We live in an incredibly turbulent time. Well, maybe it just seems that way because all the news

from everywhere is at our fingertips. In any case, it's a time that feels disorienting,

that feels foreboding. And many of us are responding to that uncertainty by grabbing onto ideas

that stabilize us. Political convictions, party loyalties,

racial identities, moral certainties about how evil the West is if you're on the far left

or how threatened the West is by chaos and immigration if you're on the far right. Those

certainties comfort us, but they get us nowhere.

This is a space to challenge our certainties to consider points of view that destabilise us,

but that leave us more thoughtful and wiser, and yes, a little bit more uncomfortable.

Music And yes, a little bit more uncomfortable. I'm so excited for today's show.

I'm Josh Zeps.

This is Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Zeps.

And before we begin, let's just point to what an insane time this is

politically, especially in the United States, looking down the barrel of perhaps the most

consequential election, certainly of my lifetime, I think, the original election of Donald

Trump was a crazy event that has so many causes,

we'll be pouring over it for decades and perhaps centuries. But for that accident to get

vindicated and re-endorsed by the American people, by re-electing President Trump would in some ways,

I think, be even more devastating to American democracy than his original election,

which if he's a one-term president, can be written off as something haphazard or accidental.

And for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice,

to have just passed away, that incredible woman having led such an incredible life, now throwing

...