The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 31, 2026


Ask Me Anything Session at the Tel Aviv International Salon (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_960)


Episode Stats

Length

41 minutes

Words per Minute

157.69536

Word Count

6,577

Sentence Count

463

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

47


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dr. Gad Saad is a professor of political philosophy at the University of Toronto and a writer, thinker, and thinker. He is a pioneer in fighting what seems to be moronic behavior, parasitic behavior, and is a leading light in the anti-racist, anti-colonial movement. In this episode, Dr. Saad talks about the current state of civilizational failure, and offers some hope for the future.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Thank you so much, Dr. Gad Saad, for an illuminating presentation.
00:00:04.920 I think a lot of us, you know, follow your work.
00:00:07.760 We understand that you are a pioneer in fighting what seems to be moronic behavior, parasitic behavior.
00:00:14.660 But my question to you is not academic.
00:00:17.020 It's completely practical.
00:00:19.620 Who's going to win?
00:00:23.460 Look.
00:00:24.400 Are you optimistic or are you pessimistic?
00:00:26.940 In the abstract, I'm optimistic.
00:00:29.400 In that there is a pathway for winning.
00:00:32.700 It's not as though if you have stage four pancreatic cancer, there is a stage where they say there is nothing we can do for you.
00:00:39.940 What stage are we at?
00:00:40.780 Well, we are approaching stage four, but there is a cure.
00:00:44.620 Here's where I get pessimistic.
00:00:46.080 The problem is that there is no indication that the West has the stomach and the testicular fortitude to actually implement what is easily available.
00:00:59.140 So, for example, when it comes to immigrants, any immigrant that belongs to an ideology that has tenets that are contrary to the Western tradition, that ideology should be banned.
00:01:13.440 And you can't use the freedom of religion argument to render us all impotent as we go to the abyss of infinite lunacy.
00:01:22.880 So, there is a way to solve it.
00:01:24.940 I worry that nobody has the ability to do so.
00:01:28.640 Dr. Saad, you live in Canada.
00:01:31.420 Yes.
00:01:31.840 Your population just voted for another feckless liberal left government that is continuing on the path to suicide.
00:01:44.240 You've got half of the European countries, the ones on the West side, exactly in the same position.
00:01:49.640 Yes, you have some right-wing parties.
00:01:52.240 You have a backlash.
00:01:53.860 You have people fighting back.
00:01:55.620 Trump won.
00:01:56.700 So, that's a good sign.
00:01:58.340 But Mandani won.
00:01:59.660 That's not a good sign.
00:02:01.620 Again, we really are facing civilizational mass suicide.
00:02:05.920 I think Israel is probably an oasis in that, but we're surrounded by, you know, enemies.
00:02:11.820 And also, ironically, the Sunni moderate Arab countries, they seem to get it.
00:02:16.940 Have you seen the thing where they're no longer sending their people to English universities because they're too extremist?
00:02:26.320 Exactly.
00:02:27.160 But that's the irony that they're being radicalized in Europe and not in the countries that they're running away from.
00:02:31.480 Okay, so then my follow-up question for Jews and for the diaspora is this.
00:02:36.960 When you were a little boy, your parents, you said, read the writing on the wall.
00:02:42.380 Should the Jews be reading the writing on the wall right now?
00:02:45.180 In Israel or in the West?
00:02:46.500 In the West.
00:02:47.640 They should, but I hate to say this because I always want people to walk away with optimism.
00:02:53.240 Most of them are still not reading it.
00:02:55.660 So, I'll give you an example.
00:02:56.640 Great, like, personal example.
00:02:58.260 Yeah.
00:02:58.420 So, I'll get stopped in the street very often.
00:03:01.620 Luckily, thank God, it's almost always fans.
00:03:04.600 So, let's say in our neighborhood in Montreal, it's a liberal neighborhood, liberal in the worst sense of that term.
00:03:12.740 Okay.
00:03:13.340 With a lot of Jews.
00:03:14.920 Yeah.
00:03:15.300 So, the Jewish fan comes up.
00:03:17.440 Oh, my God, I love you so much.
00:03:19.180 Thank you for what you're doing.
00:03:20.560 Can I take a selfie with you?
00:03:22.080 Sure.
00:03:22.260 Then, I usually will very cheekily say, oh, by the way, can you tell me who you voted for in the last election?
00:03:29.400 Oh, I voted liberal, professor, because I'm liberal.
00:03:32.120 So, they love me and they want a selfie with me and they vote for every single thing that I fight against.
00:03:40.480 Yes.
00:03:41.200 Why?
00:03:41.800 Because the word liberal makes me feel good.
00:03:45.260 I'm not like those mean conservatives.
00:03:47.720 Most people are bafflingly idiotic.
00:03:51.400 Right?
00:03:51.780 I agree with that.
00:03:52.360 No, no, but I don't mean that in an arrogant way.
00:03:54.860 Right?
00:03:55.080 Yeah.
00:03:55.100 So, my family has always voted liberal, we're progressive people, therefore, I can't vote for conservatives.
00:04:04.380 Even if I now tell you that every single policy of the liberals is going to go against your best interest, I can't.
00:04:12.540 I have to vote liberal.
00:04:13.600 So, I don't feel optimistic.
00:04:16.240 So, you don't?
00:04:16.960 I don't.
00:04:17.340 About Canada?
00:04:18.180 I don't.
00:04:19.040 That's why I'm at University of Mississippi.
00:04:22.300 And in America, you feel there's a bit more optimism?
00:04:25.120 Certainly in the South.
00:04:26.620 Okay.
