If you're new to this show and you're a fan of Dave Pocock's, here are a few other episodes you might want to check out:
Sam Harris
Megan Phelps Roper
Douglas Murray Live
Tim Minchin

Needless to say, subscribe to the show in your podcast app and on YouTube if you dig it.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Goody, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and taking dangerous stances on
0:08.6	intractable issues like political corruption and multinational mining companies and gambling giants
0:17.3	and culture war issues like same-text marriage is sort of the job of today's guest.
0:23.1	The Australian Senator David Pocock, he was born in Zimbabwe in 1988, moved to Australia
0:30.0	as a teenager, became a rugby champion. He was a professional rugby player, played for the
0:36.5	Australian national rugby team. And then
0:39.3	in 2021 was drafted into politics and became a senator, an independent senator, no less,
0:47.5	not from either of the major political parties. He has strong reformist beliefs, is generally
0:52.6	socially progressive. And I wanted to pick his brain about
0:55.2	what makes him tick and where he sees democracy going in the 21st century. I hope you enjoy as
0:59.7	much as I did this chat with the one and only Senator David Percock. Have you been in the States?
1:06.6	Are you a hunter at all? I grew up in Zimbabwe, so I actually grew up doing a lot of hunting.
1:13.8	Yeah.
1:14.0	And then didn't for 15 years.
1:17.7	And then I've got a few mates who do a bit of deer hunting.
1:21.3	They're a massive, massive problem around Canberra and sort of up into the snowy mountains.
1:25.9	Yeah.
1:26.4	And so do a bit of that.
1:28.2	Yeah.
1:28.9	We saw it.
1:29.8	We were just on a road trip through the snowies with my kids during the school of
1:33.7	holidays.
	...

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