The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 24, 2024


The Parasitic Mind & Evolutionary Psychology - the Mislaibeled Podcast (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_774)


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 17 minutes

Words per minute

175.77884

Word count

13,707

Sentence count

938

Harmful content

Misogyny

17

sentences flagged

Toxicity

38

sentences flagged

Hate speech

43

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Dr. Gad Saad is author of multiple books, including, The Parasitic Mind, The Sad Truth About Happiness, and 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life. He is a professor at the University of Concordia, host of The Saad Truth, and Global Ambassador at Northwood University in Michigan. Dr. Saad has a PhD in evolutionary behavioral science from Cornell University and a post-doctorate in evolutionary psychology from Harvard University. He has been a visiting professor and global ambassador at the Center for the Study of Evolutionary Psychology and Decision-Making, and he is a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Huffington Post.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 We are here with one of the famed intellects of our generation, Dr. Gad Saad, author of multiple
00:00:05.300 books, including national bestseller, The Parasitic Mind. Professor at Concordia University,
00:00:10.400 researcher, podcaster, and author of the new book, The Sad Truth About Happiness,
00:00:15.380 Eight Secrets for Leading the Good Life. The reason why I always speak out is because I
00:00:20.140 wouldn't be able to fall asleep on that pillow if I thought I saw a merger of truth in the corner
00:00:25.640 and I walked by ignoring it. I would be inauthentic. I am allergic to BS. You've somehow
00:00:31.240 or another avoided a full-scale cancellation. Nothing sticks. They've tried to cancel me in
00:00:35.920 all sorts of ways. If I didn't have the protection of tenure, I'd be gone long ago. After October 7th,
00:00:40.700 it almost became impossible for me to go on campus. I very quickly noticed that some of the supposedly
00:00:45.820 brightest people on earth can come up with some of the dumbest and most insane ideas. Neil deGrasse 0.99
00:00:51.120 Tyson has an obligation. He's a public intellectual who has a large platform. If you're going to go
00:00:56.920 and use your scientific imprimatur to say, it is settled, gender is on a spectrum, I'm coming after
00:01:02.660 you. All of those parasitic ideas, post-modernism, cultural relativism, radical feminism, social
00:01:08.160 constructivism, were all spawned on university campuses. Each of these idea pathogens starts off
00:01:13.780 originally with a noble goal. Then in the service of that goal, if you have to destroy the edifices of
00:01:19.600 reason, so be it. This thing's saying to me like a canary. Anytime I get into a debate moving forward,
00:01:23.680 by the way, I'm just gonna be quoting you.
00:01:31.300 All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of Mislabeled. If you are watching this,
00:01:35.560 you can please like, subscribe, and comment. That would mean the world, specifically a subscription,
00:01:39.200 really, really helps the algorithm. We are working very, very hard. We right now are in Montreal,
00:01:43.560 Canada. We are here with one of the famed intellects and evolutionary behavioral scientists
00:01:50.080 of our generation, Dr. Gad Saad. Some of his quick accomplishments include, first of all,
00:01:57.920 he's a professor at the University of Concordia. He has his own podcast, currently is the host of
00:02:03.760 The Saad Truth.
00:02:05.700 Yes, sir.
00:02:06.100 Okay. He's a visiting professor and global ambassador at Northwood in Michigan.
00:02:13.960 That's right, Northwood University.
00:02:14.720 You like that. I remember that. I know you just told me that.
00:02:16.580 Very good. That was good.
00:02:17.820 And he has his PhD in evolutionary behavioral science from Cornell University. Okay.
00:02:25.540 Slight correction, psychology and decision making, but yes.
00:02:28.500 Psychology and decision making.
00:02:29.940 By the way, I was never sure what's the difference between evolutionary behavioral scientists and
00:02:33.920 evolutionary psychologists. It's a broader term. So evolutionary psychologist is a subset of all of
00:02:40.980 the different ways by which you can use evolution to study human behavior. So evolutionary behavioral
00:02:46.500 scientists might be an evolutionary anthropologist. It might be an evolutionary psychologist. It might be
00:02:51.260 got it.
00:02:51.980 So it's a broader term.
00:02:53.740 Understood. Okay. I'm first of all, very, very excited to be here. Like really, there are certain
00:02:58.560 guests specifically that I really, really look forward to. As I told you before, and this is not
00:03:03.560 the main thing that I do, but I always tell people that there are similarities between,
00:03:07.300 you know, podcasting and the real estate business and kind of like the dopamine rush you get when
00:03:12.940 you close a deal and the dopamine rush you get when you close a great guest. So this was ranked
00:03:18.000 high up.
00:03:18.940 But the dopamine rush of this one was greater though, right?
00:03:21.320 Yes, absolutely. No, like this is, you're one of the guests.
00:03:24.060 This is like a $30 million house penthouse.
00:03:25.620 I did a $230 million deal. So you're above $230 million.
00:03:30.720 My goodness.
00:03:31.480 Sorry, I had to just throw that out there.
00:03:33.140 Thank you. Thank you for feeding my ego.
00:03:35.860 Absolutely. Okay, fine. One of the coolest things is obviously that you're Jewish, especially
00:03:40.640 with everything going on in Lebanon. You were born in Lebanon. Could you just talk a little
00:03:44.000 bit to how, you know, I know you speak about it a lot in your book. I just want to mention,
00:03:47.880 by the way, one other thing, probably the most important thing I forgot to mention in my
00:03:50.920 intro was that Dr. Saad is a author of multiple books, including a national bestseller, The
00:03:57.480 Parasitic Mind. This book is gold. This thing sang to me like a canary. Okay. I'm not even
00:04:02.360 kidding. Like you summed up everything that like I've thought and just gave great explanations.
00:04:08.440 Like anytime I get into a debate moving forward, by the way, I'm just gonna like be quoting
00:04:12.300 you. I can't even wait.
00:04:13.440 That's great.
00:04:13.920 I'm gonna take all your years of work and just steal it and just start spitting facts.
00:04:17.640 But yeah, could you just, you talk about that?
00:04:21.680 So we were part of the last remaining group of Jews in Lebanon, most of the Jewish community
00:04:28.280 in Lebanon, which was never a big one. But at one point, it was several thousand Jews
00:04:33.760 had already left by the time we were there. Even most of my extended family had left most
00:04:40.260 to Israel, a few to France, one maternal aunt to Montreal. That's one of the reasons why we
00:04:46.800 ended up moving to Montreal. But my parents were very well entrenched in Lebanese society.
00:04:53.480 They were politically connected. They were successful business people. And so despite the
00:04:59.280 fact that the writing was on the wall, you know, it always takes that final push for people
00:05:05.220 to wake up. And so we were all, I have three older siblings, much older than me. They had
00:05:11.700 already all left Lebanon because it was two brothers and a sister, two brothers and sister.
00:05:17.160 Yes. You've done your homework. One is about 14 years older, one sister, 12 years older,
00:05:22.780 and then another brother, 10 years older. And so there was really only me still a kid when
00:05:28.980 the civil war broke out in 1975. I was 10. And then when the war broke out, it became really
00:05:35.140 impossible to be Jewish. And so eventually, during that first year of the civil war, we got our act 0.75
00:05:42.200 together and got out of there very, very quickly. Were you only able to get out because of the
00:05:46.160 political connections of your family? I mean, in a sense, yes, because, and I tell this story
00:05:52.140 in the book, the only way that we can actually escape is if we were driven to the airport by PLO
00:06:01.880 militia, PLO is Palestinian Liberation Organization, is because a lot of the roadblocks that were set
00:06:09.280 up around the Beirut International Airport were manned by PLO militia. And so if you were not
00:06:15.820 friendly to that, to those militia, you weren't going to get through to make your flight. And so
00:06:20.680 my parents, undoubtedly, I don't know the exact details, but I know that they paid some money
00:06:24.960 to receive protection from these people. I mean, imagine the images that you see from the safety
00:06:31.540 of your Long Island house of ISIS and those guys. Well, those are the guys who picked us up. 0.96
00:06:36.920 It's amazing to me that they would even be willing to help you for, I mean, kind of any sum of money. 0.85
00:06:42.040 Well, they could have taken the money and they could have put a bullet in our head in a ditch, 0.97
00:06:46.020 right? And I have often thought about that, that how the vagaries of life, right? If one of them 0.94
00:06:52.380 had thought of being less than kind at that moment and not honor their deal, I wouldn't be sitting
00:06:58.240 here next to you. Yeah, that's unbelievable. So I'm sure you've answered the following question a
00:07:02.280 million times, but just for the audience, I'm going to set some basic, you know, understandings.
00:07:06.860 So what is the study of a evolutionary behavioral scientist? So imagine you want to study why humans
00:07:15.800 have opposable thumbs or why our respiratory system is the way that it is. You could apply evolutionary
00:07:21.480 theory to study why it is that evolution would have endowed us with that ability, right?
00:07:27.640 Evolutionary psychology and evolutionary behavioral science is simply applying that
00:07:31.280 to the study of the human mind. Why do we experience jealousy the way that we do? Why do we prefer the
00:07:36.940 types of mates that we prefer? So it's, you're applying the evolutionary lens to the most important
00:07:42.300 organ in your body, which is your brain.
00:07:45.020 Got it. This book, The Parasitic Mind, obviously speaks a lot, you know, regarding the woke agenda that's
00:07:50.780 kind of progressivism that's really taken over Westernism over the last, you know, 10, 15
