Leadership Insights Series at Northwood University (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_713)
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
151.42818
Summary
Learn English with Dr. Ghatan Saad, President of Northwood University. Dr. Saad was born in Bulgaria and raised in communist Bulgaria. He grew up in a communist country and lived in a socialist state, and now lives in a land that is supposed to provide a tremendous amount of freedom.
Transcript
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With great excitement, I introduce you to Northwood University, a truly exceptional
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institution in American higher education. Since 1959, this private, accredited university has
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been a vibrant bastion of free thought and enterprise, standing out among the thousands
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of other schools in the U.S. Known as America's free enterprise university, Northwood is dedicated
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to nurturing the next generation of leaders who drive global social and economic progress.
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At the heart of Northwood lies the Northwood idea, a philosophy that celebrates individual
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freedom, responsibility, and the importance of moral law and free enterprise. This entrepreneurial
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spirit is evident in that one-third of Northwood alumni own businesses. Northwood is more than
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an institution. It's a movement that empowers students to think critically and champion
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liberty. It is a rare gem in today's academic world. If you're passionate about supporting
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a university that values intellectual growth and free enterprise, or to learn more about
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Good evening, everyone. Great to have you here. And Kristen will mention those online as well.
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Well, this is another great event here in the McNair Center. And from in the late 80s, early 90s,
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there was a gentleman by the name of Dr. James Dutterstadt. He was president at the University
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of Michigan. And sadly, he passed away less than a month ago on August 21st. In 2009, he wrote
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a wonderful book called A View from the Helm. And it was his perspective of what is it like to lead this
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complex organization called a university from the position of a president. And it was Dr.
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Stahauer's idea of how could we take that concept of view from the helm and extend it out into leadership
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writ large. And so that's what we did. And in fact, the very first session of leadership insights,
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a view from the helm, we had Dr. Bill Stavropoulos and Dr. Terry Moore were here and they let it off.
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And then Bill and Terry are here. So welcome back, gentlemen, and great to have you.
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A number of other individuals from the community, I welcome you all here. And this is essentially
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what Northwood is trying to do as a university is to create opportunities for people to explore
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different perspectives. And as I said to our students and their parents often, sometimes topics
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are uncomfortable. But I also follow that up by saying we will fail as an institution if we
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don't have a student be uncomfortable at some point in their time here at Northwood. That is
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essentially what we're supposed to do is have them explore ideas and hear thought leaders and we have
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a great one tonight. Before we get into the formal introduction of Dr. Saad, I'm going to ask my
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colleague, Dr. Alex Tokarev, a fantastic professor here of economics who has lived his life, early years
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of living in a communist socialist state, and what that was like now to live in a land that is supposed
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to provide a tremendous amount of freedom. His gift to our students as they get to spend time with
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them in our classrooms. So Alex, if you could come on up and set the context. Thank you.
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Thank you, Kent, and welcome everyone. I was asked to briefly talk about why Dr.
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Ghat Saad and Northwood University are a match made in heaven. For 65 years, we have been America's
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free enterprise business school. Let's start with the fact that Northwood will always stand
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for capitalism, not socialism, not cronyism, not wokeism. Because capitalism is the only economic
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system that respects the right of the individual to control his life. Private property and free
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enterprise secure both the resources and the opportunities to do what the First Amendment
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to the U.S. Constitution guarantees on paper to every American. I appreciate, more than most of you
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probably, capitalism, free enterprise, and using my rights to worship God, to say and to publish what I
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think. Because I grew up with none of those rights. Bulgaria under socialism was a politically correct
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dystopia of the kind that Kamala wants to build here. All our views on politics, science, the economy,
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arts, culture, international affairs, and much more were prescribed by the government. Express dissent
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in private, any risk being reported, detained, shamed, expelled from school, or losing your work,
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home, family, and even your life. In his book, The Parasitic Mind, Dr. Saad refers to a Harvard
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biologist who said of socialism, great idea, wrong species. Any system that is built on a false
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misunderstanding of human nature is doomed to fail. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought that I had
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seen the end of all the PC intimidation, the self-censorship, and everyone snitching on everyone else.
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I started a family in the land of the free. For the first time in my life, I enjoyed the opportunity to
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criticize our presidents. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. I published scathing comments on their policies.
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But I slept in peace knowing that the police won't show up at my door. Then came the COVID restrictions
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of governors like Whitmer, Newsom, and Waltz. And it seemed that the home of the brave was full of
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cowards. Half of America believed that by complying with the insane tyrannical orders, we can regain the
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freedom that we give up. For me, it was a nightmarish deja vu. Colleagues and classmates snitching on each
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other. Biden's people forcing the media to censor all dissent and opposition, then using the justice
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system to go after his rival in this year's elections. The left used the emergency well.
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Infectious, neo-Marxist ideas like CRT, ESG, and DEI were spreading faster than the Chinese virus
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in government schools, on college campuses, and in the corporate world. Christians, conservatives,
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libertarians, white, heterosexual men, they all needed re-education. Expressing any doubts about men using
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women's bathrooms, bodily mutilations of minors, or drag shows in libraries during toddler programming
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will get you canceled. Why should people in a free country be afraid of saying what they believe?
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Naughty Dr. Saad. Think about that, and you will know the direction that the progressives want to take
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us. It says, at Northwood University, we consider your free speech to be much more important than your
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feelings. So, with that, I rest my case and welcome God to our family. I know that you too soon will find
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out how perfectly we fit. Now, it is my pleasure to introduce today's moderator, Dr. Christine Stehauer,
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Northwood University's academic vice president and provost. She earned her doctorate in political
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science and international relations at Northwestern University and completed postgraduate work in
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higher education at Harvard University. Dr. Stehauer's scholarly work has focused on east-west relations
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during the Cold War, American foreign policy, and the unification of Germany. Her business career
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has focused on strategy formulation and implementation, and she has worked with large and small
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organizations, both domestic and global, spanning many sectors. So, please join me in welcoming
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Thank you, Alex, for your inspiring words and context for this evening's fireside chat.
