Hey friends, welcome to this unique Theology Round episode.

This is sort of outside of our normal schedule.

I wanted to record an episode with my friend,

Dr. Austin Nuppy, who is an expert in the Middle East, in terrorism, and all the things going

on right now in the Middle East.

I know a lot of people are thinking through this and are maybe confused at what's going

on, so I wanted Austin to come in and talk to us

about what is going on between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran and all the things that

just keep escalating. So Dr. Austin Nuppi is an assistant professor of political science at Utah State University.

Prior to Utah, prior to his position at Utah State, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the John Sloan

Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. He

received his PhD in political science from the Ohio State University in

2019 and his research interests include civilian survival during wartime,

Middle East politics and the role of religion and international politics.

His first book is titled, Surviving the Islamic State, Contention, Cooperation and Neutrality in wartime Iraq, published in 2024.

So we talk about all things related to the current conflict in the Middle East. I found his

perspective to be incredibly wise and fair and balanced and well researched. The guy

knows so much about the Middle East, much more than I do or I suspect many of you do.

So please welcome back to the show,

the one and only, this is outside of our normal schedule and I'm having you on just because

Gosh just so much going on in the Middle East and it's hard to know with all the various news sources which

ones to trust what's going on how much is propaganda and really just what do we

...