00:07:56.740 years. How does, how would you say that evolutionary behavioral science or evolutionary psychology
00:08:04.120 intersects specifically with this? Yeah, that's a great question. So the idea of using the neuro
00:08:09.760 parasitological framework, which I'll explain in a second, came very much from the fact that as an
00:08:16.520 evolutionary psychologist, I often will look at animal behavior in other species to make some
00:08:23.220 statement about the human condition, right? So for example, if you want to study toy preferences,
00:08:28.160 and you want to show that little boys and little girls have certain innate toy preferences, you could
00:08:33.200 study that behavior in other species to show that they exhibit the exact same toy preferences. And those
00:08:39.380 studies have been done with rhesus monkeys, with vervet monkeys, with chimpanzees. They have the exact same
00:08:45.440 toy preferences as human infants do. And so as I was trying to find a way to explain what is it that
00:08:52.100 can cause people to be so ideologically captured, I started looking at the animal literature. So first,
00:08:59.600 I fell on the parasitology literature. Parasitology simply is the study of the interaction between a host
00:09:06.540 and a parasite. So for example, a tapeworm can parasitize your intestinal tract. A neuroparasite
00:09:15.680 has to find its way to your brain, altering your behavior to suit its interest. So for example,
00:09:23.380 a wood cricket, an actual cricket, when it detests water, it abhors water, it wants nothing to do with
00:09:30.740 water. When it is parasitized by a particular type of brain worm called a hair worm, the hair worm needs the
00:09:37.160 wood cricket to jump in water in order for it to complete its reproductive cycle. So it zombifies the wood
00:09:43.560 cricket's brain, causing it to merrily jump and commit suicide in the service of the parasite. And so that was my
00:09:50.920 epiphany.
00:09:51.460 Such a great analogy.
00:09:52.640 Thank you.
00:09:53.120 So I had that epiphany. I said, aha, well, I'm now going to argue in this book that human beings
00:09:59.620 could be parasitized by actual brain worms. For example, Toxoplasma gandhi is an actual brain worm.
00:10:05.440 But human beings, regrettably, can be parasitized by ideological brain worms. I call these idea pathogens.
00:10:12.280 And that's how the topic is.
00:10:14.300 What do you think the drive is in the Western world to argue with the reason on such a, you know,
00:10:19.740 basic foundation?
00:10:21.200 Yeah. So I try to actually explain why it is that these idea pathogens are so alluring. Why is it
00:10:29.080 that people believe this nonsense? And maybe before I answer your question of why that is,
00:10:34.340 it's worth maybe giving an example of a few parasitic ideas. So for example, postmodernism,
00:10:40.420 I call it the granddaddy of all idea pathogens, because it purports that there are no objective
00:10:47.160 truths, other than the one objective truth, that there are no objective truths, right? So up is down,
00:10:53.020 left is right, women can have penises, freedom is slavery, war is peace, men can have kids, 0.99
00:11:00.380 men can menstruate. So it affords the epistemological liberty for anything to be possible, okay? So that
00:11:08.080 would be one example of an idea pathogen, okay? And so what I wanted to do in the book was argue,
00:11:13.440 well, so why do people get parasitized this way? And what I propose is that each of these idea
00:11:19.460 pathogens starts off originally with a noble goal, noble objective, which then in the service of that
00:11:26.860 goal, if you have to destroy the edifices of reason, so be it. So let me give you a concrete
00:11:31.940 example. Equity feminism is a good idea. It basically says that men and women should be treated equally under 0.99
00:11:38.980 the law. And based on that definition, most of us would say, yeah, sign me up, I'm an equity feminist. 1.00
00:11:44.860 Radical feminists argue, if we wish to eradicate toxic masculinity and the patriarchy and so on, 1.00
00:11:52.720 we need to argue that men and women are indistinguishable from each other, that there are no
00:11:58.540 biological-based differences between men and women, because that will allow us to fight sexism
00:12:04.000 and misogyny more easily. Right. So in the service of what started off as a noble pursuit,
00:12:10.000 if we murder and rape truth, so be it. And so I argue that each of these parasitic ideas 0.77
00:12:15.660 starts off that way. Noble goal, which then metamorphosizes into nonsense, you know,
00:12:22.660 once it evolves into a parasitic. So effectively, the people that are starting it start off,
00:12:26.620 you know, with a noble goal, and there are people that take it to just a further extreme,
00:12:31.000 just allow their feelings effectively to control, you know, the outcome of what they want.
00:12:37.200 Exactly. So I'll give you one other example. So cultural relativism is another idea pathogen,
00:12:42.920 which argues that there are no human universals. There's not a single thing that is common to all
00:12:50.040 humans. Every culture has to be judged according to its own idiosyncratic trajectory. That theory,
00:12:57.180 by the way, was originally developed about 100 years ago by a Jewish cultural anthropologist by
00:13:02.660 name of Franz Boas from Columbia University. Now, why did they originally propose such nonsense? Because,
00:13:08.720 I mean, there are human universals. It's as obvious, I mean, a three-day-old pigeon would know that,
00:13:14.320 right? For example, if I do this frown, there is no culture where this means that I'm happy. And if I
00:13:21.780 smile, there is no culture where people don't understand that that's a positive, affective
00:13:26.800 state, right? But they wanted to argue that, no, everything is socially constructed. Why did they
00:13:31.760 do that? Well, because they thought, these cultural anthropologists thought, that in the wrong hands,
00:13:39.080 the use of biology can result in terrible consequences. So, for example, British class
00:13:45.320 elitist argued something that they called social Darwinism. They argued, look, we're the upper
00:13:50.540 class. And if the lower class, they die in their squalor and from tuberculosis, hey, who cares? 1.00
00:13:57.440 That's just natural selection. It's just evolution taking place. The Nazis came along and said, hey,
00:14:03.600 there's a natural struggle between races. And we are the Aryan race. We won. So, if we eliminate the 0.99
00:14:09.680 Jews and the gypsies and the homosexuals, hey, that's just natural selection. That's just evolution. 1.00
00:14:14.360 Which, of course, it wasn't. But they were misusing evolutionary theory. They were misusing biology
00:14:19.940 to advance their political goals. So, these anthropologists came along and said, well,
00:14:24.600 what if we erect edifices of lack of reason that could hopefully protect us against these misuses of
00:14:32.200 biology? But that's ridiculous because that's like arguing, well, let's not study physics properly
00:14:37.500 because it could result in weapons being developed, right? So, you can't murder truth in the service of
00:14:44.240 a goal. That's why I argue, sorry for the mouthful, that the pursuit of truth is a
00:14:49.820 deontological principle. It's perfect. That actually leads me exactly to what I wanted to ask. So, you
00:14:53.760 talk about in the second chapter about the deontological principle versus the consequential
00:14:57.860 principle. Yes. Okay. And you talk about how there are certain times, in fairness, I'll just be
00:15:03.340 honest, you actually didn't spell it out very clearly. You didn't spell it out very clearly when
00:15:08.500 consequentialist should be used in the book. It kind of seemed that you felt in the book,
00:15:14.300 I believe it's like page 30-ish around, it shouldn't be there. There's never a time for
00:15:18.800 a consequentialist. And then I watched a podcast where you actually explained that no, there are
00:15:22.940 times. Yes. So, when are the times, just to clarify where, you know, a consequentialist
00:15:29.080 ethos should be used?
00:15:31.200 So, I, I, actually, this is an example that I did give in the book. I recently celebrated 25 years
00:15:38.100 with my wife. Okay. So, here is a life tip. If your spouse asks you, what?
00:15:44.320 No, you did write this. I know.
00:15:45.780 If your wife asks you, do I look fat in those jeans, put on your consequentialist hat and say,
00:15:53.900 absolutely not. In this case, you are potentially lying, but you're lying to protect the feelings of
00:16:00.040 someone you love. So, there are many, many cases in life, most cases, where there are reasonable
00:16:06.980 ethical arguments to be made that you could put on a consequentialist hat. But there is a set of
00:16:12.900 principles that by definition have to be deontological. So, for example, the pursuit of truth
00:16:19.120 has to be deontological. It can't be follow truth, but once you put but. So, for example,
00:16:26.620 if we find that, since we're both of the same tribe, if we find tomorrow that Orthodox Jews 0.95
00:16:35.260 are more likely to commit a certain type of crime, for whatever reason, should we not...
00:16:41.340 Tax embezzlement?
00:16:42.360 Tax embezzlement. You're succumbing to Jewish stereotypes.
00:16:46.580 Okay, go.
00:16:47.040 But let's suppose that whatever it was, right? And I wanted to study that. Are there cultural reasons?
00:16:53.440 Are there genetic reasons why Orthodox Jews are much more likely than anyone else to commit such 0.54
00:16:58.600 a crime? Well, if I were a consequentialist, I would say, don't publish that, because then that
00:17:04.320 might marginalize Orthodox Jews. That might be viewed as anti-Semitic. If I'm a deontological
00:17:10.240 bent in pursuing truth, then I say it doesn't matter whether Orthodox Jews will be... their feelings 0.59
00:17:17.280 will be hurt by that. It's part of the pursuit of truth, right? So, that would be one example. Let me
00:17:21.600 give you one or two others. Freedom of speech has to be deontological. Once you say, I believe
00:17:28.820 in freedom of speech, but that means you don't believe that it's a deontological principle. Now,
00:17:34.580 there are asterisks that are associated with freedom of speech. You can't defame me. You can't
00:17:41.260 engage in direct incitement to violence, right? So, for example, you could say Judaism is a crock 1.00
00:17:47.440 of nonsense. It's pure BS. And you should be allowed to say that. On the other hand, if you 1.00
