The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 On January 18th, 2020, just one month before the COVID lockdowns began, the Danish National

00:00:11.540 Symphony was about to perform for a packed house of 1,800 people.

00:00:16.400 The conductor, Valdemar Johansson, stepped onto the stage to take his place behind the

00:00:22.600 podium, baton in hand.

00:00:24.840 Little did he know that a beautiful, yet deadly assassin, by the name of Nastassja 0.88

00:00:31.420 Folgstedtlund, hidden in the rear of the auditorium, trained the sight of her sniper's rifle, dead

00:00:39.620 center on Johansson's back.

00:00:42.800 A shot rang out, and Johansson fell to the ground, dead from a single bullet.

00:00:49.480 The crowd gasped in horror.

00:00:51.820 What happened next will shock and surprise you.

00:00:56.960 Here's the audio from the scene of the crime.

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00:01:26.460 do a lot of confinement, but when it came out, there was a lot of pigment that can

00:01:30.800 in Belặ Gust, the drone in the front.

00:01:31.460 Here's the audio from the scene.

00:01:32.740 It was electricity.

00:01:33.640 It was very natural.

00:01:34.680 You see a lot of aufmercing the behö. 0.98

00:01:35.640 You see a lot of space.

00:01:36.920 It'sine shared with people with variations to the dimensions.

00:01:37.200 It has went wherever you go.

00:01:38.500 You can't say it like this heart or anything.

00:01:40.320 Maybe a lot of comum are more of the spaces to beικest and to be it like this cultura

00:01:43.140 or art.

00:01:44.100 What you see hereafter we're doing here is a long time for spreading the

00:01:44.520 air in order to hear what the widzian and the science of the fact that

00:01:45.780 word apart from the research.

00:01:47.020 Thank you.

00:02:17.020 Thank you.

00:02:47.020 Like James Bond himself, has withstood the test of time and still elicits gasps of delight and amazement from audiences around the world.

00:02:57.240 Dr. No was the first in a series of 25 James Bond movies over a 60-year period.

00:03:06.540 The James Bond saga started in 1962.

00:03:11.100 Maybe it's just a coincidence, but that was the year my personal saga began.

00:03:16.320 That was my birth year.

00:03:18.780 Perhaps that's part of the reason James Bond is so deeply embedded in my psyche.

00:03:23.820 I grew up with Bond.

00:03:25.020 But more about James Bond later, so buckle up.

00:03:29.320 Ever since I announced I was going to have Gad Saad on the podcast, strange things have been happening to me.

00:03:40.140 I'm not a paranoid person, but lately I get the feeling I'm being followed.

00:03:44.460 I've been noticing the same faces at my neighborhood Starbucks, all showing up coincidentally at around the same time I get there.

00:03:53.660 Yesterday, on my morning hike in Griffith Park, I noticed a couple about 500 feet ahead of me on the trail for at least a full mile.

00:04:02.440 I read somewhere, they sometimes follow you from in front of you, just so you don't feel like you're being followed.

00:04:10.900 The other day at the pool, a guy I've never seen before gets in my lane and follows me for at least 50 laps.

00:04:20.080 At one point, I let him pass me, but before I knew it, he was right behind me a few minutes later.

00:04:27.020 This is very suspicious behavior, and I'm sure they are trying to send me a message of some sort.

00:04:36.020 So just to be on the safe side, I'm recording this episode from an undisclosed location, 100 miles outside of Los Angeles.

00:04:45.360 I won't say in which direction.

00:04:47.840 I bought some equipment on Amazon, which helps me to sweep the room for bugs.

00:04:52.660 And once I'm sure it's safe to speak freely, I'll be talking at a normal volume.

00:04:59.100 You can't be too careful these days.

00:05:07.640 We should be all set now.

00:05:09.620 I just want to say for the record, if this should turn out to be my last episode,

00:05:14.540 I'm a very happy person, and I'm not at all suicidal.

00:05:18.340 Honey, I love you and the kids, and please make sure my Thomas Sowell book collection gets split exactly evenly between our children.

00:05:28.360 I would hate for one of them to feel slighted in any way.

00:05:36.160 I first met Gad Saad at the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference last November.

00:05:41.740 I dedicated a full episode to the conference, and if you haven't already listened to it, you really should.

00:05:47.240 It's one of my favorite episodes.

00:05:50.200 In preparation for today's conversation with Dr. Saad, I read his 2020 book, The Parasitic Mind,

00:05:57.440 and also his new book, The Saad Truth About Happiness,

00:06:01.660 which he was kind enough to send me an advance copy of before it was available to the public.

00:06:08.060 So I feel like I've really gotten to know Gad Saad and to understand his way of thinking and seeing the world.

00:06:14.860 As regular listeners will know, music is a critical component of my podcasting.

00:06:22.100 It sets the tone for everything I create.

00:06:25.820 When I was thinking about which theme music to pair with my Gad Saad interview,

00:06:30.820 the James Bond theme song immediately came to mind,

00:06:34.820 My Subconscious Works in Mysterious Ways.

00:06:37.820 So why did James Bond get associated in my brain with Gad Saad?

00:06:43.860 Initially, I wasn't sure.

00:06:46.260 So I started thinking about James Bond and about what he represented for me all these years.

00:06:52.640 I was surprised to discover that James Bond represents four very powerful ideas for me.

00:06:59.340 I'd like to share these four themes with you because I think it will help prepare your mind for Gad Saad and the thrust of his work.

00:07:09.100 James Bond theme number one.

00:07:19.380 The James Bond movies all have the same basic story.

00:07:22.980 There's a very evil man or group of men who are out to take over the world or destroy the world in some way.

00:07:30.860 And there is only one man who can save the world.

00:07:33.900 James Bond.

00:07:35.200 Code number 007.

00:07:38.280 Bond is so special, so talented, and so important that his government has issued him a so-called license to kill. 0.62

00:07:46.420 Bond is allowed to kill whoever he needs to kill in his own judgment to accomplish his mission. 0.96

00:07:52.140 No questions asked.

00:07:54.700 He's the guy they call when the mission simply must succeed, when failure is not an option.

00:08:01.380 The whole world is counting on James Bond, whether they know it or not.

00:08:06.160 He's working behind the scenes to ensure the survival of civilization as we know it.

00:08:12.280 As a child, then as a teenager, this idea of saving the world like James Bond always resonated with me and inspired me.

00:08:20.700 And the idea that one person can save the world, that's a truly revolutionary concept.

00:08:28.380 For me, it meant that I should always act, always speak up, never keep quiet, and never go along to get along.

00:08:37.340 That I don't need the group's permission to take action.

00:08:40.080 I remember an incident as a young boy in summer camp.

00:08:44.540 I must have been only five or six at the time.

00:08:47.760 There was one kid everybody was making fun of, because he had some sort of physical disability.

00:08:54.080 I distinctly remember standing back from the group and not participating in teasing that boy.

00:09:00.760 I was the only one.

00:09:01.780 Sometimes, speaking up takes the form of keeping quiet.

00:09:07.240 Years later, as a young twenty-something living in Manhattan, I witnessed a purse snatcher grab a young woman's bag and take off with it.

00:09:16.820 Immediately, without even thinking, I started to chase the purse snatcher.

00:09:20.840 I wasn't planning to catch him and fight with him, but I stayed right behind him and kept yelling,

00:09:27.580 Drop the bag! 0.97

00:09:28.880 in the deepest voice I could muster.

00:09:32.260 After about five blocks, he finally dropped the bag and ran off.

00:09:36.580 He saw I wasn't going to give up the chase.

00:09:39.340 I brought the bag back to the original scene of the crime, and the young woman was still there.

00:09:44.000 I gave her her bag back and expected some sort of gushing, my hero-type treatment.

00:09:51.340 Instead, she just said,

00:09:53.340 Thanks, my boyfriend is not going to believe this.

00:09:57.040 Oh well.

00:09:58.360 That might have ended differently had I looked more like Daniel Craig.

00:10:02.760 She was shaken, but apparently not stirred.

00:10:06.380 Can I do something for you, Mr. Bond?

00:10:09.820 Just a drink.

00:10:11.460 A martini.

00:10:12.360 Shaken, not stirred.

00:10:14.000 For me, James Bond represents the spirit of fearless action for a just cause.

00:10:20.960 It's the spirit of believing that I alone can save the world in my own way.

00:10:26.580 It doesn't matter if I can really save the world.

00:10:30.060 It's about believing I can and just taking action.

00:10:34.280 When people ask me why I started a podcast about the ideas of Thomas Sowell,

00:10:39.880 I always give them the same answer.

00:10:42.220 Because I want to save the world.

00:10:45.860 James Bond theme number two.

00:10:58.180 James Bond is British.

00:11:00.520 Very British. 0.58

00:11:01.980 That's not a coincidence.

00:11:03.140 We Americans are so used to America being the world's savior.

00:11:08.080 But this is different.

00:11:10.080 We Americans have been brought up on the idea that we had to fight a war to free ourselves

00:11:14.740 from enslavement by the British.

00:11:17.360 That the British were the bad guys, and we were the good guys. 1.00

00:11:20.980 That's our national story on some level.

00:11:25.180 So when the guy who is saving the world is a Brit, that's a disconnect right there.

00:11:31.080 There's something really important going on here.

00:11:34.100 Do we owe a great debt to Great Britain?

00:11:36.900 Why are all the best places to live in the world former colonies of the Queen? 0.98

00:11:43.360 America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

00:11:47.360 Why do migrants to Europe from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East flood into Europe

00:11:52.680 and try to make their way through Greece, through Italy, through Spain, and through France

00:11:58.500 in order to end up in England?

00:12:01.640 Is there something special about the British ethos that migrants from all over the world

00:12:07.500 want a piece of?

00:12:09.580 I'll leave you to answer this question for yourself.

00:12:12.900 Speaking of the Queen, Britain maintains the trappings of its centuries-old monarchy to this day.

00:12:19.920 We Americans tend to scoff at the idea of monarchy.

00:12:24.160 But that is only because we compare it to democracy.

00:12:27.260 And we laugh at how primitive the whole thing sounds.

00:12:30.500 What?

00:12:31.160 The son of the king automatically becomes the new king?

00:12:35.440 How preposterous!

00:12:37.480 But we fail to appreciate what a wonderful invention monarchy was at the time it was invented.

00:12:43.860 Before monarchy, when the king died,

00:12:46.280 competing generals and their armies would fight each other over who would be the next king.

00:12:52.220 And this led to the shedding of much blood and many lives lost.

00:12:56.880 Monarchy was a brilliant solution to the age-old problem of how to transfer power peacefully.

00:13:03.540 And it worked for centuries.

00:13:06.200 This subject reminds me of a passage from Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice,

00:13:11.740 about the concept of primogenitor.

00:13:14.700 Sowell said this,

00:13:16.280 Primogeniture, the practice of leaving an estate entirely to the eldest son,

00:13:20.620 is something that most of us today would consider unjust to the other children.

00:13:24.740 Arbitrarily selecting the ruler of a nation by a similar principle

00:13:27.660 would likewise be widely objected to on moral grounds, among other objections to monarchy.

00:13:32.660 The purpose of primogeniture was, of course, to keep an estate intact from generation to generation.

00:13:38.180 The point was not simply to make a given sum of wealth in one individual's hands

00:13:41.820 larger than it would be if the land were shared.

00:13:43.820 The point was to make the total wealth available to the family as a whole

00:13:47.960 larger than it would have been under equal inheritance,

00:13:50.780 where it would have been broken up into smaller and smaller pieces with the succeeding generations,

00:13:55.100 creating economic inefficiencies that reduce the total value of the fragmented estate.

00:14:00.160 Primogeniture relied on family ties and a sense of duty to guide the eldest son

00:14:04.400 in looking out for his younger siblings.

00:14:07.140 Land was often worth more when it could be farmed in one piece

00:14:10.380 than the sum total of smaller separate pieces after being subdivided.

00:14:14.220 There are what economists call economies of scale in production,

00:14:17.420 and these can be lost as land is fragmented over time

00:14:20.780 by being repeatedly divided equally among heirs.

00:14:23.420 The poverty in a number of countries has been attributed to the fact

00:14:27.100 that there are minute land holdings in those countries,

00:14:29.980 with a given farmer often having several of these tiny plots,

00:14:33.040 inherited from different family branches,

00:14:34.980 located at some distance from one another,

00:14:36.920 requiring his working day to be similarly broken up

00:14:39.420 and time lost in transit from one place to another.

