What Burgers, Ferraris and Porn Teaches us About Evolution - Gad Saad
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 20 minutes
Words per minute
188.32014
Harmful content
Misogyny
33
sentences flagged
Hate speech
62
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Ghat Saad joins me to talk about his new book, The Consuming Instinct, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, and Identity Politics. Ghat is a social psychologist, evolutionary behavioral scientist, and author who has written many books. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and many other publications, and is one of the most influential social psychologists in the world.
Transcript
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We've been parasitized by so much wokeism that now companies have, in many cases, lost focus of their main mission.
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Oftentimes people who hate evolutionary theory will get upset because they think that if you explain something scientifically,
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this means that you are justifying it or condoning it.
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A lot of the activists will argue heterosexuality is learned, whereas homosexuality is innate.
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What infectious ideas today do you feel are creating a lot of momentum?
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Most people are cognitive misers, meaning that they are intellectually lazy.
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If I want to truly find out whether the Democrats were the racist ones or not,
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well, that's going to have to force me to actually do some work.
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Why don't I just believe Uncle Biden who tells me that, no, it's the Republicans that are the KKK white supremacists,
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Oftentimes what people say in their imbecilic, myopic way, they think that the attack on freedom only comes from the government.
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The greatest danger comes from creating a society where we will self-censor.
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So, gang, I want to prepare you for this because get ready to have a mental workout in the next 60 to 90 minutes with my guest today,
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I'm a professor, evolutionary behavioral scientist, author, wrote a book, which I love, The Consuming Instinct,
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What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift-Giving Reveals About Human Nature,
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which we'll get into as well as this recent book that just came out October 6th of 2020, last year,
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The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.
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And then we'll talk about critical race theory.
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We're probably going to get into identity politics, and we'll get into a few other topics.
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But, Ghat, thank you so much for making time for being a guest on The Attainment.
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When I announced that I was coming on your show, I got a lot of excitement.
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I must shamefully admit that I wasn't very familiar with your show.
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Our audience is also very excited to hear from you.
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So let's get right into it, if you don't mind, for some of the folks that maybe don't know you,
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But for those that don't know, would you mind taking a minute and giving us your background?
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So, I mean, my personal background or professional one?
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Well, personal, where you're from, and then professional.
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So personal, I was born in Beirut, Lebanon in the 60s.
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We were part of the last group of Lebanese Jews who had steadfastly refused to read the
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And so we were in Lebanon in the mid-70s when the Lebanese Civil War broke out.
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All future butchering is always measured against the benchmark of how brutal the Lebanese Civil
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And I could tell you, as an 11-year-old child, I could attest to how brutal it was.
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And we were able, luckily, to escape after that first year of the war, moved to Montreal,
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And that's where my adventure in the West began.
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Professionally, my scientific work is at the intersection of evolutionary biology and evolutionary
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So I look at what are the fundamental biological drivers that make us the consumers that we
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But of course, I define consumption very broadly.
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It's not just consuming Coca-Cola and posting pictures on Instagram.
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I look at the biological underpinnings of that consumatory nature.
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What inspired you and what got you to say, I want to learn more about this stuff?
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So first semester as a doctoral student at Cornell University, 1990.
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I can't believe that it's almost, well, it's more than 30 years ago.
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So I had taken a course, an advanced social psychology course with a professor by the name
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And about halfway through the course, he assigned a book called Homicide, which was a book looking
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at patterns of criminality from an evolutionary perspective.
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And so I can give you a few examples if you'd like, but that's when I was bitten by the bug.
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So, for example, if I told you, Patrick, let's see if you can guess this.
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Let's see if you are a budding evolutionary psychologist.
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If I told you what is the number one predictor of all possible predictors that can help us
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understand whether a child is going to be abused.
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So, for example, you could say if he's born on the wrong side of the tracks.
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So give me your best possible predictor, and then I'll give you the correct evolutionary
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one so that you get a sense of how powerful evolutionary thinking is and understanding
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I mean, that's a great one, and I'm sure it has an effect, but I'll just jump to the
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The number one predictor is if there is a step-parent in the house, and the idea being
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that humans are a bi-parental species, meaning both men and women invest heavily in their
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children, and therefore most people, whether they do it consciously or not, are going to
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exhibit differential investment in their biological children and their step-children.
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So, for example, if you think about Cinderella, well, the story of Cinderella is rooted in evolution
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It's the evil stepmother, but she's only evil to the stepdaughter.
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She's not evil dispositionally also to her biological children, and there are some very
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clear biological reasons why people would exhibit that penchant to be less investing in their
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Who is the number one most dangerous person in a woman's life, irrespective of which culture
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Well, it turns out, not surprisingly, it's not the guy who's hiding in the tree.
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It's usually her long-term partner, her male partner, who typically, when he is triggered
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into a homicidal rage, is because of either realized or suspected infidelity.
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Now, why would men be so triggered by that possibility?
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Because since we are a bi-parental species, I don't want to spend 18, 20, 25 years raising
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the kid of the sexy gardener who used to come and, you know, trim our bushes.
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Therefore, I become, when I say I, I mean prototypical male.
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Both you and I, Patrick, are descendants of ancestors who really cared that their women
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So because of paternity uncertainty, men have evolved the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral
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patterns that create sexual territoriality.
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And so when I saw the explanatory power of evolutionary thinking, I had my aha moment.
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So I thought I would apply evolution to study consumer behavior.
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Yeah, that's fascinating when you're talking about that.
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So let's go to the first book because, I mean, I got some questions for you just in regards
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And then we'll get into the second one as well.
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So the consuming instinct, what juicy burgers, Ferrari's pornography and gift giving reveal
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about human nature, when you wrote this 10 years ago, exactly 10 years ago, last month,
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June of 2011, which has been translated to Korean and Turkish, interesting to have been
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And what can you tell us, what can you tell us about the consuming instinct about juicy
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burgers, Ferrari's pornography and gift giving?
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So the reason why I chose those four examples, there's a backstory to it.
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Apparently speaking, the book is basically arguing, contrary to all of the social sciences,
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which presume that what makes us different from other animals is that we transcend our
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So typically social scientists think, well, sure, evolution explains the behavior of the
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But don't you dare, Dr. Saad, apply the same principles to explain human behavior, let alone
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When I put on my hat as a consumer, my hormones don't cease to matter.
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So in a very general way, what the consuming instinct is about is how to apply biological
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thinking to understand why we do the things that we do when we put on our hats as consumers.
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Now, why did I pick juicy burgers, pornography, gift giving, and so on?
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Well, because I argue that there are four fundamental Darwinian modules that drive our behavior.
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So everything that's related to our survival instinct.
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So the juicy burger example speaks to that because we've evolved the gustatory preferences
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to prefer some juicy manifestation rather than raw celery, right?
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Patrick and I might disagree about the type of fatty foods we prefer.
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But we both probably prefer some fatty food over, you know, raw carrots, precisely because
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your ancestors and mine evolved in an environment of caloric scarcity, caloric uncertainty.
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Therefore, our taste buds have evolved to deal with that evolutionary problem.
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Pornography refers to the Sega module, which is reproduction.
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So many of the things that you and I do, and everyone else does, is precisely linked to
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the fact that we are a sexually reproducing species.
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So in the same way that the peacock's tail evolved so that he can impress the peahens into saying,
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look, despite the fact that I've got this very burdensome tail, I'm still alive.
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Well, in the human context, my Maserati becomes my peacock's tail.
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So that explains a lot of the, you know, and the reason why we're attracted to pornography
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is because it titillates our computational systems in our brain for sexual variety.
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You mean I can get on the internet now and there are 10,000 beautiful nubile women that
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Well, it's very easy for then the brain to be hijacked by this alluring visual stimulus.
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Then the other two basically refer to two other modules.
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Kin selection explain, why would I ever jump into the river to save three brothers?
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Well, the reason would be because my three brothers on average share half their genes with
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me. So if I jump into the river and save them, and even if I die, it makes perfect evolutionary
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So a lot of gift giving rituals that you and I engage in with one another, if let's say
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you're my brother, speak to that kin-based altruism.
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And then finally, reciprocal altruism refers to, well, okay, I would jump into the river to
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save my three brothers, but why would I jump into the river to save Patrick?