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We really appreciate all of you joining us this evening, both here in the McNair Center and via live
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streaming. Dr. Gadsad is joining us for the seventh in our series, which we hear from top leaders as
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President McDonald mentioned, leadership insights, a view from the helm. Dr. Saad is a recognized
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thought leader and scholar, and we recently appointed him at Northwood University as visiting
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professor and global ambassador for the Northwood idea. His appointment is a bold affirmation of our
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unwavering commitment to promoting a culture rooted deep in intellectual freedom, personal responsibility,
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and the defense of free enterprise and liberty. Dr. Saad is professor of marketing at Concordia
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University in Montreal, Canada, and former holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in
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Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption. Dr. Saad has received numerous awards
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from Concordia University for teaching and for his media work, including as co-recipient of the
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President's Media Outreach Award Researcher Communicator of the Year, which goes to the
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professor at Concordia University whose research receives the greatest amount of global media
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coverage. To that point, you could call Dr. Saad a viral thought leader. He's appeared on many
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leading media outlets, including 10 times on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he has a sizable social media
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following, including nearly 1 million followers on X. In his scholarly work, Dr. Saad has pioneered the
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use of evolutionary psychology in consumer and marketing and consumer behavior. His works include
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multiple books on consumer behavior, along with over 75 scientific papers, many at the intersection
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of evolutionary psychology, and a broad range of disciplines, including consumer behavior,
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marketing, advertising, psychology, medicine, and economics. He has authored 311 articles on his
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Psychology Today blog that have garnered over 7 million views. His YouTube channel, The Sad Truth,
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has generated nearly 35 million total views, and his podcast titled The Sad Truth with Dr. Gad Saad,
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which is available on all leading podcast platforms, has yielded 9.4 million, over 9.4 million downloads
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since June 2020, and counting. In addition to his scientific work, Dr. Saad is a leading public intellectual
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who often writes and speaks about idea pathogens that are destroying logic, science, reason,
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and common sense. His fourth book, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense,
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was released in October 2020. It has since become an international bestseller, and we've selected it
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as our OmniQuest Plus book for this academic year. His fifth book, The Sad Truth About Happiness,
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Eight Secrets for Leading the Good Life, was released in July 2023, and he's currently working on a book
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called Suicidal Empathy. Please join me in formally welcoming Dr. Gad Saad.
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Thank you for that lovely introduction. It's a real honor to be here. Thank you all for showing
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up, and I look forward to some exciting questions. Great. Well, we look forward to it. We're going
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to dive right in, and we'll be able to take some Q&A from our audience participants, both via online.
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There's a QR code on the sheets on your, the programs on your chairs, and so we look forward to
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taking the questions at the end. But first, we have compiled some questions from our students.
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Sure. So you've mentioned your life ideals are freedom and truth. Could you tell us more about
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how these became so important to you, and also what early life experiences led to these being
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important to you? Right. So I discussed that in chapter one of the parasitic mind, and you might
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think of freedom and truth as only being applied to my academic life, but actually those two ideals
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apply in areas that you wouldn't have thought it might apply to. So for example, I used to be a
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soccer player, a competitive soccer player. And the position that I played was attacking midfielder,
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a playmaker, so that my whole purpose on the field was to float around freely looking for spaces to
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exploit. Whenever I had a coach who would say, you have to play on the left side of midfield today,
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suddenly my, it's as if you had guillotined me because you removed my ability to be free. And so
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freedom and truth is not something that I only adhere to in my academic life. It's something that
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shapes almost all the decisions that I've ever made. And your family were political refugees from
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Lebanon, the Lebanon War. Could you speak to that as well and how that plays into these values?
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Sure. So we were part of the last remaining group of Lebanese Jews that had steadfastly refused to
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leave Lebanon in 1975. So we were a very small minority. And then when the civil war broke out in
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1975, old neighbors became bitter enemies because one of the reasons I talk about this in the book is
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that identity politics, which seems to be a great idea according to progressives, is exactly the Lebanon
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that I experienced. Because in Lebanon, everything is organized according to your religious apakhtonance,
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your belongingness, right? So you're a Maronite, you're a Shia Muslim, you're a Sunni Muslim, you're a Jew.
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And so it was untenable for us to remain in Lebanon as Jews. There was almost no chance that we could
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survive the ordeal. And so after the first year of the civil war, we ended up leaving Lebanon. And so I
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often remind Westerners that it often takes immigrants such as myself to actually remind
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Westerners about the values that you take for granted. Because we've sampled from the full buffet
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of societies that exist out there. And we know that it is an anomaly to have the freedoms that we have in
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the West. And so it becomes incumbent on folks like me to tell people, don't take your freedoms for
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granted. Thanks for that important reminder. One question that our students are interested in,
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and we're talking about your early life, what advice would you give your younger self?
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So, you know, I was once asked on a show, not too long ago, what is the singular greatest
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advice that I've ever received? And there are many contenders. And I thought of one thing that my
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mother told me, which in a sense speaks to your first question about truth and freedom. She always
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told me, you know, God, the sooner that you find out that the world doesn't abide to your purity bubble,
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the better adjusted you'll be. Because I kind of live in this platonic ideal, this purity bubble,
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where it really offends me when someone is dishonest or someone is ungracious. And I think
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maybe I would have gone back to that early guy and said, don't live your life according to how you
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want the world to be, but accept the impurities that exist in the world. Because it has brought
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me a lot of friction in my life when I put my trust in someone and then they end up disappointing
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me. And then I hear my mother's voice saying, the world doesn't abide to your purity bubble.
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That mom knows best. Mom knows best. Often. So speaking of your social media presence,
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you've often had a viral social media presence and even standard media presence.
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How do you explain that? So many scholars quietly
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do things in their scholarly bubble and you're touching the world with these powerful ideas.
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That again speaks to the first question you asked, that I can't be constrained. So I'm not a stay in
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your lane professor. Yes, I love to publish academic papers. I love the peer review process. It's part of
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my job as a professor. But then that paper that takes three or four years to go through the peer review
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process, it'll be considered a success if a hundred scholars cite it in 10 years. But I'm a bit more
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impatient. So yes, I want to do that. But I also want to use the megaphone that is afforded to me
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today to share ideas to 10 million people rather than 10 people in the seminar. And so I very quickly
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decided, hey, there are all these wonderful opportunities to spread the message. I'm just
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going. And a lot of people warn me, that's not professorial. Don't do it. It means you don't go on
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Joe Rogan. Serious scholars don't go on Joe Rogan. What do you mean, serious scholars? If I can go on Joe
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Rogan and ignite an interest in 10 million people to study consumer behavior or evolutionary psychology,
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how is that not something very laudable? And so I resisted all of the sort of ivory tower
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elitism, presented myself to the world in an authentic way, and apparently it worked out all well.
