w/ Leo Pearlman, make it a party we'd all want to join

Hosts: Lio and Seth Guest: Leo Pearlman Lio • 01:34 Welcome everyone to TheJewFunction. I'm Lio, this is Seth, and we have a great guest with us today, who we'll introduce in a minute. He's also Leo, so don't be confused. The other Leo — he's the one with the glasses and no hair, so it'll be easy to tell him apart. If you're new to TheJewFunction, we are one of the only podcasts out there — I think we're the only ones — actively working to first explain antisemitism, or Jew hatred, according to the laws of nature. We are, I think, quite rare in that we rely on historic patterns, on words of Jewish sages, and on recent findings from network science and systems thinking to explain and demonstrate that Jew hatred is, in fact, anchored in the system that we live in. It's not simply an irrational hatred. Well, it is expressing itself as irrational, but it serves a purpose, and it's more of a reaction to something. And that is what we're exploring on TheJewFunction: the reaction to what — about something to do with the Jews. I am keeping it a little mysterious, so we'll get Leo on board with that soon. But if you want to hear the full thesis, I invite you to listen to the first 22 episodes, the first season of TheJewFunction. They're beautiful. Just put it on when you drive, when you're at the gym, when you walk, when you're in some pro-Palestinian demonstration — whatever it is, just put it on. Listen to it. It will blow your mind. And I promise you'll come back for more. And obviously, leave a comment if you can, like, subscribe, and share this so more people can join the conversation. So that was that. And today we're joined by Leo Perlman, who we tried to bring on the show a couple of times. We almost got him a few weeks ago and then we didn't. I blame the Iranians for it. He's a media executive, co-CEO of Fulwell Entertainment, and he's one of the guys who's actually quite literally shaping global culture and narrative. He's got a long list of credits. But what we care about also is the fact that after October 7th, especially in the wake of that and the rise of antisemitism, he's stepped up from behind the scenes to become somewhat of an outspoken voice on Jewish identity, media bias, and the power — and maybe also the failure — of storytelling today. So we're very happy to have you, Leo. Leo • 04:19 Thank you so much, Lio. Seth, it's a real pleasure to be here. And yes, my apologies for the previous mishaps. Lio • 04:25 Nobody knows about it. You don't have to apologize. Leo • 04:27 You already told them. This is on you. Lio • 04:29 It's true. It's a recording. So they don't know. Leo • 04:33 Yeah, true, true. Lio • 04:35 So I think maybe we'll start with something a bit general. You've spent your career shaping narratives, right? You're a producer, you're a creator. Maybe you can tell us a little bit — just give us some highlights from your career, so people understand the kind of environment you're surrounded by and where you operate in. And then tell us a little bit about what you find the media is consistently getting wrong about Jews and Israel. Maybe start with that, because that's probably— Leo • 05:09 Sure. Just a small topic to begin with. Lio • 05:11 Yeah, just take 30 seconds and give us a wrap-up. Leo • 05:15 Yeah, no. So I've been lucky enough to work in this industry for 20-odd years with some fantastic partners. I would say my partners are the real, true creatives. I do have creative input, but my role is much more, as you said, the co-CEO — strategic, looking at the global media and entertainment picture, the content picture, working out where as a business we should be heading or trying to go. I would say that as a business, we are best known for our very broad-appeal entertainment content. We make things like the Grammys and the Kardashians, the Late Late Show with James Corden. We are, I guess, first and foremost — we've always thought of ourselves as trying to create distraction from the noise, the unpleasantness maybe that's out there in the world. Come to Fulwell— Lio • 06:09 From the real important questions of life. Leo • 06:12 Correct. Absolutely. So come to Fulwell if you want to learn something about your favorite sportsman or musician or whatever. And I don't mean to say that the work we do is facile. I just mean that it is there to entertain. That is how I would describe it. I would say that I have always been very openly Jewish. It's pretty hard to hide it — the name, the features. It's pretty straightforward. But I've also never had to explicitly state my Judaism, or indeed my Zionism, because it just was. It never felt like something that needed to be made as a statement. I would say that October 7th completely changed that for me. And I look back now and think that, in fact, the rise of Corbyn should have made me change earlier. But it didn't. It took that horrific day of October 7th to make me realize not only the true threat that I think we as a people — the existential threat that we face — but also the importance, if you do have a platform or the ability to reach people, the essential importance of using it. It sounds incredibly overblown to put it this way, but I would say this is the hill that I'm prepared to die on. And until October 7th, I didn't have that hill. It's really interesting. I was having a conversation with someone a few months ago about how one describes oneself. You talk about whether you're British, a father, a businessman — there are all kinds of different ways. And the truth is that we're all elements; the change is which one you put at the top of the list. So I think back to my childhood. I grew up in Newcastle, a northern town 300 miles from London, but I support a football team called Sunderland, who are their greatest rivals. So as a child, when someone asked me what I was, I would have said I'm a Sunderland fan, because it was the most important thing that I could define myself by. Everyone around me supported a different team, and I wanted them to know that I was different. So I would say I was a Sunderland fan. And then you go through various stages of your life and that changes. Since October 7th, I would absolutely, if you asked me what I am, say I am a Zionist. And then there would be a whole list of other things that might come afterwards — a father, a Jew, etc. But Zionist would be number one, because that has become the most important defining element of my personality and character. I was no less of a Zionist before, but now it's number one at the top of the list. I can't actually remember if that was the question. You didn't ask me that question, but that's where we went. Anyway. Lio • 08:57 It's good. Seth, you want to follow up on that? Seth • 09:02 I would rush right to the end of you, and Lio pulled me back. Lio • 09:06 Seth likes to just, you know, go for the jugular. I did a little foreplay. I asked you about the media and the Jews and all of that, but you immediately brought it home. You made it personal, which is great, because ultimately I think we like to bring people here and ask them about these very personal questions. Because most of the time, we get so busy, so distracted, that it takes some horrific slap across the face like on October 7th to shake us out of this rut, in a