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I mean, my literal genetic brother, but in this case, maybe Patrick is a very good friend
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Today, he's drowning in the river, but tomorrow he might reciprocate and protect me if I come
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So what I basically argue is that much of what we do as consumers can be traced back to one
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of those four key Darwinian modules, and hence that subtitle.
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So you know, I don't know if you've heard, probably you've heard this question.
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Well, it's funny that you say this because actually there is an exact same story to the
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guy, the evolutionary scientist who was developing that framework.
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It was based on, you know, I would jump into the river to save four brothers.
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I guess I'd have to do the evolutionary calculus.
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Well, it would depend on whether you ask me this when I got married, if I'm 22 years
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Because the reproductive, sorry, it's going to sound cow.
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The reproductive benefits of saving her depends on where she is in her reproductive window.
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But the fact that you ask this exactly speaks to the type of evolutionary calculus calculations
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So it depends on what phase of your life you're in.
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And by the way, your kid carries more weight for you or less, depending on how old they
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So for example, in societies where they have practiced infanticide, infanticide is the recurring
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killing of children, they usually will kill the last born.
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Because the last born, so if I've already invested 17 years in raising a child, right?
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And they are about to enter the reproductive window of their life trajectory, then I don't
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Because, I mean, don't forget that I also extend my genes through my children having children,
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Because when my children have children, I am linked to them one quarter of their genes,
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So I could propagate my genes either directly, I have children, or by investing in my kin.
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And therefore, in cultures where you have infanticide, and typically the reason why you have infanticide
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is because you realize that you don't have the necessary resources to see them through to
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And so you make the very cold calculation of ending, if you want, their life.
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Well, you do so if they're two months old, you don't do it to a 17-year-old who's about
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So when I asked this question of other people, by the way, this was an interview question.
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So it was trying to figure out where a person stood.
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And it would many times give a cultural answer.
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Because Latinos, maybe they would choose their mom because of the connection with mom.
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You know, Americans would choose their, you know, wife.
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And you have, you know, different Asian that would choose their child because it's future.
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But it's definitely always starts a conversation about what direction to go with this.
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Forgive me for interrupting you, Patrick, because what you just said has such an implication for
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Yes, you're right that there are cultural differences.
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But underneath these cultural differences, there are some consistent human universals.
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So when a child is born, irrespective of which culture you come from, typically people will
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say, oh, my God, the child looks exactly like the father.
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And you're much more likely to say so if you are from the mother's family, because you're
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trying to convince the mother's family that she didn't stray from the relationship.
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So since you went over there, okay, infidelity men, infidelity women, you know, how does man
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respond to it differently than a woman responds to infidelity?
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So there is some fantastic research that was done back in the early 1990s, where they asked
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men and women to imagine their partner either engaging in sexual infidelity or romantic
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Romantic infidelity, your husband always has lunch with this wonderful colleague of his.
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Because men respond much more harshly to sexual infidelity.
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Women respond a lot more harshly to emotional infidelity.
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Because, again, men are responding to the threat of paternity uncertainty.
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Women are responding to the threat of you removing your investment from the relationship.
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And it turns out that it's a much bigger predictor of me packing my bags and leaving you if I develop
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an emotional bond with another woman rather than just a sexual dalliance.
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This is why men, oftentimes, in a very clumsy way, when they are caught cheating one time
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at a conference somewhere, they'll say, she meant nothing to me.
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What they are effectively doing is speaking to that evolutionary concern, which is, I could
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completely decouple my investment in you from the fact that I just had a desire for sexual
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Now, by the way, when I explain these things, oftentimes people who hate evolutionary theory
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will get upset because they think that if you explain something scientifically, this means
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And I'm, of course, doing no such thing, right?
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If you're studying cancer, that doesn't mean that you are for cancer.
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It doesn't mean that you are justifying and condoning cancer.
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So if you want to understand all sorts of ugly things that people do, you have to study
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What a thing to study, infidelity on how women respond to it versus men.
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So this is a channel, a lot of our audience, they're entrepreneurs, business owners, sales,
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Now, obviously, we've got bodybuilders, we have mob, we have politics, we have different
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things that we cover, but specifically, it's business.
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So you just said consuming instinct, what Juicy Burgers, Ferrars, pornography, and gift giving
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So a company's built their brand on having a certain set of audience.
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You know, if you got Fox News, Republicans, CNN, Democrats, MSNBC, far left, ESPN, sports,
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you know, you go to Yahoo Horoscope, certain, anyways, you go to all these different places.
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Because a company as big as Victoria's Secret, who's known who their customer is for the longest
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time, and who buys their stuff, who to appeal to, how do you view and justify a company that
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big with a CEO to say, look, we're going to go in a completely different direction.
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We're not going to have our, you know, the, what do you call it, their angels anymore that
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Now we're going to go, we're going to get activists.
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We're going to go on a complete different angle.
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How do you justify to say, yeah, they're doing the right thing.
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They're going the right direction versus saying they're about to pay a price for it.
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Well, there are going to pay, they are going to pay a price for it.
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And so one of the things that I do in my, say, when I'm teaching MBA classes and I'm doing
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all this evolutionary stuff, I want to kind of assuage the worry of my students because
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they feel as though they've wrongly fallen into the wrong class, some biology class,
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rather than some MBA course of consumer behavior.
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And I tell them, you know, be patient because it's all going to come together.
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I'm teaching you now the universal explanations for human behavior, but then I will give you
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So, and so to address your question, let me give one such example.
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So if you look at romance novels, romance novels are almost exclusively read by women all
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There is, there's not a single culture where that phenomenon is reversed.
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So if I want to study female preferences, I could look at the archetype of the male hero
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in a romance novel to see what, what is it that women fantasize about when they are consuming
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And it turns out that it's always the exact same guy.
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It's as if it's plagiarized across every single romance novel that's ever been written,
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He is a count, meaning a prince and a neurosurgeon.
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He wrestles alligators on his six pack, but he could only be tamed by the love of this one
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I just shaved, I just saved you the, the, the heartache or, or the effort of having to read
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So now let's, so that's my, my next point now is going to bring home the, the, the question
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So a few years ago, a company, I don't remember their name, uh, was a progressive company.
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They wanted to create a new line of romance novels that extricated themselves from this
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And so they created a new line where the guy, you know, is sensitive.
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The consumers in this case called women said, sorry, not interested.
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That's not what I fantasize about when I'm trying to escape in a romance novel.
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So if you do things as a company that violate fundamental tenets of human nature, the market
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has a very clever way of correcting your misconception.
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So I always tell my students, uh, ultimately a good marketer is one who understands human nature,
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So I, it took me five, I took five years to write a fiction book.
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And it's, you know, we brought a lot of consultants in.
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We went through a lot of different revisions back and forth.
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And once we got to sitting down with the publisher and the publisher said, your book has to be
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appealing to women, young adults, the audience who reads young adults, 70% are going to be
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If you can appeal to them, you're going to be able to get a book that's going to sell.
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So even the marketers, the sellers, the publishers sit there and say, yeah, we're not interested
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It's not a business model that's going to work.
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So to you, based on what you're saying right now, because here's how I process it.
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I process it as if you go read any of the old marketing books, you know, which ones I'm
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talking about, you know, there's a, uh, a Kellogg and, you know, you go through some of these
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that everyone reads at all MBA, you know, business schools, you know, you'll see certain
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approaches on how to get colors, story, marketing, pitch, all that stuff.
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But it looks like many of these companies are getting away.
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A lot of them are getting away from sex, drugs, rock and roll, you know, that whole thing.
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The sex, drugs and rock and roll still sell today.
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So for example, if I'm trying to sell beauty products, uh, putting a, for an endorser who has
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facial symmetry is going to work because facial symmetry is a marker of good phenotypic
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It means that you haven't been exposed to the method, right?
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So whether I am selling a cosmetic line in Romania or Bolivia or Nigeria, people in all
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those countries, irrespective of the race they come from, irrespective of the ethnic group
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and so on, they're all going to agree as to who is beautiful.
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I think the problem, and maybe that's what you're alluding to is that now we've been
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We've been parasitized by so much wokeism that now companies have in many cases lost
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Now it is no longer enough to provide consumers with a product that they need without harming
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Now I need to appear as though I am socially engaged, that I am fighting against social injustice.
