Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - A Conversation with Prof Gad Saad

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July 10, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

02:45:48

A Conversation with Prof Gad Saad

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	Hello, everyone.
	I am here with Professor Gad Saad from the professor at Concordia University Montreal who holds the chair of the John Molson School of Business.
	So I got that crave.
	You've got it muted.
	Sorry, I hold the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption.
	There we go.
	And I will just present your screen to everyone so they can see who you are.
	Right.
	How are you?
	Very good.
	Great to be here with you finally after a few technical hiccups.
	Yeah, sorry about that, everyone.
	It's been a pain.
	So, where to begin?
	Would you like to tell everyone what your expertise is and what you do?
	Right.
	So my first semester as a doctoral student, this is going back 25 years ago, I was taking an advanced social psychology course.
	And in that course, the professor halfway through the semester assigned a book called Homicide, which was a book written by two evolutionary psychologists in Canada, where they looked at patterns of criminality from an evolutionary perspective.
	In other words, they demonstrated that there were certain patterns of criminality that were very, very similar, irrespective of cultural setting, irrespective of time period.
	And what allowed them to explain all of these patterns was evolutionary psychology.
	So that was the original place where I was first exposed to the principles of evolutionary psychology.
	Now, since I was interested in studying consumer psychology, I thought, well, what I'd like to do is really Darwinize the study of consumption by bringing in these ideas from evolutionary biology.
	And so I founded the discipline of evolutionary consumption.
	And for the first perhaps 10 years or so of my career, I was pretty much the only lone wolf who was beating the drums of Darwinism and consumer behavior.
	Now there's a few new people who've come into the field.
	So at bottom line, I apply evolutionary psychology to study consumer behavior.
	So just to be clear, your main opposition to the evolutionary perspective on consumer behavior is the social constructivists.
	Is that correct?
	Exactly.
	So there is something.
	So the acronym is SSSM, which is the standard social science model.
	This is a term that was introduced by Tooby and Cosmetes to the founders of evolutionary psychology.
	And basically the idea of these social constructivists is that what makes us different from animals is that we transcend our biology.
	So while biology and evolutionary principles might apply to explain the behaviors of the zebra and the giraffe and the mosquito and the salamander, that's great.
	But when it comes to the study of human behavior, especially things related to the brain, many of these folks don't mind if you apply evolutionary principles to explain why your pancreas have evolved to be the way they are.
	But once you apply it to anything above the neck, well, then clearly this suggests that you are a Nazi.
	You're a woman hater, right?
	You're involved in some conspiracy to bring back eugenics.
	And so, you know, the sources of the tractors really come in all sorts of different robes.
	But certainly the social scientists have been slow in accepting the idea that humans are biological beings.
	Well, I mean, wouldn't accepting your perspective on this completely undermine everything about their own?
	Exactly.
	And I think that's really the source of the hostility.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, I've watched a few of your interviews and you've described their convictions to be almost religious.
	Exactly.
	In my own experience, anyone who's watched my channel for any amount of time will, I've occasionally described them as such because it's the only comparison that I can see that is accurate to anything else that I've seen.
	It's in the denial, in the face of facts, they just deny them outright.
	Absolutely.
	I've never seen anything like it.
	You know, it's almost impenetrable.
	The good news, though, is that to the extent that one would like to think that social scientists still adhere to the scientific method, then when I put on my optimistic hat, I say that, look, science is an autocorrective process.
	One has to be patient.
	And eventually, by constantly chipping away at their paradigmatic defenses, eventually the cumulative evidence becomes so great that they can no longer deny it.
	And to be fair, if I were to compare when I first started to Darwinize the field, say, you know, 17, 18 years ago, to today, the hostility then was greater than now.
	So in other words, today they're still quite hostile, but they're certainly less self-assured in their hostility.
	Right, that actually surprises me.
	I would have thought that as time went on, they'd become more and more hostile to you.
	That's how I found they've been to me, but I'm not doing the same thing, I suppose.
	Well, clearly, my persuasive abilities are very great.
	Well, the thing is, I was born in the wrong skin.
	That's the thing.
	I was born a white male, and so they just don't.
	That's what they are.
	They really are.
	So can you give us a quick example of how evolutionary consumerism works out?
	Sure.
	I mean, I don't know anything about it, obviously.
	So for me, when I hear it, I think probably something along the lines of when you go shopping when you're hungry, you end up coming back with huge amounts of extra food that you wouldn't normally buy.
	Right.
	So that would be a great example.
	That would be an example of how the mechanism of food hoarding, right?
	So to the extent that one of the greatest survival challenges faced by any organism is how to get tonight's dinner and how to avoid becoming somebody else's dinner, right?
	So predator avoidance and food hoarding are two of the key mechanisms of natural selection, or that natural selection seeks to, if you like, find adaptations for.
	Well, then it would make sense that since we've evolved in environments of caloric scarcity and caloric uncertainty, that we've evolved this desire to gorge.
	So when my blood sugar is down and I'm hungry, it's probably not the good time to go grocery shopping because I'm going to overbuy.
	And those findings have been actually found.
	But let me give you a few others.
	I mean, of course, I've got the whole show on only that.
	So I did a study a few years ago.
	And again, we could cover as many as you'd like.
	We've got plenty of time, honestly.
	I'm happy for it.
	Beautiful.
	So let's see if we can beat my time on Joe Rogan, which was almost three hours.
	Well, I have been known to ramble for quite some time.
	Go ahead, go ahead.
	Okay.
	So a few years ago, I did a study with one of my former graduate students.
	And the genesis of the idea came to me when I was looking at the types of sexual signaling that various species engage in.
	So the classic example is the peacock, right?
	So the peacock, but of course, there are a million other examples, but that's the one that people are familiar with.
	So let's take that one.
	So the peacock basically shows off its tail, which has iridescent colors, which is big, which has symmetrical patterns.
	And all of these are basically advertising, right, to use a consumer term.
	They're advertising good phenotypic quality.
	You must choose me because, look, despite the fact that this is making me more visible to predators, I'm still here.
	So, you should mate with me, right?
	And so, I thought, well, how can I take this principle, which in biology is known as the handicap principle, right?
	Because you're handicapping yourself in lieu of predators that are allowed.
	And how can I apply it to consumer behavior?
	Well, there are all sorts of very ostentatious purchases, very various forms of conspicuous consumption that are nothing but, to use the colloquial language, peacocking, right?
	And so, the fancy sports car is akin to the peacock's tail.
	Okay, so far, so good.
	But how can we go about testing some of these ideas scientifically?
	So, I thought, well, we know that when, say, two males of many species fight one another, the one who wins the fight has an increase in his testosterone level.
	The one who loses has a decrease in his.
	So, we set up an experiment.
	This is with my former graduate student, where we rented a Porsche and we had an old beaten-up sedan, so high-status car, low-status car.
	And we brought in men and we had them drive both cars downtown Montreal and also on a semi-deserted highway.
	One is visible, one is not so visible.
	And then, after each driving condition, we measured their testosterone levels or fluctuations at the testosterone level via salivary assays.
	And of course, as you might predict, even if you know nothing about evolutionary biology.
	You can see where this is going, yeah.
	The Porsche was right, exactly.
	And it makes the endocrinological system explode.
	Now, one reviewer had noted when he was reviewing, he or she, I don't know the sex of the person, when they were reviewing the paper, said, Well, how do you know that this testosterone reaction is not simply due to the fact that they were driving fast and so on?
	Well, other than the fact that we had given them very strict instructions, which hopefully they adhere to, when they're in downtown Montreal, when they're driving on a weekend in downtown Montreal, it's basically like driving in a parking lot.
	It's bumper to bumper.
	So, that's a natural way to control for that possible alternate explanation.
	It's certainly not because they're driving fast, it's because they are sending a cue that says, Look at me, I'm in a Porsche, and that's going to make my testosterone rise.
	So, that would be an example of linking testosterone to sexual signaling in a consumer setting.
	Now, let's take the other sex.
	So, it's not only in the human species, it's not only men who engage in sexual signaling.
	Of course, women do it as well, but of course, they use different products to attract men, right?
	I mean, this is why, even though there are many, many women who are millionaires and billionaires, 99% of Ferrari owners are male.
	And it's not because women can't afford them, right?
	Because men don't care, right?
	I mean, I'm not going to say if a gorgeous woman passes by and says, Hey, let's have sex, and I say, Oh my goodness, you're driving a Toyota Corolla.
	No way, no sex for you, Linda.
	It's not happening.
	Go get me an Aston Martin, and it's on, right?
	And so, women will use different sexual signals.
	Now, of course, they will use beautification.
	And so, with another of my doctoral graduate students, what we did basically is we kept track of women's behaviors across a full cycle of their ovulatory cycle.
	So, we basically kept track of everyday behaviors of women for 35 days.
	35 days, because usually the typical menstrual cycle lasts for 28 days.
	And so, what we wanted to see, among other things, was whether women would engage in the greatest amount of beautification specifically during the maximally fertile phase of their cycle.
	It's completely logical that they would, isn't it?
	Exactly.
	I mean, why would they not?
	Exactly right.
	Now, and by the way, the reason why I always often start off with these examples when somebody asks me about evolutionary psycho consumption, and the reason why I specifically chose these areas to study is because it's a very strategic decision.
	It makes it that much more difficult when you are using physiological-based measures for the social constructivists to say, oh, no, no, but it's due to socialization, it's due to culture, it's due to learning, it's due to my rabbi, right?
	How could it possibly be about socialization?
	I don't know when a woman's ovulatory cycle is going on.
	You know, I have no idea.
	Sorry, yeah.
	Sorry, Karen.
	Yeah, so those would be two examples.
	Maybe I could give you another one and then you could tell me if you want.
	So I have an ongoing project now that's not yet published.
	So to kind of move away from sex issues, because of course evolutionary principles don't only apply to mating.
	And so I have a study with some Israeli colleagues where we looked at gift giving at Israeli weddings.
	Specifically, we looked at the size of the monetary gifts.
	So for example, Uncle Mordachai gives $200 to the bride.
	And we actually had data from 30 Israeli weddings where each of the people who gave monetary gifts were listed, right, in a list.
	And so we wanted to test two things.
	Number one, we wanted to test whether the genetic relatedness between the offerer and the bride and groom would affect the size of the monetary gift.
	So put simply, if I'm your brother, I'm likely to give you a bigger gift than if I'm your second cousin, if only because I share more genes with you on average.
	So that one, I think, is intuitive, and people could have probably predicted that even if they knew nothing about genetics or evolutionary psychology.
	I think there could also be other reasons for that, though, couldn't there?
	I mean, just familiarity.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Familiarity, the fact that you grew up together, absolutely.
	The second one makes it a bit more difficult to argue for anything other than evolutionary theory.
	And so if you look at, for example, your four grandparents, on average, you share 25% of your genes with each.
	So if you were only looking at genetic relatedness as the operative factor, they're all equally genetically related to you.
	But if you now add a second component known as genetic assuredness, how assured are you of the genetic link?
	Well, your maternal grandmother, since it's down the maternal line, there is no such thing as maternal uncertainty.
	And therefore, her genetic link to you is absolutely assured.
	Your paternal grandfather has two generations of paternity uncertainty.
	And therefore, as has been found in the research, this is known as differential grandparental solicitude, which basically says that your four grandparents don't invest equally in you.
	Your maternal grandmother invests the most, your paternal grandfather invests the least, and the other two grandparents somewhere in the middle.
	So we took this idea and said, well, using this very, very subtle Darwinian explanation, we predict that the maternal side of the bride and groom would give larger gifts than the paternal side of the bride and groom, and that's exactly what we found.
	Now, the reason why that's a really powerful demonstration, if I may say so about my own work, is that it's very, very difficult for anybody to argue, number one, oh, it's just due to random socialization, but also it's almost impossible for someone to have posited such a hypothesis were it not that you were coming with the evolutionary lens to generate your hypothesis.
	This hypothesis would have remained invisible to you if you didn't know these ideas about paternity uncertainty and so on.
	So, that's one of the beautiful things about evolutionary psychology is that it allows you to propose research questions that would have otherwise remained completely invisible to you.
	Okay, that's very interesting.
	I'm not aware of these things, so I'm just processing them as we go through.
	Okay, no, that's no, that makes sense.
	So, as I understand it, it's so as I understand it, the parent or the grandparent that's going to invest most heavily is going to be the maternal grandmother, then exactly right.
	And the grandparent that doesn't is the paternal grandfather, exactly right, right?
	Okay, just make sure I'm on the uh yeah, yeah, still keeping up with that.
	Okay, okay, that's very interesting.
	Uh, now, I could maybe add a few things that kind of speak to the importance of evolutionary psychology.
	Is this something that we want to explore?
	Absolutely.
	So, one of the things that people don't understand about evolutionary theory in general is this idea of proximate versus ultimate explanations.
	So, a proximate explanation in science refers to answering the how and the what.
	How does the mechanism operate?
	So, if you have diabetes, how does your blood sugar result in diabetes?
	That's a mechanistic explanation.
	So, it's answering the how and what.
	The ultimate explanation doesn't mean ultimate in that it's superior.
	It's not in that sense.
	Ultimate means the Darwinian why.
	Why would the mechanism have evolved to be of that form?
	So, now let me give you a, I love to give this example because it so clearly demonstrates the difference between the two levels of explanations.
	So, if you take, for example, pregnancy sickness, the idea that women become many people call it morning sickness, but it's really the more general term is pregnancy sickness because some women don't get it in the morning, right?
	So, they're nauseous, they throw up, they're repulsed by certain foods.
	It's a really miserable time.
	Now, if you were to study the proximate causes of pregnancy sickness, there are all sorts of things you could study.
	You could study how the changes in a woman's hormonal profile exacerbate the severity of the symptoms.
	That's a perfectly fine question to ask.
	Nothing wrong with that.
	The ultimate question is the following: to the extent that this physiological mechanism is one that is found universally across cultures, across time periods, right?
	It's not specific to women in England or Lebanon.
	Why would women have evolved this physiological reaction?
	What is the adaptive solution to which pregnancy sickness is targeted at?
	And here, the one who first proposed this is a scholar by the name of a prophet, P-R-O-F-E-T.
	She basically argued and came up with unbelievable evidence in support of her theory that basically what happens is that pregnancy sickness happens during organogenesis.
	This is during the first trimester of pregnancy, where if a woman is exposed to food pathogens, that would wreak havoc to the developing embryo, right?
	And that's why it's called organogenesis, like the organs are forming.
	And so, therefore, during that time period, it is profoundly important that the woman not be exposed to teratogens and food pathogens.
	Therefore, the pregnancy sickness is an adaptive solution to that very real problem.
	And how does that solution get instantiated?
	Well, women are repulsed by certain foods that are likely to have high pathogenic load.
	They are attracted to foods that solve exposure to pathogens, like pickles.
	That's why pregnant women often will desire pickles out of the blue.
	It starts at organogenesis.
	It ends at the end of organogenesis.
	So if basically you look at all of the possible epidemiological facts, you quickly realize that it is indeed an adaptive mechanism.
	Now, if you're a woman and you go see your gynecologist and you say, hey, Doc, help me with my pregnancy sickness.
	He or she will give you a pill to soften the severity of the symptoms, which is the perfectly wrong evolutionary thing to do, because those pregnancy sickness symptoms are actually beneficial to the child.
	Yeah, they're there to protect it from any kind of deformity or malformation from eating a pathogenic food.
	Exactly right.
	And so therefore, you see here how the social constructivists who are actually threatened by my work, in a sense, I come to them with some good news.
	As long as the work that they're doing is not completely removed from reality, it is possible for them to propose an explanation at the proximate level.
	And I come along and offer the ultimate explanation for that phenomenon.
	And both of us are correct in that they are simply operating at a different level of analysis.
	So together, we can explain the phenomenon better than if it were only explained at the proximate level.
	Now, I can completely see why they hate you because I don't think the things they propose have any particular evolutionary or biological advantage.