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There must be something, though, that's giving you traction because so many people are on those
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platforms and not getting invited. Look at that smile. Look at this look. No, look,
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it's, I think it's just, it's a combination of, look, I use, I use humor a lot. That's a very
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powerful tool, right? I mean, dictators, Alex earlier was talking about Bulgaria, how it is,
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right? The first group of folks that dictators get rid of are the satirists. It's not the people
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with the big muscles. It's the people with the sharp tongues because it's the people with the sharp
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tongues that serve as a threat to my ideological control, right? And so satire, sarcasm, humor,
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when properly deployed, are incredibly powerful tools. So I'll often get stopped on the street,
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not because someone wants to talk about some academic thing I've done, but they'll say,
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oh my God, you had me laughing in stitches when you did X, Y, Z. So I think it's that combination of
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things. The fact that I'm multifaceted, that allows me to break through the academic constraints.
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So you've established your reputation, as we mentioned in the intro, with your work in
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evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior. Given Northwood's reputation as a thought leader
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in the automotive space, I'd love for you to illustrate the nature of your work in that realm
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with your early study on the biological impact of cars on their drivers.
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So I'll start maybe, can I take a minute or two just explaining what evolutionary psychology is?
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Because many people may not know what that is. Should I look at the audience or should I only look at...
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Okay. Just because I feel like I should be looking at them. So evolutionary psychology is basically the
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application of evolution to study how our human mind is structured the way that it is. Why do we
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experience the emotions that we do? Why do we behave the way that we do? So for example, if I say,
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why are men so sexually territorial? Well, you can give an answer like, well, it's because their
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egos are fragile. Well, that may be true, but that can't be the ultimate Darwinian explanation.
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The reason why men have evolved this capacity to be sexually territorial is because men face the very
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real threat of paternity uncertainty, right? We're a bi-parental species, meaning that human males
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invest a lot in their children. Therefore, because we're a bi-parental species and because
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human males face paternity uncertainty, everybody in this room comes from a long descendant of male
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ancestors who would have cared whether their women go around or not. Because I don't want to spend 18
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years raising a child that looks a lot like my sexy gardener, right? I want to make sure that it is my
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child, right? So that offers you a very simple example of how an evolutionary psychologist studies
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the Darwinian why. Why have we evolved that preference, that choice, that behavior, that emotion?
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So then I took this principle from evolutionary psychology and I said, well, why don't I apply this
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to the study of consumer behavior? But consumer behavior very broadly, we consume relationships,
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we consume religion, we consume popular culture. So it's not just the consumption of driving a Ford
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or drinking Starbucks. Everything is consumatory. So I study the Darwinian underpinnings that make us
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the consumers that we are. Now relating to the automotive part, I'll give two very cool examples of how
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I've married evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior to an area that's relevant to the automotive
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industry. So one of my most cited studies with a former graduate student of mine, we studied what
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happens to men's testosterone levels when they engage in conspicuous consumption. So conspicuous
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consumption is showy behavior, right? So if you're holding a Prada bag, that's conspicuous
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consumption, right? If you're driving a Maserati, that's conspicuous consumption. So what we did is we brought
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young men into the lab, we rented an actual Porsche, as I told some folks earlier at lunch, try to get a
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scientific granting agency to give you money so that you could rent a Porsche for scientific purposes. And so we
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brought young men into the lab and we had them drive a fancy Porsche or a beaten up old sedan in two
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environments, either on a semi deserted highway where nobody sees you, or in downtown Montreal on the
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weekend where there's a lot of people hanging around so they could see you driving either the beaten up car
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or the fancy car. And the dependent measure was salivary assays that we took from them so that we can measure
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their fluctuating levels of testosterone. So we took a baseline marker before they get into the cars and
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then after each of those driving conditions and then again at the end for another post-experimental
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baseline. Not surprising probably to anybody in this room, I won't get into all the details, but if you put
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young men in a Porsche, their endocrinological system explodes, meaning their testosterone goes up
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because they're being imbued with an immediate social win, right? So that would be an example of using
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cars as the peacock's tail. So that would be one example. The second example, which I regret to say
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has yet to be published, but it is co-authored with someone who may be visiting Northwood, one of my,
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well, one of my former doctoral students, but certainly the most illustrious one. He's himself a chaired
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professor right now in Canada. So we created personal ads of men, two versions of those personal ads for
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dating purposes. We have a picture of a guy, we describe who he is, and we have another picture of
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his personal, his favorite personal possession. And the only thing we manipulated was what that personal
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possession was. It was either a beaten up, apologies to anybody who owes a Kia, it was a beaten up old
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Kia, or it was a very shiny red Porsche. And then we asked both men and women to tell us, rate a whole
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bunch of traits on this otherwise exact same guy. The only thing that's changed is the favorite
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possession. One particular trait we looked at is how tall do you think this guy is, okay? So now here's
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the incredible thing that you could only have gotten that finding if you understood evolutionary
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psychology. When women look at the guy in the fancy Porsche, the guy magically becomes taller because
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status is associated with height. And therefore, so we call this the status elongation effect. And so I
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always tell my wife, I'm not a tall guy, so maybe I need to get a Porsche so that I can gain a few extra
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inches. On the other hand, men looking at the exact same stimuli, when they see the guy in the Porsche,
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the guy becomes shorter. Why? Because I am intimidated by other men who have high status. I don't care if
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he's got, you know, a better GPA than me, but I care if he has, you know, higher status in this case,
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in terms of what he can afford. So then I'm going to denigrate him by saying, oh, he must be some short
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little guy because he must be compensating. So the exact same stimulus causes women to elongate me or
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men to contract me, right? And so that would be two examples of how I've used evolutionary psychology
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and consumer behavior. Thank you for that. And it gives our audience certainly a feel for the kind of
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work you've done in the influence of that work. Your work was recently featured in Newsweek and on Fox
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News pertaining to the election. Right. Could you share what voters should be aware of as they
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evaluate their options vis-a-vis the candidates and any advice? Right. So here I'm going to give a bit
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of a background. So in psychology of advertising, advertisers usually try to engage the consumer's
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either central route of persuasion or peripheral route of persuasion. Central route means I engage
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your cognitive system. So if I tell you, here are the seven reasons why you should invest in this
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reverse mortgage. I'm engaging your cognitive system. On the other hand, if let's say I'm trying
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to sell you a hedonic product. Hedonic means it's feelings, it's pleasure, a perfume. I don't tell you
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here are the eight reasons physiologists at Harvard say you should buy this perfume, you'd all fall asleep.