00:14:42.580 In short, cosmic justice for heirs can mean unnecessary poverty for society as a whole.

00:14:47.660 This by itself does not necessarily justify primogeniture.

00:14:52.180 It simply says that the costs of achieving justice matter.

00:14:56.220 Another way of saying the same thing is that

00:14:58.180 justice at all costs is not justice.

00:15:01.440 What, after all, is an injustice

00:15:03.160 but the arbitrary imposition of a cost,

00:15:05.740 whether economic, psychic, or other, on an innocent person?

00:15:09.060 And if correcting this injustice

00:15:10.660 imposes another arbitrary cost on another innocent person,

00:15:14.080 is that not also an injustice?

00:15:16.020 In the world of today,

00:15:17.660 where most wealth is no longer in land,

00:15:19.600 but in financial assets,

00:15:20.780 which can be divided among heirs without such high costs,

00:15:23.660 a very different situation exists.

00:15:25.760 But this is not to say that primogeniture,

00:15:27.980 when and where it existed in a different world,

00:15:30.200 was without any rational or moral foundation.

00:15:33.180 For me, this passage serves as a powerful reminder

00:15:36.600 that we should not judge the practices of the past

00:15:39.620 with the values of the present,

00:15:42.020 at least not until we have taken the trouble

00:15:43.960 to understand why our ancestors did things the way they did,

00:15:48.860 and chose between the options

00:15:50.560 which were actually available to them at the time.

00:15:55.000 James Bond,

00:15:55.900 as powerful and important as he was in his own right,

00:15:59.780 served queen and country foremost.

00:16:02.060 The sixth Bond film was even called

00:16:05.500 On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

00:16:09.520 Bond's boss was always codenamed M,

00:16:12.660 who was the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service,

00:16:16.320 MI6.

00:16:18.060 M was played by a woman,

00:16:20.400 Julie Dench,

00:16:21.560 in Skyfall,

00:16:22.880 the 23rd Bond film.

00:16:25.280 M was somewhat of a maternal figure to Bond.

00:16:28.020 Why didn't you call?

00:16:30.700 You didn't get the postcard?

00:16:33.300 You should try it sometime.

00:16:34.580 Get away from it all.

00:16:35.420 It really lends perspective.

00:16:37.660 Ran out of drink where you were, did they?

00:16:39.720 What was it you said? 0.98

00:16:41.680 Take the bloody shot. 0.99

00:16:44.060 I made a judgment call. 0.99

00:16:45.600 You should have trusted me to finish the job.

00:16:48.220 It was the possibility of losing you,

00:16:49.920 or the certainty of losing all those other agents.

00:16:52.780 I made the only decision I could,

00:16:54.620 and you know it.

00:16:56.440 I think you lost your nerve.

00:16:58.020 What do you expect? 0.96

00:16:58.980 A bloody apology.

00:17:00.980 You know the rules of the game.

00:17:02.100 You've been playing it long enough.

00:17:04.220 We both have.

00:17:06.040 Maybe too long.

00:17:08.040 Speak for yourself.

00:17:10.340 This maternal connection for Bond 0.65

00:17:12.560 probably comes from the life experience of Ian Fleming,

00:17:16.340 who wrote the Bond novels.

00:17:19.060 As John Pearson wrote in his book,

00:17:21.360 The Life of Ian Fleming,

00:17:23.020 There is reason for thinking that a more telling lead

00:17:25.920 to the real identity of M,

00:17:27.700 lies in the fact that, as a boy,

00:17:29.940 Fleming often called his mother M.

00:17:32.780 While Fleming was young,

00:17:34.500 his mother was certainly one of the few people

00:17:36.400 he was frightened of,

00:17:37.680 and her sternness toward him,

00:17:39.260 her unexplained demands,

00:17:40.580 and her remorseless insistence on success

00:17:42.680 find a curious and constant echo

00:17:44.620 in the way M handles that hard-ridden,

00:17:46.540 hard-killing agent, 007.

00:17:48.700 James Bond theme number three.

00:17:51.860 Nobody does it better

00:18:04.120 Makes me feel sad for the rest

00:18:13.020 Nobody does it

00:18:17.620 Half as good as you

00:18:21.760 Baby, you're the best

00:18:29.360 James Bond is unapologetically masculine.

00:18:33.360 He's good-looking, strong, smart, skillful,

00:18:38.460 a great fighter, and he's tough as nails.

00:18:41.560 Plus, he loves women,

00:18:44.740 and they love him.

00:18:47.080 The opening intro to almost every Bond movie

00:18:49.820 features the silhouettes of naked women 0.52

00:18:52.140 walking, flying, or swimming across the screen.

00:18:55.960 These erotic images set the tone

00:18:58.140 for what motivates Bond throughout his movies,

00:19:01.820 his passion for women,

00:19:03.600 and his masculine instinct

00:19:05.220 to protect them at all costs.

00:19:08.540 Every Bond movie has a special woman,

00:19:11.560 and no Bond movie would work without one.

00:19:15.560 There's something about man's love for woman

00:19:17.920 which is crucial to his fighting spirit,

00:19:21.020 and is so perfectly embodied

00:19:22.700 in the character of James Bond.

00:19:25.740 If you ever get a chance to visit Palm Springs, California,

00:19:29.520 I highly recommend that you spend an afternoon

00:19:32.180 at the Palm Springs Air Museum.

00:19:34.280 I've been there about a dozen times,

00:19:37.280 and I can't get enough of that place.

00:19:39.720 I'll put a link in the show notes to their website.

00:19:42.900 The museum is located at the Palm Springs Airport

00:19:45.720 and has a large collection

00:19:47.640 of many of the original warplanes

00:19:49.920 from World War II,

00:19:51.600 the Vietnam,

00:19:52.100 and Korean wars.

00:19:54.580 One of the things I always found interesting

00:19:56.580 about these airplanes

00:19:57.780 is what was painted on the sides of the planes

00:20:00.800 right under the cockpit.

00:20:02.480 It was almost always an illustration

00:20:05.060 of a beautiful woman

00:20:06.440 either wearing a bathing suit

00:20:08.420 or some other sensual outfit.

00:20:11.840 Sometimes, she was even posed 0.68

00:20:13.820 straddling a bomb,

00:20:15.180 which undoubtedly had phallic connotations

00:20:18.700 to the dashing young pilots.

00:20:21.900 If you know anything about the aerial missions

00:20:24.560 flown during World War II,

00:20:26.960 this was a dangerous business,

00:20:29.180 and so many of the planes got shot down

00:20:31.540 over enemy territory.

00:20:33.680 When you took off from a base in Britain

00:20:35.740 to drop bombs over Germany,

00:20:38.200 there was no guarantee

00:20:39.320 you were ever coming home.

00:20:41.980 These men needed real courage,

00:20:43.740 and for some reason,

00:20:45.880 seeing that beautiful woman 0.64

00:20:47.180 painted on their fuselage

00:20:48.840 gave them that extra boost of testosterone

00:20:51.900 just when they needed it most.

00:20:55.240 There is no point in understating

00:20:57.400 this crucial aspect

00:20:58.700 of the James Bond character.

00:21:01.340 His attraction to,

00:21:02.720 and his love for women,

00:21:04.260 was a crucial component

00:21:05.560 to his fighting spirit.

00:21:08.320 No other action hero

00:21:09.680 has been able to match James Bond

00:21:12.200 in this masculine trait.

00:21:14.800 Not Matt Damon

00:21:15.940 playing Jason Bourne.

00:21:17.860 Not Tom Cruise

00:21:19.140 playing Ethan Hunt

00:21:20.700 in Mission Impossible.

00:21:22.500 Not Liam Neeson

00:21:23.940 playing Brian Mills

00:21:25.620 in Taken.

00:21:26.860 Not Denzel Washington

00:21:28.400 as Robert McColl

00:21:29.820 in The Equalizer.

00:21:31.300 Nope.

00:21:32.220 Nobody comes close to Bond

00:21:34.240 in this department.

00:21:36.140 As Carly Simon sang about Bond

00:21:38.680 in The Spy Who Loved Me,

00:21:40.020 Nobody Does It Better.

00:21:42.760 When this song was released

00:21:44.180 in 1977,

00:21:45.800 I was only 15,

00:21:47.560 and me and my guy friends

00:21:48.840 at the time

00:21:49.460 discussed what exactly

00:21:51.020 was the it

00:21:51.900 that nobody did better

00:21:53.520 than Bond.

00:21:54.920 To this day,

00:21:56.340 I'm still not 100% sure,

00:21:58.880 though I do have a few ideas

00:22:00.980 I won't discuss here.

00:22:03.780 James Bond theme

00:22:05.100 number four.

00:22:06.100 Is it just me

00:22:10.100 or is there

00:22:10.980 an underlying sadness

00:22:12.380 and loneliness

00:22:13.340 in the James Bond character?

00:22:16.560 In preparing

00:22:17.440 for this episode,

00:22:18.600 I immersed myself

00:22:19.600 in all the James Bond

00:22:21.080 theme songs,

00:22:22.300 and so many of them

00:22:23.560 have a sad

00:22:24.780 and tragic tone.

00:22:27.260 The song you are hearing now

00:22:29.020 is No Time to Die,

00:22:31.220 sung by Billie Eilish.

00:22:32.600 I should have known

00:22:37.500 I'd leave alone

00:22:44.260 Just goes to show

00:22:51.020 That the blood you bleed

00:22:55.360 is just the blood you own

00:22:57.940 As Billie Eilish sings, 1.00

00:23:00.460 Was I stupid 1.00

00:23:01.880 to love you? 1.00

00:23:03.120 Was I reckless

00:23:04.020 to help?

00:23:05.460 Was it obvious

00:23:06.260 to everybody else

00:23:07.440 that I'd fallen

00:23:09.160 for a lie?

00:23:10.760 You were never

00:23:11.460 on my side.

00:23:13.520 Fool me once,

00:23:14.820 fool me twice. 1.00

00:23:15.940 Are you death 0.99

00:23:17.000 or paradise?

00:23:19.040 Now you'll never

00:23:19.860 see me cry.

00:23:21.540 There's just

00:23:22.300 no time

00:23:23.200 to die. 1.00

00:23:24.160 Was I stupid 1.00

00:23:26.520 to love you? 1.00

00:23:28.620 Was I reckless

00:23:30.040 to help?

00:23:32.280 Was it obvious

00:23:33.540 to everybody else

00:23:37.160 that I've fallen

00:23:41.180 for a lie?

00:23:45.480 You were never

00:23:47.860 on my side.

00:23:51.040 Fool me once,

00:23:53.980 fool me twice. 1.00

00:23:55.720 Are you death 0.99

00:23:56.940 or paradise?

00:23:58.960 Now you'll never

00:24:00.840 see me cry.

00:24:04.360 There's just

00:24:05.260 no time

00:24:06.140 to die.

00:24:06.860 And I can't help

00:24:17.500 but feeling

00:24:18.280 tremendous sadness

00:24:19.580 in the theme

00:24:20.880 from Skyfall

00:24:21.900 sung by Adele.

00:24:26.540 This is the end

00:24:28.920 Hold your breath

00:24:33.160 and count

00:24:34.080 one to ten

00:24:36.080 Feel the earth

00:24:39.900 move

00:24:41.300 and then

00:24:42.460 Hear my heart

00:24:46.400 burst

00:24:48.800 again

00:24:50.100 For this is

00:24:53.300 the end

00:24:54.440 And remember

00:24:57.740 when you were young

00:24:58.700 and your heart

00:24:59.660 was an open book?

00:25:01.800 Well, those days

00:25:02.840 are no more.

