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May 11, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:11:32
Joe Rogan Experience #1816 - Gad Saad
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gad saad
01:29:27
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joe rogan
01:40:15
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jamie vernon
00:16
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unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
You look like you've lost a large child from your body.
gad saad
86 pounds.
joe rogan
That's right.
That's a large child.
gad saad
I know that you want to take credit for it because...
joe rogan
Fat shaming works.
gad saad
Exactly.
But I can't give you all the credit.
joe rogan
No, you deserve all the credit.
I didn't do anything.
gad saad
So, because...
joe rogan
I just was concerned for your well-being.
And so I was just saying, if you really are saying that you want to get healthy and you really are saying that you want to play soccer and do all these things again...
gad saad
A friend has to be brutally honest with you.
joe rogan
Well, that's a hard one.
That's a hard one because nobody wants to hear they're gaining weight or they've gained weight or that they have to make radical changes to their life.
gad saad
I'm actually at the lowest weight since I think 88. That's incredible.
Size waist 33. How much better do you feel?
Phenomenal.
Outrageous.
joe rogan
Isn't it incredible?
Like if they could give you that in a pill, just the feeling, how it feels to be 86 pounds lighter?
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
gad saad
I mean just to give you a sense so that we could put it into metrics.
When I was overweight, our lovemaking session was only an hour and a half of vigorous sex.
Whereas now, I've doubled it.
joe rogan
Congratulations.
gad saad
Thank you.
joe rogan
How do you have so much time?
gad saad
It's incredible.
My wife is Lebanese.
She's spicy.
She demands a lot of me.
joe rogan
What did you do other than exercise?
How did you shift your diet?
gad saad
So, two things.
Number one, 15 to 20,000 steps a day, no matter what.
joe rogan
No matter what.
gad saad
So it's been almost now two and a half years that I haven't done a single day of less than 10,000 steps.
Now the steps could be treadmill, it could be walking outside, it could be running vigorously on the, you know, whatever.
It could be biking.
But I always have with me this actually...
joe rogan
Is it one of those pedometers?
gad saad
It's one of those pedometer things.
And I'm obsessive about maintaining.
So just by having this clear objective that I have to reach makes it that no matter what, I've got to get off the proverbial couch and walk around.
It's minus 20 in Montreal.
I'm walking outside until I reach that.
Wow.
But I was always quite physically active.
Of course, much of your weight loss comes from keeping this guy closed, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's the thing that people need to...
It's very, very, very, very difficult to exercise your way to weight loss.
gad saad
Exactly.
And so what I did...
So my wife, who's here, who you've known her for many years...
She's an amazing woman.
She turned into the Diet Gestapo.
She's got this MyFitnessPal.
They're getting, I guess, free publicity on the number one show in the world.
So through MyFitnessPal, she enters, till today, every single thing that goes into this gorgeous body.
unidentified
Wow.
gad saad
So at the end of the day, she says, don't have any snacks.
You're at $1,727 and you were supposed to get under $1,700.
So by having that feedback loop that's always keeping you in check.
So the third thing...
I weigh myself once a week so that the autocorrective mechanism comes in not when I'm now 227 in terms of weight, but if I've come to Texas and then I go on the scale and I've gained three pounds, well, now I know that I need to correct the following week.
So these little changes, I mean, there's nothing magical.
Just doing that I guess if I can add a fourth thing, I removed the all or nothing mindset.
In the past, I mean, the highest weight I reached, Joe, can you, and you won't offend me, can you, from knowing me for many years, do you know how heavy I got?
I guess you can calculate.
joe rogan
Well, if I look at you now, you look like you weigh about 165 pounds, am I right?
unidentified
Yeah, exactly.
gad saad
I'm 170. Ah, see, I'm pretty close.
170, very good.
joe rogan
I'm good at weight classes.
A lot of years of calling fights.
Exactly.
And I would imagine the heaviest you got was probably close to 300 pounds.
gad saad
256. Yeah.
Okay, so that's the 86 pounds.
So 256 for a guy...
joe rogan
That's the heaviest.
gad saad
That's the heaviest that maybe I could have been more, that I'm aware of, that I've actually seen it on the scale, was 256. I had gone for my yearly physical, and I got on the scale, and I was 256, which is the average weight for a 6'4 middle linebacker who's, you know, 8 inches tall, you know, Right, that's scary.
And so I removed the all-or-nothing mindset in that I need to lose all the weight by next Tuesday.
My mindset was, as long as every day I'm a bit better, eventually, you know, the old baby steps thing.
And so I get on, I'm now 10 pounds less, 20 pounds.
Hey, let me try to get under 200. I am.
And then bit by bit, magically, here I am.
joe rogan
If you have a message to anybody out there that's trying to do it, what would it be?
What's the most important thing?
gad saad
It's that there are 1,000 different temptations in a day for you to violate your goal, and you can almost never fail.
You don't have to be so punishing, but 997 out of the 1,000 bifurcations in the road, you have to take the right road.
And so do that enough days, enough times, get 997 out of 1,000, And suddenly you'll be 30, 40, 50 pounds lighter.
joe rogan
Just trust the process.
gad saad
Trust the process.
joe rogan
And that's what's hard for people to do because they really do want immediate results.
And the way I always describe it, there's a gambling term that you have to get better the same way you get sick.
It's like if you're gambling, say if you and I were playing pool and I was ahead 100 games and you said double or nothing, I would say, no, no, no.
You got to get better the same way you got sick.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
Because I'm up 100 games.
Why would I risk losing it all in one shot?
No, no, no.
And that's how it is with weight loss.
You've got to get better the same way you got sick, slowly, over time.
gad saad
And it's been now, you know, the usual thing is that you put it back on.
I've now had it off for quite a while, so I'd like to think that I'm in my steady state now.
joe rogan
Well, you've become aware now of the value of being thin and healthy, and you've become aware of how good you feel.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't think...
You're a smart man.
You're not going to go back.
gad saad
Exactly.
Did you ever have any trouble with your weight?
joe rogan
I mean, I've been like 5 pounds overweight before, 10 pounds overweight before.
gad saad
That's it.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then I always go, oh, you fat fuck, and then I lose the weight.
gad saad
Now, is that because of your...
Gluttony.
No, no, no.
Why didn't you ever put on more weight?
joe rogan
It's not an option.
I'm not getting fat.
gad saad
Is it literally a vanity issue?
joe rogan
No, it's a health issue.
I work out.
I do martial arts.
If I'm fat, I can't work out.
If I can, I feel it.
It's like I put sludge in my engine.
The fattest I ever got.
I think I got to 207 one time.
For me, it goes right here.
It goes on my sides and in my belly.
Also, I was eating a lot of pasta.
Which is just not for me.
Whenever I do that, I always feel like shit.
And I just overeat.
But I work out a lot.
So it keeps it in check for the most part.
But it can get away from me if I'm stupid.
Because I still eat like a teenager.
I eat as much as I want.
I eat large amounts of food.
gad saad
But you do mainly the protein stuff, right?
joe rogan
Yes.
Mainly I eat meat.
But I eat mostly meat and fish and fruit.
That's mostly what I eat.
gad saad
So I guess the fifth element of when you ask me how to lay this weight, I also removed all the carbs, almost all of it.
Once in a while, I have a bit of something.
joe rogan
So what is a daily meal for you like?
gad saad
So breakfast, I may have one or two boiled eggs.
Lunch might be my wife and I go to the Peruvian rotisserie place that we probably go to four times in a week, which I'll get a quarter of a chicken with a bit of coleslaw, vinegary coleslaw, not creamy coleslaw.
I might have one or two snacks around mid-afternoon, which might be things like 100 grams of frozen raspberries, a little yogurt of 70 calories, and then dinner will be a fantastic salad that if you looked at the volume, you'd think, my God, how are you losing so much weight?
But it only has five, six ounces of protein, but it's voluminous so that I feel full.
I may have another little snack at 8 o'clock, 70, 80 calories, and I've reached my 15, 16, 1700 calories, and I'm Mr. Slim Man.
joe rogan
Are you trying to lose more, or are you going to maintain this?
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because you look great.
gad saad
Thank you.
That's very kind.
I just want to see a 1 and a 6. I haven't reached it.
I've gotten to 170.4.
Last time I checked, I was 171. I just need to see a steady state of 165, 167. Now, the actuarial tables, by the way, for a guy my height, they put me at 155, which strikes me as a bit...
joe rogan
That's pretty thin.
gad saad
That's pretty thin.
joe rogan
Yeah, those tables, the BMI tables, they don't account for mass and weightlifting, and also you did soccer for many, many years, so you have strong legs.
gad saad
Exactly, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think that one thing that can help you, I don't know if you've done intermittent fasting, have you tried that?
Yeah.
gad saad
So what kind of window?
16-8?
I like 16. Yeah, I like 16. So I've done that for three days, just because I'm trying to recover from having gone on a trip.
But I'm guessing you're suggesting that I do it for a longer period, correct?
joe rogan
Well, that's what I do.
gad saad
Always?
joe rogan
Yeah, I do 16. I mean, I occasionally violate it if I feel like it, but it's only because I know I can get away with violating it because I'm so consistent.
But that's my move.
gad saad
Are you as disciplined in other aspects of your life as you are in your weight management?
I mean, certainly in your work ethic you are, but other things?
Or do your punctilious nature only manifest itself in a few domains and you're completely carefree in others?
joe rogan
No.
No, I can't.
This is me.
This is me with everything.
gad saad
Your exact thing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, I take days off.
I relax.
I know how to relax.
I'm good at that.
But I think discipline is a very important thing for a person.
I think it's a very important thing to take care of the thing.
It's like not taking care of the things causes you so much more pain and anxiety than taking care of the things.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
So take care of the things, no matter what it is, whether it's your body or your work or whatever you got to do.
Fucking off is not good for you.
It's like you need, if you're a professional, just do your work.
And you should be a professional with your body.
There's a great book called, I think it's called Going Pro.
It's Steven Pressfield, the same guy who wrote The War of Art.
I'm in the middle of his second book, which I don't like as much as The War of Art, but Turning Pro.
And the whole idea is about approaching your work.
Decide that you're a professional.
Show up when you're supposed to show up.
You put in the time.
And this is in regards, he's a writer.
But I think it's applicable to almost anything, whether you're a painter or, you know, like yourself, an intellectual.
You could be whatever it is.
Whether you're dealing with your physical body, whether you're dealing with hobbies.
Just do the work.
unidentified
Put it in the discipline.
gad saad
what you're saying to being an author.
When you try to write a book, look, I do two types of authoring.
I write academic papers, but those papers have a very clear template, right?
You start with an intro, then you've got the hypotheses, the literature review, the methodology, the results.
So the content is not a priori determined, but the template is clear.
When you write a book, you're going on an open-ended journey.
I mean, you do have an outline.
You have a book prospectus of the things you want to say, but how you fill these in, you have no idea.
And so one of the things that I tell people when they write to me and say, how did you become a successful author?
Discipline.
Every single day, rain or shine, I decide that I have to write, no matter what, 300 words.
They may be great words.
They may be things that I edit.
But there is no, I'm not feeling good today.
There is no, my throat is itching.
I feel a bit down.
No matter what, I'm writing 300 words.
And so if you have that grit, I think it's a path to success.
joe rogan
Yeah, Pressfield talks about that very same approach and he describes the muse as like a thing that will show up when you show up, that if you show up every day with respect to the muse.
He even says a prayer to the muse.
I don't remember if he gives you the prayer, tells you what the prayer is, but he'll sit down and say a thing like out loud to like, you know, to his laptop before he sits down and starts to write.
And then he'll write and he will write for three hours, no matter what.
And he feels like that three hours he starts to fade off and his creativity and his his energy for just the whole process sort of wanes to the point where it's not valuable to keep going.
gad saad
Right.
You know, there is nothing more orgasmic to me, I mean, other than sex, literally, but then then the the process of creation.
There is a day when I open the laptop where that Word document has zero syllables struck.
And 12 months later, 16 months later, there is an entire book that's written that hopefully is going to be consumed by many thousands of people, many of whom are going to send selfies.
And that process is addictive.
And so a lot of academics don't write books.
They tend to focus on the peer-reviewed scientific papers.
joe rogan
Well, it doesn't have to be entertaining.
That's the difference between a peer-reviewed paper and what you write.
gad saad
Which, by the way, I want to give you a copy of The Parasitic Mind with an autograph.
Please don't sell it on eBay.
joe rogan
I will not sell it on eBay.
Thank you very much.
gad saad
Cheers.
Enjoy it.
Please read it.
I think a lot of the woke stuff that you talk about is all covered in this book.
joe rogan
And you covered it years ago, too, by the way.
You were one of the first people to sound the alarm many years ago.
There's a real problem both in academia and the way students are interacting with ideas and the way people online were interacting with ideas and you were a long time ago saying that there was something going on with people where these these essentially mind parasites It really is what it's like.
gad saad
It really is.
joe rogan
Because they're actually a contagion.
They spread throughout communities, and people accept them as standard.
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
And it becomes very hard to debate ideas, and it becomes very hard to talk about subjects objectively and honestly, because some things are triggering, and some things are offensive, and some things are...
It's just like they can just decide.
Like, what cannot be discussed?
Because these things are offensive.
Just like the whole idea of fatphobia.
Like, I was watching this video today, and this woman was talking about how people going on a diet, and she was saying, you don't even know yourself, but going on a diet, you're being fatphobic.
And let me break this down.
And she breaks this down with this pseudo-intellectual nonsense, because I guess she was an educator.
And so here you got this sloppy, overweight, lazy educator telling people that it's good to be lazy because if you're not lazy and if you try to become healthy, then you're a bigot.
You're a fat phobe.
gad saad
Body positivity, right?
joe rogan
It's nonsense.
Body positivity is stupid.
We are the only time, this is the only time in this world we're living in in 2022, this era from like whatever it was, maybe 1970, 1980 on, where poor people are fat.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
This is crazy.
Where it's not just wealthy people who are just sitting there getting fed grapes while they're lounging.
It's poor people.
Everybody's eating bad food.
gad saad
But, you know, so earlier you asked me about how did I lose all the weight.
Well, it's a daily grind to be able to lose it.
It takes a lot of discipline.
Isn't it easier for me to construct an alternate universe that basically says...
That Joe Rogan and my physician saying that I'm overweight is going to reduce my longevity.
They're just part of the fat complex that is trying to marginalize differently-weighted people.
Yeah, differently-weighted.
You like that, huh?
I coined that trademark.
But really, from an ego-defensive perspective, it's a lot easier for me to adopt that ideology than to do the daily grind that's going to require for me to autocorrect, and therefore I buy into fat phobia and I buy into body positivity.
joe rogan
Yeah, the daily grind is legitimately hard, but there's support out there.
The thing that I would say to people that are on the fence, and it's easy to just decide to be body positive, and it's easy to decide to tell everyone you're beautiful no matter what, and to look at someone who's morbidly obese and say, you're amazing.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
You're so special.
You're incredible.
It doesn't matter.
And fuck those people that say you need to lose weight.
You just need to be you.
I love you.
gad saad
You're amazing.
And any man who looks at you for your beauty rather than what's on the inside is not a man that you want to be with.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, he doesn't want to be with you either, so I don't know what to tell you.
So if you want to just, like, call it first and say, I don't want to be with him because he judges me.
gad saad
Do you remember the book The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf?
Do you know that book?
joe rogan
I do remember about that book.
I did not read it.
gad saad
So she's kind of come around a bit because she's now been more on the rational side of the whole COVID thing.
You know, more nuanced, more tempered.
joe rogan
Isn't she recently suspended from Twitter?
gad saad
Was she?
I didn't know that.
joe rogan
See if Naomi Wolf was suspended from Twitter.
I believe I might be right.
gad saad
Is Jamie part of the Ministry of Truth?
joe rogan
Jamie's on the ball.
Don't worry about Jamie.
The Ministry of Truth?
Is that the Biden administration?
Yeah, here it is.
gad saad
Look at this.
joe rogan
Suspends Naomi Wolf after tweeting anti-vaccine misinformation.
gad saad
There you go.
joe rogan
Yeah, but this is on the BBC. What is the actual anti-vaccine misinformation?
What did she say?
gad saad
Oh, the beauty myth.
There it is.
That's what I was going to talk about.
joe rogan
Yeah, this is her.
So what did she say?
She was duped into tweeting a made-up quote of an image of an American adult film star dressed up as a doctor.
Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and feces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water.
What?
She said that?
Has she gone crazy?
unidentified
I don't know about that.
joe rogan
She claimed that vaccines were a software platform that could receive uploads.
Jesus, Naomi.
This is what happens when you don't lose weight quick enough.
She also compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to Satan to her more than 140,000 followers.
gad saad
But that's not misinformation.
That's correct.
joe rogan
Well, you could do that.
You're allowed to say that someone's Satan.
But you can't say that they're separating the sewage.
Like, there's some sort of a program that, like, separates vaccinated from unvaccinated poop.
Well, you've got to fill this out so we can detail which pipe your poop should be sent through.
gad saad
We'll talk about the idea of Ministry of Truth if you want in a second.
But just to finish the point about the beauty myth, she had written a book in the early 1990s where she argued that women are now winning in all facets of life.
And the only place where men can still exert control over women is by promulgating the idea of a beauty myth whereby there are universal standards of beauty And so now women, even though they're not literally chained by the patriarchy, they're chained by those expectations.
And so I had tackled that book in my first book in 2007 as a bunch of gibberish that was part of sort of the victimhood narrative.
I don't know.
Apparently she hasn't done any better recently.
joe rogan
She blew a fuse.
gad saad
She blew a fuse.
joe rogan
It seems like she...
If that's all true, Jamie, see if there's anything that's more...
The BBC is very sketchy lately, especially when it comes to COVID stuff.
Maybe there's something that has a detailed depiction of why she was suspended, with the actual tweet itself.
Because I remember people were outraged on Twitter because she posted some really rational things and somebody reposted it.
She posted it somewhere else.
And they were like, she needs to be brought back.
But I don't know what it was.
It's...
The problem with beauty is that it's not fair.
That's what the problem is.
So when someone says, you know, the beauty myth, and men who want you to be held to certain standards of beauty, those men are bad people.
It's like, no.
It's a tyranny.
It's a short-lived tyranny.
A tyranny of beauty.
And it is reality.
And you know who doesn't talk like that?
Really hot women.
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
It's fucked.
They are a drug.
When you're around a truly gorgeous woman, it's stunning how people fall in line and they don't know what to do and they stumble over their words and men insult each other in sort of a joking way to try to get a one-up socially over each other in front of the woman.
It's bizarre to watch.
It's bizarre.
gad saad
But here's the thing.
So to give some people who may not be gorgeous some light at the end of the tunnel, mating is a compensatory process.
What do I mean by that?
I'm not six foot four.
Height is a beautiful trait.
But I can make up for my lack of height by being charming, by being funny.
By being exceptionally good looking, which is just the genetic lottery, by having academic status and being an accomplished person.
So I can compensate for traits on which I'm lacking, in this case, physical height.
