 Good day, May 40 here. I'm listening to Misha Saw's interview with Alexander McCarver, it's author of the Napoleonic Wars to be speaking to you today. So you jumped on straight away a few moments ago and and you know the way I introduced myself to you was hey I was born in Tbilisi, why don't we chat and you're like so tell me about yourself when we started to kick off Misha is a thoughtful essayist and podcaster based in Sydney but he's originally from Tbilisi, he's Jewish and here he's interviewing a historian, he's just published a book on Napoleon. So why don't we just press record and maybe we can capture some of that energy. So I think there is an affinity you know like it is probably unusual to meet Georgians in diaspora, broadly speaking, and so so like frankly you know I think there is a personal layer to this conversation, I know it's also very late for you. So right now I'm at Custom House, so by Circular Key and Sydney Harbour starting to get ready for Chrissy, it's what they call Christmas here, Chrissy in the Central Business District. It's Circular Key where you catch the wars and the Sydney Opera House is just that way. What better time to listen to a podcast about Napoleon, eh? I finished a lecture at 8 p.m. where you are, so I appreciate you making the time and I'm really excited to have this conversation. Oh it's my pleasure, I was delighted when you sent me an email because I'm always on the lookout for a fellow Georgian and especially when he told me you're in Australia. I was particularly excited. It's a privilege and an honor to be on your podcast and look forward to really talking to you about culture history and there is a lot of things to discuss. So I read which I really enjoyed and I've got questions on that but I actually want to start with Georgia. Senator, I know you've written about Georgia as well and I guess this is probably a follow-up conversation I recently, about a year or two ago, I had two new Georgians, they're not ethnic Georgians living in Georgia, a linguist and a historian come on and we spoke, we had a fantastic conversation about Georgia and I felt a little bit guilty because they weren't ethnic Georgians if I'm honest with you. I need to have an Azzar or Izzar or Svili come on and actually bring one. So I feel this is a redemptive moment in having you on. So I guess my first question is about Georgia. I've always kind of baffled that this unique culture, this country with this totally unique language, managed frankly to survive kind of nestled amongst empires, Russian empire, the Ottoman empire, the Persians. How did this happen? A very broad question. How did this happen? The survival I guess, right? Yeah, how do we end up here with this little particular country nestled amongst empires after thousands of years of giant imperial ambitions around it? Partly, I mean it's a complex question, requiring kind of a long discussion, but some of it lays in the fact that having this unique identity, unique language, unique culture in Surah. So a question in the chat. Do I miss America? No, because I plan to be back in late January. If I was moving here permanently, I'd probably have some regrets and like, yeah, bro, what am I doing? Like, how can I leave the land of the free, the home of the brave? Bro, did you cover up the FTX scam and your thoughts on cryptocurrency in general? I needed an economic analysis on that. Well, I went deep on crypto about two years ago and I said it doesn't meet any legitimate needs. I think crypto's a scam. It's unnecessary. It's something that will be used by criminals and then government's going to crack down on it. So I came hard against crypto two years ago. I first did some analysis, spent a few hours reading up on it and I just didn't see how crypto played a legitimate role. I played around in crypto for like two months. I put $500 in. I took like a 15% profit and then got out and never went back. So yeah, I think crypto's bogus. It's primary purpose is for criminals and money laundering. Crypto is a scam, but all the menosphere clowns push it. Yeah, all the their clowns, like the menosphere, like any insular identity often attracts people who get increasingly disconnected from wider society and they are less functional because of it. And being surrounded by what kind of we can say hostile powers force Georgians to be. Okay, so Georgian identity sounds a lot like Jewish identity being surrounded by hostile powers and defining themselves as against those hostile powers. To decree inward looking. But wait, isn't that the human condition? Like we all face hostile powers. Like is there any people or country on earth that has no enemies or faces, you know, no existential threat? I don't think so. So the whole primary basis of any group identity is protecting yourself against the other. It threatens your existence. And you would you see, especially in the wake of the collapse of the United Georgia Kingdom in the 15th century, we see Georgians kind of defining themselves vis-à-vis others. So if you are dealing with, let's say, is there any any group that doesn't define themselves primarily against others? Is there any group that just primarily defines themselves on the basis of what's wonderful about their group? Like in theory, yes. And the propagandists for various groups would say yes. But in practicality, seems like pretty much everybody primarily defines themselves as opposed to others, particularly those who most threaten them. We don't define ourselves as opposed to others on the other side of the world. We define ourselves as opposed to others who threaten us. Being Muslim Ottoman Turks, Muslim Persians, right? What does it mean? And I think that the more severe the threat to the existence and culture of your own group, the more intense your antipathy will be to these outgroups. Exceed to Georgian. And one of the books that I'm working on is about Georgian experience in the wider Islamic world. And you see in writings of the Italian travelers, Spanish diplomats, Venetian reports, you see that Georgians define themselves by what they are not in many respects. So they are not Muslims. So religious identity was historically very strong, especially medieval and early modern Georgia. There is a fascinating passage in the other Delevales great Italian missionaries journal who visited Iran. And as he was traveling, he and his wife were stopped on the road and he saw this group of Georgians passing by and one of the Georgians noticed that Delevales wife had a cross. And so they stopped and kind of pointed at the cross and said, are you a Christian? Right in Georgian they were saying are you a Christian? And she said, yes, yes. And when they said Delevales, when they recorded they started shouting, oh, she's Georgian, she's Georgian, even though his wife was not Georgian. So that kind of struck me that to a degree right until really modern times religious identity was very powerful. They went to the core of Georgia. And that is a very kind of complicated issue and painful issue and kind of difficult issue because we know that southwestern parts of Georgia, historic parts of Georgia came under the Ottoman rule back in 16. So a lot of religious identity is just a cover for ethnic identity. So the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, for example, is a more socially correct expression of in-group racial identity. So people would often further phrase their identity in terms of religion rather than race, even though it's race that's the bottom line. In the late 15th or 16th century, in the States, so until part of them until 20th century, quite a few regions are still part of Turkey and the local population, of course, converted to Islam. And so I think to nowadays, I think one of the challenges that Georgian state faces is that when we talk about nationalism, nationalism in Georgia is usually understood in the ethnic dimension. Of course, nationalism is primarily ethnic. Man, I had everything going here and then they threw something at me. Okay, it's so complicated doing all this live streaming. Bye bye for now.