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I show you some imagery, a beautiful woman on a horse with her hair flowing, and then I say
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mister, right? I give you some exotic sounding name. So I'm activating your peripheral system, right?
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So depending on the product, I either activate your cognitive system or your affective system,
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your feelings. Well, it's perfectly fair that we are both, we're both a thinking animal and a feeling
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animal. But when it comes to choosing the leader of the free world, you'd like it to be that you're
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engaging the cognitive system of people, right? Here are the six reasons why I think I'm going to
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vote. I'm Canadian, so I'm not voting, but I'm voting for Trump. I like him on immigration policy,
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fiscal policy, and so on. On the other hand, what is the central feature that Kamala's campaign is?
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It's joy, it's happiness, it's excitement, right? So they are trying to hijack the peripheral system
00:29:20.000
precisely because they don't want you to be engaging the cognitive system. Because if you engage the
00:29:25.520
cognitive system, they may not be doing as well. And so as I watch this, I say this is straight out
00:29:31.460
of psychology of advertising 101, and apparently they're being quite successful, they meaning Kamala's
00:29:37.240
team. Because when I even engage my own colleagues, who you would think might be less likely to be
00:29:44.140
hijacked by these types of strategies, they will just ape exactly the same stuff. This is exciting, it's a
00:29:51.180
new start, it's joy, it's, so no, no, no, I understand it's all joy and excitement. Can you give me specific
00:29:57.560
cognitive reasons? No, I don't want to hear that. It's exciting, it's joyful, she's the first woman, she's the
00:30:02.920
first person of color, and so on. So I took a principle that advertisers have known for, you know,
00:30:09.700
40, 50 years, and I demonstrate how it exactly applies to today's political campaigns.
00:30:15.920
Thank you for that. We mentioned the parasitic mind earlier. Here's the book, and this is a book that
00:30:21.560
we're reading across the university over this academic year. And I'd love for you to share with
00:30:27.740
the audience what you mean by the parasitic mind, and then what is your call to action to protect
00:30:35.560
ourselves from those dangerous, infectious ideas, including current ones, but maybe future ones that
00:30:41.500
we don't even know about yet. Sure. So let me explain the term parasitic, where it comes from. So in the
00:30:47.820
animal kingdom, there is the field of parasitology, the study of parasites and how they interact with
00:30:52.860
their hosts. So for example, a tapeworm is a parasite that ends up in your intestinal tract, okay?
00:30:59.960
A neuroparasite is a parasite that seeks to get as its final destination to the host's brain,
00:31:07.560
altering its circuitry to suit its reproductive interests. So let me give you a specific example.
00:31:14.600
So the wood cricket abhors water, but when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the hairworm needs the
00:31:22.780
wood cricket to jump into water in order for it to complete its reproductive cycle. So when a wood
00:31:29.880
cricket is parasitized by that hairworm, it merrily jumps and commits suicide in the service of the
00:31:37.480
parasite's interest. So that was my eureka moment that I had when I delved into the neuroparasitology
00:31:43.660
literature. I thought to myself, human beings could be parasitized by actual brainworms, for example,
00:31:50.980
Toxoplasma gandhi, but they could be parasitized by a second class of parasites, ideological parasites.
00:31:57.720
I call them idea pathogens. So postmodernism is the granddaddy of idea pathogens because it purports
00:32:04.980
that there are no objective truths. It's precisely that framework that allows us to say, well, we can't
00:32:11.080
really know what is male or female. Until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people who've ever lived on Earth
00:32:17.800
were able to navigate through that conundrum. But now we no longer have the biological acuity to
00:32:24.440
fully define what is male or female. That's what a parasitic ideological rapture is. So I go through
00:32:31.080
all of these parasitic ideas, cultural relativism, social constructivism, radical feminism, biophobia,
00:32:38.920
the fear of using biology to explain human behavior. Each of these parasitic ideas regrettably were spawned on
00:32:45.500
university campuses because it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas.
00:32:50.940
And then at the end of the book, I offer a mind vaccine against these parasitic ideas.
00:32:58.300
Now, for me to explain the mind vaccine, it's about a five, 10-minute explanation. Can I do that? Or do you
00:33:03.780
want me to kind of just give you a quick synopsis? Or how do you want me to do it?
00:33:07.680
Well, we have copies of the book, so maybe that's a great teaser for people to read them.
