The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 85 ｜ The Science Behind Why People Love Biden & Hate Trump ｜ Gad Saad ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 Have you found yourself saying, is it just me?

00:00:05.400 Wait, we're all supposed to say what now?

00:00:08.220 What's that word mean?

00:00:11.040 Wait, hold it.

00:00:12.960 We're all supposed to accept that men can get pregnant now? 0.99

00:00:18.340 And you feel alone?

00:00:20.980 I know I've had that experience a lot of times.

00:00:25.520 And that's what we're going to talk about today. 0.93

00:00:28.460 We're going to talk about the parasitic mind, this parasite that has been intentionally injected into us and whether or not the West will stand or not. 0.93

00:00:40.420 And we are becoming dangerously close to losing what made the West the West and indeed losing the freedoms of the West.

00:00:52.140 The guest I have for you today is one of my favorite people.

00:00:56.000 I love the way he thinks.

00:00:57.860 His name is Gad Saad.

00:01:00.200 He's an evolutionary behavioral scientist.

00:01:03.300 He's also the host of the sad truth.

00:01:05.740 That's with two A's.

00:01:06.860 And the author of the new book, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

00:01:13.500 He is a guy who, and he'll explain this, is a guy really that, a behavioral scientist, but he is a professor of marketing.

00:01:26.060 So how does our animalistic side, the root of who we all are, affect our choices?

00:01:38.280 And how has that been used against us?

00:01:41.400 And what can we do to deprogram and come back to a place to where the truth actually matters?

00:01:49.000 It's fascinating and perhaps someday a historic conversation with Gad Saad.

00:02:11.260 Gadfather, how are you?

00:02:12.200 How are you, sir?

00:02:14.040 So good to be back.

00:02:15.160 Yeah.

00:02:15.480 Good.

00:02:15.820 Good to talk to you again.

00:02:17.520 Thank you.

00:02:18.100 Listen, before we start, last time you shook me to the bones because you taught the professor of marketing something, which is always don't say my forthcoming book, but say the parasitic mind.

00:02:31.220 Right?

00:02:31.520 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:32.840 Let me show you who's the marketing guru.

00:02:40.800 Edible cookies.

00:02:42.840 That's fantastic.

00:02:45.040 And the drink.

00:02:46.760 And the book in the background.

00:02:50.360 Who's the marketing guru now, son?

00:02:52.640 So, Gad, I want to talk to you because you are a marketing guy that's an evolutionary biologist.

00:03:01.740 So, you look at marketing and why it works and why things sell, why things are accepted, right?

00:03:11.440 Can you explain that just a little bit?

00:03:12.760 I'm an evolutionary psychologist, not evolutionary biologist.

00:03:15.120 I apply to evolutionary biology.

00:03:16.920 Yeah.

00:03:17.260 Go ahead.

00:03:17.520 Okay.

00:03:18.060 So, can you explain that?

00:03:19.580 What does that job entail usually?

00:03:23.640 So, most people who study consumer behavior scientifically don't look at the biological underpinnings that drive our consumatory nature.

00:03:33.560 So, they assume that everything is due to socialization, to our parents, to advertising, to our peers.

00:03:39.800 Now, all these things are, of course, important in shaping our consumption.

00:03:44.520 But, of course, our biology also affects our consumption.

00:03:47.020 Why we prefer fatty foods to celery.

00:03:50.300 Why men are more likely to consume hardcore pornography than women.

00:03:54.780 Why women are more likely to consume romance novels.

00:03:57.640 A lot of the things that we do as consumers is really a vestige of our evolutionary history.

00:04:02.360 And so, what I do is I look at these evolutionary underpinnings and I study them in a modern arena.

00:04:07.660 So, there have been several people that have done this and, in my opinion, they use their power for evil as opposed to good.

00:04:18.180 Bernays is one of those guys that I think has, I mean, he changed everything.

00:04:26.220 Everything.

00:04:27.700 We eat breakfast, you know, eggs, bacon, and toast because of him.

00:04:31.940 When you are looking at this, would you use this to help marketers market?

00:04:43.520 Is that?

00:04:44.700 Right.

00:04:45.380 So, it's a good question.

00:04:46.780 Look, studying physics can land us on the moon, but studying physics can also result in us dropping bombs on Japan, right? 0.97

00:04:57.100 Correct, yeah.

00:04:57.600 So, it's just a tool which can be channeled either for good or evil.

00:05:02.960 So, the study of marketing is really the study of persuasion.

00:05:06.560 So, I could use marketing techniques to hopefully convince you to not lead a sedentary lifestyle, or I could use marketing to sell you BS.

00:05:15.480 In my case, I'm not really so much interested in the application of the work more than actually understanding what makes people tick.

00:05:24.260 The way that subsequently other people use it, it's for them to decide.

00:05:28.780 So, I wanted to set this up because we are in a place now where people who study behavioral science and study marketing have really shaped many things that are going on right now.

00:05:49.820 They are actively, Cass Sunstein is one of them, actively engaged in moving us toward an illusion of freedom of choice or free will.

00:06:05.120 Would you agree with that?

00:06:07.000 Yeah.

00:06:07.320 But by the way, Sunstein and his colleague, Richard Thaler, in their book, Nudge, Richard Thaler was my professor at Cornell.

00:06:14.540 He subsequently won the Nobel Prize, so I'm very familiar with their word.

00:06:17.160 Look, again, it's the same thing, right?

00:06:19.800 You can either use these behavioral principles for good or for evil, but you're right that in today's political realities, and given the fact that most people are cognitive misers, then they become very easy to manipulate, right?

00:06:33.940 Right. And especially now with social media, I mean, just the algorithms are smarter than the average bear, smarter than all of us, really.

00:06:45.000 And they know us better than us.

00:06:47.360 And all of the stuff that you research, a lot of that stuff is used to make those algorithms, correct?

00:06:53.480 Absolutely. So, let's look how, for example, we would use evolutionary theory to study political choices, right?

00:07:01.320 Okay.

00:07:01.560 So, I wrote an article, I think it was in 2003, a scientific article, where I argued that contrary to what we might think, when people choose a candidate, let's say a presidential candidate, they don't sit there and, you know, navigate through all of the issues.

00:07:17.940 Rather, they use simplifying heuristics to make a decision, who's taller, who looks more presidential, who has a more brawny face.

00:07:27.420 And the reason for that, again, is because most people are cognitive misers.

00:07:31.460 By the way, this is exactly what explains why so many people have a repulsion or what I call an aesthetic injury against Donald Trump.

00:07:39.320 It's not because they don't agree with his policies necessarily.

00:07:42.500 It's because he repulses them.

00:07:44.300 So, they use these emotional-based shortcuts to form an opinion, when in reality, they should be looking at, what do each of these two platforms represent, and who do I align with best?

00:07:55.720 They don't do that.

00:07:57.080 So, when you're looking at Joe Biden, what do people see?

00:08:04.100 He's a nice guy.

00:08:05.660 He is a sweet man.

00:08:07.940 He's going to bring back class to the presidential office.

00:08:11.640 He's not going to be as cantankerous and brazen as Donald Trump.

00:08:18.360 And I don't know if you and I have discussed this in the past.

00:08:21.420 Many of my, you know, good friends who are otherwise, you know, very sophisticated thinkers,

00:08:26.840 they wouldn't be able to enunciate to you a very specific policy that they disagree with Trump.

00:08:33.380 It's just that he hits them in the stomach. 0.98

00:08:35.820 He disgusts me. 0.93

00:08:37.140 Whereas Barack Obama, my God, he is so magisterial, right? 0.84

00:08:42.140 This is what I call, assume for a second, this is the cork of a wine bottle, okay?