	In fact, they would seem to be inherent disadvantages.
	For example, if men and women were interchangeable, then you would be saying, well, we'll just send our women out to war and whatnot.
	And sending your women out to war would be absolutely no good from just any kind of common sense point of view.
	So I don't think they're ever going to be on the same page as you.
	I agree with what you're saying completely.
	I see exactly what you're saying.
	It's two different approaches.
	But yeah, I can see why they hate you.
	And that's it.
	I mean, you hit exactly the obstacles.
	But I mean, the good news from my perspective is that at least I'm doing something that gets people riled up, whether it be, right?
	And so it's certainly not inconsequential.
	It's a big battle every day.
	But as I said, I truly believe that with patience, science is an autocorrective process and eventually they will shudder away in shame.
	I've got no doubt.
	I mean, it's very, very interesting.
	I mean, it's just honestly, it just seems very logical what you're doing.
	It's just common sense.
	You know, I hate to say it.
	You know, it just, it just, it makes sense.
	And this, I think, is inherently the problem.
	This is why they have to have such incredibly counterintuitive rationalizations for everything that they do.
	Absolutely.
	And I think that that's why they have to cling to them, all of it as well.
	It's not like, because for me, if someone turned around and said, oh, I mean, I like to think of myself as a classical libertarian, as a classical liberal.
	And, you know, but then someone comes to me and says, yeah, but what about people who are stuck in an exceptionally poor part of the country?
	They've got no particular opportunities and stuff.
	And I'm saying, well, okay, maybe a small amount of socialism to help them would be a good thing.
	You know, it's compromising my principles, but I'm not being dogmatic about it.
	It doesn't shatter my worldview if I do that.
	But these people don't seem able to do that because everything is so neatly and tightly constructed that if they remove one part of it, it's like a Jenga puzzle almost.
	You know, the whole thing begins collapsing down.
	And I'll give you a, I'm sorry, go ahead, did I interrupt you?
	No, no, no, no, absolutely.
	So I'll give you a good example of what you're talking about.
	So, if I get up in front of a crowd, which might include some hostile detractors, and I propose some evolutionary explanation for some sex difference that is congruent with the ideology of, say, radical feminists, and I'll give you specific examples in a second, then they'll all come up, oh, Dr. Saad, brilliant, love it, fantastic, beautiful work.
	If I, of course, on the other hand, come up with an evolutionary explanation for something that is incongruent with their ideology, boo, Nazi, Himmler, Himmler.
	I love the idea of calling a gene Nazi.
	Yeah, that's right, that's right.
	I'm one of those Jews that's really self-hating.
	That's insane.
	Nazism, yes.
	Yeah, internalized anti-Semitism.
	That's right.
	The flagellation of the progressive, right?
	So, anyway, so let me give you the concrete example.
	So, for example, if I say, well, you know, there's an extraordinary amount of evidence that suggests that on average, there would have been evolutionary reasons why men would evolve to be greater seeking in terms of sexual variety.
	So, it's not that women are these chaste, prude, Victorian angels, but on average, if you look around the world and across time, and that data does exist and it has been documented very extensively, well, it is clear that men are simply more have a greater penchant for sexual variety.
	That doesn't sound good.
	I must be a sexist pig.
	On the other hand, now let's continue the discussion.
	If I say, well, but there is actually quite a bit of evidence that suggests that women are actually quite the duplicit, duplicitous, you know, sexual beasts.
	And let me give you some examples.
	So, for example, if you look at the likelihood of a woman cheating on her long-term partner, it's more likely to happen when she is maximally fertile.
	And she's most likely to not insist on using protection, right?
	This is called the sperm extraction hypothesis.
	It's basically saying that she's shopping for good genes, right?
	So, so when she cheats on her long-term partner, she's basically saying, Maybe I could go behind the bushes and find some superior genetic specimen, and hopefully, the poor chump at home could raise it as his own, right?
	That's called the cuckold research.
	Go ahead.
	She's obviously with him because he has other attributes about him, like he might have a very high-paying job or a very secure job or something like that.
	Exactly right.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, sorry, let's go on.
	So, if I then give data from across primate species, so if you look at the size of the testes of different primates as a function of their body weight, so for example, if you look at chimps, male chimps, they're basically walking testicles, right?
	Right?
	Like their whole body, their whole being, their whole morphology is to support these gigantic testicles.
	And so, and the reason why they've evolved such big testes is because the females of that species are astronomically promiscuous.
	So, in other words, the size of testicles.
	I can't imagine why feminists hate you.
	Sorry, it's not that much.
	Hold up, they're going to be happy at the end of this discussion.
	No, no, no, it's so funny.
	So, carry on, please.
	So, so the size of the chimps' testicles are an adaptation to female behavior in that species.
	So, for example, male gorillas who have a polygynous mating system, meaning there's one dominant male that controls sexual access to many females.
	So meaning that there isn't a lot of sperm competition.
	Well, the male gorillas, despite the fact that if you see them, they're incredibly impressive how they look, they actually have very small testicles.
	Yeah.
	Now, humans actually place closer, if you'd like, on the chimp end of that curve.
	In other words, if we go by that function, this suggests that because of the size of our testicles, women have been going around behind our back for quite a bit.
	Now, let me give you one other data point.
	There's a guy by the name.
	Yeah, so there's a guy by the name of, I think his name is Robin Baker.
	I can't remember his name.
	I hope that I've gotten his name right.
	He wrote a book called, I think, Sperm Wars in the mid-90s.
	And he talks about the fact that the morphology of spermatozoa.
	So when you think of spermatozoa, you sort of think of the, you know, the classical sperm with the head and the tail that is sort of swimming to find the egg.
	But he actually documented there are two other forms of, if you like, phenotypes of sperm.
	There's what are called the blockers.
	Now, those are spermatozoa that have no interest in seeking the egg.
	They simply go into the female reproductive tract and they try to block the possibility of other men's sperm coming in.
	And then there are other sperms that are called killer sperms that sort of go around looking for other men's sperm to kill.
	Now, this theory has been debated, but let's go on for a second.
	Now, sperm is viable in a woman's reproductive tract for roughly 72 hours, which means, now, I think hopefully you know where I'm going with this.
	If men have evolved, if men have, yeah, do you know where your wife is today?
	Sorry.
	So if you think that sperm is viable in a woman's reproductive tract for 72 hours, and if men have evolved this sort of huge panoply of chemical weaponry to fight against the other men's sperm, this means that it was very likely, evolutionarily speaking, that a woman could have coupled with multiple males within a 72-hour period.
	And hence, when you take all of this data that I just spent quite a bit of time judiciously, you know, presenting to you, this suggests that women are hardly the chaste, prude Victorian angels.
	Now, when I present that data, they love that.
	Oh my God, long live Dr. Sad.
	Long live.
	Slot walks are completely validated all of a sudden.
	Right.
	So then it's all good.
	Men are sexually promiscuous.
	Females, women are sexually promiscuous.
	So that's the problem is that it's always evolutionary theory is so dangerous to the pet ideology of so many different types of people that they end up all lining up to hate on you for all sorts of different reasons.
	But the bottom line is, if you're right, and more generally, starting with Darwin, if he's right, then my pet ideology is in trouble.
	So I got to shoot down this Jew boy.
	Yeah, we're so tell me, well, in fact, can we let's talk about one thing that interests me about this is biological determinism.
	Because I'm by no means an expert on any of this.
	So I'm just going by what I've read on Wikipedia.
	And I find it very interesting how you very much get the LGBT groups who say, oh, well, you know, you're born gay.
	You can't help being gay.
	It's not about socialization.
	So they're very much on your side with that sort of thing.
	Do you find what do you what can you tell me about that really?
	Just about biological determinism or about well, both really, and how it what the you know the sort of issues that we're having here, right?
	So, uh, biological determinism is actually a complete canard, it's it's complete nonsense.
	So, in other words, if anybody comes to you and says, Oh, you know, evolutionary theory is biologically deterministic, then they've just basically advertised, I'm an idiot, I don't understand a thing about biology.
	I don't mean you, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not making any statements here at all, right?
	I have no fucking idea.
	So, you feel me?
	Yeah, so the correct position is what's called an interactionist position.
	Uh, pretty much everything that we are is an intricate melange of our biology and environmental inputs, even genes themselves.
	So, I mean, you could argue that nothing is more reductionist than looking at something at the gene level.
	Genes get turned on or off as a function of environmental inputs.
	Natural selection and sexual selection operate within specific environments, so it is wrong to argue that evolutionary theory is deterministic.
	It's a nonsensical term.
	Everything is an interaction with our genes and our environments and our idiosyncratic abilities.
	So, let me give you an example: the evolutionary principle that men should be very desirous to seek high social status because that's something that women desire around the world and throughout times.
	That is an evolutionary adaptive argument.
	Now, the way that individual men go about instantiating the pursuit of high social status is completely idiosyncratic.
	Sargon might become a YouTube star and make tons of money and become famous that way.
	Somebody else might become a great neurosurgeon, another guy might become a great soccer player.
	So, there is nothing deterministic in simply recognizing that there are biological blueprints that we come to existence with.
	Now, that doesn't mean though that it's deterministic.
	So, for example, if I say, look, on average, it is very difficult for men and women to stay true to their monogamous unions because, frankly, we've evolved, and it's you know, the evidence is incontestable for both men and women.
	We've evolved the desire and the preference to actually engage in multiple matings.
	And so, now that doesn't mean though, that you are doomed to cheat on your monogamous union because there are-I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, no, I just wanted to say that I think that's the part that people really struggle with.
	Because as soon as you say that, it sounds like every monogamous relationship is doomed, and you know, you can't possibly, and it would be silly to even try exactly.
	And the way that I usually try to get them over that hump is to say, look, at any given time, any organism is, if you'd like, being pulled by different Darwinian levers in different directions.
	So, I may have the evolved desire to potentially stray on my monogamous union, but I also have a moral compass, right?
	So, my moral sense is also due to an evolutionary process, and that moral compass can actually pull me back.
	So, offering an evolutionary explanation in no way argues that it's deterministic, it's fatalistic.
	It simply only recognizes that humans are both a biological and cultural animal.
	See, sorry, if I can just jump in there again, I think the word that I would use in this situation would be imperatives.
	Example, if i'm hungry and i'm in a supermarket, I don't just grab some food off the shelf and eat it, you know, despite it.
	But then if I, you know if, if it was all entirely biological uh deterministic, then that's exactly what i'd do, you know, I mean even a dog, you know you put food on a dog's nose and you can train the dog not to eat it.
	So I mean, you know I, I just I, I completely agree with you and I think that's um, just how i'm viewing it in my head.
	Yeah, i've actually used exactly that term, biological imperative.
	That's, that's a beautiful term.
	I'll give you a great uh metaphor.
	It's not I remember who, the original person who came up with it, but I, it's called I.
	I call it the cake metaphor.
	So when you're talking about this idea of nature versus nurture uh the, the way to answer that that's really a false dichotomy, and the way that one can answer that, to make to explain it to people, is via what I call the cake metaphor.
	So if you take the ingredients of a cake, you take the flour, the sugar, the eggs right, each of those ingredients, before you bake the cake, are separate and distinguishable from one another.
	Right now I bake the cake using all those ingredients.
	So now the final cake comes out, could I point to you and say, point to where the sugar is, point towards where the?
	You can't.
	It's an inextricable mix.
	So, human beings, it is undoubtedly true that we are inextricable mix of our nature and nurture.
	The problem with, I think, most of the social sciences has been that they've really built these edifices, theoretical and empirical edifices, for the past hundred years where they pretty much completely rejected the biological end, and that's simply.
	That is a form of religion right, because it's a faith thing.
	It's insane, you know, why would anyone do anything if there wasn't, initially, the biological drive to achieve an end result?
	Why would, why would anyone do any of it, right?
	I mean?
	I mean, just think of courtship, just the very idea what you can do.
	I'm going to spend all my money on this woman.
	Why?
	Why would you do that?
	It's your money, it's your resources.
	Why would you need to do that?
	Well, i've got a, a biological drive to do that.
	You know.
	You know sorry um I I, I. What annoys me as well is um, because I spend quite a lot of time criticizing um, progressivism and uh well, and I say progressivism but, like the um, the sort of more extreme side that we're talking about, it's hard to really define it, isn't it?
	Um, a lot of people think that i'm against the idea of social sciences, and i'm really not, you know.
	I just think that the people who are essentially doing all of the social science uh, or at least the loud ones in the public discourse, are people so compromised by bias and they, they have an end goal that they know they're trying to achieve and they're going to.
	They're going to write studies and um I, i'm not going to say fabricate results, but I do think that there's a great amount of just I.
	I I just do think it's a lot of confirmation bias, and i'll i'll give you an example of exactly what you're saying.
	So, so there's a excuse me, there's a movement called cultural relativism yep, which which, of course, I think you're familiar with.
	Now you might be.
	Should we just explain?
	Would you like to explain it?
	Just to please?
	Okay, no problem.
	So, cultural relativism in the context of the social justice warrior types refers to the fact that all cultures are relative in how they've evolved.
	Who are we to judge the fact that in some cultures they might gouge the eyes of children?
	Right.
	I mean, you know, who are we to decide, you know, what's up, is down, what's left, what's right.
	Okay.
	So, so that, if you'd like, that, if you like, political-based cultural relativism actually stems, the genesis of that movement actually comes from social sciences.
	It stems from some anthropologists who were starting with Franz Boas, who was an anthropologist at Columbia University.
	This is going back close to 100 years ago now, where he basically argued that, well, cultural relativists, there are no human universals.
	There is no such thing as a human nature, right?
	What makes humans humans is that they're completely cultural beings.
	So, any single human universal that you, Sargon, might propose, no way, I could find some distant tribe in some Venezuelan forest where that universal not hold.
	And therefore, everything is culturally relative.
	There are no such things.
	So, even if it comes to mating, the sex differences that the average three-year-old understands, no, no, no, no, this is due to the patriarchy, it's due to so on, right?
	I love the patriarchy, yeah, the patriarchy, right?
	Apparently, I'm one of its leaders, and I've never been invited to a damn meeting.
	So, I don't know how it works.
	I am one of the feminist tweet me on Twitter the other day to tell me that I'm the reason that trigger warnings exist.
	You are me personally, yeah.
	I'm I'm pretty high-ranking in the patriarchy.
	Wow, impressive.
	I bow to you.
	So, going back to Franz Boas, so he then trained a whole generation of cultural anthropologists.
	Perhaps the most famous one, maybe you and some of your viewers might know her, is Margaret Mead, who went to Samoa desperately hoping to show that even something as trivially obvious as the fact that men are much more desirous of pursuing sex than women, that's a complete social construction.
	And she apparently found a society where the women are sexually aggressive and the men are, oh, no, no, no, I can't.
	I don't want to.
	I'm afraid I want to be chaste and virginal.
	Now, of course, this was complete nonsense, part fabrication, part the participants whom she was asking these questions were just taking her for a ride.
	And so, there's a book that came out a few years ago called The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, which basically showed that, you know, pretty much everything that she, a lot of what she wrote, was utter BS.
	But she was so desperate to demonstrate that something as innately true and as human universal as sex differences in mating behavior were not due to biology.
	And so now you might say, well, why did they come?
	I mean, surely these people are not idiots.
	They're obviously sophisticated people who were educated.
	How could they fool themselves in such a manner?
	And I think the answer, at least the one that I propose, is that it actually came from a noble place, noble in quotes.
	Because what they wanted to do, they quickly realized that there are very dangerous repercussions when evolutionary theory falls in the wrong hands.
	So British, right?
	So, the British class elitists came up with quote social Darwinism, which of course has nothing to do with Darwinism, where they said, Hey, look, it's a struggle between the classes.
	And so, if the lower class loses and they die off in the street and they're uneducated, well, who cares?
	That's nature.
	That's Darwinian struggle.
	The Nazis said, Hey, you know, we are the Aryan race.