00:25:04.080 When you were young

00:25:07.000 and your heart

00:25:08.600 was an open book

00:25:11.020 You used to say

00:25:15.160 live and let live

00:25:17.160 You know you did

00:25:18.800 You know you did

00:25:19.860 You know you did

00:25:21.220 But if this ever

00:25:23.140 But if this ever-changing

00:25:24.140 world

00:25:25.440 in which we live in

00:25:27.200 makes you give in

00:25:29.980 a cry 1.00

00:25:31.300 Say live and let die

00:25:36.140 Then there's the ominous gold finger

00:25:56.160 sung by Shirley Bassey

00:25:58.180 Mr. Goldfinger

00:26:01.100 Pretty girl

00:26:02.320 Beware of this heart

00:26:04.540 of gold

00:26:05.300 This heart

00:26:06.680 is cold

00:26:07.960 Goldfinger

00:26:12.480 Goldfinger

00:26:28.480 Goldfinger

00:26:29.420 He's the man

00:26:34.200 He's the man

00:26:34.240 The man with

00:26:35.740 Midas touch

00:26:37.580 A spider's touch

00:26:42.540 Such a cold finger

00:26:48.520 Such a cold finger

00:26:48.580 Beckons you 0.99

00:26:53.020 To enter his web of sin

00:26:56.580 But don't go in

00:27:01.540 Diamonds Are Forever

00:27:05.960 Also sung by Shirley Bassey

00:27:08.240 Has that tragic vision

00:27:10.220 Of human nature

00:27:11.380 Diamonds are forever

00:27:13.960 Sparkling round

00:27:15.780 My little finger

00:27:16.780 Unlike men 0.98

00:27:18.500 The diamonds linger

00:27:20.060 Men are mere mortals 1.00

00:27:22.680 Two are not worth

00:27:24.800 Going to your grave for

00:27:26.180 Diamonds are forever

00:27:37.800 They are all I need

00:27:42.260 To please me

00:27:43.520 They can't stimulate

00:27:46.520 To tease me

00:27:48.400 They won't leave

00:27:51.320 In the night

00:27:52.420 I've no fear

00:27:53.480 That they might

00:27:55.100 Deserve me

00:27:56.880 You Only Live Twice

00:28:01.380 by Nancy Sinatra

00:28:02.680 is also quite sad

00:28:04.380 and implies

00:28:05.080 you can never really

00:28:05.980 live your dream life

00:28:07.500 You Only Live Twice

00:28:10.000 or so it seems

00:28:11.620 One life for yourself

00:28:13.560 and one for your dreams

00:28:22.420 One life for yourself

00:28:34.680 and one for your dreams

00:28:36.800 You Only Live Twice

00:28:38.480 or so it seems

00:28:43.880 one life for yourself

00:28:47.260 and one for your dreams

00:28:51.840 You Drift Through the Years

00:28:57.840 Then there's Thunderball

00:28:59.940 sung by Tom Jones

00:29:01.740 His days of asking

00:29:04.060 are all gone

00:29:05.200 His fight

00:29:06.660 goes on

00:29:07.780 and on

00:29:08.580 and on

00:29:09.520 His days of asking

00:29:12.920 are all gone

00:29:15.940 His fight

00:29:20.720 goes on

00:29:23.080 and on

00:29:23.880 and on

00:29:25.660 But he thinks

00:29:30.120 that the fight

00:29:32.200 is worth it all

00:29:35.200 So he strikes

00:29:39.860 like thunder

00:29:43.040 though

00:29:44.000 Oh

00:29:44.740 Oh

00:29:45.680 Ooh

00:29:47.240 OK

00:29:47.760 Oh

00:29:58.580 Oh

00:29:58.900 huh

00:29:59.760 University

00:29:59.780 Oh

00:30:00.060 Where

00:30:00.840 You

00:30:01.380 You

00:30:01.880 Who

00:30:02.140 At

00:30:02.760 So

00:30:03.900 ph

00:30:04.200 And of course, there's Writings on the Wall, sung by Sam Smith.

00:30:21.780 How do I live? How do I breathe?

00:30:25.400 When you're not here, I'm suffocating.

00:30:28.280 I want to feel love run through my blood.

00:30:31.220 Tell me, is this where I give it all up?

00:31:01.220 I swear, I give it all up for you.

00:31:05.520 I have to risk it all.

00:31:10.520 I have to risk it all up for you.

00:31:19.820 I have to risk it all up for you.

00:31:23.120 Much of the James Bond music is sad, lonely, and tragic.

00:31:33.920 For me, it's the musical embodiment of Sowell's tragic vision of human nature.

00:31:40.420 For Sowell, man is a flawed and imperfect creature, and this will never change.

00:31:45.920 And we have to learn to live with the trade-offs inherent in any society composed of such flawed creatures like ourselves.

00:31:56.300 All of Sowell's writings are infused with this tragic vision of human nature.

00:32:02.280 If you share this vision, his work resonates with you.

00:32:06.180 If you don't, it doesn't.

00:32:08.740 That's my theory anyway.

00:32:10.000 So these are the four themes of the James Bond character, which always resonated deeply with me.

00:32:20.580 His drive to save the world.

00:32:23.020 His devotion to queen and country.

00:32:25.820 His intense masculine energy.

00:32:28.880 And his tragic hero persona.

00:32:31.320 I think this is why I felt driven to pair my Gadsad interview with the music from James Bond.

00:32:39.860 For me, Gadsad represents these four themes as well.

00:32:45.200 What James Bond was to the physical world, Gadsad is to the intellectual world.

00:32:51.560 While Bond fights to save the world from bad characters, Gadsad fights to save the world from bad ideas.

00:32:59.040 While Bond fights to save the world from those who seek to enslave or destroy us, Gadsad fights to save Western civilization from those who seek to destroy the foundation and basic principles of that civilization.

00:33:15.480 Just as Bond epitomizes the masculine-feminine dichotomy, so too does Gadsad, as an evolutionary psychologist, embrace and celebrate the differences between men and women.

00:33:30.240 And he champions the union between man and woman as one of the key pillars of a happy life.

00:33:36.780 Finally, only someone who truly understands the tragic side of life would even think of writing a book about happiness.

00:33:49.060 Dr. Saad is a tenured professor of marketing at the Concordia University School of Business in Montreal, Canada.

00:33:57.060 His specialty is the application of the ideas of evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior.

00:34:03.240 He has written papers about how showy products like fast cars affect men's testosterone levels, which in turn affects their risk-taking behavior,

00:34:14.320 and how menstrual hormones affect women's buying decisions.

00:34:18.900 He has written many articles for academic journals and published several books for an academic audience.

00:34:26.400 But all that is just his day job.

00:34:28.800 In his spare time, Gadsad has been speaking up about cultural issues.

00:34:35.600 He has stepped outside of academia and talked directly to the general public.

00:34:40.960 This is exactly how I first heard of Gadsad.

00:34:44.860 I think it must have been one of his seven appearances on the Joe Rogan podcast which brought him to my attention.

00:34:50.940 Who is this guy who Joe Rogan, the most listened-to podcaster in the world, keeps bringing back to his show over and over and over again?

00:35:01.700 He has also been interviewed by Sam Harris, Adam Carolla, and Dave Rubin.

00:35:06.780 All guys I pay some attention to.

00:35:08.780 But I think Gadsad's official break into the so-called culture wars began with his publication in 2020 of The Parasitic Mind,

00:35:19.200 How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

00:35:23.240 Here are some morsels from The Parasitic Mind.

00:35:26.680 In this clip, Gadsad describes the types of mind viruses he is fighting against.

00:35:32.260 Some of the parasitic viruses of the human mind that I tackle include postmodernism, radical feminism, and social constructivism,

00:35:39.160 all of which largely flourish within one infected ecosystem, the university.

00:35:43.640 While each mind virus constitutes a different strain of lunacy,

00:35:46.640 they are all bound by the full rejection of reality and common sense.

00:35:49.860 Postmodernism rejects the existence of objective truths.

00:35:52.480 Radical feminism scoffs at the idea of innate, biologically-based sex differences. 0.99

00:35:56.220 And social constructivism posits that the human mind starts off as an empty slate, largely void of biological blueprints.

00:36:02.260 In the next clip, he talks about the dichotomy between reason and emotion,

00:36:07.760 and how the two have gotten confused, especially at the university.

00:36:12.740 Nor is it surprising that people differ in the extent to which they rely on feelings versus thinking when making choices.

00:36:18.180 The problem arises when domains that should be reserved for the intellect are hijacked by feelings.

00:36:23.240 This is precisely what plagues our universities.

00:36:25.740 What were once centers of intellectual development have become retreats for the emotionally fragile.

00:36:29.380 The driving motto of the university is no longer the pursuit of truth, but the coddling of hurt feelings.

00:36:34.760 In this final clip, Gad Saad talks about the importance of being judgmental.

00:36:41.340 And he even mentions you-know-who.

00:36:43.800 To never judge is to be an intellectual coward, for it serves as an insurance policy against the possibility of being a polarizing figure.

00:36:51.700 The most charismatic public intellectuals are typically those who share their judgments on a broad range of issues.

00:36:57.820 Thomas Sowell and the late Christopher Hitchens are two of the leading public intellectuals of the past four decades,

00:37:03.180 precisely because they never shied away from sharing their opinions on contentious issues.

00:37:06.820 Of course, not all judgments are created equal.

00:37:10.240 The difference between a judgmental ideologue and a judgmental intellectual is the process by which each arrives at his position.

00:37:16.420 As long as one uses well-articulated arguments in support of one's judgments, it is perfectly acceptable to judge.

00:37:22.960 Dr. Gad Saad, welcome to the Genius of Thomas Sowell podcast.

00:37:26.760 Oh, it's so nice to be with you.

00:37:29.340 And actually, your behavior in interacting with me is something that I cover in my forthcoming book on the importance of being judgmental.

00:37:40.040 Did you hear that?

00:37:41.260 Yeah, what was that?

00:37:42.280 Thunder?

00:37:43.140 That's a massive thunder.

00:37:44.500 Yeah.

00:37:44.700 So anyways, it speaks to the power of persistence.

00:37:47.100 So thank you for being persistent.

00:37:49.140 And I'm delighted to be with you.

00:37:50.920 Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because in your book,

00:37:54.320 you talk about how you got to interview Russell Tompkins Jr.,

00:37:58.400 who was the lead singer of The Stylistics.

00:38:00.880 Yes, sir.

00:38:01.900 And you had to be very persistent with a lot of grit to get him on your show.

00:38:08.240 And this was egged on by your young daughter, I believe.

00:38:11.780 Is that true?

00:38:13.100 Exactly.

00:38:13.500 So do you want me to share sort of the denouement of the story?

00:38:18.040 Yeah, please.

00:38:18.500 So basically what happened in 2001, I had moved to California to be a professor at University of California, Irvine.

00:38:25.580 And I'd always sort of entertained this fantasy that one day I would be holding a private party in some beautiful garden that I own,

00:38:35.700 and I would be wearing a velvet suit with a bow tie, and I would come out to my esteemed guests,

00:38:41.880 and I would say, ladies and gentlemen, the stylistics, and they would be performing at this private event of mine.

00:38:47.940 And so I had the chutzpah to actually think that a professor would have enough money to invite the stylistics for such a show.

00:38:56.420 So I reached out in 2001 or maybe 2002 to the management team of the stylistics,

00:39:01.680 and then I was quickly disabused of the notion that I could afford them.

00:39:06.160 Fast forward about 15 years later, we're around 2016.

00:39:10.200 I've now built a pretty large platform.

00:39:13.020 I invite all sorts of really interesting people to come and chat with me.

00:39:16.100 And so I reached out to their management team.

00:39:19.400 And in this case, I'm not asking them to come and perform for me,

00:39:22.320 but I'm just trying to have a chat with my childhood musical hero.

00:39:26.500 I try a few times.

00:39:27.860 It doesn't work.

00:39:29.200 Finally, my daughter says, why don't you call them and leave a message?

00:39:32.200 I did.

00:39:33.140 But then they never responded.

00:39:34.820 She kept saying, hey, have you called them?

00:39:37.340 Have you called them?

00:39:38.220 And so one day I'm sitting watching a soccer match on a Saturday morning.

00:39:42.100 The landline rings, which it almost never does.

00:39:45.960 And there is the caller ID.

00:39:47.660 And it says Russell Tompkins Jr.

00:39:49.540 And so I already know before I answer who it is.

00:39:52.840 And so I pick up the phone.

00:39:54.320 He goes, hi, I'm trying to reach Professor Saad.

00:39:57.080 I said, speaking.

00:39:58.400 He goes, oh, this is Russell Tompkins Jr.

00:40:00.700 And my exact words were, oh, my Lord.

00:40:04.420 We become friends.

00:40:05.800 He comes on my show.

00:40:06.980 Then I go visit him in Philadelphia.

00:40:09.080 I was giving a talk at a scientific conference in Philadelphia.

00:40:14.000 He lives in Philadelphia.

00:40:15.240 So I reached out to him.

00:40:16.240 I said, hey, do you want to get together?

00:40:17.920 And he says, name the place and time and I'll be there.

00:40:21.580 So we end up spending a whole evening together.

00:40:23.720 That's the beauty of life, Alan.