00:08:46.380 There's an expression in Arabic that says, getting drunk at simply smelling the cork of the wine bottle.

00:08:52.560 I don't need to actually drink the wine.

00:08:54.760 I just get drunk on this.

00:08:56.040 That's what people are doing.

00:08:57.040 My God, he is so magisterial.

00:08:59.800 He's majestic.

00:09:00.660 He is tall.

00:09:01.360 He's lanky.

00:09:02.200 He has a radiant smile. 0.93

00:09:04.420 Trump, on the other hand, is vulgar. 0.96

00:09:06.460 He's brazen. 0.94

00:09:07.380 He's combative.

00:09:08.920 That's how people make decisions, which is quite regrettable, because you would think they would spend a lot more cognitive effort to make decisions, but they don't.

00:09:16.320 So, let me read something to you I found just the other day.

00:09:23.340 I think you'll find it really interesting, especially when you know who wrote it.

00:09:32.800 I found this the other day, and I think what we're going through right now couldn't be expressed any better than this.

00:09:42.860 At the beginning, they knew, the people who are taking our country apart and our Western way of life, at the beginning, they knew they could never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude by any name which implies violation of law.

00:10:01.120 They knew their people possessed as much moral sense, as much devotion to law and order, as much pride in and reverence for the history and government of their common country as any other civilized and patriotic people.

00:10:13.620 They knew they could make no advancement directly into the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments.

00:10:18.760 Accordingly, they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind.

00:10:24.440 They invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps through all the incidents to complete the destruction of the republic.

00:10:36.740 With the rebellion, thus sugar-coated, they have been drugging the public mind for their goals for more than 30 years.

00:10:47.520 And until at length, they have brought many good men and a willingness to take up now arms against the government.

00:10:56.060 Who said this?

00:10:57.160 Abraham Lincoln.

00:10:58.960 Okay, wow.

00:11:00.180 Quite a prescient fellow.

00:11:01.560 Yeah, and I think many people feel the same way.

00:11:08.700 And it's weird because I think each side feels that way about the other.

00:11:14.000 That somehow or another we've all been hypnotized.

00:11:16.420 But I contend that those who have now fallen in line with Marxism and the fact that America and the West is systematically racist and you're born a racist, all of this stuff.

00:11:35.900 I believe that's the insidious lie, but it seems to be working.

00:11:45.740 Can you tell me why it works?

00:11:49.900 Well, that's, I mean, in a sense, that's the, you're describing my book really well, The Parasitic Mind.

00:11:55.360 Is that the parasitic mind right behind you? 0.58

00:11:59.360 Wow. 0.96

00:12:01.820 Because, look, what I basically say in the parasitic mind is that in the same way that all sorts of animals can be parasitized by actual brain worms, you know, a mouse can be parasitized by Toxoplasma gondii, causing it to no longer be afraid of a cat, but rather being sexually attracted to the cat's urine.

00:12:21.040 Well, I argue that there are a set of idea pathogens that parasitize our minds, leading us to the abyss of infinite lunacy.

00:12:28.580 Now, where do these idea pathogens come from?

00:12:30.860 They all stem from, regrettably, I say because I'm a professor, they all stem from the university ecosystem. 0.98

00:12:36.580 It takes intellectuals to come up with really dumb ideas.

00:12:39.500 And so for 40, 50 years now, we have seen a constant and pervasive attack on our reasons, on our edifices of reason, which have resulted in the downstream effects that we are seeing today in our public discourse.

00:12:53.740 If you'd like, I can discuss some of these idea pathogens.

00:12:56.000 Yeah, I want to, because that's, I mean, that is what the parasitic mind is about.

00:12:59.980 And I really want to understand it.

00:13:02.060 And then I want to know, how do you, how do you talk to people about truth and common sense when it's all gone?

00:13:12.360 So let's start with the problem and the concept.

00:13:16.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:17.740 Okay, so here, let me start with the granddaddy of all idea pathogens.

00:13:24.320 So postmodernism is really the epitome of intellectual terrorism, because what it basically says is that there are no objective truths.

00:13:34.940 Everything is shackled by our subjectivity, by our personal biases.

00:13:41.040 You can imagine how anti-scientific that is, because scientists wake up in the morning thinking that they're going to go to work to try to uncover truths.

00:13:47.360 Now, truths can change, right?

00:13:49.120 What we thought was true in science 300 years ago may no longer be true today.

00:13:54.320 But we do operate under the premise that there is a truth to be discovered.

00:13:59.220 Postmodernism destroys that.

00:14:00.860 There is no truth.

00:14:01.780 There's only my truth.

00:14:02.780 There's only my lived experience.

00:14:04.360 So it's a form of intellectual nihilism.

00:14:06.520 I call it intellectual terrorism.

00:14:08.300 So imagine if you teach students for 30, 40, 50 years this kind of nonsense.

00:14:14.200 You're not really teaching them critical thinking too well, right?

00:14:16.680 The scientific method is exactly what liberated us from these types of shackles.

00:14:22.240 It's what liberated us from our personal identities.

00:14:25.000 There is no Lebanese Jewish way of knowing.

00:14:27.040 There is no Arkansas way of knowing.

00:14:28.820 There is no indigenous way of knowing.

00:14:30.700 There's only the scientific method.

00:14:32.360 We all meet at the scientific method on equal footing.

00:14:35.860 So you eradicate the scientific method.

00:14:38.160 You introduce postmodernism.

00:14:39.760 You have toxic masculinity. 0.98

00:14:41.280 You have white supremacy. 0.99

00:14:42.800 You have cultural relativism.

00:14:45.200 You have militant feminism. 0.95

00:14:46.600 This is why I call it death of the West by a thousand cuts.

00:14:50.340 No single idea pathogen is enough to destroy our society.

00:14:54.220 But put them all together and you start having complete lunacy.

00:14:57.800 All right, I'm going to take a break.

00:14:59.540 Tell you about Bilt Bars.

00:15:01.480 Bilt Bars are, my wife is always, she's always right. 0.99

00:15:05.140 And I don't know why I fight her.

00:15:06.320 I just do.

00:15:07.240 But she's always like, yeah, I try this.

00:15:09.520 And it always ends in something that's good for me.

00:15:12.900 And I hate everything that you do not get a body like this without working hard and not

00:15:18.480 listening to your wife.

00:15:19.460 Um, so she's been eating Bilt Bars for a while. 1.00

00:15:22.680 They're protein bars, but protein bars always tastes like dog crap. 0.99

00:15:28.340 No dog crap that has been just scraped across the top of a doormat. 0.99

00:15:35.880 Bilt Bar is nothing like that. 0.99

00:15:38.540 And I only ate them because she had left the house and I was a little rumbly in my tumbly

00:15:43.920 and it was the only thing to eat.

00:15:45.500 And so I tried it.

00:15:46.240 And she came home and I'm like, these are fantastic.

00:15:49.680 She's like really genius.

00:15:52.260 Bilt Bar, really, really good.

00:15:55.380 They are, uh, high in protein.

00:15:57.840 They are low in, in fat and calories.

00:16:01.120 They have all the stuff that's good for you that I never usually care about.

00:16:04.820 The best thing about them is it's real chocolate.

00:16:07.700 It's like a candy bar, but 130 calories.

00:16:11.180 Are you kidding me?

00:16:12.160 Low carbs.

00:16:13.460 Use the promo code Beck.

00:16:14.960 Go to BiltBar.com.

00:16:16.600 Use the promo code Beck.

00:16:17.660 You get $10 off your first order.

00:16:20.060 Their cookies and cream.

00:16:21.160 Their mint chocolate is unbelievable.

00:16:24.680 All of it.

00:16:25.400 I haven't had a bad one yet.

00:16:27.380 Use the promo code Beck.