	It's a struggle between the races.
	And so, if we kill the gypsies, the homosexuals, and the Jews, hey, that's just Darwinian theory.
	What's wrong with that?
	That's nature.
	Eugenesis said, Hey, we don't want to have too many brown immigrants coming from Sicily.
	And so, maybe let's set up a eugenics or let's get rid of some of homosexuals so that the quote gaging doesn't spread.
	And so, all of these miscreants, all of these Cretans latched onto biological-based thinking in the pursuit of their own ideological interests.
	And so, these social scientists came along and said, All right, we're going to create a new worldview where biology ceases to matter.
	And hopefully, this can forestall, if not eradicate, the possibility of anybody misusing it.
	So, I think they came from a noble place, but ultimately they were pure schmucks.
	I think that I would be more inclined to agree with you on that as well.
	I mean, everyone's the hero of their own story.
	That's the thing.
	Nobody likes to think of themselves as evil.
	Even people who do evil things think that eventually the ends will justify the means.
	So, I would be more inclined to believe that they thought they were acting from a, I mean, I still think that they do.
	I think the feminists, despite the fact that there are people who are clearly very venomous people who are using these ideological ideological weapons to sort of attack, for example, white men, you know, and I'm not just saying this because I'm a white man.
	I'm saying this because I see them do it and I see them do it with such vigilance.
	They can't stand to let an example go.
	You know, they have to pounce on it and they use it specifically for emotional gratification.
	I mean, literally, I did a video yesterday where I quoted one on Twitter where this one complained about a quote transphobic joke in a video game.
	And then, after the feminist hate mob on Twitter had dogpiled the video game developer, and actually the developer didn't actually pull it, but the person who asked for the joke to be put in asked for it to be pulled because they saw what was going on.
	And this person was parading around Twitter saying, Yay, I did it.
	I'm a good person.
	It's just like, wow, that is not what a good person makes.
	And I would add, I mean, and I think the hypocrisy of their position is deafening because, right?
	So, they'll take on some gamer, you know, whatever the story is.
	But, you know, clitoris removal, don't worry about that.
	That's culturally relativists.
	Who are we to judge?
	They've got more important things.
	There was a phobic joke in a game.
	Exactly.
	And so that's why we've got the heroine, the queen of offense, Anita Sarkeesian, fighting the good battle for all of us.
	You know, as somebody who comes from the Middle East, I could tell you that many women in that region face greater problems than stereotypical patriarchal depictions in gaming, right?
	What was the name of the African lady who basically came to the West and saw Western feminism and then just chewed them out completely?
	Are you referring to Ayan Hersey Ali?
	I think so.
	Yeah, I think that's the name.
	Yeah, she was not impressed with Western feminism whatsoever.
	Yeah, so Ayan Hercy Ali, you may remember this.
	Last year in spring 2014, she was invited to Brandeis University.
	Now, Brandeis University was set up by Brandeis, a Jewish man, I believe, a judge, to remove the anti-Semitism that was prevalent in some of the higher institutes of higher learning in the U.S.
	So it's a very liberty-based institution.
	Yet here is Ayan Hersey Ali, who's dedicated her life to the plight of women around the world.
	Apparently, because she criticizes one religion, I can't remember which religion.
	I think it's maybe the Amish, maybe it's the Jains.
	I can't remember which religion it is.
	I'm being facetious.
	Apparently, she was a hate-filled hate monger who had to be disinvited from Brandeis because this university, which is founded on ideals of freedom of speech and tolerance and liberty, found her too hateful.
	So when you're getting to that level of lunacy, we're in trouble.
	Well, it's amazing what these things will justify.
	I mean, I have heard just the most ridiculous things from, I mean, I don't even know what to call it.
	I feel bad about calling it progressivism because it's what progressivism has become.
	When I was like, you know, 16, 17, I didn't really know much about the world, obviously.
	And I thought I was a progressive.
	And then I went out into the world and I met progressives.
	And then I realized, well, I'm nothing like these people because they're crazy.
	So maybe it is progressivism.
	Maybe I don't know.
	But yeah.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I was going to say, I think it comes, there are a couple of facets to, if you like, the mindset of the so-called progressive.
	I think first, most people are cognitive misers.
	They're cognitively lazy, right?
	And so they wish to take a few key talking points.
	And if somehow it supports their general identity, you know, I'm somebody who's tolerant.
	I don't like to criticize people.
	I'll latch onto that.
	You know, it's too much hard work for me to try to really understand the details of the issue.
	You know, is this particular religion peaceful or not?
	Well, I could either look at the data, study the original canonical text to see whether it preaches love and brotherhood or not.
	But, you know, that's a lot of work.
	I'd rather simply listen to whether President Obama says the religion is peaceful enough.
	Now, I like President Obama because I'm progressive and I want to support him.
	Therefore, it's a lot easier for me as a card-carrying member of the progressive platform to simply go along with it.
	And then you've got this herd mentality where it becomes clear that if you're going to be accepted among the latte drinking folks in the university clubs, you better hold certain views.
	And therefore, people become scared to speak out against those views.
	Well, you've touched on an awful lot there that I think is really worth looking a bit more depth.
	I mean, the first thing is what you've described there is the narrative.
	I'm sure you're familiar with.
	But the narrative is something that I have seen them construct in real time, where they're looking for data points, where they can flip from one point to another point to another point.
	So this happened and that happened and that happened.
	And therefore, we can justify declaring, I mean, in my example, I've been an active participant in an online movement called Gamergate.
	And so if, say, Zoe Quit, one of the people opposed to it has received a nasty message on Twitter, then they can say, oh, that came from anyone supporting this movement.
	And then so that becomes a data point that they say, no, this happened on this day.
	And it did happen, but it's something that happened.
	But the details are completely lost.
	It doesn't matter who it came from.
	It doesn't matter what happened because it's easy to say that it came from the movement that I'm part of.
	And then it moves to the next thing.
	Then they contact the FBI.
	Yeah, they did.
	But what happened then?
	Well, it doesn't really matter.
	It doesn't matter.
	The FBI said, this is nonsense.
	Get out of here.
	It doesn't matter.
	They went to the FBI.
	And then the next, and this is how they construct their narrative.
	And that's like you say, and it is that people are lazy, but I feel that we're being harsh to the general population there because everyone's got busy lives.
	They're busy, they've got a lot on.
	So I can see why they would just read like the bullet points in the paper and say, yeah, okay, fair enough.
	That's terrible.
	And move on, despite the fact that really they're being sold a complete pack of lies on whatever topic it is.
	The danger, though, is that a lot of those people who do lead busy lives, but yet make official pronouncements will scare others into speaking, right?
	So, you know, I happen to be somebody who has the right personality and testicular fortitude to speak my mind without caring what people think, because I believe that one should be accurate in pursuing the truth.
	But of course, a lot of people, I mean, if I just look at some of my academic colleagues, right?
	Let me give you an example.
	If I put up a post on Facebook where I am critical of some insane thing that some Orthodox Jew has done on a plane, like he has to wear a plastic thing over his body because he cannot be polluted by being close to a woman, whatever.
	So I put this up and I go, this is insane, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, in the general zeitgeist of today, it's okay for fellow academics to say, oh, yeah, religion sucks.
	Yes, they'll like that post because you're criticizing a religion that is allowed to be criticized.
	Those Orthodox Jews, they're nuts.
	If I put up a post saying, oh, here is a creationist museum that is going to show us how evolution is a Zionist hoax and so on, then of course they will like that post because those crazy radical Christians, what a bunch of morons.
	Now, if I put up the following, and actually I did recently a YouTube clip on this.
	I see where this is going.
	You see where it's going.
	So if I now put up a Iraqi astronomer, so he's a scientist, he's a researcher who proclaims that based on his holy book, it is absolutely the case that the earth is flat.
	Sorry, did this happen?
	Yes, yes.
	So this is not, I'm not engaging in hyperbol.
	So I, so, so, I, and I specifically use this example because it is the epitome of lunacy, right?
	It's arguing that the earth is flat.
	Then I get academics who write to me and say, hey, come on, buddy, why are you why are you ganging up on those people?
	So the scientist, my fellow colleague academic, was not offended by a fellow scientist who was spewing that the earth is flat.
	She was offended that I shared the fact that he was spewing lunacy.
	Well, how dare you?
	I mean, that guy is from Iraq.
	I mean, he's probably got brown skin.
	He's part of a disenfranchised, marginalized group.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	And so I basically said that the new rule is that when you are evaluating the veracity of a scientific statement or a statement that is antithetical to science, be very careful.
	First, establish the, you know, the privilege score of the scientist.
	If he falls into the group that we can attack, then we can criticize his scientific view.
	If not, shut your mouth.
	Well, this is the progressive stack, isn't it?
	Is um, you know, yeah, a marginalized Iraqi Muslim scientist is probably quite high, you know, probably a lot higher than a westernized Jew.
	You know, right, except although I have taken that test and I scored really, really good.
	So I'm completely protected.
	First of all, yeah, you're dead.
	First of all, I could use the brown skin, Middle Eastern Jew.
	I can use overweight, baby.
	You can't touch me.
	I no longer have a six-pack.
	You say anything towards me, that's a form of fat shaming, fat phobia, and I will not tolerate that.
	And so people usually stay away because I score high on that anti-privilege thing.
	You can't mess with it.
	Since we're on the subject, let's talk about identity politics.
	How bad is it in universities these days?
	Because it looks really bad from the outside.
	It's horrifying.
	I mean, you almost.
	You'd say, no, it's not that bad.
	Well, look, I mean, on a day-to-day basis, you can go about your business and never encounter it.
	So it's not as though, right, in every crevice, it's there.
	But again, we're talking about sort of the ethos of the time, right?
	And of course, there, the narrative, the grand narrative is one that is completely defined by identity politics, right?
	It's craziness, right?
	I mean, if you have a group of folks who wish to come and speak about an issue, then whether they're allowed the forum to speak in university depends on where they score in terms of their victimology poker hand, right?
	You know, you know, you know, the poker.
	So when Benjamin Netanyahu, and now, of course, because I said his name, somebody's going to say, oh, the Zionist pig referring to me.
	So when Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, came to my university to speak, I think it was in 2002, he was unable to speak.
	Now, I mean, again, think about what that says, right?
	In the 21st century, in Canada, right, a supremely Western liberal democracy, you could have the environment where the prime minister of a country is shut out from public space.
	So how likely is somebody who is the regular Joe to have a forum to share a counterpoint in a university setting?
	You don't.
	There is a narrative, you stick to it.
	And the thing about this is it's almost unbelievable.
	It sounds so ridiculous.
	I'm trying to think of something analogous to it.
	I just can't think of any other.
	I mean, well, I mean, I would say early 20th century in some rather totalitarian countries is very, this very much reminds me of the sort of Nazi purge of Jewish intellectuals from universities.
	Exactly.
	Very, very similar.
	It's just what side of the fence you're on, really.
	You're doing the same thing, aren't you?
	Well, now, I mean, of course, some people will say, oh, you're straining the analogy.
	Don't pretend that it's like not.
	Now, of course, we're not saying that it is dangerous for Jews to be professors at universities.
	What we're saying is that if you were to come, for example, and be pro-Israel, right, or anti-Islam, right, as part of your some geopolitical analysis.
	And of course, if you happen to be Jewish, then you're probably going to be shut down because there's going to be a student association that causes so much trouble.
	And I mean, I could list a million examples.
	I mean, one of my former universities where I was at for a few years, University of California, Irvine, they shut down or at least try to shut down the then Israeli ambassador to the United States, right?
	And again, this is a very, very dangerous precedent because once you allow any group, it doesn't matter.
	I mean, if tomorrow it were the Amish who are doing it, of course, we'd be against it.
	But regrettably, it almost always seems to be one particular group of folks that are doing it.
	When it comes to the Israeli-Palestine-Palestinian conflict, it is perfectly permissible on university campuses to spew astonishing hatred towards, and no, it's not just towards Israel.
	Oftentimes, it masquerades as that, but there is a clear anti-Semitic bent to it.
	Well, sorry, just to jump in, I've actually, I'll see if I can dig these up for people afterwards and leave links to them.
	But I've actually seen several videos of Palestinian or Muslim students directly accosting and haranguing professors in the middle of their classes or when they're in the middle of giving a speech to a large audience.
	And it's the most shocking thing you've ever seen.
	And the professor is, you know, he's like, right, what's your complaint?
	And the student was standing there in this one video, and he had to drag it out of her.
	Go on, are you part of a pro-Palestinian organization?
	It's like, yes, and I object to you.
	And it's just like it's not what he's saying.
	It's not what he's saying.
	It certainly is, which is terrible.
	Look, I've had students, I've had students at my university that have approached me who've said that they now no longer feel unsafe to wear any.
	No, no, no, these are not the safe space, guys.
	Yeah, we can talk about the BS.
	We can talk about them as well.
	No, these are Jewish students who did not feel comfortable wearing the Star of David or did not feel comfortable wearing the Kipah.
	And of course, we know in Europe, it's already much worse.
	So, of course, this doesn't mean that all Muslims, of course, it's a smaller minority.
	But is there a dynamics that is taking place in university settings where one particular narrative is acceptable while the other is shut down?
	Of course, it is.
	I mean, you'd have to be either profoundly ignorant or profoundly dishonest to not see it.
	Yeah, there is definitely, and it's political thought is the issue.
	It really is, as far as I can tell, and again, I'm just looking from the outside, but there is a distinct lack of diversity when it comes to political and intellectual.
	I suppose categories is what I'm looking for.
	It's really scary to see how the dialogue can be controlled by people complaining that they don't like what the other person has to say.
	Right.
	I mean, yeah, yeah, just quickly, it reminds me very much of something Christopher Hitchen said, which was: not only are they infringing on the speaker's rights to have their voice heard, they're infringing on your rights to hear what they have to say.
	Exactly right.
	It's a really important point, I think.
	Speaking, picking up on your point on diversity, I wrote an article on Huffington Post speaking exactly to this issue on intellectual diversity.
	So you might want to check it out.
	And I used a quote by Thomas Sowell.
	Do you know who that is?
	I'm familiar with Thomas Sowell.
	Yeah, so he's, of course, the conservative economist from the United States.
	And now I'm paraphrasing his quote, so I hope I don't.
	But he basically said: the next time that somebody asks you about diversity in university on a university campus, asks the sociology department about their intellectual diversity.
	So basically, what he's saying, and I wholeheartedly agree, and I also wrote a psychology today article about this, which I'll mention in a second, all forms of diversity are welcome.
	Sexual orientation diversity is great, racial diversity is great, religious diversity is great.
	Everything is allowed as long as the most important form of diversity, which is intellectual diversity, is not allowed, right?
	So it's really, it's an it's a almost a schizophrenic existence, right?
	Where, you know, out of 50 various forms of diversity, 49 are sought out.
	But the one that truly matters, I mean, the reality is, who cares about your skin color?
	But intellectual diversity is what should be defining the fabric of a university that we simply can't have.
	Well, yeah, I mean, that touched on a very important why are we even talking about people's skin color?
	You know, why is this even the topic of conversation?
	And one thing that bothers me a lot is that there seems to be a heavy focus on systems, which is what they seem to really, really think that the individual no longer matters.
	The individual no longer makes individual assessments based on his situation, what he knows, and what he wants or she wants, obviously.
	But they think that everyone is part of a system.
	And that's why they can say, well, if you look at the government of the United States, it's 70% male and say 90% white or something like that.
	And so therefore, white men hold the power in society and therefore everything is justified against them.
	Right.
	Well, you know, but of course, those games can be played in endless ways, right?
	There's a great book that was written many years ago called How to Lie with Statistics, a little short primer, which many graduate students, yeah, you should check that book out.
	I'll Google and I'm sorry, go on.
	Yeah, so let me give you an example.
	If you look at sex differences and educational attainment in the United States, so how many women graduate at the undergraduate level, at the master's level, at the PhD level, so broken down by sex and broken down by race.