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I don't know if you remember it, Patrick, where they were sort of down talking to all
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Well, I don't want Gillette razor company to be lecturing me and patronizing me about how
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Why don't you shut your mouth and just sell me a good razor and I'll worry about demoralizing
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So in my view, I think it's a mistake for companies to be engaging in all of this blue
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I mean, you look at so many people like, for example, when Nike announced they're going
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with Kaepernick, you know, the year and a half ago, two years ago, I don't know if you
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We're like, hey, here's the direction we're going to be going.
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And they would say, I will never buy another Nike ever again.
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And then Nike just announces, we have our biggest quarterly profits, you know.
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The marketing team knew what they were talking about.
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And folks are like, well, I guess we didn't know what we were talking about.
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So once they show the data, some people are saying it's kind of good to take a position
00:24:16.360
today versus before a lot of people played it neutral.
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But for a second, pretend that it is the cork of a wine bottle.
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In Arabic, there's an expression that says getting drunk simply by smelling the cork
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It means that I am so weak that it doesn't take me to drink the whole bottle to get drunk.
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I just need to take a whiff of the cork bottle and I'm already dizzy with drunkenness, right?
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For most people who are too imbecilic to kind of understand the greater issues, he just seems
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So these are the people who are getting drunk by the smell of the cork.
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But for most people, I think, and there's actually been a study that has tried to look
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at, does wokeism work in terms of the share, you know, does it increase the share price
00:25:16.580
And the results certainly don't support that, that being woke, becoming more blue-haired in
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your engagement doesn't lead to higher share prices.
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So yes, some people will succumb to that kind of virtue signaling, but I think most consumers
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are smart enough to understand when it's just empty, virtuous signaling.
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Is the whole idea about, you know, who cares about controversy?
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As long as people are talking about it, you're winning.
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You know, the whole thing about, you know, negative media attention is still, you know,
00:25:45.980
marketing is marketing, doesn't matter whether it's positive or negative.
00:25:51.100
I mean, yes, in the sense that we, to bring it back to evolution, we've evolved to pay
00:25:57.020
a lot more attention to negative information than to positive one.
00:26:02.060
And for obvious, you know, evolutionary adaptive reasons.
00:26:05.540
And so once you have some controversy that is laden with some negativity, even if it's false,
00:26:12.240
by the way, you've probably heard the old story about a falsehood can travel 10 times
00:26:18.040
around the world before it is, you know, corrected, well, that's, yeah, exactly.
00:26:22.700
And so, so yes, I do believe that controversy works.
00:26:26.140
By the way, I know a lot of colleagues of mine who were completely obscure in academia.
00:26:30.920
I mean, they, they were, they never published anything.
00:26:36.300
They were very, very obscure D level academics who then faced some controversy and suddenly were
00:26:45.380
And so, yes, I completely agree that controversy sells.
00:26:51.980
Well, I don't, I wouldn't put him in the D list, by the way.
00:26:56.180
We, he's the only guy we've ever had on four times.
00:26:58.640
Jordan Peterson's the only guy we've interviewed four different times.
00:27:03.660
Should I be offended that you've invited him four times before going to Dr.
00:27:08.440
Sat for the first time, one could be offended, but I should be magnanimous and not be offended.
00:27:13.440
As an evolutionary behavioral scientist today, we're going to find out if we can invite you
00:27:17.820
back for a second time, which at this pace we're going, you're definitely being invited
00:27:21.880
back, but, but you know, we had him on, we had him at an event two years ago.
00:27:26.340
I had president Bush, Kobe Bryant, Jordan Peterson, Billy being at an event with 7,000
00:27:32.880
That was exactly a month before he went away and he was kind of dealing with his own
00:27:40.080
He faces off against what the university wanted to do.
00:27:42.840
He comes out and says, this is the stand I'm taking.
00:27:44.920
Next thing, you know, he takes off, you know, look at Trump comes out and says, Hey, if
00:27:49.160
you remember the 2015, 2016, a Republican side, day one, everybody thought Scott Walker
00:27:56.380
I don't know if you remember Scott Walker, like the main Wisconsin superstar.
00:28:00.660
This is presidential Jeb Bush day one, $140 million.
00:28:04.380
Trump comes out and says, they're sending them criminals, rapists, drugs, all this other
00:28:10.360
So, you know, there's a, there's a bit of it where you're noticing that become a, even
00:28:14.700
in boxing today, look at the Paul brothers, look at Logan and Jake Paul, how they're using
00:28:19.480
controversy to bring eyeballs to themselves and how effective it is.
00:28:25.640
If I, if I may interject Patrick, I think people respect those who are not fence sitters.
00:28:31.700
I always remind people, don't be a fence sitter, right?
00:28:35.480
If I were to ask you who are the top five people that you admire most in the world, I'm willing
00:28:45.200
Whether you like Trump or not, he's not a fence sitter.
00:28:48.340
Whether you like Jordan Peterson or not, he's a principled man.
00:28:52.100
Whether you like or not got sad, I go after everything and everybody.
00:28:57.080
I don't modulate the pursuit of truth to not hurt someone's feeling.
00:29:01.000
That's why in chapter eight, and I guess we'll talk about it later in chapter eight
00:29:04.020
of my latest book, I talk about activate your inner honey badger.
00:29:08.040
Because the honey badger is an animal, the size of a small dog.
00:29:15.280
It's so ferocious that it could withstand the attack of six adult lions.
00:29:23.480
So as an evolutionary behavioral scientist, you're looking at ways we behave, respond,
00:29:31.300
marketing, a lot of the things that you covered here yourself.
00:29:33.740
And you speak to a lot of business schools, to a lot of, you know, folks who are trying
00:29:41.260
People have different kind of angles on how to take it, how not to take it.
00:29:44.640
What have you noticed being the formula great marketers have used historically?
00:29:51.700
So let me give you one that kind of continues what I was talking about earlier about understanding
00:29:57.360
If you're a social scientist, you typically believe that the human mind, we are born tabula
00:30:04.640
And it is only socialization that makes you who you are.
00:30:10.680
Well, it's because they learned it from Oprah and Elle magazine.
00:30:14.100
Why do women prefer certain types of guys?
1.00
00:30:18.900
So that perspective presumes that the mind of the consumer is infinitely malleable.
00:30:25.980
I, as the smart company, can get the consumer to want and like anything that I teach them
00:30:33.500
And I think that is a grossly incorrect position because the genes, as E.O.
00:30:39.600
Wilson, the Harvard biologist said, the genes always hold culture on a leash.
00:30:45.300
So in other words, culture can, can cause you and I to have slightly different food preferences,
00:30:51.300
but across all cultures, people prefer more rich food than raw, you know, raw celery.
00:31:00.320
So you, if you are a marketer, you always have to recognize the interplay between culture
00:31:07.840
And if you create products that are antithetical to human nature, the market will quickly let
00:31:17.980
McDonald's and all of the other companies for fast food companies that have done well
00:31:23.920
around the world, they've done well, not because they have Justin Timberlake singing
00:31:28.240
a jingle, although that certainly helps because it creates top of mind awareness, but they've
00:31:33.260
done very well because they offer something to my gustatory preferences that I don't need
00:31:39.420
I don't need to teach my young child that fatty, juicy French fries is something that they
00:31:49.520
I could give you $10 billion advertising budget to sell you grass juice at McDonald's and all
00:32:00.120
And it's never going to take off because my gustatory preferences and yours don't like
00:32:06.360
So the main lesson from anything that I teach in my MBA courses is there is no way to understand
00:32:12.560
the consumer without an understanding of the fundamental drivers that drive consumer behavior.
00:32:27.980
So how much of what I like, what you like is what you like versus what's being sold to
00:32:36.620
No matter how many skinny models I saw on Calvin Klein, I was never turned on by them.
00:32:42.720
So I saw me, this is what you're supposed to look like, like a Zoolander looking.
0.97
00:32:47.040
You're, you know, looking like it never did nothing to me.
00:32:50.100
I was almost like, can I get you a double Whopper right now?
00:32:54.440
Please eat some pizza and put some weight on your 95 pounds.
