You're listening to Robert Wright's Non-Zero Podcast.

Hello, Bob here.

I just wanted to say a little something about the conversation you're about to hear because it's a bit of a departure from our norm. It's with Russ Roberts, who is host of the Econ Talk podcast, and it's appearing on both the Econ Talk feed, where its posting date is, I think, February 19th, and the non-zero feed, which is to say

this feed.

So that's why it doesn't include my standard on-the-fly introduction of the guest, and that's

why I'm introducing the guest now in advance.

So Russ is an economist and is president of Shalom College in

Jerusalem, which I may be mispronouncing, and he's a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution,

and he writes the listening to the Siren's newsletter on Substack.

As you'll hear, Russ and I have significant differences of perspective on the Gaza War and the Israel-Palestine conflict generally.

But I think we agree that this was a very constructive conversation and was illuminating

for both of us.

And I hope you will check it out.

Thanks. So, Russ, I'm really looking forward to this conversation because we do have I think different perspectives on the

subject. For starters, you're Jewish, you're Israeli, you're in Israel, I'm none of the above.

I think we also have ideological differences that may become apparent in the course of this.

I should say you're also an American citizen.

In fact, you spent most of your life in America, but you've been in Israel a few years now.

And we've agreed that this is going to be a departure from both our formats in the sense that we'll be kind of interviewing each other. That's also known as a conversation, I guess. You suggested I ask the first question. So I'm going to do that. And it has to do with a question some Americans are asking about what's going on in the mind of Israelis.

I actually heard an extreme version of this last night and talking to a young progressive.

And I do think this is a question that's more on the mind of people left of center in America.

What he said was, I think the Israelis have lost their minds.

...