00:40:25.420 It really is a great lesson in life because, you know, I always say if you're not getting

00:40:31.800 rejected several times a day, then you're not really living on the edge.

00:40:37.340 You know, we try so hard to avoid rejection, but we should actually be seeking it.

00:40:42.320 So true.

00:40:42.840 So true.

00:40:43.500 Right.

00:40:44.100 And, you know, you reaching out to them over and over again.

00:40:47.100 Of course, you were setting yourself up for rejection after rejection.

00:40:49.740 But, you know, and it's not going to work every time, but it's going to lead to a happier

00:40:54.720 life for sure.

00:40:56.280 Exactly.

00:40:56.580 And, you know, it's tough to do because I should just mention, it's not as though I was,

00:41:01.440 you know, a pest.

00:41:02.680 I reached maybe two, three, four times every time separated by a couple of months.

00:41:06.420 But not notwithstanding that caveat, you know, you're setting yourself up not only for potential

00:41:13.080 rejection and failure, but also someone like me who can easily be offended by personal

00:41:18.980 slights, maybe to a fault.

00:41:20.600 If you don't answer me, then I'm going to take offense to it.

00:41:24.020 But yet I had to swallow my pride and say, look, maybe this guy is busy.

00:41:28.340 Maybe this guy received a million of these.

00:41:30.740 He doesn't know who I am.

00:41:32.060 And so you sort of have to also be humble in recognizing that when people sometimes reject

00:41:37.240 you, it's nothing personal.

00:41:39.040 It's because they've got busy schedules.

00:41:40.820 And so I'm glad that I had the wisdom of my then eight-year-old daughter to get me through

00:41:44.900 all these obstacles.

00:41:46.100 You know, I had my wife egging me on to get you on the show because, you know, my wife, 1.00

00:41:52.220 and I told you this, we met at the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference in November of last

00:41:56.560 year.

00:41:58.100 And okay, before I talk about my wife, when I first walked into the conference, I saw

00:42:02.040 you sitting there in the first row of tables.

00:42:05.380 And I thought to myself, of course, no conference on academic freedom would be complete without

00:42:11.740 the presence of Gadsett, who more than anyone epitomizes what academic freedom is supposed

00:42:18.320 to be.

00:42:19.240 Okay.

00:42:19.580 The second thing I thought was, it's no coincidence that he's in the front row because he's the

00:42:26.420 type of person who has a zest for life, who's going to participate 100%.

00:42:30.920 And you don't want to miss even the slightest facial expression of one of the speakers, you

00:42:36.840 know, and you're also there to learn, you know, you came to learn, you rolled up your

00:42:41.360 intellectual sleeves and you were there to learn.

00:42:43.920 And there's something, you know, inspiring about being, you know, what I call a front

00:42:48.580 rower, you know, someone who always goes to the front row.

00:42:52.200 And the interesting thing is that the front row seats are usually the easiest to get.

00:42:57.060 They fill up the last.

00:42:59.000 Is that right?

00:43:00.060 Yeah.

00:43:00.660 I've noticed that.

00:43:01.580 A lot of times I walk into a place, I always go right to the front row because I know there's

00:43:05.700 going to be seats there.

00:43:06.840 I don't know why that is, but people are intimidated.

00:43:09.740 People maybe want to hide in the back so that they're not called upon, maybe.

00:43:13.460 For sure.

00:43:14.300 So thank you for those lovely words.

00:43:15.700 I really appreciate it.

00:43:16.360 No, and I really mean that.

00:43:18.340 So, you know, your presence at the conference was a real inspiration for me.

00:43:23.740 And my wife was egging me on to get you on the show because you had awakened her to the

00:43:31.720 idea pathogens that she had been swallowing hook, line, and sinker for many, many years,

00:43:39.460 starting in 2016.

00:43:40.580 And she credits you.

00:43:42.620 Oh, that's lovely.

00:43:44.120 That wake up moment.

00:43:46.320 You know, and I remember telling you that over the snack table at the conference.

00:43:53.440 I was enjoying my scone and coffee.

00:43:55.160 And I told you, I have to tell you this.

00:43:58.580 No, you know, and by the way, that story, you can't imagine how enriching it is for me

00:44:03.920 to hear that because, you know, people will often ask, you know, why do you get involved

00:44:08.320 in all this?

00:44:09.300 Why do you do it?

00:44:09.980 Well, it's because I get to hear an incredible story, a woman that I've never met, that I

00:44:15.820 somehow have been able to hopefully positively influence.

00:44:19.320 My God, the rest of my life is bonus.

00:44:23.200 So it's wonderful.

00:44:24.060 Thank you.

00:44:24.720 Yeah.

00:44:24.960 And, you know, I want to talk with you a little bit about that later in this interview about

00:44:29.700 your call to action in the parasitic mind.

00:44:32.080 But we'll get to that later.

00:44:39.300 In preparing, you know, for this interview, I read, I studied actually two of your books,

00:45:03.440 The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

00:45:08.080 And thank you for sending me an advanced copy of The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets

00:45:14.720 for Leading the Good Life, which is brand new.

00:45:17.440 It's coming out in July.

00:45:18.820 And I recommend that everybody read it.

00:45:20.460 So I was very tickled that you mentioned Thomas Sowell in both of these books.

00:45:26.720 In The Parasitic Mind, you called Sowell, quote, one of the original slayers of social justice

00:45:32.800 warriors back in the 60s and 70s.

00:45:35.400 You complimented him for never shying away from sharing his opinions on contentious issues.

00:45:41.320 In your new book about happiness, you extol Sowell for preaching a message of personal agency

00:45:48.120 and for rejecting the victimhood mentality.

00:45:51.420 In February of 21, you wrote an essay called 10 Reasons Why You Should Love Thomas Sowell.

00:45:58.020 So tell us about your relationship with Sowell and his work.

00:46:01.840 So I first encountered him not through reading one of his brilliant books, but I can't remember

00:46:08.700 the exact genesis, but it was, you know, some YouTube clip from, you know, the 1960s or 70s,

00:46:16.040 where he's taken on some feminist on, you know, I don't know if it was Phil Donahue or,

00:46:20.900 you know, Mike Wallace.

00:46:22.400 I can't remember which show it must have been. 0.98

00:46:24.560 And I was just like somewhat, I mean, not maybe mesmerized, but God damn, who is this guy? 0.62

00:46:30.920 And so then you start doing the deep dive and then you discover Thomas Sowell.

00:46:36.800 That would have probably been, I would say, you know, maybe 15 years ago, because I had

00:46:42.500 been in my own academic work fighting against a lot of these social constructivists and militant

00:46:49.660 feminists and what I call the flat earthers of the human mind, the folks who reject the 1.00

00:46:54.500 idea that biology can influence human behavior, that evolutionary psychology can influence our

00:47:00.520 behavior.

00:47:00.900 And I think it was through, you know, my constant battles with many of my academic colleagues

00:47:06.980 that I stumbled on his work.

00:47:09.400 So it was first YouTube and then from YouTube, I then started reading some of his work.

00:47:14.180 And as you know, this past summer, I was reading, you know, I always, whenever we go somewhere

00:47:19.440 on a trip, one of my most stressful moments is to decide what is the next book that I'm bringing

00:47:24.940 on the trip.

00:47:26.140 And I was lucky enough to be rational enough to choose vision of the anointed ones for 1.00

00:47:32.620 this past California trip.

00:47:34.940 And then when I read that, I'm like, my goodness, almost every word that he says in there could

00:47:39.660 apply to exactly what we're facing now.

00:47:42.700 So yeah, Thomas Sowell, I share your admiration for him.

00:47:45.920 So, you know, how deep have you gotten into his work?

00:47:47.960 Have you read, you know, two or three books?

00:47:49.840 Have you read 10?

00:47:50.820 I mean, you know, where are you in that journey?

00:47:52.240 A full book, Only Vision of the Anointed, little snippets from many different books,

00:47:57.660 several articles from his, you remember his old ongoing, you know, series that he used

00:48:03.620 to do.

00:48:04.580 Right, the columns.

00:48:05.060 The columns, I've read those.

00:48:06.980 But I must say that, how many books has he written?

00:48:10.660 Like 30 maybe?

00:48:11.980 Well, he's got 47 books out.

00:48:14.840 37 of them, I think, are original books.

00:48:17.540 The other 10 are like collections of essays.

00:48:20.500 Right.

00:48:20.820 So I would say, and this is completely speculative, but out of all his written words, I would be

00:48:28.420 hard pressed to imagine that I've read more than 5% of it.

00:48:32.900 But it's enough of a percentage to know that he's unbelievable.

00:48:37.080 That's great.

00:48:37.500 That's great.

00:48:37.840 So you've got a lot more ways to go, which is great.

00:48:40.460 Which actually reminds me of why I started this podcast.

00:48:43.680 I was doing a reading challenge.

00:48:45.700 My goal was to read a book a week for a year.

00:48:49.780 And somewhere in my second year, I was like, you know, I'm getting a lot out of these books.

00:48:54.860 I'm reading some great books.

00:48:56.120 But the ones I'm really getting the most out of are the Thomas Sowell books.

00:49:00.400 Why don't I just focus only on reading all the Thomas Sowell books?

00:49:05.580 And while I'm at it, why don't I start a podcast to talk about them?

00:49:08.980 And so that's where I, you know, that's where I am now.

00:49:12.220 One of the reasons why I have a hard time, I mean, I read also, you know, voraciously

00:49:17.660 my entire life, both professionally, you know, right?

00:49:20.720 If I'm writing a book, I have to read a million other books as part of the research, but also

00:49:25.320 just for leisure.

00:49:26.100 It's one of the things that I enjoy reading, doing the most.

00:49:28.800 But related to a point that I discussed in my forthcoming book, I tend to be a maladaptive

00:49:33.640 perfectionist.

00:49:34.520 So oftentimes my reading speed is slowed down because I get into this kind of OCD where

00:49:43.180 I reread a sentence three times because God forbid, I must have missed one word that I

00:49:48.680 didn't read.

00:49:49.360 I mean, I, by the way, I read the end notes of every book.

00:49:51.920 And so I often wonder if I were to take up a challenge like yours, or I want to read a

00:49:58.080 book a week, whether I can do it only not due to motivation or, or, or interest, but

00:50:04.300 simply because my punctilious perfectionist nature might not allow me to get through a

00:50:10.320 book in a, in a week.

00:50:11.480 I totally get that.

00:50:12.460 The only reason I was able to do it was because I go on three hour hikes every morning and

00:50:18.300 I was able to listen to the audio books and I had the book downloaded on my phone.

00:50:23.960 So if I saw something that I really liked, I could stop and grab the quote and save it.

00:50:28.860 So I sort of had both at the same time.

00:50:31.160 Beautiful.

00:50:31.820 Gotcha.

00:50:32.620 Those hikes saved me.

00:50:33.880 See reflections on the water.

00:50:38.500 More than darkness in the depths.

00:50:43.560 See them surface in every shadow.

00:50:48.240 On the wind I feel his breath.

00:50:51.900 You know, in some ways you remind me of Thomas Sowell and let me explain why.

00:51:02.780 Both of you are academics who specialize in somewhat technical subjects.

00:51:07.420 And yet you both have chosen to communicate your ideas with the general public in a way

00:51:12.760 which everyday people can relate to.

00:51:14.880 You've mentioned in the past that fellow academics sometimes look down on you for your appearances

00:51:21.240 on Joe Rogan's podcast, for example, and also for your irreverent style of communication.

00:51:28.180 I've heard economists who somewhat look down on Thomas Sowell for, they claim, not making

00:51:34.520 any original contributions to the field of economics.

00:51:38.340 And I find these critiques very misplaced.

00:51:42.020 So let me start by asking you this question.

00:51:45.100 You're in the business school.

00:51:46.920 Is there any hard evidence that all the so-called original ideas which economists win Nobel Prizes

00:51:53.780 for have contributed to advancing humanity in any way?

00:51:58.560 I'm not saying they don't.

00:52:00.200 I'm just asking, is there any evidence that they do?

00:52:03.340 Do you know?

00:52:04.040 Yeah, no, that's a great question.

00:52:06.120 So first, I think I could retire now because any time that I am compared in any way to

00:52:11.960 Thomas Sowell is a big day for me.

00:52:14.700 So I think I might put that quote of yours on my CV.

00:52:18.380 But so thank you for those words.

00:52:20.520 I'll answer it in this way.

00:52:21.880 I'll answer it in a somewhat technical way.