And so there are ways by which you can improve your lot on the mating market.
joe rogan
Men can.
gad saad
So you're right that physical beauty, well, we talked earlier about being 500 pounds and somebody telling you, but people should love you the way you are.
All other things equal, any person who doesn't weigh 500 pounds and instead weighs within the normal range is going to improve their looks.
You're not going to turn into Beyonce if you don't have the facial morphology to be gorgeous.
But we can all improve even on things that seem to be immutable, no?
joe rogan
Well, we certainly can.
And men are certainly attracted to women's personalities and certainly attracted to their energy and how they approach life.
But the unfortunate truth about sexual attraction is it's largely a body shape and the way, the structure of the face, the geometry of the face.
Clearly, some people are repulsive because of their personality, even though they're gorgeous.
That's true, too.
But it's stunning.
I'm sure you're watching this Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial.
gad saad
I watched a bit of it, yes.
joe rogan
There's no way a fat woman can get away with what that lady did to him.
Right?
There's no way an unattractive woman who's overweight could ever talk to Johnny Depp the way she did.
She's genetically gifted and she's got an amazing face structure.
I think at one point in time she was voted the most beautiful woman alive.
She has a perfect face.
It's kind of fading a little now because of craziness and drugs.
gad saad
And she's toning down her beauty to appear as a victim.
She's not showing up.
joe rogan
Well, yeah, she's not dolled up.
She's not dolled up.
I mean, she's vain.
She's not gonna not wear makeup.
She's wearing makeup.
She's also been doing coke for decades.
You know, it's like that shit wears on you.
gad saad
I think the melange, the combination of their two personalities was the perfect combustible, you know.
Fire, right?
I didn't follow it closely, but from what I gather, he was pathologically jealous because he's much older.
She's the super hot girl who's not very homely in her interactions with other men.
She probably can trigger jealousy in even the most secure guy.
So you take...
A rather narcissistic girl with a guy who is maybe fading in terms of his qualities as a man.
He's much older than her.
And so they feed off each other.
One of the things, for example, I love...
I've been married to my wife for 23 years.
We've been together.
I think, I hope you agree, she's a beautiful woman.
joe rogan
She's beautiful.
gad saad
Thank you.
I know it's weird that you would pick this guy.
That's maybe my biggest accomplishment.
unidentified
You're beautiful too.
gad saad
Thank you.
But anyways, she's never once that I can remember triggered...
A jealousy response from me.
Not that I don't have the capacity to be jealous.
I think even the most secure of people can be true.
But it's because she has those wonderful qualities whereby we both know the code.
We never try to test each other's love by triggering each other's jealousy.
joe rogan
That's dark shit.
When you see that in a relationship, I mean, I've been in relationships where that happens and it's not fun.
But when...
You see that happen, you just go, this is not going to end well.
They're not going to learn.
That type of personality that does that, like one of the things in the trial, she called him an old fat ass.
gad saad
There you go.
joe rogan
They insulted each other, and it's just like...
They're actors.
Look, they're crazy people.
That's just what it is, man.
That business...
First of all, you've got to think that the reason why someone wants to do that in the first place, the reason why someone wants that exorbitant amount of attention was they didn't get enough when they were young, almost always.
Or they obviously couldn't possibly realize the perks, and maybe that's why they do it.
But for the most part, it's someone that's making up for something that was missing in their childhood.
Then you get them in this bizarre system where you have to audition for everything.
So you have to be chosen.
So you have to bend your personality to whatever you think.
gad saad
And it's not on objective metrics, right?
There isn't a clear A, B, C that would result in me being picked.
It's the vagaries of the casting director.
joe rogan
There's also an ideology attached to it.
You must be progressive and liberal.
You must be.
If you walk in there with a fucking Make America Great Again hat on and a Turning Point USA t-shirt, they'll kick you right out of the fucking room.
You literally won't be allowed to speak.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
If you went into the average casting agent, if you were the best, if you were Daniel Day-Lewis, and he walked in with a MAGA hat on, they always thought, get the fuck out of here.
They don't want you, because there's a gatekeeper role that's a function of the casting directors and the producers and executives.
It's part of the weirdness of Hollywood.
So that accentuates the crazy in these people.
So you have crazy people, and then they're massively insecure already, and then you have them be chosen.
So then they bend their personality around.
It's like, you know, water finds its way.
You know?
You gotta figure out what do I have to do to get in?
And then, you know...
Look, I've been exposed to that.
I've been around that for decades because I've lived in Hollywood for a long time.
But now that I'm out here, I realize how much better it is to not be around that kind of a community because it shapes...
Everything around it, because you don't realize it, whether you realize it or not.
A lot of the people that are executives in these entertainment companies wanted to be actors, but they just didn't have the talent.
A lot of people were waiters.
They want to be actors.
A lot of people who have zero talent and recognize it, they want to be reality stars.
So they try to be influencers online.
So they try to do...
Like you find out one of your kid's moms is a TikTok lady.
And you're like, oh, Jesus Christ.
And she's doing TikToks and asking to take selfies with you.
And you're like...
gad saad
Have any celebrities from that world entered your innermost friendship circle in your life?
joe rogan
Yeah, there's good ones.
There's people in that world that are very good people.
Yeah.
That are not in any way like what you would expect from like a movie star.
Like Chris Pratt is a great example.
He is the most normal.
Down-to-earth, friendly guy you could ever meet.
gad saad
Oh, that's great.
joe rogan
He's wonderful.
He's a great guy.
I've run into him multiple times.
I've been in a hunting camp with him.
I ran into him in Lanai on the beach.
Just randomly ran into him.
I didn't know he was going to be there.
He didn't know I was going to be there.
And he was there with his, at then time, I think newlywed.
I think they had just gotten married.
And he was there on his honeymoon.
He's the best.
He's so nice.
gad saad
And I'm going to make a prediction as to the number one personality trait that sorts people into the Chris Pratt's and not.
Ready?
joe rogan
Yes.
gad saad
Authenticity.
joe rogan
Authenticity is certainly a factor.
Another factor is he's very religious.
So he has a core set of values and ethics and morals that he thinks are above everything else.
So, a guy like that is not going to get sucked into the Hollywood lifestyle.
Yes, very grounded.
But I've met some other people that are really cool.
I met Robert Pattinson recently, the new Batman guy.
He's fucking great.
He's a great guy.
He was so normal.
He was fun to hang out with, great sense of humor.
gad saad
You know who's my fantasy interviewer on my show?
joe rogan
Who?
gad saad
Clint Eastwood.
joe rogan
He's a fantastic character.
Here's another one.
His son.
His son, Scott.
Great guy.
unidentified
Great guy.
gad saad
But is he in the business?
joe rogan
Yes.
He's a famous actor.
He stars in a bunch of movies.
Scott Eastwood.
Yeah.
gad saad
Should I be ashamed that I've never heard of him?
joe rogan
Nah, you're not young enough.
He's in, like, God, he was in that recent Guy Ritchie movie.
What was the recent movie?
He was great.
He played a bad cop in the Guy Ritchie movie.
He's in a lot of shit, man.
He's always in movies.
gad saad
You know what I love about Clint Eastwood?
So my first exposure to him was as a young kid in Lebanon with the Spaghetti Westerns.
So you're five, you're six, and there's this quiet guy who's ominous, who comes in, who saves the day.
And it's playing on all of the evolutionary-based archetypes that we're programmed to respond to, right?
So I'm looking at this guy and say, I like this guy.
I want to be this guy.
And then throughout his career, as I got older and as he progressed in his career, he's become a great filmmaker.
And plus, he's not woke.
And so he just seems like the type of guy, obviously he's now quite elderly and so on.
He'd be the kind of guy that I'm sure I'm unlikely to meet him and not say, my God, what a cool guy.
He just exudes those qualities, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He seems very fun.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
I mean, look, his career has been incredible.
He was, you know, he's doing those westerns in the 1960s.
gad saad
Kind of like maybe one of the last old school movie stars that is still around, right?
joe rogan
Well, also old school movie stars who's still working on a regular basis in his 90s.
gad saad
Unbelievable.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And directing as well as acting.
Yeah.
gad saad
Here's another one I would love to have on my show.
I don't quite have your reach, so I can only fantasize about some of these guys.
Burt Bacharach.
Do you know who that is?
joe rogan
No, I don't.
gad saad
Burt Bacharach is arguably the biggest music composer, song composer of the 20th century.
Pop songs that were big hits in the 60s and 70s from the Carpenters, from Diane Warwick, is this, I think he's Jewish, this Jewish guy who you would never imagine could produce this kind of soul if you're going to be stereotypical.
He's now into his 90s.
Check him out.
He even sang himself with Barbra Streisand.
He just seems like one of those old school guys who you could sit with and he's going to tell you stories that are going to blow your mind.
I'm not really too much into celebrities, but if I had to pick two guys I'd like to sit down with, Clint Eastwood, Burt Bacharach.
joe rogan
Well, you have a great podcast, and when you move out of that communist country you're stuck in, maybe you will be able to get those people on your show.
gad saad
Well, aren't you lovely?
I remember I was actually telling someone earlier this morning, I was meeting with some people from UT Austin and the president of University of Austin earlier today, and I was basically saying that Joe told me long ago when I used to do your show in California, he used to say, Why don't you just move to California and do your podcast?
And I think I told you at the time, well, it's not quite as easy for me.
I'd have to give up my tenure.
But I think at some point, you just have to take the risk and get out of the golden cage that tenure is.
joe rogan
Well, it is a great cage.
But you're popular online to a point where you have this literature career.
You write.
You do your podcast.
You're...
You comment on things, and you have a very valuable perspective to a lot of people.
At some time, sometimes being connected to an institution, even though it provides you with security, and it's wonderful in terms of the benefits and guaranteed money, That can sort of hold you back.
And I don't know exactly if it is holding you back.
gad saad
It is.
It is.
We can talk about that.
So first let me address the communist part.
joe rogan
Sure.
gad saad
Five minute of venting and then we can continue.
joe rogan
Please do.
gad saad
So last week, you know, I'm by temperament unbelievably jovial.
I wake up in the morning, I'm happy, I'm excited, I'm going to do Joe Rogan.
Then I'm doing, just life is beautiful.
joe rogan
Right.
gad saad
A week ago, I went through a momentary depressive existential crisis on May 2nd, Monday, May 2nd, when it was the deadline to do your taxes.
So I have basically two main sources of income.
One is my professor's salary, and then the other is anything else.
Much of the anything else this past year was the parasitic mind.
The book royalties came in.
And so, you know, I don't make...
$100 million Spotify money.
So the royalties of that book are enough that, oh, now I can buy a home and retire if I wanted in Austin or Florida.
If you take that money from me, now I've got no money.
It's really that different.
So...
How impersonal the exchange was is kind of what hit me as an existential crisis.
I quietly, like a good little boy, entered my password into my bank account.
The box for Quebec government and Canadian government are ticked.
I put in a very large number in each of those two boxes that corresponds to a large majority of the book royalties that are coming from my neuronal firings.
You're not taxing me because I sell cups, which I understand that everybody doesn't want to be taxed.
But this is the most personal form of taxation.
It's a taxation of my personhood.
I'm telling you my story growing up in Lebanon, what happened to us.
I'm sharing with you my experiences as 30 years of a professor.
And the Quebec and Canadian governments say, hey, great job, Dr. Saad.
55% of the proceeds of your book are mine.
joe rogan
55%?
gad saad
Yeah, it ends up being about 55. So there's a progressive taxation system.
And at the highest end, it gets about 53, 54. The highest rate for the federal government is 33. The highest rate at the provincial is 25. So I end up with about 58% just on the income that I made.
We didn't get into the sales tax, which is both at the provincial and federal level.
And then all the other, the property tax...
So I'm left with roughly about a third.
Now, it's not as though I discovered taxes yesterday.
I knew about taxes and I've always accepted it.
It's part of the institutionalized scam.
But when it's the money that you had taken ownership over it, because it hadn't been taxed at the source, right?
So that money had gone into my bank account.
It's there.
I'm now feeling as though I've built a little nest egg that can allow me to retire early from Concordia, to move to Austin and hang out with Joe and have my podcast here.
And then very, very coldly, in a dispassionate way, just like a Nigerian prince were speaking to me, I press two buttons and it all goes into a magic cloud.
Really hit me hard.
And I've never been someone who's interested in pecuniary things like money.
I've never cared about it.
But now I do because I do want an exit strategy.
I want to move on to the next stage of my life.
So money does matter.
So when you tax, though, my thoughts, my neuronal firings, my personal history, I can't imagine a higher form of existential rape.
I mean, let me just analogize one more thing.
When you torture someone, say, in a political prison, you will often hear the victim saying, they could torture my body as much as they want, but they could never get my mind.
Well, the Quebec and Canadian government Got my mind.
They said that the proceeds of my writing belongs to them, certainly more than it does to me.
joe rogan
That's insane.
That's an incredible rate of taxation, but I always knew that Canada was really high.
It used to be that Canada was high, but crime was lower.
The United States people were friendlier.
It seems like a great system because you have socialized medicine, you have some sort of a healthcare system up there, although there's a lot of complaints about that as well.
Your education system, it seems like it's more accessible to people to go to college and things like that, so you're contributing into this pile, which is fine.
But then, when you have what's a creepy fucking dictator for a prime minister, and that's what he is, the way he behaves, the way he behaved during this thing, and just the disingenuous way that he communicated, it freaked me out, because I never thought that guy was like that.
gad saad
We had a conversation a few years ago where you were sort of more positive about him.
joe rogan
I thought he was a handsome fellow with a good vocabulary and seems like a nice guy.
And before he really leaned into the woke stuff, I just thought he was a kind, sensitive guy.
And I was like, that's probably a good disposition to be a leader.
But just the way he labeled those truckers as racist...
For no reason.
The people that were protesting against mandates, he decided they were misogynists and racists.
gad saad
Transphobic.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But the way he did it was just like, he just cast a pejorative label on them with no evidence.
With no provocation.
It was just like, I'm going to label them this so that I can impose laws to stop them from doing what is essentially a peaceful protest against something that- So let me tell you about the draconian measures we've had in Quebec.
gad saad
Oh, I know.
You know about it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I have friends.
I have friends that live in Quebec and they're fucking furious.
gad saad
So we still have, by the way, masks.
I think they're removing them on May 14th, right?
So the first time that I came to the US after COVID was to Texas in December, to San Antonio.
I was at a speaking engagement.
The second one was in Naples, Florida.
And having now habituated so much to being masked under the dictatorship in Quebec and in Canada, it took us a day or two for us to kind of fall into step with everybody in Florida, where I had gone to an event that Dave Rubin had invited me to the first day that I was there, and everybody was unmasked, and yet here were the Canadians who were still masked because we had a difficult time letting it go.
Now, I don't see anybody masked here almost.
But till today, you can't go into a cafe in Montreal and not be masked.
A few months ago, we had a nighttime curfew where after 10 o'clock, you weren't allowed to walk your dog.
joe rogan
Yeah, there was a politician in Canada that just said the science is settled and he's going to mandate if he wins COVID vaccines for young children.
And it's going to be a part of their normal vaccination process like measles, mumps, rebellion, required vaccines.
Well, that science is not settled.
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
Not only is it not settled, there's clear evidence that it's more dangerous.
Right.
And, like, you looking at children getting COVID, it's not dangerous.
Like, if you really want the settled science, you're going to encourage people to lose weight.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
Because that's the settled science.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
The settled science is obesity is a massive factor, a massive factor, a risk factor in COVID outcomes.
unidentified
Right.
gad saad
Yeah, I mean, this kind of points back to what we were talking about earlier with getting Naomi Wolf off Twitter, this idea of a ministry of truth.
Look, science, as I think you well know and your listeners know, the beauty of science is that it truly is epistemologically humble and that anything that is settled in science is settled with an asterisk.
It is provisionally true.
If in a hundred years someone comes up with compelling evidence that suggests that the theory of evolution is false...
Then, with complete humility, we will go back to the drawing board, right?
So to speak of settled science is literally an epistemological attack on the scientific method.
Nothing is ever settled, even though we now have an overwhelming evidence.
I mean, short of gravity, there's no theory that is as supported as the theory of evolution.
But I always keep in mind open that if tomorrow somebody were to bring down the whole edifice of Darwin, then that's what it is.
So this idea that there is someone, let alone this woman from Joe Biden who was doing the singing.
Do you know who I'm talking about?
joe rogan
Yes, the minister of truth.
gad saad
Who's going to adjudicate what is true or not.
In a free society, there is always room for racists, imbeciles, idiots, false spreaders to exist.
That's what it means to be true.
And I've said this a million times and I'll say it again on your show.
I'm Jewish, as you know.
There is no greater, more offensive lie that you can say than to deny the Holocaust.
There's nothing more offensive, right?
The most documented historical event that has led to the systematic eradication of a people in the most industry-level way So there's nothing more offensive than to deny it, yet I support the right of Holocaust deniers to exist.
I may not invite them on my show because I think that it is fruitless, pointless for us to debate what is in it, but they have a right to exist.
So what does it mean that someone is going to adjudicate misinformation, disinformation?
No, let the autocorrective process of debate and the scientific method decide that.
joe rogan
Yeah, and people should know also that your life experience was far more extreme than the average person's.
When you're saying this, you're coming from Lebanon where you literally fleed for your life, your family fleed for their lives because you're Jewish.
Exactly.
It's not as simple as I'm Jewish and denying the Holocaust is offensive to me because I'm Jewish.
No, you fleed for your life because you were Jewish.
gad saad
Bingo.
And yet I support the right of those idiots.
So what greater commitment to absolute freedom of speech can you exhibit?
So I hate all this stuff.
I hate this idea that there should be hate speech laws.
You can get on the pedestal and say, Jews suck.
And you know what?
You're an idiot, but that's cool.
What you can't do is say, let's go to the corner of 7th Street and 8th Street, whatever, 8th Avenue, and kill every Jew that's at that synagogue.
So short of incitement to violence, short of defamation, everything goes.
joe rogan
Yes.
No, I couldn't agree with you more.
And I do also agree with you more about Holocaust deniers.
And there's a lot of people that say really ridiculous shit online.
And what we need is people that correct them and do it with a sounder argument and a more convincing argument.
And then you allow people to debate.
What people are concerned with, and I think people have this...
Naive perception about disinformation that there are people out there that are dumber than them and they'll get talked into things that aren't true.
That's what it is.
It's protecting people that are dumber than them because they're not getting sucked into it.
Say if you have a bunch of people that believe the earth is flat.
You know, who are we protecting by not allowing people to make videos about the Earth being flat?
We're protecting morons.
That's it.
Because it's not going to trick you, and it's not going to trick me, and it's not going to trick most people.
And the beautiful thing about someone coming out and saying the world is flat is that other people would say, Actually, they proved the world was around a long time ago and this is how they did it.
Not only that, we have satellites that fucking rotate around the earth and they go very specific miles per hour.
You can actually time them.
You know when they're gonna pass by.
Not only that, We've had satellites that are in space that look back and take photos of Earth.
