Dr. Gad Saad is at The Babylon Bee to talk about being a happy honey badger and his evolutionary psychology takes on consumer behavior, infectious ideas that are killing common sense, and his new book The Saad Truth About Happiness. Gad recently got in trouble for saying certain languages are violently ugly, so The Babylon Bee wanted to find out what other languages are ugly. Also, since Neil Degrasse Tyson says you can feel 80% female some days and it doesn't matter what your chromosomes say, everyone decided to change their gender. Neat! Also, what do women want? Check out The Saad Truth About Happiness: https://www.amazon.com/Saad-Truth-about-Happiness-Secrets/dp/1684512603 This episode is brought to you by our sponsor: Issues, Etc.: http://issuesetc.org
And now it's time for another interview on the Babylon B podcast.
All right.
Hey, guys, welcome to the interview show.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
My name is Jared Le Master Ross.
With me is Sam Greer.
Very nice to have you.
And our special guest today is Gad Sad.
Is that how you say it?
I mean, if you're saying it in an Americanized, that would be if it were the Middle Eastern way, it would be Gad Sad.
It has to be a guttural eye.
Sad.
Yeah, sad.
Very good.
Sad.
It's almost like Arnold Schwerzeneger was saying.
Sad.
I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have said that.
Is that offensive?
No, no.
No, I'm okay.
All right.
Well, God said, you are a Canadian evolutionary psychologist.
I'm fascinated by this.
This is going to be very interesting.
You're a public intellectual a la Jordan Peterson.
And you're friends with Jordan Peterson.
I am.
Good friends.
Very good friends.
Like, do you guys text?
We usually send little love notes to each other.
I was going to say that.
What are you wearing, Jordan?
My lobster suit, of course.
I'm thinking about you, Jordan.
I was just thinking about you, Gad.
Hey, when I was on Joe Rogan.
Sorry, it doesn't sound quite like that.
That was good, though.
Hey guys, Kyle here.
Recently, I spoke to over 500 Lutherans at the Issues, etc., making the case conference at Concordia University, Chicago.
I had a great experience.
You wouldn't think that an entire room full of Lutherans would be any fun, but trust me, they were a hoot.
We had a blast talking about everything from serious theological topics to lighter issues, like jokes and what God has done for us by giving us humor, all kinds of fun stuff that we got to do.
And they were just an absolute blast.
Well, Issues, etc. is a podcast and syndicated radio talk show, and it covers all kinds of topics from culture and worldview to theology, apologetics, ethics, philosophy, law, and culture.
Issues, etc. has been educating, equipping, and edifying Christians for almost 30 years, and they have my highest recommendation.
Listen at issuesetc.org or at your favorite podcast provider.
That's issuesetc.org to start listening today.
Go Lutherans.
You are, yeah, your area of specialty is marketing, and you're a Renaissance man then, too.
So generalists.
Just to add to what you just said, I apply evolutionary psychology to the study of consumer behavior.
So that's how it is marketing.
Because when people hear marketing, they might think something completely different.
I basically marry biology, psychology to understand our consuming instinct.
That's the fundamental area of my research.
Oh, my gosh.
Well, okay, so this is your, I know we'll probably get into this a little bit, but what's a good example of that?
Okay, so let's take, for example, how hormones affect people's behaviors in the shopping context.
So I'll do both men and women.
Okay.
So I did a study with one of my former doctoral students where we looked at how the menstrual cycle affects women's beautification practices.
And not surprisingly, from an evolutionary perspective, when women are ovulating, meaning when they are maximally fertile, that's when they are most likely to beautify themselves.
Because just like all kinds of other of our animal cousins, we engage in sexual signaling.
In this case, women are using products, wearing high heels, letting their hair down, putting makeup, being more scantily clad at exactly the point when they are maximally fertile.
So that would be an example of studying hormones as relating to consumer behavior.
But for women, for men, on the other hand, I've done another study with another one of my graduate students where we looked at how conspicuous consumption, showy consumption, affects men's testosterone levels.
So what we did is we brought men into the lab.
We actually rented the Porsche and actually try to imagine trying to get a scientific granting agency to give you money to rent a portfolio.
To rent the Porsche.
And you're saying it's for science.
It's for science.
And so they drove a Porsche and a beaten-up old sedan, so a low-status car, both in a downtown Montreal area where everybody can see me and in a somewhat deserted highway, so there's not much of an audience.
And after each of those driving conditions, we took salivary assays so that we could then measure the testosterone levels.
The idea being, we know this from the animal kingdom, if you and I are competitors and we fight, the winner of the fight has a rise in testosterone.
The loser has a drop in testosterone.
And so what I wanted to show in this study with my student is that we use products, in this case, a conspicuous product like a Porsche, as a form of peacocking.
And I'm going to demonstrate that to you by showing you that the testosterone level of young men when they enter a Porsche basically explodes.
So those would be two examples in one case female, one case male, where we're using physiological mechanisms, biological mechanisms to study consumer behavior.
So what are the testosterone levels of a person who drives, say, a 2015 Silverado?
They're castrated.
What about a person who wears a backwards cap?
That's a man.
Oh, it's a real man.
What about you?
What about somebody who drives a like 2008 Honda CR-V?
You mean like the one that I was picked up in?
Yes.
My testosterone levels went down simply by being in that car.
I'm telling you.
What is the testosterone level of, I mean, speaking of your friend Jordan Peterson, a recently defeated lobster?
What do you mean, why was he defeated?
Why was he recently defeated?
That's the entire first chapter of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life.
12 Rules for Life, right.
Oh, testosterone levels.
Oh, in that sense.
I thought you meant something happened recently to Jordan where he...
No.
That's what I thought.
Well, you know, it's funny because a lot of the detractors of Jordan will say what a ridiculous thing it is to generalize something to humans using lobsters.
But that's a ridiculous concern because there's a whole field in psychology called comparative psychology.
Comparative psychology, the comparative part means you're comparing some human phenomenon to our animal cousin.
So for example, I have a whole in one of the chapters in my previous book, The Parisian Mind, where I talk about sex-specific toy preferences, the fact that boys prefer certain toys and girls prefer certain toys and that that's a universal.
Well, I use comparative psychology, just like Jordan did with the lobsters, to demonstrate that vervet monkeys, rhesus monkeys, and chimpanzees have the exact same sex-specific toy preferences that human infants do.
So then it can't be socialization.
It can't be your sexist patriarchal parents that are imposing this on you if you have our animal cousins exhibiting the exact same sex specificity.
So there is not, there's nothing fundamentally flawed when Jordan argues because these animals do it, then it makes sense that we also do it.
When you guys shake hands in real life, do you guys have like your lobster clamp-offs and you try to assert dominance over each other?
Well, listen, he's a lobster guy.
I'm the honey badger.
And there is no time where the lobster.
Come on.
I mean, the honey badger.
The honey badger defeats six adult lions.
That's a lot of serotonin.
That's a lot of testosterone.
I don't know about serotonin, but it's a lot of testosterone.
That's a lot of honey badger testosterone.
You're mixing up your hormones with your neurotransmitters.
He didn't just get out of a CRV.
He got out of some kind of red.
I need to go back to the honey badger.
But seriously, so in the previous book, in the last chapter, I talk about activate your inner honey badger as a cry, you know, as a call to arms.
And what I'm doing there, the reason why I use the honey badger is because it has been actually ranked as the most ferocious, the fiercest animal.
It's the size of a small dog, and yet it can literally withstand an approach of, and the reason I said six adult lions is because there's a famous YouTube clip where you see this honey badger being badgered by six adult lions, and they're kind of backing away because it is insanely ferocious.
Now, what I tell people, of course, is not to be physically violent or ferocious, but that to be ferocious in defending your principles.
If you have ways by which you can offer evidence to support your position, be a honey badger.
Well, how is it that, I mean, a good way to defend your principles might be to use the tool of satire.
Yeah, so 10 out of 10.
Well, because it really, legitimately, we care very much about free speech.
You know, we are obviously a bunch of jokesters, but we also really like free speech.
We really like freedom of conscience.
We love all those principles that we're standing up for.
And so we do it by standing off in the corner and laughing at it.
What does that say about our testosterone levels?
I don't know if it says anything about testosterone level, but what it does definitely say is that you guys are doing the right thing in terms of trying to convince people about some of these positions.
So I have a whole, forgive me, it's not to plug the book, but in my previous book, I have a whole section called the, I think the sexual style of the power of satire.