00:16:28.620 BiltBar.com.

00:16:31.280 When you're looking at things, let's just take critical race theory.

00:16:36.060 Sure.

00:16:36.360 Um, Gad, you're telling me that white people haven't benefited from this society, that there's 0.95

00:16:47.240 not, you walk in for a job, a black man walks in for a job. 0.55

00:16:52.140 You don't think that there's been bias with that guy's going to get the job, whether they

00:16:57.020 know it or not, they may all claim they're not racist, but please, Gad.

00:17:01.380 What you're, what you're enunciating there is exactly the allure of many of these idea

00:17:08.020 pathogens, because they start off with a kernel of truth.

00:17:11.920 They start off with a noble cause, but then when taken to extreme, they become idea pathogens,

00:17:17.920 right?

00:17:18.100 So let, so we could talk about critical race theory, but let me just, let me just shift

00:17:22.180 to say militant feminism.

00:17:24.520 Equity feminism is the idea that men and women should be equal under the law. 0.97

00:17:27.920 Well, any reasonable person would say, yeah, of course I support that.

00:17:30.480 I'm an equity feminist. 1.00

00:17:31.840 The problem with militant feminism is it pushes it further. 1.00

00:17:34.760 It then says in order to remove the sexist status quo, we need to eradicate the possibility

00:17:40.840 that there are innate sex differences, right?

00:17:43.480 Everything is due to a social construction. 0.96

00:17:45.240 So in the pursuit of the noble goal of seeking equality under the law, we murder and rape

00:17:51.000 truth.

00:17:51.480 The same thing happens with critical race theory.

00:17:53.840 Yes, of course there has been at times systemic racism, but to argue that today LeBron James

00:18:00.000 is afraid to leave his house to go to the play the game because he is being hunted by racist

00:18:04.900 cops is a slight exaggeration.

00:18:07.440 So, so, so, so we, so we could pursue noble goals while always adhering to truth.

00:18:16.200 I can chew gum and walk at the same time, but all these idea pathogens don't draw that distinction.

00:18:22.300 They, they argue from a consequentialist perspective, if we murder truth in the service of our social

00:18:28.540 justice, screw truth.

00:18:30.320 So, do have all, did all of these start, for instance, political correctness?

00:18:37.920 I have a daughter who has cerebral palsy. 0.92

00:18:40.340 I remember when they were like handicapable and I thought that was the dumbest thing I've 1.00

00:18:43.960 ever heard because if you call handicapable in a generation, that word is going to mean

00:18:50.900 the same thing as handicapped.

00:18:52.860 You know what I mean?

00:18:53.460 You just need different help to do different things.

00:18:58.000 So, it's just, it's such a ridiculous concept to me, but what sold me not to become a politically

00:19:06.060 correct person, but to go, you know what?

00:19:08.020 I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings is if it does make the difference with somebody,

00:19:13.860 I don't want to hurt somebody's feelings and I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to

00:19:17.780 stand there and preach to a special Olympian.

00:19:20.560 No, you're very different. 1.00

00:19:22.460 That's ridiculous. 0.99

00:19:23.880 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:19:24.520 Right.

00:19:25.040 So, is it though they always start with the kernel of truth and compassion?

00:19:31.380 You got it, right?

00:19:32.740 So, of course, we should all work to be kind and respectful to each other and to the extent

00:19:37.940 that language is dynamic and organic and changes and a word that was acceptable 40 years ago

00:19:43.900 is no longer acceptable, then we adjust accordingly.

00:19:47.000 Again, the problem is the overreach.

00:19:48.840 So, the thought police then comes up every two seconds with new rules of linguistic engagement,

00:19:54.720 right?

00:19:54.980 Because it's a form of power play, right?

00:19:57.440 It keeps me unstable.

00:19:58.900 I don't know which word I should use.

00:20:00.660 For example, the word oriental to describe someone who came from the Orient was perfectly 1.00

00:20:05.880 okay a couple of generations ago.

00:20:07.840 Now, you don't say oriental, you say Asian.

00:20:10.160 Well, wait a second.

00:20:11.020 I'm Asian.

00:20:11.600 Lebanon is from the continent of Asia.

00:20:14.640 Why has Asian been served by people from the Far East?

00:20:19.240 So, you see that there is a vagary, a haphazardness to a lot of these politically correct terms.

00:20:24.640 By the way, I analogize political correctness to the sting of the spider wasp.

00:20:30.700 So, the spider wasp stings a spider, rendering it zombified.

00:20:35.840 It then, you know, carries it to the burrow and it lays an egg on the alive spider so that

00:20:44.900 as the egg hatches, it eats the spider in vivo.

00:20:48.620 While political correctness is the spider's sting, it stullifies us.

00:20:54.380 It leads us to the abyss of infinite lunacy quietly and in a docile manner.

00:20:59.540 It's the exact same mechanism.

00:21:01.900 So, I am amazed at how the left, I think what the left has done to the West, I believe, is evil.

00:21:13.520 But, and I don't use that word lightly.

00:21:16.320 I think anything that is destroying man's freedom and man's ability to clearly think is pretty evil.

00:21:26.460 But it is also in the same regard, unbelievably beautiful.

00:21:32.480 It, they have, they have put this thing together to destroy the West where I think in a hundred years from now, 0.97

00:21:41.240 when it all is exposed and we really know how it was done,

00:21:45.660 it will be studied for a long time on how to cripple half of the world.

00:21:52.540 Well, that, but that's why, so my, when I analogize between, you know, parasites and idea pathogens,

00:21:59.880 or when I talk about these idea pathogens as mind viruses, I'm not just sort of being, you know, poetically flowery in my language.

00:22:08.480 It's precisely for what you just said, right?

00:22:10.560 A virus, an actual virus is a beautiful thing, right?

00:22:14.140 It has the circuitry, the machinery to be able to find a way to enter your cell so that it could then use your machinery to replicate itself.

00:22:24.380 It's gorgeous.

00:22:25.080 I mean, in terms of the creation of a virus, it is beautiful.

00:22:29.340 So you're exactly right.

00:22:30.700 These idea pathogens are wonderful because they could, as I said, lead me quietly to the abyss of infinite lunacy while I'm feeling proud about my progressive nature.

00:22:41.360 It's gorgeous, but it is tragic.

00:22:43.740 I talked to a woman who, she was 16 years old when she first started saving Jews in Poland.

00:22:52.180 I took my family over to Auschwitz probably about 10 years ago, and I said, I believe these days are coming back. 0.99

00:23:00.540 And we have to know who we are as a family and what we stand for as a family.

00:23:05.800 And at the end of the day, we met with one of the righteous among the nations, and she was 16 years old.

00:23:12.420 Now, she was in her, I think, her 90s when we spoke to her.

00:23:17.460 She was so sweet, so kind.

00:23:20.000 And I said to her at the end, how do you water the tree of righteousness?

00:23:25.200 And she said something that I'm only really now fully understanding.

00:23:30.460 She looked at me and she said, you misunderstand.

00:23:34.380 The righteous didn't suddenly become righteous.

00:23:37.380 We just refused to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.

00:23:43.800 Right.

00:23:44.520 Okay.

00:23:45.100 So my abyss is kind of an apt metaphor.

00:23:47.940 Yeah.

00:23:48.120 Okay.

00:23:48.320 Yeah.

00:23:48.980 So how do we get...

00:23:55.240 Is this any different than what happened in the Soviet Union?

00:24:01.500 What happened in Nazi Germany?

00:24:05.600 Is this more elegant or is this what happened to...

00:24:09.280 Because I've always wondered, how do you get Germans to do that? 0.99

00:24:12.400 How do you get people to believe that?

00:24:14.900 Now I think I understand.

00:24:16.820 Yeah.