way. There's nothing wrong with a little bit of entertainment, but if that becomes my reason for being, the meaning of my life — I'm not saying you, I'm saying in general — what we consume, how we do it; if I'm just busy with that, I'm kind of neglecting some of the biggest questions. And Jews were always the ones grappling with those questions. That's one of the things that got me and Seth on this quest. It's not simply, okay, we've got to stop Jew hatred because it's uncomfortable for our kids. No, it's because it is intimately tied to: what are we human for? Why bother with making humans when a monkey would have sufficed? It's good enough for evolution, if you want to think about it from an evolutionary perspective. If you want to talk about an upper force — what's the purpose of creating someone, calling them human, or in Hebrew, Adam, from the word domeh, similar — to creating someone that will become similar to that force, a force of love and bestowal? Why bother? Why go through the trouble? What's in it for us, with all this life that we — if you add everything up together, the moments of pain and suffering and anxiety and unnecessary drama, they outnumber those really sweet highlights of birth of a child, marriage, right? So why? There's got to be something. So those are the questions that we were also interested in, and I know a lot of people are also interested in that. And we also felt that they had something to do with this thing called a Jew. What is a Jew? Why that attitude, that unique attitude that singles out Jews throughout history? So this ties with that question, in the sense that there's a certain story that we're telling, or that we're not telling, and we wanted to find out what it is. So I'm curious to know — again, just to continue that personal line — were you, before October 7th, exposed to antisemitism? And if you were, or if you were after, did it make you stop and wonder why the hell this is still a thing? Why is it happening over and over, no matter what we're saying, what we're doing? Leo • 12:14 I think like the majority of Jews, most of us have experienced some form of antisemitism. But in the modern parlance of our day, one would describe it as microaggressions. Comments, jokes, little snipes, things that lean into antisemitic tropes but are not quite explicit enough. And when I look back and think about it, if I'm honest, I actually blame myself more than the people who said them. I blame myself for not calling them out. We let things slide. You tell yourself it doesn't really matter. But when you do that enough, it creates this permission — whether you mean it or not — that implied antisemitism. That shifted. Certainly in the UK, going back to my earlier point, that shifted with the rise of Corbyn. It shifted because the tide mark of acceptable language rose. So what you had was this moment when, through a convergence of social media, which enabled actual antisemites to find each other online and gain a confidence through doing so, to this on-the-street movement that used this thin veil of anti-Zionism as antisemitism — and all of that built up. And we roundly applauded ourselves and patted each other on the back when Corbyn didn't win a national election. It was such a great moment. He did not win because Jews stood up. He didn't win because he was completely fucking incapable of governing, and the rest of the country realized so. But they did not vote for him because he was an antisemite. We shouldn't kid ourselves of that. So then October 7th happens, and that tide mark of acceptable language has risen so high that things that even then were not acceptable to say now become par for the course. That's the antisemitism that I experienced without it ever being explicit. And then it changed. It changed on October 7th — the day when you thought, well, this is going to be the low point of my life as a Jew. And actually, it was just the start of the low points. And then they just kept on getting lower and lower and lower. And certainly, I think I saw it happen in the media almost overnight. I don't think I was under any illusion that our institutions had the ability to be antisemitic. I just don't think they were anywhere near as explicit in being so. You would still find balance on the BBC or in The Guardian. You would still find balance. Lio • 15:01 Did you find balance on the BBC and The Guardian? Leo • 15:05 Prior to October 7th. Prior, yeah. Because there was nothing for that cancer to attach itself to. Lio • 15:12 Well, but if I look — I'm only bringing this up because I studied antisemitism for a while after I came back to Israel with a professor who specializes in the appearance of those manifestations in the media. And he had a whole list of gripes with The Guardian and the BBC on how they cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And now, you could say it was not antisemitism, it was some anti-Israel stance. But when you peeled it open, there was an actual instruction to editors, to reporters, to report a certain way. Leo • 15:56 Sorry, let me be clear. I'm not saying that wasn't antisemitism. I'm saying it absolutely was. What I'm saying is that there wasn't a singular incident that all of that antisemitism that existed within those institutions could connect to, could effectively attach itself to. So you had sporadic elements, sporadic pieces when the opportunity arose. But the headlines were not about Jews and Israel every single day of the week, because there wasn't an October 7th, a conflict in Gaza. There were pockets of incident. So if you looked across the year before October 7th, you could 100% find 20 incidents in The Guardian or in the BBC when you would have gone, that is completely unacceptable. However, the vast majority of the news was not about Jews or Israel, because there wasn't something for it to coalesce around. Once October 7th happened, every headline was about Jews and Israel. So all of that institutional antisemitism that previously had been bubbling under the surface, but didn't have anywhere to go and release itself — now it absolutely did. And seeing how quickly that became, as I said, the cancer that grew, and seeing how even October 8th and 9th, way before Israel had responded in any way in Gaza, it was already showing its face. And how few people in our industry — my industry — who at every opportunity would look to virtue signal by calling out an act of violence in another country, were deadly silent when it came to October 7th. To the extent that if someone did come out and say something, it was extraordinary. It was a cause for celebration. It was like, oh my God, did you see that LeBron James and Maverick Carter posted something on Instagram that was pro-Israel? It shouldn't be like that. It should be that everyone's supporting until they find a reason not to. So it was within 48 hours that I made the decision that if no one else is going to say anything, I probably had to. Lio • 18:11 Did you feel it with your colleagues, that some of them have changed their attitude maybe to you, even? Because we've had guests who were like, I had dinner with someone, and then two days later, after October 7th, suddenly they were like, oh yeah, we always hated Jews, it just wasn't trendy to say it. Leo • 18:35 100%, it's incredibly noticeable. You