Because as you may know, I use satire and sarcasm and hyperbolic humor as part of my arsenal of weapons when trying to convince someone, precisely because satire is, so I call it the, it's akin to having the surgeon's scalpel cut through warm butter, right?
Because satire is so punchy.
It's so, that's why dictators, when they go after their detractors, they don't go after the guys with the big muscles.
They go after the guys with the sharp tongues, the satirists.
We got to get rid of these guys first because they are a danger to my throne.
Now, you said that, but didn't that just happen?
It just happened somewhere in the Middle East.
Where was it?
They just outlawed satire in a country.
In some country.
Middle Eastern country.
Are you being frequently?
Can you guys look that up?
No, it just happened.
Jamie, pull that up, please.
Yeah, Jamie.
Yeah, that just happened.
That just happened yesterday.
Dan.
Dan's doing the research right now.
He's our researcher.
Am I looking this way too?
No.
Oh, it's a good idea.
So, I mean, on a related topic, I remember I heard of a study years ago where, yeah, same thing.
They spit to check testosterone levels, but it was like you're seating your posture.
If you're like in a low posture position, you'll spit in the Petri dish and your testosterone will be low.
But if you're sitting way back, your testosterone is sky high.
Rate our posture right now in terms of testosterone.
We're still with testosterone.
Well, you guys have the legs open a bit.
So you're looking confident.
You're staring at me squarely.
You're a bit slouchy, a bit slouchy.
What does slouchy mean?
I'm starting to put you towards the estrogen.
And what about this crossing?
This is like a...
This is called the Trudeau.
The Trudeau, Justin Trudeau.
See, look, I'm so manly and I have such thick soccer legs, notwithstanding my spelt physique, that I can't even do that.
I mean, I literally cannot do this.
I can only do it one direction.
So I don't know.
Is that true?
That's funny.
That's actually true.
I can try the other way, but it's very uncomfortable for a lot of reasons.
Anyway, but we won't get into those positions right now.
But yeah, so satire was just clamped down on in Georgia.
Jordan.
It looks like Jordan.
The Alhood, the onion of the Middle East, was just banned in Jordan ahead of a new law to curb online criticism.
So not good.
Not good.
That's like the first place where they go.
And we've had this.
You know, the government, the kind of, you know, autocrats, totalitarians in our government have come after us too.
And in the big tech and stuff like that.
So they come after us because we're just making fun of them all day.
And it's like the Facebook and Twitter executives for the longest time had their DMs open to the FBI and more.
And of course now, different with Twitter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we're still pretty shadow banned on Facebook and Instagram.
Yeah, so speaking of the, I mean, are you aware of the B?
Like, what's your experience with the B?
So I became aware of it through Twitter.
And so I'm ashamed to say that I don't know some of your other content, which I'll make sure to go in all your skits and so on.
Apparently, they're hilarious.
I'll make sure to catch up.
But you definitely come up on my Twitter feed.
And we've often been linked together precisely because you're a satirical group.
And I use satire a lot.
So sometimes you guys will post something and then they will say, oh, this is God, sad level satire.
By the way, the term is satire.
Oh, satire.
Satire, A-A-D.
T-I-R-E.
There you go.
So I don't know if you've now surpassed me.
Maybe the student has surpassed the master.
Dare I say it.
Oh, goodness.
That's true.
Yeah, so that's your experience.
And you've been, you know, you've been criticized for your satire as well.
I have.
So we can talk about that.
But before I do that, to your earlier question about how powerful satire is, some of the more common times when people come up to me, say on the street, they recognize me, it'll be about some satirical clip that I do.
So it won't be, hey, Professor, I loved your paper, evolutionary.
It'll be, oh, you're under the desk.
Do you know my under the desk series?
I haven't seen it.
Okay, the under, that's actually Megan Kelly, not to name drop, but Megan Kelly, her favorite skits of mine, apparently her and her husband constantly fight as to which of my skits is the funniest.
Her favorite is where I go under the desk and I hide in mocking the hysterical fear that the woke people have.
So, you know, let's say Donald Trump is about to be inaugurated.
Here I go hiding under the desk.
Climate change is going to kill us in 12 minutes.
I go hiding under that.
And so there's a whole series of clips where I'm hiding under that.
I've got another set of clips where I actually self-flagellate because I'm so, you know.
Like they do.
Like they do.
And actually someone asked, how is it that Professor Sad has that particular sex story?
It's not a very funny, spicy story.
It's actually, I used to use my belt to self-flagellate.
And then a very nice fan decided to send me that whip as a gift.
Was that the only thing they sent you?
I've received other stuff.
I've received a knife called the honey badger.
Oh.
I've received also, I had one soldier send to my son all sorts of his memorabilia when he served in different.
So the fans are unbelievable.
They're so lovely.
It's so cool.
But we could talk about some of the criticism if you want.
I always like to hear about criticism.
So I have received a lot of, you know, blowback from people, none of which has been stronger.
This wasn't a satirical thing that I said.
It was something that I said in jest where I joked about different accents that I find unpleasant.
This was on the most recent episode of Joe Rogan.
I said that Portuguese was uniquely unattractive.
And that came from the fact that we had just returned from Portugal, my family and I.
And you hated everybody there.
No, no, please don't get me too more trouble.
Only the accent, not the people.
Love the people, love the food, love.
Okay.
And then I said, oh, well, Hebrew, which is one of the languages I speak, is violently ugly.
And then I said, oh, but when it comes to French Canadian, oh, that's an affront to human dignity.
Exactly.
But as I was telling Sam earlier in the car ride, that's a running gag phrase that I've used for years whenever I'm trying to hyperbolically say that something is unattractive or crazy.
So, you know, people who love the Beatles are an affront to human dignity.
How does it feel to be so wrong about that?
Oh, you're a Beatles fan?
I do like the Beatles, yeah.
You're an affront to human dignity.
I'm offended.
Yeah, so offended.
But so anyway, so yeah, see, see, to any French Canadians watching this, that's how you should be reacting to a joke.
But apparently it caused such a stir-up in Quebec because, you know, people got very offended that I was being critical of the language.
And so there were a whole bunch of TV shows that were released on that, tons of media, hundreds, if not thousands of hate mail, many calls to have me fired from my university.
A 30-year professor, chaired professor, fired because I said jokingly that the French Canadian accent is unattractive.
Is it, I mean, does this come back to is the government really in charge of the media there?
Is this kind of like the government like over-inflating some of the offenses or is this the people just being really wokish and there is a reflex in Canada to have the big nanny state take care of you, right?
You know, you're, you're, you're part of the, the, the great unwashed.
You're the rubes, you're the plebs.
Put your trust in us and we'll take care of you, right?
And so, for example, the monitoring of online content always comes under the guise of we're not doing it because we're autocratic.
It's because you don't want hate speech around, right?
We can't have the First Amendment the way the Americans do because there are some things that should not be said because they're going to hurt someone.
Don't criticize this religion because that would marginalize those folks, right?
And so it's always kind of cloaked under the guise of some noble cause, right?
They don't say we're doing this because we want to be autocratic and take over, right?
And the counterpoint to that as a free speech absolutist, and I think you guys would appreciate that, I'm Jewish.
I escaped the Lebanese civil war, so I've faced some very difficult times.
There's nothing more offensive that anyone could ever utter than to deny the Holocaust.
And yet I support the right of people to be Holocaust deniers.
Because in a free society, we're allowed to be wrong.
We're allowed to be idiots, imbeciles, spread falsehoods.
That's the price you pay to live in a free society.
And so when it comes to that issue, sorry to get professorial on you here.
This is called a deontological position, meaning it's an absolute moral statement.
There is no, I believe in free speech, but.
Once you say but, that means you're entering consequentialist ethics.
The consequences decide whether you're allowed to say whatever you want to say or not.
If it hurts someone's feelings, don't say it.
Now, do you define free speech as anything up to the point where you incite violence?
Exactly.
Okay.
But direct incitement of violence.
Direct.
Right.
So because otherwise, anything I say, if I say, you know, this particular religion has certain tenets that are not congruent with Western values, that could be construed as I'm inciting violence against members of that religion.
No, I'm not.
I'm attacking the ideology.
So direct incitement would be, hey, let's go to the synagogue at the corner of 4th and 7th Street when the Sabbath ends tonight and let's beat up some Jews.
That would be an example of direct incitement.
So the bar has to be really set for me to say that something is not within the confines of free speech.