00:24:17.180 I mean, your question is, are human minds ready to be parasitized by bad ideas?

00:24:24.000 And this is certainly not something that is new to today's era.

00:24:27.220 As you said, look, in the Soviet Union, Lysenkoism was...

00:24:33.220 Are you familiar with that term?

00:24:34.240 Do you know what that is?

00:24:35.060 No, Lysenkoed? 0.99

00:24:36.680 So Lysenkoism... 0.90

00:24:38.100 Lysenko was a geneticist who actually argued against the law of genetics, the established

00:24:45.480 Mendelian laws of genetics, because he thought that his framework for how genes are passed on

00:24:52.260 and so on, had to be more in line with Marxism.

00:24:55.860 And so he adjusted science to fit his ideology, which resulted in the great famines that led

00:25:03.200 to 20, 30 million people dying, right?

00:25:06.300 So it's not that today the parasitic ideas that we're seeing is something novel in the

00:25:13.200 fact that humans can have minds that are parasitized.

00:25:15.520 What is unique about today's zeitgeist is that we thought we had developed the right

00:25:22.260 weaponry to no longer succumb to these.

00:25:24.780 We thought that the scientific method, the scientific renaissance, the enlightenment had

00:25:31.600 resolved these things.

00:25:32.840 And so that's why today we live in this anomalous society called the West.

00:25:37.220 But regrettably, no, you always have to defend this beautiful thing that we've created in

00:25:42.220 the West, because our capacity to be parasitized is kind of the default value.

00:25:47.200 There's always the next charlatan who's going to come along to try to play around with my

00:25:51.600 circuitry.

00:25:52.120 So, Gad, what are the conditions that are required to get people ready?

00:26:06.980 For instance, you know, you just said we thought we had this, we had the scientific method.

00:26:11.440 And I immediately thought there was no one more scientific than Germany in the late 1800s, 0.54

00:26:18.120 you know, up until the 1940s.

00:26:20.920 They had that as I mean, they were teaching the world.

00:26:26.800 So it was is that arrogance?

00:26:29.680 Is it a is it a reliance on science without balancing something else?

00:26:38.140 What what what is the so each each era will have a different set of factors that result

00:26:44.600 in these parasitic ideas to flourishing?

00:26:47.820 If we're talking about today's era, you have basically 40, 50 years of leftist professors

00:26:54.580 who were slowly erasing human nature slowly.

00:27:00.780 So, right.

00:27:01.260 So, for example, the idea that biology.

00:27:03.720 So this is my area of research.

00:27:05.020 The idea that we should use evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to study human nature

00:27:09.540 is actually quite heretical in the social sciences, because most social scientists.

00:27:14.420 Yeah, exactly.

00:27:15.020 I like your reaction.

00:27:16.580 Most social scientists who are social constructivists, meaning everything is due to a social construction,

00:27:22.480 believe that sure, biology explains the behavior of the mosquito and the zebra and your dog.

00:27:28.100 But don't you dare say, Dr. Saad, that consumers are driven by biology.

00:27:33.320 That's vulgar. 0.91

00:27:34.000 What do you mean?

00:27:34.320 I transcend my biology.

00:27:36.160 Right. 1.00

00:27:36.540 So now, again, now you might say, well, how could they be this idiotic? 1.00

00:27:40.720 Aren't they supposed to be professors? 1.00

00:27:42.020 Again, it starts from a noble place.

00:27:44.280 And let me explain how.

00:27:45.840 Because evolutionary theory has been misused by a whole bunch of nefarious folks throughout the years.

00:27:51.920 The Nazis used it to argue, hey, there is a struggle between the races.

00:27:55.280 It's a Darwinian struggle.

00:27:56.620 We won. 1.00

00:27:57.300 So who cares if we kill the Jews? 1.00

00:27:59.600 Eugenicists said, hey, you know, we don't want to have gays around. 1.00

00:28:02.620 So if we sterilize them, we get rid of the gay gene. 1.00

00:28:05.940 What's wrong with that? 0.99

00:28:06.980 Now, of course, that has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

00:28:09.140 But because all of these folks misappropriated evolutionary theory, these social scientists,

00:28:15.800 these progressive noble social scientists said, well, let's create a new understanding of the human condition

00:28:21.900 where we remove biology.

00:28:23.980 So which goes back to my earlier point.

00:28:26.040 In the pursuit of noble causes, you should never murder and rape truth.

00:28:31.900 Your first goal as an academic is to stay true to truth.

00:28:36.260 And then you worry about activism and social goals.

00:28:39.160 But that's the problem with the humanities and the social sciences.

00:28:42.340 Their first ideological activists, second pursuers of truth.

00:28:46.380 That should never be the case.

00:28:47.460 So when Nietzsche said, God is dead, that wasn't a celebratory statement.

00:28:55.260 That was a warning.

00:28:56.240 Isn't he warning in a way about biological evolution?

00:29:04.380 I mean, we need, as a people, we need something bigger than us.

00:29:10.860 And if it's not that, it'll be something else.

00:29:14.660 And isn't that a biological need in us?

00:29:18.840 Right.

00:29:19.100 So you're right that I think the default value of humans is to believe in a higher power.

00:29:26.880 And I say this, as you know, I'm Jewish, but I'm also an atheist.

00:29:30.180 Right.

00:29:30.260 I recognize, as an evolutionist, that you are never going to eradicate the religious impulse from us.

00:29:38.860 It is part of us.

00:29:39.760 Now, we can argue whether man created God or whether God exists outside of man.

00:29:44.540 But the religious impulse is something that is within us.

00:29:47.700 And there are several reasons.

00:29:48.640 By the way, evolutionary scientists study why religion evolved.

00:29:54.260 In other words, you could study why religion exists as an evolutionary phenomenon.

00:29:59.260 Right.

00:30:00.760 I mean, again, I am a deeply religious person.

00:30:03.640 I deeply believe in God.

00:30:05.380 But I have to tell you, if I wake up in the coffin and there's nothing but dirt for all eternity and darkness, it made me a better person.

00:30:14.760 I know the switches that it throws in me.

00:30:19.720 And that's fine.

00:30:21.960 You know what I mean?

00:30:22.800 Right.

00:30:23.320 Either way, it's fine.

00:30:24.940 That's a common, you know, position that people take where they say, look, if all you get are benefits in believing and being a religious believer, then why not do it?

00:30:36.200 Right.

00:30:36.300 But, I mean, that goes back really to Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher who really provided Pascal's wager.

00:30:43.140 Right.

00:30:43.520 Where he basically said, look, God could exist or God could not exist.

00:30:47.320 I could believe or I could not believe.

00:30:49.480 So, it's a two by two matrix.

00:30:51.180 And in every single one of those cells, it makes more sense to believe than not believe.

00:30:55.400 So, just believe.

00:30:56.580 So, I buy that argument.

00:30:58.760 It's a nice game theoretic argument.

00:31:00.440 But here's the thing.

00:31:01.580 If you are a truth purist, then you're not convinced by that.

00:31:06.400 Because then in my case, I'm going to say, even if religion offers me a functionally beneficial value, I'm not going to believe it unless you can prove to me that it's true.

00:31:17.140 In other words, I'm not going to be consequentialist about my belief in religion.

00:31:20.780 You follow what I mean?

00:31:21.160 So, yeah, so I will tell you that when I started searching whether God exists or not, I did prove enough of it to me, but I can't prove anything.

00:31:30.240 You know what I mean?

00:31:30.920 Sure.

00:31:31.140 You can't prove that he doesn't exist.

00:31:32.480 You can't prove that he does exist.

00:31:33.760 So, it's a personal thing. 0.93

00:31:36.300 I'm not like, I don't really buy into any of this crap, but I'm going to believe.