00:52:23.980 So one of the things that the scientific method expects is what's called replication,

00:52:31.620 right?

00:52:31.820 So if there is a phenomenon that we can sort of include as part of the core knowledge of

00:52:37.600 the field, it has to hopefully be replicated and validated across different independent

00:52:44.020 teams, all of which then converge to confirming that this finding seems to be veridical, which

00:52:49.620 of course, by the way, even that would be still provisionally true because if in 300 years

00:52:54.080 someone comes along and falsifies that, well, then we're back to the drawing board.

00:52:57.420 That's what's beautiful about the scientific method.

00:52:59.500 We're always updating what we consider to be true.

00:53:02.880 And so to the point of replication and in answering your question, maybe in an indirect,

00:53:07.880 oblique way, less than 5% of findings published in the leading business school journals have

00:53:17.760 been replicated.

00:53:19.620 Stop and think about that for a second, right?

00:53:21.460 So I can't answer to the fact of whether some of the findings have helped society.

00:53:28.340 Of course they have because many of the things, for example, that you see in the AI algorithms

00:53:34.480 that allow Facebook to understand our behavior and to then predict what we're going to do next

00:53:40.820 better than our brains can predict, that really comes from a lot of people who understand consumer

00:53:45.520 behavior and marketing and big data analytics.

00:53:48.340 So there's an insurmountable amount of cases that suggest that, of course, we are doing

00:53:53.420 things that are practically relevant and so on, let alone academically relevant.

00:53:57.420 But the fact that only 5% of the edifices of reason that we purport to be teaching our

00:54:05.060 students, only 5% has been replicated, that should make us stop and really think hard about

00:54:10.740 what we're doing.

00:54:11.540 And one of the reasons why, by the way, Alan, I love evolutionary psychology is because usually

00:54:17.260 the findings in evolutionary psychology have an extraordinarily higher replicability rate.

00:54:25.180 Because before you argue that something is a human universal, as is often the case in

00:54:30.760 evolutionary psychology, you have to have demonstrated its veracity across different cultural environments,

00:54:38.100 across time periods, oftentimes across species.

00:54:41.480 And so that which many of the other fields in the business school, let alone the social

00:54:48.260 sciences, they suffer from lack of replicability, that is not something that evolutionary psychology

00:54:54.020 suffers from.

00:54:54.640 For your eyes only, can see me through the night.

00:55:02.880 For your eyes only, I never need to hide.

00:55:11.480 When I look at someone like Sowell, he spent years and years figuring out how things work

00:55:36.500 in the real world.

00:55:37.320 Then he spent more years and years teaching what he learned to the general public, including

00:55:42.340 me.

00:55:43.740 And he did that so that people can make better decisions when they vote.

00:55:47.880 In my mind, that's the highest contribution an economist can make to humanity.

00:55:53.100 And I did an episode on why he deserves a Nobel Prize just for that.

00:55:58.100 You know?

00:55:58.980 Now, if your research into happiness can help people to become happier, isn't that more important

00:56:05.000 than you simply coming up with a bold new theory on happiness that no one ever thought of before?

00:56:11.180 I mean, a lot of the ideas in your book are very basic.

00:56:13.680 And yet, if you can communicate them in a way which inspires people to actually use them,

00:56:19.540 isn't that an accomplishment unto itself?

00:56:21.620 I mean, I would certainly hope so.

00:56:24.260 And to that point, before I answer the happiness point directly, you might remember, and it speaks

00:56:30.500 to your earlier question about how some of my colleagues would look down upon me for appearing

00:56:34.140 on Joe Rogan.

00:56:34.880 I'm guessing you are perhaps referencing the story in chapter one of The Parasitic Mind,

00:56:40.280 where I talk about my going actually to Stanford.

00:56:43.000 Although it wasn't on the Stanford trip where you and I met, it was an earlier trip in 2017,

00:56:48.280 where I had been invited to the Stanford Business School.

00:56:51.260 So that's pretty much the mecca of academia, where I had been invited to give a talk on

00:56:56.480 my evolutionary consumer psychology work.

00:56:59.820 And the night before, I had gone out to dinner with one of my hosts, just one-on-one.

00:57:06.400 And during the night, he said, oh, you know, I looked you up on Google and so on.

00:57:11.760 I didn't know you were such an academic celebrity.

00:57:13.940 You appear on Joe Rogan and so on.

00:57:15.520 I said, oh, as a matter of fact, I'm probably going to be appearing soon.

00:57:18.740 So he kind of looks at me with disdain and says, oh, well, you know, we don't condone

00:57:21.980 that at Stanford.

00:57:23.380 And I said, well, you don't condone what exactly at Stanford?

00:57:26.440 You don't condone appearing in front of a crowd of maybe 20 million people who are going

00:57:31.100 to download your ideas?

00:57:32.540 He said, well, we don't do research so that it could be sexy enough to appear on Joe Rogan

00:57:36.920 and discuss it there.

00:57:38.100 I said, well, I don't either.

00:57:39.240 I can both do serious research.

00:57:41.160 And if it's worthwhile research, then I would like to think that I could share it with 20

00:57:47.900 million people.

00:57:48.620 It's not a mutually exclusive thing.

00:57:50.420 So that speaks to your earlier point.

00:57:52.280 But now coming back to happiness, you're exactly right.

00:57:55.240 I think that if I can help, I don't know how many people, X number of people have a certain

00:58:01.320 set of guidelines that are likely to increase their chance of being happy, then how do you

00:58:06.820 quantify that?

00:58:07.640 Look, by the way, and this is not to denigrate academic research.

00:58:10.900 I love doing academic research.

00:58:12.520 It's part of my wearing a professorial hat.

00:58:15.620 Do you know, Alan, how many average citations the typical academic paper receives?

00:58:22.380 The modal, the modal number.

00:58:25.260 I don't know.

00:58:25.760 I mean, I'm not in that world.

00:58:27.140 But, you know, I hear numbers bandied about be like 100, 200, 15, 5.

00:58:33.060 I have no idea.

00:58:34.500 Zero.

00:58:35.340 Zero.

00:58:35.600 Okay, so most people's academic papers get referred to never.

00:58:41.020 About the modal numbers.

00:58:44.520 Okay, so basically, let's put it this way.

00:58:48.300 If you, your first guesses were 100 or 200, I think you said.

00:58:53.300 Right.

00:58:53.480 If you have a paper that's been cited 100 or 200 times, that's a highly successful paper.

00:59:01.800 I mean, of course, it depends how many years it took to amass the 100.

00:59:05.400 I mean, if it took only a year, then it's better than if it took 30 years.

00:59:08.440 But already, very few papers are going to amass, you know, 200 citations.

00:59:14.100 As a matter of fact, if you go on Google Scholar, it gives you your I-10 index, which is how many

00:59:19.680 publications have you published that have more than 10 citations?

00:59:24.420 Why did they pick 10?

00:59:25.880 Why wasn't, if it's very common to have 1,000 citations, then that would have been.

00:59:30.320 But that would be like a grand slam home run.

00:59:34.520 Is that it?

00:59:34.860 So, so the idea is that it's very hard once you're bitten by the bug of communicating to

00:59:43.760 thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people to be satisfied with only communicating

00:59:51.260 with 37 colleagues who share your interest in psychology of decision-making.

00:59:56.240 And again, it's not to denigrate that because you need to do that.

00:59:59.680 That's part of your mandate as a professor to push the research frontier.

01:00:03.640 But my God, do I also get an incredible tingle when someone sends me a selfie of a copy of

01:00:11.780 my book, let's say, The Parasitic Mind.

01:00:13.420 They're sitting on a beach, you know, in Oman, and they send me a selfie of that, right?

01:00:18.560 Because that person had 1 million different possible things they could have done for that

01:00:24.140 next hour or two.

01:00:25.600 And yet I captivated their attention on that Oman beach.

01:00:30.300 That's pretty enriching and pretty humbling.

01:00:32.280 So I think that professors should be able to do it all.

01:00:35.460 I don't think we should only be speaking to other ivory tower folks.

01:00:39.020 And another reason why I think both of us love Thomas Sowell.

01:00:42.140 You only live twice, or so it seems.

01:00:53.780 One life for yourself and one for your dreams.

01:01:00.140 In your book about happiness, you make the argument that authenticity is an important foundation

01:01:16.880 for a happy life.

01:01:18.400 Here's a quote from the book.

01:01:19.500 Quote, A central feature of personal authenticity is realness or genuineness.

01:01:26.380 One is real if there is congruency between one's internal feelings and overt behaviors,

01:01:33.360 even if such genuineness yields negative personal or social outcomes.

01:01:39.340 When I was reading this section of your book, it occurred to me that one of the reasons I

01:01:44.440 love Sowell so much, and I suspect that many other people feel this way as well, is that

01:01:49.800 Sowell is just so authentic.

01:01:52.380 He's so real.

01:01:53.780 He speaks his mind and he doesn't seem to care how his ideas will be received.

01:01:59.860 One can say the exact same thing about you, actually.

01:02:02.760 Tell us more about this concept of authenticity and why you believe it's such a key feature

01:02:09.640 of happiness.

01:02:11.420 Oh, thank you for that fantastic question.

01:02:13.640 I'll, I'll, I mean, I can answer it in a, in a sort of theoretical philosophical way, or

01:02:18.060 I can give you a concrete story that speaks exactly to that quote.

01:02:22.500 So a few days ago, I don't know, maybe a week ago, I faced a conundrum, okay, as often

01:02:29.460 happens when you're in the public eye.

01:02:30.780 There was a gentleman whom I'd never interacted with on a one-on-one basis, but who had recently

01:02:36.340 come in my radar.

01:02:37.880 And especially so since I'm now, you know, starting to do my media tour for different

01:02:42.520 shows.

01:02:42.860 A lot of people said, Hey, you should go on this guy's show.

01:02:46.100 He's got a huge following and blah, blah, blah.

01:02:48.320 So I started checking him out to see, you know, what's this guy about?

01:02:51.920 And I saw that every second, every second tweet seemed to be as though his account had been

01:02:59.300 hacked by an 11 year old prepubescent girl.

01:03:03.320 Love is love through kindness and loving the flowers.

01:03:07.460 We will build a society of flowers.

01:03:10.640 You must cut your cucumbers with love because, you know, the cucumbers to have feelings.

01:03:17.020 And at first I thought, I can't, could this be satire?

01:03:20.140 Is he doing like God, sad satire or is he, is he, you know, trolling?

01:03:25.160 Well, no, he was spreading that message.

01:03:27.100 Now it could have been either that he truly is that naive that, you know, love will conquer

01:03:31.900 all, or it could be that it's a false persona.

01:03:35.460 So we can talk about his authenticity or lack thereof, but the more important element to your,

01:03:41.740 the quote from my book is what should I do with this information?

01:03:46.120 Should I swallow my tongue because there is a careerist, a pragmatic, clear benefit to me

01:03:56.200 holding my tongue and going, dear so-and-so, I love what you're doing.

01:04:02.280 How about I'll be coming to Texas soon?

01:04:04.640 Let's get together so that I can come on your show.

01:04:07.580 But that would feel false to me.

01:04:10.520 Why?

01:04:10.800 Because your tweets are pissing me off and they sound false and they sound inauthentic 1.00

01:04:17.520 and they sound as though you're peddling pure bullshit. 1.00

01:04:21.580 So, and you have a large following. 1.00

01:04:24.100 So I'm getting increasingly pissed off.

01:04:26.600 So then my internal state has to be consistent with my overt behavior.

01:04:32.640 I put out a sad truth clip.

01:04:35.280 I'm not frivolously mean.

01:04:37.020 I'm not insulting him in obnoxious ways, but I am being critical of his positions.

01:04:43.920 Now he had claimed, I'm always willing to learn.

01:04:47.160 I'm always willing to listen.

01:04:48.800 I'm always willing to exchange and debate people who disagree with me.

01:04:53.700 Well, here comes Gadsad disagreeing with you.

01:04:56.740 What does he do?

01:04:58.160 He blocks me.

01:04:59.100 And then of course he got, you know, attacked mercilessly by people saying you're fraudulent

01:05:05.240 because you, you preach that from this side of your mouth and then you do this from the

01:05:09.340 side of the mouth.

01:05:09.920 So the point of authenticity applies both to him and that I think he's being authentic,

01:05:14.660 but more importantly, I had to be authentic with my genuine self.

01:05:20.640 Again, not to be frivolously mean, right?

01:05:23.080 I'm not going after someone, attacking them in a defamatory way.