Not only that, every fucking planet is round.
So the likelihood that Earth is this weird flat thing that's shaped like a Frisbee, while everything is round like a ball, doesn't make any sense, does it?
No.
Well, that's what the process of spreading correct information to counteract this information looks like.
The problem is we have these Election terms and there are like four years right and then every four years a new president gets elected Well, if you could just trick people enough to get someone into office that person could do a lot of damage Yeah, and that's what they're worried about so unfortunately that's
That this thing, this machine of spreading information and also this process of picking a new person every four years, it gives people this sense of urgency, that they have to stop information immediately, right now, which is what led people to make sure that the Hunter Biden story, the laptop story, was removed from Twitter, which is pure insanity.
gad saad
Insane.
joe rogan
Pure insanity, because it's a 100% legitimate story.
It's now been substantiated.
It's now being openly discussed in the New York Times and the Washington Post and all these other liberal newspapers.
They wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole before the election for fear that Donald Trump was going to get elected again.
So, through their own fear of this process of truth, that their truth wasn't going to be convincing enough, they decided to censor fact and news and real information.
And they did it for the good of the people that were too dumb.
Look, those people are not going to vote for Donald Trump.
If you look at the hardcore left people in this country, they're not going to vote for Donald Trump just because Hunter Biden is corrupt, and just because it appears that Joe Biden is corrupt as well, and that they were getting bribes from Ukraine, and he did have a job that he was completely unqualified for, and it was paying an exorbitant amount of money, and he was smoking crack.
unidentified
And was a sex addict.
joe rogan
Maybe.
Maybe just likes to party.
I don't know.
But the point is, this is all real information that was pertinent to our understanding of who Joe Biden is and who his son is and what kind of business dealings were they involved in.
And shouldn't this demand an examination?
But they wanted Trump out so bad, they decided to censor.
Well, this is a fucking slippery slope.
A terrible slippery slope.
gad saad
So let me give you the academic analysis of what you just said.
So in ethical systems, there are two systems of ethics.
There's what's called consequentialism, right?
So is it okay for me to lie?
Well, it depends if the consequences of that lie protect someone's feelings.
So for example, if my spouse says, do I look fat in those jeans?
Then I better put on my consequentialist hat really quickly and say, my God, you've never looked better, sweetie, right?
Therefore, in this case, the consequences of the lie are noble, and therefore it's okay to do it.
Deontological ethics operates in the absolute realm.
It is never okay to lie.
Now, the reality is, for most things in life, we typically are consequentialists, and that's fine.
But when it comes to the truth or foundational principles, Then you should be completely deontological.
So let me give you an example.
We both know someone who's been on this show, who maybe remains a friend of yours, less so of mine for reasons that are unrelated to me, who violated deontological ethics when he went on Twitter and...
He celebrated the fact that Jack Dorsey had taken out Donald Trump's Twitter account.
Not that it's literally Jack Dorsey, but he had kind of tagged him.
Thank you, Jack, for doing this.
So what did he do there?
He was a consequentialist.
He violated a deontological principle which says that you never violate a freedom of speech thing.
But in his case, Orange Himmler is so dangerous That if I have to violate this deontological principle only for this one time, then it is worth doing it.
It's not unlike Brett Kavanaugh, right?
What people said, well, sure, he may technically not be a gang rapist when he was 16 going up and down the East Board, raping every single woman in sight.
But the presumption of innocence here doesn't apply because this isn't a court case.
It's only a job interview.
So let's not grant him that courtesy of presumption of innocence because it's too dangerous to have a guy.
So that's where all of those cases come from.
When it comes to truth, when it comes to foundational principles, be deontological.
For all other things, be a consequentialist.
joe rogan
Yes, and it's so important for the dissemination of information.
It's so important for our collective understanding of what's true and what's not true.
And when you violate that, and as soon as you make these decisions based on ideological principles rather than based on the true desire to understand objectively the facts,
And that's where we find ourselves today, which is grossly highlighted and exaggerated by social media because these echo chambers that people get in and then they seek approval and they seek validity from all these other people that share the same ideology and then they all support each other and they virtual signal to each other and then you develop these bizarre Like,
groups of humans, like, I love following certain people just because I know they're going to tweet ridiculous shit, and then I can go into their little hive mind and look at all these people in their echo chamber agreeing with them.
And I'm like, this is crazy.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
But it's so, it's so fat, and some of it is of things like fatphobia.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And some of it is things like men can get pregnant, like that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
It's like, it's crazy.
Like, if you had told me that there was going to be a pregnant man emoji on my iPhone just five years ago, I would have told you to get the fuck Do you remember, I don't know if I've ever said this story on this show, but I think even if I have, it's worth repeating.
gad saad
It's something that I discuss in the parasitic mind.
Did I ever tell you this story with my interaction with a woman with whom I had a battle about men getting pregnant?
joe rogan
I don't believe so, no.
gad saad
Let me tell you this.
So this, of all idea pathogens that I discuss in the book, the granddaddy So social constructivism is an idea pathogen.
Biophobia, the fear of using biology to explain human affairs, is a pathogen.
Cultural relativism is a pathogen.
Identity politics, right?
So postmodernism is the granddaddy of all idea pathogens because it removes the most fundamental epistemological premise of reality, which is that there are universal truths that we can regularly count on.
That's the whole premise of science.
There are natural laws that we're trying to discover.
Postmodernism says there is no absolute truth.
Everything is shackled by subjectivity, by personal biases, by relativism.
So in 2002, one of my doctoral students had just defended his PhD.
So he calls me and says, you know, or maybe I've called him, whatever, let's go out to dinner to celebrate.
So it was myself, my wife, we didn't have kids then, 2002, 20 years ago.
This is going to speak about your emoji with the pregnant man.
So it's myself, my wife, him, and he's bringing along a date, a female date.
He calls me up to say, I just want to give you a heads up that my date for the evening is a graduate student in postmodernism, women's studies, and cultural anthropology, to which I answered, ah, the holy trinity of bullshit.
LAUGHTER And then I said, okay, I get what you're saying.
You want me to be on my best behavior.
This is about you.
We're celebrating you.
So mom's the word.
You can count on me.
I'm going to be good.
Of course, it was a complete lie.
About halfway through the evening, I turned to the lady in question and I said, you're a postmodernist graduate student.
Yes?
Yes.
Do you mind?
I mean, I'm an evolutionist, evolutionist psychologist, so I do think there are, for example, human universals that we can rely on.
Do you mind if I propose a universal and then you can tell me how I'm an imbecile?
She said, go for it.
I said, is it not true that within Homo sapiens only women bear children?
Is that not a universal?
So she looked at me kind of baffled by my stupidity and said, absolutely not.
I said, no, how is that?
So she said, well, there is some Japanese tribe off some Japanese island whereby within their folkloric mythological realm, it is the men who bear children.
And so by you restricting it to the biological realm, that's how you keep us, you know, barefoot and pregnant.
joe rogan
Mythological?
gad saad
Yeah, exactly.
unidentified
Wow.
gad saad
Once I recovered from the mini-stroke...
Having been exposed to her imbecility, I said, okay, well, let me take an example that's perhaps not quite as corrosive and as contentious as only women bear children.
I realized that was too dangerous ground.
Is it not true that since time immemorial, sailors have relied on the premise that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?
Is that not true?
So there she used a variant strain of postmodernism called deconstructionism.
And the founder is Jacques Derrida, who basically says that there is no reality outside of language.
Language creates reality.
So there she deconstructed She said, what do you mean by east and west?
And what do you mean by the sun?
That which you call the sun, I might call dancing hyena.
I said, well, fine.
The dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west.
And then I see your perplexed face, but that's postmodernism.
So she said, I don't play label games.
And that ended the conversation.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
How is this guy dating her?
Are they married with children now?
gad saad
No, they're not.
They're not.
I don't think it lasted much longer.
Exactly.
So bad.
Exactly.
joe rogan
Wouldn't you like to interview her again?
gad saad
I would.
joe rogan
20 years later?
gad saad
You know, and I wonder, by the way, if...
Because I've told this story on a few occasions, it's in the book.
I've always fantasized about whether she read that story and says, what an idiot I was.
Or whether she reads that story and says, what an idiot he is.
He's never come around to seeing the truth.
joe rogan
Well, she was in her 20s, right?
gad saad
She must have been in her 20s.
joe rogan
And now she's in her 40s.
So maybe she's a Republican.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Maybe she got red-pilled.
That happens a lot.
gad saad
Well, that was in Canada, by the way.
joe rogan
Yes, but I mean, whatever you have, whatever your version of that is.
gad saad
Conservatives.
joe rogan
What's your conservative?
gad saad
So it would have been Harper, the last prime minister who was conservative.
joe rogan
Right, but what is your party, the Conservative Party?
gad saad
The Conservative Party.
joe rogan
Oh, it's just the Conservative Party.
gad saad
And then there's the Liberal Party and there's the NDP. Those are the three main ones.
joe rogan
Well, at least you have three.
gad saad
Yeah, we don't have a two-part institution.
joe rogan
We have a joke.
gad saad
But the point, I mean, just to wrap up that story, she wasn't an escapee from a mental institution.
She was a graduate student in postmodernism.
Maybe you can't tell the difference between these two.
But she wasn't an outlier.
She was just aping what you learn if you're a graduate student in postmodernism.
So what's the goal?
It's staggering, right?
It doesn't...
People often think that when I attack some of those disciplines, it's because I'm placing a value judgment on sociology or on art history.
I'm not.
I think you can study all those things in a very rational, in a very enlightened way that can enrich the human spirit.
What you can't do is to be so parasitized by idea pathogens That it becomes a form of intellectual terrorism.
It becomes a form of nihilism.
Up is down, left is right.
So I could have predicted the whole men can get pregnant from that story from 20 years ago.
joe rogan
It's pretty incredible that she was willing to deny east, west, north, and south.
gad saad
And the sun!
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, we have a fucking compass, okay?
As far as what is East and what is West.
What is hot and what is cold?
You deny those labels?
If you ask for tea and they give you an ice cube, are you cool with that?
What the fuck are you talking about?
gad saad
Listen, I come from a background in mathematics before I got into the behavioral sciences.
There is no field that is as axiomatically free of your identity bullshit than mathematics.
The distribution of prime numbers is the distribution of prime numbers whether you're Latinx or transgender or two-spirited, right?
Now, about five, six years ago, on my show, I did one of my satirical pieces where I donned a social justice warrior wig with red coloring because, of course, it shows that I'm ideologically fierce if I have blue-haired color or red-haired color.
And I facetiously stated that I was introducing, coining a new field called social justice mathematics.
We don't say the word irrational numbers because that marginalizes mental illness.
I just went through the whole litany of mathematics.
Five, six years later, my prophetic satire catches up.
I mean, reality catches up.
So now we have math is white supremacy.
So why is it that I'm able...
It's not because I'm a prophet.
It's because I have the ability To look for the stupidity where it is and then extrapolate how far you can take that stupidity.
That's what I satirize and then I wait with my arms folded until reality catches up to my satire.
It's insane.
joe rogan
It is insane and I don't know where it's going.
Do you have any predictions about five years from now?
Is there any satire that you have thought about releasing on the world?
gad saad
Not that I could think off the top of my head, but for example, I have another series of satirical clips where I do the hiding under the desk.
Have you ever seen any of those?
joe rogan
Hiding under the desk?
unidentified
Why?
gad saad
I remember once you very kindly said that you really appreciated that the professor of my standing could be such a regular guy and joke around and so on.
So what I do is I mock the hysteria of the woke people by releasing clips where I'm hiding under the desk because I'm so fearful.
So for example, Donald Trump is inaugurated.
I hide and I literally do it I don't know if my acting is very good, but I pretend that I'm so fearful because I'm satirizing the insane hysteria.
So for example, when he was inaugurated, on my personal Facebook page, you'd have endless professors saying, well, I'm a woman of color.
Will I be able to still go safely on campus now that he's been elected?
Well, what do you think?
There's going to be militia roadblocks where they veer the women of color to gang rape centers?
Like, what kind of hysterical response is that?
I mean, you don't like Donald Trump?
Fine.
But it's not going to lead to the eradication of professors of color.
And so I have a whole series of clips where I feign hysterical fear hiding under the desk.
The most recent one might have been, or one of the recent ones, I think you'll enjoy the story, So my wife and I go to a cafe every morning after a one-hour walk.
The barista that was serving her looked like a transgender person.
So she came to me as we were waiting for our order to be delivered to us.
And she said, you know, I felt quite...
I didn't want to make an error in how I was addressing the person because, you know, I didn't know should I... And so I put out a tweet that was meant to be a testimony to how sensitive and kind and empathetic my wife is, that she was very, very concerned to not get the address wrong.
It was meant to be something aligned with the pronoun Taliban, right?
But it turns out, about 28 million tweet impressions later over two days, All egged by Valerie Bertinelli, because somehow she's an ally to the LGBT community, so she came after me.
Anyways, it doesn't matter.
joe rogan
Valerie Bertinelli, the lady that used to be married to Eddie Van Halen?
gad saad
Exactly.
Exactly.
You can probably go find all the tweets.
They're still up there.
So then...
joe rogan
I'm a little lost here.
What is she upset at?
gad saad
She couldn't have said, hello, may I have a coffee without using pronouns?
Is she mentally ill that she doesn't know how to address someone without a pronoun use?
But there was...
I explained then what happened.
There was a colleague of the barista who my wife turned to that colleague to say...
Because it was the first day that the transgender person was working and was having a hard time with the cash register.
So she wanted to say, oh, it's only his first day.
He'll get the hang of it.
So there was a need to use a pronoun, right?
It was her first, but she didn't know.
So she didn't want to presume that this female presenting person was her.
Maybe that will offend her.
She didn't want to use the...
unidentified
And so it was a very innocent thing.
gad saad
And so I tweeted about it as a measure of how lovely my wife is, that she was so concerned.
So, I mean, literally millions of tweets of hate.
Now, of course, if I were Drew Brees, I would have gone on the record apologizing for having exhibited patriotism towards the flag, and I didn't know that the U.S. flag hurt some of my colleagues.
I'm a honey badger.
I don't apologize to anybody.
But what I did is I released a satirical under the desk clip where I said that all of the stuff that I faced in the Lebanese civil war from Islamic extremists is nothing as scary as the pronoun Taliban.
That got them more angry.
And I just kept egging them on and on till they went away.
So lesson is life lesson.
Never apologize to the assholes.
joe rogan
But that seems like you have a lot of free time.
You're willing to engage with those people all day long like that.
gad saad
You know what it is?
It's a pressure valve release for me.
Yeah?
I always do these things with a sardonic smile and a twinkle in my eyes.
I just enjoy it.
Now, sometimes I'm too busy and I don't do it.
Plus, I'm combative in that if you attack me, I'm going to attack you and anybody who's ever known you.
It's just part of my temperament.
So it's not a question of I have free time or not.
It's just I can't walk away from a fight.
joe rogan
Well, I don't know if that's healthy either.
gad saad
It's not.
And I've tried to modulate that by being less on social media.
joe rogan
But this pronoun thing is so strange.
I never would have imagined that gender would be such a hot topic.
I mean, there's always been, you know, look, go back to Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It was transvestites back then.
And then transvestites somewhere along the line, you heard transsexual now.
And then transsexual became a new thing.
And it's like, okay, now people are transsexual.
And then you had drag queens, which were not necessarily transsexual.
Sometimes it's people that just have some erotic connection or some fantasy connection with dressing up like a woman.
Sometimes they were heterosexual men, and they just liked to dress occasionally like women.
But then somewhere along the line, it became like a major fixation for culture.
The pronoun thing.
And putting your pronouns in your bio.
Like grown men with beards.
Say he, him.
Like what the fuck do you think you are?
gad saad
Every single professor I know on LinkedIn has to put it.
joe rogan
That's insane.
I talked to a professor about that, and he said, I reluctantly put it in my bio because if I don't, I'll be attacked for it.
gad saad
The day that you see me putting it on my thing, send out one of your security guys to put a bullet in my head.
joe rogan
No, I'll send them back to kidnap you and take you to Texas.
We don't have to do that here.
But even places like Austin is very progressive.
It's probably the most progressive place in Texas.
gad saad
Where would you put it in the continuum of wokeness compared to, say, the Mecca of Portland, Oregon?
joe rogan
Not close.
Not close at all.
gad saad
So still way ahead?
joe rogan
Way, way, way more normal.
It's tolerant, which is beautiful.
I like tolerance.
Look, I don't have any problem with someone who has gender dysphoria.
I wish that everyone was happy.
I wish everyone, whatever clothes you wear, whatever name you like, whatever...
Identity you choose, it doesn't bother me.
What bothers me is when you enforce it on other people and then you promote it.
And then you make it seem as if it's more...
For young kids, I've had conversations with kids that are in high school, and one kid was like, it's not just tolerated, it's preferred and rewarded and you're looked down on if you're heterosexual.
Like, he has friends that are queer, and he has friends that are...
This is...
One of the things we were talking about, he was saying that there's people that just claim non-binary.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
And you can get away with non-binary and still have sex with girls and date girls, but you just call yourself non-binary, and you can say, I'm a they-them.
And as long as you don't dress with, like, tank tops and, you know, fucking yoga shorts...
And so where it's really obvious you're male, you can get away with it.
It was the weirdest conversation because I was like, what is it like in school these days?
And he was like, man, I know so many trans people.
And I go, are they really trans?
He goes, I don't know.
He goes, some of them are being trendy for sure.
And a lot of them, it's girls that they didn't fit in before.
Perhaps they have...
They're awkward socially or whatever, and then they decide to be either non-binary or trans, or they don't want to specify, or they come up with some other gender, or they're pansexual is another one, which is like, I guess you're attracted to everybody.
gad saad
To everything, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, but just...
gad saad
So that speaks, by the way, to the earlier point where we talked about deontological ethics versus consequentialism.
Look, both you and I, I think, are very socially liberal.
So I support transgender rights in the strongest of ways.
everybody should live free of bigotry and so on.
In the pursuit and defense of that noble goal, I don't have to murder truth as a consequence of that.
So it's the same thing, for example, with equity feminism versus radical feminism.
Equity feminism is the idea that both sexes should be equal under the law.
By that standard, both you and I are strong equity feminists. - Absolutely. - On the other hand, When it becomes a problem is that in the service of that goal, we end up creating the premise that men and women are interchangeable, indistinguishable, that all differences between men and women must be due to social construction and other idea pathogen.
So we're murdering truth for a higher noble goal.
No, I never cede one millimeter of truth for any goal.
I have to be deontological in the defense of truth.
joe rogan
Well, that's very brave of you in your line of work because that's not something that is common in professors.
gad saad
No.
joe rogan
Professors, they give in to, for the most part, they give in to the will of the crowd.
And it's very strange.
gad saad
You know, I've made the following analogy.
When we choose Navy SEALs, we're choosing them based on certain traits.
They have to be courageous.
They have to be physically fit.
They have to have bravery.