	So Hispanics, black, white, and so on.
	In every conceivable group of analysis, women now lead, right?
	So if we use the metric, this metric, which in the past was used to argue that women were shunned from universities, now we should all be celebrating at the fact that women now are absolutely trashing men in every conceivable domain in education, right?
	Now, here's what.
	Now, no feminists will rejoice at this.
	Rather, they will say, no, at Princeton University, in the math department, there are 12 full professors, nine of whom are men, three of whom are women.
	Aha, institutionalized race, sexism still exists.
	So again, it's because it comes from a cancerous form of victimology logic.
	It's that's the way that the whole world is viewed.
	There are different groups that are fighting one another, and therefore, you know, in this case, white males are the ones who are winning.
	Let me give you another great story.
	Do you know the beauty myth?
	The beauty myth by Naomi Wolf?
	Do you know that?
	I don't actually, no.
	So Naomi Wolf is a feminist who in the early 90s wrote a book that was incredibly successful called The Beauty Myth.
	And in the book, basically, she says, Oh, I'm hearing something in the background.
	There's kind of a, is that me?
	Oh, sorry.
	What's what are you hearing?
	I'm hearing my voice in the background, kind of like an echo.
	I'm not sure.
	Anyways, oh, well, hang on.
	I think this is.
	Anyways, we can go on.
	Is that any better?
	Let me try to see.
	I think it is better now, actually.
	Yes, I don't know what was happening.
	I'm wearing headphones.
	Oh, no worries.
	So Naomi Wolf basically argued in her book, let me kind of distill her position very quickly.
	She said, look, in every conceivable arena, women are now equal participants, if not greater participants.
	So we've pretty much won the war, the sex war.
	The only remaining place where men could cause us harm.
	Now, I hope you're sitting down for this because the level of delusion is on steroids, right?
	You know, I have heard such ridiculous things that I don't even know if I can be shocked anymore.
	Let me see if I could shock you.
	So since women have won everywhere and all men are banding together and saying, God damn it, we've lost it.
	How else can we get back at these women?
	What men have done is they've created a beauty myth, meaning that they've created this idea that there is such a thing as a particular type of beautiful woman.
	There is such a thing of an archetype of what women prefer.
	And therefore, by duping women into thinking that men, when they're pursuing women, care about beauty, this is how you're ultimately able to destabilize women because this attacks their sense of self.
	And by creating this beauty myth, this is how men could reverse the trend, right?
	So, I mean, no, no, no, yep.
	Yep.
	And the thing is, there is a kind of twisted logic to this because, I mean, you know, I mean, I would have thought from an evolutionary perspective that just women, there's no getting around the fact that women are far more concerned about their looks than men are.
	And that's because everyone knows that men are visual creatures.
	Men like to look at things that are important.
	Women like to know that the man is going to be strong and protective and providing.
	Different evolutionary needs are obviously pursued in different ways.
	And so women's obsession with their own looks is because men look for that.
	Exactly.
	Well, look, the way I usually try to, you know, to use satire is often the best way to kind of make these idiots go away.
	And so I usually basically say, look, if you do a content analysis of romance novels, right?
	So if you look at romance novels stemming from 50 different countries, very, very different cultures, very, very different traditions.
	Of course, romance novels are always read predominantly by women, right?
	And so in that sense, you could study what is the preferences that women seek in a archetype of masculinity by studying what is the archetype of the romance novel hero.
	Now, the romance novel hero, let me distill it for you very quickly, whether it's an Egyptian romance novel or a Brazilian romance novel, whether it's one written 80 years ago or whether it's one written today, is basically a guy who's tall, who is a count and a prince and a neurosurgeon, who fights against alligators on his six pack and wins, who is reckless, but for the love of this woman who will tame him.
	It's the exact same archetype, right?
	There is no romance novel where there is a beta submissive male who's sucking his thumb, who's pear-shaped, who has a high nasal voice, who decides that he prefers to be unemployed and not a risk-seeker.
	And this gets the sexual juices of women flowing, right?
	It's not because there is a conspiracy to create this archetype of masculinity.
	It's because when you are selling a product to half a population known as women, then you recognize that there are certain things that they might seek in this ideal archetype.
	So then, if it is the case, as Naomi Wolf says, that there is a grand patriarchy that tries to infuse this beauty myth on women, well, then it's also unfair for us shorter guys who no longer have six packs.
	How come we're being taught, I feel very bad about myself.
	I'm not six foot two, and I no longer have a six pack.
	Luckily, I have a good voice and I do have high status.
	And I used to be a great soccer player.
	But otherwise, I feel really crappy about myself.
	There must be some matriarchal force that's convincing women that six foot tall guys are more attractive than five foot six guys.
	This is unfair to us shorter guys.
	And that's exactly the problem that the social constructivists have come up against, isn't it?
	Because if you don't think that evolutionary factors have any effect on anything that people do, this is completely unexplainable.
	Why the hell would this be?
	You would need a mystical patriarchy or a mystical matriarchy to explain this, because otherwise, you know, explaining it through sort of like the more evolutionary factors, women prefer to have big, strong guys who can protect them and the archetypal romance novel hero who's obsessed with the woman, you know.
	And for men, it's a very voluptuous but kind of, I don't want to say submissive, but you know, you know, that sort of the archetypal male fantasy woman, it, you know, if from evolutionary factors, it's completely explainable.
	So let me, I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, just someone who can, you know, bear healthy, strong children, you know, someone faithful, and all this sort of thing.
	It's just, you know, the sort of biological imperatives played out sort of in fiction, really, isn't it?
	Yeah, so let me give you a great example of that.
	I often use this example when I'm discussing the power of evolutionary explanations.
	And here, if you don't mind, I'll just use a few technical terms and I'll explain them.
	So in evolutionary psychology, contrary to what many people say that, oh, it's just a bunch of just-so storytelling, actually, serious evolutionary scientists engage in what is called the building of nomological networks.
	A nomological network is, if you'd like, multiple sources of evidence coming from completely different paradigms that point to the same final conclusion.
	So let me give you an example because we're talking about voluptuous women and so on.
	So there is an adaptive explanation that speaks to why men prefer the hourglass figure, right?
	Which is called the waist-to-hip ratio of around 0.7.
	Now, somebody might say, oh, no, but that's just the patriarchy.
	It's Elle Magazine that taught us.
	You know, if we were taught, yeah, if we were taught differently, I would be looking for women that look like Michael Phelps, the Olympic male swimmer.
	But it's only through the accident of the patriarchy that I picked my really beautiful voluptuous wife.
	I could have been taught to prefer trees or watermelons or Michael Phelps.
	But anyways, so let's see if we can find as much convincing evidence in support of the evolutionary argument that men have a waist to hip ratio preference of 0.7.
	Okay, ready?
	Here we go.
	So number one, if you do epidemiological studies and medical studies on women that have different waist-to-hip ratios, what you find is that women who have the 0.7 ratio have healthier outcomes and they're more likely to be fertile and nubile.
	So it's not just the just-so storytelling.
	There is a direct link between fertility, nobility, and health and that particular body type.
	Okay, so now we just checked one square in the nomological network.
	Let's go on.
	If you do studies where you elicit the preferences, so you show men different photos of women of different waist-to-hip ratios and you ask them which one they prefer.
	Now, you don't just do this in an undergraduate lab at Ohio State University.
	You go to 40 different cultures that are radically different and you demonstrate that they tend to prefer always on average the hourglass figure.
	So that's point number two that supports the adaptive story.
	You could take photos of cosmetic surgeries of women in the pre-cosmetic surgery and post-cosmetic surgery and show that around the world where women seek cosmetic surgeries, they're trying to get to that ideal of 0.7.
	That I'm number three.
	I did studies, a study where I looked at the manner in which female online escorts, so prostitutes, advertise themselves online across 48 different countries.
	And of course, what they advertise usually is, hi, my name is Jenny.
	I'm 22 years old.
	Here's my height.
	Here's my weight.
	Here's my measurement.
	And so I had an undergraduate student go through 48 different countries of online escorts.
	And yeah, it was a good summer job.
	Sorry for him.
	And guess what?
	It's close to 0.7.
	Now, let me give you a few more.
	You could do studies with brain imaging, where you look at which parts of the men's brain light up most as a function of which images they see.
	Guess what?
	When you show men an hourglass figure, their pleasure center lights up.
	Now, if all this information is not enough, let me give you two more pieces of evidence.
	You could take statues stemming from several thousand years of art from ancient Greece, African art, Indian art.
	So spanning radically different cultures and spanning several millennia.
	And you do an analysis of the statues, guess what?
	It comes out to roughly hourglass.
	And now here's the kicker.
	You ready?
	You could take congenitally blind men.
	These are men who, by definition, have never had the gift of sight.
	Therefore, by definition, they could not have been socialized by sexist Hollywood images.
	Now you could give them different mannequins.
	And of course, the way you elicit the preference is through haptic.
	They actually touch the different mannequins.
	And then they guess which one they prefer.
	Well, obviously the 0.7.
	Now, does this suggest all the evidence that I just gave you that it's just a bunch of random just-so storytelling?
	Because I'm pretty sure it's a social construct.
	Exactly.
	You see, Dr. Saad, you've proven it.
	It's all a bunch of BS.
	The gazillion data points have not convinced me at all that it's due to biology.
	Yeah, and it's interesting that the social constructionists, I always find it very interesting that they're convinced it's all about social construction.
	It's like, okay, well, why?
	Why would we have done this?
	Why would we make it?
	Because ultimately, there are a lot of different things to like, remember, to attain what is considered the very attractive body shape, the sort of 0.7, you've got to be fairly slender.
	You can't be particularly overweight, which generally requires, especially in like a society like ours with particularly high calorie intake, that it requires generally some either self-control or some sort of discipline with exercise.
	You need to show that you're kind of fit and healthy.
	It requires effort.
	Why would we do that?
	I mean, why wouldn't we go down the path of least resistance?
	Right.
	Although I would, just to be fully accurate, there are cultures throughout history where men have preferred more rotund women.
	I bet that's because they had scarcity, though.
	Well, that's one, that's actually, you're right.
	So that the waist to hip ratio preference is slightly adjusted as a function of the endemic scarcity in that culture.
	You're exactly right.
	But even if we assume that that were not the case, so if you take, for example, Rubinesque paintings where, you know, Rubin is taking all these chubby women, isn't there?
	The chubby women, or in Central Africa, they prefer bigger women.
	Well, if you do the waist-to-hip ratio analysis, they actually also turn out to be 0.7.
	Exactly.
	So, it's not so much, it's not so much, or just more rotund.
	It's not so much that whether you're heavier or thinner, it's that the ratio should be as close as possible to the hourglass figure.
	So, some might prefer them to be thinner, some might prefer them to be heavier, but no culture has ever been uncovered where men on average all prefer the body shape of a male Olympic swimmer.
	It's not been found.
	I assume that by, you know, for women, then they have what would be considered like the ideal male figure.
	I mean, I'm just thinking of like, you know, they're very tall, they're muscular, very narrow waist, that sort of thing.
	Exactly.
	It's 0.9.
	So, if we were using the waist-to-hip metric, it's 0.9.
	Height, of course, is an important one.
	Another one that's important, and you know this just anecdotally, is tight buttocks.
	Okay, right.
	And now that, again, it's because it correlates with certain phenotypic qualities that are very interesting from an evolutionary perspective, right?
	So, the guy who's got a flabby hanging butt is likely not signaling the same phenotypic worth than a guy who has exactly the types of butts that women desire.
	It's all about effect at the end of the day, isn't it?
	It's, you know, the guy who's fat and flabby probably isn't a very athletic, strong, powerful man who can actually, in the end, do what, you know, give her protection, give her whatever she's looking for.
	Now, here's the, here's, now, here's where, again, we can fight against this idea of biological determinism.
	So, luckily, in the human mating context, it's what I call a compensatory process, meaning it's not as though women are saying you better be at least six foot tall.
	And anybody who is under six feet tall might as well join the priesthood because you're never going to mate with anybody, right?
	So, it's a compensatory process in that multiple attributes are put together to evaluate the overall quality of the full product, right?
	Because otherwise, I would have never found a woman because I happen to be five foot seven on a good day.
	And so, so, so, in other words, I could make up for my high challenge by maybe becoming high status or maybe by having charisma or maybe by having a good sense of humor.
	So, again, the fact that you may not possess one of the important evolutionary metrics doesn't doom you to a life of celibacy and sexual frustration, but it simply recognizes that on that metric, you are scoring poorer than would be ideal.
	I think a lot of that is the subjective situation of the woman doing the judging.
	You know, if she's not a particularly high status or particularly desired female, if I'm right, maybe her body ratio proportions aren't wonderful, maybe she's just not that great to look at.
	You know, so yeah, like you say, it's not like you're doomed to a life of celibacy because all women have got this ridiculous Standard, although there was a study done recently that women's standards have been going up, and they basically sat a bunch of women down to sit and go through dating profiles on the website, just looking at the picture and judge how attractive the guy is just based on his looks.
	And they came out something like 80% of guys were less than average in attractiveness, which obviously makes no sense, but it speaks a great deal to and again now, I think this would be a good way for us to start talking about socialization because I don't want people to think that we are discounting the idea of socialization at all, because I personally don't think that socialization is a be-all and end all, but then I don't think that it's irrelevant either.
	What's your opinion on that?
	Oh, 100%.
	I'm glad actually you raised that point.
	No serious evolutionist rejects the idea that socialization is a very powerful force, right?
	I'm so glad that you've pointed this.
	Socialization, though, exists not outside of biology, right?
	It's not a counterpoint to biology.
	Social patterns of socialization exist in their form because of biology, right?
	So it's not as though we're saying that socialization doesn't happen, but rather what's important to ask is why is socialization of that form?
	And that's why we then look for the ultimate Darwinian why.
	And to the extent that certain types of socialization happen in exactly the same way across all cultures and time periods, then it suggests that it's not just due to the sort of random vagaries of the cosmos, right?
	It's because socialization is a way by which you instantiate biological imperatives.
	So let me give you a specific example.
	So we could look at cultural forms where women are taught to be sexually more restrained.
	So nobody denies the fact that part of the origin of how women learn to be more sexually restrained is through various forms of socialization, whether it be their parents or their rabbi or their religious doctrines.
	But now the question becomes: so why would all of these cultural forms have evolved so that it's always the case that there is a much greater desire to quell the sexual freedom of women, not the other way around?
	And the answer to this is very simple.
	So it works like this.
	So this is something known as paternal investment theory.
	So if you look at, sorry, parental investment theory, if you look at the two sexes, the minimal obligatory parental investment that women have to provide is astonishingly greater than men's, right?
	Women have to go through gestation, women have to go through all sorts of physiological challenges.
	The number of OVA that women have from the onset of the menses to menopause is only 400 OVA.
	On the other hand, the number of spermatozoa and an average ejaculation of a man is 250 million spermatozoa.
	There's no contest, right?
	Exactly.
	So then if we look at the minimal parental investment that each of the two sexes brings to the table, it's astonishingly weighed towards women.
	Therefore, evolutionary theory would predict that since they are likely to incur a much greater cost for making a poor mate choice than men would, then we would expect them to evolve the capacity to be more sexually judicious, sexually restrained, right?
	And therefore, socialization ends up piggybacking on this biological imperative.
	So if I want to educate my daughter and son in terms of how to navigate through the world, I am likely to teach my daughter to be more sexually restrained, not because I took a seminar in Patriarchy 101, but because I recognize that there are certain biological differences in each of my two children making a poor mate choice.
	So yes, socialization is important, but it doesn't exist outside of biology.
	It exists because of biology.
	That's a very interesting point because one of the things I have long thought when dealing with the social constructionists is they say that gender is a social construct.
	And that's true.
	It is a social construct.
	It's not biological sex.
	It is a pattern of behavior that is constructed in society, but it's very, very universal.
	Almost every society have these social constructions and they're almost always very, very similar.