01:05:27.780 I'm saying, here is how I disagree with your positions.

01:05:31.840 And I simply couldn't be quiet long enough to benefit from his large social platform.

01:05:38.040 And sometimes I, I wonder whether I am being too authentic, whether on the inverted U curve,

01:05:44.400 I haven't found my sweet spot, but then I think not because what allows me to walk tall,

01:05:51.020 even though I'm hardly a tall guy is that my sense of personhood doesn't have any glaring

01:05:58.180 fractures.

01:05:59.360 What you see is what you get for better or worse with all my qualities and all my faults.

01:06:05.280 And I think that is a fundamental feature for being happy because there's nothing for you

01:06:10.740 to modulate.

01:06:11.700 If you're always speaking the truth, as far as you know, there's nothing, no lies for you

01:06:16.740 to remember, it's a much easier way to live life.

01:06:20.140 You know, I really, really agree with that for, for at least since I've been a teenager,

01:06:24.760 there's one quote I came across that I've made my life's motto.

01:06:28.640 It was from a guy named Werner Erhard.

01:06:30.920 Have you ever heard of him?

01:06:32.160 I don't think so.

01:06:33.560 He said this, it was a seven word quote that has always stuck with me.

01:06:37.700 Be yourself and be that fully.

01:06:41.600 There you put it.

01:06:42.380 Perfect.

01:06:42.560 That's, that's been my life's motto.

01:06:44.260 And, and I, and I'm, and I'm glad to hear there's some scientific evidence that this

01:06:49.240 actually leads to a happy life because it does have its costs.

01:06:51.940 As you mentioned in your book, you know, you've talked about the career costs that you've

01:06:57.500 paid because of your outspokenness.

01:07:00.540 I was just going to say that, I mean, I'll give you one example, which I actually mentioned

01:07:04.280 in, in the book.

01:07:05.780 Uh, I ended up taking out the identifying markers of that particular university, although

01:07:12.280 I certainly didn't mind mentioning it, but just to stay consistent with that protocol,

01:07:16.660 I won't mention the university.

01:07:17.740 I'll simply say that it was a Southern California university where the, you might remember this

01:07:23.340 passage from the book where both the president of the university and the then chancellor of

01:07:28.660 the university were gigantic fans of my work and were incredibly keen on having me joined

01:07:35.340 the university.

01:07:35.940 Now, for me, that was a, a, a wonderful, wonderful news because while being Jewish, 1.00

01:07:41.580 you might think the promised land is Israel.

01:07:43.340 For me, the promised land is anything that is close to Newport beach, California.

01:07:47.800 Uh, and so I came close to getting that job.

01:07:51.400 And then at the last second, when it was pretty much a signed and done deal, uh, apparently

01:07:58.200 there were some folks who were not very happy for me to join the place.

01:08:02.020 And I lost that job.

01:08:03.380 Now, while I may regret the fact that I didn't get to spend the last, you know, at least decade

01:08:09.340 in Southern California, I don't regret that.

01:08:12.440 You know, I, if you, if you ask me, Hey, had you not said A, B, C, D, I could have now guaranteed

01:08:19.400 you that you would have been at that job.

01:08:21.320 I would have said to you, Alan, yeah, sorry.

01:08:23.280 No.

01:08:23.920 And, and again, you know, some might say, well, you're too exacting in your code of

01:08:28.080 personal conduct.

01:08:28.700 I say, no, it allows me to put my head on the pillow at the end of the night and avert

01:08:33.680 insomnia because I never feel as though I'm being fraudulent or a scammer or charlatan

01:08:38.340 because I'm always being true to me.

01:08:40.300 While we're on the show, let's get started.

01:09:10.280 On the subject of authenticity, I want to ask you about the last chapter of the parasitic

01:09:14.840 mind.

01:09:15.260 You call the chapter call to action.

01:09:18.360 In your book, you make the case that Western society is drowning in a flood of harmful

01:09:23.440 ideas and that each of us needs to join the battle.

01:09:27.840 You write this quote, most people are too busy to notice the dangers of idea pathogens or wrongly

01:09:34.920 assume that they are unimportant.

01:09:36.480 The intrusion of anti-science, anti-reason, and illiberal movements occurs slowly and incrementally

01:09:44.380 without many people becoming aware of the larger problem.

01:09:48.880 Hence the slow and inexorable death of the West by a thousand cuts.

01:09:54.480 End quote.

01:09:54.840 So your goal in writing this chapter, I assume, was to inspire people to speak up and oppose

01:10:02.240 the many crazy ideas which have taken hold nowadays.

01:10:07.060 You talk about the bystander effect, how everyone assumes that someone else is speaking up so they

01:10:12.840 don't have to.

01:10:13.940 It's like, hey, Gad Saad is speaking up about this issue, so I don't have to.

01:10:17.940 You talk about believing in your own voice, no matter how small the audience might be.

01:10:22.720 You talk about how we shouldn't be afraid to judge others, how we shouldn't shy away from

01:10:29.580 possibly offending others.

01:10:31.580 You talk about how we should avoid virtue signaling.

01:10:34.620 You talk about the honey badger and why we should be more like this creature.

01:10:39.680 By the way, my nickname for you is the Manuka honey badger, the honey badger of honey badgers.

01:10:46.800 Oh my goodness.

01:10:47.680 Thank you.

01:10:48.380 So let's talk about this subject a bit.

01:10:50.260 You make it sound so obvious and easy, but I think this is where most people get stuck.

01:10:55.540 People are afraid to speak up.

01:10:58.320 To me, the perfect example of this was the women's swim team at the University of Pennsylvania,

01:11:03.160 my alma mater.

01:11:04.960 Not a single female swimmer spoke up when a biological male joined their team and competed

01:11:11.360 against them.

01:11:12.680 Everyone was afraid to be the only one speaking up.

01:11:16.280 It's like a reverse bystander effect.

01:11:18.260 No one wants to be the only one to speak out.

01:11:20.700 So everyone keeps quiet.

01:11:22.120 What's going on here?

01:11:23.440 And do we need some sort of game theory to understand why people are not speaking up?

01:11:30.740 Right.

01:11:31.180 Well, by the way, excellent summary of all of the key points in that chapter.

01:11:36.640 Look, there's something in economics very much related to game theory, as per your question,

01:11:41.360 called the tragedy of the commons, right?

01:11:43.120 The idea is that let's suppose you've got a plot of land where there is communal grazing.

01:11:49.540 And if there's too much use of that land, then the land never has the opportunity to replenish

01:11:56.020 itself and heal itself for next season and so on.

01:11:58.940 So all of the 10 farmers that are using their livestock to graze the land come to a gentlemanly

01:12:04.980 agreement and says, okay, guys, all of us are going to now commit for the next one year of never

01:12:12.280 having our livestock graze that land.

01:12:15.220 Deal?

01:12:15.600 We all shake hands.

01:12:16.920 But then the optimal strategy is for one of the farmers to violate it.

01:12:22.400 Hopefully the other nine will be true to the agreement.

01:12:25.220 And then we really all win because if only one farmer uses the livestock grazes, it could

01:12:31.120 still replenish itself and recover.

01:12:33.740 And hopefully all the other nine will be honorable, whereas I'm not being.

01:12:37.400 But of course, the tragedy of the commons is that every single one of the farmers think

01:12:41.340 that and then we're into trouble.

01:12:42.760 So that's the idea of coordinating a collusion or a collective action.

01:12:47.360 So what's happening in the diffusion of responsibility, I know that I should be speaking and I know that

01:12:54.820 Gad Saad said in his book that it is incumbent on each of us to speak.

01:12:58.720 But, you know, I don't want to not be invited to the cool kids party and I don't want to

01:13:02.920 not go to the cool Malibu, you know, highfalutin progressive list parties.

01:13:07.820 And therefore, you know, how about I be cowardly and hopefully all the other people will heed his

01:13:14.840 call.

01:13:15.180 And then every single one thinks exactly that.

01:13:17.860 And therefore, we all go quietly into the abyss of infinite lunacy.

01:13:22.960 And so what I try to tell people is, look, first of all, here's what you can do within

01:13:27.900 your small sphere of influence.

01:13:29.620 No one is expecting you to have the reach of Joe Rogan.

01:13:32.260 Nobody's expecting you to be as erudite as Thomas Sowell.

01:13:35.400 That's that's OK.

01:13:36.600 But within your small sphere, maybe you heard that your grade five kid was being taught some

01:13:42.880 insane things at school that you disagree with.

01:13:45.460 Don't sit idly, send a polite email to the teacher, even if it's something as small as

01:13:51.120 that.

01:13:51.600 You don't even have to start a march.

01:13:53.660 You don't have to start a parental indignation group.

01:13:57.560 Just which in whichever way that you can, you could affect change.

01:14:02.560 Some of us can affect it on a huge soapbox.

01:14:05.760 Some of us have very small voices.

01:14:07.800 Just don't diffuse the responsibility onto others.

01:14:10.140 And to the honey badger point, the reason why I specifically chose the honey badger,

01:14:15.400 because for those listeners of yours who don't know much about the honey badger, it has been

01:14:20.540 officially formally ranked as the fiercest animal in the animal kingdom.

01:14:27.560 I mean, it is just unimaginably fierce, right?

01:14:31.760 It can withstand the sting of a thousand bees.

01:14:35.520 It could be stung by an incredibly venomous snake and it passes out and then rebounds.

01:14:42.180 It could be attacked by six adult lions.

01:14:44.960 The reason why I say six is because there are YouTube footages where you literally see

01:14:48.940 six adult lions shying away from an insane honey badger.

01:14:55.000 Now, the honey badger is the size of a small dog.

01:14:57.040 So it's not as though it is ferocious by its size.

01:15:00.080 It's ferocious in its attitude, right?

01:15:03.740 It's ferocious in its I don't give an F mindset.

01:15:08.220 And so what I tell people when I implore them to activate their inner honey badger,

01:15:12.080 it's not that they should be physically violent, but be ideologically fierce.

01:15:17.560 If you truly believe that there are clear definitions of what it means to be male or female,

01:15:24.480 as have 117 billion people who have existed since the start of Homo sapiens, we all seem

01:15:33.500 to have known exactly what male or female was until three minutes ago when someone at Oberlin

01:15:40.120 College told us that we were all simpletons.

01:15:43.000 But I seem to have married a person that seemed to have the right genitalia for us to bear children, 0.62

01:15:49.840 as you seem to have also.

01:15:51.500 What an incredible coincidence, 117 billion people.

01:15:55.220 So if you find that it is insane and it stretches your credulity to hear such nonsense, challenge

01:16:02.240 your politician, challenge your principal at your kid's school, challenge your friend on

01:16:08.560 Facebook, just get engaged.

01:16:10.560 And if we all of us speak in unison, I famously said on the first time that I appeared on

01:16:16.900 Tucker Carlson's night show, I say famously because he started laughing when I said, I

01:16:22.440 said, look, if we all speak in unison, we will get rid of these problems by next Tuesday.

01:16:28.280 If we don't, it will be a slow train ride to hell, right?

01:16:31.260 Activate your inner honey badger.

01:16:32.680 That's really what it is.

01:16:33.740 It's a challenge of coordinating the collective action.

01:16:37.680 If we're able to do that, I think all this nonsense could be eradicated very quickly.

01:16:41.460 You're right, but I just want to challenge you on one thing, though.

01:17:02.440 Some people are able to speak up and monetize their speaking up.

01:17:08.240 You mentioned Tucker Carlson.

01:17:09.440 He has monetized speaking up.

01:17:12.400 Megyn Kelly has monetized speaking up.

01:17:15.440 You've been able to monetize speaking up to some extent with your books and YouTube and

01:17:20.000 all that.

01:17:21.320 But most people will never be able to monetize speaking up.

01:17:25.180 In fact, it's going to cost them real money.

01:17:28.360 If you have to pay your mortgage every month and you've got to go to Costco and you've got

01:17:31.800 to pay the groceries and your insurance and your cell phone bill and all that, I mean,

01:17:35.920 you've got real bills to pay.

01:17:37.400 If simply the fear of losing your job or of losing a client, that would be enough to shut

01:17:45.500 you up.

01:17:46.160 How does one break out of that monetary fear?

01:17:51.960 Yes.

01:17:52.420 So that's a great question.

01:17:54.360 And there are several ways I can answer it.

01:17:56.220 I can answer it first.

01:17:57.420 And I'm not trying to be bombastic or, you know, hyperbolic.