00:33:14.200
Exactly. But let's talk about your book on happiness that came out in 23. And could you speak to the
00:33:23.460
importance of persistence and the anti-fragility of failure? Because our students could really benefit
00:33:31.560
from that. So the term anti-fragility comes from a fellow Lebanese author. His name is Nassim
00:33:38.020
Talib. But the concept of anti-fragility has existed for thousands of years. So for example, Seneca,
00:33:46.080
the Stoic, many thousands of years ago, I don't have the exact quotes, I'm going to paraphrase it,
00:33:50.860
said that when you look at trees, the trees that have deep roots that can't be uprooted are precisely
00:33:57.820
those that grew facing a lot of wind stressors. Because by precisely facing a lot of wind stressors,
00:34:05.020
that's how they become able to withstand future stressors. Those that are too brittle to ever
00:34:11.580
have faced wind stressors, then they're gone, right? And so that concept of anti-fragility
00:34:17.060
is a foundational principle for leading a optimally flourishing life in that. So if you look at many
00:34:24.020
of the greatest people who've accomplished things in different domains, I was talking earlier to
00:34:30.280
Kristen, Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player of all time, was told he's too small and frail to
00:34:37.280
ever be a professional soccer player, let alone the greatest player who's ever played. Zinedine Zidane,
00:34:43.120
who's the greatest French soccer player of all time, who's won the World Cup, was rejected because he
00:34:48.020
could have played for the French national team or the Algerian national team by heritage. The Algerian
00:34:53.820
coach rejected him as being too slow. He ends up being the greatest French soccer player of all
00:34:59.040
time. Michael Jordan was rejected from his sophomore high school team. So there was a coach who looked
00:35:06.220
at Michael Jordan at the high school level and said, you're not making the team, right? Steven Spielberg,
00:35:13.080
one of our great, our meaning North America, I'm Canadian, but a filmmaker was rejected not once,
00:35:20.400
not twice, but three times from film school, right? So some admissions folks said, this guy's going
00:35:27.300
nowhere. He's not good enough to get into our film school. He becomes Steven Spielberg. J.K. Rowling,
00:35:32.080
you all know the story, was rejected by every single publisher until the last one that didn't reject
00:35:36.620
So the idea of anti-fragility is that you have to be anti-fragile to rejection because almost anyone
00:35:45.340
who's ever accomplished something has one of those stories to tell. So if you are a student,
00:35:50.480
it's okay if you get rejected, get back on the proverbial horse, and hopefully you'll be sitting
00:35:55.320
in this seat one day sharing your wisdom with the rest of us. So Gad, your current book project has a
00:36:02.280
very provocative title, Suicidal Empathy. Could you tell us what that means and what you're working on
00:36:09.620
there? Right. So, you know, life has so much serendipity in it. When you open up the email, I always tell my
00:36:19.500
wife it's like playing a slot machine, right? You get an email from Kent McDonald saying, hey, have you
00:36:27.560
heard of Northwood and can we talk? And I didn't know Northwood and look where we are now. So one of the
00:36:32.860
emails that I got regarding that book was the executive editor of Harper, I guess I can publicly
00:36:40.440
say it now because we're signing the contract, Harper Collins, which is the second biggest publisher
00:36:44.760
in the world. I had put out a tweet explaining my idea of what Suicidal Empathy is, but it was just a
00:36:51.080
tweet that I was putting out. I was mulling whether I should write a book about it. He reaches out to me
00:36:55.560
and says, so he puts the link to that tweet and he said, well, I guess we just found the topic of your
00:37:01.060
next book. Let's talk. And that's how it started. So the idea of that book is empathy is a wonderful
00:37:09.080
emotion to have. It's a virtuous emotion. There are evolutionary reasons why we've evolved empathy
00:37:15.160
within our repertoire of emotions, right? We're a social species. We need to put ourselves in the
00:37:21.580
mind of the other when we're having meaningful interactions. So there are all sorts of very easy
00:37:26.420
to explain evolutionary reasons why empathy exists. But like anything in life, it has to be activated
00:37:32.760
within the sweet spot. So in the happiness book, I talk about the inverted U as the most important
00:37:38.280
universal law in nature. Too much of something is not good. Too little of something is not good. And the
00:37:43.720
sweet spot is always in the middle. Aristotle already knew that. He told us about that, the golden mean.
00:37:48.660
And so empathy becomes problematic when it is hyperactive and on the wrong target. So we often
00:37:57.920
joke with our daughter who's so empathetic that if she sees a discarded inanimate object on the street,
00:38:05.480
her first question is, daddy, is it sad? And I have to explain to her, but it's an inanimate object. It
00:38:13.080
doesn't have any feelings. But in that case, her empathy is so great that it becomes, in a sense,
00:38:19.560
maladaptive. Now, how do we apply it, say, to the plight of the West? I argue that many of the problems
00:38:25.780
that we're seeing in the West stem from suicidal empathy, the hyperactivation of that emotional system
00:38:33.660
and targeting the wrong target. So, for example, it doesn't make sense that
00:38:40.260
South American or Central American illegal immigrants would receive greater benefits when
00:38:48.580
they come in illegally than American vets. It shouldn't need me to tell you this, but that
00:38:54.560
becomes part of suicidal empathy. It doesn't make sense that we let in millions of people into the West
00:39:03.040
who do not share a single one of the foundational values that define the West. But the reflex of why
00:39:10.680
we do that is because it would be racist to criticize any other culture. It is unbecoming of us to judge
00:39:19.120
others. No, that's suicidal empathy. It doesn't make sense that we cast no judgment on anyone, right? So,
00:39:26.740
for example, now we see a gigantic and orgiastic growth, explosion of Jew hatred across the West.
00:39:34.920
Well, I've been predicting that for 25 years because if you let in people who come from societies where
00:39:41.120
there is endemic Jew hatred as a foundational principle within their society, you shouldn't be
00:39:46.740
surprised then that campuses are going to have massive demonstrations of Jew hatred. And so, in the book,
00:39:53.020
I go through many of these policies in the West and I argue that each of them are rooted in emotional
00:39:59.780
irrationality. So, shifting. Irrationality. So, if I can maybe just, I think I mentioned this earlier at
00:40:09.380
lunch. So, the parasitic mind is what happens to human minds because of distorted thinking. Suicidal empathy
00:40:19.620
is the distortion of the emotional system. One of them is the distortion of the cognitive system and this next
00:40:26.300
book is the distortion of the emotional system.
00:40:29.820
So, your work has gained attention from Elon Musk. He weighed in on one of your future projects. Could you share
00:40:38.740
Yeah. I mean, one of the things of not being a stay-in-your-lane professor is that you're able to draw the attention of
00:40:46.060
people that otherwise our worlds would never intersect. And so, I'm very pleased and honored
00:40:51.020
to say that Elon has become a huge champion of my work. We've become, you know, we've gotten to know each
00:40:59.200
other. And so, he's stated that the parasitic mind is civilizationally saving, in a sense, because he realizes
00:41:09.080
that the woke mind virus is really the thing that's going to destroy our society. And so, I don't think
00:41:17.600
it's... So, I've often put polls on Twitter. They're not scientific polls, but where I say, which of these
00:41:23.200
is the most dangerous existential threat? And the people who answer bad ideas are exactly correct, because
00:41:31.800
most of the calamities that we face throughout history, short of natural calamities that we can't
00:41:37.260
control stem from the fact that someone had a really bad idea and acted on that bad idea. And so, I'm
00:41:43.800
fortunate enough to have garnered Elon's support, and let's see where that takes us.