00:31:41.120 I don't think that works. 0.52

00:31:42.800 But I was just using that as an example of, for instance, why fear sells, why every election you have to be afraid.

00:31:53.360 Because fear is much more powerful because we coalesce around something that protects us from that, right?

00:32:01.900 Exactly.

00:32:02.780 And by the way, that's one of the reasons, that's one of the evolutionary arguments for religion.

00:32:07.060 So, in one of my earlier books, The Consuming Instinct, I offer an evolutionary analysis for kosher laws, for specific kosher laws, right?

00:32:15.620 So, one possibility would be to say, well, you're not allowed to eat certain types of shellfish and stuff because God dictated it.

00:32:22.860 Another way, if you look at it biologically, there is a pathogen that can be found in some of these foods whereby you can't even tell if the food has that pathogen or not.

00:32:35.140 All you know is that one day Moshe is walking around in the desert and he either drops dead or not because of the food.

00:32:41.940 Well, short of me understanding germ theory and so on, what other way can I attribute causality than to say it must be a divine, you know, an edict that says don't eat this food.

00:32:54.460 But there are very clear biological reasons why people would have succumbed to these particular food consumptions.

00:33:00.920 But 4,000 years ago, they didn't know that.

00:33:03.760 Therefore, they put it on the broad shoulders of God.

00:33:06.360 So, that brings me to, you know, I believe that if there is a God, he's got to be the greatest mathematician ever.

00:33:15.480 Because everything is precise.

00:33:17.160 The entire universe falls apart if you're playing math over here one way and math over here another way.

00:33:24.080 It, it, it, it, he's a scientist if, if he exists, he's the ultimate scientist because it all has to work.

00:33:31.960 Um, but if you're, if you're, um, looking at that, your, your, um, uh, theory here with, with kosher, I, I accept that that it could be the way that it all happened.

00:33:45.660 But that just goes to universal truths that there are things that are true, whether you put a, uh, sports car cover over that engine, or you put a bus cover over that engine, it, the engine still is working the same.

00:34:04.300 So, which speaks, I'm sorry, that's your point.

00:34:07.580 So, so this is, the problem is we've erased the big truths.

00:34:13.060 We've erased that, that the universe is mathematical and it works the same way for everyone.

00:34:21.560 Not only have we erased specific truths, we've, we've erased what, what I call the epistemology of truth, right?

00:34:29.080 The scientific method is what allows me to adjudicate between competing hypotheses, right?

00:34:35.520 There's a clear way for, if I want to know whether men on average are taller than women, there is a way that I can collect data to absolutely confirm this one way or the other, right?

00:34:45.940 I don't have to rub crystals.

00:34:47.580 I don't have to sit under a pyramid.

00:34:49.200 I don't have to look at revealed truth.

00:34:50.980 There is a way for me to understand the statistical regularities of the world.

00:34:54.620 Well, what postmodernism does, to go back to that earlier point, is it removes that epistemology.

00:35:01.260 It says that, why are you bothering looking for universal truths?

00:35:04.760 There are no universal truths.

00:35:06.640 Everything is subjective.

00:35:08.240 So again, you could imagine how intellectually terroristic that is, right?

00:35:12.380 Because what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning for me if there are no universal truths for me to study, right?

00:35:18.020 Everything is random then, right?

00:35:19.840 So that, that, that's precisely why I use the terms idea pathogens.

00:35:23.620 So take, for example, transgender activism.

00:35:27.020 You and I can probably agree.

00:35:29.760 I'm sure if I put the words in your mouth that, you know, we're, we're, we're very kind, loving people.

00:35:34.960 We don't want to see any bigotry towards transgender people.

00:35:37.640 None.

00:35:38.140 But I don't want my child to be taught in school that sometimes boys menstruate and sometimes girls menstruate. 0.99

00:35:46.820 Now that, again, speaks to my earlier point, which is in the pursuit of protecting transgender people from bigotry, I don't have to sell bullshit. 0.98

00:35:56.680 I don't have to murder truth in the service of that earlier laudable goal. 0.86

00:36:01.260 That's the problem with all of these idea pathogens.

00:36:05.440 Does that happen, Gad, though?

00:36:08.720 Was that happening 20 years ago where they were murdering truth?

00:36:11.820 Or is it a slow creep to where you need to get the public to a certain place before you can then just say?

00:36:20.460 It has been a slow creep.

00:36:23.720 First, it began in academia.

00:36:26.300 You refined the mind virus for several generations.

00:36:30.640 You inculcated in many generations of students so that these students then become the leaders of our HR departments.

00:36:38.100 They become our prime ministers in Canada.

00:36:40.740 They become the Democratic Party in the U.S.

00:36:43.720 They become the diversity officers in every organization.

00:36:48.280 You know, that didn't happen by magic.

00:36:50.060 It's a very slow burn.

00:36:51.840 It's sort of the old parable of the boiling frog, right?

00:36:54.920 If you put the frog in the pot and you slowly raise the heat below a just noticeable difference, the frog is frolicking all along, right?

00:37:03.160 That's what's happening with the West.

00:37:05.100 Death by a thousand cuts slowly, slowly chipping at the edifice of reason, and then one day we end up in complete nihilism.

00:37:12.600 So that someone like, was it Julian Castro when he was talking about, well, we want to give abortions to both men and women and so on.

00:37:22.020 I mean, is it possible that in the 21st century, a leading presidential candidate of the Democratic Party is uttering such nonsense? 0.99

00:37:31.280 Could we not support the right of transgender people without uttering such garbage? 1.00

00:37:37.760 Can we? 1.00

00:37:38.620 Well, if people read my book and get the vaccine, the parasitic mind is going to drive me straight to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize.

00:37:48.040 So, we're looking at all of these crazy things, and I think people hear things like that, and they blow it off because that's crazy.

00:38:05.100 And they can't possibly mean that, or, you know, it's just so crazy, nobody's going to believe it.

00:38:11.420 And then all of a sudden, you wake up in a world where you're looking around going, am I the only one that doesn't believe that?

00:38:19.640 Glenn, just for you to know, over the past, I don't know, five to ten years since I've become a lot more vocal on many of these issues because of social media and so on, I've always been fighting these idea pathogens.

00:38:30.400 But now social media offers me, you know, a much bigger platform to do it.

00:38:34.180 I've received innumerable emails, exactly speaking to your point, which is some student, some professor, some parent of a student writes to me, unable to make sense of the world, right?

00:38:50.200 They don't know which is, and basically, I'm sort of the anchor for them, right?

00:38:55.260 Thank you so much, Dr. Saad, by listening to you, I still feel as if I am grasping reality.

00:39:01.580 Well, why is it that we're here?

00:39:03.540 Like, why is it that you need me to tell you, as I did with the Canadian Senate when I appeared in front of them to testify about the transgender stuff, that, hey, Canadian senators, no, really, trust me, I'm an evolutionary psychologist.

00:39:16.600 There is such a thing as male and female.

00:39:19.220 In the 21st century, you need a fancy-smancy professor to come to you to tell you that a sexually reproducing species has this thing called male and female.

00:39:28.540 And then one of the senators, upon hearing my testimony, points to me, you could all watch it, the testimony is available, and he says, you are pro-genocide, sir, you are pro-genocide.

00:39:40.640 And then I say to him, well, you better be careful because it might not be a good look to be telling someone who escaped execution in Lebanon that he is pro-genocide.

00:39:49.720 But that's the lunacy that we've reached.

00:39:51.780 Can you tell me, do these people that are preaching this, let's say just militant feminism, I see them hanging out with really hardcore Islamists, not a Muslim, an Islamist. 0.88

00:40:15.340 And I'm like, you are the first person to be killed or contained, you know, if the Islamist gets their way. 1.00

00:40:27.280 How does that work in people's brains? 0.90

00:40:31.480 Look, you may or may not know the name Leon Festinger.