	It's always the man's job to provide.
	It's always, you know, this sort of thing.
	And so I can't help but think that gender roles are very much informed by biological sex.
	Of course.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And this is something that I've long thought.
	And this is something that the social constructionists completely deny.
	They think it's ridiculous.
	And it's just like, how could it be ridiculous?
	So I'll give you a great example.
	So if you take women who are very, very high in their social status, both in terms of their economic power and just like, let's say they're a neurosurgeon, they're a diplomat, they're a they're really high up.
	They're really high up.
	guess what happens to their mating preferences.
	Now, if you believe that- They can't find houseplants.
	Well, they actually become more insistent to have very high status men.
	Sorry, sorry, go on.
	Well, I was going to say, I already know, actually, because I've been doing this quite some time.
	You see these articles on the women's section of newspapers all the time, where it's, I'm a 40-year-old woman.
	I have a career.
	I own a house.
	I've got lots of money.
	I'm doing great.
	No guy will come near me.
	Because she's not looking for some dropout surfer guy.
	She's looking for a guy of higher status than herself.
	And believe it or not, when you're at the top of the pyramid, it becomes a bit thin on the ground.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, sorry, Karen.
	Sorry.
	Yeah.
	So the reason why that finding is so important, because it negates an alternate explanation that was offered by some sort of feminist types that basically argued, well, yeah, of course it makes sense that women around the world desire high status men.
	It's because women have historically been subjugated.
	And so to the extent that they were left outside of the status hierarchy, to the extent that they were left outside of the labor market, they are seeking that which they don't have.
	Now, of course, then the way that you counter that, I mean, there are many ways to counter that stupidity, but one of the ways is to simply say that, well, okay, let's then do a natural field experiment using field data where we take profoundly high status women, where obviously that lacking is no longer there, right?
	They have all the resources.
	They have all the status.
	So do now their mating preferences revert to the 18-year-old illiterate who has a very nice butt?
	If so, then we should find tons of high-status women looking for the cabana boys who didn't finish high school.
	They don't.
	They don't because that's not what they're interested in.
	So again, the problem with all of the detractors is that they despise your work because it attacks their pet ideology.
	And this, again, ties perfectly into why there are more men in CEO positions, politicians, all of these sort of things than women.
	Because men need status to impress women.
	They always have done.
	They always will do, I think.
	I don't see this being a biological imperative that's going to disappear anytime soon.
	And so this is why the feminists have had such problems, like getting women into politics, getting women to the top of companies.
	And then like there was, I know this is just a small anecdotal thing, but I was watching an interview with a female politician in Britain called Edwina Curry and then the editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine.
	And they were having an argument as, you know, and Edwina was like, look, the problem is.
	Women just aren't going for these jobs.
	You get some women like me who want it, but the overwhelming majority, they're just not interested.
	And so they're having this back and forth.
	And eventually she's like, well, why didn't you go into politics?
	And then she just replies to the cuffs, I didn't want to.
	There's your answer.
	Don't want to, you know, right.
	And this is why the feminists are having such a problem getting parity.
	But then they will argue because it's sort of an endless loop of BS.
	Then they will argue, yeah, okay, fair enough.
	Maybe they don't want to, but it's because it's the patriarchy that has instilled that.
	So how can you, it's an infinite regression of repeat patriarchy here, right?
	I mean, yeah, so it's a problem.
	I mean, look, the other guys that hate my stuff are the religious folks, of course.
	And so I was invited once to a rabbi's house, and I actually wrote about this in one of my Psychology Day articles.
	And so when he introduces me to the people, this is for a Shabbat dinner, a Sabbath dinner.
	And so I walk into his house and he says, this is Professor Saad.
	He's an evolutionary behavioral scientist.
	Now, I don't know exactly what he studies in terms of evolution because we all know that evolution was falsified.
	How could they ever be on your side again?
	And how gracious and hospitable to introduce me that way to his Sabbath guy.
	And so I just kind of smiled and my wife kind of swallowed her thing, not knowing whether I was going to come out swinging.
	I said, hey, hey, Rabbi, this is your home.
	So I'll plead the fifth.
	And I didn't say anything else.
	But, you know, so you got all sorts of religious folks who say, but, you know, if evolution is true, where is God in the mix?
	And so, you know, it's just, it's endless, the number of folks that hate you for what you do.
	Yeah, you know, I would rather, I think I would rather deal with the sorts of social constructivists and the critical theorists rather than the religious folk, because at least they're trying to work from something that is temporal, something that might have an internal logic to it.
	But when you get to a position where it's like, well, where's God?
	It's like, well, I mean, what do I say for that?
	Well, you know, where's God?
	Well, I don't know, somewhere else, I guess.
	Not really.
	So do you find you get a lot of hassle from the more sort of orthodox religious types?
	I mean, not horrible.
	I mean, not death threats or anything.
	But certainly I get more gentle blowbacks.
	So for example, let's take it in the context of the university.
	I will, once in a while, not very often, but once in a while, I will have a student who will sort of approach me, usually very respectfully.
	And he or she is kind of torn, right?
	Because they've been exposed to a particular narrative, typically from their religious upbringing, that now goes square against some of the things that I am teaching in class.
	And so you feel them, they're conflictive.
	So they're not actually, they're not hostile.
	They're not disrespectful.
	They really are searching to find a way because they're obviously listening to all the stuff I'm saying and saying, geez, this makes a lot of sense, right?
	I mean, I really like that.
	It's my whole life.
	So how can I now shed all that stuff that I've, I mean, how could I unlearn it?
	And of course, I have them for 13 weeks in a semester, whereas, you know, somebody else has had them for 22 years or 25 years.
	And so the challenge is tall, but I try to do my best.
	And so this is really where I often see sort of the schism between religion and what I'm talking about in seeing how students are trying to reconcile the two.
	So yeah.
	Yeah, one thing I think is interesting about that as well is I think that people, from my experience, I actually should apologize to some of my subscribers.
	I recently, I'm very much sort of politically left libertarian.
	And I did a bit of a straw poll with my subscribers the other day, and they overwhelmingly came in very similar politically to me.
	But I'm not the sort of sort of left-leaning person who won't talk to the rights.
	Because one thing that you find these days is that the more extreme wings, they don't want to have anything to do with each other.
	They either think the other side is retarded or immoral.
	They think that there are some deep, deep flaws in the people who hold these positions.
	And so I've spoken to more right-wing people like Stephen Crowder.
	He's right-leaning libertarian.
	So we both, we're on the same page when it comes to authority, you know.
	But we're just, you know, it's on slightly different sides of the aisle when it comes to social responsibility, which is fine.
	And that's the thing.
	I don't like to think of myself as being dogmatic.
	So I'm happy to let him have his opinion.
	I'll disagree with it.
	I'll give my reasons.
	He'll give his reasons.
	Interesting.
	He might persuade me.
	and I'm like, so did him.
	But people have been treating me like, or some people, some people have been treating me like...
	Why did you give him a forum?
	Exactly.
	Why did you even talk to him?
	It's like, well, it was a conversation.
	We didn't get married.
	I haven't converted to his religion or anything.
	And then people on his side have done a very similar sort of thing.
	And so it's just, I can't remember where I was going with this now.
	No, probably I think you're maybe making the point that these extremist groups live in polarized worlds where they never interact.
	So they can't benefit from some of the positions that the other one holds, right?
	They always ascribe the most nefarious causes to the other cap, right?
	So the folks over there, the red team, must be a bunch of devil worshipers and Nazis.
	And so why would you ever give him a forum?
	And regrettably, that's exactly what happens in universities, right?
	So for example, I am all for women having the right to choose in terms of the abortion issue, right?
	But I also recognize that some student groups may have, for all sorts of reason, an opposing view, right?
	Now, I think it's grossly inappropriate to basically argue that if you are pro-life, as the term goes, that you should be shunned from university discussion.
	Even though I disagree with their position, they have a right to debate the issue.
	And so I think generally what's happening in universities is if you don't ascribe to the right positions, shut your mouth.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry, I've just realized what I was trying to say with them.
	Yes, yes, go ahead.
	Yeah, what I was thinking is basically as I understand it, or as I see it, as I observe it, it seems that the right wing thinks that the left wing is extremely stupid and the left wing thinks the right wing is extremely evil.
	And so this is, I think, the difference between, because they're very similar on a lot of issues, but just the opposite sides of the coin.
	But the difference, I think, is that the extreme sort of progressive left use the justification of, well, they are bad people.
	Therefore, I can say or do whatever I like.
	And it can be justified morally because I am attacking an evil force.
	True.
	Which is, I see it happen a lot on Twitter.
	And so they tend to be hyper-aggressive and very, very unforgiving.
	Whereas the people on the more far right, they just think that the left is extremely stupid.
	And so they don't tend to have this sort of malevolence.
	They're mean sometimes, you know, but they're a lot more condescending.
	They're a lot more, well, you're just really stupid.
	They talk to them like they're retarded children or something.
	And, you know, don't get me wrong, I talk to them like they're retarded children sometimes as well because, frankly, they sound a lot like retarded children.
	But the difference, I think, is that there isn't a lot of emotional investment in maintaining the idea that they are retarded children.
	If you can persuade someone on the right, they've got less reason to feel bad about themselves for the way they've treated the people on the left than the people on the left about the way they've treated the people on the right.
	Right.
	Because if you can show them that, in fact, maybe there is some validity to this other side, maybe it's not immoral, then they've got to look at themselves and go, wow, I was a real dick.
	And nobody wants to do that.
	I think there's a lot of emotional investment.
	Well, I think...
	No, no, no, I'll dismiss it.
	I was going to say that I think your premise could be empirically tested by perhaps conducting a study where you look at the political leanings of the most active social justice warriors.
	And I mean, in line with what you're saying, I'd be willing to bet that the most vociferous folks in the online medium are likely to be left-leaning.
	In other words, I think you're exactly right.
	They're much more vested in defending their positions.
	But just to speak about the right versus left issue, I actually despise these types of sort of coalitional thinking.
	I think that a truly intelligent person is one who is nuanced in their thinking.
	In other words, I don't support Manchester City or Manchester United and I will die for the cause.
	Rather, I support ideas.
	So there are specific ideas that the left comes up with that I'm in complete agreement with.
	And then there are other ones that I'm in agreement with the right.
	And therefore, what defines me is my individual identity that allows me to navigate through all of possible issues.
	I think the problem with the partisanship that we see is that humans are a coalitional animal, right?
	There's us, there is them.
	There's blue team, there's red team.
	So once I belong to the team X, everything about Y is bad and everything about X.
	And that to me is a signal that you're a moron because you're simply unable to navigate through the issues, right?
	So when it comes to gay marriage, I'm completely with the left.
	I don't care.
	Homosexuals should have no different rights than everybody else.
	Therefore, if it is on that metric, I'm completely left-leaning.
	On the other hand, I tend to be a lot harsher when it comes to penal punishments.
	I don't mind the fact that a serial killer and pedophile of children is put to death despite the fact that mommy hugged them enough or didn't hug them enough.
	If I find the DNA of a serial killer on the bodies of seven children, that's enough for me to execute him.
	On that dimension, I'm completely right-leaning.
	So I'm not left.
	I'm not right.
	I'm an individual who could weigh the pros and cons of each position and come hopefully to an informed decision.
	Well, that I think is the, I think, in fact, I think that's exactly the same principle as me as well.
	I mean, I disagree with you on the execution thing, but not to the extent where I would probably oppose the idea.
	If, you know, I would say in principle, I think it's wrong to execute someone.
	But, you know, I would then look at it from a pragmatic view and go well, what we can do pay, you know, a million dollars or whatever, keep this exact serial killer alive for 25 years and, you know, come on, and you wouldn't ascribe uh, any evil intent in the fact that I support the death penalty.
	In other words, I don't want to.
	Exactly, as a reasonable person, you could recognize that we might disagree on an issue and we could engage one another, and I think that, i'm sorry, go ahead.
	Oh no no no sorry, I was interrupting you.
	So I think that the problem with much of the tenor in political discourse is that it really has become, you know, in logic, there's, you know, the Venn diagrams, you know, when Venn diagrams have an intersection, Regrettably, the two groups now have these circles that never intersect.
	So if you don't have a point where you could intersect, where you could actually meet to discuss ideas, this is what causes the problem, right?
	So you exist in separate realities and you just hurl, as you said, insults at each other.
	You're stupid, you're evil, and let's end the discussion there.
	And that's dreadful in terms of public engagement.
	Yeah, you're absolutely right.
	And the problem is that it is exactly as you're saying.
	We're not dealing with individual issues.
	What we're dealing with is party issues.
	And I recently read Rules for Radicals by Saul Linsky.
	And for anyone listening, you should read it.
	Everyone should read it.
	It's a really insightful book.
	And it's not a partisan book.
	It's not a left-right book.
	It's an up-down book.
	It's an authoritarian, libertarian book.
	But one of the points that he makes in it is Alinsky was a community organizer and he was interested in helping people achieve their goals, helping the poor achieve their goals against the powerful, the haves and the haves-nots.
	And one of the things that he points out is that if you create a political party or whatever based on one single issue, it will never go anywhere because you'll only get a small number of people who care enough about that individual issue to push it.
	And so what you need to do is have more issues, you know, and you get another issue and you'll get people who agree with both issues, but would only get off their asses to do something for one of the issues.
	And then if you get five issues, you'll get even more people and they will support what you're doing.
	But, you know, they, you know, to various gradient degrees, and maybe even on some of the issues, they disagree.
	But the majority issues that they really care about, they will push these issues.
	And I think that this is the problem that we have basically found now.
	The left and the right are covering every issue.
	They have a position on every single goddamn issue.
	Issues that they shouldn't care about.
	I mean, I'll probably do a video for people to give some concrete examples.
	But isn't he the guy, by the way?
	Could he have been sort of the godfather of some of Obama's thinking?
	Am I right in saying this?
	Is this the gentleman?
	No, I don't think so.
	I think that's someone else that you're thinking of.
	Because there is some guy who, I think, in the 60s had written some sort of seminal works on how to go about doing community organizing.
	I thought that it might be.
	Oh, it might well be.
	It might well be.
	But the thing is, he's quite anti-authoritarian.
	I don't think the Obama administration is anti-authoritarian.
	Right.
	Speaking of, I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Oh, well, yes.
	So I just, it would be hard.
	I mean, to be fair, there is a lot you could learn if you were an authoritarian.
	But what he was trying to do is he describes as the counterpoint to Machiavelli's The Prince.
	The Prince is designed to help the haves keep what they have.
	And his work is to help the have-nots taken away.
	So it's very interesting.
	Sorry, what were you saying?
	Yeah, I was going to say that your talk of the have-nots has just skewed a very ugly image in my head.
	And it's going to be described by two words, Russell Brand.
	Oh, my God.
	The reason I thought of him is, well, because of this whole have-not Je Guevara fight against, right?
	But earlier we were talking about detractors.
	It might surprise you to know that some of the biggest blowback that I get, and I mean, I take very clear positions on a lot of things.
	One of the areas where I get the most blowback is if I ever criticize His Holiness, the Dali Brand.
	But it's so easy to criticize.
	So I got, and I shouldn't have been sucked into this thing, but on my public Facebook page, I had a couple of guys who just went wild on me.
	I mean, I criticize all sorts of profoundly more serious issues, but don't you dare, you, you elitist ivory tower right-wing nut.
	How could you talk against?
	I said, really?
	Like, it's that difficult for me to, because I have my most recent YouTube video is a satire of Russell Brand's thinking, where I basically argue that the FIFA World Cup is all due to U.S. foreign policy, where I'm satirizing his whole sort of conspiratorial bent, and people just went wild.
	They just couldn't accept that I would criticize such a beautiful man.
	Because I'm a contrarian, I feel like I should step to his defense.
	Okay, here we go.
	At least to a certain degree.
	Now, Russell Brand is a hippie.
	He doesn't know as much as he thinks he knows.