00:41:49.520
Good luck with that. Our students are interested, in your opinion, on what technical and interpersonal
00:41:57.320
skills they should develop for their future success.
00:42:00.100
Wow, what a great question. So, technical, I'm going to... So, I hope this doesn't upset anybody, but
00:42:06.460
I'm not... Even though personal skills are really important, and we'll talk about it in a second,
00:42:12.920
I don't think you need to go to school to learn how to be a good person. But learning how to apply
00:42:20.140
mathematics to solve business problems, that's something that would require you going to school.
00:42:26.460
So, for example, my background is in mathematics and computer science, even though eventually I
00:42:31.600
became a behavioral scientist. I only chose mathematics and computer science because... Well,
00:42:36.260
I mean, I was good at it, but also I knew that I would get good mental training. Irrespective of what
00:42:42.400
I would do later in my life in academia, having a background... It may be very difficult to study
00:42:47.380
something more complex than mathematics, right? And so, I said, okay, that's what I'll study. So, I would
00:42:52.600
I would ask the students to spend less time learning at school fuzzy skills and more time learning at
00:43:03.140
school technical skills that they otherwise will never learn, right? The second part was what? What
00:43:09.580
are interpersonal skills? Yes. So, there are many interpersonal skills that I think will either make
00:43:15.460
you a great interlocutor or a bad one. So, active listening. It's surprising to see how poorly many
00:43:23.920
people do in conversations. And I think one of the reasons that maybe I've been successful, say, on my
00:43:29.120
show when I invite guests, because I give the guests time to... A conversation is a tango. I speak,
00:43:37.120
you listen, then you speak, I listen. Apparently, to many people, it's completely foreign to them. So,
00:43:43.860
I will sit down with people where... Well, I won't mention who it is, but I was recently invited by a
00:43:51.780
really top diplomat who invited me under the pretext of, oh, I'm a huge fan of your work. I'd like to meet
00:43:59.600
you. And so, I thought, okay, that's lovely. That's me. I stayed in his office for two hours and 40
00:44:05.160
minutes. He spoke for two hours and 30 minutes. So, students, don't be that diplomat. Okay? I mean,
00:44:14.360
it doesn't make sense that you invite me for an interaction, but most people have the reflex to
00:44:21.300
want to monopolize all the conversation. So, just learning these soft skills, showing interest in
00:44:28.940
someone, restating what they said to demonstrate that you are actively listening to it. These little
00:44:35.300
skills end up being crucially important as you navigate any organizational hierarchy.
00:44:43.060
Thank you for that advice for our students. We hope they're listening.
00:44:47.220
You're extremely prolific as a writer, a scholar, a commentator. What do you like to do in your
00:44:53.840
free time? Well, I like to exercise. I like to watch soccer. And more than anything, spend time
00:45:02.300
with my family. So, I've often been asked, what is it that allows you to have the ability to tackle
00:45:08.820
all these things? It's to have the solace of a happy family life. So, that there's all this
00:45:15.340
ugliness out there. And I'm engaged in all sorts of battles, whether it be on social media or the
00:45:20.080
editor of this journal or whatever it is. But then I come home. It's my children. It's my wife who's
00:45:26.100
here in this audience. And that gives me great solace. So, I'm not someone who needs to be out
00:45:32.820
with the boys. I want to be with my family. And usually, even when I travel without them to events
00:45:38.540
like this, I always feel guilty that my children didn't get an opportunity to experience such events.
00:45:43.920
So, I would say soccer, exercise, reading, which one can argue is part of my work, but I read for
00:45:50.440
pleasure. Those would be top things. So, taking a note from that, what was one of the most influential
00:45:58.900
books you first read? Oh, I love that question. Oh, first read. Yeah. And then how about generally
00:46:05.680
speaking too? So, I'll start with generally because I have an idea. So, probably the book that influenced me
00:46:12.280
the most in terms of my academic career is a book that was assigned to us by, so my first, so I did my
00:46:21.040
PhD at Cornell. And I was taking an advanced social psychology course in my first semester. It wasn't an
00:46:27.380
evolutionary psychology course. It was a social psychology course. About halfway through the
00:46:31.680
semester, the professor assigned a book titled Homicide by two of the pioneers of evolutionary
00:46:38.240
psychology who were at a Canadian university, McMaster, a husband and wife team, Margot Wilson
00:46:43.780
and Martin Daly. And what the book does is it looks at patterns of criminality across cultures and
00:46:51.760
across time periods and offers an evolutionary explanation for why these things happen. So,
00:46:58.680
maybe I could take a minute or two to explain what those are because it also explains evolutionary
00:47:03.060
psychology well. So, the most dangerous person in a woman's life, irrespective of where you are in
00:47:10.720
the world, irrespective of which time period, by orders of magnitude more than the next most dangerous
00:47:15.640
guy is her husband. In other words, it's not a serial killer who's lurking in the bushes. It's her
00:47:23.100
husband. And what is the number one reason that he is likely to go into a homicidal rage for
00:47:29.320
suspected or realized infidelity? Precisely for what I talked about earlier because of the threats of
00:47:36.120
paternity uncertainty. Second example I'll give, what do you think is the most, the best predictor
00:47:45.560
of there being child abuse in a home? So, usually when I lecture about evolutionary psychology, I'll ask
00:47:52.140
this of the class and they'll propose a whole bunch of factors. Oh, it's if there's alcoholism in the
00:47:58.140
house if you live on the wrong side of the tracks. And all are valid explanations. The number one
00:48:04.620
reason, a hundredfold greater predictor than the next closest predictor. Can anybody guess what it is?