00:17:53.720 say, at the corner of Notre Dame and 7th Street, when the Jews come out of the synagogue, let's go 0.98
00:18:00.120 and kill them, that's not protected by freedom of speech, by the First Amendment in the U.S. So, 0.98
00:18:06.060 for most things, it has to be deontological. So, that's what I talk about in the book.
00:18:10.380 Well, so my only question is, obviously, that for sure makes sense. And I love the fact that truth and
00:18:14.180 freedom is your motto of defending those things, and that's what drives you, and authenticity,
00:18:18.020 right? I think we have to add authenticity into one of those words, because you write truth and
00:18:22.040 freedom in the beginning of the book, but the more I... In the next book, in the happiness book,
00:18:25.700 I talk about authenticity a lot more. Okay. In fairness, I'll be honest, I didn't
00:18:28.940 manage to cover the happiness book, even though we're going to get to some of those principles I
00:18:32.400 know you discussed there. All right, everybody, I want to take a quick second to give a big shout-out to
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00:19:47.920 at C-U-B-X dot com. You can also check them out at cubx.com. That's C-U-B-X dot com. Now back to our
00:19:56.280 episode. Specifically regarding hate speech versus free speech. Obviously, you said there's an asterisk
00:20:03.020 by hate speech. How do we determine? I feel like a lot of people have differences of opinion on what
00:20:09.360 is hate speech and what is free speech. Anything short of a very direct incitement to violence is okay.
00:20:17.420 We have to err on the side of caution. Well, on the side of freedom. Yeah, yeah. Okay, on freedom of speech.
00:20:22.480 It's so difficult because you'll have the consequentialists or the postmodernists who will, you know, sit there
00:20:27.400 and say that, you know, saying that Judaism is, you know, a crock of nonsense, they'll say that that 0.70
00:20:33.420 is hate speech. I mean, we have that going. I don't, though. So I'll give you the word, I'll give you the 0.95
00:20:37.560 most offensive speech that is imaginable. And maybe you've heard me mention this example before.
00:20:43.840 There is nothing worse than to deny a historical reality whereby an entire people was being exterminated
00:20:51.500 at industrial scale level called the Holocaust. So there's nothing more offensive than for someone
00:20:57.280 to stand up at a university and say it never happened. Actually, it wasn't six million Jews.
00:21:01.380 It was six Jews. It's just the Jews like to lie. That's very offensive. That's very hurtful, right? 1.00
00:21:07.260 But in a free society, I have to tolerate racists, bigots, falsehood spreaders, idiots, imbeciles. 1.00
00:21:16.060 That's what freedom of speech is meant to protect. It's not meant to protect that you tell me I look 1.00
00:21:20.580 really good in my velvet suit, right? Because then you don't need freedom of speech for that,
00:21:24.400 right? So I think most people don't have that reflex, because most people want to be kind,
00:21:31.120 decent, empathetic people, which is the topic of my next book, Suicidal Empathy. And therefore,
00:21:36.420 in the service of being infinitely empathetic, if we murder these foundational principles,
00:21:42.060 so be it. At least I could die being an empathetic person.
00:21:44.680 Right. But it's, yeah, I mean, nice guys finish last. It's really, there's really a piece to that I was,
00:21:49.040 you know, as I, um, by the way, everyone, you should follow, uh, Dr. Saad's Twitter of the
00:21:53.980 greatest feeds to date. And the most amazing thing you should know that I realized is that there are
00:21:58.900 people who don't pick up on your satire. You want to hear something? Because that's how crazy the
00:22:02.880 world is. And you want to hear something? Someone once wrote one of, one of the most profound tweets
00:22:08.720 from someone that I've ever seen. He, he said, uh, Dr. Saad has found the singularity point. They
00:22:15.520 could never cancel him because they never know what, when he's being straight and when he's being
00:22:22.920 satirical. By the way, that's exactly the power of satire. That's why dictators, when they want to
00:22:30.460 get rid of the most dangerous people in their society, they don't go after the guys with the big
00:22:35.180 muscles, because those are very easy to kill. They go after the guys with the sharp tongues, 0.81
00:22:40.100 the guys with the spicy pen, because it is those guys that have the true intellectual muscle.
00:22:47.140 It's the satirist who can bring me down. It's not the guy who is tall and has big muscles,
00:22:52.260 one arrow and I get rid of him. But ideas are a lot more dangerous. And therefore,
00:22:57.880 usually the first thing that the dictators will get rid of is humor, satire, mockery,
00:23:03.520 because I can't stand that. So think about some religions today, today that are very intolerant
00:23:09.800 of comedy or satire. Can you think of anyone? Um, I'm, I could think of some. Yeah. Okay. Well,
00:23:16.880 so there is, when there, when there's the book of Mormons that becomes a bestselling play where one
00:23:24.080 could argue the play is not very, uh, complimentary to Mormons, there were no terrorist attacks,
00:23:30.760 right? You can do all sorts of blasphemous thing to Christianity under the auspices of its art, 1.00
00:23:38.180 right? You can take literally a crucifix of Christ. I don't know if you know this example.
00:23:44.120 And this artist put it in a jar of urine and called it art. And yet no Catholics went around 1.00
00:23:50.980 killing people. But there is one particular religion. Not talking about Judaism, right? 0.96
00:23:55.800 Right. Where you can't do that precisely because that religion recognizes that once you open it up
00:24:02.360 to mockery, then it's on shaky grounds. And so satire is very powerful. How have you,
00:24:08.480 I was going to ask this towards the end, but hell with it. Sure. How have you been able to fight,
00:24:14.700 you don't mince words when it comes to Islam, you know, you know, at all and in an amazing way,
00:24:19.980 the way it should be done. How do you have a, that courage and how are you still standing?
00:24:26.200 I'm being honest. Well, God willing for many, many more years. Um, I mean, standing. Yeah. Also
00:24:31.800 the questions at a physical way, but I wasn't referring to it in a literal way. I was also
00:24:34.760 figuratively like, yeah, like being canceled. Yeah. You haven't gotten, I mean, you're still
00:24:38.260 a professor of marketing in Concordia and they, they're also very left-leaning, uh, probably the
00:24:44.380 most left-leaning. How was this happening? So I think there are a couple of, uh, reasons why,
00:24:50.880 uh, that's taking place. One is because I'm very, very disciplined in my, what I call epistemological
00:24:59.620 humility. And so let me explain what I mean by that. I know what I know and I know what I don't
00:25:05.060 know. So you could ask me right here a thousand questions. I won't try to wing it if I don't know,
00:25:10.320 right? Because I don't pretend to be the professor who knows everything. There's a million questions
00:25:14.300 you can ask me. Oh, well, that's a great question. Unfortunately, I really don't know enough about
00:25:18.180 this to tell. And by the way, that builds trust because when the audience say my undergraduate
00:25:22.560 students see the, you know, the, they come into first day of class, wow, I'm in Katzad's
00:25:27.500 class. And then they ask me some great question. I go, you know what? Send me an email. I'm going
00:25:31.580 to look into it. Then they know that I'm never going to BS them, right? So how is this related
00:25:36.540 to the question of canceling that you're talking about? If I take a position on Islam, I could 1.00
00:25:42.300 back it up with a tsunami of evidence. So good luck to you if you want to debate me because
00:25:47.920 I've already done my homework. For sure. You're, no one's going to argue that you're
00:25:51.580 wrong, but from the consequentialist line of thinking, they could just get rid of you and
00:25:55.720 cancel you. It's, you know, they can't, but that's the beauty of tenure. So for the, for
00:26:01.000 the people who, so that they, I mean, there is some truth to the argument that tenure, which
00:26:07.440 for those of you who don't know is the protection, protective mechanism that causes professors
00:26:12.020 not to be able to be fired for things that they say. Some will argue, but that creates
00:26:17.560 deadwood. After people get tenure, they don't have any reason to keep producing and being
00:26:23.600 productive. The reality is most professors will keep producing no matter what, because
00:26:27.820 they are driven to, you know, to pursue science and so on. But someone like me, if I didn't have
00:26:34.620 tenure, I would have been canceled 25 years ago. This is my 31st year as a professor and
00:26:40.620 I've never modulated my, my speech. I've always told it like it is. And I would have never gotten
00:26:45.980 as far as I did if it weren't for tenure.
00:26:48.020 Do you have sympathy for the people that, you know, are careful about what they say?
00:26:52.900 No.
00:26:53.140 You don't have tenure?
00:26:54.040 No.
00:26:54.980 Why is that?
00:26:55.880 I'll tell you why. So here is an email that I've received from 50,000 people. You ready?
00:27:03.340 Dear Professor Saad, a bunch of compliments. And here's the last sentence.
00:27:09.240 In case you decide that you want to read this email on your show, please do not mention my name.
00:27:16.080 And then I respond and I say, Dear so-and-so, thank you very much for your kind words. Don't
00:27:21.320 you think that the last sentence is exactly why we are in the position that we're in? And then
00:27:25.880 oftentimes that will kind of slap them into reality. Now, it seems as though I'm being sort of
00:27:30.720 smug about it or I'm not taking their concerns seriously. There's always a reason why it
00:27:37.420 shouldn't be you who speaks out. I can't speak out because I'm only a postdoc. I can't speak out
00:27:42.940 because I don't have tenure yet. I can't speak out. I have tenure, but I'm applying for a full
00:27:47.600 professor. I can't speak out. I do have full professor, but I'm applying for chair professor.
00:27:52.280 I can't speak out because I won't get the grant. I can't speak out because I'm in the running for the
00:27:57.040 Nobel Prize. And if I speak out, so there's always a reason that I can find for why it shouldn't be me