can be a very successful Jew in the entertainment industry, in publishing, in theater, in music, in television and film — as long as you're the kind of Jew that is prepared to say that Israel is the greatest evil on the planet. In fact, there are opportunities, I would say, for those kinds of Jews that have extended or built their careers upon the last three years of calling out Israel for its crimes. But if you want to be a Zionist, then no, the industry is a very different place than it was previously. Big change. Big change for sure. Lio • 19:23 And so at some point you decide to put on the cape and join the — it's funny to call them crusaders — but the pioneers who are making this cultural exodus from the masses who are turning against Jews, and stand and say, no, we are people. If you prick us, don't we bleed, that sort of thing. But did you ever stop to ask, how is this even possible today, such a cultured world we live in? Everybody, especially in developing countries, they have access to education, to running water, to all the luxuries of the world. Leo • 20:17 There are definitely moments when one is stopped in their tracks. When you don't feel like you can be surprised by anything anymore. Kanye West is a perfect example of that. I found myself, since October 7th, maybe 20 times, going, wow, I didn't think that I could be surprised anymore. But Kanye playing in front of 170,000 people in Los Angeles — and it's important to say this — without as much of a whimper of complaint from Jews on the West Coast to try and stop that from happening. That shocked me to my core. Thankfully, when he tried to turn up in the UK to perform, we managed to put a stop to that. But yeah, there are, of course, moments when you stop and think how. I think if you don't stop and think how can this happen, you can't necessarily come up with a plan for how it might be changed — how one can deal with the problem if one doesn't understand the problem. But my attitude has shifted quite considerably since October 7th. We all have a limited bandwidth to deal with anger, sadness, pain, etc. — some more than others — and a limited bandwidth in how we expend our energy to try to make a positive impact on the world. I definitely started off October 7th being shocked that there were so many idiots out there unwilling to educate themselves. So my thought was, well, there's a huge silent majority, and I think that with my platform, I can probably do some good to influence. The biggest swing I took at that was the Nova documentary, which we made. The very premise of which was: we are not making this for Jews. I'm not making this so that when I go to shul on Friday night, I get a pat on the back. I'm making this to reach an audience who genuinely would not have a clue what happened on October 7th. All they saw was the social media post. The truth is that we made that film, we got it on the biggest platform in the world — the BBC, CBS, etc. — and it made virtually no impact whatsoever. My attitude since then has been that my energy and bandwidth should be expended in trying to inspire the next generation of young Jews. I don't believe that my grandchildren will be born in the UK. I think Jews will still be here, but they'll be Jews who are willing to accept a version of being Jewish that society forces upon them. Lio • 23:16 You can say Jews are willing to accept Muhammad, that's okay. Leo • 23:23 Well, Jews who are willing to say that they don't accept Israel as their homeland, as a starting point for sure. And I don't intend to have grandchildren who take that view. So I don't believe my grandchildren will be born in this country. I do, however, believe that if we don't inspire them and show them a version of Judaism that is full of pride, bravery, courage, memory — that wherever they are, maybe I'm wrong, maybe they're in the UK, the US, Israel, wherever they may be — then we lose regardless. So my focus now, moving forward, is on that. Seth • 23:57 The picture that they need to see, the picture that we all need to see, is something that's huge and something that's beautiful and something that's hopeful. Like the whole Jewish promise, the promise of the prophets, the promise of the Torah, that there's going to be a brotherhood of mankind, that nation won't lift sword against nation. This is the big, big goal that has to be in front of us. Otherwise, culturally, things will always change. Governments will always go up and down. But through it all, the Jews need to have this gigantic picture. And it's very weird to imagine that there is a people such as this. That there is a people who have this — that this is the foundation of who this people is. Imagine that somehow, out of all of humanity a couple thousand years ago, some light comes from space and ends up inside of these people. And now this tiny group of people has this transformational experience at Mount Sinai and they receive some kind of law of unity amongst them. And now wherever they go for the next 3,000 years, even though they're just a fraction of a fraction of the population, they're managing humanity through politics, through finance, through entertainment, through everything — without really understanding who we are and where we are in that. Like, for your grandkids, for example, are we just running away to the next country, and then we maybe end up at this place in the Middle East with a giant army that'll last for a while? But the big story, Leo, is the story of this group who claims their mission to bring brotherhood, love to humanity. And I think that you give a story that everyone can coalesce around. Like, imagine it's 1934 in Germany, and someone came to us and said, all right guys, it's time to leave. Imagine the Jews that were in Germany at that time. There had been Jews in Germany for hundreds of years, maybe more. The Jews in Germany were at the top of their game in academia, were at the top of their game in the entertainment business, were at the top of their game in finance. They had families there. They had kids in school. They owned land. And someone's like, all right, listen — maybe Leo Spiegler here comes and says, guys, it's not looking good, we've got to go to Israel, we've got to leave here. People are like, Spiegler, you're crazy, what are you talking about? It's just another — we've been through it before, right? Who would actually leave? Leo • 27:09 I don't think almost anyone would leave. My great-grandfather, who I'm named after, he left. He left with my grandma, who was six years old. Okay. You've got a mission to fulfill then. And we lost 30, 32 family members in the camps. Five of them got out, and they were the ones who came to the UK. And I spent my childhood — to give context — with my grandma on that side, who had escaped from Nazi Germany with her father, mother, and siblings, telling me growing up the entire time that it can happen again. And I remember all those years of looking at her and mocking her, being like, you're mad. Look at the world we live in. It's crazy. Seth • 28:02 Don't change, Grandma. Leo • 28:03 Yeah, exactly. Every single day. And I'm so grateful that she's not around to see what we're living through now — mainly because she told me, I told you so. And I fucking hate being told I told you so. But genuinely, because she