00:48:17.940
No. I mean, it's a good, it's a good explanation, but that's not the one. No. I'll just take one more
00:48:29.220
then I'll give you the answer. Anybody? No, but it's related to that. Sorry? No. It's if there is a
00:48:39.300
step parent in the home. That's a 100 factor greater predictor. So, just to give you a sense of what that
00:48:48.700
means, in science, when you talk about odds ratio likelihood, if you give a placebo versus a real drug
00:48:55.260
and if the odds ratio is 1.2 and it's a significant effect, that means it's 1.2 to 1. It's 20%. This is
00:49:03.580
1.2 to 100. So, it's orders of magnitude greater than what you would see in science. The reason why
00:49:11.180
the step parent is a problem is precisely because of what I talked about earlier. We have, we're a
00:49:17.980
bi-parental species. So, most people are not very keen on investing in the children that were spawned by
00:49:25.300
someone else. That doesn't mean, by the way, that in evolutionary psychology you're condoning that
00:49:29.880
behavior, right? Explaining the behavior doesn't mean that you're justifying it any more than if
00:49:34.780
you're an oncologist and you explain cancer, that means you're for cancer. You're justifying cancer.
00:49:40.180
No, you're explaining why it exists. So, explaining that step parents might prove to be a very dangerous
00:49:46.740
dynamic in a home doesn't mean that most step parents are not lovely and kind, right? But if you
00:49:52.320
want to study a phenomenon well and understand it, you better find the actual causative mechanism.
00:49:57.640
So, when I saw that in the book, I saw the explanatory elegance, the parsimony that is afforded by this
00:50:06.600
evolutionary explanation, I had my eureka moment. Okay, I'll take this framework and I'll apply it to
00:50:11.800
decision-making, consumer behavior, and so on. So, professionally speaking, that would probably be
00:50:18.220
the most important book of my life. Earlier, I can't go to, you know, when I was seven or something,
00:50:23.380
but say as a young guy of about 20, maybe, I read a book by a anti-apartheid activist by the name of
00:50:35.080
Steve Biko, and the book was titled, I Write What I Like, which kind of goes with the theme of Northwood,
00:50:43.560
right? You don't shackle me. I speak what I want to speak. So, apparently, it catered to my inner honey
00:50:49.240
badger because I saw this guy who, under immediate, I mean, he ended up being tortured to death,
00:50:55.160
was not going to be shackled. And so, I, so that I write what I like is kind of a battle cry for me.
00:51:01.960
So, when I read that book, I said, well, that's, that's somebody to aspire to be like.
00:51:09.600
We have some questions from online. Could you please elaborate on how business choices that
00:51:16.160
are, that are at odds with the business mission can be so prevalent in our current institutions?
00:51:23.900
So, in, in, there's a field in mathematics called operations research, which is a field with, by the
00:51:31.700
way, I highly recommend for students to, business students to take such courses, where you're trying
00:51:38.100
to optimize or minimize something, right? So, how should I set up a manufacturing plant to minimize
00:51:46.320
waste? And so, the algorithms that solve these types of optimization problems, that field is
00:51:53.380
called operations research, okay? And so, to that question, I think what ends up happening is that
00:51:59.540
that business organization is optimizing the wrong metric, right? So, when you see a lot of universities
00:52:06.740
right now that put as their number one mission statement to engage in social justice ahead of
00:52:14.800
to intellectually enrich its constituents, that is the wrong maximization algorithm that you're
00:52:21.820
applying. So, I think that's what creates that incongruity. There's an incongruity between what
00:52:26.300
the real mission of the business should be and its sort of woke credentials.
00:52:31.220
Here's another one from online. Do you regret any social media posts you've authored wishing
00:52:41.440
It's going to sound arrogant, but no. No, because I, I, I'm very authentic, maybe to a fault,
00:52:50.280
and if I felt it, there would have been a good reason why I wrote it. So, so maybe the only time I felt
00:52:57.000
it is I've shared something, and then I find out that that which I shared turns out to be a fake
00:53:05.300
thing, right? But the reality is the velocity of how quickly things happen online, you can't sit and do
00:53:12.120
seven weeks of investigative journalism to decide on the veracity of every tweet that you see. So,
00:53:18.380
that would probably be the only time where I say, oh, and then I will usually post a correction, or I
00:53:24.140
usually don't delete it. People say, well, why don't you delete it? I don't want to delete it
00:53:28.680
because I don't want it to disappear from, from the, the ecosystem that I made that error. So,
00:53:34.660
I'll leave it, and then I'll make a correction.
00:53:39.160
Very interesting. Any questions from the room right now? We have a mic over here.
00:53:43.940
I want the student questions to go first, but I didn't sense a hand go up. So, I'm puzzled by
00:53:55.840
something that perhaps you can explain to me. Our current Democratic candidate for president,
00:54:04.880
when she wasn't a candidate, was thought to be an idiot. She went to the,
00:54:09.420
she went to look at the, you know, end of the United States, nothing happened, you know,
00:54:17.080
she was fighting with the people in her office. The minute she became, it felt like to me, but it
00:54:23.800
was probably two or three days, everything in the news thing flipped. So, I, the question I have is not
00:54:33.500
so much why and how, but I guess the question is why and how. Is it possible that people are in a
00:54:42.560
certain, they see themselves as a certain kind, and I should let you answer really. Right. But, but,
00:54:50.400
so if the person who is designated as your kind, you're automatically for them. I find that as a
00:54:57.240
voter upsetting because I always look at the policy first. Right. So, that speaks to me. Because they
00:55:02.840
bring people who support the policies. So, you can explain, I hope, why two days earlier, a mess,
00:55:10.440
and now joy. Right. So, earlier, remember I mentioned the two, the two persuasion systems,
00:55:16.780
the emotional versus the cognitive. I'll add to that because it speaks to your question. There's an
00:55:21.680
expression, one of the beautiful things about speaking many languages is that you can borrow an
00:55:26.180
expression from another language that doesn't exist in, say, in English. So, and my mother tongue
00:55:32.080
is Arabic, and Arabic is a very poetic, flowery language. And so, there's an expression that I use
00:55:38.280
that I think speaks, well, not I think, I know speaks to your question. The expression, when directly
00:55:44.280
translated, is getting drunk by smelling the cork of the wine bottle. Okay. And so, what does that
00:55:52.380
literally mean? It means that I'm of such weak constituency that I don't actually have to drink
00:55:57.760
the wine to get drunk. I just have to take a whiff of the cork, and I'm already losing balance. Now,
00:56:04.600
how do we apply that to politics? Well, look, now I'm going to get drunk smelling the Barack Obama
00:56:11.280
cork. You ready? He is tall, he has a radiant smile, and he has a mellifluous voice. You see,
00:56:19.300
I'm getting drunk. I didn't say anything about his fiscal policy. I didn't say anything about his
00:56:24.200
immigration policy. I didn't say anything about anything that is of any substance, but I'm drunk.