00:32:59.800
If I even touch you, like I'm worried about touching you here.
00:33:02.300
So how much of it is us believing in the dream that's being sold from media, from politicians,
00:33:11.380
from our clergy, from our parents, where, you know, kids, parents tell them, you know,
00:33:16.340
a good man is somebody who believes in God and lives a godly life.
00:33:19.840
A good man is somebody that takes care of themselves.
00:33:23.340
Honey, you have to look sexy, put on the right makeup, or, you know, you got to go serve the
0.99
00:33:27.400
military because it's this, you got to have, you got to work hard.
00:33:31.540
All these things that we go through, organized, clean, athlete.
00:33:36.580
I'm going to go be a football player to make him proud.
00:33:38.960
How much of it is the marketing being done around us by media, TV, parents, military,
00:33:45.980
So if I were to rephrase your question, I would say you're, in a sense, if I distill
00:33:52.360
it, it's you're asking about the nature versus nurture issue, right?
00:33:55.660
How much of who we are is due to nature, genes?
00:33:58.260
How much of it is due to nurture, you know, all the things that you mentioned?
00:34:02.400
Well, and the best way for me to answer that, I'm not trying to do a cop-out answer.
00:34:11.680
So if you take all of the ingredients of a cake, you take the butter, you take the eggs,
00:34:23.240
Once I bake the cake, and now I show you the final cake, if I were to tell you, Patrick,
00:34:35.120
We are an inextricable melange, mix of our genes and our environments.
00:34:40.260
Now, depending on the phenomenon you ask me about, it might tilt more towards nature or
00:34:45.760
My height is driven a lot more by my nature than my nurture.
00:34:50.020
No amount of hugging and coddling by my parents would have turned me into a six foot six basketball
00:34:56.300
So the best answer I can give you is it depends.
00:35:03.020
Some are largely due to nurture, but most are somewhere in the middle.
00:35:06.800
I hope that I've given you a satisfactory answer.
00:35:11.660
And I know that answer, and I've kind of a word, the nature, and we'll debate that all
00:35:21.920
So for example, I sit there and I market the idea of being gay and lesbian to you.
00:35:34.400
On TV, it was getting, I don't know, 0.2% of TV or media was showing what a gay character
00:35:44.980
is or commercials having gay, lesbian, all that stuff, right?
00:35:48.880
And today, it's widely accepted, left and right.
00:35:51.520
It's no longer like a thing where Trump was asked on his campaign, hey, so what do you think
00:36:01.820
No one's debating it anymore, except from the far extreme conservatives, you know, more
00:36:06.700
clergy based, you know, faith based Republicans.
00:36:09.860
But if I, if I increase that from 0.1% to 1% to 2% to 5% of coverage on TV to 10% and it's
00:36:17.300
now my face, does it influence me as a kid thinking, you know, maybe I am gay, maybe I
00:36:22.740
am lesbian, maybe I, does it influence that at all?
00:36:25.840
So I think what it would do if we, if we take that specific example you're giving, what
00:36:30.720
the changes in culture will do is that it might normalize the existence of homosexuality such
1.00
00:36:42.440
So through those interventions, we change the cultural norms that allow us to now view same
00:36:52.300
I can just, you know, without batting an eye, but it's not going to affect my underlying
00:37:02.080
But interestingly, by the way, a lot of the activists, now look, look how silly this can
00:37:05.820
A lot of the activists will argue that heterosexuality is learned, whereas homosexuality is innate.
00:37:17.620
So you would think that for a sexually reproducing species, the default value would be heterosexuality,
00:37:24.380
but apparently I'm just a dumb evolutionary behavioral scientist.
00:37:29.720
I, this literally just came up while I'm talking to you.
00:37:32.980
So let me try to share screen and just kind of show this to you.
00:37:38.740
So Gallup shows, let me know if you can see it.
00:37:43.680
So Gallup shows that since 2012 till today, American self-identification as LGBT went from
00:37:53.520
three and a half percent to three, six, three, seven, three, nine.
00:37:56.420
Now 5.6% identify as LGBT up 2% from just eight years ago to 2020.
00:38:04.100
So in Gallup is pretty center, you know, it's not left or it's right.
00:38:08.880
Where, you know, like, for example, maybe I'll take a different angle with this.
00:38:21.480
They wanted me to talk specifically on the marketing side.
00:38:24.920
Hey, why is, you know, money being given to churches down?
00:38:28.680
Christian non-denomination, not necessarily on the denominator, specifically non-denomination.
00:38:34.100
You know, these young people just don't get it anymore.
00:38:40.620
So if you go to Mormon's YouTube channel, Mormonism is up.
0.57
00:38:49.220
What are you guys doing that you weren't doing before?
00:39:04.520
Thomas Jefferson had an element of debating the existence of God.
00:39:09.240
I'm not sitting here telling you everybody always believed in God, but you'll hear a lot
00:39:25.060
Is that because we're smarter or is that because the people on TV and social talking about that
00:39:31.860
God doesn't exist has increased the percentage of that message being given where people are
00:39:35.440
starting to say, you know what, maybe you're right.
00:39:39.180
I'm trying to see how much of that's being influenced from media.
00:39:41.880
I think it's several factors, whether it be the LGBTQ data that you shared from Gallup or
00:39:47.960
whether it be the atheism example that you gave.
00:39:49.940
So one possibility is by creating a, quote, safer environment for someone to truly identify
00:39:58.420
as an atheist when in the past it was difficult for me to do so or to truly identify as a member
00:40:04.260
of the LGBTQ community, whereas earlier I would have been ostracized by my family and kicked
00:40:09.300
out of my small town in the southern USA, then those patterns go up, not so much because
00:40:15.560
there are now more LGBTQ people, but because people are more comfortable admitting to
00:40:22.120
But there's a slightly more, I mean, not sinister, but, you know, less clear example.
00:40:34.700
She wrote a book where she basically argued that the increase in transgender young women,
0.95
00:40:42.700
so biological women who now self-identify as male, is akin to a social contagion, right?
0.86
00:40:51.340
In other words, in the same way that a contagion can spread, ideas also spread.
00:40:56.220
And so for whatever reason, it becomes intoxicating to be a member of that identifiable group.
00:41:02.640
So the next question you can ask me, well, why would anybody ever want to self-identify as
00:41:08.700
a member of a marginalized group, like the LGBTQ folks, people?
00:41:13.180
And here, actually, I'm going ahead to my latest book.
00:41:17.000
I actually explained this using something called a psychiatric disorder called Munchausen
00:41:22.240
Can I take a minute or two to explain what that is?
00:41:24.320
So in 2010, I had written a scientific paper in a medical journal on Munchausen syndrome,
00:41:31.340
which is the mechanism whereby someone feigns a illness so that they can garner the empathy
00:41:38.320
and sympathy that comes with having that illness.
00:41:41.060
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is even more diabolical because this is when you have someone under your
00:41:46.460
care, your elderly parent, your pet, or typically your biological child, you harm them.
00:41:53.040
You physically harm them so that you can then garner the empathy and sympathy by proxy.
00:42:01.140
So I was trying to understand the evolutionary reason why biological mothers would harm their
0.60
00:42:08.860
So now I'm going to tie it in with that social contagion that I just talked about.
00:42:13.020
Well, to the extent that it now becomes a form of victimhood to be a member of a marginalized
00:42:19.420
group, I can get my ego strokes, my empathy and sympathy by being a member of that group.
00:42:26.760
Now, as you might imagine, Abigail Schreier got into a lot of trouble because, quote, she
1.00
00:42:33.200
was erasing the voices of those transgendered kids.
00:42:36.580
Now, she wasn't saying that transgenderism doesn't exist.
00:42:39.800
She wasn't saying that we should be bigoted towards transgenderism.
00:42:42.520
She was simply saying that for some of the people, they aren't truly transgendered.
00:42:48.220
They are simply succumbing to a social contagion.
00:42:50.540
So to go back, to finalize with your Gallup poll, I suspect that some of that uptake is
00:42:58.340
So the irreversible damage is the one I think you're talking about.
00:43:04.100
Let's go even deeper with that on what you're saying.
00:43:09.760
So I love women like I can't have enough of them.