So imagine if we were to choose our professors in a way that we're not only choosing them based on their IQ, but on intellectual Navy SEAL-ness, if you'd like.
I mean, on Navy SEAL-ness and their intellectual courage, right?
joe rogan
Yes.
gad saad
But we don't pick people.
As a matter of fact, most professors are invertebrate castrated individuals.
So they don't have a spine, nor do they have testicles.
Irrespective of whether they're male or female.
So they may have all the intelligence in the world.
As a matter of fact, all of these parasitic ideas originally were spawned by professors.
So being intelligent and educated does not inoculate you against stupidity, since many of the ones who originated those ideas are the anointed professors.
What they don't have is intellectual courage.
And so actually on this trip that I'm meeting you here, I've met some folks that are associated with University of Texas, Austin, and now the new University of Austin, that not only do we share intellectual affinity, but more importantly, we share intellectual courage metrics.
That's what is required to change the system.
You know, history is not shaped by fence-sitters.
It takes bold people, intellectually bold people, and we certainly don't choose our professors based on that trait.
joe rogan
No, I think that's a great point, that intellectual courage should be a requirement, and that it should be something that we celebrate and cherish and reward people for, based on an objective analysis of truth.
Exactly.
Because there are facts.
There are some things.
And like you said, saying that someone who's a biological male cannot bear children is just a fact.
It's just a fact.
And if you deny that, that's cowardice.
You're just scared of the crowd.
You're not denying that it takes a double X chromosome and a womb and eggs, and eggs fertilized by sperm inside this viable womb in order for you to conceive and ultimately give birth to a child out of your vagina.
But no, they're teaching people...
There was a story about a university that is...
Facetiously teaching people how a biological man would give birth out of his penis.
gad saad
I've heard about that.
joe rogan
Yeah, this is fucking insanity.
This is the ultimate cowardice, the ultimate intellectual cowardice.
Because they're so terrified of the madness of the crowds, as Douglas Murray would put it, that they're literally saying, well, when a man gets pregnant, the baby must come out of his penis.
Are you teaching people this?
Like, you're out of your mind!
It's unbelievable.
But this weird place that we find ourselves in where truth is not as important as adhering to these ideological principles that are clearly inaccurate.
gad saad
But the reason why they're parasitized in this way is because they're trying to adhere to a higher noble goal, which is Don't hurt someone's feeling.
Don't attack their personhood.
Celebrate their personhood.
So again, we go back to consequentialism.
If I have to murder truth so that I appear empathetic and loving and accepting of all people, goodbye truth, it was nice knowing you.
That's wrong.
I can chew gum and walk at the same time.
I could be very socially conscious, as I think I can speak for both of us, but I am a dogged defender of the truth, and I will never concede an inch of the truth in the pursuit of not hurting your feelings.
I remember one time on a previous show, and I actually took that quote in this book, where you said, but if you pursue forbidden knowledge in your research and it hurts someone's feelings, what then?
Do you remember what I answered you?
joe rogan
I don't remember what you said.
gad saad
I said, well, fuck your feelings, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, your feelings are...
That's the problem.
There's a lot of people that get offended by things very easily, and if we start catering to them, we're not going to get anything done.
There's people that get offended by alarm clocks.
They don't want to have to be somewhere on time, because they're offended by the idea that they don't need as much rest as you do, or you need less rest than that, whatever the fuck it is.
The point is that anything can fall into that category as something that hurts your feelings.
If you have more money than the next person, that could hurt their feelings.
You should have less money, and we should have even distribution of income.
It's called Quebec.
Yeah, well, yeah.
Well, that's the dangers of quality of outcome, right?
I mean, that's literally communism.
That's how it gets going.
gad saad
So let me apply what you just said in the context of, you know, when you do research in a university, you first have to send it to an institutional review board or an ethics board, right?
That ensures that the research that you will do adheres to certain ethical principles, right?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
gad saad
So now let me give you the historical background to this and then tell you how insane it has become.
So in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which has been referred to as sort of the golden era of social psychology, you could damage a person's sense of self in the pursuit of science, but there was no ethical oversight over that because it was for the betterment of science.
So let me give you an example of that.
Suppose I bring you into the lab.
This is, let's say, in the 1960s.
I'm going to do what's called a false feedback paradigm.
I'm going to ask you to do an IQ test, and I'm going to falsely give you one of two experimental conditions.
I'm going to say, hey, Joe, you scored in the 99th percentile of the most intelligent people, and then I'm going to see how you solve a math problem based on this glowing feedback.
Or I'm going to say, oh, Joe, based on this IQ test, you basically score lower than a newborn pigeon.
Oh, okay, never mind.
Let's move on to the math test, right?
So I'm giving you false feedback, either glowing or not, and then I'm seeing how it affects your performance on some subsequent task.
Well, now, after you finish the experiment, I debrief you, right?
I say, actually, it was wrong.
It was false.
I just randomly put you in this condition.
We didn't even do an IQ test.
Now, this, by the more recent standards of ethics, which is still fine, would be considered unethical because even if I now tell you I was not truly giving you an IQ test, You'll walk away not knowing for sure whether what I just said is untrue, right?
So did he now tell me that I'm not a newborn pigeon because he's just trying to assuage my feelings, but I truly am dumb as a doorknob?
So it made sense that at some point we erected some ethical mechanisms to make sure that people were not damaged.
But now we've taken that to your earlier point.
To such an extreme whereby I can't ask you, are you male or female?
I have to have a 740 page list of all the different possibilities.
I can't ask you about your cultural background because I'm going to offend you.
I can't ask you about your income because that marginalizes maybe some people who don't have good income.
So basically, I can't ask you anything on an experimental study or a survey because there is no way by which there isn't going to be some road by which some participant may or may not be offended.
So now when I go through these ethical review processes, that's probably the thing that causes me more stress than actually conducting the study because I know I have to jump through 900 hoops before some moron says, okay, you're now cleared to do your studies.
joe rogan
And it seems like the academic world rewards this sort of intellectual cowardice.
Like, if you comply, then you're a part of this group, you're a part of this system, and you're allowed to continue spreading bullshit and getting a check for it.
And then your new coming group, your incoming students from the 2023 year and 2024 year of the freshman class, they're going to be more extreme.
With each year, they're going to get more things are going to be on the list of offensive topics, offensive answers, offensive reactions.
And it makes me wonder where this is going because this is accelerating.
This is not slowing down.
And even though there's a lot of people like yourself and myself who are older who realize how preposterous this is, the young people don't.
And they seem to think that not only is this better, that it's required in order to make the world a better place.
gad saad
So here's some optimism along those lines.
I'm hearing from a lot of teachers, meaning teachers at the high school level and so on, who write to me and say, my latest batch of students strike me as being less woke than previous generations, as if now the fulcrum is starting to shift.
So I don't have incontestable empirical evidence, but I'm increasingly hearing that we've kind of reached the singularity, peak wokeness.
joe rogan
What do you think is causing this shift back?
gad saad
It might be that there's been some people who've been fighting this, and now they're getting bigger platforms, so things are changing.
It might be that more...
I mean, take, for example, someone, and I'm happy to use this platform to give him a kudos, Christopher Ruffo.
Do you know who that is?
joe rogan
I know his name.
gad saad
So Christopher Ruffo is a guy who came out of nowhere, was a journalist, who became the kind of central repository of all things anti-critical race theory.
He's a journalist.
And now he has spearheaded.
It was a serendipitous thing.
He had never planned on being an anti-CRT activist, but through the serendipity of life, he has become sort of the honey badger of anti-CRT. And now there's all kinds of battles that are being won by parents who are finding their spine, who are going to these school board meetings, who are saying, I'm tired of this bullshit, right?
And so it doesn't take much for people to be ignited and find their courage.
And so I'm getting the sense, again, this is just from the trench that I'm, you know, the reports that I'm getting, that more and more people are now willing to speak out.
It's a domino effect, right?
This one speaks out, so I speak out.
And so my feeling is that if we're able to ignite the silent majority into speaking, as you know, The blue-haired Taliban are a minority.
It's not as though there is millions of them on every campus.
They're just very vocal, very committed.
They have the ear of the administration.
So very few committed people can keep the rest of us in check.
Most people are not on board with all that nonsense.
And I receive millions of emails that attest to that.
joe rogan
Well, we see that, I'm sorry, but we see that with Disney, the stock crushing.
gad saad
I think so.
joe rogan
With Netflix, their stock crushing.
gad saad
So there's all kinds of little evidence that's coming out to suggest that we might have reached peak wokeness and we're going to, you know, there are now a lot of institutions that are trying to position themselves as a bit less woke.
And, you know, the University of Chicago Declaration, the Princeton...
So my feeling is maybe I'm being too optimistic.
I think we've reached the maximum of the parasitic infestation and may reason rain again.
joe rogan
Well, may reason reign again and may debate take place again, too.
Let's let opposing sides discuss things.
You know, come up with a champion for your left-wing idea and allow that champion to debate someone from the right.
And then if the person from the right wins, do better.
Come back with a better argument.
Let's do it again.
And maybe you're wrong.
Maybe it turns out that this guy's going to convince you of certain things.
Or maybe he's wrong.
Maybe you're going to convince the audience of things.
When I was a child, when I was in high school, Barney Frank, who was a liberal in Massachusetts, was debating someone from the moral majority.
And the moral majority was like this- He was the first openly gay congressman.
He wasn't openly gay at the time.
gad saad
Oh, I see.
joe rogan
Yeah, he is now, and he was the first openly gay, but at the time he was not open.
So anyway, Barney Frank, who's this brilliant man in my high school, is debating this guy, and I found it fascinating because I got a chance to see two different perspectives, and Barney Frank was just much better.
He was just more rational, more well-read, and the other guy was sort of this cookie-cutter, rah-rah, conservative, God, liberty, justice for all, that kind of shit.
He was reading off of a playbook, whereas Barney Frank had a much more nuanced and much more convincing perspective, and it was great.
It was great because me and all these other kids that were 14, 15 years old got to sit in this class and watch these two people debate.
Now today you can't have that.
You can't have that.
The other guy who thinks that abortion is against God and that homosexuality should be outlawed, and that was like one of his perspectives, his anti-homosexual perspective, which was ironic because Barney Frank is gay, but nobody knew that.
But when that all took place, it was very beneficial.
To watch it play out.
And the crowd let it all play out.
There was claps when people did well.
But you're watching this intellectual discourse.
You're watching a sparring match.
And Barney Frank was the more skilled at that.
And that's how it's supposed to go.
That's what's beneficial for everybody watching.
gad saad
And beyond the philosophical arguments for why we should have open debate, let's link it to your personal reality.
The Joe Rogan show is in large part popular, other than your infinite charisma and so on, is because of...
I'm undoubtedly sure that you score very high on the open-mindedness trait, right?
And it is that open-mindedness that created this, quote, safe space of deferring ideas.
That's what resonates with people.
Today you can bring Gad Saad, and tomorrow you can bring someone who is completely anti-Gad Saad, and you'd have a great conversation with both, and people reward you for that with a big Spotify deal.
So there are even very concrete, earthly, non-philosophical reasons to be Open-minded.
It results in...
joe rogan
I guess, though.
You can't fake that, though, I don't think.
I think it would come out eventually.
But you know what's interesting to me is that when I have progressive people on the podcast, I get no pushback at all.
gad saad
From them or from the audience, you mean?
joe rogan
From the right.
gad saad
From the right.
joe rogan
Now, when I have someone from the right on, whether it's Dan Crenshaw or Ben Shapiro, I get accused of being a fake left-wing person, a fake progressive.
I get all this hate and you moved to Texas and you became a fucking, you're red state and all.
It's only he's captured by the right.
He doesn't even realize it.
It's hilarious.
The mental gymnastics people will go through, even if I argue with them, even if I have them on and I don't agree with what they're saying about many things.
Which oftentimes is the case.
It does not matter.
The tolerance level from the left has evaporated.
gad saad
So I've got a theory for this.
It's actually in my, forgive the shameless plug, my next, my next, this is not this book.
This is the next book.
The next book which I'm just finishing wrapping up.
It's tentatively titled A Recipe for the Good Life.
And so I look at all different metrics that have been studied relating to well-being and happiness and I infuse it with personal anecdotes.
So at one point I talk about, does political ideology affect your well-being and your happiness?
And so I look at the literature and a lot of the literature finds that conservatives score higher on happiness, to your point, score higher on happiness and well-being as compared to the liberals.
And so I was trying to...
joe rogan
I'll tell you why.
gad saad
So you go ahead and then I'll tell you my reason.
joe rogan
The liberals are unhappy that the conservatives exist.
gad saad
So how can they be happy?
Right.
So I'm going to add to what you just said.
The conservative, at the root of the word conservative and the etymology, is to conserve, right?
So there's a set of beliefs, of values, of foundational principles that are worthy of conserving.
So I wake up existentially, if I am a conservative, and I say, yeah, there might be at the margins bad things, but I'm happy because life is good.
There are things worthy of conserving.
The liberal, on the other hand, is looking for the magical utopia, unicornia that's around the corner.
The current world sucks.
I need to burn it down so that I can start fresh.
And so I think that's why you get the deferring venom from the two.
The conservative is happy with the status quo.
The blue-haired Taliban wants to burn it down.
joe rogan
This is interesting because conservationists, a lot of them tend to be liberal.
gad saad
It's true.
They're trying to conserve nature.
joe rogan
Yeah.
gad saad
Well, cognitive consistency is not a hallmark of the left, unfortunately.
joe rogan
But conservationists who also participate in outdoor activities like hunting and fishing tend to be more Republican.
On the right.
gad saad
That's right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
gad saad
It's interesting.
joe rogan
And they really are conservationists because they actually contribute financially.
The vast majority of the money that goes to wildlife habitat conservation, that goes to wildlife biologists, it goes to making sure the populations of wild animals are healthy, vast majority comes from hunters.
gad saad
Is that true?
joe rogan
Billions of dollars.
gad saad
Anecdotally?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
No, the real data.
Yeah, the Pittman-Robertson Act.
It's an act that was created that...
So it's not just hunters, it's also gun owners.
So people who buy ammunition, firearms, people who are just gun enthusiasts who never hunt, they contribute...
Find out what the exact amount is.
I believe it's 10%.
So 10% of this act goes to conservation of wildlife habitat.
It goes to setting up these structures to make sure that these wetlands are preserved for migrating birds and all these animals that require certain populations in order to be healthy.
They'll either import new animals into these areas.
Or they will cull some of them so they'll increase the amount of tags that are available.
All that is paid for by hunters.
By hunters.
By people that are trying to shoot the animals and eat them.
gad saad
Do we know what is the ratio of avowed Republicans to Democrats who are hunters?
joe rogan
It's staggering.
gad saad
90, 10?
joe rogan
It's probably somewhere in that range.
gad saad
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I would like to know.
I wonder if anybody's ever done that study.
gad saad
It has to be.
joe rogan
The ones that I meet- Are all Republican.
It's like 80%.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
There's a few that are liberal that become concerned with regenerative farming, and then some of them become vegetarians, but their body doesn't go well with it.
It's like they have problems with their health.
And so then they reluctantly start reintroducing meat, but they want to do it in an ethical manner.
So then they start hunting.
That's happened to quite a few friends that I have that are liberal, but that do hunt.
But most of them are conservative.
gad saad
Very interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah.
gad saad
I did, in this book, I looked at the distribution of Republicans to Democrats, certainly within academia.
And as you can imagine, it's overwhelmingly tilted to the left.
joe rogan
Overwhelming.
gad saad
Depending on the disciplines.
And some disciplines could be 120 to 0, the ratio.
I mean, literally not a single Republican.
joe rogan
What is the discipline where it's more balanced?
gad saad
What's the most balanced?
So the most balanced in this particular study I have in mind, which is probably the most exhaustive one that's been done, engineering was 1.6 to 1. Now, 1.6 to 1 is actually very lopsided according to the metrics of stats.
You know, I mean, there's something called the odds ratio when you're calculating the efficacy of a drug.
If you get 1.2 to 1, that means the drug is effective.
It's 20% more effective.
So 1.6 to 1 is already quite lopsided.
That's the least.
You start getting into 5 to 1, 10 to 1, 15 to 1, 30 to 1. And then as you get into the more activist fields, it turns into 60 to 1, 120 to 0. So again, it's not that there is anything inherently less scientific about sociology.
Sociology could be as scientific as physics.
The problem is that sociology is more prone to be parasitized by ideology, whereas physics is less prone.
So the pursuit of these disciplines either makes them more amenable to adhere to the scientific method or less.
So oftentimes people, again, to go to an earlier point, people think that I am denigrating sociology as a lesser than.
No.
As a matter of fact, it's probably harder to study social systems involving human beings than to study the chemical structure of a particular compound in chemistry that is a lot more deterministic.
So there is nothing unscientific about the endeavor of sociology.
What makes it unscientific is that it doesn't adhere to the scientific method.
It becomes an activist field rather than a scientific field.
So if we can get rid of the activism and leave it out of the university, we'll get rid of a lot of this bullshit.
joe rogan
It's just stunning for a person who's not an academic to see so much intellectual, ideological capture that's involved in so many of these disciplines.
The Pittman-Robertson Act, did you Google that?
Like with the pretendants?
jamie vernon
It's 10% for handguns, 11% for long guns and ammo.
joe rogan
Yeah, so that's a large amount of money.
And how much money does it generate per year?
7 billion.
In the 76 years since its inception, over $7 billion has been collected from manufacturers and has been made available to states, including over $106 million in Mississippi, this partnership of hunters and sport shooters with firearms and ammunition.
By far, America's largest contributor to wildlife conservation and public access to our natural resources.
gad saad
Now, isn't that...
So if you were to ask people their perceptions of which of the two parties is more committed to environmentalists, I'm willing to bet that almost everybody would say it's the Democrats, right?
Occasional Cortex AOC is someone who, you know...
joe rogan
Occasional Cortex!
gad saad
And by the way, someone told me that...
That Michael Savage uses it.
And that pissed me off because they were saying, oh, you stole it from him.
I only found out independently that he uses it.
So I wanted to give him the kudos.
But I came up with that joke.
I studied the brain.
Occasional cortex.
So occasional cortex.
joe rogan
I'll go to war with you on that one.
gad saad
Aren't you sweet?
So I'm maladaptively honest to a fault, so I would never do that.
So occasional cortex is the linchpin, right?
She's the new Green Deal, right?
So I'm willing to bet that even Republicans would probably not know of this, don't you think?
joe rogan
A lot, no.
The ones that hunt, no.
What percentage of hunters are Republican versus Democrat?
unidentified
I was trying to find that out.
jamie vernon
I couldn't get accurate data.
I found a poll of a thousand hunters, and they were answering other questions that didn't say, like, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat.
joe rogan
I bet it's sociologists, but the other way.
gad saad
So earlier I was saying about the distribution of Democrats to Republicans in academia, but I found a study that was looking at within medicine.
So you are an anesthesiologist, you are a surgeon, you are a psychiatrist, you are a dermatologist.
Does the likelihood of you being Republican or Democrat change across disciplines of medicine?