Defamation wouldn't be allowed.
Of course, the screaming fire in a theater.
So short of those, anything goes.
And the Quebec government is saying this professor is committing linguistic genocide.
They're making fun of our Quebec French.
Well, we're sorry it caused you so much stress to call out Quebec French and Portuguese and Hebrew is being unpleasant to the ear.
We wanted to get you in trouble with some more languages.
Uh-oh.
We're going to give you a list of languages.
You tell us, hot or not.
Or not.
Hot or not.
Go.
Beautiful or not.
You go first.
French.
French from France?
Beautiful as long as it's not Parisian French, which is unbearably snobby.
We got him in trouble with one.
Exactly.
So I like international French.
International French would be the French that would be spoken by the Swiss or the Belgian or so it's an Lebanese French.
We speak in international French.
Okay.
All right.
That's cool.
What about Italian?
Gorgeous.
What about Elvish?
What is that?
Elvish.
What is Elvish?
From Lord of the Rings.
Oh, I've never seen it.
Sorry.
I think I just, I went down and stalked in your eyes.
But I remember I was once on Rubman Report and he asked me, are you a Star Trek or a Star Wars?
And I answered neither because I hate all that stuff.
And so apologies.
All his soccer player testosterone means he can't watch nerd stuff.
Whoa.
Space wizardry.
Too much space wizardry.
I'm not into the science fiction.
I'm into real stories, real people.
No, I'd say, I know we're going to continue on with these.
I want to mine this, though.
I want to mine this because I feel like, what is it about science fiction and fantasy that bothers you?
I just don't have the interest in navigating that surreal world.
I want real story.
So if you ask me, what are my favorite movies?
It's 12 Angry Men, the original.
That's so good.
It's Bronx Tale.
It's Goodfellows.
It's Moon Structure.
It might surprise you.
I'm not a huge fan of Cher, but great movie, 1987.
I'm into Shawshank Redemption.
That's a good one.
Real powerful movies.
Of course, Godfather.
So those kinds, I'm not into the, sorry.
Do you like Braveheart?
I do love Braveheart.
Oh, good.
Yes.
How beautiful is Braveheart Scottish accent?
It's not as nice as the Irish accent.
What about Mexican?
The language.
So Spanish as spoken by Mexicans.
Yes.
I think that's what I mean.
I'm just kidding, Spanish.
So I'm not sure if I can differentiate between all the different Spanish accents.
Here's what I could say.
Two definitive statements.
Argentinian Spanish is beautiful.
And so now get ready for some death threats coming my way.
That's good.
I despise the lisp spoken in some regions of... Castellano.
Right.
So, you know, get rid of the F.
And I actually did a whole clip.
I did a whole.
It's a bit of practical motion math.
My favorite soccer player, Methy.
Methyl.
Methyl.
I love Methy.
Oh, my goodness.
And actually, there is an Arabic.
You mentioned earlier, Jordan had something about satire.
I was picked up by an Uber driver.
I was in San Francisco before coming here.
And we started speaking in Arabic.
And our T in Lebanese Arabic becomes the in Jordanian.
And so that reminded me of the lisp in Spanish.
Can't stand that sound.
You don't like the theta.
I don't like the theta.
Get rid of the theta.
Well, the funny thing is, isn't it?
Oh, by the way, watch how we're joking.
And now I won't get a single death threat from anybody, but the French Canadians don't mess with our accent.
With the French Canadians.
When we talked about Messi, did you know that he's a huge fan of Ronaldo?
That is an absolute lie.
I can't stand Ronaldo.
Let's put it.
But he is a huge fan of Messi.
Who is a huge fan?
I am a gigantic fan of Messi.
Actually, I was telling Sam earlier before we went on that one of the clips that's really now going crazy for my recent Joe Rogan episode is when I explained why it was cosmic justice for Leonel Messi to win the World Cup and how sports can cause us to become so vested in the results of this guy who's never met us, who doesn't know we're alive.
And yet when we sat there as the entire family watching that World Cup final, I mean, my son at one point said, I'm going to go upstairs.
I'm not watching anymore.
I'm going to have a heart attack.
So invested.
And you're thinking, but that's the power of sports.
It can make us band with someone, in this case, this gorgeous player who also carries himself so beautifully, so humble.
And so, yeah, I'm a huge Messi fan.
You know, it's weird.
I was talking with my niece this morning about the- About how much you have that same affection for me as I do for a message.
I couldn't believe that I was going to talk to you today.
I actually have been slightly nervous because I just am very excited to talk to you.
You're very kind.
But we have, so we were talking about, they went to Taylor Swift last night.
Oh, they're kids.
Taylor Swift is an affront to human dignity.
My entire Instagram going to that Taylor Swift concert.
I'm not a big fan, but you know what's interesting?
They went there and people were dying to be there.
They were so excited and just worshiped Taylor Swift.
Wow.
You know, which is such a weird thing.
The human heart has a tendency to worship, which is what I think.
Yes.
So like, and also sports events, the need for like a sacrifice, the need for a public display.
I was like, who was it?
Who was it talking about that?
Was that Jordan?
I'm not sure if it was Jordan Peterson.
I think it was.
Maybe it was.
They were talking about the gladiatorial nature of sports and the necessity and culture.
And during COVID, how we lost that.
And so people started rioting in the streets because, you know, we don't have that human sacrifice anymore.
But you know, if I could just build on what you just said.
So you can have someone like Lionel Messi play a game where half of humanity is watching that match.
Yet if you were to ask him to do public speaking in the most basic way, it would be the most terrifying thing ever.
Which shows you that we put these guys on this kind of godly pedestal.
And in some sense, they're deserving of it.
They're going into battle.
They're gladiators.
And yet, probably what most people, well, not probably, actually, there are studies that I've looked at.
What's the thing that people are most afraid of?
And overwhelmingly, people say public speaking.
So the thing that I do, which is public speak and so on, you know, Messi might look at that and say, I could go on a soccer field and play in front of half the world and I don't think about it, but ask me my opinion about different accents and I would shut down.
So, you know, we all have different strengths.
That's the way of life.
That's very true.
Jared mentioned there's an innate desire to worship built into people.
It's one of my favorite features of intelligent design.
Gadsat would agree.
And I wouldn't.
Let me ask you this.
You mentioned on your most recent Rogan appearance, you wouldn't at this time in your career debate a creationist.
They're too far outside the pale.
What would you do if you ran into two, as Jordan Peterson called them, fundamentalist Christian frat boys?
That's what Jordan Peterson calls us.
It's the highest praise.
Me.
No, no, how would you convince us to invite science into our hearts?
So the reason why, by the way, the reason why I said that I wouldn't debate, just to be clear, it's not that it's beneath me to debate a creationist or, you know, I'm an academic elitist.
It's because I know a priori that there is no amount of evidence that I could ever offer with any sense of certitude where that person would say, you know what?
I'm now convinced of your position.
So we're going to absolutely talk, you know, is that true for you as well?
Do you think if somebody offered you enough evidence, you might change your mind?
About religion in general?
Or just about creation or whatever?
Is there kind of like a space?
Yeah.
Would you ever debate a guy like, I mean, do you know who Hugh Ross is?
He's an astrophysicist, really good.
Who's this?
Hugh Ross?
No, I don't think I know him.
I don't know him.
Oh, he's a great guy.
He's an astrophysicist.
Is he as smart as Neil deGrasse Tyson, who said that gender is on a spectrum?
I would say he's a bit smarter than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Because some of the latest physicists I've been seeing, I might need to revisit what kind of education they're getting.
I think you might be right.
I'd say, yeah, there's some weird stuff going on.
Can I tell you why?
I said, I'm generalizing it to multiple physicists.
Sean Carroll, who I don't, do you know who that is?
He's a, you know, I think he, until recently, he was a Caltech professor in physics, public intellectual, said some insane things about, you know, the gender ideology stuff.
And then Neil deGrasse Tyson recently said some incredible things.
And I satirized it recently on my thing.
And I'm not sure that, because oftentimes people hold physicists in great esteem because there's something almost impenetrable and almost metaphysical about some of the things that they say, right?
They're studying the Big Bang and astrophysics and cosmological issues.
Wow, they must be really smart.
Some of these guys are as dumb as a dormitory.
Dumb as a box of rocks.
Well, that is your third big satirical bit.
You've got the under the desk, you know, you're, oh, Brett Kavanaugh was just appointed to the Supreme Court.