00:04:26.940 So, most of the centers that are now sprouting, freedom centers, a renewed defense of the Constitution, of the Bill of Rights, of the Declaration of Independence, it's at University of Florida, it's at University of Mississippi, it's at University of Tennessee, it's at Texas.
00:04:47.140 And so, for those of you, and I do want you to stay and study in Israel, but for those of you that are looking to go to North America, and you don't want to worry about wearing a Star of David, many of the good universities now are all in the South.
00:05:03.940 That is clear, and it's probably because the, I guess, the Christian evangelicals are the only people putting up a fight.
00:05:09.900 Right.
00:05:10.420 At the moment.
00:05:10.920 As Zionists, you mean, and pro-Jewish.
00:05:13.140 Well, not just as Zionists, for their own society.
00:05:14.860 Absolutely.
00:05:16.500 And so, again, back to the question, where are we in 10 years?
00:05:21.320 Are we better off or are we worse off?
00:05:22.900 I'm always torn because I always want to leave with a hopeful message.
00:05:29.260 A lot of people think, to your earlier point about Donald Trump, that now that Donald Trump is here, woke stuff is going to die.
00:05:36.080 Nothing could be further from the truth.
00:05:38.120 Because it took, for these parasitic ideas, it took 50 to 80 years for them to originally be spawned on university campuses.
00:05:46.580 So I'd like to think that it won't take 50 to 80 years to have a vaccine against them, but it's not Donald Trump's come and we have a cure for polio.
00:05:55.200 And so it'll be a much longer intergenerational fight.
00:05:59.440 I completely agree with you.
00:06:00.680 I don't think it's going to go away.
00:06:01.640 And now I'm going to ask you more of a political question.
00:06:03.640 How much of this do you think has been funded and deliberately pushed into the West by Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran and China?
00:06:17.260 How much of this is deliberate, trying to deconstruct Western society?
00:06:22.880 I mean, there is a part of that.
00:06:24.340 Yeah.
00:06:24.640 But it's not only that.
00:06:26.300 So, for example, the people who believe in all the postmodernist stuff, it wasn't some evil doctor, evil in China or in Iran that's doing this.
00:06:38.980 It really came from the idea that we are liberated when we have a relativistic framework, right?
00:06:46.040 I'm not defined by my genitalia.
00:06:48.380 I could be anything I want to be.
00:06:50.200 There is no objective truth when it comes to art.
00:06:53.040 There is no objective truth when it comes to morality.
00:06:56.300 In a sense, that's freeing, right?
00:06:58.060 Because we're not constrained.
00:06:59.760 But here's the problem.
00:07:01.560 There's the pesky shackles of reality that always come back to slap us into reality.
00:07:07.620 And so, yes, there is an element of a nefarious few forces that are trying to undermine the West.
00:07:13.460 But the biggest threat, I hate to say it to the West, you know what they're called?
00:07:18.300 Professors.
00:07:18.820 Yeah.
00:07:19.340 Because nearly all of the most idiotic, existentially destructive ideas come from intellectuals.
00:07:29.240 George Orwell explained many years ago, I'm paraphrasing him, that it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest bullshit.
00:07:36.160 And the reason for that, and this is my explanation, is because in academia, you could stand up, pontificate, without having the autocorrective mechanisms of reality slapping you back into reality, right?
00:07:56.360 It's a bubble.
00:07:56.840 It's a bubble.
00:07:57.560 It's a theoretical bubble.
00:07:58.580 It's a theoretical bubble.
00:07:59.920 I'm sitting in lesbian dance therapy, and I could pontificate all kinds of really cute stuff.
00:08:06.920 I've got some 18, 19-year-old people who look at me and say, oh, professor, you're so smart.
00:08:12.360 And then those students become our former prime minister called Justin Trudeau, right?
00:08:17.940 And so the reason why these ideas flourish is because they, now, this is, by the way, why, while all fields can be parasitized, business schools, engineering schools are less parasitized.
00:08:33.220 Why?
00:08:33.780 Because in the business school, you are wedded to reality.
00:08:37.300 If you develop an economic model based on lesbian postmodernism, it's going to fail, and somebody's going to knock on the door and say, I lost a lot of money because of your lesbian dance therapy.
00:08:49.160 If I build a bridge using lesbian physics, the bridge will collapse, and then it'll lead to a problem.
00:08:57.240 So there is a natural inoculation against imbecility in some disciplines.
00:09:02.700 But generally, that's the problem of academics.
00:09:05.120 But as we go into the era of AI, is the kind of scientific reality going to overcome, maybe that's the solution, overcome, I loved when you said the trinity of bullshit, overcome these sort of crazy, completely disconnected to reality subjects, theories, disciplines, is it going to help us or is it going to make things worse?
00:09:30.200 I'm feeling so bad because it seems like all my answers are pessimistic.
00:09:33.340 Oh, no, no, no, we're in Israel, for God's sake.
00:09:36.600 Here's the problems with academics.
00:09:39.120 So some of you have heard of what's called the self-selection bias, right?
00:09:42.460 Where there is a pressure to self-select a certain prototype.
00:09:48.600 Academics should be intellectual Navy SEALs.
00:09:53.300 They should be bold.
00:09:54.740 They should be courageous.
00:09:55.780 They should be irreverent and defenders of the truth.
00:09:58.820 Well, I'm here to tell you that academics are part of a unique species called the invertebrate castrati.
00:10:10.760 Invertebrate means they have no spine.
00:10:13.840 Castrati means they have no balls.
00:10:16.360 Because I've spent 32 years as a professor, I have never met a more meek, cowardly, tepid group of people as academics.