00:40:35.100 He was the pioneer of the theory of cognitive dissonance.

00:40:38.300 These folks have completely fractured diseased minds of cognitive dissonance mush, right?

00:40:46.280 I mean, think about there's a group called Queers for Palestine. 0.99

00:40:51.460 What the hell are you talking about?

00:40:53.320 Do you know what happens to LGBTQ people in Palestine? 0.93

00:40:56.960 If you really want to be queers for something, be queers for Tel Aviv, because Tel Aviv has one of the most vibrant LGBTQ communities. 0.96

00:41:06.200 But that's the kind of fractured minds they have, because they have bought into the idea pathogen that the poor Palestinians are the oppressed and the evil Zionist Jews are the oppressors. 0.96

00:41:19.980 It's part of the currency of victimology poker. 0.98

00:41:24.460 But doesn't the your people are throwing gays off of the roof of a building in Iran mean anything? 0.87

00:41:33.700 No, those people.

00:41:36.400 So I'm now answering on their behalf.

00:41:38.740 They would say, no, but they're not practicing true Islam. 0.97

00:41:42.460 They are. 0.98

00:41:43.160 It's a some grotesque, you know, cancerous version of Islam, just like socialism. 1.00

00:41:49.280 Right. 0.85

00:41:49.920 If you show people 100 places where socialism has been tried and it has failed, what do they always come back with?

00:41:56.400 But, bro, that wasn't true socialism.

00:41:58.180 If only now AOC institutes true socialism, then we will live happily forever more, making love on the streets and holding hands.

00:42:07.220 And so what stops us from what?

00:42:10.540 What?

00:42:11.460 Why is it? 1.00

00:42:12.660 Gad, I don't believe in any of that crap. 0.99

00:42:15.800 Somebody else my age. 1.00

00:42:17.240 Because you have a functioning brain.

00:42:18.540 But what what makes me different than somebody else my age that has a relatively same kind of life experience?

00:42:30.240 They're completely what what is it that the parasite didn't get into me?

00:42:35.740 Right.

00:42:36.420 Well, that's that's the that's the thousand dollar question.

00:42:38.780 I think it really boils down to whether you are when it comes to truth, a deontological person or a consequentialist.

00:42:46.960 Let me explain these two systems.

00:42:48.960 A deontological ethical system is there is an absolute truth.

00:42:52.780 It is never OK to lie.

00:42:54.500 That's a deontological statement.

00:42:56.680 That's a consequentialist statement would be it is OK to lie.

00:43:00.340 If, for example, I'm trying to spare someone's feelings.

00:43:02.560 So if you want to have a longstanding marriage and your spouse says, do I look fat in those jeans, maybe lie to him or her because you want to protect their right.

00:43:11.060 The reality is we're all we're all at times consequentialist.

00:43:14.720 Yeah.

00:43:15.100 At times.

00:43:15.520 Right.

00:43:16.300 But when it comes to the truth with a capital T, I propose that you should always be deontological.

00:43:23.360 Right.

00:43:23.660 I never sacrifice a millimeter of truth in the pursuit of some downstream consequence.

00:43:29.300 So to answer your question, my feeling is that you versus the other guy who is your age, who is parasitized, is that you are probably deontological when it comes to the capital T truth.

00:43:39.720 And he's not.

00:43:41.280 One of my mottos is from Immanuel Kant, who I get into talking later at some other time.

00:43:47.260 But he said, I will.

00:43:49.760 There are many things that I believe that I shall never say, but I shall never say the things that I do not believe.

00:43:56.220 Boom.

00:43:56.820 That's exactly it.

00:43:57.620 Yeah.

00:43:57.880 So that's that's where I'm at.

00:44:02.360 Here we are sitting now at a time where I'm looking at the polls and I.

00:44:11.940 I can't knowing what I know about America.

00:44:16.640 You have a group of people who will not to cry or call to stop the violence on the street.

00:44:24.120 They're still calling it peaceful protests while cars are burning behind them.

00:44:30.320 One step after another, America, all the police are racist and we should take your guns and defund the police and have open borders and have open borders.

00:44:48.800 Just attack the second amendment.

00:44:50.160 Correct.

00:44:50.640 That would work.

00:44:51.440 So all of the things that are being said are so.

00:44:55.560 Not un-American in the way it usually is used, but just that's not that's not how America traditionally thinks or what they embrace.

00:45:07.200 And yet I see these poll numbers and I have come to a place to where either the poll numbers are absolutely wrong.

00:45:15.600 Or I am absolutely wrong and I am now completely out of step with a new reality in America.

00:45:24.180 America, which is it?

00:45:26.840 Yeah, I mean, I wish I knew.

00:45:29.160 If you would have told me, I mean, certainly before COVID hit, I would have said it's a cinch that Trump is going to be reelected.

00:45:35.640 If you told me before the last, I mean, the first debate, the presidential debate, not the VP debates, I thought that he didn't come across as, you know, as well as he should have.

00:45:47.940 Because regrettably, most people will use, as I mentioned earlier, right, they smell the cork of the wine bottle.

00:45:55.260 And so they will simply say, oh, he looked so bullying, whereas the other guy looks affable and somewhat confused and he's he's Uncle Joe.

00:46:02.280 And so I think that might have shifted some of the few remaining undecided towards Uncle Joey.

00:46:08.100 So if I were to predict today, I'm tilting it slightly towards I call him avocado brain.

00:46:16.320 I'm tilting it to avocado brain a bit more than to bullying Trump.

00:46:20.560 So we'll see.

00:46:21.280 I mean, do you have a sense?

00:46:22.320 What's your prediction?

00:46:24.120 Oh, I have no idea.

00:46:27.520 I have absolutely no idea.

00:46:29.320 But I wonder, for instance, I saw the I see Joe Biden and and I don't I don't say this with any malice.

00:46:40.680 I don't mean to be mean at all.

00:46:43.580 He reminds me of my grandfather when we had to take the keys of the car away.

00:46:49.120 He's he's usually there, but there are times when he's not.

00:46:53.420 And he's just slowing down enough to where, Grandpa, you shouldn't be driving.

00:46:57.460 And so I think people have seen that in their own family.

00:47:04.380 He's not the man he was, even in the primary debates.

00:47:07.940 He is declining quickly.

00:47:11.300 Then I see a man who has covid is flown to the hospital, comes out two days later and he is virile and and not 75.

00:47:25.040 How do those two work in the mind?

00:47:32.540 That amazes me.

00:47:33.780 I was just telling my wife we'd gone for a coffee early this morning.

00:47:36.600 I said, you know, when I look at Trump, I'm exhausted just seeing how much energy he has.

00:47:42.440 Right.

00:47:42.620 I'm 20.

00:47:43.540 I'm 20 plus years younger than him.

00:47:45.620 I'm I'm I'm 55.

00:47:47.240 He's what, 74, 75.

00:47:48.500 So he's about 20 years on me and I just can't believe the kind of energy he has.

00:47:54.580 Just think about all the things that he's done in his career.

00:47:57.000 Now, now some will say he's been a scammer, but he's a doer.

00:48:00.580 He's done a million things.

00:48:02.240 Right.

00:48:03.180 Sometimes he succeeded.

00:48:04.380 Sometimes he's failed, but he's tried many different things in many different arenas.

00:48:08.560 So he's a doer.

00:48:09.960 It's as if he's on Adderall.

00:48:11.700 He can't he can't stop.

00:48:12.880 He probably sleeps two, three hours a day.

00:48:14.520 He does.