I'm hiding under the desk.
You've got the self-flagellation.
I think it might be time.
Would you be willing to, on our show, change genders and then change back into a male?
Absolutely.
Right.
Right.
Right now.
Right now, I'm at 100% epitome of manhood.
Yeah.
And if you want, I could show you how I can transition to.
You're kind of an apex male.
I am an apex male.
Yeah, I mean, you came in here and it was like, whoa.
You felt it.
Yeah, it was.
I like that.
My testosterone levels went way down.
I guess I'll wear the wig.
Would you like me to wear it right away?
Yeah, absolutely right now.
We're rolling.
Let's do it.
And the rest of the interviewer, these wigs.
I hope that I can.
I think this wig was we used in a zombie.
We did a woke zombie sketch.
Right.
Where instead of when they get bit, they turn into zombies.
They get bit and they turn into.
I feel this is going to go viral.
This is a good one.
I feel that this might be.
How do you feel?
This is a really good color for you.
I definitely feel for I feel more feminine.
So I feel that there is definitely a Neil deGrasse Tyson transition.
There's an energy.
There's an energy.
I'm feeling that you guys also are transitioning away from being male.
And I know that that's true because physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said so.
And I don't know if you saw the clip how he spoke with such bombastic arrogance to the guy who was right.
He goes, I don't understand what's so difficult to not get about the gender spectrum.
And when he speaks to me in such a haughty, patronizing way, I know he's right.
Yeah.
I've always felt like when people condescend always makes me feel better.
Yeah.
That's the truth of what they're saying.
Well, when you go after people on Twitter, when you're a honey badger on Twitter, does it give you, well, let me ask a big picture question.
Does Twitter overall give you a net increase in happiness?
Speaking of the sad truth about happiness?
Actually, yeah.
Can we move on to your book?
Of course.
Well, shall we de-transition together?
Yes.
Let's go back to...
I can only stay a woman for so long.
It's a very short time.
Can I put my womanhood here?
Please don't put your womanhood anywhere.
So in all seriousness, we had a headline about the result of Twitter on one's happiness.
It was local man narrowly escapes peace of mind with well-timed Twitter visit.
So does it contribute to your happiness?
So it's like most things, there are two sides to the coin.
There is an element of connection that comes from Twitter, whereby my world has intersected with other people's world, Babylon B, that otherwise I wouldn't have had the incredible pleasure of meeting you guys, that would not have come if we were both on social media.
Now, the fact that I'm exposed to endless imbecility, phenomenal stupidity on Twitter can sometimes get me upset.
It's like a bunch of Beatles fans.
Exactly.
A bunch of Beatles fans.
A bunch of Ronaldo fans.
A Ronaldo fans.
I mean, real affronts to human decency.
And so that can sometimes trigger me.
But even when I'm being punchy and spicy, people who know me know that I'm doing it with a twinkle of my eye.
So even when I'm coming after you and I'm even using words like, listen, castrato.
So one of my favorite insults is castrato.
What does it mean?
Castrato.
It's like castrato.
It means like somebody that's been castrated.
Castrated.
Like the castrati, the great castrati singers.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Very good.
I don't know them.
I know that.
So, yeah.
So actually, as a matter of fact, in certain opera traditions, if a young boy had a beautiful voice and you didn't want him to lose that angelic voice where he hits those very high notes, that high register, they would be castrated so that they could retain their angelic voices.
That is sad.
Or should I say sad?
That is sad.
So the castrati were actually sopranos, but they called it, there was a different register because they didn't call them sopranos.
Look at you.
You're a psychologist.
Well, impressive.
So anyway, so to answer you, to close the thing on your question, there are times when I can get upset on Twitter, but largely speaking, I've greatly benefited from being able to connect with so many people.
That's great.
In your book, you talk about regret.
Yes, sir.
And due to action, regret due to inaction.
Is there something that you regret in particular?
Something that when you look back, it makes you feel like that.
Very good, very good.
Look, so you're right that the psychology of regret this differentiates between these two types of regret.
And by the way, the gentleman who developed that taxonomy was my former professor in psychology at Cornell.
His name is Thomas Gilovich.
And so what he demonstrated in several papers is that over the long run, if you ask people, what is your biggest looming regrets?
What are your biggest looming regions?
It's the regrets due to inaction that haunt us.
It's not I cheated on my wife and that resulted in divorce.
It's rather I didn't take that road.
I always had hoped to be an artist, but I became a pediatrician because my dad and his dad are a pediatrician.
And now that I'm 75, I hate the fact that I never instantiated my love for the arts.
So to answer your question on a personal level, I discussed this in the book.
My regret is one really that was imposed on me.
So I was, I always knew that, and we discussed this briefly in the car, there were two things that I was interested in, soccer and academia.
And so I'd always thought that I would be a professional soccer player.
And I mean, I was a very serious competitive player heading to Europe at a time when very few players in North America would ever have gone to Europe.
So I was, you know, Canadian Championships and so on.
And then I had a very, very severe injury in the Eastern Canadian Championships.
Not to bore you, but there was what's called a scissors tackle, which is illegal.
A scissors tackle is when you slide and you do a scissors motion.
The reason why it's so dangerous is because if he connects at both points of your leg, it breaks your leg.
And so I had that injury where the surgeon said, oh, you probably will always walk with a limp.
Luckily, that didn't happen, but it did end my career.
Later, after my career had ended, I had a second injury, a complete rupture of the Achilles tendon.
So things were not going well for me yet.
That's painful.
Yeah, and it took me about 14 months for rehab.
I've got a huge scar.
And you were playing soccer, just snapped.
Playing soccer, it snapped.
Incidentally, by the way, when that happens, you think that someone hits you.
Because I was playing in a tournament, and after I came back from the surgery, I asked my teammates, who was the player that hit me?
He goes, they said, there was nobody around you.
You just dropped.
But you feel as though someone jackhammered you because the way it pops.
So my biggest regret in life is that I wasn't able to instantiate my full soccer potential.
I always would have known that I would have gone into academia after my soccer career.
It just- You didn't live it all the way through.
Not at all.
Yeah, that's frustrating.
Now, when you say, like the example that you gave earlier was a man that decides to cheat on his wife and then ends in divorce.
Would it be appropriate to say maybe that he, it's a path he didn't take?
Like, I wish I would have actually, I regret not being faithful to my wife.
is that instead of like some more positive regret or is it more like but then you can all those are just linguistic reframing of yeah that's what i mean But you committed an action.
You cheated.
So you know what I mean?
So it's, you know, I regret the fact that I was never loving enough for my children.
The inactions are usually the road not traveled.
Got it.
Right.
So, and that's why I always use those examples.
I want to be an artist, but I became, you know, my school counselor said that accounting is a really hot field.
You can get a secure job.
Just study that.
But I've always wanted to be an architect, but I became an accountant.
And then I wake up at 55 and I and it perfectly sets me up for a midlife crisis because I'm not living.
That's one of the other things I talk about in the book.
I'm not living an existentially authentic life.
Yeah, it's a crisis of meaning, right?
Isn't it kind of?
Exactly.
One of the reasons why I'm happy is because I think that the profession that I've pursued makes me wake up every morning and rub my hands in glee.
Today I'm going to speak to the Babylon B. Yesterday I was doing a Commonwealth Club event in San Francisco.
Tomorrow I might start thinking about my next book idea.
I'm always in the creative impulse.
I'm always, whether we're creating content on a podcast, whether I'm writing a book or a paper or preparing new material for a class, I'm always creative.
And that gives me great purpose and meaning.
So one of the things I talk about in the book is if you can find a profession that gives you access to that creative impulse, you're well on your way to being professionally happy.
I definitely feel that creativity is kind of the spark of happiness if we're talking about, I feel that we've found a place here where creativity is very much, I mean, every day is different.
Every day I'm going to get to meet someone new.
All the time we're creating something that's funny or something that's profound.
It is, it's maybe the best thing ever.
And I believe it.
And honestly, and I'm not saying this just to frivolously compliment you guys.
When I came in, I felt there was happiness and everybody was smiley.
Maybe it's just because they're being gracious and they're saying Sam for like the first part.
Yeah.
You met Sam, the enthusiast, and then you met me, the second enthusiast.
So maybe that's it.
Kyle smiled, though.
That's bad.
I noticed Kyle smiled.
That's good.
But, you know, I have in the, in the last, almost the end of the book of the happiness book, I have a quote from Victor Davis Hansen.