00:10:29.760 And now people think, oh, I do this stuff.
00:10:32.060 It's just part of my persona.
00:10:33.720 No.
00:10:34.200 Yes, I am who I am.
00:10:36.040 But it's because most academics disgust me because I can't sit down with them and actually have a meaningful conversation.
00:10:45.060 They just want to do their little narrow area of specialization, never rock the boat, never say anything that could get them into any kind of trouble.
00:10:55.380 So unlike the commandos that you hear about in the IDF, we should be the commandos of the cerebral world.
00:11:02.560 Most of them are sucking their thumb in a fetal position.
00:11:05.220 So until we solve that problem, until we're able to attract bold, irreverent, courageous people into academia, I think the problem will always self-perpetuate.
00:11:20.840 And so you are a small minority in academia.
00:11:25.300 I would say one out of 20 million.
00:11:28.440 There's almost no one.
00:11:29.760 Now, there are a few that have joined the group, yes, but they do it while crossing their legs very sweetly, right?
00:11:39.120 They don't...
00:11:40.500 Wow, but he's not a professor.
00:11:42.760 My socks are more professorial than Justin Trudeau.
00:11:45.300 No, but what I'm saying is that even the people who are on our side...
00:11:50.040 Are still scared.
00:11:50.920 Are still scared.
00:11:51.820 They still speak with the diplomatic, what I call the progressive lisp.
00:11:56.520 Look, now I'm going to speak like this because I'm very progressive, right?
00:12:01.200 Whereas I'm from the Middle East.
00:12:03.020 If you want to kill me, I'll kill your entire family and their descendants and their past.
00:12:08.780 But that's the kind of academic you want.
00:12:16.560 Now, I don't mean literally be violent, but I mean be bold in defending truth.
00:12:22.320 Why don't more academics stand up who are in biology department and say,
00:12:26.480 what is this craziness about men can menstruate?
00:12:29.560 How can you utter such words, right?
00:12:32.180 I mean, what's the most fundamental attack on reality for a sexually reproducing species, right?
00:12:38.120 How much time have we wasted debating what constitutes male or female?
00:12:43.000 So, regrettably, even the ones who are, quote, on our side are always very measured and progressive in their language.
00:12:52.320 And just one question before we open this up to the audience.
00:12:55.280 You know, when you see the impact somebody like Charlie Kirk had on college campuses,
00:13:01.620 you see that there's a huge crowd of students that are fed up of this.
00:13:06.880 Do you find that as well?
00:13:08.960 Did you find that in Concordia?
00:13:10.720 You're finding it more in Mississippi.
00:13:12.820 Tell us a little bit about the actual student body.
00:13:15.960 Because at some point, isn't this a market?
00:13:18.620 Isn't this demand and supply?
00:13:20.400 Isn't at some point people going to go, I'm not going to pay money for this?
00:13:24.220 And Elon Musk saying you don't need to go to college anyway.
00:13:27.340 What do you think about that?
00:13:28.880 Right.
00:13:29.420 So, here's some optimism.
00:13:30.540 Even though universities are the centers of parasitic nonsense,
00:13:37.140 the number of such wokesters is actually a minuscule number of the total population.
00:13:46.060 But they keep the rest of the people in check, right?
00:13:49.760 So, let me draw an analogy.
00:13:51.760 How many terrorists did it take to alter the New York landscape on 9-11?
00:13:57.900 Was it 19 million?
00:14:00.140 Was it 190,000?
00:14:02.020 Was it 1,900?
00:14:03.460 No, it was 19 terrorists.
00:14:05.640 So, 19 terrorists who were very committed were able to irrevocably alter our reality.
00:14:12.480 It's the same analogy when it comes to the wokesters.
00:14:15.700 There is a few incredibly committed, zealous maniacs who then create an environment where everybody keeps quiet.
00:14:23.500 So, if I showed you the letters that I've received from students, from professors, in all the years that I've been doing this,
00:14:31.280 you would think that they're in North Korea.
00:14:34.020 So, for example, someone will write to me and say,
00:14:37.000 Professor, I think my lab director is now looking at my social media,
00:14:43.400 and I'm worried that I once liked a tweet that was complimentary of Donald Trump,
00:14:49.900 and I think I'm going to lose my postdoc.
00:14:52.240 What should I do?
00:14:53.200 And I'm thinking, the fact that you have the reflex to write to me with such fears shows you...
00:15:00.920 You are living in North Korea.
00:15:02.000 You are living in North Korea.
00:15:03.400 But it's not there's a million of these maniacs running around.
00:15:06.240 It just takes a few of them to keep the rest of us quiet.
00:15:08.920 So, maybe that is a little optimism.
00:15:11.480 Okay, so with that, we'll open up.
00:15:13.080 Then, I'll start with Dean over there, who fought me before the event started.
00:15:17.100 Maybe get up, stand up, say your name, and ask your question.
00:15:20.540 And can I just make a small request?
00:15:23.480 I hope it's not impolite.
00:15:25.260 Please don't pontificate for 10 minutes about your brilliance.
00:15:28.480 Don't make it an Israeli question.
00:15:29.800 Ask a question so that I can answer as many people as possible.
00:15:33.480 Okay.
00:15:33.700 As a significant protector of our beloved Judeo-Christian values, do you feel like you might be missing
00:15:46.120 out on vital insights, or the humanity is missing out on your insights, did you not look into
00:15:53.100 what the Judeo part has to say in those, in the Judeo-Christian.
00:15:59.940 You mean the fact that I don't incorporate Jewish teachings within my positions?
00:16:05.180 Is that what you mean?
