The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 18, 2026


Discussing Suicidal Empathy with Rob Schmitt on Newsmax (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_993)


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

172.97612

Word count

891

Sentence count

69

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

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

A recent tragedy here in New York is a reminder of the costs of suicidal empathy. A 76-year-old retired teacher was thrown down the steps of a subway station by a man who should have never been on the streets. The accused killer, this 32-year old repeat offender, is smiling in a courtroom. That should anger you.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.080 Welcome back. A recent tragedy here in New York, a reminder of the costs of suicidal empathy.
00:00:06.220 76-year-old retired teacher Ross Falzone thrown down the steps of a subway station by a psychopath.
00:00:13.640 Falzone was killed by a man who should have never been on the streets.
00:00:18.340 The accused killer, this 32-year-old repeat offender, Ramel Burke, smiling in a courtroom.
00:00:26.060 That should anger you.
00:00:26.980 Police say he was released from the psych ward the same day that he killed Falzone.
00:00:31.340 The New York Post's Miranda Devine revealing that a liberal New York woman
00:00:35.640 who was attacked by that man just before he killed Falzone,
00:00:42.720 the 23-year-old refusing to cooperate with prosecutors after Burke attacked her on a subway as well,
00:00:49.620 she said, because maybe part of me was like, I don't want to put another black man in jail.
00:00:55.580 And now because she didn't cooperate with police, he went out just weeks later and murdered a retired schoolteacher by throwing him down the stairs.
00:01:04.900 Dr. Gadsad is the author of the book Suicidal Empathy.
00:01:09.100 It is a book that is exactly about moments like this and what we're doing to ourselves to achieve some kind of ridiculous virtue.
00:01:19.480 Doctor, good to have you back on.
00:01:21.140 Your reaction to that story and talk about, you know, this is exactly your point.
00:01:24.620 Right. I mean, it's too bad that that story didn't happen in times included in the book. But the regrettable feature here is that I've got a million such cases in the book. I mean, it's simply incredible.
00:01:39.400 What I'd like the listeners and viewers to understand is that the book is not about an attack on empathy. Empathy is an evolutionarily selected trait. We are a social species, so it makes sense for us to have empathy as a virtue.
00:01:55.940 For you and I to have a good conversation, I need to put myself in your mind and vice
00:02:00.520 versa.
00:02:01.000 That's part of cognitive empathy.
00:02:03.100 But like most things in life, like Aristotle explained to us several thousand years ago,
00:02:07.420 all good things in moderation.
00:02:09.120 Too little of something is not good.
00:02:11.000 Too much of something is not good.
00:02:13.140 And much of life is about finding that sweet spot.
00:02:15.960 So too little empathy or no empathy makes you a psychopath.
00:02:19.120 path, too much empathy when it hyperfires to in the wrong situations towards the wrong targets,
00:02:26.300 you end up with a malady that can destroy the West. And there's no and there's no empathy for
00:02:32.120 the innocent. You know, that's one thing that you never find. There's tremendous empathy for
00:02:37.140 criminals and for people that I guess are viewed as somehow victims of society as they victimize
00:02:43.560 us. Exactly. So in the case of these recidivist criminals, the idea is that they are born as
00:02:50.900 beautiful human beings, and it is only the fact that they have been socialized into a life of 1.00
00:02:56.780 criminality. In this case, it's a black individual who undoubtedly had to go through the horrors of
00:03:02.980 living in the white supremacist United States. So in that case, why would you then double punish 0.77
00:03:09.040 him. He's already been punished by being a black man in the United States. Now you're going to 0.99
00:03:13.700 punish him by presuming that he's got personal agency. God forbid, he probably needs another
00:03:18.460 200 chances before we actually throw away the key. You got to wonder what that 23 year old woman 1.00
00:03:23.500 feels knowing that this has happened, you know, because she didn't want to prosecute. She didn't
00:03:27.640 want to help the police. He'd be in jail. This wouldn't happen. Indeed. Frankly, I hate to say
00:03:33.060 this, but I bet you that she probably doesn't even feel any guilt. I'll tell you an even more
00:03:37.660 incredible story than the one that you just discussed. There was a gentleman in Norway who
00:03:42.020 was raped and sodomized by a Somali migrant. The Somali migrant ended up serving a very small 0.99
00:03:48.680 sentence in Norway because the Norwegians are very kind and empathetic. After he was released,
00:03:54.780 he was going to be deported back to Mogadishu. The guy who had been raped by him felt horrible 0.92
00:04:01.840 existential angst because now he wouldn't be able to his rapist wouldn't be able to fully flourish
00:04:08.420 in Mogadishu. Poor guy. That's just it's just unbelievable. And it I guess doesn't surprise me
00:04:16.800 anymore. But the extent of that is just surreal. Real quick, before I do let you go, you see the
00:04:23.080 judge that let the guy off in Boston, the guy that shot up like 50, 60 rounds, he shot at people,
00:04:28.080 injured two people. He had only gotten five years in jail for firing 13 shots at police officers.
00:04:33.960 They went to the judge's house. She said, I don't even remember the case.
00:04:37.580 At what point do we need to start holding to account the judges that are allowing these people
00:04:42.920 to continue to victimize society? Look, life is about cause and effect relationships. Once you
00:04:48.560 violate that relationship between what you do and the consequences of that, which is the case with
00:04:55.100 many of these liberal judges, you end up
00:04:57.220 with nihilism.
00:04:59.040 Nihilism.
00:05:00.600 Dr. Gadsad, we appreciate you coming on.
00:05:02.740 It is a wonderful book.
00:05:04.380 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:05:05.920 Suicidal Empathy is the name of it.
00:05:07.480 We appreciate it, sir.
00:05:08.420 Cheers. Take care.