00:28:02.460 who speaks out. You know who didn't care about that? The thousands of men who lined up, put up
00:28:08.020 their hand in Normandy and said, we will land on Normandy where we're going to be mowed down like 0.56
00:28:14.580 little mosquitoes by Nazi machine guns. They seem to have lost a lot more than your reputation or not
00:28:22.920 being accepted to the cool parties in Manhattan or not getting tenure. And yet they did it. So
00:28:27.440 I don't mean to be flippant or smug about everybody's concern. Of course, don't be a reckless
00:28:33.740 martyr, right? You can modulate how you take your risks. But the idea that you are unique in the risks
00:28:42.580 you face is not true, right? One of the reasons why I never show my family in any photos is precisely
00:28:50.040 because I incur a lot of costs that have nothing to do with tenure, right? So when someone says,
00:28:56.320 here are the 17 ways we're going to kill you, that's not a pleasant email to receive. But I
00:29:00.680 can't not speak because I know what happens to societies where you can't speak. I come from those
00:29:06.220 societies and I don't want the West to repeat those mistakes. It's interesting because I was going
00:29:11.500 to say when I started this, first of all, this might be or I might have caught you on potentially
00:29:15.140 the best day of your life. I mean, Trudeau. Oh, he drops right now. In my mind, I was like,
00:29:20.880 I should bring that up first. But I got started. Yes, yes. I mean, I'm hoping that Trudeau. But you
00:29:26.820 know, can I tell you something? It's going to surprise you. Even if he were to step down today,
00:29:31.460 it wouldn't remove the existential injury that I feel that no matter what, he was prime minister for
00:29:39.840 nine years. The fact that that degenerate, lobotomized, cretin, who, by the way, every 1.00
00:29:46.440 single parasitic idea in my book, he is a walking manifestation of it, right? He doesn't say 0.99
00:29:52.640 recession. He says sh-cession because he's a feminist guy. He's, yeah. I mean, he's a caricature,
00:30:01.800 right? He pursues a feminist foreign policy, right? He believes in, you know, that his cabinet
00:30:09.440 has to have the right number of transgender people and, you know, women with penises and so on. 0.98
00:30:14.860 So, by the way, I can't apply for grants as a scientist if I don't fill out a diversity, 0.92
00:30:21.980 inclusion, equity statement, which, so now it's been about seven years since I've last had a research
00:30:28.500 grant because I'm unwilling to play that charade, right? You would never know if I filled that out,
00:30:33.180 right? It could be completely enormous, right? But I wouldn't feel authentic if from this side of my
00:30:38.780 mouth. I'm arguing against how ridiculous it is to fill out these forms. But then when nobody is 0.94
00:30:44.960 looking because I need money, I play along. And therefore, I've been completely without any
00:30:51.000 research funds for seven years because of your boyfriend, Justin Trudeau.
00:30:54.980 Yeah, no, he's on a whole different level, that guy. You know, talking about that,
00:31:01.480 in America, especially with the, you know, Trump's win, which I think you'd be proud of me,
00:31:07.460 I put down a big bet on Trump winning the popular vote.
00:31:10.000 Look at you.
00:31:10.860 And I made a whole bunch of money.
00:31:12.060 Wow.
00:31:13.000 So, that was really nice.
00:31:14.900 I was following, what is that betting site that became famous?
00:31:18.600 So, there's Kalshi and there's Polly.
00:31:20.520 Polly, that's the one. I was looking at it feverishly the day of the thing and as it was
00:31:24.780 going up.
00:31:25.280 So, I'll tell you, part of what I realized that was just straight, I was getting it with
00:31:28.680 one to four odds. So, already on the popular vote, it was one to four odds. And on the
00:31:32.540 most left-leaning outlets, only had her up one percent on the popular vote. And just in
00:31:37.160 general, when there's any poll, I just did plus three Trump, just like, and the most accurate
00:31:42.720 polls of the last three elections had Trump winning by two points. I just felt, based on
00:31:47.540 independence, there was a whole host of reasons, actually. And I announced this publicly
00:31:51.260 before. I really put my money where my mouth is. I announced it publicly before. I said,
00:31:55.440 I guarantee you this is happening. And I put down, you know, money on it. I wrote it on
00:31:58.460 Twitter or whatever, the whole money on it. Anyways, what made sense, the reason what
00:32:02.500 just was simple and straightforward in this case was that, at the very least, that should
00:32:05.460 have been a 50-50 line. It was 22-78. So, I knew that it was at least going to go up
00:32:11.280 to 50-50, just on a given, because it's not going to be 22-78, you know. So, anyways,
00:32:16.820 that was, but obviously with the Trump win, getting back to, you know, what I was saying,
00:32:20.080 the Trump win has changed things dramatically, or at least we're headed in a
00:32:25.420 much, much better direction. I honestly don't even want to think about what would
00:32:27.980 have happened if she would have won. It was that bad, that bad of a candidate.
00:32:31.540 My question specifically is, how can you reverse what is happening? And the reason why I asked
00:32:37.780 that, just to elaborate a little bit, you know, further, is that we're, like, this is
00:32:43.840 an indoctrination, right? It's a pathogen that's, you know, a parasitic pathogen, as,
00:32:47.520 you know, discussed, that's taken over the mind. It's also coming from universities.
00:32:50.800 It's being indoctrinated into kids in universities, and that's your biggest...
00:32:55.420 Even younger.
00:32:56.520 Even younger? Great. Okay, true. And my question is, how do you...
00:33:00.080 There's a clear, stark contrast in the country. Yeah, we, you know, Trump won.
00:33:03.780 That was 50% of the country, but the other 50% undoubtedly still hold the same parasitic... 0.72
00:33:07.580 That's why, by the way, so to your question, this is why I implore people to not become
00:33:15.160 complacent in the battle against all of these parasitic ideas, because a lot of people have
00:33:19.420 gotten that reflex, now that Trump and his gang has come in, that's it, the nightmare
00:33:24.380 is over. I mean, yes, he's going to create a bit of an auto-correction, but it took 50 to
00:33:30.560 100 years for many of these parasitic ideas to originally flourish in the academic ecosystem
00:33:36.640 and then, you know, to be promulgated everywhere in society. Hopefully, it won't take 50 to 100
00:33:42.280 years to eradicate all the parasitic ideas, but it won't all end magically by the time
00:33:48.560 of, you know, Trump's, you know, stepping down from his second term. It's going to be
00:33:53.920 a much longer battle. To your point, it's an ideological slash cultural battle. And so
00:33:59.520 for me, so for example, for my next book, when I was thinking about, you know, which of the
00:34:05.380 two wins, if Kamala wins or if Trump win would be better for my book. Now, in a small way,
00:34:13.900 you would argue, well, if Kamala had won, of course, it would be a disaster, but it would
00:34:18.160 be even better for my book because it would, it would, you know, just accelerate all the
00:34:22.480 nonsense. But the reality is, even if Trump won, which he did, it's not, these things are
00:34:28.760 not going to go away overnight. It's still going to be a generational battle.
00:34:32.620 So what's the reason to believe it will ever go away? Is it just because the same way it
00:34:35.860 got here, we could assume it'll just pass on?
00:34:37.760 Well, listen, let me give you an example. There used to be a time in Salem, Massachusetts,
00:34:42.340 where it was thought to be a good idea to throw women, if you thought that they were witches, 1.00
00:34:48.760 into water. And if they swim and don't drown, then this proves that they are witches. But if 0.89
00:34:56.040 they drown, oops, I guess they weren't witches. And many, many people thought that that was a
00:35:00.500 great idea. Well, today, several hundred years later, we no longer think that. So the human mind
00:35:06.480 has always had the capacity to be parasitized. It's not, because people ask me, is what you write
00:35:12.540 in the parasitic mind, is it related to the current time? It's yes and no. It's no in the sense that
00:35:20.140 throughout human history, we've been parasitized. What is unique to the current period are the specific
00:35:26.380 idea pathogens that are parasitizing us. While we don't worry about Salem witch hunts,
00:35:31.940 we do think that men can menstruate, right? So the parasitic ideas take new forms, but our capacity
00:35:38.260 to be parasitized is eternal. That actually makes a lot of sense.
00:35:42.160 There you go. If you go backwards. That's why I wear the velvet suit.
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00:37:01.100 back to our episode. There's something very interesting that I wanted to ask you. Of course,
00:37:06.360 part of the parasitic syndrome is this idea that everyone is racist, bigoted, et cetera,
00:37:10.540 no matter what the facts show, profiled, you name it, all those things. We have a current
00:37:16.700 situation going on. I do want to talk a little bit more about the parasitic mind and the book,
00:37:21.840 but there's one thing I really wanted to get to. We do have something going on right now,
00:37:25.340 especially with Israel and Jewish people. We're very, very much in the spotlight right now.
00:37:29.320 And the same way me and you would really hate, and I presume we're on the same page about this,
00:37:33.740 of saying something and then being called a racist immediately, there seems to be a common
00:37:39.660 sentiment from, a lot of times it's anti-Semites actually, but sometimes it's not, that they
00:37:45.540 feel that any single time there's any criticism towards Israel, the word you're an anti-Semite
00:37:50.200 is thrown out, and that there's no ability for them to have an opinion on the Jews or Israel,
00:37:53.860 because if there is, they're just immediately character assassinated. Do you think there's
00:37:58.440 validity to that? And if so, what would we do? Yeah, I think you could absolutely criticize
00:38:03.660 specific Israeli policies, just like you can criticize Cameroonian policies and you wouldn't
00:38:10.040 be called racist, or you can criticize Japanese policies without being called an anti-Japanese