00:16:06.040 Just like you, you don't have to memorize the Talmud, but the way you could, you didn't have
00:16:12.400 to memorize the Koran or the Hadith to just delve deep enough to understand the stances
00:16:16.960 and perspectives, but, and, and not, and when you're asked, you mean, being asked about
00:16:20.840 the Torah or, or, or, uh, or Judaism, you say, I don't know, uh, it's not my field.
00:16:26.280 I argue it is your field, as first as a fellow Jew, and second as a...
00:16:30.660 Yes.
00:16:32.340 Wow.
00:16:33.100 It's a Jewish community.
00:16:34.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:34.780 So, even, even the guy who receives a million death threats, defending the Jewish people,
00:16:43.680 your conclusion is, but why don't you talk more about the Torah?
00:16:49.060 Yes.
00:16:51.000 Why don't you know what, what the Torah has to say about things?
00:16:54.900 Instead of saying, uh, oh, I heard this one thing in all my time on campus, I heard this
00:16:59.300 on campus, he told me this one thing, and that's, that's your answer to this.
00:17:02.980 Right.
00:17:03.260 Uh, look, I, I certainly don't know as much about the Torah as Maimonides would, but compared
00:17:10.220 to the average person, I think I know enough about it.
00:17:13.860 The reason why it doesn't necessarily come up often is because I'd like to think that
00:17:18.840 most of the positions I take are rooted in a scientific epistemology, but if there are
00:17:25.440 Judaic teachings that might help me, I'd, I'd be happy to, to, to learn.
00:17:30.680 Sure.
00:17:31.320 Thank you.
00:17:31.900 First of all, what kind of, uh, how do you see gender politics as it going to devour itself,
00:17:39.980 or will it devour Western society first?
00:17:42.440 And what kind of ostrich syndrome do you witness here in Israel?
00:17:45.400 In Israel, uh, so I've been on a few Israeli shows where they asked me whether I think,
00:17:52.360 you know, I usually say, for example, Sweden has stage four parasitic suicidal empathy, right?
00:17:59.140 Uh, my understanding of Israel, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is that a lot of these,
00:18:05.420 you've heard the term luxury beliefs.
00:18:07.380 So a lot of these beliefs flourish in environments where you can have the luxury of being a moron.
00:18:15.360 But, but when you are in Israel and you have to worry about whether you're going to existentially survive tomorrow,
00:18:22.640 maybe I don't have enough time to worry about whether men menstruate or not.
00:18:26.940 So my understanding is that Israel doesn't score as highly on some of these issues.
00:18:33.400 Does that sound fair?
00:18:34.760 Yes.
00:18:35.060 And just to draw an analogy, for example, eating disorders, anorexia nervosa,
00:18:43.020 tend to always happen throughout history in societies of plenty, right?
00:18:48.760 Ethiopian women in Ethiopia that face enduring famine crises don't have the luxury of suffering from anorexia nervosa,
00:18:59.160 so it's a similar mechanism.
00:19:00.360 Some of the viruses might, but for example, the open border policy, look, demography is destiny,
00:19:14.700 and if you don't solve that, it will devour you.
00:19:17.480 Now, the only thing you need is to have the foresight to extrapolate.
00:19:22.240 Most people have the, what I call temporal myopia.
00:19:26.100 They only see beyond their nose.
00:19:28.560 So come on, Islam is not going to take over.
00:19:30.880 Well, it's not going to take over tomorrow.
00:19:32.820 It's not going to take over in five years, but inshallah, give us enough time.
00:19:36.400 In 500 years, you will all be listening to the prayer, right?
00:19:41.180 So Islam doesn't always take over in five minutes.
00:19:44.460 Depending on the culture, it could be 500 years, but it will happen if you allow it.
00:19:49.980 I hope that I get to hear your audio book, if you will bring out suicidal empathy.
00:20:02.280 It's the perfect two words to some of you obviously on the street.
00:20:05.120 Thank you.
00:20:05.480 You mentioned courage, you mentioned Aristotle.
00:20:08.220 Now, I'm not a doctor.
00:20:09.260 I got my PhD in being attacked by both transgenders and Islamists in the streets of London, never at the same point.
00:20:17.880 I want to ask you about courage and what it means to you.
00:20:20.600 You're talking about intellectual courage, standing up for morals, standing up for moral clarity,
00:20:24.660 and also standing up to the minority, which you call the violent wokeists.
00:20:29.020 What can each individual here do or tell their friends who live in the diaspora to do for all these campuses to enable them to stand out with their Jewish identity?
00:20:38.400 Yes, thank you.
00:20:39.620 I mean, my answer could apply to the Jewish identity, or it could apply just generally about defending truth.
00:20:46.380 So in Chapter 8, in the last chapter of The Parasitic Mind, some of you, if you've read it, might remember that I have a call when I say activate your inner honey badger, right?
00:20:57.040 Now, for those of you who don't know, the honey badger is an African badger that has been ranked by animal experts, by zoologists, as the fiercest animal in the animal kingdom.
00:21:11.500 And that's saying a lot, because there are a lot of intimidating animals.
00:21:14.600 Now, it's the size of a small to medium-sized dog, yet when adult lions see him coming down in the African savannah, they go,
00:21:26.380 I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to interrupt you, and they cross to the other side.
00:21:29.760 Why?
00:21:30.400 Because he stands tall.
00:21:32.480 He may not be tall, but he proudly stands his ground.
00:21:36.620 So what I ask everybody to do, not everybody has, you know, my personality,
00:21:42.400 but you could all contribute in some way in defending truth.
00:21:48.120 If your professor says something that is insanely wrong, politely challenge them.
