The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 02, 2023


Leonardo da Vinci and the Pleasures of Reading and Book Hoarding (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_626)


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

155.42699

Word count

1,200

Sentence count

67

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Gad Saad talks about the importance of books, and why you should read Leonardo da Vinci's first ever biography, "Leonardo the First Scientist" by Michael White, and the inscription on the inside of the book he won't read.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.640 Hi, everybody. This is Gad Saad on a Saturday evening. Just came back from my usual deep
00:00:08.400 dive into a used bookstore to find more books as if I need more books, given the huge personal
00:00:15.140 library that I have with many, many hundreds of books yet to be read. But I wanted to mention
00:00:21.520 a couple of things about the importance of reading and the importance of books and so
00:00:25.440 on. My last undergraduate class of the semester happened earlier this past week. And one
00:00:33.200 of the students came up to me at the end of the class and said, can you offer me some advice
00:00:39.000 as to, you know, how to better myself and so on. And I said, well, I've got three, you
00:00:44.620 know, key prescriptions. Number one, read. Number two, read. And number three, read. Some
00:00:52.340 of you may have heard me mention in the past, the oft-referenced finding that the biggest
00:00:59.660 predictor of a child's success is the number of books that are in the home. In any case,
00:01:07.280 I wanted today to, you know, tie that into something that just happened at the bookstore where I
00:01:13.020 was looking for, you know, these gems. Before I do that, I wanted to, well, let me just mention
00:01:21.380 it's about Leonardo da Vinci, one of my big heroes for many, many reasons. But I want to
00:01:27.320 discuss a little passage from, so this is in my latest book, The Sad Truth About Happiness. I
00:01:34.780 really, truly would love if you guys would consider getting a copy. It is such a fun book, so optimistic,
00:01:41.280 so, you know, personal anecdotes, ancient wisdoms, contemporary science dealing with happiness,
00:01:46.900 well-being, and so on, which is something that is particularly apropos as we enter the holiday
00:01:51.980 season. So, on page 120, this is in the chapter where I'm talking about variety as the spice of
00:01:58.500 life, and then in brackets, sometimes I'm talking about intellectual variety seeking. So, let me just
00:02:04.060 read you a passage, and then I'll link it to my latest book, Acquisition. Forgive me.
00:02:11.980 Back in 2014, I wrote a Psychology Today column listing the 10 historical figures I would invite
00:02:18.660 to a party, and I asked people on social media to offer their own lists. The two most popular
00:02:25.000 responses were Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin. Here are mine in no particular order, Charles Darwin,
00:02:32.140 Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Galilei, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci,
00:02:39.200 Maimonides, and King Solomon. If I had to put one guest above the others, it would be
00:02:45.880 Da Vinci, because he was the ultimate Renaissance man, a polymath extraordinaire interested in anatomy,
00:02:52.700 botany, and cartography, who made astounding contributions as a painter, engineer, scientist,
00:02:58.640 sculptor, and architect. Some of his sketches were prophetic of future inventions, like the machine
00:03:04.380 gun, and the helicopter. A copy of Da Vinci's famous drawing, the Vitruvian man hangs in our
00:03:09.620 bedroom in honor of this great man's intellectual and artistic achievements. We also have another
00:03:13.900 sketch painting by Da Vinci in our bedroom. Now, why am I saying that, of course, is because
00:03:20.740 this is a copy of the first ever biography on Da Vinci that I bought. If memory serves me right,
00:03:30.760 I got this one, I think it was maybe when I was a visiting professor at Dartmouth, I had found this
00:03:37.980 incredible used bookstore, sort of like an entire barn and house, and I think I got it there. I'm not,
00:03:45.260 actually, no, I am wrong. I'm such an idiot. I am such an idiot. No, I just looked at the inscription. 1.00
00:03:52.280 This is a book that my former doctoral student had given me as a gift, and then he has a beautiful
00:04:01.980 inscription on the inside, which I won't read because it's private. I'm such an idiot. I confuse 1.00
00:04:07.860 it with another book. Anyway, so here's that. Now, that's one. Now, you would think, okay, once I've read
00:04:16.100 that book on Da Vinci, we're good, but that wasn't enough. I was giving a talk at USC this past March,
00:04:28.160 and I ended up going to the last bookstore in downtown LA. It was really fun because I had to
00:04:34.820 also avoid getting gang raped by homeless people, but that's just part of the cultural enrichment of
00:04:41.140 downtown LA because Democrats just generally, you know, manage cities better because they're
00:04:46.100 progressive, and so I got this book. Oh, my. Oh, my. So, the first one is Leonardo, the First Scientist
00:04:55.060 by Michael White, and again, to the former doctoral student who is himself a senior professor now,
00:05:05.580 thank you for that incredible gift and for, especially for the inscription inside.
00:05:10.120 The second book by Charles Nichol, Leonardo da Vinci, Flights of the Mind, right here,
00:05:16.860 and as if that's not enough, so today I walk into the used bookstore that I was at, and I asked,
00:05:24.380 hey, can I, do you have the latest biography on, by Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk? Because someone
00:05:33.440 had suggested that I read it. I'll mention who it is. That was actually Drew Pinsky,
00:05:37.420 and they said, no. I said, okay, well, you know what? You know, he's written a lot of other good
00:05:42.760 biographies. I'm particularly interested in the Da Vinci. Do you have the Da Vinci biography by Walter
00:05:50.400 Isaacson? So, he said, well, it could only be in one of two places, either in biographies or in artist
00:05:54.880 biographies. Well, it wasn't in biographies, but then he comes to me and he goes, look what I have.
00:05:59.580 Oh, my. Oh, my. Leonardo da Vinci
00:06:04.580 by Walter Isaacson, and so I said to him, well, here's my problem. I already have two massive
00:06:13.260 biographies on Da Vinci. He's one of my heroes. What do I do? He said, well, that's a no-brainer.
00:06:20.520 Just get it. So, here you go. So, never mind about loving books. Never mind about loving
00:06:25.960 to read. How about having, look at this. Look at this. Three biographies by Da Vinci,
00:06:36.520 and I hope to have enough time in life to actually not only read those three biographies, but to read
00:06:43.040 all of the books in my personal library, it just seems like an affront to human reason
00:06:51.100 to actually not have all of that knowledge somehow imparted into my brain, and so if I can offer you
00:06:58.480 any advice, read, read, read, right? What makes someone interesting? Well, there are many facets
00:07:04.880 to making someone interesting, but to the extent that people pay you money so that you write books,
00:07:09.680 pay you money so they can hear you speak, pay you money so that they can, you know, be at an event
00:07:14.460 with you, that comes from the fact that you're interesting and you have things to say, and that,
00:07:20.260 those interesting things that you have to say didn't just magically enter your brain. It came from,
00:07:27.020 you know, long hours where you sat and you nourished your mind. So, if there, you know,
00:07:33.580 two things you need to do is have a healthy mind and a healthy body, and a healthy mind needs to be
00:07:39.420 nourished with knowledge. So, go out there and read. Cheers, everybody.