	And what he knows, he doesn't know as well as he should.
	There's no getting around it.
	There's simply no getting around it.
	Dilatente is the word I've probably used.
	But he's not wrong on certain issues.
	For example, when he says you probably shouldn't vote because it doesn't really matter, he's probably right.
	Because at the end of the day, if you look at the backing and the sponsorship for both political wings in Britain, in America, probably the same in Canada.
	I've not looked, but probably the same in Canada.
	You find that they're not trying to change the system per se.
	And the system is very much a corporatist system.
	There is, you know, whatever happens, Amazon and Starbucks and all of these other corporations are going to pay very low tax.
	You know, the rich aren't going to be massively taxed like they should.
	And it's a system that's not set up in favor of the person voting.
	So whichever one you vote for, it's not going to be a vote in your favor.
	As a person, really, unless you vote for a tiny party no one's ever heard of, because they never get any press because it wouldn't be in favor of the people who are running the system.
	So on that note, Brand is right.
	And then Brand goes and talks about other things.
	Well, let me rebut this.
	So I agree with you, but I think it would be a tall order to argue that if I wish to criticize somebody about his positions on ABC, I also have to recognize that he said nice things about XYZ, right?
	So his corporatism position might be very well be true.
	But if I am arguing that, you know, Brand is absolutely nuts to think that Jihadi John did what he did because of alienation, because of the mistreatment of the British people, because of the 2007, 2008 financial crisis.
	Yeah, I mean, I could clearly see a link.
	So mortgage prices, the housing bubble collapses.
	And the first thing that people say, hey, let me catch a flight to Iraq so I can behead people.
	I mean, I can completely see a clear link there.
	So I don't care about whether his corporatism position is right or wrong.
	I think on the positions that I care about, I think he is more buffoonish than an amoeba.
	And therefore, I criticize that, right?
	I mean, Hitler.
	I agree.
	I agree, but I just didn't want...
	I get you.
	Yeah, when you give such a categoric rebuttal of his position.
	And that, you know, correlation does not, you know, necessarily imply causation brand.
	And that he is completely categorically wrong in that.
	I mean, I live in the country.
	I've lived in Muslim predominant areas.
	And I can tell you that Muslims in this country have a very, very, they're a protected class.
	They're absolutely a protected class in this country.
	And it's led to some serious problems, such as the issue in Rotherham and Oxford and various other cities.
	Exactly.
	No, no, no.
	Don't be a racist.
	Don't be a racist.
	Wow, that's exactly the problem that we're having is that word racist.
	So he's completely wrong on that issue.
	I just didn't want it to go...
	I understand.
	He's completely wrong on everything because he does have some valid points.
	I actually, at one point in my Facebook exchange, I told the guy as an analogy, I said, look, Hitler was a very bad guy, and we can criticize him, despite the fact that he also loved animals.
	And I'm a huge animal lover.
	So if I want to criticize Hitler, I don't have to say, no, no, but he's also, right?
	And so then what he takes away from my analogy, what a pig you are.
	You're comparing Russell Brand to Hitler.
	So once I am facing this level of stupidity, then I have to kind of raise the white flag and say, all right, buddy, I'm done.
	I'm heading out for a jog.
	I'm not saying that Russell Brand commits any genocides or anything.
	Exactly.
	Yeah, no, yeah, I know.
	just, you know, I just wanted to make the point that he's not entirely dumb, he's just Fair enough And the thing is, with Russell Brand, you can tell that it really is coming from a place of good intentions.
	Yes.
	That's another thing.
	He is likable.
	He's, well, okay.
	I like to live...
	I liked him in forgetting Sarah Marshall.
	That's where I liked him.
	My liking of him started and ended with forgetting Sarah Marshall.
	I've not actually seen it.
	I don't tend to consume his media.
	Every now and again, a friend of mine will send me a video of his saying, hey, look, this is a really good point that he's made.
	And it will probably be a video where he has made a good point.
	But then he's not showing me the 10 other videos where he's making silly points.
	No, but this is actually a movie that he was.
	He played it.
	He's an actor in the movie.
	So he wasn't taking any political positions.
	And it's actually a very, very, I mean, cute sort of romantic comedy.
	And so at that time, when I had saw him, when I had seen him there, I thought, wow, what a funny guy.
	But then when I became familiar with some of his political rants, then I revised my opinion slightly.
	This is the problem of being so radically left.
	And this is the problem.
	If I was to identify myself to someone, I would say, yes, I'm on the left.
	I'm a leftist.
	But there needs to be a new term for what I am because, you know, I don't know, the rational left or something, the left that still cares about facts and evidence and empiricism and sense, you know, reason.
	Because he, in a sort of, in a really roundabout way, he's not wrong.
	You know, he, you know, I'm sure that economic depressions hit sort of Muslim communities quite hard, you know, like they hit everyone, you know.
	And so through a very convoluted sequence of events, this comes to, we have, you know, quite a few mosques in Britain that preach quite radical things.
	And they become sort of, they've become colonies in effect, a lot of places, you know, they really have where there's not much outside influence.
	And so you've got lots of Muslims, you know, living in a certain area with a radical preacher who isn't being countermanded by anyone.
	And so, you know, and then you've got the down and out like Muslim chap who's taken in by the radical.
	And so in a very indirect way, he's not wrong, but it completely removes all agency from the individuals who are taking part in it.
	And that's, that's where you're completely dead wrong, Brand, because they're individuals.
	They know that blowing themselves up is wrong.
	And he also manages to always unfold the ultimate causality to the evil Brits, the evil US, right?
	The Halliburton, right?
	So that, so in other words, it is never.
	So if I say to you, I don't eat pork because I'm Jewish.
	I go to synagogue on Saturday because I'm Jewish.
	I do XYZ because I'm Jewish.
	Now, why did I do all those things?
	Well, it's certainly not because I was Jewish, right?
	So what is the evidence that I need to provide you, Russell Brand, before you're able to tentatively, maybe draw some link between their religious fervor.
	And of course, it's not only their religious fervor, right?
	Nobody contests the fact that there might be other causative agents.
	But to be able to offer a narrative whereby the repeated statements that they make about how they are being driven by their religious fervor is somehow negated is frankly, at best, is delusional.
	At worst, it's actually harmful because he has a much larger following than you and I put together 50-fold.
	And therefore, he is polluting people's minds in terms of their being able to navigate through these issues in a well-informed manner.
	And so for that, I hold a lot of contempt for him.
	Now, I think you made some really great points there, actually, because and some really important points, because one of the things that I mean, I often find myself in a strange position where, like yourself, like you said, I'm concerned with nuance.
	I'm very concerned with nuance.
	And I'm very concerned with, and I hate using certain words because the progressives have ruined certain words.
	I like to be empathetic to the people I'm talking to.
	I like to be empathetic to the people who I'm talking about.
	And now everyone's thinking, well, he's a fucking social justice warrior, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	No, no, no, calm down.
	There is still merit in being empathetic.
	Sure.
	Despite the fact that, you know, you may, you know, you may come to the conclusion that they're still in the wrong, even if you understand their reasons for doing things.
	And so, fuck, I keep talking myself around and forgetting my point.
	It's my good looks.
	They're overwhelming you.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So, yeah, so to say that Islam plays no part in Islamic radicalization and suicide and terror is absurd.
	It's ridiculous.
	But like, you know, we've been saying, there are other factors that lead up to it.
	It's not the be-all and end-all.
	Exactly.
	And so it's one of these things that, like with all things, there are just going to be dozens of reasons probably, you know, for each individual to end up taking the sort of radical path.
	And I mean, a lot of it, the problem, I think, is the fact that it's asymmetric warfare.
	There was this chap called Chalmers Johnson who wrote a series of books, starting with one called Blowback, about why, basically, why 9-11 happened to explain to Americans who just out of the blue were like, What the hell's going on?
	He's like, Look, right, you don't seem to understand that the United States is a world empire.
	You know, the Americans don't realize it.
	And now, and now I know there are people in Technical, oh my God, he's about to criticize America.
	Well, you know, and yeah, I'm gonna, but that's because what I'm saying is true.
	You know, you do have a thousand bases around the world, and only 750 or so of them are on record.
	You know, and it's this is the problem that you're encountering, you're encountering: is that your experience of everyone else's experience of America is very different to someone in the Middle East's experience of America.
	You know, you've got like Pakistani villages who get drone strikes out of a blue sky on a daily basis.
	You know, Obama has done far more drone strikes than Bush ever did.
	And so it's, you know, if, and all he knows is that it's an American drone with an American missile that's killed his family unjustly.
	You know, they probably weren't terrorists.
	And so now he's pissed off.
	You know, he's he wants some fucking revenge.
	What does what choices does he have?
	Can he join the Pakistani army?
	Are they going to fight the Americans?
	No, they're being paid off by the Americans.
	The Americans give hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Pakistani government.
	You know, so what choice does he have if he wants to fight the enemy that's killed his family?
	He's got no choice.
	He's got to become a terrorist.
	And, you know, Islam provides him a perfectly neat and easy path to become that which we will end up declaring as an evil terrorist.
	And so, you know, I think he's wrong, of course, but we were no more in the right to bomb his family.
	Right.
	You know, I mean, I guess my rebuttal to that would be: yes, fine.
	Everything I'll concede the things that you've said.
	There could be particular instances where some terrorist act is a direct retaliation to some American action.
	But of course, that can't explain the 37,000 other incidents that have nothing to do with the US, right?
	So when Sunnis are beheading Shia in Moshe, right?
	Now, of course, the ones who are committed to argue that it's due to America will argue as follows.
	And here's where the lunacy continues.
	Well, had the US not overthrown Saddam Hussein, then, right?
	So again, the stupidity is endless.
	You're unable, because of your ideological bent, to ever assume that it has anything to do with the religion in question.
	And there must be some underlying prior cause that led these otherwise lovely, peaceful John Lennon people to behead people and rape people on mas, right?
	And that's just dishonest, right?
	I mean, yeah, no, absolutely.
	Can I just, yeah, just because that's that's quite an interesting, yeah.
	The Sunni Shia, um, the death squads, effectively, after the fall of Saddam was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen.
	Um, I mean, you, you, you could that was my reality in Lebanon, by the way.
	That's Lebanon.
	You know, I honestly, I can't imagine what it's like being a Jew in an Arab country, especially in times of political instability, like civil war.
	Um, I mean, just you can look all through Europe, you know, all throughout history, throughout Europe, when there was some sort of religious fervor going on.
	It was the Jews that felt the sting first, right?
	And then the crusade finally reached Muslim lands and then actually did what it was supposed to do.
	Um, and so, yeah, so I mean, you could argue that yes, the US overthrew Saddam, and so you know, this is the cause that the US is responsible.
	It's like, no, it's not responsible.
	The US has just enabled this to happen.
	Um, because what and it's exactly the same thing, you know, it's it's I have a dogma, you know, it's it's this team, this team, someone from this team murders someone from that team.
	Well, revenge, revenge, revenge, revenge, revenge, revenge, blood libels, all this sort of thing.
	And so Saddam comes along, dictator, right?
	No, it all stops.
	The American comes along, knocks Saddam, it begins again.
	It's not the America's fault that this is occurring.
	They didn't help.
	But surely it's dishonest to unfold history until you get to the villain that you want to get to.
	So I did a YouTube clip where I was satirizing that position.
	And I said, look, if we're going to unfold history in this way, we really need to blame our ancestors who walked out of Africa for the occurrence.
	That's exactly it.
	That's it.
	Because had they not walked out, then the US would have never come to be.
	So really, it's Homo.
	You got to go after Homo erectus, baby.
	They're the real cause of ISIS.
	So, I mean, it's ridiculous, right?
	I mean, the guy who is to, I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Sorry, yeah.
	I just want to, I don't feel that I finished quite explaining my position just because I'll get sticked from people in the chat if I don't.
	So basically, what I'm saying is whenever an individual takes an action, the responsibility for that action lies entirely on that individual.
	That's my personal belief.
	You know, they will have all their reasons and rationalizations for it.
	They will say, you know, Sonny guy killed my Shia daughter or whatever, and so I must now kill him.
	And like you said, it's an endless cycle that's just going to go round and round around because people do things for reasons.
	So I think, and this was the argument I made to an Israeli friend of mine in a conversation with him a long time ago about Israel and Palestine.
	I was like, look, right.
	Basically, if you want, the options in Israel and Palestine are you either eradicate the Palestinians or you stop shooting them.
	They're your choices.
	They will attack you and you'll just have to endure it.
	You've got the Iron Dome, so you're as protected as you can be.
	Because at the end of the day, like you say, there's no going around in circles.
	There's no winning.
	There's no unraveling it.
	So someone has to effectively be the bigger person and take it on the chin and say, well, the buck stops here.
	Whatever we're doing has to stop.
	But I'm just moralizing now like an idiot.
	It's your show.
	I'm just the prop.
	No, no, no, I'll tell you my guess.
	Christ.
	I'm not sure if I would agree with the passive, let's take the high moral ground when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian.
	I think the reality is one has to look at what is the underlying ultimate desire for each of the two groups.
	And here, of course, maybe you'll get flat, maybe I will get flat, but it doesn't matter.
	The reality is that I think it was Golda Meir who said that if we were to lay down our arms, there would be a mass genocide.
	If the Palestinians were to lay down their arms, there would be peace.
	Now, the point of that is basically that, look, I navigate amongst Arabs and amongst Jews.
	My mother tongue is Arabic.
	You know, I've never sat down with a bunch of Jews.
	Now, I don't mean to imply that there aren't Jews who hold extremist views.
	Of course.
	But it is not part of the ethos of the values of most Jews to kind of sit around and say, you know, death to Arabs and so on.
	If anything, most of them are incredibly progressive and liberal and so on.
	On the other hand, if I sit down, now, again, this doesn't imply that all Muslims are bad, most are terribly nice and so on.
	And I know that better than most because I grew up in that world.
	Now, on the other hand, if you sit down with a lot of the folks from the other camp, it will very, very quickly disintegrate into calls for mass genocide.
	In other words, one group has defined its identity in part as a contra point to the existence of the other group.
	Anybody who doesn't agree with that is either blind or is dishonest, right?
	I can say that's the problem.
	The problem is that as long as one group actually views it as imperative to rid the region of these other, I mean, think about all the other countries in the Middle East where Jews were there thriving in the millions.
	What happened to them?
	Where are they?
	Right.
	And this is not, this has nothing to do with Israel.
	What's happening to the Christians in those lands?
	So we have to also recognize that.
	And, of course, this doesn't mean that Israel doesn't do a lot of things that I disagree with, right?
	No, no, no, of course.
	I wasn't.
	Yeah, I don't assume the very end of the spectrum as soon as you take a step in that direction.
	Exactly.
	And so I think the issue is that, you know, there has to be a recognition, at least as far as I'm concerned, that these two people have to coexist in that region.
	And as long as the narrative, maybe of not the majority, but a very, very sizable minority to be charitable is that death to Jews, death to Jews.
	And that's seen on TV, in radio, in soap operas, at the mosque.
	It's everything.
	I agree.
	I agree.
	I've seen children's cartoons from Palestine or Jordan, one of the nations near Israel where they had kids on TV saying death to Jews and stuff.
	Look, growing up in Lebanon, I tell you a very quick story.
	Where I'm maybe 10 years old, the teacher says, everybody get up and tell us what you'd like to be when you grow up.
	So when I grow up, I want to be a policeman.
	When I grow up, I want to be a soccer player.
	And so Hisham gets up.
	I still remember his name.
	I think that was his name.
	And says, when I grow up, I want to be a Jew killer.
	Everybody starts chanting, Jew killer, yeah, Jew killer, Jew killer.
	This is in moderate, tolerant, pluralistic Lebanon, right?
	And I could share with you 17,000 other such stories.
	Now, does that mean that most people were rabbit killers?
	Of course not.
	But is it something that is pervasive throughout all of the fabric of society?
	Absolutely.