01:18:02.720 June 6th just happened recently.

01:18:04.880 June 6th, you know, landing on D-Day.

01:18:07.840 18, 19-year-old men, all of whom said, oh, I'll go, I'll go.

01:18:12.660 And they landed knowing that they were going to be mowed down like little insignificant

01:18:20.340 mosquitoes.

01:18:21.460 Yet they said, oh yeah, sign me up for that.

01:18:24.260 I'll do it.

01:18:25.140 So why am I saying that?

01:18:26.440 Because I'm contextualizing the fear that people fear today, which you're mentioning

01:18:31.900 is a real fear.

01:18:33.100 Yes, I'm not belittling the fact that you don't want to lose your job and not be able

01:18:36.860 to pay your mortgage, but that there is nothing that is worth fighting for as grand as freedom

01:18:44.940 of speech, as defense of reality that doesn't involve some cost.

01:18:50.180 Now, I'm not suggesting that people be reckless martyrs, right?

01:18:54.680 Which, by the way, speaks to, in one of the chapters of my forthcoming happiness book,

01:18:59.700 I have a whole chapter on the inverted U.

01:19:01.800 Too little of something is not good.

01:19:03.320 Too much of something is not good.

01:19:04.620 And for almost every phenomenon that you could think of, there is a middle sweet spot, which

01:19:08.760 Aristotle had talked about 2,000 years ago.

01:19:12.480 It's not good to be a cowardly, meek soldier.

01:19:16.280 It's not good to be a reckless martyr who jumps and takes unnecessary risks because you're 0.72

01:19:21.300 going to die very quickly as a soldier.

01:19:22.920 But somewhere in the middle lies the golden meat, the sweet spot.

01:19:26.040 So this is where I implore people to use whatever cost-benefit risk-reward calculus in deciding

01:19:34.920 how they wish to involve themselves in the battle of ideas, but do it in some form.

01:19:41.080 So for example, you're too afraid to go publicly on Twitter because maybe your boss is going

01:19:46.820 to fire you.

01:19:47.660 Although that itself should get you pissed off, that in a free society in the 21st century,

01:19:51.980 you can't do that.

01:19:53.140 But okay, you want to be pragmatic and you want to be able to pay the groceries for your

01:19:57.480 kids?

01:19:58.140 How about you just challenge your friend privately when you're sitting at a pub, when they say

01:20:03.340 something that strikes you as insane?

01:20:05.220 In other words, there are many ways by which we could lend our voice in the battle of ideas

01:20:11.280 while not necessarily taking any unnecessary risks.

01:20:14.980 And I should also mention that the costs of speaking out are hardly only monetary, right?

01:20:23.020 Because you could, for example, argue, as I explain in the personic mind, some people

01:20:27.140 will write to me and say, yes, professor, sure, you're courageous, but you're a tenured

01:20:30.740 professor, you can't be fired, okay?

01:20:32.580 And then I usually write back to them and say, can you send me your home address so I can

01:20:37.020 redirect all of the death threats I receive straight to your home?

01:20:40.460 Because it doesn't seem as though tenure is protecting me when I'm looking left, right

01:20:44.980 and center everywhere to make sure that I'm not getting knifed in the next five minutes.

01:20:49.240 There was a time when I would go into my university classes to lecture where I had received many,

01:20:56.020 many death threats that caused the police to be involved and so on, where at the end of

01:21:00.260 my lecture, as I would be whisked back into the waiting car for me to go back home, I would

01:21:05.960 have something akin to like an anxiety thing because I survived another week until next

01:21:11.580 week's class without being knifed or killed somewhere because I didn't know if they were

01:21:15.240 coming for me or not.

01:21:16.380 So we all have a cost to bear, boo-hoo-hoo about your concerns.

01:21:21.320 I'm not trying to be minimizing, but the reality is, what about what I went through as a child

01:21:26.940 in Lebanon?

01:21:27.660 How does that compare to your fears?

01:21:29.260 So the only way you could live in an enlightened, free, civil society is if we all put in the

01:21:37.280 costs necessary to protect the deontological principles that allow that society to flourish.

01:21:43.640 So no, I'm not going to shed a tear for you because you have a mortgage to pay.

01:21:48.240 I also have a life to live and I had a panic attack two years ago because of the death threats

01:21:53.260 I was receiving.

01:21:54.300 And yet here I am talking to Alan.

01:21:56.120 So no, I don't feel sorry for you.

01:21:58.180 Speak up.

01:21:59.260 I don't feel sorry for you.

01:22:29.260 This is the end.

01:22:35.260 Hold your breath and count to ten.

01:22:41.260 Feel the earth move and then hear my heart burst again.

01:22:53.940 Let's segue from this heavy topic to humor.

01:23:07.340 In your new book about happiness, you describe humor as an important component of a happy

01:23:13.220 life.

01:23:13.980 When I read this, I was reminded that one of the things I love about Thomas Sowell is his

01:23:18.940 incredible sense of humor.

01:23:21.100 As you know, I collect Sowell quotes and almost all of them are funny in one way or another.

01:23:29.180 Gad, would you like to play a quick game with me right now?

01:23:32.740 Go.

01:23:33.080 Okay.

01:23:33.800 I know you like to play.

01:23:34.980 I know you like to play.

01:23:35.000 So I'm going to share my screen with you.

01:23:38.960 And I've put together 34 funny Thomas Sowell quotes.

01:23:46.200 Let me open this up.

01:23:47.760 Here we go.

01:23:48.560 Can you see that?

01:23:49.600 I just see like file name, like one for 34.

01:23:53.100 Yes.

01:23:53.500 Here's the game.

01:23:54.400 Pick a number.

01:23:55.620 Pick a card.

01:23:56.260 Any card.

01:23:56.800 Pick a number one through 34.

01:23:58.960 Here are the 34 quotes I've collected.

01:24:00.720 And I'll open it.

01:24:01.640 Oh, I like it.

01:24:02.880 13.

01:24:03.780 Okay.

01:24:04.280 So this proves to the audience that this is a total random selection.

01:24:08.300 So why don't you read it for the audience?

01:24:10.440 Sure.

01:24:11.180 Take away the spirit impact theory and you would have widespread unemployment in government

01:24:16.700 agencies that enforce anti-discrimination laws.

01:24:20.780 Trial lawyers might have so much time on their hands that they would have to sue more doctors 0.71

01:24:26.040 in order to make ends meet.

01:24:28.800 Right.

01:24:29.140 By the way, do you know why I chose number 13?

01:24:31.340 Because that happens to be my birthday.

01:24:33.180 Oh, okay.

01:24:34.280 October 13th.

01:24:35.300 Yes.

01:24:35.600 Okay.

01:24:36.220 Red.

01:24:36.960 So this is one of Thomas Sowell's funny quotes that, you know, I just, I did an episode recently

01:24:43.540 about disparate impact theory and, you know, how if some policies have a disparate impact

01:24:49.100 on certain racial groups, that those policies are de facto racist, you know, and there couldn't

01:24:55.340 be any real differences between different groups.

01:24:57.320 It has to be the policies that make the differences.

01:25:00.420 And, you know, and he was saying that, you know, if they, if they got rid of disparate 0.99

01:25:04.680 impact theory, that these trial lawyers would have so much time on their hands that they

01:25:08.000 would have to sue more doctors in order to make ends meet. 0.70

01:25:10.400 I know you laughed when you read it, but what, what, what do you, what do you make of this

01:25:15.020 type of Sowellian humor, as I call it?

01:25:17.500 You know, how do you describe this type of humor?

01:25:19.320 Well, it's, it's highbrow humor, right?

01:25:22.780 Because there's a lot to dissect and process for you to be able to get to sort of the humorous

01:25:32.000 nugget, right?

01:25:33.580 Which is perfectly fine.

01:25:35.000 I mean, I, that's great.

01:25:36.460 That's, that's fine.

01:25:37.380 I'm not sure that the average person, and I, and I don't mean that in an elitist sense,

01:25:42.800 I'm just being pragmatic, you know, because then they might say, well, what, wait a minute,

01:25:46.860 I don't even understand what disparate impact theory might mean.

01:25:49.880 And I don't even, right?

01:25:50.740 So to put it all together, to understand then the punchline might require quite a bit of

01:25:55.820 cognitive load.

01:25:57.000 So I might argue that while that is a perfectly reasonable approach to humor, satire, which

01:26:04.940 I use very often, which some might say is itself quite impenetrable, unless you're quite

01:26:10.780 intelligent, I find that to be an even more punchy form of humor.

01:26:16.260 And by the way, that's why you may know that satirists are arguably the most despised people

01:26:24.060 that every autocrat wants to get rid of first, because the autocrat and the ideologue is not

01:26:30.980 worried about the guys with the big muscles.

01:26:33.800 They're worried about the guys with the sharp tongues and the stingy pen.

01:26:38.840 And satire is really akin to the surgeon's scalpel.

01:26:42.380 So I might have a slightly different comedic style, but I certainly appreciate that quote.

01:26:49.420 Okay.

01:26:49.820 Want to pick another one?

01:26:51.220 Okay.

01:26:51.560 Let me put back my glasses.

01:26:55.080 Let's go with 22. 0.80

01:26:58.760 Let's face it.

01:26:59.900 Most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are.

01:27:04.020 And for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.

01:27:07.520 But yes, it's funny that you said this, because I don't know if you saw it in the parasitic 0.94

01:27:14.380 mind.

01:27:15.020 I was kind of channeling my inner George Orwell when I'm talking about idea pathogens, which

01:27:22.260 all of these idea pathogens regrettably were spawned on university campuses. 0.93

01:27:27.520 And I say, it takes intellectuals to uniquely come up with some of the dumbest ideas.

01:27:35.680 And that's actually one of the places where I think I appreciate from the 5% of material 0.81

01:27:41.580 that I've read of Thomas Sowell, he seems to have a disdain for the highfalutin progressive

01:27:49.280 list on anointed ones.

01:27:51.460 And I exactly share in that sentiment.

01:27:55.120 And by the way, to your earlier question, because many of them reek of falsity, reek

01:28:02.080 of inauthenticity, right?

01:28:04.120 Part of my humor is actually a manifestation, and now I'm linking the different threads of

01:28:10.680 your questions, is a manifestation of my authenticity.

01:28:14.560 And some of my, quote, lowbrow humor, I mean, I'm not doing farting jokes, but, you know, when

01:28:20.640 I hide under the desk in full fear, I'm not doing the fancy disparate impact theory, right?

01:28:30.100 But that, if I may say, requires a very unique comedic talent and an incredible, if I may

01:28:38.520 speak of myself, sense of confidence.

01:28:40.360 Because why?

01:28:41.680 Some would say, oh, you're losing your serious, austere professorial aura when you hide under

01:28:49.040 the desk.

01:28:49.580 You're no longer appearing professorial when you wear that pink wig when I went to Ithaca

01:28:56.280 and I came back from Ithaca more woke than ever, and therefore I changed my hairstyle.

01:29:03.020 On the contrary, it reeks of authenticity.

01:29:06.360 It reeks of my desire to approach life as a playground, one of the chapters in the book,

01:29:12.220 which is, I can perfectly be the very serious professor that you saw me when I spoke at the

01:29:18.740 Stanford Academic Freedom Conference, and then the next day be wearing a pink wig while

01:29:24.160 hiding under the desk.

01:29:25.940 That's called being a multifaceted, multidimensional human being.

01:29:30.000 And regrettably, most academics don't have the sense, the strong sense of personhood to

01:29:35.720 think that they can pull off the multiple facets of themselves.

01:29:39.660 So they always have to be looking up into the sky, pontificating deeply.

01:29:44.000 They're not being real.

01:29:45.480 That's what I love about Thomas Sowell.

01:29:47.200 He's real.

01:29:47.720 Nobody does it better Makes me feel sad for the rest

01:30:02.400 Nobody does it half as good as you

01:30:11.460 Let's talk a little bit about creativity as a component of happiness.

01:30:17.720 You mentioned in your new book that the physicist Richard Feynman was an ardent bongo drummer,

01:30:23.580 which I didn't know.

01:30:24.560 And that the classicist Victor Davis Hanson, who's one of my intellectual heroes, that he's

01:30:30.160 also a farmer.

01:30:32.240 Yes.

01:30:32.860 And you mentioned that Thomas Sowell is a passionate photographer, which I think a lot of my listeners

01:30:38.500 might not even know.

01:30:40.320 You can actually see his photos at tsoowell.com.