00:48:14.960 I respect that. 0.99

00:48:15.760 Then you look at someone like Biden, basically a political parasite, 47 years. 0.89

00:48:21.600 What can you put on your CV that's concrete? 0.96

00:48:24.100 If you look at my CV, I can list for you all the papers I've written, all the books I've

00:48:29.360 published, all the talks I've given.

00:48:31.120 There's something very concrete on my CV.

00:48:33.520 What is his CV?

00:48:35.020 Nothing.

00:48:35.680 He's just someone who never said something sufficiently ugly that he was kicked out of politics. 1.00

00:48:41.240 And so he was a parasite. 0.97

00:48:43.680 And so if only that, I can respect Trump and not Biden. 0.98

00:48:49.460 But for many of my highfalutin ivory tower friends, the mere fact that Trump is an aesthetic

00:48:55.140 injury disqualifies him.

00:48:57.280 So but there's not there's not there's nothing in the average person that sees an and again, I don't mean this to be mean, but in a man who is clearly in decline and say, I want one of these two to keep me safe.

00:49:13.280 I'll pick the guy who reminds me of my grandfather when we had to take the keys away.

00:49:18.420 I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to be hyperbolic and even push it further to those people who would still prefer Biden.

00:49:25.700 Biden could be in an induced coma where he could only flip his eyelids.

00:49:31.760 They would still think that is a much better option than brazen, vulgar, orange man bad.

00:49:39.080 And I know this for a fact because I've tried to engage some of these people, some of whom are otherwise really intelligent people.

00:49:46.280 But there is a complete wall of emotional hysteria that is simply impossible to penetrate.

00:49:53.020 And by the way, I don't mean to imply a lot of times people think, oh, you know, I must have posters of Trump in my bedroom that my wife and I use as foreplay.

00:50:02.800 No, you don't. I mean, I'm not the only one.

00:50:09.820 So it's not that I'm such a Trump lover.

00:50:13.280 It's that I think I'm sufficiently nonpartisan, especially as a Canadian to say, wait a minute, there are very compelling reasons why someone might like Trump. 0.96

00:50:23.060 It can't be that 60 plus million people in the last round voted for a complete racist monster. 0.62

00:50:29.860 They can't even grant you that. 0.99

00:50:32.140 No, he is a monster and only monsters could vote for such a monster. 0.96

00:50:37.400 It's all about his monster qualities. 0.99

00:50:39.920 It's grotesque. It's idiotic. It's imbecilic. 1.00

00:50:42.460 Let me let me take you here. 0.99

00:50:44.820 I remember in 2004, I saw a poll that said six or seven percent of America believes that we never went to the moon.

00:50:56.480 And at the time I said, you watch that number.

00:51:01.800 That number is going to be in the teens before you can blink.

00:51:06.440 It's now about 16 percent.

00:51:10.320 Wow.

00:51:11.160 And we have I've been trying to explain the difference between a conspiracy theory, which is not bad.

00:51:22.880 It's just been made to sound bad.

00:51:24.740 That's a theory of these people are colluding to do this, but it's a theory and conspiracy fact.

00:51:35.100 Both sides now are are in the role of conspirators.

00:51:40.580 You know what I mean?

00:51:40.940 They're there. They both have their theories.

00:51:43.940 Donald Trump, you know what?

00:51:45.020 He's in bed with with Russia and he's done all these things. 0.95

00:51:49.560 And the other side is saying, well, no, here's the proof in their own handwriting that it was the other way around.

00:51:57.200 Right.

00:51:57.680 How do you cut through the immediate call that something's a conspiracy theory and so therefore must be discredited and say and and and get to people and say, look, I I'm not I don't want you to believe me.

00:52:15.920 I don't want you to believe me.

00:52:18.800 Here it is in their own handwriting.

00:52:21.540 How do you bridge that?

00:52:24.340 Yeah, so it's it's tough because so in Chapter seven of the Parasitic Mind, I propose a way to get at the truth.

00:52:33.300 But to get to that truth, you can't have someone going, la, la, la, la, la.

00:52:37.520 I don't want to listen to you.

00:52:38.480 Right.

00:52:38.740 If they start with that position, then no amount of evidence that I can present to you is ever going to penetrate you because you've already built up the wall.

00:52:47.320 Now, let's assume for a minute that they don't do that, that they actually are open to hearing my evidence.

00:52:52.880 Can I describe the procedure?

00:52:55.520 Please do.

00:52:55.940 Yes, yes, yes.

00:52:57.500 So so there's a thing that I call nomological networks of cumulative evidence.

00:53:01.680 It's a it's it's a lot of fancy words, but let me explain it.

00:53:04.540 So when you think about Charles Darwin, when he tried to, you know, develop his theory of evolution.

00:53:11.460 Right.

00:53:11.940 He didn't do he didn't prove his theory by, you know, running a study with 30 undergraduates at Ohio State.

00:53:19.360 Right.

00:53:19.860 What he did instead is over two, three decades, he assiduously collected data from many, many different fields, from paleontology, from ecology, from animal husbandry, from geology.

00:53:32.620 So that when you put all the data together, it became incontrovertible that he was correct.

00:53:38.840 And for 150 years, people have been trying to falsify him to no avail.

00:53:42.620 So I argue for a similar process.

00:53:44.800 And that's what I call nomological networks of cumulative evidence, which means what in common language?

00:53:51.520 I'm going to drown you in evidence coming from so many different directions that it becomes impossible for you to argue my position away.

00:54:00.620 And let me give a tangible example.

00:54:02.220 If I want to prove to you that toy preferences are biologically based, the fact that little Johnny likes trucks and guns and little Linda prefers dolls, that's not due to your parents being sexist.

00:54:15.260 It's due to real biological reasons.

00:54:17.440 How would I go about proving that to you?

00:54:19.360 Well, I would put on my hat of the guy who's trying to come up with many lines of evidence, and I would present these to you.

00:54:26.440 So let me give you a couple of lines.

00:54:27.900 I could bring you data from different animals, so vervet monkeys, rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, all of whom exhibit the same sex-specific toy preferences in their infants.

00:54:41.820 In other words, an infant vervet monkey boy and an infant vervet monkey girl has the same preferences as human infants.

00:54:50.320 Well, that seems pretty compelling evidence.

00:54:52.240 I could give you data of children, human children, who are in the pre-socialization stage of their cognitive development.

00:54:59.500 In other words, they're too young to have been socialized, and they already exhibit those toy preferences.

00:55:05.340 I could, I'll just give you one more, just because you'll get the point.

00:55:08.500 I could look at little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is an endocrinological disorder that masculinizes the behavior of little girls.

00:55:18.400 Well, little girls who suffer from this disorder have toy preferences that are like that of boys.

00:55:23.920 So bit by bit, I can build this suffocating network of cumulative evidence around you.

00:55:30.800 I don't need to use hysteria.

00:55:32.380 I don't need to scream above you.

00:55:34.220 I don't need to get all, you know, emotionally labile.

00:55:37.600 I just have to present to you the data.

00:55:40.380 And now the problem with that is, is it takes a lot of discipline to build that network, right?

00:55:46.240 And it also does, it also takes something else.

00:55:48.480 It takes epistemic humility.

00:55:49.740 If you were to ask me, hey, Professor Saad, what's your position on the legalization of marijuana?

00:55:55.920 My answer would be, you know what, Glenn?

00:55:58.260 I haven't built the nomological network to be able to satisfactorily answer you that question.

00:56:04.540 So in other words, when I know something, I speak with the full swagger of someone who knows something.

00:56:10.920 When I don't know something, I say, you know what?

00:56:12.960 I don't know enough about this.

00:56:14.340 In other words, I don't let hysteria, I don't let my affective system drive my positions.

00:56:19.100 I just let the evidence speak.