00:38:16.280 bigot. So there is absolutely room for people, reasonable people to say, you know, this particular
00:38:22.980 policy by the Israeli government is wrong for reasons X, Y, Z. The reality, though, is that most
00:38:30.220 people who, quote, attack Israeli policies or Zionism but not Jews, if I scratch a bit, they
00:38:38.560 usually are anti-Semitic. But in the abstract, is it possible to criticize Israel without being
00:38:44.940 anti-Semitic? 100% yes. Do you think we're doing ourselves a disservice at all by just throwing out
00:38:49.660 the word very flippantly? Of anti-Semite? Yeah, I mean, this is, I would say on Twitter, you know,
00:38:54.640 Twitter's a real cesspool, you know, freedom of speech, you know, obviously, but at the end of the day,
00:38:59.400 it is a, you know, the cool thing. Again, it's a case by case basis, right? I think that there are
00:39:04.560 some Jews that are so thin-skinned, or maybe they're Israelis who fall prey to what you're saying, 0.66
00:39:11.360 which is any valid criticism of Israel becomes a form of anti-Semitism. And they do us a disservice 0.96
00:39:17.920 because then people say, you know what, here comes a Jew crying anti-Semitism. But if you see the kind
00:39:23.120 of the stuff that I receive, I'm not Israeli, I'm not involved with the IDF, I didn't shoot anybody.
00:39:30.540 But if you see the orgiastic hate that I receive, that's not anti-Zionism, that's anti-Jew.
00:39:37.500 Honestly, I don't even, not that I don't care to, but I don't even need to see that. If you go on
00:39:40.940 Twitter, you know, on X right now, I don't think, X formerly known as Twitter, which I think it will,
00:39:46.000 the formerly known as Twitter will always be there. Right? If you go there, I mean, like you said,
00:39:51.260 I love that word, the orgiastic flood of anti-Semitism, like direct, clear, there is no
00:39:57.940 from, say, likes like Dan Bilzerian. And, you know, what are your thoughts, let's say, on Candace Owens?
00:40:03.060 Do you think she...
00:40:03.580 It's funny. I just put up a post about her today where I was satirically...
00:40:09.460 Yes, I saw the post.
00:40:10.280 Yes, but I want to hear, meaning I want to hear your full thoughts.
00:40:12.840 So look, I don't know what happened to her. She became parasitized by some strain of anti-Jew,
00:40:19.460 you know, hatred. Because I know Candace, she came on my show. And at the time,
00:40:25.360 so this is probably four or five years ago, you know, she was very reasonable. She was kind of,
00:40:31.100 she took up the place of the conservative, pretty black girl, right? So she's not, you know, 0.97
00:40:39.680 she was demonstrating that you can't presume that if someone is of a particular group,
00:40:44.840 everybody follows suit. Not all Jews vote Democrats. Some actually love Trump.
00:40:50.160 Right.
00:40:50.360 And so she was representing that. Not all black Americans are, you know, Democrats and so on.
00:40:57.300 And so she held a particular, you know, appealing niche. And then I don't know what happened to her. 0.89
00:41:04.680 She went wild. Something went bonkers there. I don't know what happened.
00:41:08.220 And frankly, not that I wish to get personal on this, but I'm very, I'd like to think that I'm very
00:41:15.780 adept at picking up certain character flaws in people. So here's a character flaw that I picked
00:41:22.460 up in her that has nothing to do with her anti-Jew stuff. I mean, literally, probably within a day or
00:41:29.180 two of Kanye West tweeting something like, I like how you think, Candace, that so got to her head
00:41:38.320 that the next day she unfollowed every single person that she had been following. So she,
00:41:44.440 she went from being a fangirl of, let's say, Jordan Peterson or Gatsad to suddenly no longer
00:41:51.560 needing to be associated with us because she had transcended to the real intellectual and the real,
00:41:59.340 you know, cerebral powerhouse of Kanye. Somebody who can let go of, right. I mean,
00:42:05.500 I literally have people that I had followed back eight, 10 years ago on Twitter that I can't stand
00:42:12.380 the positions that they take, but I've never unfollowed them out of just a sign of respect that
00:42:18.200 day. Right. Well, but Candace, after the Kanye thing, decided that she was too good for the rest 1.00
00:42:23.820 of us. And so that to me suggests that she didn't process her growing fame really well. And so never
00:42:31.960 mind the anti-Jew stuff. Yeah. Let me ask you, I wanted to just go back a little bit to, you know,
00:42:38.280 the ostrich parasitic syndrome for a simpleton like myself. Yes. And everyone else in the world that
00:42:45.080 doesn't have, honestly, your intellect, sorry, not trying to gas you up, just being honest.
00:42:48.620 How do you differentiate between, you know, doctrines that will lead you towards that versus
00:42:54.580 the truth? Right. So just for people to explain the syndrome. So the, this is a metaphor. The
00:43:02.640 ostrich doesn't actually do this, but burying your head in the sand has become the metaphor for
00:43:10.160 ignoring reality, right? So, or doing la, la, la, that's the same thing. Now, ostrich parasitic
00:43:15.580 syndrome is a, is a malady that I coined that suggests that it doesn't matter how much evidence
00:43:22.220 I can show you, I can never get you to change your position on something honestly. So example,
00:43:29.120 earlier we spoke about Islam and I have a whole section on this in the parasitic mind. 1.00
00:43:36.140 So since 9-11, there have been over 45,000 terror attacks committed by Islamic terrorists in nearly 0.90
00:43:48.440 70 countries since 9-11 alone. It's unbelievable. They will go up in front of a television and then
00:43:55.660 this will be publicly, you know, advertised, aired that we are about to do the thing that we are about
00:44:02.380 to do. And they quote the exact verses from the Quran that justifies why they should do it.
00:44:09.620 Here is what are, in French, you say,
00:44:12.420 the good, the politically correct thinkers will have us believe. You ready? That's,
00:44:19.180 that's going to be ostrich parasitic syndrome. It's lack of art exposure that causes Muhammad to go and 0.99
00:44:28.140 blow people up in Brussels or, see, because the reality is who amongst us, if it weren't for being 0.98
00:44:34.720 exposed to Picasso, we would head off to Raqqa in Syria and throw the gays off the rooftops. It's a 1.00
00:44:41.280 straight, direct line from me not seeing Chagall and Picasso and becoming a jihadist, right? But this is not 0.61
00:44:47.860 said satirically, but because at all costs, I have to protect the noble faith from Islamophobia,
00:44:54.820 right? Bill Nye, the science guy, explained to all of us simpletons that the Bataclan terror attack
00:45:04.120 in Paris was due to climate change, because those guys in Syria said, you know what, there's just 0.53
00:45:13.260 too much carbon emissions, not enough solar panels. We're really raping Mother Earth. It's time to go
00:45:19.360 to Paris and kill the kuffar, right? So when you're able to generate such nonsense with a straight 1.00
00:45:26.760 face, because nothing is more important than to be empathetic to the noble faith, that's ostrich 0.70
00:45:33.260 parasitic syndrome. So how do you know what's right or wrong? Believe your lying eyes.
00:45:40.200 The information could be confusing. There's so much, you know, what tactics, if you're someone who's
00:45:45.060 growing up, let's say under the age of 30, you're formulating your thoughts. I mean, you could have
00:45:48.500 people, you know, you get so much information, some of it, even though maybe in your gut seems like
00:45:53.520 it doesn't feel right, right? And your instinct feels like, no, this is off. But then it's sold
00:45:58.800 to you in a, you know, in a package that like, oh, I can't really argue with this. It makes sense.
00:46:03.340 So one of the things that I've learned in my many years of public engagement and academic debates and so
00:46:09.180 on is to know when I should no longer waste time on you, because I know that no amount of evidence
00:46:17.660 that I could ever present you will ever get you to that. By the way, that's one of the reasons why I
00:46:22.140 refuse to debate many people, even in very, very prestigious forms, because I know that that person,
00:46:30.720 because I know their history, is never going to come to a debate with an honest spirit, where they're
00:46:37.020 at least open to the idea of changing their minds. By the way, I was recently asked on a show, it was
00:46:42.780 hosted by a British psychiatrist. This was about a year ago. He asked me, and funnily enough, I don't
00:46:48.980 think anyone has ever asked me that question on any other show. At the end of the show, he said,
00:46:54.080 of all your years as a behavioral scientist, as a psychologist and so on, what is the singular
00:47:00.620 phenomenon that has most surprised you about humans? And so I had to think for a second. I said,
00:47:07.020 probably the inability of most people to ever change their opinions on anything. So in chapter
00:47:14.580 seven of The Parasitic Mind, which is a chapter where I'm talking about how to seek truth, I start
00:47:21.180 off at first, where I give a whole bunch of quotes by very well-known psychologists, including Leon
00:47:28.620 Festinger, who is the pioneer of cognitive dissonance theory, where he basically gives the very pessimistic
00:47:35.200 view that almost no person, irrespective of how much evidence you give them, are you ever able to
00:47:42.860 get them to move away from their anchored position. But that notwithstanding, I think I did offer what
00:47:50.060 I call a mind vaccine, which I can share with you if you'd like. But it's slightly technical. So can
00:47:55.880 we take like five or 10 minutes to explain it? Absolutely. Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm ready to
00:47:59.340 go for as long. I know you have the... Yeah, I have a problem. I have a bunch to get to, but yeah,
00:48:03.060 sure. Go ahead, please. So I think we mentioned it off air when I was testing you on how well you
00:48:07.420 had read the book. Did I pass or not? You did, you did. You did, 100%. So nomological networks of
00:48:15.460 cumulative evidence is a mind vaccine for seeking truth. So it's a mouthful. So let me try to explain what
00:48:23.100 that means. Let's suppose earlier I mentioned very briefly toy preferences. Let's suppose I wanted
00:48:29.340 to prove to you. So let's say you are a social constructivist. Social constructivist means you
