My guest today, Tarak Buneeb, was living in Switzerland, originally born in Canada,

and his parents actually of Egyptian descent.

And growing up sort of a living and really being comfortable in a lot of different cultures,

led him to really start to be concerned about what he perceived as so much hatred and so

much vitriol and so much othering and lack of the ability to see the humanity and other

people in the world.

And that kind of reached a fever pitch.

And while he was living in Switzerland and Zurich building his own companies, he decided

to set aside a bunch of time and do something that so many people thought was maybe even

impossible to go to the United States to find a group of Americans who really were concerned

were fearful, who had feelings about people, especially Islam, especially in the Middle

East, that were not good and then bring them to offer them a free trip to Egypt, where

they would then be paired with people who were very often the exact opposite of them

and to film it and just see what happened without forcing any sort of educational agenda,

but just to watch and see what unfolded as people discovered or didn't discover each

others shared humanity.

The result was a documentary called Free Trip to Egypt, which is now circulating, definitely

check it out.

We will link to it in the show notes.

That was really incredibly powerful, so moving on so many different levels.

So I had a chance to sit down with Tara today and talk not just about his background,

but also about how his own life and his experiences have informed his lens on other people and

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