00:56:21.200 Does that make sense?

00:56:22.160 Yeah, it makes total sense.

00:56:23.580 Now, how do you do that in, you know, two months?

00:56:29.020 I feel like the West, if America falls, the world is in real trouble.

00:56:36.080 The West will fall.

00:56:37.600 And the West is a, there's a great book.

00:56:43.860 Somebody tried to finish Winston Churchill's book on the English-speaking peoples.

00:56:49.980 And I read it, I don't know, 15 years ago.

00:56:52.680 And it ended with, it foretold the ending of the West, that it was under attack and it was being subverted from within.

00:57:00.960 And it said, only after it falls will the world realize how benevolent, how good, how caring and and how charitable that system really was.

00:57:20.920 And the world will mourn.

00:57:23.920 And let me, if I may just add to what you just said.

00:57:27.780 And if you go to an immigrant who has seen what the rest of the world has to offer.

00:57:34.380 Yeah.

00:57:34.600 To exactly speak to your point, right?

00:57:37.000 Yes.

00:57:37.460 The Westerners who live in the West think that this is the default value, right?

00:57:42.300 That the world is replete with this, these types of societies.

00:57:46.560 No, the West is a little bleep of an anomaly, right?

00:57:52.240 The trajectory of human history is not peppered with West.

00:57:56.920 It's peppered with tribal politics, with hatred, with superstition, with collectivism over individual dignity. 0.87

00:58:06.700 And so for someone like me, Glenn, who escaped all that garbage to come to the West.

00:58:12.000 In the book, I talk about, you know, two great wars that I faced.

00:58:15.560 The first war was the Lebanese Civil War from which we escaped.

00:58:18.760 The second war is the war on reason that I've been seeing on university campuses as a professor.

00:58:24.680 And it breaks my heart because we are self-imploding.

00:58:28.040 There was no reason for us to do this, but we are committing self-suicide or I mean suicide.

00:58:33.380 So, so, um, if, if, well, you do have a platform to where you can speak to people and people who understand and know that there is truth.

00:58:49.600 Um, and even knows that they are not the final arbiter of that truth, but they can see, they still have some common sense.

00:58:59.440 Uh, they still remember what truths were self-evident.

00:59:04.480 Um, and they want to wake people up, but they've tried everything.

00:59:09.360 They don't know what to do.

00:59:11.300 What do you do?

00:59:12.240 How do you reverse this?

00:59:14.420 I mean, how do you make an impact so we don't lose?

00:59:18.640 I mean, I know it's going to take decades, but how do we, how do we hang on to what we have?

00:59:25.200 So in, in, in the last chapter of the Perseic Mind, it's, it's a call to action chapter.

00:59:30.500 One of the calls to action is activate your inner honey badger.

00:59:34.140 Now let me explain that term.

00:59:36.700 A honey badger for your viewers, those who don't know is an extraordinarily ferocious animal.

00:59:42.080 It is the size of a small dog, but it can withstand an attack from six adult lions.

00:59:47.520 They, the, the lions will approach it trying to investigate and it starts acting completely berserk that they're actually intimidated and they retreat.

00:59:55.980 Well, I argue that we have to be ideological honey badgers.

00:59:59.280 Meaning what, if you have a set of principles that you can truly reason, you could explain those first principles, be a honey badger.

01:00:08.980 And that's if, I mean, you follow me on social media.

01:00:11.420 We've known each other for a few years.

01:00:12.920 I never back down.

01:00:14.320 If you come after me, I come after you 10 times harder.

01:00:18.320 I'm relentless.

01:00:19.640 If you.

01:00:20.480 Isn't that Donald Trump though?

01:00:22.500 Isn't that Donald Trump?

01:00:23.240 Yeah.

01:00:24.200 And by the way, that's why I respect him.

01:00:26.180 Right.

01:00:26.400 So it's not that I love everything about him, but I respect a leader who says, Hey, listen, if you come after me, you better come correct.

01:00:34.720 I respect that a lot more than a castrato.

01:00:37.540 Right.

01:00:37.820 I respect that a lot more because the world is shaped by brazen people, by courageous people.

01:00:44.020 In the same way that we choose Navy SEALs because of their physical bravery and courage, we should be choosing academics who have intellectual Navy SEAL qualities.

01:00:53.840 Instead, most academics and thinkers are cowardly, are meek, are politically correct.

01:01:00.340 And it's only a few of us who have the temerity to speak out.

01:01:03.480 So to answer your question, each of us, however big or small our platform is, should be engaged in the battle.

01:01:09.780 If someone posts something on Facebook that is insane, challenge them politely.

01:01:13.920 If you're at a pub and someone says something that you find objectionable, engage a debate.

01:01:18.540 But what they do, what they do instead is they say, I don't want to lose their friendship.

01:01:22.400 I don't want them to judge me.

01:01:23.860 So there's always an excuse for why they subcontract the battle of ideas to others.

01:01:28.920 Let Gatsad worry about that.

01:01:30.920 I've got to be friends with this guy.

01:01:32.500 No, no, no.

01:01:33.080 Don't subcontract it to me.

01:01:34.500 You have a voice.

01:01:35.660 Use it before you lose it.

01:01:37.280 How do you, I've said courage is contagious.

01:01:42.980 When you see someone else stand up and risk, and I'm seeing people, you are one.

01:01:51.760 You're standing up, you've taken the hits, you've hurt yourself financially and every other way, but you've done it.

01:02:01.600 And when people see that, they say, well, maybe I can do more.

01:02:07.740 Maybe I can.

01:02:09.080 Is that the only way to encourage courage?

01:02:15.780 I mean, yeah.

01:02:16.500 I mean, you're leading by example, right?

01:02:17.920 Just yesterday, I received an email from a professor.

01:02:21.800 I think it was in Southern California who said, I've been following you for a while, Professor Saad, and you finally got to me.

01:02:28.680 I decided to do X, Y, Z.

01:02:30.520 And you can't imagine the sense of fulfillment that I get from that.

01:02:35.120 I mean, not from narcissistic reasons, but because I see the tangible benefits that my engagement offers people, right?

01:02:42.920 So, it might start off by you watching me, and then you get the courage, but then don't stop.

01:02:48.280 Keep speaking.

01:02:49.140 Keep talking.

01:02:50.160 Think about the, look, I'm friends with the wife of Raif, by the way.

01:02:54.880 I don't know if you know who that is.

01:02:55.800 This is the Saudi blogger who has now been languishing in a Saudi prison for six, seven years because he dared say some rather innocuous things about the Saudi government.

01:03:06.320 But now imagine how much courage he had.

01:03:08.320 He was criticizing the Saudi government while living in Saudi Arabia, right?

01:03:14.280 So, then imagine when someone exhibits that kind of courage, and then I receive an email from someone who's at Wellesley College, but they're boo-hoo-hoo, so afraid to speak out.

01:03:25.420 I mean, imagine the level of cowardice you might have when you are so pampered at Wellesley College that you're afraid to speak, while they are heroes in the Middle East, knowing that if they speak, they're going to be killed, and yet they speak.

01:03:37.000 So, follow those honey badgers.

01:03:40.500 Gad, it is always great to talk to you.

01:03:44.240 You're one of my favorite people and favorite thinkers.

01:03:47.520 Thank you so much.

01:03:48.500 The name of the book is The Parasitic Mind.

01:03:51.800 The author is Gad Saad.

01:03:53.960 Thanks, Gad.

01:03:55.360 Thank you, Glenn.

01:03:55.980 So good to be with you.

01:03:56.680 Cheers.

01:03:56.820 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

The Glenn Beck Program - October 10, 2020

Ep 85 ｜ The Science Behind Why People Love Biden & Hate Trump ｜ Gad Saad ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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