Do you guys know who that is?
Yes.
Victor Davis Hansen is a classicist.
Right.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead.
Yeah.
And so anyways, he's a wonderful guy who can kind of link ancient Greek themes to contemporary political issues.
I love that, right?
But he's very austere.
He almost never smiles.
And so he had come on my show.
And at the end of the show, he said, you know, it's very rare to see academics smile the way that you do.
That's the first time.
And, you know, I should smile more like you do, or something to that fact.
I don't remember the exact quote.
I was touched by that because it is true that many academics almost think that it is part of their professional, you know, thespian facade to always be, you know, if I pontificate seriously while looking up into the sky, I must be saying something profound.
But if you're joking, but you're a joker, that belittles your professorial status.
No, it doesn't.
I'm a multifaceted person.
I could be a buffoon one minute and I can give a lecture at Stanford the next.
It's okay.
Both can live with you.
You can wear a pink wig with a Babylon B one minute.
And then I can hit you with other, hopefully profound stuff the next.
I thought you were going to just hit us with other things.
Hit you with my flagellation belt that somebody gave me.
In the first chapter of the book, you set the foundation that human action can bring happiness.
You say that, hey, I'm following Seneca, Aristotle, Kant.
I'm following the ancients in saying you can make choices that'll lead to happiness.
What do you make of exceptions to that?
And for example, it would be like if someone has a conversion experience and gets a sunny disposition from a change like that.
What would you say?
Would you say most people should go the slow but steady route of following wisdom, reading your book and becoming happy?
Or for those who experience a pivot, what do you make of that?
There are many trajectories that we can take in trying to summit Mount Happiness.
So there isn't a unique one.
What I can tell you, though, to kind of contextualize your question, about 50% of individual differences and happiness scores comes from our genes.
So you may start off with a sunnier disposition than me, right?
But irrespective of where you and I start off on the continuum, there are certain things that we can do to improve our lot on happiness, right?
Because that means that there's 50%.
If 50% is due to genes, that still leaves 50% up for grabs.
So the choices that I make, the conversion that I go through, the spouse that I end up with, the mindsets that I adopt, all of these things can move me towards climbing Mount Happiness.
Would purchasing and reading the book, The Sad Truth About Happiness, be a move forward towards happiness?
It would.
I mean, but I know you're being slightly facetious, but it would because so what I try to do in the book is a combination of three things.
Number one, personal anecdotes.
Because personal anecdote, we are a storytelling animal.
We love to learn through vivid stories.
So I incorporate my life experiences in describing why I am a happy person and so on, coupled with, as you mentioned earlier in your question, ancient wisdoms.
Here comes Epictetus.
Here comes Aristotle, you know, so on, and Seneca.
And then backed up by contemporary science, put those three together.
If I've done a good job, you get a really fun book to read.
Where does authenticity fit into all this?
Because we recently published an article.
The headline was this.
Report, record number of people following their hearts.
And in our worldview, there's a lot of sin baked into your heart.
And I mean, the headline really clicks when you see the image and the image is a bunch of misbehaviors.
And also, and primarily Adolf Hitler.
Yeah.
So where does authenticity fit into it?
Are people, if they're just following their hearts, should they submit themselves to a higher moral standard than authenticity?
How do those things balance out?
So I talk about two different types of authenticity in the book.
There is personal authenticity, meaning realness, right?
So you meet somebody at a party and they're either right there, they're focused on you, they're not playing the room to see who else is there, who's more important than you.
They're fake, they're posers.
So there is that individual level of authenticity.
But then there is one that I alluded to earlier, what I call existential authenticity.
If I was always meant to be an artist and architect, but I became a forensic accountant, I haven't lived an authentic life in that sense.
And so I don't know if I can couch it in a religious narrative.
I think your question was kind of alluding to that.
All I could say is you want to forestall being 80 years old and succumbing to regret for the road not traveled.
One of the ways you do that is by another Delphic maxim from the ancient Greeks, know thyself.
If I know myself really well, then hopefully I can be authentic to what my interests are, what my passions are.
And so I knew very early soccer, academia, and I've been very authentic to those interests.
I became an academic.
I'll tell you a very quick story.
This story, I discussed it in the parasitic mind, where I'm talking about different cultural expectations that one might have.
I was comparing, you know, the victimology ethos versus the meritocratic ethos and so on.
And so I told a story where I, so I, I'm not saying this to talk about my CV.
It's relevant to the story.
I did an undergrad in mathematics and computer science at top university.
Then I did an MBA at that same university.
And then I was heading straight to go out for my PhD because I knew I was going to go into academia.
Well, one of my brothers, who at the time was living in Southern California, who was a very successful computer guy, very wealthy, was trying to convince me to take a break from my academic pursuits and put on the proverbial suit because I just finished my MBA.
Why don't you get some experience, hang out with me, get some experience?
And the reason why I had come down to Southern California to visit him is because I'd been accepted at several doctoral programs, one of which was UC Irvine.
So I was coming to visit UC Irvine to decide if I wanted to enroll there for my PhD.
And during that time, my brother was saying, hey, why don't you put a stop to your studies?
Come work with me for a few years.
When I went back to Montreal and my mother had caught wind of the fact that my brother was trying to convince me to maybe take a break for my education, this speaks to the cultural value that Jews place on education.
She takes me to mothers.
She takes me to a side room.
And I'm thinking, well, what is she going to ask?
She goes, I want to talk to you.
Can you come to the room?
I'm thinking, uh-oh, what's going on?
She goes, well, I heard that your brother is trying to convince you to take a break from your studies.
Do you want people to think of you as someone who dropped out of school?
Do you want to bring shame to that?
So think about that.
I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics, computer science.
I have an MBA degree.
But if I stop after that, that's going to bring shame because people will remember me as someone who dropped out of school.
So that gives you a sense of what cultural expectations or family expectations can.
Now, of course, I didn't pursue my PhD because I was trying to please my mom, but I lived my authentic life.
I thought about my brother.
Do I want to work with him?
I'm sure that I would have made tons of money with him.
That wouldn't have been me.
I wouldn't have met the guys from the Babylon B had I not been a public intellectual.
Which is the peak of the whole thing.
Which is the peak.
It's the peak of the CV.
This is the climax.
So much time.
There's testosterone in here.
And so I think I've made the, and I have nothing to regret.
Wow, that's amazing.
So your mother, your mother can miss you.
Now, this is a shame culture.
Not a guilt culture, but a shame culture.
You mean the Middle East we're talking about?
I would say, yeah, maybe like even a Jewish culture is shame, communal.
Shame and honor.
Honor and shame, right?
Honor your family.
Yeah, in the Middle East, there is a huge calculus of, so, you know, if you and I go, if you were Lebanese, let's say, and you and I go out to dinner, there would be this huge jousting at the end of the meal to decide who's going to pay.
Because it would be dishonorable for me to lose.
If I am your friend, so actually I talk about this in my first book ever, in 2007 book, where I talk about cross-cultural differences and norms.
And so I came from the culture where I have to always win the right to pay for everybody.
But I realized that the Canadians didn't share in those values.
So after I went three or four times to pay everybody as a young guy, I quickly realized I'm going to go broke.
Nobody else is going to try to beat me.
Nobody's going to be able to beat me.
I'm socially dominant.
These people are letting me pay over and over.
Exactly.
And then I realized I need to adjust my cultural compass points.
Okay, so in the atheistic worldview, just what scares a little bit, the atheistic worldview, where we're all just here by accident and there's no, there's nothing, the universe is marked by pitiless indifference.
And one day around the sun will expand and it will expand, the sun will expand and swallow us all up and everything will be destroyed.
Why does it matter that we're happy or not?
It's definitely not a leading question.
Look, I actually address this in the happiness book when I'm talking about the links between religiosity and happiness.
And it might please you to hear that the research shows that there is a moderate positive correlation between religiosity and happiness.
Religious people are on average a bit more happier than people who are not religious.
But there are very earthly reasons for those, for that reality.
It builds greater communality, greater cohesion within the in-group, greater likelihood of engaging in reciprocal arrangements within my in-group members.
And so those are very earthly reasons why just by- Which God designed us to.
Which a lot of designers.
I'm going to love those things.
Fair enough.
That's why I don't debate on those issues.
But immediately after I finished that section, and not because I was trying to be diplomatic, but I wanted to also make the people who are not religious walk away thinking that they're not doomed, that they're not going to be happy simply because they're not religious.