And there are profound differences.
I thought that was fascinating.
This is not my study.
It was someone else's study.
So psychiatry, pediatrics scored very, very high on the left.
Orthopedic surgeons scored Oh, and infectious disease also scored very high on the left, which we might presume from some of the COVID interventions.
Orthopedic surgeons were a lot more right.
Isn't that interesting?
joe rogan
Well, it's a structure thing, right?
Like there's no room for funny business and shenanigans and mandates when it comes to fixing your knee.
gad saad
Fixing Achilles tendon, exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's just like this is what it is.
I bet military, very high on the right.
gad saad
On the right, exactly.
joe rogan
Very high on the right.
Well, the thing about hunting in particular that I think leads it to be very high, it's not just the use of guns, which is of course that alone, just firearm laws and regulations, like the people on the left overwhelmingly want to restrict those because it's part of the ideology.
But it's also the hard work.
Hunting is very difficult, especially mountain hunting.
I would imagine that the people that do elk hunting and the people that do the real high mountain stuff, it's overwhelmingly conservative people.
It's fucking hard, man.
There's no equity in hunting.
You have to fucking put in the work.
And if you're a part of a hunting party and everybody only eats if you do your work, you know, you can't say, you know, you're being fat phobic.
Like, no, you have to get up and fucking go.
And if you're 100 pounds overweight, people are going to look at you like you're a problem for the rest of the tribe.
The fact that we have gotten to a place where there's so much comfort and so much leisure time and people are so protected and insulated by the overwhelming amount of resources that we have that you can make that argument that it's okay to be fat and it's okay to be body positivity.
That only exists because of excess.
gad saad
Forgive me, I don't mean to be psychoanalytic on you, but your disdain for obesity has come across in many of, at least our chats.
Is it because you ascribe a particular trait to someone who is willing to let themselves go that is kind of a personal injury to your sense of...
joe rogan
I'm afraid of seeing it in myself.
One of the things that people are upset at something they see in other people, it's things that they would never want to see in themselves.
I don't like liars because I'd never want to see myself lying.
I don't like people that are weak.
I don't like people that just give up.
Drives me crazy.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
Because I don't ever want to see that in myself.
That's the thing I fear the most.
So what is obesity?
It's like, are you blind?
Do you not recognize that you've done something horrible to your body?
Of course you know.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
You've just chosen that it's too difficult to act and do something.
gad saad
But I have a slow thyroid.
joe rogan
Oh, me too.
Really, I have hypothyroidism.
gad saad
Do you?
unidentified
Okay.
gad saad
I was being facetious about that.
joe rogan
No, I really do.
gad saad
Okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, when I found out about it, I had 8% body fat.
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
I was fucking ripped.
And I was still, I was like, why am I getting headaches?
And the doctor's like, you have a hard time losing weight?
I'm like, no.
And he was like, you have hypothyroidism.
It's, what's it called?
Hashimoto's disease.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And so they prescribed thyroid medication, but it just stuck.
Because at nighttime, I would get these vicious headaches.
And I would go to sleep like I got shot with a tranquilizer dart.
I was so tired.
But my willpower and my discipline is what kept me working out.
I don't know if I was 8% body fat.
I might have been 10. But I had a six pack.
I was ripped.
And so they're like, this is unusual.
Usually people who have hypothyroidism, they gain weight.
But I just worked out all the time.
I just made sure I worked out, period.
I didn't use it as an excuse.
People that use that as an excuse, I'm tired all the time when I exercise.
I still fucking do it.
I just make myself do it.
That's a possibility.
That's a choice.
gad saad
But do you enjoy it?
Because I enjoy exercising.
joe rogan
Yes.
gad saad
It's not a chore for me to do it.
joe rogan
Well, clearly when you get healthier, you're enjoying it even more because you're seeing the fruits of your labor.
But also, once you get going, once your body starts sweating, effort feels good.
Especially when you do it and then you have those breaks in between sets where you get to take some deep breaths.
And you realize, all right, I did these things that I thought were really difficult to do.
Like if I said, I'm going to do 50 burpees, and I do 50 burpees.
Like, you did it!
And that little reward for hard work and for effort, that's very important for people.
And especially in this world that we live in, where we have these bodies that were designed to run away from predators and fend off invaders, and they don't get any fucking use at all.
You just sit down at a chair.
And when you do that, you get depressed and you feel that anxiety, like, gee, I wonder why.
When people tell me they're anxious, oh, I have anxiety, I have anxiety, okay, do you also have exercise?
You don't have exercise.
Well, what a coincidence.
You don't have exercise.
And then the thing that you get when you don't exercise is prevalent, which is anxiety.
Exercise.
Rigorous, hardcore exercise is clinically proven to be better than SSRIs for dealing with depression.
They've shown better results for anxiety for people who exercise vigorously than almost anything.
Other than like just fucking hardcore benzodiazepines, which are very difficult to kick.
gad saad
I'm going to share this probably for the first time ever publicly, and I'm doing it on the biggest forum in the world.
Last year in July, I was driving to go get the roti 3 Peruvian chicken with my wife and kids.
I had absolutely no sense of doom or anxiety or stress, and I got out of the blue what turned out to be a panic attack.
I'd never, ever had this.
I've never...
You know, I'm an intense person, but I'm very mellow.
joe rogan
First time in your life.
gad saad
First time.
So I had had a few times where I felt kind of an anxiety rush.
I think it started when I was getting, in 2017, a lot of death threats that required for me to have security and so on.
So that's the first time that I felt kind of this whoosh.
But it was totally manageable.
I've never experienced anything.
And so we were driving and I told my wife, I feel like I have to stop.
My heart is really beating fast.
I started getting tingles in my fingers.
I said, am I getting a stroke?
Am I getting a heart attack?
And so we went to the hospital and very quickly they said, you know, it's a panic attack, which I haven't, I've never had a recurrence of it.
I can't explain why I had it that time and I haven't had it other times.
It turns out, by the way, that the attending physician, when we were...
I said, you know...
Because I'm always worried.
I mean, you would feel it more than I do.
You're a public figure.
I'm known.
And he goes, I know who you are when I saw the name that I was...
Right?
And then he kind of told me, you know, maybe you need to mellow out and not be so...
You know, he gave me the usual stuff.
But I'm saying all this because...
As I felt other times this kind of rush coming that might lead to that, what would help me is to right away start exercising.
unidentified
Yes.
gad saad
And when I would exercise, it's as if like a gag reflex.
You know when if sometimes you're nauseous, you're nervous, if you gag, it releases it.
So exerting the physical pressure that's pent up in you, then my wife would say, how do you feel?
I say, oh, I feel great.
I'm fine.
So I think I have anecdotal evidence to support what you're saying.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think most people do that have experienced that, that have had these bad feelings, then exercise and felt good afterwards.
It's the release of endorphins.
I mean, it's all science.
They know what happens to the body when you exercise.
Exertion feels good.
There's something very valuable.
And if someone's overweight and you're saying, well, I can't run, I can't exercise vigorously, you don't have to.
You can just walk.
Just go walk.
Especially if you're overweight, I would encourage you to just walk.
You don't have to do something that hard.
gad saad
Now, what I'm about to say next is completely speculative because I've often tried to introspect as to, you know, what caused that particular episode.
And it kind of relates back to our earlier comment about, you know, how I lost weight.
So something that I suffered from, not in a clinical sense, but I'm very health anxious in that, you know, because I'm punctilious, because I'm perfectionist, I always worried is something looming in the background.
And of course, once I'm overweight...
It's a lot more looming in the back, and it could be around the corner, right?
And so, as I was losing weight, but I had never gone to see a physician for several years, I was always ruminating about the possibility that once I see my physician for the first time in three years since I last got my checkup, could there be something that ends the party that I'm on?
Could there be a result, right?
And as we were driving to go to get the chicken, And again, I'm speculating, but it makes sense.
I saw a bus sign ad in the back of the bus, like city bus, that said, you know, could you recognize the signs of a stroke if it's happening?
And so I think I literally internalized it, got the panic attack.
By putting it to myself, developed the symptoms of a panic attack that mimic these kinds of things.
And I said, that's it.
I'm about to die in front of my chill.
And it just gets worse and worse and worse, right?
So for anybody who's listening out there, there is hope that you could never have it again.
But when you do have it, it is a surreal feeling.
joe rogan
Well, I will speculate as well, and I think that completely makes sense, and also I think it makes sense that you finally doing something about your health and losing weight makes you also anxious about the fact that it took you so long to do it, and what kind of damage have you done in the process?
Because when you were 86 pounds heavier, which is so crazy for me to say, I can't believe you were actually 86 pounds heavier, but that's how you were when I met you.
That is It's terrible for your body.
gad saad
It is.
joe rogan
Your body carrying around all that extra tissue, it's the worst.
It's not my disdain for people that are overweight.
I have love for everybody, and I certainly have love for people that are overweight.
I have a lot of friends that are morbidly obese.
I have friends that are comedians.
gad saad
One of your comedians who always appears, I don't know his name.
joe rogan
Joey Diaz?
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, Joey's lost quite a bit of weight.
gad saad
Oh, good.
joe rogan
Yeah, he lost quite a bit of weight during the pandemic.
He was really worried about it.
gad saad
You're setting us straight one guest at a time.
joe rogan
I try, man.
I come off mean sometimes, because I'm mean to me.
If I'm mean to me about stuff like that, I'm mean to my friends.
And sometimes they don't want to hear it, and I'm like, okay.
Okay, but I'm just telling you.
gad saad
You know, it's so funny you said this because I didn't, not to be charitable, but a lot of people got upset when you had fat shamed me.
And I think my wife and I were talking and I said, you know what?
How about I look at it this way?
If he didn't care, he wouldn't have said that stuff.
joe rogan
No, I've had a lot of fat people and never said a fucking word to them.
I love you.
I want you to be healthy and wealthy.
And I'm happy that you are now.
I'm really happy.
It's beautiful.
And I've been following it very closely.
I follow you on social media.
gad saad
You sent me one such a Nice message.
I'm seeing you on those.
That really made my day.
That was so beautiful.
unidentified
Thank you.
joe rogan
Well, it made my day to see you thrive.
It really makes me happy.
unidentified
Thank you.
joe rogan
It makes me happy because I know how hard it is.
It's very hard to change your lifestyle.
It's very hard to change habits because we get ingrained in these patterns in our head, whether they're good or bad.
And one of the things that I could say, like people say, oh, it must be hard for you to exercise every day.
I'd be like, I don't think it's not.
Nah, it's not really.
No, it's hard when you haven't been exercising to start.
Once you have momentum, it's not that hard.
It's like when people say, Joey Diaz said this, Joey's a very wise man, and one of the things he said about stand-up comedy, he said, it's the hardest, easiest thing you'll ever do.
Because when he's on, when that guy's on, he, in my opinion, is the funniest guy that's ever lived.
And when he's on, I've seen a lot of great comedians, and like, you know, there's great, great comedians that are live today, but no one makes me laugh like that guy.
And when he's on, it's effortless.
It's effortless.
He's just in the groove.
But getting there required decades and hard work and writing and performing and constantly experimenting with how to deliver material and how to do it correctly.
Once you've got it though, then it's just about maintaining it.
That's why you see the great ones like Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle.
They're constantly working.
They're constantly going at it.
If they had to start over from scratch as a beginner, as an open-miker, that's hard.
That's why I'm very encouraging of young, up-and-coming comedians, or even old.
I don't give a fuck what age you start.
People who are just starting out in comedy.
I'm very encouraging of them because I want them to know, like, hey, man, we all suck in the beginning.
It is a hard grind, but it is a beautiful fraternity of people.
And if you can make it in this community, if you can get to a point where you're funny, you will have a really enjoyable life.
It's a great way to make a living.
gad saad
I saw you on a documentary where I think you were, it was a documentary about stand-up.
Do you know which one recently?
joe rogan
I've done a couple of those.
gad saad
Okay, I don't know which one.
I was fascinated by it because I think what was being discussed is the creative process in generating material.
And I'm fascinated by that because I can explain my creative process of how I write a book, but I've never attempted to write a set of jokes.
I could be naturally funny, but I don't know the mechanism.
I don't know how a chef is creative.
I don't know how a painter.
But the act of creation excites me.
And so I remember I had watched that particular documentary, and I thought it was so cool to see all these comedians.
I'm trying to think which one it was.
It was maybe a two-part series.
Is it ringing a bell?
joe rogan
Do you know which one?
I've done a few of them, and I haven't done one in a while, but everyone does it differently.
Some people write everything in joke form, and they think in joke form.
Tony Hinchcliffe is one of my favorite comedians, a good friend of mine.
He writes in joke form, and he thinks in joke form.
He's the guy, if something happens, if Jamie says something, and Tony has this sly look on his face, I always look at him, and he'll have the perfect line.
He's like the best off-the-cuff guy I've ever met.
And he hosts this show called Kill Tony that's on Monday nights on YouTube.
and the beautiful thing about that show is complete amateurs and Professionals and you know they all throw their name into a hat and he reaches in and pulls a name out and that person will go on stage Live on YouTube and in front of hundreds of thousands of people that are gonna watch
watch it and they'll do one minute of stand-up comedy and then Tony will either encourage them or mock them or they try to find humor in it but it's all in good spirits and it's all in good in good fun and in that takes courage Yeah, it does take courage.
But my point was that his specific style of writing is very different than mine, which is I either get an idea and I write it down or put it in my phone or I write in essays.
So I write essays where I just like a subject, like...
gad saad
Sex differences.
joe rogan
Yeah, sex differences.
And then just start...
And then I just like...
I might type out a thousand words of nonsense for one sentence.
And that one sentence of like, ah, there's something there.
And I'll pull that out and I'll put it aside.
I'll copy and paste that somewhere else.
And then I'll start over again with that one sentence that I know that's good.
I'll keep that above and then right below it, I'll give it a couple of spaces.
And right below it, I'll readdress the subject.
Try to do it from new eyes.
gad saad
So if you have to come up with new material for a one-hour special, how many pages of content is going to correspond to the one hour?
joe rogan
Nine out of ten pages suck.
gad saad
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, if you looked at my notes, you'd be like, this guy's fucking terrible.
But the thing is, I'm not writing down the things that I think are good.
I'm just writing.
So I'm trying to let my mind find the things that are good.
So as I'm talking about a subject, I'm just...
So, if that's true, then why is this?
And then like, aha, I got something.
And then I'll pull that aside, and then I'll try to figure out a clever intro to that, and then maybe I'll try it the other way, and maybe I'll start with the premise first, or maybe I'll start with the pun.
I mix it up.
But I find that my best writing is when I write in just an essay form, and then extract And are you trying to write every day?
Yeah, I write basically every day.
I do something every day.
Every day.
I mean, I'll take a day off, but I feel like if I don't sit down every day and review my notes and go over my material, I feel like I'm doing it myself a disservice because there's so many bits that I have that are in my act that have been on comedy specials that I've done that just came from sitting down and writing.
Some of them came from nowhere.
Like, some of them came from nowhere.
You know, like I was with a friend of mine once.
And we were talking, and she was laughing about this overweight woman who had all this makeup on and this short dress, and she was looking at this crazy image of this woman, and she goes, what is she thinking?
I go, I'll tell you exactly what she's thinking.
She's just letting everybody know, it's not the best ride.
But there's no line.
And her and I were howling.
We were laughing so hard.
That came out of the ether, right?
And that made it onto a comedy special.
But that came out of nowhere.
So sometimes it's like that.
Sometimes they just come.
gad saad
Do you test the stuff on trusted audience of your friends before you do it the first time professionally?
joe rogan
Sometimes I'll run it by a professional.
Sometimes I'll run it by Tony or one of my friends and I'll have an idea.
But most of the time I run it on the stage.
So most of the time, like I've been doing this Johnny Depp Amber Heard chunk.
And I've got two different versions.
So Friday night I did two sets in Phoenix.
I did one version of it the first set and a different version of it the second set.
Just trying to figure out.
And so it's baby legs, obviously, because the trial just started.
I need to figure out if it's even going to work.
It gets laughs, but I'm like, you always have to realize that if something gets laughs and it's in the news right now, it doesn't mean it's really good.
It could be that they're just reacting to it because they want to laugh at this crazy fucking trial.
It doesn't necessarily mean the material's good.
So you can't rely on the moment being novel, right?
Like there's this moment and everybody's excited about this moment and they're all aware of it so they're tuned into it.
It's got to be good a year from now, right?
Where it's like, if you had to do a joke tomorrow about someone like Brett Kavanaugh being inducted into the Supreme Court, it's got to be good a year from now.
It's got to be a good chunk.
It's got to have good material.
It can't just be familiar.
gad saad
So I want to tie what you just said to some scientific principles.
So there's something called two-factor theory in psychology of persuasion.
The idea being that every time you are exposed to a stimulus, there is incremental learning.
The first time that I hear a lecture, I pick up a lot of stuff, but the second time I pick up more, but it reaches this asymptote.
After I've watched the same lecture 18 times, I can't extract anything from it.
joe rogan
Right.
gad saad
An opposing factor is what's called negative tedium, boredom.
The first time I hear a funny ad that's surprising, it makes me crack up, but by the second time, it decays very quickly.
unidentified
Yes.
gad saad
The combination of these two results in what's called an inverted U-shape, okay?
So I'm wondering how we would apply that principle, let's say, to the feeling of novelty that you as the comedian experience when you deliver that joke, right?
The first time you say it, it's exciting.
The 73rd time that you say it during your tour...
Are you able to deliver it with as much spice and spunk, or are you entering as the deliverer of the message the negative tedium of the curve?
joe rogan
That's part of the art.
The art is you have to be in the moment when you're discussing a subject, so you have to care.
If you don't care, the audience knows.
If you're phoning it in, they know.
You can say the right words with the right amount of pause, with the right timing, and it doesn't matter.
They have to fucking know that you're tuned into it.
If you're not tuned, they smell it.
They feel it.
What's going on when you're doing stand-up is some kind of weird sort of mass hypnosis.
That's what's going on.
And to think that it's just jokes is not totally understanding the art form completely.
Because everyone knows, everyone that's done stand-up that's had a killer set, when you're killing, you have this feeling where you're just...
Everyone's like synced.
It's like there's energy in the room.
Like you feel a wave that you're all riding.
And you're as much of a passenger as you are the driver.
And you're all riding it together.
That's the best time.
That's the best time for the audience.
It's the best time for the community.
gad saad
So of all the, I don't think I've ever asked you this, so you've got many hats, you've got this show, you've got the MMA, you do other things, you do stand-up.
If there is one that I told you you must choose as the one, is it a fair question to ask you that?
What would it be?
joe rogan
I definitely wouldn't want to choose because I think one of the things that I really like is that they all complement each other.
They complement each other as well.
Like doing MMA for instance.
One of the things about it, first of all, I love the sport and it's a great honor for me to be able to do commentary for the UFC and it means a lot to me and it always means a lot to me.
I never take it casually.
I always take it very seriously.
I'm never funny.
Like I'm not cracking jokes.
I'm not trying to be funny.