would have been proven correct. And on the other side, my dad's side, my grandma and grandpa met during the siege of Jerusalem. My grandfather went out there, joined the Haganah, pretending to be part of a youth group, in 1945, 1946, and met her during the siege of Jerusalem. So I had this very strange upbringing of this survivor mentality from my mom's side and this kind of "fuck you" early Zionist from my dad's side, which is a strange combination to grow up around. Lio • 28:52 It's a very good combination, because we thrive on contradictions. In fact, that's what Jews do really, really well, sometimes without even thinking about it. And the rest of the world, they can't grasp it. We've had a lot of people here on this show. We had some non-Jews, some outright antisemites, white nationalists. We had all kinds of people here. And they all point out that there's something that's going on. And one of the things that we're saying on TheJewFunction — and if people listen to that first season, they'll hear it — is that Jews were really just like everybody else. We started out like everyone else in Babylon three and a half thousand years ago, everybody living together, one big metropolis. And there was this thing that started to change, as they do in humanity. And when most people were just kind of getting at each other's throats — friction and distrust — it used to be easy to just exchange things and barter and get along, and all that kind of broke down. That social trust broke down. And most people went their separate ways. But Abraham was a local priest. He saw it and he was like, no, no, there's something going on here. We need to approach it differently. And he invited people who wanted to learn how to approach it differently, what to do when that friction happens with someone that's close to you. And those people later became Jews. So those are representatives of all the nations. That's why Jews are such a hodgepodge. We're not like one ethnic group. Seth • 30:41 Like a microcosm of humanity. Lio • 30:43 Exactly. Because Jews represent all those different opinions, all those different mindsets. And Jews went through — it's almost like they went through an accelerator. You know how you take a great startup idea and you take it to an accelerator. It doesn't need 30 years to become a company. You can do it in three years. Jews went through that. Seth • 30:58 Squeeze them through Egypt, squeeze them through Rome, squeeze them through Greece. Lio • 31:01 Yeah. So by the time most of the world were just kind of discovering the wheel and algebra, we already went, got out of Egypt, went to Israel — the first temple, second temple — which are really symbols, representations. Forget about the rocks and the stones and the wood and all that. They were symbols of a level of unity and brotherly love. That's what it was. And that's why they broke. You read about it, right? Second temple destroyed because of unfounded hatred. They were unable to hold on to that, for a reason. And then they got dispersed among the nations. For what? For exactly this time, where all of humanity catches up and is now ready to do something. Seth • 31:42 Let me jump back to my story then. So this role of the Jews — thank you — the role of the Jews there as this people who reached this degree, which is symbolized by the temples. They reached this adhesion with the creator. They reached this unity amongst them. It was, like — it's stupid to say like a Coachella, Lollapalooza kind of thing, three times — it's not the right; it's more Woodstocky, but not even that. Three times a year when everyone would make a pilgrimage to the temple, and there'd be music and barbecues and everyone's opening their houses. I get the chills even thinking — like, what an incredible people, coming from every direction, and all the foods together and everyone going to the temple. And so Israel reached this, and then through the subsequent exile after the destruction of the second temple, and also the ten lost tribes, the Jews now are dispersed among all the nations. So that pinnacle that we reached as a nation, as a people, which is why Jews have this weird ability — it doesn't make any sense. You look at the Nobel Prizes, you look at every industry, it just makes no friggin' sense. I heard Joe Rogan; they thought there were billions of Jews — like there must be a billion Jews. What? You serious? Like, you don't even know. It doesn't make any sense at all. And now our role is not just for ourselves, but it's to bring all of humanity to this brotherhood. And what Leo and I — Spiegler and I — have discovered through all of these texts (it's not our own ideas, by the way) is that antisemitism will not stop until Jews deliver to humanity a method for uniting and loving each other. And it doesn't matter what period of time — it'll just keep transforming. And it's not to say that someone doesn't rise to kill you, you have to kill him first. Or that we have to manage the media war as well, and we have to have incredible movies that tell incredible stories and songs — because those things can change a person's heart faster than a lecture or a war. But until we tell that story, until we help people feel that we're all in this together, we're all brothers, and love has to rule — we don't see, history doesn't show us, that antisemitism will ever end. Leo • 34:38 And yet the natural Jewish inclination, certainly over the last hundred years, has been to hide, has been to assimilate. That's a human inclination. Lio • 34:57 You know, I want — let me just— Leo • 35:03 But no one's had a better lesson of what an enormous failure taking that position is than the Jews. There was one Yom Kippur a couple of years ago when my dad sat down next to me at Kol Nidre, and he said, we're about to have a massive row. And I was like, okay, what have I done? I'd written a piece in one of the papers, in the Telegraph, which had come out that morning, which was basically saying that my parents' generation had let us down — had committed the greatest crime they could have done, which is that they didn't learn the most important singular lesson from the Holocaust, which was that hiding, assimilating, and failing to stand up and speak out does the exact opposite of what you hope in the end. And that our generation had a responsibility to our children to not commit the same crimes as our parents. And I'd forgotten that this had come out. I'd written it a few days earlier and it came out. And he sat down and he said, we're going to have a massive row. I said, why? He said, everyone in shul right now is looking at me thinking that you wrote that piece about me. And I was like, okay, let me be clear. Firstly, if we spend the next two hours having a row, it's going to be better than Kol Nidre, so I'm okay with that. But secondly, I was not writing specifically about you. It was more of a generational thing. But my point still holds. Yes, of course, it is a natural human inclination to hide, to not want to stand out from the crowd. I agree with that. But Jews should know better, in my opinion. And the smartest antisemitic tropes are the self-fulfilling ones. Like, we control the media — therefore we all go, better not stand out and make any big decisions that anyone points at Jews and says it was down to them. The