00:48:34.360 believe that nothing's due to biology. Everything is due to social construction. So when it comes to
00:48:39.260 toy preferences, you would say the reason why little boys are much more likely to play with guns and balls
00:48:45.700 and hammers, whereas little girls are more likely to play with dolls, is because they are nurtured 1.00
00:48:52.640 into those toy preferences. So let's suppose I wanted to demonstrate that that's a false position,
00:48:58.220 that there are biological evolutionary reasons why these sex-specific toy preferences exist.
00:49:04.620 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to build you a nomological network of cumulative evidence
00:49:10.040 that hopefully drowns you in the tsunami of evidence that's going to come your way. So what am I going
00:49:15.920 to do? And I'll give examples in a second. I'm going to show you that across cultures,
00:49:21.860 those toy preferences exist, across very, very different cultures. I'm going to show you that
00:49:27.260 across time periods, those preferences have been exactly the same. I'm going to show you that across
00:49:32.940 species, those preferences are the same. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to what's called,
00:49:39.520 I'm going to triangulate. I'm going to bring distinct line of evidence from a bewildering number
00:49:46.180 of sources so that hopefully it becomes unassailable and unequivocal that the position I hold is the
00:49:52.480 correct one. Now, the good news is that when I have done that with many people, I have been able to flip
00:49:58.380 many people. That speaks actually to your earlier question of why I don't get canceled. Because I walk
00:50:05.500 into rooms where there are hundreds of people who are unbelievably hostile, then I present my evidence
00:50:12.620 and I go, how come I'm not hearing any rebuttals? That chirping slows down. Be quiet and sit down.
00:50:20.400 Right? Well, that's because I've done my homework, because I've already triangulated all the possible
00:50:27.040 and let me give you examples of those specific lines of evidence for toy preferences. Okay. So for
00:50:33.420 example, I can get you data from pediatric endocrinology, where this is in medicine,
00:50:39.700 pediatrics, where little girls who suffer from a disorder called congenital adrenal hyperplasia,
00:50:47.300 it's a disorder that masculinizes their morphology. It masculinizes their behaviors.
00:50:54.640 So little girls who suffer from this endocrinological disorder, guess what their toy 1.00
00:51:00.140 preferences look like? They look like those of little boys. So that demonstrates that there is
00:51:05.840 an endocrinological hormonal reason for those preferences. Interesting. I can get you data
00:51:12.940 from 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, in Roman times, where in funerary monuments,
00:51:24.860 in mausoleums, little boys and little girls are depicted playing with the exact same toys as
00:51:31.580 they are today. I can take you to cultures that have nothing to do with the West, sub-Saharan
00:51:36.600 nomadic tribes in Africa, where they play with the exact same types of toys. I can bring you other
00:51:43.280 animals like rhesus monkeys and vervet monkeys and show you. So look what I'm doing. I am cornering you.
00:51:51.200 I am putting the epistemological noose, metaphorically speaking, around your neck
00:51:55.600 so that hopefully you will kind of throw up your arms and go, all right, I'm convinced. And so I'm
00:52:01.580 able to do that. Now, there are, for some people, no way for me to do that because they literally are
00:52:07.220 going, la, la, la. So how can I give you the vaccine against polio if you never show up to the
00:52:12.740 station to take the vaccine, right? But for many people, as long as they're intellectually honest to
00:52:18.620 at least hear my evidence, I can flip you. What would be the response, let's just say,
00:52:22.960 as I was listening to this, that, okay, you're arguing there's a biological, you know, reason,
00:52:27.980 let's say, for this. And, you know, social constructivists will obviously say that's
00:52:32.240 a social component. What would be the answer if one of them said, well, yeah, it's in our biology
00:52:36.580 because originally, let's say millions of years ago or whenever you believe the world was created,
00:52:41.620 you know, when the world started, really it was a social component. Now it became a biological one
00:52:48.480 because socially they kept on doing it. It's actually the exact opposite. That's very, it's very good.
00:52:52.680 How do you know? Maybe now, maybe they'd argue that now if everyone, you know, if we could change
00:52:57.500 our biology. So the same way evolution has created a biology, right, we got here, we could
00:53:03.100 unevolutionize it. Well, so there are many ways that we could know, but let me just answer it in a
00:53:08.300 broad way. So when my students asked me about nature versus nurture, which very much relates to what
00:53:16.340 you're saying, biology versus social construction. Biology is nature, social construction is nurture.
00:53:22.120 How do we know the difference? Well, first of all, nurture exists in its form because of biology,
00:53:29.140 not in lieu of biology. So for example, there is no culture where girls are taught to engage in 0.94
00:53:36.120 indiscriminate sex with as many men as possible. It doesn't exist. The reason why, you know,
00:53:41.840 it hasn't existed is because men and women have deferring costs in making a poor mate choice. 1.00
00:53:50.860 And that exists 18,000 years ago, and it will exist 18,000 years from now. And it exists in the
00:53:57.500 Yanomomo tribe in Amazon, and it exists here in Montreal. These are biological realities. Therefore,
00:54:04.440 socialization builds on those biological imperatives. So religion teaches women to be chased 1.00
00:54:11.400 irrespective of which religion, right? Orthodox Jews teach their women to be chased, and Catholic 1.00
00:54:20.120 girls are taught to be chased, and Muslim girls are taught to be chased, if we only speak about 1.00
00:54:25.580 Abrahamic faiths, right? So nurture exists because of biology. But let me give you one other important
00:54:33.500 metaphor. This is called the cake metaphor. If I am baking a cake, before I start baking the cake,
00:54:43.180 hang, bear with me, I'm going to come, yeah. Each of the ingredients are separate, right? Here are the
00:54:48.460 eggs, here's the butter, here's the flour, here's the sugar. Once I bake the cake, and it becomes an
00:54:55.520 inextricable mix. If I told you, please point to the eggs, you wouldn't be able to. That's exactly
00:55:02.260 nature-nurture. We are an inextricable melange of our genes and our environment, but nothing in
00:55:10.400 our nurture exists outside of our biology. It exists because of biology. This is what Matt Ridley,
00:55:18.040 the famous evolutionary biologist, said, nurture by nature, right? Got it. Or E.O. Wilson, who
00:55:26.300 recently passed away, he was a Harvard biologist, said that biology holds culture on a leash. The
00:55:33.340 leash could be long, meaning that different cultural traditions can manifest themselves in different
00:55:38.380 ways, but no culture could ever exist that violates biological imperatives. Yeah, you're saying
00:55:44.580 there's a foundation across certain things that just can't be fought. How would you say that the
00:55:50.380 upcoming book, Suicidal Empathy, is going to differ from The Parasitic Mind? That's a great question.
00:55:56.220 So The Parasitic Mind is a narration of what happens to our cognitive system when it is parasitized.
00:56:07.380 So human beings are both a thinking and a feeling animal, right? It's not one or the other, right?
00:56:13.020 So we've evolved a cognitive system, and we've also evolved an emotional system. So I can tell you
00:56:19.280 the reasons why men and women have evolved romantic jealousy, for example. There is an evolutionary
00:56:25.620 biological reason why that toxic response exists, and we can talk about it if you'd like.
00:56:33.180 So in The Parasitic Mind, I'm talking about what happens to human brains, their cognition,
00:56:39.980 when it is parasitized by idea pathogens. I complete the story with Suicidal Empathy by now explaining
00:56:48.300 what happens to your emotional system when it is hijacked by idea parasites.
00:56:54.620 It's very, very interesting. I mean, I know, you know, the Suicidal Empathy, the words speak for
00:56:59.300 itself. I mean, we have people, the most basic things. It's unbelievable.
00:57:02.780 By the way, forgive me for interrupting you. I can't believe how viral it's gone. It almost
00:57:10.040 has me worried that it's gone viral too early before the book comes out, because now I could
00:57:16.640 literally go on social media, and I will see Suicidal Empathy in like 60 languages. It's
00:57:24.600 in the Philippines. It's in Germany. It's in France.
00:57:26.660 So officially in 2026, but I'm trying to best, but if guys like you keep inviting me on these
00:57:36.920 shows, I can't be writing the book, you see? No, no, but seriously, I'm trying to speed it up.
00:57:43.540 One of the reasons why, frankly, I'm very excited this year to be at Northwood University, and I'm
00:57:48.180 not saying this to plug them, is because they've really given me the freedom. They haven't tied me
00:57:53.900 down with a million other responsibilities, and so I'm able to accelerate the pace at which I'm
00:57:59.740 writing the book.
00:58:00.480 You know, it's fascinating. I mean, the words speak for themselves. It's, you know, at the end of the
00:58:05.100 day, I mean, you could explain it to people just on a very simple level, the concept of suicidal
00:58:10.060 empathy.
00:58:10.740 Do you want me to do that?
00:58:11.460 Yeah, please.
00:58:11.820 So empathy is a perfectly noble and rational emotion to hold, right? I mean, we are a social
00:58:20.720 species. Therefore, we have to manage these relationships. One of the ways that we manage
00:58:26.080 these relationships is through the mechanism of empathy, right? So if you're hurting, I can empathize
00:58:32.140 with you. I have theory of mind. I could put myself in your shoes and feel what you're feeling,
00:58:38.340 and it is a fundamentally important part of human sociality to have empathy. So the book is not an
00:58:44.560 attack on empathy in all of its form. It's an attack on the misfiring of empathy. When empathy is
00:58:53.000 targeted to the wrong individuals or empathy is hyperactive, then we have problems. And so let me here
