Catherine Stewart is the author of Power Worshippers, The Rise of Religious Nationalism.

She is an author, an investigative reporter, and I'm very pleased to be joined by her today to have

what I hope is a very important discussion for all of you about a great danger that we all face

and isn't talked about enough in my view.

And Catherine, I just want to start out here.

I had a experience in the last couple of weeks, two actually,

that I wanna share with you before we get into a discussion

about the danger.

And the first one was sitting down with a young journalist

and by young, I'm gonna say early 30s, and was young, I'm going to say early 30s,

and was watching CNN on a television screen

and was asking a political question premised on,

well, if this is on CNN, how could possibly this other competing message ever get through?

And what was on CNN, of course, was the Israeli Gaza War.

And what I said to the journalist was you understand that there's like 148,000 people in the

country watching this right now.

And I pointed to someone who was like walking by on the street.

And I said, you appreciate, right?

That person, like they, in their visual acuity, they're seeing something

completely different than what you're seeing, which along with me are two of the 148,000 people

in our country at 330 million watching what we're watching on CNN. So then I'm having another conversation, and it's with a woman who is erudite,

well-read, smart, but falls into this category of people that when they're exposed to something they don't know, their response isn't,

...