truth is the exact opposite. The truth is we have to own it. We have to own the fact that, although we're only 0.2% of the world's population, we have an enormous, overinflated impact, as Seth said. And I think until we're willing to own that and effectively take on the antisemites who want to use those tropes — own those conversations — I don't think we're ever going to get to the point, as Seth says, where we're able to have that kind of an impact. Lio • 37:28 100%. I'm so happy you said it. Because, again, as a media guy, and as someone who's wearing glasses, I can give you the — we often use this analogy. You remember those pictures from the '90s, those stereograms, that you have to kind of soften your gaze and suddenly you see like a 3D dog or something? But if you only have one eye, you're screwed. You can't see it. You need two eyes. You need to have the sense of depth. So the analogy is that Jews, who went through this accelerated development process, we acquired that connection that Seth was talking about — that "love your friend as yourself," that "this love will cover all crimes," holding the two opposites and rising above them. Those are not moralistic things. Those are really the physics of human connection. This is something way deeper. This is touching on really deep laws of nature, like physics of nature. And not ethics. Yeah, not morals, not ethics. And when you do it, what happens is something opens up. You start to see the system in everything — the systemic nature of everything. You see it. It's a little bit like taking mushrooms and seeing that interconnectedness of all living things and plants and all that. When you connect, you begin to see the same thing between humans on such a deep level. And Jews had it. We had it at the first temple. Then we lost some of that, second temple. And remnants of that stayed with Jews. And they're also buried, you could say, in the text. There's a reason why we're— Seth • 39:02 Here's a good one from Baal HaSulam. Lio • 39:05 Hold on, before you read the text, I'll just finish the analogy. So we're surrounded by these remnants. And we naturally, intuitively approach the world like a two-eyed person looking at this three-dimensional image. And everybody else has one eye. They're half blind to what's going on. There's a reason why Jews find themselves in those intersections of media and money and influence and thought leadership and negotiations. We're always in that, creating that, because we can see that. And it's natural. Leo • 39:40 Half blind — you're not saying consciously. Lio • 39:45 Oh yeah, you do it intuitively. Leo • 39:47 No, no. The people I'm saying — you talk about other people not having that vision. Lio • 39:52 Oh yeah, yeah. Most of them don't know. They won't be able to explain to you why I hate a Jew. All they know is that somehow their good fate depends on the Jew doing something, and the Jew is not doing it, so I hate him. So it's race, it's religion, it's Zionism. Just give me a story that I can— Leo • 40:11 I understand that, but at what point does it just become historical echoing? As in, at what point does it simply become, well, we live in an advanced society where things should work, by all accounts. Things don't work, and therefore I need to find blame to apportion. Historically, Jews have been blamed, therefore I'll blame the Jews. Lio • 40:35 I'll tell you more than that. The whole system is rigged against you, okay? Because it needs you. The system of nature needs the Jew to act its function. It's just like your body needs hormones when you hit puberty to go through the body and activate, flip all those switches so you can become an adult, right? Humanity needs it. We're at that point where humanity needs the Jews to lead that change. And we're not doing it. Because we forgot. And the world doesn't know. So everybody's just angry about everybody. And Jews are trying to just justify themselves. And it's just, no, no, we're just like you. And it doesn't work. None of it works. Because we're not hitting that one thing. You had a quote, Seth? Leo • 41:19 Well, sorry, just on that point. It could be — the depressing version of that, and I'm not saying that's not a depressing version, but it's a depressing version with hope. The depressing version of it is more that the world requires the Jew to act as the scapegoat. Not that for the world to function, for society to function — and one could argue that historically there is enough historical proof of this to show — that actually the cycle requires a scapegoat, requires an entity to blame. And it is, and always will be, the Jew. Lio • 41:56 To some extent, you're absolutely right. In other words — and we say it — it's like you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, right? If you don't do what you need to do, you become the scapegoat. Antisemitism. People pin everything on you. You're being persecuted until the system releases enough tension, so to speak. And it resumes; it regains a sense of equilibrium for a while. A decade, two, three, four. And then it happens again, and it reaches a crescendo. And the crescendo is usually violent. And then a release. However, it will never stop, because the system doesn't have anyone else to do it. So it will never let the people really destroy the Jews. That's the personal hell we're in. They won't be able to destroy the Jews, and yet, if you don't do what you do, you'll always be persecuted and be blamed for and beaten, and all that. Because you need to do something. The system needs someone to do it. And that someone just happens to be this group called the Jews. It's not like they were Jews and then they were pinned with that responsibility. They became that because the system needs that. Look at every network. The internet needs routers. It needs ISPs, electrical grid, airports, human body. That's how systems work. Seth, quote? Seth • 43:29 Yeah. So Hamas is in bad shape. Hezbollah is in bad shape. Iran is not in great shape. Muslim Brotherhood — I don't know. But let's say — how many people died on October 7th? Lio • 43:41 1,500, 1,800. Seth • 43:47 1,500-plus, some additional soldiers in the war. So say there was a cost, right? There was some heavenly calculation: you're going to get 1,500, but you're going to be able to wipe out Hamas, Hezbollah, and stick it to Iran. Would — what about 100? Maybe if you pay with 100 lives, it's not enough. Maybe 800 is not enough. There's a certain level, and then it happens. The point is that this whole thing about loving the other and all these things — it's not ethics in any way. It's that we're hastening the inevitable. For example, imagine all of the things that happen — because look at Japan, for example. Look at the United States and Japan, or look at the United States and Germany. Maybe that's not the best relationship right now, but let's say United States and Japan. At one time it was World War II. But if you fast forward through all of the discernments, you become friends, you become great trade partners. So the idea is, how do you fast-forward through all of those interchanges without having to drop nukes on each other? How do you pass all of the energy back and forth without having it to manifest on our flesh? That's what the Kabbalists, what we understand that they're talking about