And the way I did that is by arguing that there are many ways by which I can be experienced an awe-inspiring spiritual moment or a divine moment that is very earthly and not couched in a supernatural.
The conversation that we're having here, maybe you might think I'm using the word in a trivial way, but to me, it's a very spiritual experience.
I just connected with two guys that I didn't know two hours ago.
Maybe we'll become great friends.
I can meet a random stranger who approaches me and we have this incredible moment for 45 minutes that is completely serendipitous.
I could go to a natural landscape and look at the, yes, yes, it's God who created the natural landscape.
But, you know, in other words, I can be filled with reverence for all of these awe-inspiring, magisterial experiences while being completely devoid of a supernatural cause.
So whether you get to it through a religious narrative or through a spiritual, non-religious narrative, I think it's available to all of us.
Yeah.
And I would say that God created us all with the capacity to understand beauty because he is beauty.
Amen.
He understands beauty.
But that's an interesting, an interesting observation too.
The fact that we can have a conversation like this and it can be a spiritual experience and we can develop a soul connection because human beings have a capacity for that because we're, I think, because we're eternal beings and we're designed to.
But that's, yeah, but that's awesome.
It's an interesting take on that.
And, you know, it's funny because a lot of in the past, people thought that I was caustic against the religious, and that's completely untrue.
You don't seem to be caustic.
Not at all.
I mean, not today.
No.
No, I could be punchy on social media when somebody pisses me off.
But in terms of my disposition, I'm very affable, warm, friendly.
Usually when I've criticized religion, it's when religion has tried to enter the sphere of science, proposing alternate explanations for scientific explanations.
Can you give an example of that?
evolution evolution as a i mean you mean humans are christians saying that evolution is is not true because the earth is young or something like so So it could be young age creationists.
It could be, well, there is an alternate mechanism by which species evolved.
It used to be called creationism.
Today it's called intelligent design.
It's a bit of a repact.
I think that there are very, very clear reasons why people are religious.
As a matter of fact, even as an evolutionist, I think that the default value of humans is to be religious.
In other words, it is an outlier for you to be a non-believer.
So I understand the functional need for people to be religious.
But that doesn't mean that I should tolerate an alternate explanation from religion in the scientific sphere, right?
I say tolerate.
I don't mean it in such a way.
In other words, if you enter that domain, then I'm going to come after you because it's my job to try to protect those scientific realities.
But I have no ill will to people who say, hey, this is my worldview and I've got a well-structured belief system.
I go, I get it.
I completely get it.
And this is totally fine.
And as a matter of fact, that's more natural than the atheist.
So does that...
He's a honey badger for science.
I'm a honey badger for science.
He's a honey badger for science.
Exactly.
If you're like, I prayed, he's like, you mean hypothesis and peer-reviewed study, then you're like, oh, sorry.
I say, are you one of those people that think that science and religion are by nature at odds with each other?
Because I have a sense to think that they are not.
I think that they're very much not at odds with each other.
They're only at odds with each other when they offer contradictory positions on certain things.
Now, we can do all sorts of mental gymnastics where we say, oh, but the seven days, it's seven stages of evolution.
I mean, you really get into Olympic level mental gymnastics to the word yam.
Yeah, I'm sure you've heard that.
Look, I spoke to my rabbi once, the rabbi that I mentioned earlier from Cornell, where I was saying, well, rabbi, how is it that you could explain, you know, if the earth started at this time, how can we get a rock that looks like it's dated before that time?
Oh, well, the reason for that is because at time T0, God put a rock that looks as though it's 200 million years old.
How can I rebut that?
What can I say to that?
So that's where I then, if you say, I want to debate you in the areas in science, I say, well, maybe not.
But if you tell me I get my moral compass uniquely from scripture, I say, I get that.
I get it.
Your book, The Consuming Instinct is a thorough, I mean, for me, it was a thorough and beyond stimulating thought experiment with using evolution as what one of my old professors, Dr. Grant Horner at the University, the Masters University, he would call it a totalizing explanatory system where it's a full-blown worldview.
And in that book, you leave no stone unturned.
You explain how our predilection for fatty foods rather than broccoli is from evolution.
You take like which movies do gangbusters at the box office and which ones don't, and you boil it down to evolution.
So you've done your due diligence in turning it into a full-fledged worldview.
I wanted to ask, what have you found in your life that's that's put pressure on that?
Have you found anything that you thought, oh, that doesn't quite fit in?
Anything like spiritual or mystical or non-materialistic, non-naturalistic?
I hate to disappoint you, not really.
The reason being that, you know, if you are a, I don't want to say subscriber because I really think that there is no other game in town.
I don't mean contra-religion.
I mean in explaining human behavior scientifically, the only framework that makes sense is the evolutionary framework.
Because the only other way it would be something else is if you think that the human mind came from somewhere other than evolution.
Leaving aside religion, here's what other social scientists would say.
We're born tabula raza.
We're born with empty minds, with no biological imperatives endowed upon us from evolution.
And it's only socialization that causes me to prefer the McDonald's burger.
It's only socialization that teaches me to like the Beyonce body type.
So the two competing- That's interesting to know.
Can we write that down?
He refers to Beyoncé.
So the two competing frameworks certainly in the social sciences, those who try to explain human behavior, there's one group called evolutionists, evolutionary psychologists, evolutionary behavioral scientists.
And then there's what's called social constructivists.
Social constructivists are the ones who view everything being due to a social construction.
But that is a profoundly inadequate explanation because even if something were due to socialization, the question that begs to be asked is, why is socialization of that form?
If women are taught to prefer taller guys through Hollywood images, but why do Hollywood images show the leading men as being tall guys, right?
So there must be an explanation for why socialization happens in that form.
And that explanation is ultimately Darwinian mechanisms.
So to your point, the power of evolutionary psychology is that it allows me to look at anything involving human beings, from the movies that we love to the foods that we prefer to the sexy clothes that we wear and view it in a complete and it allows me to have a really parsimonious, coherent explanation for it.
So it's not through, what is it, the quote by C.S. Lewis.
It's not by, it's through evolution you see everything else.
So it's the way we see, the way I see Christ, it's not that I look and I see, I look, what is it?
How does it go?
I want to say it correctly.
I believe in God not because I see him, but because through him I see everything else.
I see everything else.
Something like that.
So you would say I believe in evolution not because I see it, but because through it I see everything else.
Exactly, and by the way, I mean- So it's a bit religious, isn't it?
Except, if I may, science is epistemologically humble, meaning that we operate in provisional truths.
That which we thought was true 300 years ago, we have autocorrected in light of new evidence and said, oh, that's no longer true.
And therefore, something that was espoused as absolute scientific truth is now known to have been falsified.
So if tomorrow you showed me evidence to your earlier question, if you showed me unequivocal, unassailable evidence that brings down the Darwinian edifice, then I would have to have the epistemological humility to say, oh, it's back to the drawing board.
Back to the drawing board.
I think.
It's because you're a legitimate scientist.
You're a legitimate researcher.
Thank you.
And that's why, by the way, guys like, not to get political, guys like Fauci and the rest of those guys were not legitimate scientists because there was nothing that would ever cause them to express some humility and saying, you know, I said A, but in light of some of the COVID trajectories, I think I was wrong.
They were never wrong.
And they'll go to their graves without ever being wrong.
Now, here, I'm going to hit you with some theological things.
Of the seven deadly sins, what's the supra sin?
Pride.
Pride.
Boom.
That's why you guys know your religion.
A-plus.
It's the apex thing.
So in French, by the way, there is a distinction between two types of pride.
I'm going to say them in French and then I'll translate.
Fierte means the positive connotation of pride.
So if I say, I am proud of my work, that's positive.
I'm proud to be an American.
I'm proud to be an American.
Or at least I know I'm free.
Or guil is negative.
It's when there is nothing that you can do that would cause me to abase myself to apologize to you.
That would be negative pride, right?
And so I think scientists, if they are legit scientists, really are quite humble.
That's why, by the way, I also seldom get into trouble in my public proclamations other than when I'm criticizing an accent from French Canada.
Because if you ask me a question that I really think I know the answer to, I'll answer it with the swagger of someone who knows what I'm talking about.
But there's an endless number of questions that you could ask me that I know very little about.
I won't try to phone it in or wing it.
I'll say, hey, that's a great question, Jared.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about this to answer.
And therefore, I never get caught.