I mean, if something funny comes up, that's fine, but my job is to explain what's happening and to put color to...
I'm literally a color commentary guy.
That's helped by comedy, because I talk live all the time.
So when I'm at the UFC, and millions of people are watching, and the light goes on, and the camera's pointed at me, and I have to explain what's going on, I have zero feeling of, oh my god, oh, these people are watching, because people are always watching me.
They're watching me when I do this, they're watching me when I do stand-up, and I'm well aware when I stumble my words, I'm well aware when things don't come out the way I wanted it to, where I'm searching for the correct sentence and it doesn't really fit right, whether I'm not warmed up enough.
Because there is an intellectual warm-up process, and I'm sure you're aware of that too, that feeling.
So they complement each other.
All three things complement each other.
Podcasting is complemented by stand-up, because stand-up is the most difficult of the three.
Stand-up is you don't get a chance to redo it.
You can't say, actually what I meant to say is this.
There's so much wiggle room in podcasting, which is probably the easiest.
Podcast is probably the easiest.
And then stand-up is the hardest.
And MMA, it's easy with a caveat.
It's easy for me because I'm a massive fan and I watch fights constantly.
I'm always watching them on YouTube.
And this is something that's been a passion of mine my entire life.
So from the time I was a boy up until now, I've never not followed combat sports.
I've never not watched all the big fights.
I've never not paid attention.
I've never not trained.
I've never not...
So it's easy for me to plug into it because it means a lot to me.
But if someone was just applying it as a job, Say if you didn't give a shit about MMA, but you're like, you know what would be good?
If I was an MMA commentator.
MMA's really popular.
Maybe I should become one of those.
I'm not into training.
It's not a part of my life, but I'm just going to learn a lot about it.
Good luck.
That shit would take decades.
And you're gonna get things wrong.
People are gonna get so mad at you.
You're gonna say the wrong name for a kick.
Or you're gonna give the wrong advice about the way they need to position their feet or the way they need to move.
You're gonna fuck it up.
And then the people that know are gonna be so mad.
One of the things that I'm very fortunate that I have that job.
Very, very fortunate.
But I say I'm very fortunate.
Everyone knows I'm very fortunate.
I know that they know.
They know that I know, right?
And they also know that I'm legit.
Like, I really care.
gad saad
Authenticity.
You talked about it earlier.
joe rogan
There's not a moment when I'm watching a great fight where I'm pretending.
I am fucking 100% tuned into that.
They know I'm one of them.
So when I'm talking about technique or I'm talking about style matchups and what's fascinating about it, they know I'm 100% genuine.
If you're just a sports guy and you're bullshitting, we've had a few of those, sports guys who come in and try to add sports guy terminology that they might use for baseball or for football or what have you, and they try to apply that to MMA, MMA people get mad.
They get mad.
Because it's a more personal form of competition.
It's more personal, more intense.
It's like you're literally putting your health on the line.
gad saad
Well, I remember maybe the first time that I came on your show, you said something that always stuck with me.
You were drawing an analogy between the honesty that is required when you are a stand-up comic and when you're a fighter and you go into the ring.
You can't hide anywhere.
And then you analogized it to when I have to speak in front of an audience about academic stuff.
And you said that all of these three pursuits, you can't bullshit because they're going to know.
And I love that because I am someone who is authentic to a fault.
And so I love the idea that if you walk into the ring, you can't fake it.
If you're not prepared, you're going to get pummeled.
If you go up in front of an audience, you're not funny.
Regrettably, people are going to respond accordingly.
If I get up in front of an audience and I start espousing bullshit, people are going to...
I mean, I'm on this show.
People are going to listen to every syllable that I utter.
And so I think for me what protects me is that I'm very epistemically humble.
In other words, when I know something, I walk with the swagger of someone who knows what he's talking about.
But then if you ask me about...
So what are the consequences of the legalization of marijuana in Canada?
I'm going to say, you know what?
I don't know enough about this topic.
And so having that epistemic humility protects me against the prying eyes because I am very modulated as to what I know and what I don't know.
And of course, Confucius talked about this many thousands of years ago.
And so I think that honesty element is so beautiful.
And so people ask me, do you get nervous before you get on Joe Rogan?
And I say, no, he's a friend.
I know I'm going to have a good time.
I don't think just like you that there's anybody watching me.
The number one thing that makes me stressed about coming on the show is, am I going to have to go to the bathroom during the three hours?
joe rogan
But you have to go.
You let me know.
gad saad
I know.
You always say that.
joe rogan
Just let me know.
unidentified
We'll pause it.
gad saad
That's literally the only thing that worries me.
joe rogan
But your honesty is very important.
I mean, and you are obviously honest to a fault.
There's no fault to being honest.
So it's not...
That's a weird statement.
But it's your...
It's...
So that people know they can trust you.
If you're like you are, where you know so much about psychology, you know so much about the mind, you know so much about the way people think and why they think and what the evolutionary basis for those things are, you can enlighten people in a way that they can just accept your knowledge because they know that you're being honest.
gad saad
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
And that's so valuable.
That's so valuable.
gad saad
One of the biggest thrills I get is, as you might imagine, given your platform, I receive innumerable emails from people.
Someone will say, I got into evolutionary psychology because I followed the stuff that you were talking about with Joe Rogan.
Which leads me to another point, which, again, not to blow complimentary smoke up your beautiful behind.
But in the parasitic mind, I tell the story in chapter one of the haughtiness of academia.
And the story that I tell is I was at Stanford speaking at the business school, about as big of an academic mecca as you can get.
And the gentleman who had hosted me...
The night before for dinner said, oh, you know Joe Rogan, you go on a show.
I said, yeah.
He said, yeah, well, we don't condone that at Stanford.
I said, well, what do you mean?
What is it that you don't condone?
He said, well, we don't do sexy research so we can get on Joe Rogan.
I said, well, I don't do research so I can get on Joe Rogan, but I can do research and get on Joe Rogan.
Surely you would think that popularizing your ideas to millions of people Might be worthwhile in addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journal.
And his answer was, yeah, well, we don't do it.
joe rogan
He's just saying that because he hasn't been on.
gad saad
Exactly.
It's an ego.
joe rogan
I've had a lot of people from Stanford on.
gad saad
Well, but not this guy.
But by the way, when I started coming on the show, I don't think you had yet many professors who had come on.
I think now everybody wants to come on Joe Rogan because...
joe rogan
Yeah, you were one of their...
What year did you first come on?
gad saad
I might have been the first...
What year was it?
The first time, 2014. Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't know if you were the first professor, but you were certainly one of them.
I mean, that was eight years ago.
Isn't that crazy?
unidentified
That's eight years ago.
joe rogan
Time flies.
gad saad
That's unbelievable.
Do you foresee doing this forever, or do you ever see it?
joe rogan
I enjoy it.
I don't think about it.
I don't think about whether or not I'll keep doing it.
I thought about it when I was going to build a giant building.
When I came out here, I was going to buy a piece of land and build it.
And I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
gad saad
For what purpose?
joe rogan
To build a fucking crazy podcast empire.
gad saad
Is that right?
joe rogan
Just to build a giant studio.
I'll show you what we're doing here afterwards.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
But I thought about it for a moment.
Then I'm like, what are you thinking?
Why are you thinking about that?
I just do what I like to do.
And as long as I can do what I like to do, I just do what I like to do.
It becomes like...
Pragmatic if I have to sit down and go, well, this is not tenable anymore.
This is not manageable.
This is too much of this and that.
But it's not.
So I don't have to think about it like that.
gad saad
So if you don't mind me asking, you've had recent stuff with Spotify and this thing being taken off and that.
Would that be construed as something that affects your enjoyment of doing a podcast?
joe rogan
What affects my enjoyment is whether I enjoy it while I'm doing it.
And I always enjoy it while I'm doing it.
Because I always pick who's on.
So I don't have...
There's not a managerial department.
There's no executives.
There's no one.
So if you see...
Like yesterday I had the Black Keys on.
I love that band.
They're fucking awesome.
They were great.
And I'm friends with them, and they contacted me, and they said, hey, we got an album coming out.
I'm like, fuck yeah, come on.
That's the process.
So there's no filter.
So the audience knows there's no filter.
They're aware of this.
So they know that if I'm talking to you, it's because I enjoy our conversations.
So that's always going to be good.
And when it's not, I'll just quit.
But I was just like, I don't want to do that anymore.
I'll just quit.
gad saad
So I recently saw you on Instagram posting about Marcus Aurelius.
joe rogan
Yes.
gad saad
And so I want to, can we veer to that for a second?
joe rogan
Sure, please.
gad saad
So in the next book that I'm doing, The Recipe for a Good Life, of course I get into the history of all sorts of cultures that have explored the good life.
It's not as though I'm the first guy to write about this.
Probably one of the topics that's been most written about.
None have been as prolific as the ancient Greeks.
And so when I saw your thing about Marcus Aurelius, I was about to write you to say, well, I've come to that same realization.
So as I was doing my research for the book...
Every time I would get an insight that I thought was original to me, I'd say, that fucker Epictetus has already said it 2,000 years ago.
joe rogan
Isn't that wild?
gad saad
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
And so it reminds me, and I want to give him kudos on the show.
So do you know who Nassim Talib is?
unidentified
Sure.
gad saad
Yeah, so Nassim is a good friend of mine.
He's a fellow Lebanese.
And so many years ago, he was kind of egging me, teasing me, saying, I don't really understand what you study in psychology, Gad.
Everything that there is to know about psychology and human nature, the ancient Greeks have already covered it.
And so I mean, he was just egging me on.
But then many years later, as I'm preparing for this book, I'm like, I think he might be right.
We might be empirically validating what they've already philosophized.
So your post about Marcus Aurelius really resonated with me at exactly that same moment.
joe rogan
It's quite fascinating when you read his writing.
gad saad
It's unbelievable.
joe rogan
Because he was so wise and his decisions for what he would concentrate on and not concentrate on and how he would accept people's flaws and mistakes that they'd made as if they had never made them and this just approach to stoicism and his philosophy on life.
The Greeks and the Romans, and if you look at the history of these ancient civilizations that dominated the world at that period of time, we can get a kind of an understanding of how they thought about things.
It's, to me, one of the more amazing things about history is to peer It's almost like we have a little bit of a time machine to peer into the mindset of these people that were so wise thousands and thousands of years ago and that their words are applicable today.
gad saad
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that speaks to the universality of the human condition, right?
So I always tell my students when I'm teaching about evolutionary theory, I say, look, you can use cultural products as fossils of the human mind, right?
The human mind doesn't fossilize.
But the products that is left from human minds, we can study its contents in the same way that paleontologists study fossil remains.
So I can connect to the mind of an ancient Greek poet and understand what he's talking about as though he's speaking today.
Because the software that's running his mind and mine is identical.
He doesn't know what an iPhone is.
He doesn't know what a podcast is.
But he knows about sexual longing.
He knows about paternity uncertainty.
He knows about sibling rivalry.
Those are the universal themes that are invariant across time and place.
And so one of the things that I love about being an author is that I get to be connected through ideas with all of these immortal souls, you know?
And so it's really a beautiful thing to write and to create and that...
The fact that I independently thought of something that Epictetus thought 2,000 years ago connects me with him.
joe rogan
Yes, truth.
It's just you developed an understanding of human beings and of human nature and you have deciphered from this and extracted some truth and it turns out other people have done the same thing.
gad saad
It's fantastic.
joe rogan
It is fantastic.
You know, there's a great book called The Immortality Code.
And it's Brian Mororescu who has gone through ancient Greek culture and all of the Ulyssidian mysteries and looked into all of their rituals and tried to figure out what was going on.
And one of the things that they've done is going over pottery.
And finding that there's remnants of psychedelic substances in these pottery jars.
And so these wine jars, these jugs as pottery, they found that they were imbibing in wine that was dosed with lysergic acid.
So they had different kinds of ergot and different kinds of things that would produce psychedelic states.
So all of these, you know, when people would go there to learn and when people would go to have these ritualistic experiences, they were tripping.
And this is the birthplace of democracy.
This is the birthplace of a lot of these thinkers, these great thinkers of, you know, that age.
And of course, Roman emperors forbade it, and they outlawed it, and in the book they sort of detail how it migrated to other countries, and you can find the same remnants in the pottery in these other countries, and you can literally track the path of their escape from these areas where they were more restrictive and trying these ritualistic experiences in other places.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's The Immortality Key or Code?
unidentified
Key.
joe rogan
Key.
The Immortality Key.
It's an amazing book.
Really, really interesting.
And Brian was on the podcast and because of him being on the podcast, Harvard has opened up a field of study.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
And in that particular area where they're looking at psychedelic substance use in ancient Greece.
Because it's irrefutable now.
Because of the residue, now they now have scientific evidence.
They have residue that shows that They were most certainly flavoring their wine with this stuff.
That's another thing that I didn't know.
I always thought wine was wine.
It was fermented fruit.
It's not.
Their wine, they would always add things to.
They constantly added stuff to their wine.
Their wine was never just wine.
Their wine was most of the time wine with other things and oftentimes psychedelic substances like ergot mixed in with the wine.
gad saad
Fantastic.
So earlier you said that everything that I do, I do it out of love.
If I stop enjoying it, I won't do it.
So in The Recipe for the Good Life, I talk about the two decisions that you'll make in your life that are most likely to either impart great happiness or great misery on you.
Number one, choosing the right spouse.
Number two, choosing the right job or profession.
Because most of your waking time is going to be spent either with your family or at your job.
And if either or both of those impart you great happiness, you're well on your way to living a happy life.
And so in your case, you've ticked off the...
I mean, you probably live the most desired life in terms of a pursuit that most people desire to be in your, right?
Because you're completely free.
You're not bound to anyone.
You do exactly what you want, when you want, right?
So what would be, if it came to choosing the right spouse, you've been married for a long time so that Have you met my wife before?
I've never met her.
joe rogan
Oh, she's here.
She'll be here in a little bit.
gad saad
Oh, that'd be great.
joe rogan
She'll be here.
We have a gym next door.
gad saad
So what would be the things that you would advise people?
I want to see if it jives with some of the things that I say in the book, the things that you should look for for the optimal mate.
Of course, there is no guaranteed recipe, but do you have some life lessons as to how someone should choose their optimal wife or husband?
joe rogan
You have to be someone who a good person would want to be with.
That's a big one.
There's a lot of people that want this amazing spouse, they want an amazing husband, they want an amazing wife, but they're not amazing.
Who the fuck are you to get that person?
I don't mean worthy as in a human being.
I mean worthy in your behavior, your tenacity, your discipline, your passion.
You have to be fun to be around.
You have to be a giver.
You have to be someone who enjoys being around you.
So when you're on a date with that person, when you first meet them, they like you.
They have fun.
You like them.
It's mutually beneficial.
Everybody wants to be desired, but nobody wants to be compatible.
Nobody wants to be generous.
Those are not things that people aspire to.
People don't aspire to being cordial.
They don't aspire to being warm and friendly and loving and humorous.
But that's what people like.
Everybody wants to be the baller at the club with the champagne, the big gold chains.
But that's just fucking bullshit.
That's what you see from the outside.
You want to be the person who's on stage where everybody cheers and they see your face.
That's on the outside.
What you want to be is someone who people like genuinely.
Like as a person.
Not the image of you, but who you fucking really are.
They have to know you.
So if you don't know yourself, and if you're not honest with yourself in terms of your discipline, your work ethic, the way you treat your friends, the way you treat strangers, the way you are, your personality.
If you're not working on that, you're never going to attract a valuable mate.
You're never going to attract someone who is...
Someone who's desirable, someone who you want to be around.
Why would they want to be around with you?
There's people out there that are working harder than you.
There's people out there that are nicer than you.
There's people that are there that are more friendly than you.
That's attractive.
If a woman's on a date with a man and the man's rude to the waitress...
gad saad
I was gonna say exactly that as a test.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
Or the man talks badly about his ex-girlfriend or his ex-wife.
She's gonna go, what are you gonna say about me?
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, you're not even treating me nice.
gad saad
So I agree with everything that you've said.
So I told you I always go for long walks with my wife to get to the cafe in the morning.
And so one day we were stopped by one of my daughter's friend's father who came up to us.
He's a photographer.
And we stopped by to say hello.
And he said, do you mind if I ask you a question, Gad?
I said, sure.
He goes, how do you do it?
I said, do what?
What are you asking?
He goes...
Every single day I see you walking on this thing, you're arm in arm with your wife, and you're kind of lost in conversation.
You're both very serene and happy.
I said, well, I don't have a recipe.
I really just enjoy her company.
She's my best friend.
It sounds cliche-ish, but that's really what it is.
I'd rather be with my wife more than anyone else on most days that I exist than Now, I don't know if there is a recipe to find that person, but if you do find that person, hang on tight.
So that's one.
joe rogan
Well, you have to know who you are.
gad saad
Very true.
joe rogan
If you don't know who you are, you won't know who they are.
And if you're full of shit...
gad saad
And by the way, the ancient Greeks already beat you to that.
Know thyself, right?
unidentified
Yes, yes.
gad saad
So the stuff you're saying, they already said it.
unidentified
Yeah, they knew it.
gad saad
To our point.
joe rogan
Yeah.
gad saad
The second thing, if I'm going to get more scientific, it turns out that for long-term marital success, there are two competing maxims, birds of a feather flock together or opposites attract.
Opposites attract is great for short-term mating, right?
I tend to be extroverted.
You are introverted.
Maybe that complements each other for a little sexual dalliance behind the bushes.
But on the other hand, for long-term marital success, you want assortative mating, birds of a feather flock together on which traits, on shared values.
joe rogan
Right, right.
gad saad
So if you don't have that in common, the stats of you likely divorcing shoots through the roof.
joe rogan
Like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
gad saad
Bingo.
joe rogan
Johnny's a sweetheart of a guy, generous to a fall.
gad saad
But is that true?
Is he really?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, he is.
Yeah, he's a sweetheart of a guy.
gad saad
Okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've talked to him, and he's very good friends with one of my very good friends, my friend Doug Stanhope.
He's a sweetheart of a guy, and that's part of the problem.
And he was in a loving relationship before her and had a child and the whole deal.
But it's also, it's the partying, you know, that's probably what they shared in common.
But what they didn't share in common was truth and honesty, and Johnny's pretty honest.
gad saad
I didn't know that he was so poetic and all that.
joe rogan
See, people are going to get the chance to see him.
He's an interesting guy, and she's not.
Well, she's interesting, like, if I was a psychologist, and I was studying her.
Like, for you, it must be interesting.
gad saad
Right, right, right, exactly.
joe rogan
Because, I mean, she's so full of shit that she says things on the stand that are directly refuted by previous things that she said.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
Including that she never hit him.
Like, she's fucking...
Not only that, the two of them are recording each other.
Like, how crazy the both of them.
They're both...
That's when they have in common.
Neither one of them trusted each other, so they were fucking recording their conversations like insane people.
gad saad
Yeah.
You were mentioning earlier about the test if someone treats the waiter or waitress badly.