00:59:01.160 draw a theoretical analogy. OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, is a psychiatric disorder. But actually,
00:59:12.300 its foundation is perfectly adaptive. Let me explain. The idea of scanning the environment for threats
00:59:20.100 makes evolutionary sense. So for example, if you, when I came here, if you had sneezed in your hand,
00:59:25.900 and I see that you have a cold, and then you shake my hand, I might decide to very quietly go to the
00:59:32.620 bathroom and wash my hands because I don't want to catch your cold. So at that point, that germ
00:59:37.000 contamination fear makes perfect evolutionary and adaptive sense. If on the other hand, that instinct
00:59:44.040 misfires in the way that I spend every day, seven hours washing my hands and scalding hot water, 0.99
00:59:52.660 I can't get to work because I'm stuck in this infinite loop, my skin is falling off because I'm
00:59:58.800 stuck in this infinite loop and scalding hot water, then it becomes a dysregulated dysfunction,
01:00:04.560 right? So I take that principle, and I argue that our emotional system can exactly exhibit those
01:00:11.720 misfirings. Empathy is great. It's not so great when we care about the illegal Guatemalan immigrants 1.00
01:00:19.720 more than the American vets who lost their legs fighting in this war.
01:00:25.020 In psychology, I mean, there's like the concept of boundaries. It's like you speak to some people
01:00:28.540 and they're like, oh, I want to be so nice to this person, but that person's abusing them. It's like,
01:00:31.600 stop trying to, you know, that's suicidal empathy effectively. You know, like stop sacrificing
01:00:35.900 yourself, you know, at the expense of some, you know, for someone else. I know you discussed it in
01:00:40.540 your previous book, a lot about mating. And specifically in the seventh chapter,
01:00:44.680 you talk a lot about how biology has influenced mating. I recently did a podcast where I basically
01:00:52.220 said, you know, there's obviously a lot of discussion in the Orthodox community where
01:00:55.260 there's a big push for people to get married young. And when people aren't married, you know,
01:01:00.980 naturally there are going to be some people that aren't married. It's a whole big deal.
01:01:03.540 And it became this whole, they refer to it as a crisis, which I've pushed back on personally.
01:01:07.040 I'm like, no, some people don't get married. Sorry. Like not right away. Not sure. Some people don't
01:01:11.340 get married ever actually, but just because someone's not married by 26, it doesn't mean
01:01:15.080 we're in a crisis. It just, anyways. So I was saying, I think one of the reasons why people
01:01:19.840 don't get married is because people don't look at dating as a negotiation. They don't know where
01:01:24.080 they stand on what I refer to as the chessboard, you know? And I was reading in chapter seven
01:01:28.640 and you spoke about this, I believe it was seven or eight.
01:01:31.720 Now, which book are you referring to? Because I've spoken about it in the last book.
01:01:35.640 Consuming Instinct? Consuming Instinct? Yes, I believe.
01:01:38.360 Or the evolution. So I'm trying to think. I mean, in several books I've talked about
01:01:41.960 it. Yes. So what's the exact question so I could focus on it?
01:01:45.680 No, I just, I want to, from your perspective, I'm an evolutionary perspective.
01:01:49.660 Psychology, yeah.
01:01:50.080 Yes, psychological perspective. How do you see, like if you're looking for someone, right?
01:01:56.500 Yes.
01:01:56.900 Based on the laws of nature and evolution, how would you see the best way to find someone?
01:02:00.880 So probably the singular topic that's been most studied by evolutionary psychologists are human
01:02:07.840 mating preferences. And the pioneer of that area is someone who wrote, who's a good friend of mine,
01:02:15.840 who wrote the foreword to one of my earlier books. That's why I was wondering if that's
01:02:20.580 what you're referring to. So my 2011 book titled The Consuming Instinct, What Juicy Burgers,
01:02:27.780 Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift-Giving Reveal About Human Nature. So the foreword to that book was
01:02:33.320 written by David Buss, B-U-S-S, who's a professor of psychology at University of Texas, Austin.
01:02:39.160 And so he conducted the seminal studies, and many have conducted more studies since, in the late 80s,
01:02:46.540 where he went, he collected data from around the world, radically different societies, different
01:02:53.420 cultures, to see if there were certain attributes that are exactly the same in terms of what women 0.87
01:03:00.320 look for in men and what men look for in women. And perhaps not surprising, there are unbelievable 0.85
01:03:07.920 similarities across grossly different cultures. So it's not culture specific. What are some of these?
01:03:16.500 Men are much more likely to place a greater premium on a mate's youth and beauty. And women are much 0.79
01:03:26.500 more likely to place a much greater premium on a man's status. Now, status could be judged differently
01:03:36.720 as a function of which culture I'm from. So if I'm in the Hadza tribe in Africa, it might be the number 0.87
01:03:43.340 of cattle head I have. If I am in North America, it might be the number of Ivy League degrees I have,
01:03:51.420 or the number of zeros in my back and forth. So the means by which a culture defines status might
01:03:57.980 change. But there is no culture where women have said the following sentence. You ready?
01:04:03.760 I'm looking for a pear-shaped, nasal-voiced, effeminate man who plays video games all day and
01:04:13.540 shows zero ambition. That drives me into a sexual frenzy. That statement has never been uttered in the 0.99
01:04:21.040 history of humanity for a reason.
01:04:23.600 That's fascinating. That's a great way of putting it. Your humor is awesome. A couple of quick
01:04:27.460 rapid-fire questions.
01:04:28.680 Go.
01:04:29.800 Well, this is unfortunately I need to ask this because of this pod. Your parents are religious? 0.94
01:04:35.340 So we come from an Orthodox community, but not Orthodox in the sense that we have the whole
01:04:41.540 Lubavitch thing, but our synagogue growing up in Lebanon was an Orthodox community. Here it's called
01:04:47.880 the Spanish-Portuguese. So technically we're Orthodox. But am I today? No. Is that what you're
01:04:56.100 asking?
01:04:56.420 Yeah. No. I mean, specifically, I know you talk about God. You're not sure. You're officially
01:05:01.200 atheist. I don't know exactly what your current position is.
01:05:03.420 So it depends how we define God. If we define God that He really cares whether I eat prosciutto,
01:05:10.680 then that is a demeaning image in my mind of what God should be. The God of the universe
01:05:16.940 should really not care too much whether I have a prosciutto sandwich. It really minimizes how
01:05:22.380 important He is if He cares about prosciutto. So then by that measure, then I'm godless.
01:05:28.160 If we redefine what God means in more sort of esoteric, vague terms, then I can sign up 0.64
01:05:35.040 for it. Am I very Jewish in my identity? I was almost executed for being Jewish. So
01:05:42.920 I'm probably more Jewish than most people alive. So I can be very Jewish without necessarily
01:05:48.860 worrying that if I don't light the Shabbat candles at 422, not 423, because then that's
01:05:54.620 really a problem.
01:05:55.140 You should come to my house for Shabbat because you'll see me light those at 422. I specifically
01:05:58.960 wanted to ask you though, what's your relationship like with your parents' family based on your
01:06:05.440 direction? You're obviously extremely accomplished, as it goes without saying. So I ask that partially
01:06:11.160 because of my own world. And you also mentioned in the book that some of the dogmatic approaches
01:06:16.220 in your family as, I don't know if you're referring to immediate or extended.
01:06:21.100 Yeah. You're talking as the dogma is relating to religion.
01:06:24.920 Yeah. You talked about, I believe in the beginning of the book, you referred to this.
01:06:28.620 Exactly. So what you're talking about there is, I tell the story of, you know, going to
01:06:33.900 the synagogue in Beirut, what's called Magan Abraham. So we would go to synagogue and I'm
01:06:39.740 an inquisitive kid as I am today. And so I would ask my dad, you know, why are we standing
01:06:46.460 up? Why are we sitting down? Why are we doing the Macarena dance to the left and to the right?
01:06:50.400 And the answer is, shut up and do. And that offended me. That upset me. I was a honey badger 0.95
01:06:56.180 back then also as a five-year-old and combative and so on. And so that made me get turned off
01:07:01.900 by this kind of zombified, parasitized, ritualistic thing, right? Now, I can sit down with a rabbi 1.00
01:07:10.200 as I have when I was, say, a doctoral student at Cornell. I became very good friends with a
01:07:14.440 hardcore Orthodox rabbi called Rabbi Eli Silberstein. We're still friends today, where we can have
01:07:20.360 really wonderful philosophical conversations. He's engaging my mind, right?
01:07:24.700 I was going to ask you, do you ever learn Talmud in like a real deep way?
01:07:28.340 Not in a deep way, in a very, very shallow way.
01:07:30.980 You would soak it up.
01:07:32.480 I'm sure I would.
01:07:33.520 Sorry for like, I'm just thinking about it. Especially with the way your mind works.
01:07:37.220 I have friends, by the way, that went straight to Harvard, got their BTL, went straight to
01:07:41.460 Harvard and these guys sit and learn Talmud all day. It's a bachelor's in Talmudic law.
01:07:45.600 And these guys are the top guys in their class.
01:07:47.340 Oh, I believe it.
01:07:47.960 Their brains are, they're analytical skills. I grew up very much in this world.
01:07:51.220 Absolutely.
01:07:51.680 It's, if it doesn't go a straight line, there's no making things up. It has to equal out. If it
01:07:55.940 doesn't equal out.
01:07:56.480 Just for you, I mean, to sort of support what you're saying. In my first book ever, in 2007,
01:08:03.300 I wrote a book. It's a very technical book called The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption.
01:08:08.040 And I quote Maimonides, who, I mean, probably your audience knows who that is, but he was
01:08:17.880 a physician. He was the physician to the sultan at the time. He was a rabbi. He's a philosopher.