	Could I go anywhere in the Middle East, wear a t-shirt saying, I am Jewish, I love Jews?
	No.
	so we have to recognize those realities now that again that doesn't mean sorry i i I don't mean to keep interrupting it's just that it is okay now I completely agree with you that's that What you've said is completely true.
	And there is no point at that where that's not true or in doubt in my mind.
	However, that also doesn't invalidate the truth of, say, Hamas's, you know, the predominant recruits of Hamas are probably people who have lost family members to Jewish military, to the Jewish military, right?
	Yes.
	So at no point does that discount the reality of that.
	True.
	And it's not like Islam has always been focused on killing Jews.
	I mean, we know that all throughout history, hell, in Al-Andalus in Spain, medieval Spain, the Jews got along brilliantly there until the Christians reconquered it and kicked them and the Muslims out.
	They were flourishing under Islamic rule.
	So it's not like Islam is inherently against the Jews.
	The problem is modern political issues.
	And so the and I think this is heavily propagated by what has happened with the expansion of Israel into Palestine.
	There's no doubt that Israel has expanded its territory into Palestine.
	And it's, you know, and I'm not saying that Israel's evil because state actors, there's no point in describing a state as good or evil.
	You know, they're not moral actors.
	So, you know, there's no point describing Israel as good or evil, or in America as good or evil.
	But there's no getting around the fact that Hamas's recruits come from people who have been damaged, had their lives severely impacted by Israel and wants to get vengeance.
	And that then becomes part of the justification.
	We hate the Jews.
	It's the Jews of Israel doing this.
	It's Jews, Jews, Jews.
	And it becomes, as you said, part of the cultural fabric of the Middle East.
	While Israel stands, the Arabs around them are looking at going, fucking Jews.
	Look at what they've done to our fellow Arabs and whatnot.
	And so, and so just this means that you, like you say, if we stop fighting, we get eradicated.
	If they stop fighting, the war's over.
	And so it's one of these, again, it's a sort of feedback thing where, you know, there's no necessarily good answer.
	But I wasn't really saying, sorry, I know you want to jump in.
	I just want to point out.
	That's okay.
	Go ahead.
	I know that you, I'm not saying that the Jewish people should disarm themselves.
	And, you know, so if Egypt and Iraq decide to invade again, they should just allow this to happen.
	But I do think that there could be more nuance in the position there.
	Right, no, fair enough.
	Look, as I said, there's enough blame to go around against everybody.
	I will perhaps very gently and diplomatically point you to one issue.
	You might want to read the original sources of the three canonical texts in Islam to see whether it's true that Jews are loved in the canonical.
	I am aware that Muhammad eradicated a few Jewish villages in that.
	But so you can, so you could read the Quran, you could read the Hadith, and you could also read the Sira, the biography of Muhammad.
	And then, as a matter of fact, there's somebody who's done the work for you.
	There's a guy by the name of Bill Warner who started off as a physicist.
	He was a professor of physics.
	And for the past 12 years, after he sort of took, I guess, his retirement as a physicist, has been studying the actual contents of religious texts, not just Islamic texts.
	He'll look, for example, at the Old Testament.
	And he uses a methodology known as content analysis.
	You could actually count, right?
	You could count how many times is there a passage of love and peace in the Old Testament?
	How many times is there a call for violence in the Old Testament?
	And so what he's done is he's basically looked at the position of the holy books from Islam vis-à-vis since we're talking about Jews.
	And so what I would do is I would recommend that both you and your viewers go and check out the conclusions of that.
	And maybe you'll come to a slightly different conclusion.
	I would as well.
	I just want to tell you what my knowledge of this is.
	I haven't actually read the Quran.
	I've read the Torah and I've read the New Testament.
	I've honestly, I couldn't be bothered to read the Quran.
	It's such a slog.
	So what I think that it sargon said it, not me.
	He just said that.
	I'm sorry.
	I just couldn't get through it.
	But what I ended up doing is reading summaries of it, where you get, you know, someone has read it and extrapolates the major points.
	So I am aware what happens.
	I thought, I mean, maybe, I mean, it was about 15 years ago I read it.
	But I was under the impression that there were, I thought it was only a handful of Jewish villages in Arabia that were eradicated by Muhammad.
	Right.
	So, I mean, it depends.
	So it depends on, you know, which, what's the unit of analysis that you want to look at?
	General dynamic is that the Jews in Arabia were the ones who, because of their very staunch monotheism right, they already had a very strong tradition, religious heritage, so they are the ones who, if you like, were most resistant to Muhammad's message.
	Correct, and so therefore, his eventual antipathy could towards the Jews could, could be explained in very earthly, psychological terms.
	Right, and so So it's not just, I mean, yes, we could talk about all of the beheadings of the Jewish tribes, and then we could discuss whether it was only meant to hate those Jews versus all Jews, right?
	There's all sorts of apologism that goes on.
	But the reality is, it's quite, it would be quite a stretch of historical reality to think that anti-Jewish hatred is something that is specific to the creation of modern Israel.
	Now, that doesn't mean, incidentally, that you can't go through different historical periods over the past 1400 years, as you did in mentioning Andalusa, where you say, hey, they coexisted.
	I mean, we don't expect that a people are going to engage in 1400 years of endless carnage, right?
	But for example, within the Andalusa context, were Jews equal?
	No, right?
	So you just have to read, for example, the treaties that Maimonides did on living amongst the Arab lands.
	Jews are always at times tolerated.
	In other words, you live as a dhimmi, right?
	That's the actual term.
	In other words, it is perfectly fine.
	It's not as though, I mean, look, we lived in Lebanon, right?
	I mean, until we were no longer you pay?
	Sorry?
	The Jesus, isn't it?
	I'm probably pronouncing it.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	Exactly.
	So the people of the book, meaning that the monotheists, Christians and Jews, have the option.
	So either you convert to Islam or you get killed or you live under a dhimmi status and you're tolerated.
	Now, in different contexts, that dhimmi status manifests itself in different ways, right?
	In some contexts, you literally pay the tax.
	You are literally humiliated on a daily basis.
	In other contexts, in Lebanon, where I grew up, it wasn't that readily prevalent, right?
	But you certainly didn't go around wearing a star of David the size of your chest, right?
	So in other words, be quiet, know your place, right?
	And then the day that we decide that we no longer wish to tolerate you, then the carnage will start.
	So to argue that Jews have coexisted with other people is absolutely true, but we also have to recognize what that coexistence meant.
	Were they perfectly equals in the way that you and I would understand equality to be under the law in Western context?
	Absolutely not.
	And so again, you know, that's a very complicated discussion, but at no time were Jews viewed as full partners in the Middle East.
	So for example, my brother was a huge champion in Judo in Lebanon.
	And this is, I think, the first time that I'm sharing the story publicly.
	So bonus play for your viewers.
	And so he actually represented Lebanon in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
	And so he had won several Lebanese championships.
	And this was becoming embarrassing.
	It's not good for this Jew boy to be, especially in a warrior sport, to be winning.
	And so he was visited by some guys who told him that regrettably he would have to retire.
	Otherwise, accidents can happen where he ends up at the bottom of a river.
	And so my family decided that it was too dangerous for him to stay in Lebanon.
	So he then moved to France to pursue his career there.
	Now, was he beheaded?
	No.
	But was it clear that who held the power?
	Yes.
	And then when the civil war started, then it literally was impossible for us to be there.
	We were going to be executed.
	So, you know, we need to understand what pluralism means in the Middle East.
	It doesn't mean as you understand it in the West.
	Yeah, I just want to stress that I wasn't necessarily trying to argue that Islam is a tolerant religion.
	I don't believe it's a tolerant religion.
	In fact, it's exceptionally imperious, I find, and it's insanely domineering.
	In fact, one of the things I find very interesting about Islam is that it is almost more of a political ideology than it is a religion, which is something I find very, very interesting about it.
	And one of the things, one of my favorite things, I'll probably do a video about this at some point.
	Because all through my 20s, I spent a lot, I'm not formally educated on any of this, but I spent a lot of time reading, you know, just reading the text, reading books about it.
	And I just enjoyed reading it.
	And so I'm happy to concede when my knowledge is lacking.
	No, but you're exactly right about the political and spiritual element.
	It's very interesting, though, isn't it?
	Sorry, go on.
	Yeah, so there are two, this you may or may not know.
	So if you know it, I apologize, but maybe your viewers might be interested.
	You know, there's in the Quran, there's the Meccan period and the Medinan period, right?
	And so the Meccan period is where Muhammad was trying to proselytize in a very peaceful manner.
	And I think if I'm getting my facts right, I think in an eight-year period, he was able to basically attract 150 people to his message.
	150 people in eight years.
	That's not much of a conversion rate.
	And then when he then moved to Medina and took on a much more, to put a charitably political bent to his proselytizing, right?
	Then he suddenly got a lot more adherents to follow, and then it spread.
	And so I think that's what Ayan Hirsi Ali is trying to argue in her latest book.
	If only the Meccan message is the one that is retained, which really contains some of the spiritual parts, that's some of the beauty, the spiritual beauty of Islam that comes out.
	Once we incorporate some of the supremacist, less tolerant, more political, more invasive elements, then I think that's the part that we have a problem with.
	So of course there are many elements of Islam that are quite beautiful, quite refreshing, quite spiritual, but that's precisely because they are within the spiritual realm.
	That's actually something I've long said.
	There needs to be some sort of reformation of Islam to divorce the political ideology from the spiritual aisle, from the religious aspect of it, really.
	But I wasn't necessarily trying to argue that Jewish people were equal under Islamic society.
	And I'm not suggesting that Jewish people in the Middle East should live under Islamic societies.
	I think that would probably be a very bad idea.
	Really, all I was doing is trying to argue the counterpoint as I think it would be argued by, say, like an Arab intellectual.
	But I consider that.
	There are a lot of things that I disagree with what Israel does.
	I wasn't trying to...
	Yeah, yeah. I know.
	You know what I mean?
	100%.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And that's what sometimes frustrates me because not in what you're saying, but people think that if you support Israel, that means you support everything that they do.
	And again, going back to my argument about nuanced thinking, right?
	I could support the right for Israel to exist, but I can disagree with actions A, B, C, D that it takes.
	On the other hand, I also find it quite suspicious when somebody will engage in vitriol where the right of Israel to exist is questioned.
	So again, it's all about nuance.
	A clear thinking person is able to look at the Israeli-Palestinian situation and say, on these points, I'm completely on the Palestinian side.
	On these points, I think the Jews have a good point.
	And that's what constitutes an intelligent discussion.
	And I think, especially when it comes to this debate, both sides can be quite, you know, the Venn diagrams never meet.
	It's a lot worse than the political situation in America, isn't it?
	It is.
	It is.
	But yeah, absolutely.
	And one of the things that I think a lot of people, a lot of people, particularly in American universities who very much support Palestine, is they act like the Israelis have got no right to say that we are going to defend ourselves.
	And I find that ridiculous.
	I mean, I always want to say, look, if you were them and you considered yourself under attack, you would feel that you had every right to defend yourself.
	And don't get me wrong.
	And that's what I feel that I have to argue against when I'm talking to Israelis is like the Palestinians have every right to do the same thing if they feel that way.
	But again, it's a giant convoluted mess.
	It really is.
	And my prediction, and you'll have it on tape forever, I truly don't think it will ever be resolved.
	In other words, you and I can meet in 30 years, and I can almost guarantee you that we'll be at exactly the same state.
	Actually, I think that it would be resolved if ever the balance of power were to tilt towards the, let's call it the non-Israeli side, and if they were to militarily win.
	And I think you know what would happen at that point.
	I agree.
	I agree.
	I think the only way it's going to end is all the arguments necessary.
	The conflict is going to end in a victory for one side or another.
	But I think we know from today that one side has all the military might to end the conflict today, yet they choose not to, correct?
	Now the other it'll take exactly 15 minutes, correct?
	On the other hand, what I'm saying is if we flip that balance of power one day in the future so that it is exactly symmetrically opposite, then the issue will be resolved.
	And I think you understand what I mean.
	Absolutely.
	In a vacuum, that is exactly what would happen.
	But I do think that the United States would step in.
	I think that if Israel suffered a catastrophic military defeat multiple times saved, so there were literally no more fighting men in Israel.
	I can't imagine the international community would stand by.
	But how would you intervene?
	So, for example, if Iran were tomorrow to have the capacity to have nuclear bombs and the capacity to deliver them, then any response would be long late because three of those and it's bye-bye Israel, right?
	So yeah, you're absolutely right.
	And again, I'm not, and again, I'm not necessarily arguing for the other side.
	I'm just, you know, this is what I think they would say.
	Right.
	But yeah, it's a sticky situation.
	And, you know, I tell you, as somebody who is both Lebanese and, I mean, Jewish, but of course, I'm also an atheist.
	There are so many.
	I mean, I'm Lebanese.
	I mean, I'm Arabic in everything, right?
	I mean, it's my mother tongue.
	It's my culture.
	And so, you know, from a strictly sort of neutral perspective, I long for a day where, I mean, you know how hurtful it is for me that I could never take my children today to Lebanon and maybe do a visiting professorship at the American University of Beirut where they could learn their mother tongue, which is Arabic, right?
	I mean, I've got nothing to do with this.
	I can't even imagine.
	So truly, in my heart of heart, I mean, all I want, I don't care Israel and Palestine.
	I want everybody, I mean, in a true John Lennon moment here, I want everybody to get along.
	I truly think that some of the religious dogma on both sides, right?
	I mean, Israel exists also because of religious dogma, right?
	Unless you eradicate that, the issue will never be resolved.
	As one atheist to another, I'm in full agreement that religion doesn't bring any benefits when it comes to political strife.
	Very true.
	You know, if you've lost a loved one and you need solace, it's perfect.
	You know, as an atheist, I've got nothing there.
	But if you want to deal with the political issue, don't bring religion into it.
	Yeah, I'm actually, and next year I'll be one of the speakers at the Imagine No Religion Conference, which happens every year in Vancouver.
	And so it'll be interesting to kind of draw up a lecture on the Imagine No Religion conflict, because again, I'm somebody whose personal history has been repeatedly affected by religious hatred.
	So I certainly know of that that I speak, you know.
	Well, yeah, as a Lebanese Jew, I mean, Christ, there's, you know, both worlds are converging in yourself, aren't they?
	You know, you should be playing the identity politics game with that, you know.
	Well, you know, it's interesting because oftentimes I've had conversations with non-Jews, I mean, Arabs, without them knowing what my religious background is.
	And that itself can be quite an eye-opener because, you know, you almost feel as though you're a spy because you're able to get at some truths precisely because they don't suspect that you're Jewish, because you're obviously an Arabic speaker.
	And I have to say that in my long history, I've heard some really, really very, very bad things.
	I'll tell you a very quick story.
	When I was a graduate student at Cornell, I became friends, as is often the case with a bunch of Arab guys.
	We share so much in common.
	We're the same.
	And so one of them approached me, of course, to proselytize me to Islam.
	Hey, God, you know, you're a very smart, intelligent guy.
	Why haven't you converted to the true path?
	And okay, so we started chatting.
	And he goes, and then he pauses and he goes, you know, you know what, Gad?
	I really think you're such a great guy.
	I said, oh, yeah, well, why is that surprising?
	He goes, well, you know, because, you know, I said, no, I don't know.
	So he goes, I said, you mean, because, oh, because I'm Jewish.
	He goes, no, but come on, you're not a Jew Jew.
	So I said, no, no, no, no, I am a Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew.
	He goes, no, come on, God, don't be silly.
	You're not a Jew-Jew.
	And so I refer to this anecdote as the Jew-Jew anecdote because, you know, it really was very difficult for him to reconcile the fact that I could be such a swell guy, no different from him, an Arabic guy.
	But obviously, I couldn't have been like one of those demons.
	And therefore, I'm not a Jew-Jew.
	I'm just kind of a Jew.
	You're kind of like a Zionist or something.