when they talk about loving the other. It's not just some ethical, hippie kind of thing. It's literally — what did? Yeah, it's literally like, I feel opposite from you, but we're going to love on top of that. And then what happens is, now you get United States and Japanese relations in 2026 versus the '40s. Okay, so here's a quote by the incredible Kabbalist Baal HaSulam: When humankind achieves its goal by bringing them to a degree of complete love of others, all the bodies in the world will unite into a single body and a single heart. Only then will all the happiness intended for humanity become revealed in all its glory. Sounds absolutely utopian and ridiculous, but it's the goal that the Jews need to — this is the pinnacle of what we're supposed to do. Lio • 46:15 And just to make it very, very simple — yes, there is a whole — as Seth said, there's a method. People wrote about it. It's a lifetime of engagement that you can get into. That's not the point. The point is, first of all, to acknowledge that something is not working right in what we're doing. Running away doesn't work. Standing up proud, just in and of itself, is not enough. Suing everybody is not going to do it. Conducting a media war, a narrative against narrative— Seth • 46:47 But we may have to do all those things also. Lio • 46:48 Yeah, you may have to. But it won't change the fact, because the system still needs you to do something. And you can call it a law of the system. You can call it a commandment of the creator. It doesn't matter what you call it, really. The fact is that you live in a closed system with forces. You can say, oh, it comes from the Almighty, or it comes from gravity — it doesn't matter. There are laws, right? And that's what we're trying to expose here: that there's something where we start to relate to each other with this new understanding. I'm in a closed system. There's a force that's trying to raise us out of where we are. We need to continue on our evolution, but it has to happen consciously. You can't evolve human will involuntarily. We have to want to. We have to be part of it. You know what I mean? Inanimate, vegetative, animals — that was all sort of happening by itself. Now you come to the human; you need to participate in this. That's this big adventure that we're trying to invite people to — to start seeing it as such. That this pressure is coming for a reason. It's not something to fight, or to only fight directly, but it's something to start asking, why is it coming? And how do I need to recalibrate myself? And even the sad, ironic, mostly sad thing is that Seth and I were talking about it years ago. We started this podcast in 2020. And we're saying — you're sad that the world didn't listen to us? Well, not to us. To some wise Jews that we were trying to be their shofar. Every big calamity, every pogrom, every exile always happened on the heels of what? On the heels of Jews not being able to maintain that unity above everything. That law. When you break it, when you move out of it, when you try to marry out of this, so to speak — again, not culturally, not the religious part of it — when you move away from that, when you decide to, I just want to be like everyone, I'm going to use this intuitive view of the system that I have, not even knowing how I got it or why I deserve it, to satisfy my egoistic needs, rather than, I'm going to show how to rise above egoistic needs to fulfill this unique connection that we need to show here. When we do it — pogroms, hell, everyone. Jews have been expelled 800 times from places. That should give you a picture of what happens before that. There's always something. The first temple — Jews were killing each other, man. We were destroying ourselves. October 6th, we were at each other's throats in Israel. Leo • 49:46 I agree. So you put our own unity as the first step in the necessary. And I would argue that we have never been more fractured and disparate as a people than we are even now. Lio 100%! Leo I mean, October 7th didn't bring us together. Lio No, it did not. Leo Thank you, first of all, for saying this. I'm telling you what I see and what I believe. I certainly see it in the UK. I certainly see it in the US. It's incredibly depressing. Lio • 50:22 Yeah. But this is not a depressing show. We want to talk about the potential of what can be done. Seth • 50:28 Because, again, the good news is — they tell you in school, they told us in school, like, do your work, don't drink and smoke. But the guys who didn't do their work and drank and smoked the best became the rock stars, or whatever, right? It's always the — if we just do our thing the best, despite all of — it always happens. For example, we look at how gay people are part of the world now. There's not even, I mean, in New York where I live in the States, it's no issue. Everybody knows gay people. Everybody works with gay people. Not an issue at all. Black culture — every white kid is into black culture and hip-hop culture, right? So, I think you said it also: if we just do our thing — I'm probably — all the rap guys and all the other guys, they'd be happy. You know, they always talk about their Jewish lawyers and their Jewish managers and everything, right? I think the world would be happy when it happens. If we create this party for everybody, we create this unity, this love. I think people would, even though they're on us the whole way there — once it happens. Leo • 51:55 Yeah, well, the gay community and the black community is — I think is two great examples, because the turning point for both was when they turned the party they were throwing into one that everyone else wanted to go to. It's really, really simple to me. I remember growing up in the northeast of England, and the terrible language my dad and his father, my grandfather, would use — not out of hate speech, just because it was inherent in the way they would describe someone who was gay or someone who was black or from India or Pakistan. And the turning point was my generation sitting at the Shabbat table and saying, you can't say that. That's unacceptable. They didn't learn. They were told by the younger generation. And we were saying it because a pride march looked like the best party in town. And the clubs which the black guys went to looked like the best clubs in town. So that piece — celebrating our culture, making it a party that everyone else wants to go to — I'm totally with you on that. I'm totally with you on that. Lio • 52:58 So what story — how do you imagine this story kind of going on? Because there's a lot of, as you mentioned earlier, there's never a shortage, to put it this way, of self-hating Jews and Jews who, again, their survival instinct makes them really rise against — oh, people are going to be virtuous, we're going to be the best virtuous there is, right? People are going to protest against killing, we're going to be the best protesters against killing. It doesn't matter what the story is, what's happening. So there's that on one hand. There's a great deal of ignorance on the other hand. This generation cannot be bothered with facts or research. I don't know if you saw that piece about the guy interviewing in New York, the girl about the Iran war. It's like, everybody's talking about the Strait of Hormuz. I saw it. But what about