1.00
00:43:13.740
Like I was like, you know, I was greedy, extremely greedy.
00:43:19.100
I wanted to experience everything and anything I could.
00:43:22.340
One day, one of the guys at our unit says, I found the sickest club, but I can't tell
00:43:26.960
everybody about it because we could all be kicked out of the army if they find out what
00:43:33.560
But I'm telling you, it's the best club in America.
00:43:39.120
No one's going to put the best club in Nashville, Tennessee.
00:43:41.620
I'm telling you, it's the best club in Nashville, Tennessee.
00:43:47.140
So at this point of the game, thank God I trust this guy because he was my workout partner.
00:43:51.860
So I asked him, I said, listen, I mean, I partied with you.
00:43:56.080
I don't like men, but you got to go here with me.
00:44:05.020
Now, two of our friends, by the way, all of them till today.
00:44:12.340
First of all, women are there with the intention of they don't want to be flirted.
1.00
00:44:17.420
So they're kind of going, they're saying, oh, the gay men, I love gay men because they're
00:44:27.700
But we go in and obviously it was exactly what he said.
00:44:33.980
It's like the movie, Wedding Crasher, where the scene where Owen Wilson goes to meet Will
00:44:41.940
He says, man, I'm not going to weddings anymore.
00:44:46.260
It's like, it's not even fair because you know, all this stuff.
00:44:53.120
It's funny, but one of my friends, a guy comes and flirts with them.
00:45:03.840
But one of the guys comes and tells one of our friends and he says, so you like men?
00:45:15.560
And I got to tell you this question of how do you know, confuse the living crap out of
00:45:46.500
This guy experienced just to find out if he knows or not.
00:45:49.960
That's what he had a gay encounter just to answer that question.
00:45:54.100
Just to answer that question, whether he did or not.
00:45:57.680
So the part I'm going to you with this, obviously, there's humor behind the story, but it wasn't
00:46:03.820
I just remember being hammered and we're cracking up about it.
00:46:06.960
But the point I'm trying to make to you is, if media and TV, social, if they have this
00:46:12.820
much power, if they just put it in your mind to say, how do you know cocaine isn't good
00:46:35.220
That's what I mean when I say the marketing today, the amount of influence they have.
00:46:38.720
Is it really changing the way we're wired because we're questioning stuff about ourselves
00:46:50.240
Now, in the case of your friend, maybe he had some questions that he needed answered.
00:46:55.260
But I think that if you were to ask 100 men who are avowed heterosexuals, how do you
00:47:03.580
know you don't want to get sodomized by a Turkish hairy guy?
1.00
00:47:08.560
They'll say, well, because I don't fantasize about that.
00:47:11.140
Basically, my entire internal life of fantasy has been rooted in fantasizing over Beyonce
00:47:17.800
and not about a Turkish hairy guy sodomizing me.
00:47:22.880
And I don't think any marketing guy is going to convince me to go to a gay sauna and have
1.00
00:47:32.140
But I will mention something that is scientifically interesting to what you asked.
00:47:40.640
And it's actually, it's a real term whereby, so if you look at women, they're much more
1.00
00:47:49.020
So for example, a woman could be completely committed to being a heterosexual woman.
00:47:55.760
But you know, in that dorm at Wellesley on that cold evening night when my girlfriend and
00:48:02.540
I were really tight and we started wrestling, a little lesbian session broke out.
1.00
00:48:06.500
Now, I say that, you know, in a jocular manner.
00:48:08.760
But women have the capacity to be a lot more fluid in their sexuality whilst completely being,
1.00
00:48:23.180
And the data, the scientific data suggests that very few men wake up on a Tuesday and
00:48:27.940
say, today, I have to kind of think inside, do I want to be clobbered by Shaquille O'Neal
00:48:40.480
Maybe your friend was one of those, but he's a unicorn.
00:48:43.720
I hope he doesn't see this interview because he's going to be upset with me.
00:48:47.420
But we didn't mention his name, so we don't know.
00:48:51.520
Let's call him Jackson is what we're going to call him.
00:48:58.360
Whether you're going to wake up in the morning with a fantasy about getting clobbered by Shaq.
0.99
00:49:01.860
I can't see that happening with you, but let's just see somebody does wake up.
00:49:15.800
I'm going to try to take out of my head today, guy.
00:49:17.820
That's not a visual I want to have with a evolutionary behavioral scientist hooking up with Shaq.
1.00
00:49:25.120
Let's go to a whole different place, but specifically to that topic.
00:49:28.680
So, let's get away from the gay and how do you know, right?
1.00
00:49:32.820
Let's go to the same phrase being repeated a billion times until you're like, you know what?
00:50:00.860
So, 1960, 64% of African-Americans are voting Republican.
00:50:08.720
1964, 92% of African-Americans are voting Democrat.
00:50:15.580
1960, 64% of African-Americans are voting Democrat.
00:50:25.320
Fast forward four years later, Barry Goldwater, 1964, 92% is voting Democrat.
00:50:32.460
It went from 64% to 92% in the span of four years, right?
00:50:36.940
So, the messaging, and today, by the way, the numbers are at around 88%, 84% to 88%.
00:50:43.220
Trump, it was a little bit lower, but you're still at around the mid-80% range that we have
00:50:46.440
So, you hear the phrase, Democrats or Republicans, Democrats are for Blacks, Democrats are for
0.95
00:50:51.980
Blacks, Democrats are for Blacks, Democrats are for Blacks, Democrats are for Blacks.
0.99
00:50:59.340
The rich Republicans' country clubs didn't allow Jews on, right?
00:51:03.480
No Italian, no Jews, no, you know, you've seen that sign before, right?
0.98
00:51:06.980
So, Jews, so powerful, they make so much money.
0.99
00:51:10.400
Democrats, most of their beliefs is conservative, but why are they Democrats?
00:51:14.320
Because Democrats are for Jews, Democrats are for Jews, Democrats are for Jews, Democrats.
0.96
00:51:22.340
No, this is, so my mom, one day I'm talking to her, and I say, Mom, you know, everybody
00:51:26.360
in school is talking about Democrats and Republicans.
00:51:31.360
You know, one day you're going to read the book Karl Marx.
00:51:33.540
We're Democrats, is what we are, because Democrats are for the poor.
00:51:39.640
I said, I want to be a Republican one day, Mom, because I want to be rich.
00:51:47.460
How much does messaging, repeating it over and over and over and over and over again,
00:51:54.440
get me to flip to a different side, whether I look at somebody in a good way, a bad way,
00:51:59.360
Yeah, well, repetition, as a matter of fact, I've done research on what's called advertising
00:52:08.360
But by the way, even for repetition effects, there is an inflection point.
00:52:12.120
In other words, repeating a message many times is great up to a point, but then you repeat
00:52:17.280
it beyond that point, it could backfire against you, right?
00:52:24.280
That repetition is one of the central tools in the arsenal of weaponry that marketers will
00:52:29.600
Now, let me give you a somewhat fancier cognitive psychology explanation for why people succumb
00:52:37.200
So there is a German psychologist by the name of Gerd Gigerenzer who developed a research
00:52:50.120
It's a decision rule that you could deploy rapidly.
00:52:55.260
A fast heuristic is one that you could deploy very, very quickly, and it's frugal in that
00:53:04.220
So let me give an example of a fast and frugal heuristic in your wheelhouse of investment
00:53:09.920
So there is something called the recognition heuristic, which basically goes as follows.
00:53:16.540
So if I give you two investment portfolios or an investment portfolio made up of a bunch
00:53:21.620
of companies, some of the companies I recognize, I recognize Coca-Cola, I recognize Ford, but
00:53:28.340
So one group of people are going to implement the following investment strategy, a fast and
00:53:35.020
Simply choose to invest in stocks of companies that you recognize.
00:53:44.620
The other one is use all sorts of mathematical modeling from PhDs in mathematics from Princeton
00:53:51.000
to come up with the optimal investment diversified strategy.
00:53:56.500
The simple fast and frugal heuristic performs just as well as the fancy one.
00:54:02.060
In other words, there are evolutionary reasons when simply deploying a fast and frugal heuristic
00:54:08.020
So now let's link it back to the repetition stuff.
00:54:11.040
Most people are cognitive misers, meaning that they are intellectually lazy.