01:08:24.620 And he had proposed that there are eight levels of tzedakah, right? Like pious giving and so
01:08:35.220 on. And so he basically, and what I wanted to demonstrate is that even though he wasn't
01:08:41.000 officially by title an evolutionary psychologist, he was an evolutionary psychologist.
01:08:46.920 Yeah. People's, yeah, go on.
01:08:48.260 Yeah. Why? Because he argued that there are eight levels of piety in giving, the highest
01:08:55.860 of which, which is almost never attained, is when the recipient of the altruistic act
01:09:03.040 and the altruist don't know of each other's identity. Because there, there is no social
01:09:09.820 capital to be gained. If I'm doing the act for no other reason than the purity of the act,
01:09:16.140 and I, I stand to not benefit any social capital from anyone because it's completely anonymous
01:09:22.100 both ways, that's really pure. And so I had taken that to demonstrate that even though
01:09:27.280 you may not be a Darwinist by training, we are all Darwinian beings. And here is Maimonides
01:09:32.560 to your point, who was an evolutionary psychologist.
01:09:35.280 So interesting. It's, that's fascinating. Okay. Last thing. Debating between my last question
01:09:39.980 because it's tough.
01:09:40.880 Go.
01:09:40.980 First of all, as a scientist-
01:09:41.900 Ask both.
01:09:42.400 I appreciate the hell out of it. As a scientist, what are your thoughts on, you know, Fauci and
01:09:49.840 his handling of COVID? And I ask this because I know that you talk about the stupidity of 1.00
01:09:54.380 certain anti-vaxxers, you know. 1.00
01:09:56.880 Yes. So this idea of settled science is the epitome of a non-scientist. There is no such
01:10:07.140 thing as settled science in science. There are provisional truths, right? So today,
01:10:12.280 we may hold something to be true until someone comes along and they may or may not topple it
01:10:19.480 and falsify it. That's what Karl Popper referred to as the falsification principle. We set up
01:10:24.900 a theory and then everybody comes with their weaponry trying to shoot it down. And if it's
01:10:29.180 still standing, then it looks like it is true. But it is always provisionally true. So there
01:10:34.360 are many intelligent people who propose things that were true 300 years ago that today we know
01:10:39.600 are not true. So what I regret in Fauci's position and all those sort of COVID guys is that they
01:10:46.960 created a world that was no different than the Dark Ages. Don't say that or we will burn you at the
01:10:52.640 stake. Don't say that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, so to speak. That's what happened 0.83
01:10:58.760 with Galileo, right? The church put him under house arrest because he was proposing a cosmic theory
01:11:04.900 where the earth wasn't at the center of the universe, right? Well, that was against the church
01:11:09.900 doctrines and we can't have that. So we're going to either put you under house arrest because you're
01:11:13.920 Galileo. But if you weren't Galileo, we're going to burn you at the stake. Well, Fauci did the exact 0.99
01:11:18.380 same reflex, right? So I'll give you a great example. I mentioned earlier Matt Ridley, the evolutionary
01:11:23.700 biologist. His people had written to me. By the way, he was in the House of Lords. He was the Lord in the
01:11:29.880 British Parliament. His people had written to me to tell me that his latest book arguing about the
01:11:38.320 likelihood that the COVID virus had escaped from a Chinese lab, that book was coming out. And it was 0.79
01:11:45.560 at the time when you weren't allowed to say that. So I wrote back to them and I said, look, you know
01:11:50.800 that I'm a honey badger and there is nothing that I won't be willing to say, but we need to be
01:11:55.720 non-reckless in our martyr behavior. If we have that conversation and I post it on YouTube,
01:12:03.540 within three seconds of me posting it, it will be removed and likely my channel closed. So it'll
01:12:10.860 serve us zero purpose. And that decision, and they understood it, but that decision always sat
01:12:16.860 bad with me. But it's not because you wouldn't, nothing would, you wouldn't waste the time.
01:12:20.820 Exactly. I'm jumping just to get killed, just to prove that I'm a hero. But so,
01:12:25.720 to answer your question, what I hate about Fauci and all his gangs is that they didn't allow all
01:12:31.540 ideas to be, you know, adjudicated in the arena of, you know, ideas. Now, here is the great cosmic
01:12:40.200 justice and the great irony. Jay Bhattacharia, do you know who that is?
01:12:45.660 No.
01:12:45.820 He is one of the guys, he's a physician by training and a health economist at Stanford.
01:12:51.880 With two other guys, he wrote the, I think it was called the Barrington Declaration. I can't
01:12:58.200 remember what it was, where he was arguing that many of the positions that we've taken as relating
01:13:02.820 to COVID were ill thought. And, you know, they wanted to fire him from Stanford. He was just
01:13:10.880 nominated by Trump to head the NIH.
01:13:13.860 But also, I know, but also there's, what just came out is the clear emails of Fauci literally
01:13:19.520 saying, like, shut this guy down, like, without even a look.
01:13:23.060 That guy should be, I mean, I know he probably doesn't have, he should be in prison for the
01:13:26.240 rest of his life.
01:13:26.760 It's crazy. It's unbelievable. And I just saw another story of, you know, the woman who accused
01:13:32.260 the three Duke players, you know, of rape.
01:13:35.080 She should go, she should go. 0.61
01:13:35.860 What should be the punishment for someone like?
01:13:37.260 So whatever the punishment would have been for them, had they been found guilty, that's
01:13:42.980 what she should get. So if it's 30 years, you go 30 years. What's one of the Ten Commandments?
01:13:49.100 Do not, do not, no, and do not bear false witness.
01:13:52.220 Yes, yes.
01:13:52.740 Right? So you're bearing false witness. And even if those guys didn't go to prison, which
01:13:57.820 they didn't, right? It was dismissed.
01:13:59.400 Yeah, in that case.
01:14:00.200 That stain is never going to be washed away.
01:14:03.640 Trevor Bauer from, I don't know if you're familiar with that story.
01:14:06.200 Same thing. He was accused of, I believe, of sexual assault on the Astros. Big time pitching
01:14:13.160 career ahead of him. He was like the ace. He was like one of the big guys.
01:14:16.400 Oh, I think I know this guy.
01:14:16.900 And his girlfriend's wife accused him. Story totally false.
01:14:20.380 He did go to prison, right?
01:14:21.600 They kicked him off the team.
01:14:22.700 Oh.
01:14:22.980 And then it was found out. Total lie. But his career's over. It's just insane.
01:14:27.040 Last question.
01:14:27.840 Yes, sir.
01:14:28.680 Who's the most, I know you're close with Dr. Jordan Peterson.
01:14:33.260 I want your thoughts on him as well as who's been the most inspirational thinker in my life
01:14:38.920 all time.
01:14:40.080 Yeah.
01:14:40.200 Well, I love Jordan. He's a great guy. I don't share some of his reverence for Carl Jung. You know,
01:14:48.900 he does all the Jungian stuff. It's a bit of hocus pocus for me. That's one. I don't, I'm not as
01:14:55.280 religiously inclined as he is. But otherwise, he's a lovely human being, very sharp guy. So I have only
01:15:03.800 good things to say about him. Who is the greatest thinker that's influenced me the most? I'll answer
01:15:09.380 that in two ways. At the most fundamental level, it has to be Charles Darwin, because I'm taking
01:15:14.920 the theory of evolution and applying it to the study of the human mind. In a more temporarily
01:15:20.480 close thing, it's a book that launched my career as an evolutionary behavioral scientist. It was my
01:15:28.060 first semester as a doctoral student where I was taking an advanced social psychology course. And the
01:15:35.220 professor, his name is Dennis Regan, about halfway through the semester assigned the book by actually
01:15:41.160 two Canadian-based evolutionary psychologists, husband and wife team called Margot Wilson and 0.98
01:15:47.760 Martin Daly. The book was titled Homicide. And it explored patterns of criminality via an evolutionary
01:15:57.500 lens. And in a very, very elegant way with great theoretical parsimony, they were able to explain a
01:16:06.640 bewildering number of universal patterns of crimes. That was my aha moment. I said, okay, well, I'm going
01:16:13.080 to take that evolutionary framework and apply it to study human behavior in general and consumer and
01:16:19.540 economic behavior in particular. Unbelievable. I love this book. I'm so excited. Guys, I mean,
01:16:26.060 it's coming out. I thought it was going to be coming out in like the next six months. I'm working on it.
01:16:29.220 First of all, I'm not joking. Anyone who's watching this, I know they're part of my, from my ilk type of
01:16:32.860 thing. Like, um, parasitic mind, you're not going to be disappointed. This is a great Shabbat read. If you're
01:16:37.560 sitting around and you just ate a whole bunch of chulant and you're hungry, you know, by the way, I went on the
01:16:43.340 lion diet. That's a whole different discussion. You familiar with that? The meat diet? No. The meat diet? Yeah, it's the
01:16:47.940 carnivore diet. Yeah, yeah. Jordan talks about it. I have an autoimmune disease, so I went on it,
01:16:52.260 whatever. And it's helping you? So far, I feel great. Oh, good for you. I haven't been on for that, that long, but
01:16:56.000 so far, I feel great. Um, either way, maybe you'll hear me scream from New York soon, but
01:17:01.200 you'll know it's not so great. Anyways, guys, this is a must buy. First of all, uh, Gadsad on
01:17:06.280 X. X at G-A-D-S-A-A-D. You hit the million follower mark a little bit ago. And if you want to just
01:17:15.760 crack up consistently, the best Twitter feed, uh, suicidal empathy coming out shortly. Elon Musk is
01:17:22.000 busy retweeting you every single day. I mean- Elon Musk is my biggest fan. He loves you. He really
01:17:28.000 does. No, because- And I love him back. Because you're able to pinpoint with absolute
01:17:32.520 perfect accuracy all the things that drive him insane. I mean, obviously, he has his own
01:17:36.340 personal, you know, situations. Anyways, uh, Dr. Saad, thank you so, so much. I'm so honored
01:17:41.960 to be here. Absolutely. I'm, uh, on my way back in a couple hours. Uh, guys, another amazing
01:17:48.320 episode coming next week. I hope you all enjoyed this one. Peace.
01:17:50.720 Outro Music