the gays of Hormuz? She's like, yeah, the gays. It was great. And that was such a — okay, that's part of the problem. It's not the only problem. So the question is, how do you — maybe, again, put on your media hat now, and let's brainstorm a little bit. How do you bring this story to people? Because it's a nuanced story. It's not simply, hey, Jewish pride, we're Jews, we're here, get used to it. No, it's not just that. It's rather, hey, let's take a look at ourselves. There's this amazing adventure to be had that we're missing out on by running around and trying to be not Jews, or the most anti-Jews, or whatever, or hiding. You're missing out. And there's a huge story here. There's this opportunity to rise to a higher dimension in reality. It's like — the first time, I don't know, it probably wasn't Edison, but someone like Edison or Tesla and one of the other guys at the time, right? The first time they took, like, the plus and the minus, and they put them in a coil, and the resistance allowed these negatives to produce light. Right? Imagine that. That's the first time. That was like, oh shit, that happened. So imagine people realizing, finding out, that when you take two people with opposing views and you actually put them together, and they don't kill each other, but they actually make efforts to come out and rise above it — suddenly you reveal something that doesn't exist. Upper light. Upper light. Our sages call it upper light. This is a real physical experience. Well, it's emotional, but it opens up a whole dimension. And everybody can join that party. How do we tell that story? How do we bring the people, so it doesn't sound like some crazy religious mumbo-jumbo or some mystical shit? There is that — we need help with that. Leo • 56:02 I hear you. I would say one thing. I would like to believe that the fact that there are Jews who stand against Jews is not something new. It's always been there in history. Never has it been amplified to the extent that it is today through social media and various other methods. So at times, I want to believe that it is not as great a problem as at times I feel it is. I think the problem is this kind of unholy alliance between Jews who, in another era, would be comfortable debating but not necessarily taking such an anti-stance, and the left-wing progressive movement, which pushes those Jews into a more extreme position than I think maybe — I would like to think that maybe they themselves are not even comfortable being in. It's almost like they can't separate their worldview from who they are. But I also believe very strongly — and I think this is a lesson that I see all the time in the content industry — you have to meet people where they live. In the simplest terms, you can't create a YouTube show and put it on Netflix and expect fans of YouTube to go and find it. If you want to make a YouTube show, you put it on YouTube, and then you direct people to find it. So you have to speak in the language that they understand, and you have to go to them. You can't expect them to come to you. So when I think about the types of stories we should be telling and the manner in which we tell them, this idea of a lack of education, as in factual education, is to me a bit of — because facts are largely, sadly, irrelevant. There are some fantastic commentators out there who rely solely on facts. Natasha Hausdorff, Jonathan Sacerdoti, etc. They have kind of built their own edifice upon the fact that truth will always out. I sat on panels with them. Lio He was on our show, Sacerdoti. He's fantastic. Amazing. Leo Amazing. Amazing thinker. But I think he's wrong, in the fact that — truth is important generationally. It's important that we always lay down a marker so that one can't look back historically and say, well, that was true because no one countered it. So it's important from that respect. But in terms of influencing and changing opinion, the facts are largely irrelevant, because we only view the facts through the lens of our predisposed views. You read something in The Guardian, you've already decided it's bullshit before you've actually read it. You read something — and the opposite side reads something in the Telegraph — you've already decided. So it is about storytelling. It is about emotional connection. Everything has to flow from that point forward. It's about finding Trojan horses. It's about finding ways to tell a story without being explicit. I was about to use the example of our Nova film, which I said 45 minutes ago failed, so it would be a bad example to use. But the theory behind it, I think, was correct. There was a reason and a rationale why that film started at 6 a.m. on October 7th and ended at 2 p.m. on October 7th. It didn't tell the story of how we got there, and it didn't tell the story of the hostages and where we ended up. It literally told an eight-hour narrative. The reason being was because we wanted people to watch it and go, that could be Coachella, that could be Glastonbury, that could be anywhere other than Israel. There was a purpose to it. There was a reason why we didn't include anything really that explicit in terms of the violence, sexual or otherwise. There was a reason why it didn't hit you over the head like the 47 minutes of horrific uncut footage that was shown to people. There was a reason why I said I would only sell it to the BBC and to no one else — because the BBC is still the most trusted brand for factual content in the world. All of that was supposed to connect you emotionally. It was not about the facts on the day. It was about emotion. It didn't work, but I still believe in the theory of it. So when we talk about the kind of content we should be producing, I think it all has to be through that lens of: how do we connect emotionally with people? Your point — it is about exciting them. It is about making them want to join the party. It is about feeling a love and an excitement to be part of something. But if we're going to also use the counter to that, which is a fear of something else, then we should again lean into the emotion, not the facts. Seth • 01:00:41 What happens for people like us is that, you know, you get to a point where, even if you have food and sex and money and all these things, there's an emptiness that doesn't go away. And that causes people like us to look for bigger truths, to look for something. And probably that feeling is in every human being, maybe from a child — why am I alive? But there's nowhere to get answers for those things for almost anybody. And probably, as adults, it's too easy, especially with scrolling and all of the things that are available to us, and food and everything else, to dull that question. But when that question — and I think that's also why we're in such a hard business — because someone who actually will allow that question to burn inside, it's a very uncomfortable question. It's very difficult to deal with. It's very difficult to find an answer. But when someone is holding on to that by their teeth, then they're willing to go through anything to hear an answer. So when you're connecting it — I agree with you that it has to be something emotional. And we see how the whole world believed the bullshit narrative because it was a great story. This desire in people that they can't be satisfied — probably technology will just hasten that, right? Because when your Optimus will do everything you want — your Optimus robot will do everything you want for you, and everyone's got one for 200 bucks a month — imagine the emptiness at that point that people will feel. And imagine what kind of fulfillment, true fulfillment, they will want at that point. Lio • 01:02:52 Not just fulfillment. It will even accelerate that process of asking, wait, what is my place in all of this? If I can — if I'm found redundant, if the robot can do anything I do and better — what is the one thing that only I can do? And that is where people are willing to ask the deeper questions and willing to acknowledge that there is something here more than just the machines. Seth Otherwise, again, that comes to the emotional connection between all of us. Lio • 01:03:29 What we're saying, Leo, is that there's a — maybe, I don't know if people are looking for spirituality, but there's like a spiritual adventure, or maybe a supernatural adventure, whatever you want to call it — an opportunity to go somewhere no one has ever gone before, sort of thing. It's not, as Seth said, more food, more sex, more family, more money, more honor, more power and control. All that stuff is fine. It's almost like we're already at the point where we're recycling our own shit to try to get some nourishment from it. You know what I mean? So yes, there's a spark of creativity here and there, but there's something beyond. And I hate to — on the day, today, yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel — and I hate to quote Hitler on that, but there is a line that he said. And we talk about it in the show, episode two of our show, it's called "Love Letters from an Antisemite," because the antisemites themselves often — I don't know if consciously, subconsciously — some divine power reaches in and activates the puppet, that they write — they tell us, like, there's some amazing — you'll hear it, you'll be like, what? Anyway. So Hitler wrote — and again, forgive me, everybody, for quoting Hitler — he said, "In nature, there is no mercy for the weak in the struggle for existence." That's one thing he wrote. But he said also, "Only the audacity of the Jews could demand that men overcome nature." And it's so prophetic and beautiful, because that is the only thing that Jews are designed for. Jew, from the word unity. By nature, we cannot unite. We are opposite desires, each fighting for our fulfillment. But Jew is the one who can demand that supernatural connection between people. Just like what happens sometimes around the Shabbat table, where everybody sits down and they're like, I don't care who you sleep with. I don't care how you make your money. I just want to be with you, right? That thing. I want to get people excited about that thing, and the potential, and how much we have no clue about what's written in all those holy texts that we call them — we're just like, oh, it's some religious mumbo-jumbo. No, no. There's an internal quality that we're missing out on, big time. So what do you say if you had all — just listening to you — what's the one thing you wanted to start doing? Leo • 01:06:06 Jesus. Wow. Can you make that happen? Can you make it happen that I can speak to them all? Lio • 01:06:16 Yeah, absolutely. This podcast, as we speak, it's going viral, and everybody's listening to it. It's probably one of the most viral podcasts out there right now. Leo • 01:06:24 So choose your words wisely. Jeez, I really should now. Yeah, my moment on the mountain. I'd say: stop shrinking. We spent far too long trying to make ourselves smaller, quieter, less visible, less controversial — and it hasn't worked. If you don't learn something from history, then you're a fool. So be proud, be informed, and most importantly, teach your children and give them the lessons that they need so that they can pass it on to theirs. And I guess, to the point we were just discussing around disunity — understand that actually disagreement is not only fine, but it's an inherent part of being Jewish. But abandoning your Judaism because of disagreement — that's where the line is that you can't cross. That would be my message. Seth • 01:07:32 Of such a warm kind. I am sure you're fierce also in battle, but you have a great, warm — you project a beautiful energy. I'm very happy that you made some time for us today. And I hope we get a chance in the future to continue the conversation. Leo • 01:07:53 No, genuinely, this has been really awesome and fascinating. And I would love to continue the conversation. We should definitely do that. Lio • 01:08:04 Amazing. Can I trouble you to read a quote for us from the sources? Leo Of course. Lio Okay. I was debating between two. It's on the longer side, but I think you can master it. It's by Baal HaSulam. Seth also read a quote from earlier. And it's from the introduction to the Book of Zohar, which he wrote after the Holocaust, when he sort of gave up on trying to go and warn the Jews. He went to Poland to try to warn them. They excommunicated him, and then they all died. And he talked to Ben-Gurion. He talked to everyone, but nobody listened, because we were not ready. Maybe now we're ready. So he wrote this after. When you read it, when he writes about the relics — the relics, the survivors from the Holocaust — so it's kind of apropos as far as the timing. Seth • 01:08:49 Baal HaSulam — he was that Kabbalist I read earlier. Huge, huge. Like to have, the contemporary of Rav Kook. Leo • 01:08:59 Now it is upon us, relics, to correct that dreadful wrong. Each of us remainders should take upon himself, heart and soul, to henceforth intensify the internality of the Torah and give it its rightful place according to its merit over the externality of the Torah. Then each and every one of us will be rewarded with intensifying his own internality — meaning the Israel within him, which is the needs of the soul — over his own externality, which is the nations of the world within him, being the needs of the body. And that force will come to the whole of Israel, until the nations of the world within us recognize and acknowledge the merit of the great sages of Israel over them, and will listen to them and obey them. And the internality of the nations of the world — the righteous of the nations of the world — will overpower and submit their externality, who are the destructors. The internality of the world, too, who are Israel, will rise in all their merit and virtue over the externality of the world, who are the nations. Then all the nations of the world will recognize and acknowledge Israel's merit over them, and they will follow the words of Isaiah: "And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the land of the Creator." Lio • 01:10:18 Leo Perlman, thank you so much for being here, for being on TheJewFunction. Leo • 01:10:26 Thank you, Lio and Seth. I really appreciate it. Genuinely do. It's been fascinating. Thanks, guys. Lio • 01:10:32 My pleasure. It was all ours. For everyone else, please check out that first season. Like, subscribe, leave a comment — it helps. And share this. More people need to hear it, especially Jews, but not only. We believe there's a great adventure that awaits us. So grow this community. Take care, everyone. See you next time.