	Well, he certainly didn't use words like Zionist or Israel.
	And he was talking about the fact that I'm obviously Arabic.
	So look, in the language of hatred that happens on the street in the Middle East, people are not saying the word Zionist and they're not saying the word Israel, right?
	It's Jew, right?
	So it's death to the Jews.
	When Abdel Nasser, the former dictator of Egypt, passed away in 1970, I was a very young boy.
	And so there were these demonstrations on the street.
	Now, I don't know what it had to do with the Jews, but as the people were lamenting the death of Abdel Nasser, who was kind of the king of the pan-Arabic movement, all that I could keep hearing as a very young boy, five, six years old, was death to Jews, death to Jews.
	So, you know, so it's not, it's not Zionism.
	It's Jews.
	It's very interesting because someone recently sent me a news article about how the BBC had been caught sanitizing the language that was being used by Palestinians when talking about Israelis.
	Well, they were talking about Israelis, but so in the translation, they would say, you know, blah, blah, blah, Israeli, blah, blah, blah.
	When in fact, they were saying Jew, you know, and it's it was the difference between sort of the political language and hate speech.
	And that's exactly what you see on campuses.
	In today's environment, it is perfectly politically correct to say, hey, I love Jews.
	I just hate Zionism, right?
	But it ends up being a cover for many people.
	Now, for many people, it is true.
	They have nothing against Jews and they just hate some Zionist policies.
	And that's perfectly fine.
	But for many other people, they recognize that that's what's palpable in today's world.
	You can't come out fully and say, I despise Jews.
	No, no, I only hate Zionists.
	I get the feeling that you get a lot of that from almost any ideology where it represents a group.
	For example, I imagine there are probably quite a few people in the manosphere, but not the majority, but like there is probably a demographic or a group, or at least a number of people who, when they say, I hate feminists, they're probably saying I hate women.
	There probably are people who do.
	And I'm not saying it's, you know, you don't, again, like all these things, I get the feeling that they've been made.
	You know, they've not been born that way.
	They've been made that way, you know, from whatever reason.
	And I do think that these people who hold unreasonable hate for people they've never met can be talked down from their position if given the opportunity.
	I don't think that anyone is necessarily a lost cause.
	Oh, well, that's a wonderfully optimistic position.
	It is optimistic.
	It is.
	I understand.
	No, but I hope that you're right.
	I hope I'm right too.
	You know, look, the end result is, and I love to use this analogy.
	If you look at companies in terms of the legal right that they have to advertise to children, that's very regulated, right?
	So the argument is that children don't have the cognitive capacity to counter argue against advertisement.
	And therefore, it is ethically, morally, and legally inappropriate to, say, target them for selling them chewing gum or cereals, right?
	Now, on the other hand, right, as soon as I finish making that statement, it is then perfectly appropriate, legal, moral, and ethical to take a child that comes out of the womb and feed him with endless religious nonsense.
	And I'm not talking here only about Islam.
	It could be Judaism, Christianity, right?
	So how is it logical and moral to protect our children from the evils of chewing gum, but we could take a malleable brain that is one day old and then feed him endless bullshit about religious dogma.
	That's the problem.
	So once you rid the world of the capacity to influence brains that are one day old, I think the Israeli-Palestinian problem will cease to be a problem.
	Hey, you're preaching to the choir metaphorically here.
	I think that if religion is something people should come to when they're adults, when they've, you know, it shouldn't be a part of public life.
	I fully support secular societies.
	And this is genuinely why I think that Islam is in desperate need of a reformation.
	It really is.
	You've got to secularize Islamic societies.
	And the only way to do that is by reforming, like you were saying, exactly as you're saying, you need to emphasize the Meccan passages rather than the Hedina passages because it's so self-evident when you're reading through it to see just the change in tenor of what Muhammad was saying as he became more politically secure.
	I really like looking at the situations in which religions are formed, the political situations, because you can see Christianity, It was very much hijacked by Paul of Tarsus, I think, and very much so.
	And he, it's only after Paul of Tarsus gets his hands on it, becomes turned the other cheek.
	Until then, he's you know flipping over tables and whipping money changes and stuff, right?
	And I think that Paul did this as a direct response to the Roman Empire.
	After the Seleucids, after the Egyptians, and then the Romans, there was no way the Jews were going to beat the Romans.
	There was just no way.
	It had to be render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render it a godliness which is God.
	You've got to endure it, you know, it and the reward comes afterwards.
	Whereas if you look at the political situation that Islam was formed in, it was very fractious.
	You know, there was no great power.
	And so there was room to be imperial.
	Right.
	And so you can see how it informs the ideology very much.
	You know, it's, of course, natural that the Muslims should rule over the conquering of the people that have conquered.
	And it became very much, you very much part of Islam.
	And I mean, I don't even, maybe you can't separate the two.
	Well, I think that I was going to actually pick up on exactly your last sentence.
	I think the challenge is that it is unclear from a doctrinal perspective how you would go about the reformation, right?
	So, so here's the first obstacle: if you start off with the premise that the Quran is the inerrant, final, perfect, eternally true word of God without a single comma in Arabic, you say haraf, not a single alphabet, not a single thing that could be altered.
	Well, then we're in trouble, right?
	So, so again, the question is: there are many, many very courageous and wonderful Islamic reformers that have come out throughout the past 1400 years, but regrettably, they did not stick around much because it's very, very difficult from a doctrinal perspective to actually implement that project.
	And so, when we see Ayan Hirsi Ali writing a book about reformation, yeah, that's all great, but how do you do it?
	Right?
	I doubt she's got good ideas.
	Well, she does it really because all she says is like what you said, you know, focus on the Meccan, not the yeah, well, but how do you do that, right?
	Because, from a doctrinal perspective, you may or may not know that there's a principle of are you familiar with what abrogation is?
	Is that something you know?
	Abrogation, hang on, no, I do.
	I'm just gonna, I'm just googling it to make sure I know the repeal of abolition of a law, right or agreement.
	Okay, yeah, sorry, so abrogation is basically the idea: the following idea: suppose that you've got a verse that says, uh, be peaceful, and then you've got another verse that says, Don't be peaceful.
	Well, how do you reconcile?
	Surely, God, surely, Allah couldn't be, you know, uh, isn't it chronological?
	Uh, well, yeah, what exactly what you exactly.
	So, what you do is you abrogate the earlier verse by the later verse.
	In other words, Allah is all-knowing, all-powerful.
	If He chooses to change his opinion, He chooses to change His opinion, right?
	And therefore, if I right, so the P, so usually when the peaceful stuff is quoted, it's coming from the Meccan period, right?
	Uh, no compulsion in religion, you have your religion, I have mine.
	That's Meccan stuff, right?
	The harsher stuff comes in the Medinan period, right?
	Now, by doctrine, the later stuff abrogates, nullifies, renders void the earlier stuff.
	So, unless you come up with a new interpretation of the doctrines that allows you to wiggle and come up with new ways to, you know, understand those texts, then it's all useless.
	The whole endeavor is going to eventually fail.
	Uh, so I think I speak for most people who are saying uh, reformation is great, but unless you give the blueprint for how you're going to implement the reformation, it's just empty talk.
	That's true, and that's um, where did I hear this?
	I can't, I can't remember.
	I maybe it was like George Carlin or some comedian saying that, um, basically, it's all well and good having the idea, but at least the vegans had it right when they had like uh tofu sausages, you know, they were like, Don't eat meat, eat this instead.
	They had a replacement, you know, right?
	Yeah, so there's um, you're exactly right.
	If well, God is in the details, right?
	Well, yeah, forgive the pun.
	Yeah, yeah.
	The last thing is, you know, it's all well and good me saying, hey, we need a reformation of Islam because you know, and the thing is, I don't think you can ever really strip someone's religion from them.
	You know, if they believe it, they believe it.
	If they don't believe it, they don't believe it.
	And so, you know, if and this is coming from someone who's never believed in any religion.
	So, you know, I'm just going by what I observe in others.
	So, and so the only thing I can really see is the suggestion that it would need to become secularized.
	But as we said, it's almost impossible to separate the two.
	If you know, I mean, we can't see it.
	So, again, it's one of these issues that I mean, how do you persuade devout Muslims that the Quran isn't necessarily the exact word of God?
	And I mean, is it possible?
	Probably not.
	I don't know.
	Well, how do you, for example, Muhammad is the perfect man who should be followed in every possible way.
	Now, if you're going to then say, Let's not.
	Well, no, but that causes a problem, right?
	So, so if he, if all of his actions are perfect, then we should emulate them.
	Now, if one of his actions, action X, is one that we may disagree with, well, how do we go about then saying, well, he is perfect, but we disagree with X?
	So, that's where you get that schizo sort of phrenic approach where you really're stuck between a rock and a hard place, at least for many of, and I, and many of these folks, many of these Muslim people are very good friends of mine.
	And we've had these discussions, and it's very, very difficult.
	And the privacy of our conversations, they're able to concede points, but there is such an overwhelming community and doctrinal pressure to never question things that it makes it difficult for any reformation to truly take hold amongst the masses.
	That's the challenge.
	You know, you know, that just sounds exactly like feminists that I've spoken to.
	Exactly.
	Where they will concede a bunch of points that I'm making, and then as soon as the personal conversation that we're having ends, they will go back.
	And I will see them spouting their normal feminist rhetoric when they return to their communities that you know, the hug boxes online.
	And it's exactly the same principle.
	Because the costs, the costs that you're going to bear don't stem from the private conversation that they have with you, it's it stems from if they advertise their quote reformation to the group that matters, their family, their their their club, their mosque, their ummah.
	So, so yeah, if they're honest enough in the privacy of their conversations with you, they'll concede points.
	But once I get back out there and I'm a card-carrying member of the feminist movement, no, no, no, I never said that to Sargon, he's a liar.
	Yeah, no, the Quran is written by God.
	Um, right, you know, do you know what I find interesting?
	Is the since since we've brought it up, and I think this would be a good way to end the conversation, sure.
	Um, feminism and Islam, you mean, are they are they are they compatible?
	No, they're not compatible.
	Why don't the feminists hate the Muslims?
	Because in the no, that's because in the well, I would, I would maybe correct you not to be politically right, rather than hate Muslims, it's it's maybe criticize Islam, right?
	Because that's what I meant, yeah, of course, I know, but because you're going to get flack if I don't make you right, you're right.
	Obviously, I'm not talking about individuals, I'm talking about the other, of course.
	Uh, I think, yeah, I think it really is victimology poker, and in victimology, poker, depending on the poker hand that you're holding, allows you to win the victimology game.
	And in that game, Islam and Muslims have unfortunately, in the context of the West, become untouchables.
	That's what you don't criticize.
	So if you're a feminist, you're against all mistreatment of women, except if that mistreatment is done by those brown people.
	Then that trumps, then you shut your mouth.
	It's cultural relativism.
	You racist pig.
	Don't you dare criticize it.
	Right.
	So, sorry, go ahead.
	No, no, sorry.
	Sorry.
	Go ahead.
	So basically, it's really, it's a hierarchy of victimology.
	And there are clear rules, very much like how when you play those silly privilege games, you know, where you enter your ant and it gives you your privilege score.
	The reality is, regrettably, I say regrettably because ultimately reformation of Islamic doctrines are not going to come unless we speak about them openly.
	So the regrettable part here is that the ones who should be at the forefront of championing these reformations, people who are free in the West, are some of the ones who are engaging in the greatest stifling of these discussions, right?
	I mean, it seems amazing to me that somebody like Ayan Hirsi Ali, right, a black Somali Muslim woman, could be construed as, you know, part of the new atheist white male patriarch, right?
	I mean, how I mean, how outlandish can it get, right?
	I mean, I did a YouTube clip where I said I've uncovered a whole bunch of new white male bigots that are anti-Islam critics.
	And of course, I was satirizing the fact that I then list a whole bunch of people, all of whom are brown and women.
	And so the idea is that unfortunately, in the West, you know, the apologists don't have the capacity to behead you, but what they have the capacity to do is to attack your person.
	And so people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Ayan Hirsi Ali, some of whom I've had the pleasure of interacting with, Sam Harris, I know personally, you know, they're treated as though they're these unbelievable extremists.
	And nothing could be further from the truth.
	They're actually people who hold liberal values very dearly.
	We should be supporting their discourse, but instead we shun them as extremists.
	Yeah, whenever anyone from the extreme wing of either side, frankly, tells me that someone else is an extremist, then that's generally when I start to think that they're probably a moderate.
	Right.
	I've had people from the extreme right tell me that George Bush was a liberal.
	I've had the progressives on a daily basis tell me I'm right-wing.
	I get the feeling that they have no idea what they're talking about on either side.
	Right, very true.
	But the feminist, here's something.
	It's one of those things that I just can't believe they're capable of such monumental doublethink.
	I mean, I personally find the general Islamic treatment of women quite barbaric.
	This is why I'm not a cultural relevist.
	I look at it and think, well, objectively, that is a bad thing.
	That is objectively worse than my own culture that thinks that every human being should be treated equally under the law.
	I don't think that it should take four women's words to equal a man or however many it is.
	I think the women should be stoned to death if they get raped.
	These things are ridiculous.
	Well, let me give you a great example from feminists.
	And I've also written and done a YouTube clip about this.
	Western feminists argue that the niqab is liberating while the bikini is patriarchal oppression.
	Now, how do they come to that conclusion?
	By the following phenomenal gymnastics of logic.
	So rape, you see, has to be redefined.
	It's not just an actual physical penetrative act.
	The visual gaze, the male gaze, is a form of sexual assault.
	Therefore, to the extent that women are leered at via the oppressive male gaze, well, viewed under that lens, the niqab, which doesn't permit women to be leered at and hence visually raped, is liberating, whereas the bikini, which causes men to leer and hence visually rape women, is oppressive.
	And so I've actually had conversation with feminists who've argued.
	exactly what I just said.
	It's actually written by some of them.
	So when you get to the point where your moral compass is so broken, where the identity of a woman is removed, right?
	I mean, she's in a black bag.
	We don't know who it is under that black bag.
	It's viewed as more liberating than the individuality afforded in Western democracies where a woman can choose to either wear a bikini or not, where that's oppressive and the other one is liberating, we're in trouble.
	We're in serious trouble.
	It defies belief, doesn't it?
	You couldn't make it up because if you said that someone, oh, I've written a book in which this is the case, they'd be like, no, that's stupid.
	No one's going to believe it.
	Right.
	It would break their suspension of disbelief, you know, if this was fiction.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	So I guess on that, I mean, we should probably call it a day there.
	Yeah, that was fantastic.
	I so enjoyed it.
	Yeah.
	Thanks a lot for joining me.
	Honestly, it's a real privilege.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you so much for having me.
	So I hope that the people tune in to, do we want to do any of the promotional stuff or you'll do it later on y'all?
	You go ahead, you promote your, I've left links to the professor's channel in the description.
	So you go ahead, you tell people what you want.
	So they could follow me at Gatsad, G-A-D-S-A-A-D on Twitter.
	I also have a public Facebook page that they could easily find.
	So please send requests to my public page, not my private one.
	And then I also have a YouTube channel that I started last August where I discussed many of the issues that we've been talking about for the past few hours.
	It's basically slash C for channel Gatsad.
	And so you could find it.
	Each clip is called The Sad Truth.
	And basically, I just go through the various issues.
	And so I hope that people will subscribe.
	And I want to end by saying that I am amazed.
	I am envious of the extraordinary viewership that you've been able to garner.
	I mean, I'm just, I'm amazed that, please, oh guru, teach me the ways because 130,000 subscribers and 23 million viewers, you must be doing something right.
	So congratulations on your success.
	I think you'd have to ask each of them why they subscribe.
	I get the feeling they've probably all got individual reasons for it.
	Well, you're a charming host.
	I think that has a lot to do with it.
	Thank you.
	Honestly, it was a real pleasure.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you so much.
	Cheers.
	Thanks to everyone for watching.
	Take care, everyone.

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