01:30:43.600 That's his own personal website, if you're curious.

01:30:45.640 Tell us why some type of creativity is so vital for happiness.

01:30:52.920 And let me mention that for me, podcasting has developed into exactly the kind of creative outlet

01:30:59.780 you were talking about.

01:31:02.220 Look, you and I right now are involved in a tangle.

01:31:06.280 It's an intellectual tangle.

01:31:09.660 It's a conversational tangle.

01:31:11.500 You ask a question.

01:31:13.240 It takes me to certain places.

01:31:15.060 You rebut.

01:31:15.800 We're dancing.

01:31:16.800 We're doing an intellectual dance.

01:31:18.500 That dance will be recorded and people will listen to it and hopefully will appreciate it.

01:31:24.080 That did not exist before you reached out and said, hey, let's dance together.

01:31:28.940 So you are engaged in the creative process.

01:31:31.600 So I completely get what you're saying about the creativity.

01:31:34.000 Now let's step back and answer your broader question.

01:31:37.480 When I was talking about the creative impulse as a route to happiness, it was in the context

01:31:42.740 of one of the early chapters in the book where I'm talking about the two most important decisions

01:31:48.940 that will either impart the greatest amount of happiness upon you or the greatest amount

01:31:53.180 of misery, and that is hopefully choosing the right, exactly that one, choosing the right

01:31:58.800 spouse wisely, judiciously, and choosing the right profession.

01:32:04.660 Now, you might say, well, how can we ever know?

01:32:07.100 Well, you could never know, but there are certainly some clear guidelines that augment the probability

01:32:13.860 that you're making a right choice, right?

01:32:15.800 Life is about navigating through statistical minefields, right?

01:32:20.080 And so in the context of choosing the right profession, I argue that the professions that

01:32:27.220 are most likely to impart the greatest amount of purpose and meaning to you, all other things

01:32:34.280 equal, are those that allow you to instantiate your creative impulse.

01:32:39.540 But now here's the kicker.

01:32:41.100 I define the creative impulse very, very broadly.

01:32:44.360 So you could be a chef and you could, adhering to what I'm saying, right?

01:32:48.520 You are creating a small little sensorial experience, which until you came along and created, those

01:32:55.520 patrons had never experienced before.

01:32:57.860 You could be an architect and be involved in the creative process.

01:33:01.080 You can be a professor or an author, right?

01:33:04.000 I mean, I'm always amazed how the book that you just read that I sent you, well, I guess

01:33:11.280 you read two books, but the latest one, there was a day when I opened my laptop, I opened the

01:33:16.740 Word document and there wasn't a single letter written.

01:33:21.920 And then 12, 14 months later, it goes to the publisher.

01:33:25.220 And then a while later, here's Alan reading that book and hopefully enjoying it.

01:33:29.740 That's a mystical experience, that creative process.

01:33:32.480 So whether you are a journalist writing an investigative piece or whether you are an artist creating

01:33:38.200 a new painting or a chef or an architect or an author, anything that allows you to instantiate

01:33:44.660 your creative impulse has to lead to greater purpose and meaning.

01:33:49.980 Now, then someone could ask, but okay, but what if I am an insurance adjuster?

01:33:55.180 Well, what does that mean?

01:33:56.180 I'm doomed to unhappiness?

01:33:57.840 Well, no.

01:33:58.680 We, of course, need all sorts of people who are not necessarily the creative types, but you

01:34:03.600 could still then instantiate your creative impulse by choosing hobbies that cater to that,

01:34:09.400 right?

01:34:09.560 So I may have decided to become a pediatrician because my dad was a pediatrician and his dad

01:34:15.500 was a pediatrician.

01:34:16.480 I've always wanted to be a ceramics artist, but it wasn't seen nicely in my Jewish community

01:34:22.300 to be anything but a pediatrician.

01:34:24.600 But how about when I finish my rounds at the hospital, children's hospital, instead of going

01:34:30.620 home and watching mindless television for three hours, why don't I sign up for the ceramics

01:34:35.380 class in the Lifelong Learning Institute where I might instantiate that creativity?

01:34:41.540 So I think anything that allows you to tickle that creative reflex is guaranteed to get you

01:34:48.880 closer to happiness.

01:34:49.640 I've spent a lifetime running and I always get away, but with you I'm feeling something

01:35:14.340 that makes me want to stay.

01:35:20.380 I'm prepared for this.

01:35:25.220 Let's end our conversation per day on the subject of marriage.

01:35:30.100 You mentioned in your new book, the 1993 movie, A Bronx Tale.

01:35:34.800 You mentioned it twice.

01:35:36.240 My last episode was called Love and Marriage.

01:35:38.360 So my mind is very much in tune on the subject right now.

01:35:41.500 Tell us why marriage is so important for happiness and what lesson you learned from a Bronx tale

01:35:48.260 that everyone should take to heart.

01:35:50.620 Oh, love it.

01:35:52.040 So let me answer the first part of your question using my evolutionary hat.

01:35:58.660 Humans are in a sense in a evolutionary conundrum because we have both evolved the conflicting

01:36:06.780 desire of long-term coupling because we are a bi-parental species.

01:36:13.540 By definition, compared to other mammalian species, human dads are super dads.

01:36:17.540 We are by far one of the most invested mammalian dads of all mammals, but by far.

01:36:23.580 We may not invest as much as women on average, but we are certainly considered to be a bi-parental

01:36:29.200 species.

01:36:29.540 Therefore, it makes perfect evolutionary sense for the mechanisms, for example, the affiliative,

01:36:36.360 the emotional system of romantic love to have evolved because it needs to keep us bonded

01:36:43.420 long enough to invest in our children until they reach sexual maturity.

01:36:48.480 So on the one hand, it is perfectly natural for there to be long-term unions as per a marriage.

01:36:55.420 On the other hand, as I explain in a later chapter, when I talk about variety seeking,

01:37:01.300 we've also paradoxically evolved the desire for, for those of you who are only listening

01:37:09.720 to this, Alan put his hand on his ears as though he's fainting.

01:37:13.760 He doesn't want to hear this.

01:37:14.780 We've also evolved the desire to stray.

01:37:18.320 And so it's always this multiple Darwinian tugs that are pulling us in different directions.

01:37:23.380 But all other things considered, my God, is it more enjoyable to be able to share your

01:37:31.680 life with someone?

01:37:32.880 Imagine now when the, the denouement of my book coming out now was something that I can't

01:37:40.940 share with anybody.

01:37:41.640 But imagine when I see my 11 year old going to the cafe with me and he's trying to struggle

01:37:46.820 as he's reading chapter one of my book.

01:37:49.560 And he asks me, what does heterogeneous mean?

01:37:52.860 But he doesn't pronounce it right.

01:37:54.520 And then my wife comes to me and I actually had her on camera the second that she finished 0.98

01:37:59.560 reading the book.

01:38:00.460 And she started tearing up because she was sad that now she had read, she had finally

01:38:05.800 read the book.

01:38:06.500 And now she doesn't have the anticipation of wondering what's to come.

01:38:11.160 It's been consumed.

01:38:12.040 So I can't imagine feeling the same sense of excitement if I couldn't share that with

01:38:18.220 my children and wife.

01:38:19.720 But to your second, so, so all other things equal, I think that long-term coupling to use

01:38:25.940 the evolutionary term or marriage is certainly correlated to happiness.

01:38:29.640 Although I could completely understand that some people decide not to, but to the Bronx

01:38:34.920 tale question, so there I took a snippet from the movie called The Door Test, where the young

01:38:43.820 man is about to go out on a date with a young woman, they're there in high school, and his

01:38:51.060 mentor, who's this kind of local mafia boss, tells him, when you take her out, make sure 0.88

01:38:56.960 that she passes the door test.

01:38:58.600 I'm paraphrasing the exact words.

01:39:00.540 And the guy says, what is the door test?

01:39:02.540 He said, well, so this is, the movie's taking place in the 60s, where you don't have an

01:39:07.000 automatic, you know, opener of the car, of the car door.

01:39:11.000 He says, you first open her door, then you come around the car, and you wait to see if

01:39:17.920 as you're coming around, she moves, she moves to open your car door.

01:39:22.660 If she does, that means she is considerate.

01:39:25.160 She's not only thinking of herself, and then you know that she's a keeper.

01:39:29.080 And then, of course, she passes the door test.

01:39:31.480 Now, I explain this in the book, and then I say, well, let me tell you about my door

01:39:36.900 test, although it was kind of a serendipitous tea test, tea, what you drink.

01:39:42.980 So the way that I met my wife when I was giving some in-house executive education at a company,

01:39:50.680 I had been mandated to teach, I think it was six weeks of material to the executives of this

01:39:57.220 telemarketing firm.

01:39:58.360 You know, one week, it might be psychology decision-making, one week, it might be advertising,

01:40:03.000 consumer behavior, whatever.

01:40:04.440 Around maybe the third class, I had contracted, as I have in the past, often a really bad

01:40:11.040 bronchitis.

01:40:11.700 And I used to be asthmatic.

01:40:12.920 And so when I get bronchitis, I have this really nasty kind of whooping cough.

01:40:17.500 I'm like really miserable.

01:40:18.740 But of course, I don't want to miss class.

01:40:20.180 So I was struggling to try to get through this, I think it was like a three-hour lecture.

01:40:26.460 And about halfway through the lecture, I called for a break where, you know, people went and

01:40:30.660 got lunch or whatever.

01:40:32.160 And unbeknownst to me, without my having done anything, my wife-to-be went downstairs, went

01:40:40.600 to whatever place to get a tea, brought it back to me and said, you know, you seem to be

01:40:46.580 struggling, breathing, hopefully this can help you.

01:40:49.560 And, you know, I was more mesmerized by that kind, considerate act than her beauty.

01:40:55.580 And she is very beautiful.

01:40:57.800 But that was inconsequential compared to someone who had the gentle consideration to do something

01:41:05.040 like that.

01:41:05.340 So that was my door test.

01:41:06.800 And so the reason I mention all these things in the book is I say, you know, we have to

01:41:11.600 be attuned to these important cues when we're choosing a partner.

01:41:16.580 You know, lust is nice, but we know that these things fluctuate in very predictable ways.

01:41:23.580 But if you have someone who is structurally on the inside, a high quality individual,

01:41:29.120 that you take forever.

01:41:30.380 So choose wisely.

01:41:32.480 You call it consideration.

01:41:34.140 I call it nurturing.

01:41:35.100 That's how I look at it.

01:41:36.000 I, you know, I was looking for someone that I thought was a nurturing woman.

01:41:40.600 And I, I, like you, I've been very lucky to have found that, the most wonderful wife I

01:41:46.180 could imagine.

01:41:46.980 And maybe one day you'll meet her.

01:41:48.880 I would be delighted to.

01:41:50.200 Next visit to Southern California.

01:41:52.980 Indeed.

01:41:53.460 Which I'll be coming, by the way, in August, because I'm first going to be speaking.

01:42:00.020 Do you know what the Commonwealth Book Club is?

01:42:03.240 No, I don't.

01:42:04.100 It's, I mean, I didn't know what it was, but I subsequently have found out that apparently

01:42:09.500 it's a pretty big deal.

01:42:10.580 It's in San Francisco.

01:42:12.340 So first I'll be going there to do an event in celebration of the release of the book.

01:42:18.420 And then I'll be going down to Southern California, where I'll be doing a whole bunch of shows

01:42:22.960 there.

01:42:23.200 So maybe we'll have an opportunity to meet them.

01:42:25.560 Yeah.

01:42:25.720 If you come to Los Angeles, I would love to meet you.

01:42:28.340 That'd be great.

01:42:29.520 Gad Saad, thank you for joining me on the Genius of Thomas Sowell podcast.

01:42:34.340 Thank you so much.

01:42:35.300 It's been a delight.

01:42:36.140 And thank you for inviting me.

01:42:59.060 This has been episode 33 of the Genius of Thomas Sowell podcast.

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01:43:34.100 For now, just sit back and enjoy this orchestral version of No Time to Die, created by Epic Orchestra.

01:43:46.520 I'm Alan Wolin.

01:43:48.300 Thanks for listening.

01:43:49.360 Of course, I'll see you next time.

01:44:14.320 Thank you.

01:44:44.320 Thank you.

01:45:14.320 Thank you.

01:45:44.320 Thank you.

01:46:14.320 Thank you.

01:46:44.320 Thank you.

The Genius of Thomas Sowell Podcast - Courage, Authenticity & Sowell (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_617)

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