So when I'm on Joe Rogan and the Inquisitor truth teller, Jamie, he goes to him, hey, Jamie, check that.
I never fail because I know what I know and I know what I don't know.
Let's put you to the test.
Boom, go.
How does evolutionary science explain Tom Cruise?
If survival of the fittest, he's not tall.
Is tallness in movie stars compensatory?
Can they be so charismatic that...
Beautiful.
And how does it just, this is another kind of movie question in the same vein.
Why, if evolution is true, what's happening to Disney right now?
You know what I'm saying?
Let me answer this question.
They're devolving.
They are devolving.
They are devolving.
They're not going in that direction.
We should all be going.
They are not going.
They're being maladaptive.
No, so To your point about Tom Cruise, so in the happiness book, I talk about mate choice being a compensatory process.
The idea being that compensatory process means I can compensate for one shortcoming with other great qualities.
It's a bundle that you're looking for in an ideal mate.
So if a woman were to say this, I will never date a man who is under six feet tall, that would be non-compensatory.
Because if I don't match that six feet.
I would say it's prideful.
If I don't meet that standard, then it doesn't matter that I can be amazing on 75 other attributes.
I can never compensate for that shortcoming.
Luckily.
Shortcoming.
Exactly.
You like that.
And you picked that up.
You should get a rim shot every time we have.
But luckily, since mate choice is compensatory, I may be Tom Cruise who is not tall, but I'm a talented actor.
And as you said, I think, what was it?
He's nine foot eight because he's standing on his money or whatever.
Well, so I gave you, I think, the example in the car on the right here of Pablo Picasso, who was a short guy, bald guy, unattractive man.
You pointed at me.
But you're bald in a viral way.
Oh, this was George Costanza bald.
This was George Costanza bald.
And so he was by any standard stereotypical archetypal metric, not this epitome of manhood.
Yet he had a very, very long lineup of very beautiful, willing women willing to go with him because he was Pablo Picasso.
He was this great artist.
So the good news about mate choice is that most of us can really improve our lot in the mating market by improving on certain attributes that the other sex desires.
By the way, I apologize for presuming that there are binary sexes.
Yeah, we were offended.
I was saying.
Yeah, I don't know where I stand on that.
Seek the help of Neil deGrasse Tyson.
He'll help you.
Oh, right.
You should check out our book, The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender.
Yeah.
Coming soon.
That'll help you.
You can choose one of your 467 genders if you want.
You can choose.
It'll help you make that decision.
Thank you.
You were going to say something.
You were going to ask something.
Oh, I was going to say something about, oh, what do women want?
For.
Okay, so before I answer that, in evolutionary psychology, we distinguish between short-term mating and long-term mating.
The idea being that for many attributes that are desirable in a short-term mate are precisely those that are undesirable in a long-term mate.
So what are you asking me about?
Long-term?
You know, I think for our Christian audience, long-term is probably better than short-term.
Yes.
So long-term mate, these are called necessities.
So usually when we talk about mating attributes, we break them up into necessities versus luxuries.
So kindness, intelligence are actually necessities both for men and women.
In other words, those are potentially deal breakers, to put it in the middle.
If you're a real moron.
If you're a real moron, you're a nasty person.
I always tell people, and I'm hardly the first to say this, when you go out on a date, check whether the person that you are on the date with, how they treat the server.
If they are nasty to them, run the other.
You're a real Neil deGrasse Tyson.
You're a real Neil DeGrasse.
You're saying his name right.
So certainly kindness and intelligence are important.
Women will oftentimes, well, by the way, the number one attribute that women desire in men around the world is traits associated with social status.
So it could literally be that you're wealthy, but that doesn't have to be that because a lot of women are attracted to the starving artist who doesn't have any money yet.
But what does he have?
Status.
Social.
No, he's got talent and ambition.
Oh.
Right?
So a lot of women find the starving artist actually quite sexy and desirable because they are being attracted to his unique talent, to his assertiveness, to his ambition.
One day he will be McJagger or whomever.
No woman has ever uttered the following words.
I desire a guy who plays video games all day in mom's basement, who exhibits zero assertiveness and who's going nowhere.
I'm really ready to go.
I'm out.
I'm out for that.
I'm just looking at my own life as you're saying this.
And now I understand why my wife liked me.
Because I never got it.
I never got it.
I'm like, why does she like me?
I was an actor and I was out of work and I didn't have, but I did have some talent and I was very ambitious and I had a lot of dreams and a lot of goals.
And you do have a disarming smile.
Well, I mean, thank you.
I feel like we're getting closer.
And you were viral bald and not George Costanza bald.
Exactly.
I was losing my hair at the time.
I had hair at the time, but I was losing it.
It was like, you know.
But were you trying to do the comb over to hang on to the dream?
I was going to accept it.
And I told her the second day that we went out, I was like, look, Beb.
I didn't say Beb.
I said, look, my lovely Christina.
Ma'am.
I said, ma'am, I'm going bald.
There's no hope for this.
Full disclosures.
I just want you to know beforehand so you don't get in too deep.
And she was like, she was like, that's okay.
I know.
I can tell.
It's so funny.
It's like you get the light from the top and you can see like a baby chicken up there.
It's like baby chicken hair freshly hatched.
Anyway, so what do now I'm interested in the short term as well.
Yeah.
Because I think this can be instructive too, because it's like if you're focused on all the wrong things.
Even if you're a religious person, you live in the real world where these things happen, right?
Obviously.
So we can't go la la la.
So there are certain physical traits that are a lot more important to women in the short term that become a lot less important in the long term.
So again, height would be one.
A nice beard.
So remember earlier I talked about the menstrual cycle study?
So there is some.
You're talking about ovulating.
Exactly.
And so there are some studies, although now there's some conflicting results that showed that the type of men that women prefer will depend on when you ask them that question across their ovulatory cycle.
Meaning, when they are maximally fertile, they will go for the brawny markers.
When they are in the non-fertile phase, so it's dad versus CAD.
I got you.
Okay, so CAD is in the ovulatory phase, Dad in the non-ovulatory phase.
So Henry Cavill.
Who's Henry Cavill?
I don't know who that is.
Superman.
Superman.
Okay.
Very hairy chest.
And then Tom Hanks.
Like, those are the dads.
Dad versus Cad.
I don't know the first guy, but I can't.
Well, how about Brando in streetcar name desire?
Yes, that's just.
But he was.
That's the CAD.
Okay.
Cad is Sean Connery.
Yes, Cad is Sean Connery.
Like Big Town.
Exactly.
Nailed it.
Tom Hanks is a perfect example of the dad.
I mean, he doesn't exude one single testosterone market.
No, he's.
Sorry, Tom Hanks.
We could still be friends.
I would still like to be friends.
No, my, and after you said that, I don't want to say what I was going to say.
Because he reminds me, he's so much like my father.
Like, my dad is Tom Hanks to a team.
Oh, that's sweet.
Looks like him, acts like him.
Very kind guy.
Very kind, like super quiet.
But also, he acne rose the ladder.
He was a professor.
He's got a PhD.
He's a really good dude.
In what field?
Leadership, studied leadership.
No kidding.
It's like when into organizational behavior and psychology.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Yeah.
Very cool.
He's a good guy.
Anyway, but he looks just like Tom Hanks.
So now that I know Tom Hanks is like a total dad.
Low-T dad said.
Low-T dad.
Yeah.
That's funny.
No, that's very interesting.
So the short term, it's the CAD versus.
Am I allowed to say whatever you want?
Yeah.
Just for the audience, religious.
We censor stuff if it gets out of hand.
Okay, it isn't.
So there is a strategy called shopping for good genes.
Oh, yeah.
Whereby, for example, women are much more likely to cheat on their long-term partner when they are in the ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle.
Because what are they doing there?
They are literally shopping for better genes.
When they're doing that, they are then looking for a person to cheat with who is of a superior phenotype than their regular partner.
So they are right now with Tom Hanks.
But now here comes the Greek gardener who's got the V, who looks like the Olympic male swimmer.
So if I decide to violate the moral code of the sanctity of my marriage, you like how I put that in the middle.
Wow, look at that.
Look at you.
Look at me.
So if I decide to do that, then I'm not going to cheat on my husband with Bill Gates.
I'm going to cheat on my long-term on my husband with Gino.
My question is to you, who would cheat on their husband with Bill Gates?
Very good.
Very good.
Very, very good.
We have a politics question, shifting gears a little bit, but we're about to plug your third book thoroughly, The Parasitic Mind.