00:54:15.220
I don't want to spend all my time knowing whether Islam is peaceful or not.
1.00
00:54:19.380
If Barack Obama tells me enough times that Islam is peaceful, then I will simply use that as
1.00
00:54:25.900
a shortcut and then it will make my world much simpler.
00:54:30.200
So there is a cognitive enticement for me to simply be swayed by a repetitive message.
00:54:39.960
Because if I don't do that, I'm going to have to do the heavy lifting of actually going
00:54:46.820
So for example, if I want to truly find out whether historically the Democrats were the
00:54:52.680
racist ones or not, well, that's going to have to force me to actually do some work,
00:55:00.180
Why don't I just believe Uncle Joe Biden who tells me that, no, it's the Republicans that
00:55:08.100
So I think that instinct of succumbing to repetition stems from the fact that most people are
00:55:15.880
By the way, the answer that I just gave not only guaranteed that I will be invited again
00:55:20.500
on your show, it has guaranteed that I will be the number one most invited guest on your
00:55:28.840
I got to tell you, your level of humility is on a whole different level.
00:55:32.280
I mean, it's just, it's like a number one most humble guy of all time.
00:55:39.200
And I wouldn't, I don't think that necessarily helps at the highest level when you want to
00:55:45.640
You know, we were having a debate, friends, family, we're sitting there and this is the
00:55:48.940
question I'm asking, you know, it's the question is, uh, you know, oh, things are changing
00:55:56.160
You know, it's just, oh my gosh, we've never had a, like this before.
00:56:01.780
Have quiet, rich people who make their money, create jobs and take care of people.
00:56:08.660
Have con artists, rich people who abuse people, take advantage of people.
00:56:15.440
Have lazy people who want to be entitled to your wealth and tell you how unfair it is on
00:56:24.360
Have people who always, you know, look at themselves as the, you know, you don't even
00:56:30.260
understand what kind of, and they use guilt or, you know, if you only knew how hard my
00:56:36.940
They're always looking for a reason why they're not, have they always been around?
00:56:39.900
Have people who sit in the middle and I say, I don't know, I kind of agree with both
00:56:43.320
I don't know if I fully agree that I don't know, but you know what, you kind of make
00:56:46.280
Have the people in the middle always been around?
00:56:55.160
Are we really behaviorally changing that dramatically today versus a hundred years ago, 200 years
00:57:03.100
So, well, it depends on which phenomenon you're speaking of.
00:57:06.220
I mean, on some things, of course, there is a social evolution that happens where, you
00:57:12.980
know, I used to, I mean, I'm speaking generically, I've never smoked, but, you know, I used to
00:57:17.540
think that smoking was okay because the pharmaceutical companies told me that it's
00:57:22.780
But then I learned through epidemiology that it's actually not true.
00:57:27.580
So, so it's, so there are some things that are impervious to change.
00:57:31.760
The fact that you and I, and probably every other man who's ever lived prefers a woman
00:57:36.620
who has an hourglass figure to a woman who is like the one you mentioned, the heroin chic,
1.00
00:57:41.680
the 90 pound woman, or, you know, or there is no culture where men repeatedly prefer women
1.00
00:57:47.560
that look like male Olympic swimmers with broad shoulders and narrow waist.
00:57:54.060
No amount of marketing is ever going to alter that because that is such an indelible part
00:57:59.020
of what makes me a human that you're not, no persuasion is ever going to change that.
00:58:06.260
Who could have foreseen the types of intoxicating addictive power that social media has on our
00:58:13.680
Today, it's probably harder for me to get my kids to pry the cell phone away from my
00:58:23.660
It's impossible to get them to get off the social media.
00:58:30.080
And I guess that's exactly what an evolutionary behavioral scientist does.
00:58:32.900
He tries to, he or she tries to study those things that are interacting with the environment
00:58:37.720
versus those things that are an indelible part of our human nature.
00:58:45.200
And by the way, just, just to clarify, when I do all that bombastic, grandiose stuff, I
00:58:54.300
Listen, just from talking, but you're the kind of guy I would want to go to dinner and,
00:58:58.760
you know, debate topics, talk topics, go deeper.
00:59:02.500
You're the person I wants to be friends with and just have dinner with you.
00:59:08.260
You would, you would see who you would get along.
00:59:10.020
We're like, it's just a guy I want to be friends with you.
00:59:11.760
This, this is the kind of person you want to have in your life.
00:59:15.980
By the way, what you just said means a lot to me and it's very sweet.
00:59:20.080
I tell people, so I receive, as you might imagine, you know, tons of fan mail and all
00:59:25.480
The ones that mean the most to me or some of the ones that mean the most are precisely
00:59:30.820
The guy who is the Navy SEAL, the guy who is the special forces who says, you know what?
00:59:36.900
We want, we would have wanted you to be with us.
00:59:39.100
And I don't know, maybe it's the machismo part, but I'm like, I want to hear from that
00:59:43.300
guy, not from the Stanford professor smoking the pipe.
00:59:50.220
It's about being in the trenches with guys that are cool, that have your back.
00:59:55.120
And now maybe, by the way, that comes from the fact that I was also a very competitive
01:00:00.260
So when you're a competitive soccer player, you can't get offended by every word that
01:00:07.520
You don't wilt away because someone trash talks you.
01:00:10.660
And so maybe there's also that element that allows probably someone like you and I to get
01:00:16.580
I was having a conversation with these two guys who were trying to troll me.
01:00:20.460
And I told the guys, is that really the best you got?
01:00:22.800
I said, do you realize if you were in the army, the guys at my unit would destroy you
01:00:28.880
You would emotionally be hiding in a closet for the rest of your life.
01:00:32.020
You guys got to pick up your trolling game because you don't have it.
01:00:37.240
So The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.
01:00:42.220
What infectious ideas today do you feel are creating a lot of momentum and why?
01:00:51.220
So let me kind of give you the back, the elevator story of the book, and then I will answer
01:00:58.000
So I argue that contrary to the current pandemic that we're facing with COVID, we've faced another
01:01:06.760
And in this case, the virus is not a biological virus.
01:01:11.180
That's why I call these idea pathogens or parasitic ideas.
01:01:16.220
So if we're trying to find out where the COVID virus came from, we're not allowed to say because
01:01:21.620
to say where it comes from would be racist, of course.
01:01:29.060
In other words, as I always remind people, it takes intellectuals and professors to come
01:01:34.440
So now I'm going to answer your, so what I do in the book basically is I talk about all
01:01:38.400
these idea pathogens, where they originate from, what downstream effects they have had
01:01:44.160
on society, and then how we can vaccinate ourselves against these bad ideas.
01:01:48.860
So now I answer the question of what are some examples of these idea pathogens?
01:01:53.340
So probably the granddaddy of all idea pathogens, Patrick, is what's called postmodernism.
01:01:59.120
So postmodernism is a framework that developed in the university environment, which basically
01:02:10.460
We are completely shackled by personal biases, by our subjectivity, by relativism.
01:02:17.940
So to speak of a universal truth is silly because there are no such truths.
01:02:21.920
Now, you could imagine how that's a complete form of intellectual terrorism because scientists
01:02:27.500
do wake up every day thinking that there is a truth to be discovered out there, right?
01:02:33.420
What was true 300 years ago may no longer be true today.
01:02:37.400
We update what we consider to be true, but we do operate every day under the premise that
01:02:41.780
there is something to be discoverable in the world.
01:02:44.120
There are natural phenomenon that are universally true.
01:02:47.440
If I throw you from a building 50 times, gravity is going to have the exact same effect 50
01:02:53.460
So postmodernism is a deeply flawed and nihilistic framework because it actually takes you down
01:03:07.440
You can't understand consumer choice using postmodernism.
01:03:11.060
And so it creates a form of chaos when students are taught all of this nonsense.
01:03:18.420
Here, I'll give you one or two other idea packages.
01:03:21.040
And then if you want to hear more, I'll tell you more.
01:03:23.460
Social constructivism is another idea pathogen.
01:03:26.000
It purports that we are all born with empty minds with equal potentiality, and it's only
01:03:33.420
So Michael Jordan didn't start off his lot in life with an advantage over Patrick.