00:21:53.140 If you're out at the pub and your friend says something that you think is worthy of a discussion,
00:21:58.880 don't walk away from it because it might create friction.
00:22:02.280 Use every opportunity to weigh your voice into the debate.
00:22:07.680 Some of us have huge platforms.
00:22:09.680 Some of us have small platforms.
00:22:11.680 But none of us have the luxury to say, God, Saad, will do it for me.
00:22:16.220 Because the problem is everybody then, it becomes a tragedy of the commons.
00:22:21.220 Everybody diffuses the responsibility on a few of us.
00:22:24.520 But then there is a big target on all of us, right?
00:22:27.100 So I'll give you an example.
00:22:28.380 This is an email that I've received probably a million times so far.
00:22:31.720 Let me give you the general structure.
00:22:34.540 Dear Professor Saad, tens and tons of compliments.
00:22:38.200 Last line.
00:22:38.900 If you decide to read this email on your show, what comes next?
00:22:45.340 Please don't mention my name.
00:22:48.700 So I write back.
00:22:50.540 Dear so-and-so, thank you for your lovely words.
00:22:53.440 Don't you think the last sentence of your email is exactly why we are in this problem?
00:22:59.520 And then they get slapped into reality.
00:23:02.180 Because they don't even have the courage not even to say the things that I say.
00:23:07.920 They don't want to be publicly associated to the one who says it on their behalf.
00:23:13.540 But they're the first to say, oh my God, you're my biggest hero.
00:23:16.760 But don't mention to anybody that I think you're a hero.
00:23:19.520 So we all have the opportunity to contribute in different ways.
00:23:23.560 Just contribute.
00:23:31.480 First, I see every interview, almost every interview with you a couple of years.
00:23:35.340 So I would raise respect about that.
00:23:37.640 Thank you.
00:23:38.140 Thank you.
00:23:39.680 In 1993, there was a panel debate about Naomi Wolf, Rebecca Walker, case of agents.
00:23:47.580 I remember this.
00:23:48.540 I watched it a couple of times.
00:23:51.000 And in the debate, the debate was on progressive feminism, the beef tree.
00:23:56.720 Naomi Wolf, she grew and raised in Tel Aviv.
00:23:58.760 She moved to England and the United States.
00:24:00.740 And the case of agents tried to explain for two hours why it's going to be, they're going to shoot in their legs with this wave tree.
00:24:08.700 Now, Naomi Wolf in 2016, 2015, she go to the show of Jordan Peterson.
00:24:13.580 She said she's sorry about the wave tree and what happened with the professor.
00:24:17.460 I think you know this.
00:24:18.300 Yes.
00:24:18.820 And my question is like, there is a lot of people who blame the Jews.
00:24:23.300 The Jews about, like, that's what we push the narrative of the left for something like 100, 200 years.
00:24:31.760 Everybody blame the Jews about the Bolsheviks.
00:24:34.180 Yes.
00:24:34.520 No.
00:24:35.180 Lenin was, everybody say he's Jewish.
00:24:39.060 No, Trump's saying he's Jewish.
00:24:40.160 Yeah, but Lenin, the grandfather, he was Jewish.
00:24:43.760 That's what everybody said.
00:24:45.160 So Marxism, Jewish, progressive, LGBT, everybody says it's us.
00:24:50.980 And that's how you see it, like, ears and ears like that.
00:24:54.680 And this is something that you can explain, but I don't...
00:24:58.980 Yes.
00:24:59.560 So you're saying why is it that there's always a reflex to blame the Jews when it comes to these parasitic ideas?
00:25:04.560 Yes.
00:25:04.820 Right.
00:25:05.080 There's this other guy who fights against parasitic ideas.
00:25:07.640 He's also Jewish.
00:25:08.440 His name is Gad Saad.
00:25:09.420 So this is what I buy...
00:25:10.900 By the way, I call six...
00:25:12.520 Has anybody heard the game that I coined called Six Degrees of Jew?
00:25:15.960 Right?
00:25:16.600 Six Degrees of Jew is a beautiful, fun game that everybody can play.
00:25:20.120 I give you a calamity in the world, and you have up to six causal steps to explain why you should blame the Jew for it.
00:25:28.260 So, for example, an Amazonian frog just died in the Amazon.
00:25:33.180 Go.
00:25:33.960 Okay?
00:25:34.160 So the problem is it's a disease of the human soul, which is Stephen Miller, who is the Trump advisor, is Jewish, and is probably the most anti-immigration guy possible.
00:25:50.180 We don't quote him as an example of anti-immigration.
00:25:54.720 We will look for Barbara Spector, who I have no idea who she was, but she's always on these clips where she's a Jewish woman saying we have to have open border policies.
00:26:03.880 So when I'm a Jew hater, I'm going to look for the exemplars that support my position, and I'm going to ignore all of the exemplars that are contrary to my position.
00:26:15.080 So that's part of the cancer of Jew hatred.
00:26:18.440 The psychology of the problem and why people blame the truth.
00:26:21.480 Okay.
00:26:22.060 Yeah.
00:26:22.540 Okay.
00:26:23.120 So I can offer you an explanation there.
00:26:25.380 There are the usual, you know, there's Islamic Jew hatred, there's Christian Jew hatred, there is the academic left Jew hatred, there's the neo-Nazi Jew hatred.
00:26:34.640 I'm going to propose a psychological explanation for why Jew hatred is throughout history.
00:26:41.960 In the diaspora, Jews are always a minuscule minority, but they always box way above their weight class.
00:26:55.040 Yes.
00:26:55.540 So they're what's called market dominant minorities.
