All right, this is so exciting.

Such an honor to have you here.

I know that Elon himself said you are standing between us and civilizational collapse.

It's an excellent book and I hope you all take advantage and pick up a copy.

So, Gad, we had a conversation about this before, but thinking back to your early childhood

experience in Lebanon amidst the threats of rising violence, virulent anti-Semitism, and social

disintegration, do you think that that experience inoculated you to an extent from suicidal empathy or at

least primed you to recognize the phenomenon in a more clear-eyed way?

Well, first, thank you all for being here.

Thank you for having me.

For those of you who don't know, I was born in Lebanon in the mid-60s.

I was part of the last remaining group of Lebanese Jews that had steadfastly refused to leave

Lebanon.

And regrettably, the Civil War started in 1975, where it became impossible to be Jewish in Lebanon, so we had to leave

under imminent threat of execution.

So to your question, I saw what happens to a society that is deeply committed to organizing

itself along tribal lines, along identity politics, right?

Everything in Lebanon is viewed through the prism of your religious heritage.

So there's an internal ID card that you carry, and people don't care how tall you are,

or what's your weight, or what's your eye color.

It's what's your religion. And if you were Lebanese, it was written Israelite, not even Jewish. And so if you

were stopped at any militia checkpoint, it wasn't going to turn out well for you in Lebanon. And so

...