Do you remember in Bronx Tale the door test?
joe rogan
Yes, yes, yes.
gad saad
Isn't that unbelievably wise?
joe rogan
Yeah, it is wise.
How crazy is it back then?
Like, there's no automatic doors.
gad saad
Exactly.
By the way, one of my favorite movies of all time.
joe rogan
It's a great movie.
It's a great movie.
Yeah, yeah.
But that is a test.
You want people that care.
People that don't care about other people.
That's only a virtue if no one cares about anyone and you're protecting yourself from pain.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And so there are a lot of people out there that say that.
I don't give a fuck about anybody else.
I'm going to get my thing.
That's silly.
You're missing the objective point.
The objective point is community.
The objective point is camaraderie, love, friendship, relationships, whatever.
It's a mutually beneficial thing to be caring and to be kind.
It feels good to be nice to people.
It really genuinely does.
It's actually selfish to be generous and kind and nice.
It really is.
gad saad
Because you benefit.
joe rogan
Yeah, you benefit.
And people don't think about it that way.
And it's not why you should do it.
You should do it because it makes other people feel good, but that does make you feel good.
It really does.
That's one of the secrets to my happiness.
I have a lot of really good friends.
And I'm really close to them.
And I love them.
And I tell them I love them.
I tell my guy friends I love them all the time.
And I have a lot of friends.
And these friends that I have, a lot of them I've known for decades.
And we've had a lot of fun together.
And we have kindness and generosity, but also we hold each other accountable, and we're also very honest.
And when they're not honest, I'm like, come on, fuckface.
I know you're full shit.
gad saad
Do you, because of your fame and so on, are you...
Not defensive, but are you guarded in bringing new people into your inner circle, always wondering if there is an ulterior motive to why this person...
Do you have the mechanism to be able to adjudicate that?
Because a lot of people are trying to be friends with Joe Rogan, and I need to make sure that you're not a pretender, a user, and someone who's being instrumental in your...
joe rogan
You can find out pretty easy.
gad saad
Okay.
joe rogan
Bullshitters are not good at it.
No one's good.
I mean, there's some genuine sociopaths that wind up being cult leaders and shit like that, but eventually you see it.
Eventually you see it.
Just don't let them all the way in.
But you get it by just the way they talk.
When you're full of shit, one of the things about being a liar or being someone who is dishonest or is acting, you're acting like you're someone who you're not, is you're not good at recognizing that in other people.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And you're not reading how the other people are seeing you, so you think you're conning people when you're not.
This is the Amber Heard thing.
If she was an honest person, just the way she's talking and acting, the fake crying, it would be so brutal.
gad saad
But it's so funny because I listened to, I think it was maybe Megyn Kelly's podcast, where it seemed as though everybody had bought into her act.
No way, even though she's an actress, could she ever fake those emotions?
Whereas I watched that little snippet and it struck me as inauthentic.
Who thought it was authentic?
Well, I can't remember who her guest was.
No, no, no.
I think there was a guest on her show.
joe rogan
Oh, the guest must have been a hardcore woman feminist that doesn't believe ever that the man is the victim.
gad saad
Do you think that that's the only thing that can assort people into seeing the inauthenticity versus not seeing it?
joe rogan
Yeah, I think she has...
If someone doesn't recognize the inauthenticity of that woman on trial, it's because they don't want to.
gad saad
They can't read people, yeah.
joe rogan
Well, they either can't read people or they are so biased that they're looking for, like when people were talking about Joe Biden, like Joe Biden's State of the Union.
gad saad
It was Mark Garagos.
joe rogan
What about Mark Garagos?
gad saad
He was a friend.
I think that was the guest on Megyn Kelly where he was saying, you can't fake those kinds of raw emotions.
joe rogan
That's hilarious.
Isn't he a lawyer, though?
gad saad
He is.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I don't know about that.
Yeah.
gad saad
Sorry, Mark.
I didn't mean to call you out.
joe rogan
Of course you can fake that.
She's not even faking it well.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
What a sucker he is.
I'd like to find out how many times that guy's been divorced.
unidentified
Okay.
gad saad
Mark, I'm really sorry.
I got to tell you.
joe rogan
Maybe he's just saying that to be a contrarian.
gad saad
So I know Mark well.
He lives in Southern California.
He's done a lot of high-profile cases.
A couple of summers ago, I was in Southern California with my family.
We were very keen to go to an LAFC game, Los Angeles Football Club.
I reached out to Mark.
I say, Mark, you got to hook me up with tickets.
Within two hours, he's wired me tickets to go.
joe rogan
So he's a good guy.
gad saad
He is a very, very good guy.
joe rogan
Sometimes good guys are suckers.
gad saad
Now, I might agree with you on one point.
Doug Peterson, is that his name?
The guy who killed his wife?
Or Dennis Peterson?
The guy who killed his pregnant wife who was on death row in California.
He represented him.
Which one?
joe rogan
I don't remember what that guy was.
What were the circumstances of him killing?
gad saad
There was a guy who was dating, having an extramarital affair.
Was that in Colorado?
No, it was in Modesto, California.
joe rogan
There's a few of those cases, aren't there?
unidentified
Can we get Jamie to pick Scott Peterson?
gad saad
Scott Peterson.
joe rogan
Okay, I remember that one, yeah.
gad saad
Well, I think Garagos represented him, or maybe during the appeal process.
And I've always wondered whether when lawyers do that, they have to know the truth.
joe rogan
Yeah, you have to know, but it's your job to defend the guy.
That's what's the darkest thing about that job.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
When you're a defense attorney in particular, where you have to defend someone who very well might have killed their pregnant wife.
gad saad
But technically speaking, if that client were to say to you, I admit to you in private that I've done it, or do you have to go under the...
joe rogan
I don't know.
I'm not a lawyer.
I don't know.
I don't know how that works.
I mean, I think you could probably recluse...
Could you recuse yourself?
What happens when someone knows that their client is guilty?
That's a very good question.
gad saad
Yeah.
I mean, so my feeling is as long – and I don't know.
I'm not a lawyer either.
But I don't think they can simply say, I did it and you're defending me.
So I just kind of put my hand and I go, la, la, la.
Don't ever say it.
And I'm presuming that we're going – everything you're telling me is truthful.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You know what's scary is the opposite of that?
When prosecutors know that you're innocent and they're still trying to get you.
That's real.
I mean, that's Kamala Harris, by the way.
gad saad
I despise that woman and I'm Canadian.
I have no...
By the way, her high school...
I played soccer for my high school against her high school when she was at that school in Montreal.
Because I don't know if you know, she was from Montreal.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
I didn't know that.
gad saad
She grew up in Montreal.
unidentified
Wow.
gad saad
So we lived very close to one another.
joe rogan
Did she cheat at soccer, too?
gad saad
She probably cheated.
I didn't play against her.
I didn't play.
I played on...
Back then, we used to have boys teams that were made up of biological boys.
unidentified
Lawyers are supposed to...
jamie vernon
Represent someone even if they think they're guilty.
joe rogan
Okay.
unidentified
Zealously.
joe rogan
But if they think they're guilty or if they know?
I believe it's the same thing.
gad saad
Oh, it's the same thing.
joe rogan
Okay.
Defense lawyers are ethically bound to zealously represent all clients, including those they believe will justly be found guilty, as well as those they believe are factually innocent.
A strenuous defense is necessary to protect the innocent and to ensure that judges and citizens have the ultimate power to decide who is guilty of a crime.
So the problem with that is then it becomes like an intellectual exercise for the person who's the lawyer to defend someone who they know is guilty against an inferior...
Right.
Prosecuting attorney that they know is kind of a schlub and that they can sneak by and they've done that in the past with expensive suits and big words and convincing arguments.
gad saad
The mafia lawyers surely don't think that those guys are in construction really.
joe rogan
Not only do they not think it, do you remember when John Gotti was on trial and he had that mob attorney who was fucking excellent, who was built like a brick shithouse?
gad saad
Bruce something.
joe rogan
What was his name?
Cutler?
gad saad
Bruce Cutler?
joe rogan
Was that his name?
gad saad
That sounds right.
joe rogan
Cutler?
gad saad
Boy, we're going to Jamie today a lot.
joe rogan
What was his name?
But he was built like a fucking linebacker.
He was a scary guy.
gad saad
He was a mob lawyer.
He looked like a mob.
joe rogan
Yeah, look at him.
What's his name?
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
Bruce Cutler?
Yeah.
Look at the fucking, look at the size of that guy.
I mean, he looks like the guy would break your fucking head with a bat.
Look at him.
Look at him.
Big, bald, gorilla-looking dude.
Like, he'd smash your fucking face in.
That looks like a mob attorney.
Like, that's a guy that was under no illusion that John Gotti was innocent.
And he was really good at getting him out.
That's why they called him the Teflon Don.
They kept getting him out.
gad saad
By the way, you mentioned earlier how horrific it is when you prosecute someone that you know is innocent.
Of all the guests I've had on my show, probably the one that on a personal level affected me the most is I had a guy who spent 29 years in prison for a murder which he was eventually exonerated of.
And I've included him in my latest book because I'm talking again about the recipe for the good life.
And what amazed me about this guy is how non-filled with anger and hatred and a sense of retribution he had.
And so I basically coined him, you know, the new Buddha because I was trying to put myself in his position.
If you stole from me 29 years of my existence, he was so poised and so truly like as if he's a saint.
And I thought, you're a much better man than I am because if I got out after you've stolen 29 years from me, I think I would want to burn the world down because I would be so...
joe rogan
It's a third of your life.
gad saad
Right.
joe rogan
If you're lucky.
gad saad
Yeah, so you might...
I'll send you the link if you ever have time.
You should watch it because this guy is the model by how we should live life without having rancor in our heart.
I mean, how forgiving he was is really incredible.
joe rogan
That's amazing.
Yeah, it's a sneaky system.
I've had Josh Dubin on.
He's an ambassador for the Innocence Project and he's a good friend of mine.
I've had him on multiple times and through this podcast several people have actually been let out of jail because of the arguments that he made in this podcast and cases reopened and people examining things.
gad saad
Is there no end to your influence?
joe rogan
It's his influence.
I mean, I'm giving him the portal, but he's so selfless in his work and what he does to try to exonerate innocent people.
And, you know, we've had fucking tear-filled conversations about this because he's gotten people out that, you know, were immigrants, couldn't speak English well, were unfairly accused, and the prosecutors knew that this person was innocent, and they don't give a fuck.
Once they have someone in the game, they're trying to win.
Once the game is going on, they don't say, hey, Your Honor, I think we're wrong.
I think this guy's innocent, and I'm going to not try to prosecute him.
Even though we're in court right now, I want to say that I'm on his side.
No one does that.
gad saad
Ego and careerism over truth.
So on the judicial point, are you for or against the death penalty?
joe rogan
If people were honest, 100% of the time, I would be for the death penalty.
People are not honest.
And if you know what I know about the whole process of trying someone and convicting someone unfairly about the way they withhold evidence, like we were talking about with Kamala Harris, including genetic evidence, they try to withhold evidence that would exonerate innocent people.
If I didn't know that, I'd be for the death penalty.
gad saad
So philosophically, you're not against it.
joe rogan
I am for killing people who rape children.
I'm for killing people who murder your family, killing people who do horrible things.
I'm all for removing dangerous people that are detrimental to society.
The problem is you don't know.
You don't know because we have a corrupt system.
And not only do we have a corrupt system, but we have people that have existed inside this corrupt system for decades, and they're really fucking good at it.
gad saad
So how about we do it very simply?
I'm going to set a criterion.
If I find your DNA in or on the bodies...
joe rogan
But you can't, no, because someone could plant that.
Even then it becomes sketchy.
Because people have planted DNA evidence on innocent people.
They've taken someone's innocent DNA, an innocent person's DNA, and planted it on a body in order to make it look like they committed a crime.
gad saad
That's impossible.
So then practically speaking, since there is no way to render that probability of malfeasance to zero, then practically you would never be for the death penalty.
joe rogan
I think it's so hard to know whether or not someone who is saying they're innocent, unless there's overwhelming evidence, unless you have their family members and all these people saying, like Jeffrey Dahmer is a good example.
Fucking monster.
The guy was a monster, clearly.
There's a lot of cases of those.
Ted Bundy.
There's a lot of cases of those where people were fucking monsters.
That makes sense.
Like, remove them from society.
But what about people that are unfairly executed?
Unfairly convicted and then executed for crimes they didn't commit?
That happens all the time.
gad saad
So I think we can set the set of criteria that you must reach so that you would feel sufficiently convinced that it has assuaged the possibility that someone is planting.
joe rogan
It has to be a Richard Ramirez type situation.
It has to be someone...
gad saad
The Night Stalker.
joe rogan
Yeah.
There's so many people that are good people that get fucking railroaded and they wind up in jail and they have poor representation and maybe they can't read and maybe they're just...
They get fucked and then they wind up getting executed and the killer is loose and free.
And that happens.
That happens all the time.
I don't know what percentage.
Let's ask this.
What do you think, I don't even know the statistics, what percentage of people who are executed turn up to actually be innocent?
gad saad
I'm going to say no more than 5%, which is a pretty high number.
joe rogan
It's a pretty high number.
I would say you're probably right.
It's probably less than that.
I would say it's probably less than 5%, but that's enough, man.
gad saad
That's enough, yeah.
joe rogan
That's a lot.
You get 100 people, five of them, you're going to murder.
gad saad
But that's because the criteria...
joe rogan
4%.
See, we're close.
gad saad
Goddamn!
joe rogan
Give me some knuckles, brother.
gad saad
Goddamn!
joe rogan
Nailed it.
Can I see that statistic, the way they say it?
It says the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science determined that at least 4% of people on the death penalty, death row, were and are likely innocent.
unidentified
Have been executed.
joe rogan
Oh, people have no doubt that some innocent people have been executed.
jamie vernon
That's a different sentence.
joe rogan
Yeah, but it's okay.
It's the same thing.
It says people on death row that have been convicted to the death penalty.
gad saad
Yeah, but look, there have been cases of death penalty where it's based on eyewitness testimony.
We know how unreliable that is.
unidentified
Terrible, yeah.
gad saad
So you and I can set up the framework so that our exacting standards, so that nobody falls under 4%, could be met.
What I don't like is when you have people who say, under no conditions and no possible states of the world is it ever appropriate nor moral to kill someone.
And I simply don't agree that that's part of our...
joe rogan
Like Hitler?
You're telling me you wouldn't want to execute Hitler?
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
There's people that are egregious, right?
There's people that their cases are so horrific that there is a moral imperative to remove them from the population.
gad saad
Exactly right.
And I think the example that you gave with the children is that's where I would be.
joe rogan
You know, there's a story.
There's a UFC fighter who's one of the all-time greats, Cain Velasquez, and he's in jail now because there was a man who was working at the preschool who molested his four-year-old A hundred times or more.
Like, they don't know how many times this person did this.
gad saad
By the way, that number, before you go on, that number is an actual stat, which I may have mentioned on the show before, that the average pedophile, when they're caught, has up to 100 prior molestation encounters.
joe rogan
Well, this guy got out on bail and was under house arrest and Cain Velasquez found out and chased him down in his car, shot at him in the car, wound up shooting his father who was driving the car.
His father, who by the way, was running the nursing home.
So his father likely knew that his son was a monster.
Shot him in the abdomen and in the arm.
I think he shot him through the door.
The car was shooting out the door of the car.
Kane's in jail with no bail, no possibility of bail, and he's being tried for murder, or tried for attempted murder, excuse me.
And, you know, that's a situation where that guy seems to be guilty.
I would have no problem with that guy getting the death penalty.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That guy's ruining people's lives.
Unbelievable.
Ruining a small child.
If you found out your boy had been sexually molested...
Fucking a hundred times by some monster.
gad saad
It's the biggest nightmare in the world.
joe rogan
It's the scariest thing ever and what Cain Velasquez did is what every person says they would do if someone came after their child.
He actually went out and did it.
gad saad
So I've had not heated exchanges with my wife, but I always come with the following approach in parenting.
I don't put my children, who are now a bit older, they're 13 and 10, but growing up, I never put my children in any situation where they could ever be molested.
Meaning, if there is a man in any situation, my children are never going to be alone with them.
Now, my wife would argue, aren't you being a bit too punitive in presuming that there's a pedophile hanging around every corner?
I say, well, I'm not willing to take...
So the precautionary principle, I'm not willing to take the chance that that person who really seems nice, that neighbor, or the teenage son of their friend...
Anybody could be that guy.
He doesn't have horns.
I can't tell what he looks like.
Therefore, there was never any sleepovers.
There was never sleepaway camp.
So I can't understand.
Not that I'm blaming this gentleman who sought revenge.
But why is it that he was in a nursery that was run by a father and there was a male present?
That makes no sense to me.
joe rogan
I don't know.
I don't know how it worked.
I don't know the story.
I see your perspective, but, you know, there's a lot of people that have run nursing homes that are adult males that are great people.
It's not.
I mean, it's a horrible, horrible situation.
But I just think the problem is we can't read minds.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Until we can determine ultimate truth, like pure, undeniable truth from a person.
Like I sit you down and say, Mr. Saad, will you please put your hands on this thing and tell us what you did and what you didn't do.
And then until we can do that...
And by the way, people...
Here's the thing.
People say, like, oh, just give them a polygraph test.
Let me tell you something.
Sociopaths pass polygraph tests all the fucking time.
Real sociopaths can sit there and lie to your fucking face and it doesn't change their heart rate at all.
Liars.
Like real good liars.
People have gotten real fucking good at lying.
They've been lying their whole life.
They've just been making up shit and lying about this and lying about that and covering their tracks.
They don't even think they're lying.
They're fucking crazy.
gad saad
I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the show.
There's an evolutionary biologist by the name of Robert Trivers who's still alive.
Some have said he's arguably the biggest evolutionary biologist since Darwin.
He's now in his late 70s.
So he developed the theory of the evolution of self-deception.
Why is it that we are so good at self-deceiving?
And the argument is that if I'm trying to manipulate you, Joe, when I lie to you in a manipulative intent, I have micro cues that...
first lie to myself so that I can shut off those signals, it becomes impossible for you to read the manipulative intent in me.
Well, what psychopaths have innately built within them is the natural ability to have those cues shut off.
And so the polygraph test can't pick it up precisely because they're not emitting those signals.
But if you and I tell a fib, it's going to create a physiological arousal state and then you're going to pick it up in the machine.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's why it's not applicable in court.
And they need to come up with one.
I mean, that's the only way we're ever going to really know.
And until then, there's unfortunately a lot of people that are in bad circumstances, they have poor representation, they get framed, something happens, and then they wind up on death row.
So until then, it's very hard to support the death sentence.
I mean, I don't not support it in cases of pure guilt, like we know.
It's undeniable.
But there's a lot of places where people thought someone was absolutely guilty and it turned out not to be the case.
And then, you know, imagine living with that.
Imagine being a prosecuting attorney and you railroaded someone and sent them down the river, put them on death row, and then had them killed, and then it turns out they were innocent.