Boom.
So we've now name-dropped all three.
No, can I just correct you?
Go ahead.
There's five, five, five.
You're right.
Five books.
But Parasitic Mind was the, yeah.
Parasitic Mind was my fourth book, which was the book before The Sad Truth About Happiness.
But go ahead.
Five books, three books.
What's the difference?
So in the parasitic mind, you identify scary mind parasites, how they're infectious, and you go with some classics like SJWism on campus, folks who view censorship as a safety measure.
You say that's a mind parasite.
And then you say like things like anti-Semitism are mind parasites.
What are the mind parasites that you perceive as being the biggest ones either now or in the future?
Beautiful.
So let me explain why I actually use the neuroparasitological framework.
Remember earlier we were talking about how Jordan Peterson compares humans to lobsters and I've got sort of bollocks.
It's not what?
It's not bollocks.
It's not bollocks.
We'll have to flowerbed that.
Bollocks, as in the British term?
Yeah, the British term.
Oh, okay.
Well, that was, isn't that the famous thing?
There was that lady on GQ when he brought up, she's like, well, you know, that comparison between lobsters and people, that's all bollocks, isn't it?
Good impression.
That's an impressive sex.
No, it's not.
That's what the research suggests of Kathy Newman.
Yeah, that's right.
That was a viral moment.
That interview.
No, that's exactly wrong.
Yeah, it's a history.
The interview is painful.
Look at your thespian self is coming out here.
It always does.
We're losing it.
It's hard to keep it in.
I'm sorry.
I just totally stopped you.
Go ahead.
No, no worries.
It's not bollocks.
So let me give you the background of how I developed that neuroparasitological framework.
I was looking at the animal kingdom to look for a apt, powerful metaphor that can explain how human minds can become completely zombified and become completely irrational in even navigating through basic common sense of daily life, right?
And so parasitology is a field of study where you study parasites, but that can go in different parts of your body.
So a tapeworm goes into your intestinal tract, right?
A neuroparasite is a parasite that looks to go to the host's brain, altering its behavioral patterns to suit its reproductive interests.
And so I said, aha, I found my epiphany.
Now I'm going to argue in the book that human beings not only can be parasitized by actual physical brainworms, which can exist, but they can be parasitized by a second class of brainworms called ideological parasites, or I call them idea pathogens.
And so to your question, what are some of these idea pathogens?
I'll first hit you with names, and then I'll speak about the granddaddy of them all.
Postmodernism, cultural relativism, social constructivism, biophobia.
Biophobia is the fear of using biology to explain human affairs.
So identity politics, political correctness, each of these, radical feminism, each of these is an idea pathogen.
The granddaddy of all, if pride is the supra apex sin of the seven cardinal sins, postmodernism is the granddaddy of all idea pathogens because it's the one that offers the framework for all the other nonsense to flourish.
Because postmodernism is a philosophical framework that basically argues that there are no absolute truths other than the one absolute truth that there are no absolute truths, right?
And therefore, there is no objective truth to speak of.
Everything is shackled by subjectivity.
There is, right?
Everything is relativistic, right?
So postmodernism results in a museum putting up an empty canvas as a painting.
Because who are you to judge what is art?
Art is in the eye of the beholder.
And actually, I had that experience when I visited the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh where I saw an empty canvas and I demanded to speak to the museum curator because that pissed me off.
So postmodernism- It's like it's irony.
It's irony.
Exactly.
Hey, look, it's allowing us to have a conversation.
So it has part of the art.
That's part of the art.
It's reconstruct.
What does it mean to you?
Exactly.
And so I tell the story in the parasitic mind, which has become now a very popular story all over the internet.
In 2002, one of my doctoral students had just defended his PhD dissertation.
So we were going out to a celebratory dinner.
Do you know the story?
Either you know the story.
No, keep going.
Okay.
And even if we did, they don't.
There you go.
So we were going out for a celebratory dinner.
My wife, myself, the doctoral student in question, who actually recently wrote to me to congratulate me on my latest book, who himself now is a well-known Canadian professor, and his date.
Now his date, he calls me up before we go out to dinner to give me the heads up on the fact that she is a graduate student in postmodernism, women's studies, and cultural anthropology, to which I answered, ah, the holy trinity of BS.
The trifecta.
The trifet.
So his point was, hey, let's go out, have a good time.
Let's not get, you know, I said, oh, don't worry.
I'll be on my best behavior.
I cannot wait to see where this goes.
You're going to like this.
I said, oh, I get you.
I got you.
I'm going to be on my best behavior.
Which, of course, was a complete abject lie.
Because about halfway through the dinner, I turned to the lady in question.
I say, oh, I hear you're a postmodernist.
She goes, yeah.
I said, okay, well, I'm an evolutionary psychologist.
So I think that there are some human universals.
There is an invariant human nature.
So I do think there are some universals.
So maybe I can propose what I think is a universal, and then you can tell me how I went wrong.
And she said, yeah, sure, go ahead.
So this is 2002.
So this is predating all the transgender stuff prophetically by decades.
I said, is it not a human universal that within Homo sapiens, only women bear children?
Is that not a universal?
So she looks at me, scoffs, rolls her eyes, can't believe at my simpleton imbecility.
She says, no, it's not true.
I said, it's not true that only women bear children.
How is that?
She goes, well, there is a Japanese tribe off some Japanese island where within their mythological folkloric realm, it is the men that bear children.
So by you restricting the conversation to the materialistic, material, you know, biological realm, that's how you kind of keep us barefoot and pregnant.
So then once I recovered from the mini stroke I had at listening to such nonsense, I said, okay, well, how about I offer you maybe a less contentious example?
Because it's simply too dangerous to say only women bear children.
I said, okay, is it not true that since time immemorial, sailors have relied on the premise that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?
Is that not a universal?
So there she used, because you used the term deconstruct, she used what's called deconstructionism, which is the godfather of that is somewhat a French deconstructivist called Jacques Derrida.
And she said, what do you mean by East and West?
And what do you mean by the sun?
That which you call the sun, I might call dancing hyena.
Literally her words.
I said, well, fine, the dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west.
She said, I don't play those label games.
So imagine, so why is postmodernism the granddaddy of all idea pathogens?
Because I was sitting next to, in front of, not someone who escaped from a psychiatric institute, although it's indistinguishable.
I was sitting next to a postmodernist graduate student who wasn't willing to concede that only women bear children and that there is such a thing as East and West and the sun.
If we can't agree on that, that's what's called intellectual terrorism.
That's what then allows me to promulgate all those other idea pathogens because what's up, what's down, what's left, what's right, what's male, what's female, everything's up for grabs.
And so in that book, what I do is I discuss all those idea pathogens and then I offer a mind vaccine against those idea pathogens.
Man, that's wonderful.
I love it that you're talking about the actual reality, the reality that we live and breathe.
we believe in a rational God too, that, that created a reality and created math and all these things, these things that structure this universe.
And I think, uh, what a, what an amazing, I love being able to have this conversation with you because you also, we're, we're on the same footing, right?
So we're like, we're standing on the same ground.
I've been struck by the overlap.
We're not social constructivists either.
Our explanatory system is creationism, rather.
But like there's, you've landed with strange bedfellows because of just these certain overlaps.
It's interesting.
And thank you.
And by the way, that speaks to, I think you have it, and if I can speak of myself, an openness of spirit, right?
I think that's what makes Joe Rogan so successful, right?
Because day one, he could speak to Sir Roger Penrose, who's a Nobel Prize winner in physics.
Day two, he's speaking to his comedian friend where every three seconds they're dropping the F-bomb.
And the fact that he can go from Sir Roger Penrose to comedian friend seamlessly is because of that open spirit.
And so we can sit down here.
We probably agree on 95% of things.
We might not agree on a few things.
And that's okay.
Hawking and Penrose.
Hawking and Penrose.
Ones that believe in the singularity.
that we think started everything.
The designer behind the design.
Anyway, I know.
Anyway, we don't have to talk about that anymore.
Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on.
We're going to go into a subscriber portion right now.
It's just a brief portion.
Sure.
But we wanted to just ask you a few questions we ask everybody.
Is that cool?
Do it.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
Question one.
Yeah.
Have you ever met Carmen?
Like, are you seriously asking me that question?
Of course.
Which I don't know if you know.
Did you know we were a Christian website?
I did not know that until Sam hit me with every single scripture in the history of the world.