00:56:30.020
Now, I'm going to get drunk in the negative sense of, to Trump. He's disgusting. He's brash. He's an
00:56:36.920
ogre, right? So, notice how all of those getting drunk by the smell of the cork are triggering my
00:56:43.800
emotional system. So, that's how you're able to get someone to flip so quickly, because your emotional
00:56:51.240
system is an autonomic mechanism, right? Those responses do not require careful deliberation.
00:57:00.120
They are fast and frugal. That's why Kamala's campaign uses joy, excitement, fun, because that's
00:57:09.540
what gets people drunk by this, by smelling the cork of the wine bottle. Worse than not critical
00:57:18.100
thinkers, we are non-thinkers, in that most, most, most people's art. So, the term that I like to use
00:57:24.240
is cognitive misers, which is a fancy academic way of saying profoundly intellectually lazy. So,
00:57:30.760
it's a lot easier for me to get drunk by the mellifluous voice of Obama than to actually think
00:57:35.900
about what his policies are. That just takes too much effort. So, one final question here that
00:57:41.800
came from online. In these turbulent times, what gives you hope? Wow, that's a good one.
00:57:50.600
I'd like to think that truth and freedom are universal values, that when people wake up to the
00:58:00.760
dangers, the silent majority will wake up. So, I'm often asked, I mean, the way you speak about all
00:58:07.540
these things, it's as if we're doomed. But I know that the silent majority hates all that stuff. And I
00:58:13.000
know it because I received the thousands of emails from people. But here's the typical structure of an
00:58:19.540
email, which is going to answer your question in an oblique way. Dear Professor Saad, a whole bunch of
00:58:27.420
nice comments. I support you fully. And then here's the problem with the last line. You ready?
00:58:32.960
Do you know what the last line is? If you decide to share my letter, please don't read my name.
00:58:40.680
And then I write back to them, dear Professor so-and-so, thank you for your kind words.
00:58:44.580
Don't you think that that last sentence is precisely why we are in this problem? And then
00:58:50.560
they'll often write back and say, you're so right. But you know, I'm going up for tenure. I'm going for
00:58:55.300
a chaired professorship. There's always an excuse for why it shouldn't be me that speaks out against
00:59:03.240
the lunacy now. The rest of you maybe should have the courage to speak out, but not me. I have too
00:59:07.780
much to lose. Well, the guys who landed on Normandy, knowing that most of them would be mowed like
00:59:12.980
little mosquitoes, went and did it no matter what. And they suffered many more consequences than not
00:59:19.660
getting tenure or not getting the professorship that they wanted. So what gives me hope is that
00:59:25.500
at some point, the silent majority, which regrettably is still silent, will wake up through
00:59:32.400
my efforts and those of many others who are speaking out. And then I think it will be flipped
00:59:37.480
very quickly. That's what gives me hope. Well, that is a great note to end on. And we bookended our
00:59:43.100
conversation with truth and freedom and a call to action not to be part of the silent majority and
00:59:50.040
give us courage to speak out when we need to. So we thank you for investing your time this evening to
00:59:55.940
help us learn more about your work, your thought and your influence. We've benefited greatly from your
01:00:01.900
insights and wisdom. And I'm now pleased to introduce a student to give her perspective to wrap things up.
01:00:08.500
And we are inviting Gabby Schloop, a senior from Midland, Michigan, who majors in management
01:00:15.260
information systems and cybersecurity to share some of her key takeaways from tonight's fireside chat.
01:00:27.900
And thank you, Dr. Saad, for generously sharing your wisdom this afternoon. As I prepare for my career,
01:00:33.980
I have a number of valuable takeaways from this evening. I will always remember to exercise my
01:00:40.180
freedom of speech before worrying about who I might, who I might please. I will also remember
01:00:45.480
that the world does not abide by my purity bubble. I have learned, I have learned the difference of
01:00:53.940
peripheral and cognitive activation and how they can influence viewers differently. I have also learned
01:01:00.340
understanding the understanding of infragility and how one or multiple setbacks won't derail a
01:01:04.980
flourished life. Thank you again, Dr. Saad, for allowing us all to benefit from your leadership
01:01:10.060
insight. Dr. Saad, to commemorate your service as a guest for Northwood University Leadership
01:01:16.020
Insight, a view from the helm, we have a gift to appreciate, to appreciate for you.
01:01:21.800
Oh, my. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. Oh, wow. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
01:01:51.800
Thank you, Gabby. Well done. This has been a fabulous evening. And so on behalf of our board
01:02:02.760
chair, Dr. Jennifer Panning, who has driven up from the Detroit area and all the trustees,
01:02:08.500
I just want to also thank Dr. Saad Gad. It's wonderful to have you part of the Northwood family.
01:02:15.280
You talk a lot about family last night at lunch today. And I won't draw her out, but you didn't
01:02:21.520
mention that she's here. And Annie's in the room. And Annie is going to become a close
01:02:25.740
member of something that's really important to us at Northwood, and that is community and family.
01:02:31.960
Next time, their two wonderful children might come up here and see our peaceful, humble place.
01:02:37.900
But it's a place that we're proud of what we do. And I think the work we do has never been more
01:02:44.280
important. I say it often that the world and this country needs more Northwood. And to have you part of
01:02:49.600
our community, Gad, is just a wonderful, wonderful thing. I would encourage all of you to join us for a
01:02:58.940
reception. Kristen, marvelous. Again, those who have asked questions, thank you very much. And look forward to
01:03:06.520
the next time we get together for the Leadership's Insight session. This is really important to
01:03:11.660
Northwood to make sure that this community knows that we're Midlands University. We don't have moats
01:03:17.220
around this campus. It's open to all. And you being here is wonderful. The next time you might be able to
01:03:24.480
visit us on campus is next Tuesday night. We have our Freedom Concert, a wonderful rock and roll band who will be
01:03:32.180
playing free for the community. It'll be a great night. And thank you all for coming here tonight. Thanks so much.