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Dear listener, welcome back to Conflicted, Thomas Small here, Amin's here too.

Hello Thomas, how are you?

I'm doing great. Now we've always said that there's a strange kind of parallel to our lives, haven't we?

I was once a novice monk obsessed with religion, my friends say I still am, and you, well, you joined Al-Qaeda.

There's a kind of radical religiosity in common there, certainly a radical streak to both of those life paths, isn't there?

Indeed, you joined the monastery, I joined the monstrosity.

Well, we've both been attracted by different kinds of fundamentalism, and today we're going to dig into the reasons why.

Why does recruitment and radicalization thrive? What's the psychology behind it?

And why are religious people, like you and me, Amin, so often prone to radicalization? Let's find out.

Before we get into the weeds here, and this conversation certainly will become weedy.

Let's talk a little bit about talking about...

Oh, weed. I'm smoking the weed, man.

Okay, sorry.

Okay, that's terrible. That is just terrible.

What do you think this is? Joe Rogan? This isn't Joe Rogan, we don't smoke weed on this podcast, that's okay.

Okay, okay, I was just kidding.

Let's talk a little bit about terminology.

What do we actually mean by radical Islamism,

...