01:03:39.240
It's only because mama hugged him enough or didn't hug him enough that he became the NBA
01:03:46.400
Because it basically argues that any of our children could be the next Einstein or the
01:03:50.820
next Lionel Messi, but it is perfectly rooted in bullshit.
01:03:54.100
So each of these idea pathogens that I described, I argue they start off with a noble cause,
01:04:00.980
but then they metamorphosize into the murder of truth in the pursuit of that original noble
01:04:09.980
So, you know, what is your biggest concern outside?
01:04:13.420
I mean, obviously postmodernism, all these others, but what is your biggest concern with
01:04:17.320
the side effects of what critical race theory could do to us in the next 12, 24, 36 months?
01:04:23.960
Yes, so critical race theory stems from one of the idea pathogens that I discuss in the book.
01:04:30.340
So identity politics, the idea that I am first a member of a group before I am an individual,
01:04:41.960
I present myself on Patrick's show, not as a representative of Lebanese Jews.
01:04:46.500
I present myself as God sad with all my flaws and all my merits.
01:04:50.780
And I ask you to judge me based on my unique personhood.
01:04:57.980
It says you are a member of the LGBT community or the Muslim community or the black community
01:05:07.020
Now, I escaped the society that is a perfect manifestation of how you organize a society
01:05:16.320
Lebanon, everything is viewed through the prism of your religious tribe, right?
01:05:21.540
As a matter of fact, in Lebanon, there's an Arabic word in, well, in Lebanese that says
01:05:26.800
Hawiyeh means your internal passport, your internal ID card, so that if the cop stops you, you show
01:05:34.320
Well, the most conspicuous thing that you see on the ID is which religion you belong to,
01:05:41.420
The constitution of Lebanon is organized along religious lines.
01:05:50.840
This is the number of seats this religion gets in the parliament.
01:05:54.220
So everything is viewed through the prism of identity political line.
01:06:03.960
So everywhere where you create these tribal factions, they might coexist for a while, but
01:06:11.040
eventually the stressor of this political allegiance to different groups will start causing mayhem
01:06:19.920
So what worries me the most is that the West is losing the belt of protection that it had
01:06:27.260
because of its very liberating and enlightened values, each of these are now being trashed
01:06:33.880
by all the idea pathogens that I describe in the book.
01:06:36.380
So in 10, 20, 50 years, if we continue along the same lines, we will have a repeat from the
01:06:44.460
So you, you, you asked a couple of questions at the beginning, you said, what is the number
01:06:50.580
one reason why a man becomes a, what did you say?
01:06:54.720
Well, the man becomes a children is because he had a stepfather, right?
01:07:00.080
That's the one you're talking about because a stepfather always treats his biological sons,
01:07:06.880
And he said, the second reason why does a women end up becoming it all because a long-term
1.00
01:07:11.480
relationship with the man that they had in their lives, because men, you know, the jealousy
01:07:15.700
of women cheating on him and fidelity, et cetera, et cetera.
01:07:18.840
So man, you know, what is the ultimate thing man is willing to fight for?
01:07:26.600
I've read a lot of books on the topic where you think about, Hey, when you start a new country,
01:07:32.220
what do you need to have in the country to attract the best families to come on board?
01:07:36.620
You have to think about what a mother thinks about every morning she wakes up, which is what
01:07:42.660
And then, you know, the creativity of man, what does creativity man need?
01:07:46.420
What do you think is the number one thing man is willing to put their lives on the line
01:07:51.300
that eventually they're going to be like, listen, man, you've crossed the line.
01:07:56.360
You're going to have to kill me to take this away from you.
01:07:59.740
So I actually discussed this in chapter one of the parasitic mind, where I'm trying to explain
01:08:04.540
what are the two life ideals that shape every trajectory in my life?
01:08:10.760
And I came up with two, which answer your question.
01:08:18.960
And you can't have freedom if you're constantly murdering truth.
01:08:23.120
So they're kind of, they, they, it's a feedback loop between these two.
01:08:26.680
Now, freedom to me means many different things.
01:08:28.960
It's not just, you know, freedom of speech, which of course is fundamentally the most important,
01:08:33.360
right. But, you know, I tried to look at decisions that I've made in my life that speak to freedom
01:08:39.880
in completely different domains. So let me give you another example. When I used to be a competitive
01:08:44.020
soccer player, I played what's called the playmaker role. In other words, I would float around the
01:08:49.920
field looking for spaces to try to, you know, be creative. Now, if a coach came along and told me
01:08:56.960
today, you're playing more on the left side of midfield, you have to track back and cover.
01:09:01.000
So you are restricting my freedom. I, it's as if you had decapitated my head. I lost all my creative
01:09:07.520
juice. So for me, so to answer your question in a very sort of existential way, the most fundamental
01:09:13.600
thing that people fight for is for freedom, right? I mean, and security is ultimately linked to freedom.
01:09:19.320
If I don't have the freedom to walk outside in New York city without having a stray bullet, kill
01:09:24.580
me. That's not very good. So freedom is everything. The rest is details. Yeah. I'm kind of with you
01:09:31.180
there. So right now, if freedom is everything and you are being pushed today, the other day, I, we make
01:09:39.900
a video on our podcast. We talk about an athlete that gave his opinions on a health matter and Hey, whether
01:09:46.420
I want to do this or not a decision, I don't want to take. We wrote it. We read it. What he said
01:09:50.820
that video was flagged. It got a strike channel was shut down for a week and then channel came back a
01:09:57.620
week later. Right. And we haven't had a lot of strikes with our channel. Our channel was clear
01:10:01.280
monetized the whole nine. We followed the rules that they have, but it makes you kind of sit there
01:10:06.240
and you're like, Oh, I don't know if I want to touch this. Just like last week, I was at Rudy Giuliani's
01:10:11.640
place all day. We interviewed him four hours. If the interview goes live, this is going to get
01:10:17.980
millions on top of millions of views because what some of the things he said, my attorneys are saying
01:10:22.620
don't put it up because there's likely if something's going to happen to your channel, if you put up
01:10:27.080
that specific topic, what he said about that thing that he revealed to everybody, that's going to be
01:10:31.880
controversial. Is it good idea that, is it a good idea that we're going in the direction where we have
01:10:36.900
to wake up every morning saying, I don't know, because some people are giving the argument from the
01:10:41.120
other side, well, it's not, you know, fact checking. It's not good. If it's not true, if it's not this
01:10:45.540
and how do you know this? And it's not, it makes people think it gives people ideas. How dangerous is
01:10:50.260
the direction we're going with censorship? I think what the example you gave is exactly the right point
01:10:57.100
to make, because oftentimes what people say is, well, it's not the government that's stopping you. So this
01:11:02.540
has nothing to do with freedom of speech because in their imbecilic myopic way, they think that the
01:11:08.900
attack on freedom only comes from the government. Well, you just gave an example that had nothing
01:11:14.080
to do with the government. You have a unbelievably successful YouTube channel. I checked it, 3 million.
01:11:20.360
My God, I only dream of having such a reach. Congratulations. Thank you. You've worked hard.
01:11:25.560
You've done the right things to be an engaging person, to have great guests. Now you have to think
01:11:31.500
twice. Do I want to lose all that? So what will you do? You'll do self-censorship, right?
01:11:35.920
So when the kid in class wants to say something that's positive about Trump, he has to decide,
01:11:43.240
should I say it? In which case the professor might grade me down in my grade. By the way,
01:11:48.980
in The Parasitic Mind, I publish anonymously several bits of letters that I receive from people,
01:11:56.520
from students, from professors, from parents of students, one of which was exactly this case,
01:12:00.680
which is a student had worked on a scientific paper for a while with his supervisor. The supervisor
01:12:06.360
found out that the student had said something mildly positive about Trump. He takes his name
01:12:12.820
off the paper. So this wasn't the government stopping you from speaking. The greatest danger
01:12:18.760
comes from creating a society where we will do the bidding of our attack of freedom of speech.