00:26:59.660 This is the term of amichua.
00:27:01.640 Okay.
00:27:02.160 So, so remember this point.
00:27:05.060 Now I'm going to say something else.
00:27:06.560 In psychology, there's something called the self-serving bias.
00:27:09.460 The self-serving bias is how we attribute causality in our lives.
00:27:14.780 Typically, we attribute successes internally.
00:27:18.620 I did well on the exam because I'm smart and I studied hard.
00:27:22.620 The success was because of me.
00:27:24.320 And we attribute failures externally.
00:27:27.760 I did poorly on the exam because Professor Saad is a nasty Jew.
00:27:32.640 Right?
00:27:32.800 Now imagine for all of my individual and collective failures, I have a ready external culprit for my failings.
00:27:44.460 It's the Jew.
00:27:45.560 Why?
00:27:46.220 Because I live in a society where 99% of people are not Jewish, yet my accountant is Jewish.
00:27:53.800 And the top lawyer is Jewish.
00:27:55.680 And the top professors at my university are Jewish.
00:27:58.380 And the surgeon that operated on my aunt is Jewish.
00:28:01.620 Those asshole Jews are taking all our jobs.
00:28:04.260 I wanted to get a job as an actor who controls Hollywood.
00:28:08.560 It's the Jews.
00:28:09.300 That's why I didn't get it.
00:28:10.460 I wanted to get a mortgage for my house who controls the banks.
00:28:14.320 It's the Jews.
00:28:15.100 So you take the self-serving bias.
00:28:17.400 You couple it with the fact that Jews are a historically the most market-dominant minority.
00:28:25.760 And you've got the perfect cocktail for solving all your failures.
00:28:29.280 It's the diabolical Jew.
00:28:32.360 Down there at the back.
00:28:34.320 Dr. Saad, thank you so much.
00:28:36.060 Do you think that there's maybe a kernel of truth to the argument of those with the parasite,
00:28:40.200 that it is possible to become the bad guy, and that maybe there are some problems that
00:28:45.040 we would be betraying our own values if we were to solve?
00:28:48.040 So, for instance, if Germany wanted to solve their immigration problem,
00:28:52.200 and they rounded up every man named Mohammed and put him on a train and sent him eastward,
00:28:56.780 all of a sudden they'd become the bad guy.
00:28:58.640 So maybe they know what to do, but they can't do it.
00:29:01.840 So is there not maybe a kernel of truth there?
00:29:06.840 Men are taller than women, even though your Aunt Linda is taller than your Uncle Roscoe, right?
00:29:14.100 Meaning that I can always find a singular exemplar that falsifies a statement that is true at
00:29:20.780 the population level.
00:29:22.220 There are hundreds of millions of lovely Muslims.
00:29:26.660 I probably know more of them than all of you here by virtue of being from Lebanon,
00:29:30.780 and I have a lot of Muslim friends and fans.
00:29:33.660 That doesn't take away from the fact that Islam is a really bad idea when mixed with Western tradition.
00:29:41.180 So I can't comment about what if Germany screws up by sending back a Mohammed who's sweet.
00:29:46.840 Of course that would happen.
00:29:48.440 But if you want to resolve the problem of Islam,
00:29:52.280 you have to recognize that when Islam becomes dominant,
00:29:57.360 personal liberties cease to exist.
00:29:59.820 Nothing could be clearer.
00:30:01.900 There is 1,400 years of data that supports this,
00:30:05.700 notwithstanding that there are hundreds of millions of Mohammeds
00:30:09.080 that are as lovely as anybody here in this room.
00:30:11.580 Both of those statements are true.
00:30:13.700 Over here.
00:30:14.780 I think we're going to take a few more, and we're going to close the evening.
00:30:18.040 Yes.
00:30:18.520 My mother is Judy Sloan Cohane.
00:30:21.460 She's also an alumna of Cornell,
00:30:24.080 and she has over 100 peer-reviewed publications,
00:30:27.440 specifically on midwifery.
00:30:29.220 She has invented a protocol to eliminate postpartum hemorrhage bleeding
00:30:33.680 by squatting after birth.
00:30:35.500 How can she get it adopted globally since nobody wants it?
00:30:40.920 Wow.
00:30:41.520 I can't speak about that specific example, but what I can tell you,
00:30:45.800 so in suicidal empathy, to your point about medical innovations,
00:30:52.760 does anybody know what the Semmelweis reflex is?
00:30:56.580 Does anybody know what Semmelweis, or vice, depending on how you pronounce it?
00:30:59.960 Semmelweis is actually arguably the physician
00:31:02.760 who has saved more lives than most physicians you could ever think of.
00:31:07.820 He was the guy who found the mechanism that causes mother mortality after giving birth.
00:31:19.960 And you know what the, does anybody know where I'm going with this?
00:31:23.120 Washing your hands.
00:31:24.760 Because physicians would work on cadavers and then would move to obstetrics
00:31:32.800 without ever washing their hands.
00:31:35.100 So he did a very carefully controlled study where he showed
00:31:39.640 that by simply washing your hands, that would solve that problem.
00:31:45.760 Guess what all his colleagues said?
00:31:48.380 You're an asshole.
00:31:49.900 And how dare you think that we are the cause of this?
00:31:53.280 And he died a very tragic death, but now they have statues of him.
00:31:58.000 And so that became known as the Semmelweis reflex
00:32:00.440 because most people, including esteemed professors,
00:32:05.680 when they are exposed to theories that are contrary to their accepted wisdom,
00:32:10.540 they go la la la.
00:32:11.440 I was recently asked on a show,
00:32:13.560 I had been invited to appear on a show by a British psychiatrist.
00:32:18.040 And at the end of the show,
00:32:19.460 he was the only guy who's ever asked me this question.
00:32:21.700 And it was a great question.
00:32:22.580 He said, out of all your years as a professor,
00:32:25.720 what is the single phenomenon that has most surprised you about the human condition?
00:32:32.140 So I had to think for a second.
00:32:33.640 And I said, the inability for most human beings to change their opinions
00:32:39.980 once it is deeply anchored in a position.
00:32:42.840 So I can't speak to the specific details of your mother,
00:32:47.500 but I can tell you, good luck to her.
00:32:51.200 I'm willing to email you.
00:32:53.100 Would you be willing to tell?
00:32:54.480 I will try to look, but given the number of emails I received,
00:32:58.480 I always feel very guilty.
00:33:00.140 So I don't know if you saw earlier today,
00:33:02.000 I put out a random, like an email where I said,
00:33:04.720 apologies to all the people that I haven't responded to
00:33:07.240 because I feel guilty.
00:33:08.200 I want to respond, but I get 10,000.
00:33:10.200 And I would be spending all day doing that.
00:33:12.200 So I'll talk.
00:33:13.100 Wait, I'm ignoring the talk over here.
00:33:15.280 Yes.
00:33:15.580 All right.
00:33:15.920 Thank you.
00:33:16.180 I used to tell people, I used to show them the Wikipedia page
00:33:19.660 of this year's terror attack.
00:33:22.780 And they would say, I would say, what's the common denominator?
00:33:27.340 And they would say, economic state.
00:33:30.440 Of course.
00:33:31.100 Stuff like that.
00:33:32.320 And also about the Palestinians.
00:33:34.240 And in Iran, they arrived at Oslo
00:33:36.260 and gave a lot of territories back to the Palestinians
00:33:40.140 and got back a lot of death.
00:33:42.520 So I'm asking, in 40 years after,
00:33:46.040 the world had cooled down.
00:33:48.300 How can we not forget what Islam really is to the Jews?
00:33:54.160 And what's the connection between them?
00:33:55.660 Bill Warner.
00:33:56.380 Yeah, Bill.
00:33:56.960 So for those of you who are all...
00:33:58.140 Can you speak about it a little bit?
00:33:58.460 Yeah, so I'll answer you in a second.
00:34:01.440 But just to your question,
00:34:02.640 Bill Warner is originally someone, a physicist by training.
00:34:07.720 But later in his life, he set up a center called
00:34:10.680 the Center for the Study of Political Islam,
00:34:13.680 where he does very serious analyses of the content of Islam.
00:34:19.100 So he can go into the Hadith,
00:34:21.420 or he can go into Muhammad's Sira,
00:34:23.500 or he can go into the Quran and say
00:34:25.820 how much Jew hatred is in this text
00:34:28.540 versus in Mein Kampf.
00:34:30.540 And it doesn't matter how much evidence you show them.
00:34:34.220 To my point earlier to this other gentleman,
00:34:36.400 people go, la la la, I don't want to hear it.
00:34:38.820 So I feel, unfortunately, I don't want to be pessimistic,
00:34:42.880 that it is part of the architecture of the human mind
00:34:46.280 to be never-ending in its parasitic proclivities.
00:34:51.020 And the suicide event.
00:34:52.380 And the suicide event.
00:34:53.180 Well, let me give you an example from Israel.
00:34:55.700 So, Yahya Sinwar, right?
00:34:59.120 Yahya Sinwar, I thought about that.
00:35:00.220 I wanted to tell you.
00:35:00.940 Is in prison in 2011.
00:35:05.800 The Israeli surgeons who are adhering to the Hippocratic Oath
00:35:10.100 that says, I will save anybody,
00:35:13.880 including the one who wants to genocide me,
00:35:16.460 say, hey, you've got a brain tumor.
00:35:18.480 No problem.
00:35:19.520 We will cure you.
00:35:20.700 Now, you would think that if the Jewish surgeon is curing you of a brain tumor,
00:35:28.660 boy, have I just bought some goodwill that hopefully will get you to reciprocate in kindness.
00:35:35.220 And Sinwar said, beautiful.
00:35:37.840 Here's how I'm going to pay you back.
00:35:39.340 October 7th is coming your way.
00:35:40.980 And the reason for that is something that I talk about in Suicidal Empathy,
00:35:46.240 which I call cultural theory of mind.
00:35:48.760 So, remember earlier I said theory of mind is when I could put myself in your shoes and vice versa?
00:35:53.600 So, the West, and regrettably even the Israelis, don't have cultural theory of mind.
00:36:00.080 What do I mean by that?
00:36:01.260 If we are kind, empathetic, generous, altruistic, we think that those values will be reciprocated.
00:36:10.980 The other folks, you know what they hear?
00:36:13.800 Weakness, weakness, weakness, and weakness.
00:36:17.620 So, your beneficence is taken as feminized weakness.
00:36:23.200 And this is why, this went viral, I was explaining that when I would speak to Arabic people,
00:36:30.200 this is before, now people know me, so they don't speak freely to me,
00:36:34.840 but they would always tell me,
00:36:37.000 you know God, the West is a woman to be mounted in Arabic.
00:36:42.120 It's a very colorful way of saying it.
00:36:44.280 Because they view the empathy and kindness of the West as a woman to be mounted and effed.
00:36:52.240 Yeah, up there.
00:36:53.480 Great, thanks.
00:36:54.760 I think this gentleman could...
00:36:56.840 Okay, we'll wait.