01:12:25.920
We self-censor, right? Now I happen to be someone who, for better or worse, I'm a honey badger. So
01:12:32.000
I never modulate my, and believe me, I've had, I used to get so many death threats that when I would
01:12:38.900
go to campus, I had to be accompanied by security. The university came with me to the Montreal police
01:12:46.860
to file a report because, and I had to bring a whole dossier with all the death threats. So there are
01:12:51.980
many costs you have to bear, irrespective of whether it's the government that's infringing
01:12:57.380
your freedom of speech. So I really get upset when people say, well, so what if YouTube demonetizes
01:13:02.900
you? That's not the government. That's not an infringement of freedom of speech. Well, no,
01:13:06.280
because the next time that I want to put something on COVID, I'm going to think twice as to whether I'm
01:13:11.300
going to say what I feel or not. So I completely agree with you. What you felt is exactly the type of
01:13:19.520
problem that we need to redress so that we can truly have a free and flourishing society.
01:13:25.480
Here's what I believe in. I believe the bully doesn't win long-term. I believe the bully creates
01:13:30.220
a bigger bully that whoops his ass in ways that it hurts him for many, many years to come.
0.92
01:13:35.440
That's what I believe in. Because, you know, when, when I sit with a lot of investment bankers,
01:13:43.220
who invest into different companies that I have. Okay. I was with one yesterday in Fort Worth,
01:13:47.200
and they manage around $28 billion, eight billionaires' money, $28 billion, one deal we're
01:13:52.160
doing, they're looking at investing with me. So I sit with them. And 90% of the conversation,
01:13:58.700
I crushed it. 10% of it, I'm like, wow, those questions I didn't have an answer for. I got to
01:14:05.180
work on that, right? Now, 10 years ago, when I sat with guys like this, 10% of it, I crushed it.
01:14:11.460
So I, you know, the other 90%, I had no clue what I was talking about. And it didn't lead to a lot of
0.56
01:14:17.560
business. So you get better over time. But what happens is when you bully, and you only want to
01:14:23.880
impose one way of thinking to an audience who has other ideas, you make their arguments stronger,
01:14:30.860
because they get to pick apart every single one of your argument. And then when they get the voice
01:14:36.240
back, when they get the mic back, that's not a pretty sight when they get the mic back. So I
01:14:41.820
believe that the fighters show up. I believe in the sheepdogs. I believe in the guys that eventually
01:14:47.740
wake up and say, yeah, that's kind of enough of you bullying. Let's kind of really show you who the
01:14:51.740
real bullies are. It's the guys that sit around quietly who bully bullies. And we're very good at
01:14:56.420
it. It's time to give that mic back. And you can still have a mic, but you cannot bully people moving
01:15:00.560
forward. You can give your ideas, but it's no longer being forced on. So I'm optimistic that what
01:15:05.260
happens long term is we're going to be taken care of. Are you in the same belief that that's
01:15:11.420
eventually going to be taking place? I do. So if you're asking me, am I optimistic that we'll be
01:15:15.900
able to address all these problems? I am. Otherwise, I wouldn't wake up in the morning with vigor and with
01:15:20.960
a smile on my face and with hope. You'd be thinking about Shaq when you woke up in the morning.
01:15:24.440
We don't want that. By the way, I love that you mentioned sheepdogs, because we're a family with
01:15:30.400
Belgian shepherds. So I don't know. I mean, you were a military guy. All of the commandos all have
01:15:35.040
Belgian shepherds. But we've had Belgian shepherds before. It was cool to be Belgian shepherds.
01:15:38.800
And let me tell you, I would rather walk into a tough neighborhood with a couple of Belgian
1.00
01:15:43.200
shepherds than with, you know, loaded with guns. I mean, these guys are so fierce. It's unbelievable.
01:15:47.420
But OK, coming back to your question, I am hopeful that there will be an autocorrective process where
01:15:54.400
those who are being bullied are going to rise up. The silent majority will speak out. But here's the
01:15:59.500
problem. We can either solve it today peacefully through dialogue, through the battle of ideas,
01:16:06.220
or we could solve it down the road in a much more violent way. So to go back to critical race theory
01:16:12.480
that you mentioned earlier, you know, people are not going to sit quietly forever as their children
01:16:19.540
are being taught in school that they suffer from dermatological original sin, as I call it,
01:16:26.220
because their skin you is white. Right. So we've we've taken the old racism against black people,
01:16:31.100
which was reprehensible then. And we've cloaked it in the robe of progressivism today, where it is
01:16:37.260
perfectly OK to be unbelievably racist to white children because, you know, bruh, systemic racism.
01:16:44.820
OK, so good, peaceful white people are one day going to wake up and say, I've had enough. Now,
0.82
01:16:52.640
do you want them to wake up peacefully by attending the parent teacher meetings or do you want them to
01:16:58.320
wake up in 40 years and be a lot more violent? The choice is yours. That's why I constantly get
01:17:02.860
engaged because I don't want to see violence. I want to see us defeating those other idiots in the
01:17:07.600
battle of ideas. Here's the challenge with that, though. The challenge with that is that most people
01:17:12.740
who are in power believe they will have their power a lot longer than they usually do. They don't
01:17:20.260
realize that you're eventually going to lose your power. It's just it's not permanent. Right.
01:17:24.700
Sonny Francis, who is the father of Michael Francis, a an infamous gangster who just died a year and a
01:17:33.460
half ago at the age of 104. And he goes way back. Sonny Francis feared, feared gangster back in the
01:17:39.560
days. He told his son something once. He said, listen, be very respectful to even the smallest,
01:17:46.840
weakest person today because who's in charge historically changes, who you who reports to
01:17:53.960
you today. One day you may be reporting to them. So just be respectful of everybody, whether they
01:17:58.640
have power, they don't have power. Unfortunately, today, the people of power today don't respect those
01:18:04.540
who don't have the power today. If they did, it'd be a different story. Well, hence the deplorable
01:18:09.740
argument of Hillary Clinton. Right. She thought she was a shoo-in for the presidency. And so she didn't
1.00
01:18:16.280
need to be respectful to those great unwashed rubes. They were deplorable. And then suddenly
1.00
01:18:21.900
it came back to haunt her. Now, rather than her having some humility and say, you know, I actually
01:18:26.980
was a useless candidate who made some serious faux pas. It was Trump. It was the Russians. It was this.
01:18:32.880
She had no humility to recognize her faults. But it speaks to exactly the point you made.
01:18:37.620
She thought she was guaranteed the power so she could denigrate those that are below her.
01:18:41.880
And, you know, what I like what Twitter did and YouTube and Facebook did is when she started
01:18:46.100
making claims that the election was a fraud when Trump won because of Russia, it was impressive
1.00
01:18:51.080
to see Twitter, YouTube and Facebook deplatform her. It was very impressive when that took place
01:18:56.940
with Hillary Clinton. Obviously, hence the sarcasm that never happened.
0.74
01:19:00.640
I was just thinking, I was trying to think, is he being sarcastic?
01:19:03.940
Because I don't remember her being deep. Well played, Grasshopper. Well played.
01:19:09.960
Well, listen, I got to tell you, 90 minutes went by like it's five minutes. I had a blast with you.
01:19:17.620
I appreciate you for coming out. And I'm looking forward to the next time. Hopefully next time
01:19:21.720
I'm going to be face to face instead of over Zoom.
01:19:23.660
I look forward to it, brother. Thank you so much for having me on. It was lots of fun.
01:19:26.980
Anytime. And we're going to put the link below. So anybody that wants to go order his book,
01:19:30.400
his link's going to be below. Take care. Take care. Bye, bye, bye.
01:19:34.060
I got to tell you, this was one of my favorite interviews of all time because we were laughing.
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We were thinking. We were going, having a banter. You know, I was learning. Hopefully you were
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learning. It was just an incredible conversation dialogue. Those are my favorite kind of dialogues
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that we have. And if you enjoyed this interview, there's two other interviews I want you to watch.
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One of them is with Jordan Peterson, where I interviewed him. This has got to be in front of six or
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7,000 people at the same event where I interviewed President Bush and Kobe Bryant, the late
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Kobe Bryant. If you haven't seen that, it's very deep. He gets emotional. And this was right before
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he left for about a year, year and a half. Haven't seen it. You got to watch this. The other one was
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with Daniel Lieberman. That was another one that we had a lot of fun left. And we talked about random
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things. So either one of these, you're going to enjoy. Click on either one to watch. Take care,