00:36:57.820 Do you think that the Western world is marching toward the idiocracy,
00:37:02.900 meaning the public becomes more and more stupid?
00:37:05.140 So, you can convince them in ideologies,
00:37:11.600 but they just have propaganda in the heads.
00:37:15.520 Not because they're facing this, but because they are really stupid people.
00:37:20.680 So, I don't know if I could make a statement as broad as what you just said,
00:37:24.640 but what I can tell you,
00:37:26.420 there is, for example, indication
00:37:28.260 that the average person does one behavior
00:37:32.480 much less than previous generations.
00:37:35.140 Can anybody think what it is?
00:37:36.820 Breathing.
00:37:37.560 Breathing.
00:37:39.360 Right?
00:37:40.400 If you come to my house
00:37:42.000 and see the personal library that I have,
00:37:46.080 people who know a lot
00:37:48.340 actually know how little they know.
00:37:51.160 Because I look at all these books that I've yet to read
00:37:54.500 and I'm filled with a terrifying angst
00:37:58.520 that are those books going to out-survive me
00:38:02.620 and that I might not be able to read them all.
00:38:05.680 Well, I hate to say it,
00:38:07.620 but for most people today,
00:38:09.560 reading a book is tougher than climbing Mount Everest.
00:38:13.880 And I see it in my own students
00:38:15.700 where they just no longer have that reflex.
00:38:18.340 So, I don't think there is a general, you know,
00:38:21.480 distribution whereby most people have become morons.
00:38:24.600 I think that one of the reasons why I'm interesting to listen to
00:38:28.540 is because most of my time I spend reading.
00:38:32.460 Therefore, I have things that are interesting to share with you.
00:38:36.060 It doesn't magically come to my brain, right?
00:38:38.140 So, I think if I were to offer you three life lessons,
00:38:43.000 read, read, and read.
00:38:46.260 Amen.
00:38:46.820 Okay, up here.
00:38:47.740 Yes, up here.
00:38:48.480 I think it's going to have to be the last question.
00:38:50.040 I'm so sorry.
00:38:50.740 Go on.
00:38:51.020 I'm going to have a good one.
00:38:51.640 Zach Schwartzman, thanks for taking my question.
00:38:54.280 So, you mentioned that Jews are a minority
00:38:57.260 in many places that may have had this outsized success.
00:39:00.640 What specifically do you think the reasons are why?
00:39:03.060 So, this gets to an issue that comes up often in evolutionary psychology
00:39:10.700 or in the social science, is it nature or nurture?
00:39:13.360 So, nature, we could certainly address some of the research
00:39:16.620 that shows that on average, there's a genetic component
00:39:19.580 that makes Jews higher IQ.
00:39:21.380 But I could even ignore all of that
00:39:23.620 and offer you a nurture argument for Jewish excellence.
00:39:27.860 You ready?
00:39:28.960 And I'm going to use a personal story to describe it.
00:39:32.560 So, I did an undergrad in mathematics and computer science.
00:39:35.680 Then I did an MBA, both at a top university.
00:39:39.280 You'll see in a second why I'm not saying this to tell you my CV.
00:39:41.960 It's relevant for the story.
00:39:44.280 As I was about to go on for my MS and PhD at Cornell,
00:39:49.380 one of my brothers, actually the Judo brother,
00:39:52.600 was trying to convince me to work with him
00:39:55.460 in Southern California for a few years.
00:39:57.640 At the time, he had a software company.
00:39:59.720 He said, you know, now you finished your MBA,
00:40:01.100 come work with me for a few years
00:40:02.900 and then you can go back and do your PhD.
00:40:05.500 When my mother found out that my brother
00:40:08.920 was trying to get me to not maybe pursue my PhD,
00:40:12.700 he's in California.
00:40:14.600 So then I had returned to Montreal.
00:40:16.800 She says, can I talk to you in the other room?
00:40:19.080 And I'm thinking, am I in trouble?
00:40:20.820 What's happening?
00:40:21.940 She goes, I'm hearing that you're thinking about
00:40:24.280 not going on for your PhD.
00:40:26.720 And before I could even answer,
00:40:28.660 no, no, don't worry, I am continuing with my PhD.
00:40:31.360 She goes, do you want people to know you
00:40:34.120 as somebody who dropped out of school?
00:40:36.200 So having a bachelor's degree in mathematics
00:40:42.820 and computer science followed by an MBA
00:40:46.160 and stopping there would bring great shame
00:40:50.200 as someone who was an illiterate fool.
00:40:53.300 So that explains Jewish excellence.
00:40:55.920 How do you differentiate that
00:40:57.040 between Indian immigrants in the U.S.
00:40:58.820 and Chinese as well?
00:40:59.780 Well, by the way,
00:41:01.680 I had a great affinity
00:41:03.540 with the Indian graduate students at Cornell
00:41:06.680 because I saw them as the Jews
00:41:10.940 of that region of Asia, right?
00:41:13.580 Because their reverence for learning
00:41:16.160 was as infectious as a Jew.
00:41:18.120 So I'm not suggesting that that reflex
00:41:20.620 is monopolized by Jews,
00:41:22.860 but usually all of the immigrant groups
00:41:26.000 that succeed really well
00:41:27.640 have that kind of equals.
00:41:29.140 Well, I think we all know
00:41:30.580 that we were the first people
00:41:31.480 to actually read something
00:41:32.780 that wasn't hieroglyphics
00:41:34.080 and the first people to write.
00:41:35.840 And I think the last two answers
00:41:37.300 are the same, read, read, and read.
00:41:39.880 And this is why we are who we are.
00:41:41.400 Thank you so much.