Like, man, good luck in hell.
Good luck in hell.
There's a special place in hell for people like that.
gad saad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Imagine?
gad saad
Prior to eventually settling on consumer psychology and evolutionary psychology, I had toyed with the idea of going into criminal psychology.
I had always been fascinated with the serial killers and so on.
And I decided, I think, rightly against it because I thought that I might have had the intellectual interest, but my personality would have been severely damaged by being exposed to darkness and evil.
That's actually one of the reasons why I didn't go into clinical psychology, unlike, say, Jordan Peterson, a friend of both of us.
I'm empathetic that I think I could have been an effective therapist, but I think it would have been very detrimental to my personhood because I wouldn't have been able to create the demarcation between listening to what was done to you when you were a child And then, oh, now it's five o'clock.
Let me go and party with my family because all is good.
And so I think I would have probably blown my brains.
And so I think in retrospect, even though I've always been interested in forensic psychiatry and clinical psychology and criminal, I picked more uplifting fields of human behavior to study.
joe rogan
I think you picked wisely and I think you're absolutely accurate.
I think that same problem applies to police officers.
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
I mean, I have many friends that are either former or current police officers, and they tell me the horrific things that they've seen, you know, where they've had to go to a home where a father just murdered the wife in front of the children and that kind of shit, or murdered a child.
They've seen so many horrific, horrific things, and then they come home to their own children, and there's a high rate of suicide among police officers, and I think they're correlated.
gad saad
And imagine that we now You know, make them turn out to be, you know, diabolical via the hashtag defund the police.
So, of course, they are bad cops.
But the reality is we should be treating them with the respect they're deserving of because most of us would not be lining up to do their job.
They don't get paid enough for it.
And yet we do hashtag defund the police.
It's grotesque.
joe rogan
Well, it falls in line with these people that live in this delusional world where you don't need law enforcement, you don't need laws, and they're just going to be good people.
And then you get LA, where you get rampant, out-of-control crime, and people just get released on bail for murder.
They're just out roaming around the streets.
gad saad
And if you steal less than 950, it's not a felony.
joe rogan
I mean, how many fucking Walmarts have to close down and Walgreens have to close down in San Francisco?
Those drug stores where they just walk in and just start shoveling things into a bag and walk out and no one does anything about it.
gad saad
But again, that shows you that having a poor understanding of human nature has downstream bad effects, right?
So if you think that by definition if you're a criminal, It is never due to your own personal agency, but the culprit is really the society that caused you to become a victim.
Then why should I be punitive, right?
And therefore I shouldn't incarcerate you.
It's wrong.
I am double penalizing you.
First, the world made you into the rapist.
Otherwise you're a beautiful, lovely human being.
And now I'm going to put you in prison.
Why don't I instead find a way to help you out of this thing?
So it's a wrong understanding of human nature that causes all of these insane woke policies.
joe rogan
It is a wrong understanding of human nature, but there is a reality to people that are fucked by the world.
There are certain people that through no fault of their own, they were born into a horrible circumstance.
They have terrible parents.
They live in a terrible neighborhood.
There's crime and drugs.
And that's all they know.
And that's all they've ever known.
And they grew up that way.
And they're probably the victim of abuse, whether it's physical abuse or sexual abuse and violence.
They've had this their whole life.
They've been in and out of penal institutions.
These people are fucked.
And the problem is there's no rehabilitation mechanism that's involved.
The friends that I've had that have gone to jail and come out of jail, they're like, you're not getting rehabilitated in there.
If anything, you get turned into a harder criminal.
You get taught how to do crimes better and you get to talk to people about how they get caught and how they're going to not get caught the second time when they get out.
I don't know what the solution is.
I would imagine that we're going to have to have a much more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to program a mind and what it takes to deprogram a mind and what techniques, what substances are involved in that that can be Effectively given to people?
Because we know that there's some substances that aid tremendously in alleviating people from whether it's alcoholism or any kind of addiction issues like this Ibogaine.
There's a bunch of different things that people can do.
A lot of people that have done psilocybin, John Hopkins studies have shown tremendous benefits in quitting detrimental behavior, whether it's cigarettes or things like that, gambling, drug addiction.
gad saad
I think there's Just aging reduces your criminality.
Nothing else, right?
Just your drop in testosterone is a huge predictor.
joe rogan
Especially violence, yeah.
gad saad
So just, you know, wait out the curve and you'll become less violent.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I mean, it's like, how do we let someone become more wise while still protecting everyone else from that person's impulses and urges?
Especially if that person did grow up in a violent household where they were beaten and everyone in their neighborhood sucks and just...
There's a lot of people like that.
That's the real inequality.
The real inequality is the way children are raised.
The real inequality is what are you exposed to?
Even in the womb, they've done studies that show that women that are pregnant, and notice I said women that are pregnant, because guess what?
Men can't get pregnant.
gad saad
Wow.
That was a bold statement on your part.
unidentified
I'm saying it.
joe rogan
While women are pregnant, that if that woman is exposed to violence, that her higher cortisol rates in her body and the stress in her body, the adrenaline, all these effects will actually make the child more inclined towards violent activity.
Because the kid is thinking he's going to be born into a world that's crazy and he's got to protect himself.
He's got a shorter tension.
gad saad
But then this kind of causal argument could be applied ad infinitum, right?
Yes.
At some point, you have to stand up and say, I have personal agency.
Look, I grew up in the most violent environment possible.
It's called the Lebanese Civil War.
I did not rob anybody.
I did not attack anybody.
I did not rape anybody.
joe rogan
But you also grew up with good parents.
gad saad
Fair enough.
I get it.
But there are many, many people who've grown up with very, very bad parents, and they didn't end up killing anybody.
unidentified
That's true.
gad saad
So I get the argument of the mitigating factors, and I'm empathetic enough to understand it, but it never justifies.
At any moment in life, you have a bifurcation in the road, and you can go right or you can go left.
If you make the wrong choice, you pay the price.
joe rogan
I think that's true.
I think you're right.
But I think we need to find some way to reach people and let them know this in a way that there's a lot of people that don't have any role models of people that are striving through all this chaos and doing the right thing.
All the people that they're around, you know, people imitate their atmosphere.
If everyone in your atmosphere is committing crimes, and there are places in this country and certainly places in the world where that's the case, where you just live in a horrific environment and everyone around you is involved in terrible activities.
gad saad
Have you seen this study?
I can't cite it off the top of my head, but that the number one predictors in a home that can serve as a predictor of how well your children will do is how many books are in the home.
joe rogan
Really?
gad saad
So imagine if...
It'd be great if...
joe rogan
Well, my kids are going to kill it because I got a lot of books.
gad saad
They got a lot of books from guests that come on your show and then books you throw.
Exactly.
I'm going to test you on this book next time.
What did I say in Chapter 7?
No, but seriously, so you're exactly right.
Having loving parents.
Larry Elder, whom I think you know, often talks about that the number one predictor...
joe rogan
He's the blackface for white supremacy.
I saw that in LA Times.
They wouldn't lie.
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
What does it say?
A child growing up in a home with at least 80 books will have a greater literacy and numeracy in adulthood.
A home library can promote reading.
gad saad
There you go.
The other thing that I think in terms of parenting that is fantastic is if you treat your children with the dignity that they are deserving of.
Now, what do I mean by that?
I don't baby my children.
Even when they were five or six or seven, I speak to them as though they have a personhood.
I listen to them.
I explain the concept of libertarianism to my son who was nine last year.
We were walking and I was explaining.
You know why?
Because I was pissed off that a cop was standing giving out jaywalking tickets to people who were crossing the street when I'm perfectly capable as a 57-year-old man to know if there's an incoming car for me to make...
But apparently, no, the nanny state has to say when I should cross.
And so that led to a discussion of libertarianism.
Well, my giving him the dignity of me speaking to him in a way that I explained this to him, that's what good parenting is, right?
I don't mean to be tooting my own horn, but it's that you treat your children with the respect that they have a functioning brain.
Treat them with dignity.
And I think that could hopefully go a long way towards solving some of this criminality, maybe.
joe rogan
Well, your children are very lucky that they have you as a dad.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that have shithead dads.
The other thing is exposure to drug addiction and then losing that sort of the fear of that at a very early age.
Everyone's doing drugs around you and it's a common thing.
gad saad
It's like You didn't have a dad growing up, right?
joe rogan
No.
I have a stepdad, but my parents divorced when I was five years old.
gad saad
Did you stay in touch later with your biological dad?
joe rogan
No, I haven't talked to him since I was seven.
gad saad
Wow.
Do you even know if he's alive?
joe rogan
Yeah, he's alive.
gad saad
Wow, that's rough.
joe rogan
Rough on him.
gad saad
Has he ever tried to reach you?
joe rogan
No.
No, that's what's even more crazy.
His kids have.
He has other kids.
They tried years ago.
gad saad
Do you think they reached out, forgive me for asking, because you're the Joe Rogan guy?
joe rogan
That's how they knew.
We have the same name, he and my dad and I. His name is Joe Rogan too.
unidentified
Oh, is that right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
gad saad
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's his punishment.
gad saad
That's his punishment.
He could have been with the son Joe Rogan and Probably not though.
joe rogan
Probably wouldn't have been me.
I probably would have been a shithead if I kept him as a dad.
It's one of those things where you always wonder.
The curse of having that happen to me at an early age, it gave me an independence and a determination.
I had determination that other kids didn't have.
gad saad
I'm going to show the world.
joe rogan
I had that, but I also had no one's coming to help me.
There's no dad that's going to clean up my mess.
There's no dad that's going to be there to hold my hand and comfort me.
I had to do it all myself in a lot of ways.
My stepdad's a very good guy and my mom's a wonderful lady.
They didn't do bad, but there's something about not having your biological father in your life and knowing that he's out there and that he's not even reaching out to you.
I can't imagine that.
I mean, I love my children so much.
gad saad
I won't say much, but believe me, I share a similar reality.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm sure.
gad saad
And yesterday I was asked, I was speaking at UT Austin, I was asked by a young man, how do you deal with adversity?
I said, well, for better or worse, I have the temperament that if you try to hurt me or if I face stressors in life, I want to then shove it up your ass and succeed even more.
So the more you throw at me, not unlike what happened with you, The more I'm irreverent to that stressor and I want to defeat it.
So I hear you, brother.
joe rogan
It's taken me a while to calm myself, though, because of it.
It took into my, you know, probably into my late 20s to really calm myself.
Because there was part of me that also felt angry that he wasn't around and also part of me that didn't feel in any way like I was safe.
When you're a child, you don't feel like anybody's looking out for you.
It's like a weird way to grow up.
You grow up in this way where you feel like...
Plus, I was a latchkey kid.
They just let me out of the house when I was little.
And you grow up that way, you recognize a lot more danger than other people do, which is also why I moved here so quickly.
Like, I moved to Texas in May of 2020, I started looking for houses.
I was like, fuck you.
When they said two weeks to flatten the curve, I go, okay, flattening the curve.
And then I started looking at statistics, then a few of mine got COVID and got over it really easily, and I'm like, what is going on?
And then it was months later.
I was like, what happened in a few weeks?
And then it was like more restrictions.
And I was like, what's going on?
And then I came out here to Texas and everybody's no masks and just hanging out.
I was like, what the fuck is going on?
Yeah, you should take care of yourself.
Yeah, you should be healthy.
Yeah, you shouldn't do anything unwise.
Yeah, it's not good to get COVID, but it seems like it's a respiratory disease and we've never been able to stop a respiratory disease from spreading ever in human history, ever.
And I know that.
And I'm not a fucking epidemiologist.
How do you not know that?
How do they not know that?
They do know that.
And masks don't work.
Fucking Fauci said masks don't work.
Unless you have a fitted N95 or KN95 mask.
Like, they're not working.
These fucking bandanas that people are wearing, this is nonsense.
Like, what are we playing games?
And the thing about Texas is like, you know, I met with the governor when I first came out here.
And one of the things that he said, he said, we want to make sure that we preserve people's freedoms.
That's the same thing Ron DeSantis said.
I met him recently, too.
He said, we preserve people's freedoms here.
gad saad
I spoke at an event by Hillsdale College.
I don't know if you know the school.
They're kind of a college that positions itself as kind of the premier anti-woke college.
And they had invited me to speak in Florida at an event in Naples.
And so I was the plenary speaker on whatever it was on Thursday.
The Wednesday event, it was DeSantis.
And so I didn't get to meet him personally, but I was at his thing.
And he seems like pretty legit.
What do you think?
joe rogan
I think he's legit.
There's people that don't agree with some of the things that he says because they're ideologically opposed to him because they're on the left.
But if you don't have a left or a right, which would be way better for all people to just engage with individual ideas individually.
Engage them independently.
How do you feel about education?
I think it's critical.
It's very important.
How do you feel about indoctrination by people that are educators?
I don't like that at all.
They're just two very different things.
And if you want to tell me that they're the same thing, I say, fuck you.
Because they're not.
Because there's a lot of fucking crazy people that wound up being teachers.
Someone said to me that, or read this, that term groomer, a lot of people don't like that term online.
They're very upset.
But they're real.
There are groomers.
You don't like it?
Do you not like it because you don't want children to be groomed?
Or do you not like it because it's a pejorative that's used against the left?
Which is, I think, more likely.
But here's what's more important.
Not have people groom your fucking kids.
That's what's more important than you getting uncomfortable with this word because it's used by people on the right.
Like, I saw someone as an argument, someone who I think is an intelligent person, say that there should be a block against using the word groomer.
No!
No, there should be no groomers!
How about that?
And this is what they wrote.
They said, not all teachers are groomers, but a lot of groomers are teachers.
gad saad
There you go.
joe rogan
And that's real.
That's a real fucking problem.
I mean, constantly, teachers are getting arrested for exposing themselves to children, For masturbating in front of children, for sending nude pictures in front of children.
Every couple days there's a new one that pops up in the news.
And how many of those people haven't been caught yet?
And how many of those people are out there?
And how many of those people are doing it under the guise of I'm an LBGTQ educator?
gad saad
I'm keeping a tally of the amount of hate mail that you're going to be getting.
joe rogan
Well, good luck.
I don't read it.
There's people that are good people in all walks of life.
Trans people, gay people, straight people, bisexual, whatever the fuck you are.
There's good people in all walks of life.
There's also pieces of shit that will use those labels in order to get closer to groups of people and indoctrinate them.
And indoctrinate them for their own sexual pleasure.
And that's real.
gad saad
So you don't like kindergarten teachers talking about gender identity?
joe rogan
Well, I think it's important, and I think everyone should know it.
I think that's why that whole, what they were calling the don't say gay bill in Florida was so infuriating.
Like, when you're saying that you oppose any sort of legislation that prevents people from talking about Sex and gender identity and sexual orientation with people that are first grade through third grade.
You oppose anything that restricts that.
I go, okay.
Who are you talking about?
Because if this is open-ended, I've had some fucking idiots for teachers when I grew up.
Can you imagine if those fucking idiots were trying to convince your child that they should be homosexual or that they should even be straight?
Imagine if you have a kid that's gay.
gad saad
Never mind convincing.
unidentified
How about just don't address, don't talk about this issue.
joe rogan
That's my point.
My point is, imagine if you have a gay child and you have a fucking teacher that's trying to indoctrinate your child into the world of heterosexuality and convince your child that they're going to burn in hell if that child is gay.
Imagine how furious you would be.
Well, it works the other way too, right?
It does.
It works the other way.
You should be really good at what you do if you want to talk to a fucking seven-year-old about gender identity and sex.
I've seen some of these people with lip rings and fucking blue hair.
They clearly are ideologically bound.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the way they live their life.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them pursuing whatever sexual identity they have and living their life.
But I'm saying you should not be the person that talks to children about this, especially if you're a fucking history teacher.
unidentified
You're supposed to be teaching them about fucking Native Americans.
gad saad
So when I have students in my consumer behavior class, I tell them what age is it moral, ethical, if not legal, to target children through advertising?
And the typical answer that we get from academic research is that you should only target children with advertising when they know that the intent of the advertisement is to persuade them of something.
joe rogan
Yes.
gad saad
Because once they know that, they can build the cognitive barriers against your persuasive intent.
unidentified
Yes.
gad saad
We tell companies, you can't sell cereals to an 11-year-old child because they're too young to protect themselves against the persuasive intent.
But from this side of the mouth, we tell people, teachers, that it is when they're 7 years old or 6 years old that we should tell them about LGBTQ stuff.
Those two things are inconsistent.
If I can't target your child to sell them chewing gum, then I shouldn't be targeting your child with gender identity stuff.
joe rogan
Well, the other thing is children want the praise and acceptance from adults.
They do.
That's part of being a child, especially adult they admire, like a teacher.
Especially adult that has a position of power, a position of influence.
They're standing in front of a class, and they're 37 years old, and these kids are 8, and they're telling them about how the world works.
And maybe they're doing it in a better, more attentive way than the parents do.
Maybe the parents aren't doing such a good job, because maybe the parents are fucking tired and they work all day.
I don't know.
But what I do know is your cerebral cortex doesn't even fully form until you're 25 years old.
Your frontal lobe, your ability to be a fully, like, realistically, you shouldn't be able to make any decisions until you're 25. Like, realistically.
Right?
But obviously you can't do that.
It is.
It's a high standard.
But there's so much that you can convince a child of.
There's so much.
You can convince them to join cults.
You can convince them to be a suicide bomber.
Why do you think they get children to wear those vests?
Because you can convince a child that you're going to go to heaven and you're going to be with Allah if you put on a suicide bombing vest when you're fucking ten years old.
There's a reason why they do that, and they don't go to 50-year-old guys with PhDs, right?
Because that guy would be like, wait, how many virgins do I get?
Why do I even want a virgin?
What the fuck are you saying?
Can you show me this?
unidentified
How do I know that God said this?
gad saad
I feel as though you're preparing the next bit for your show.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
We're at a very strange place in this country where we're so ideologically bound and we're so connected to our tribe that we ignore all the signs that both sides are doing something wrong.
Both sides.
You were speaking about Dave Rubin, and there's one thing that I noticed recently that was kind of very disturbing.
Dave is now, he's essentially a right-wing guy, right?
He used to be a left-wing guy.
He used to be with the Young Turks.
Now he's a right-wing guy.
Dave and his husband adopted children.
No, surrogacy.
gad saad
Surrogacy, yeah.
joe rogan
Surrogate, okay.
So they used their sperm and they created children, right?
And then I was watching all of these fucking vicious...
Right-wing, ideologically captured people who were talking about how horrible they were and about this is rent-a-womb and they were talking about how it's satanic and all this sick shit and just shitting all over him and his husband.
I guess there's two children.
gad saad
There's two of them, exactly.
joe rogan
And I'm watching this.
I'm like, man, imagine being that dude.
And, you know, you go over to that side and you think, you know, well, the right wing accepts me and he loves me.
And it's kind of a cool thing because I'm a gay guy, but I'm also conservative now and I've been red pilled.
And then you try to express a little bit about your own personal life.
And these hateful assholes are coming out for you.
And he just wants to be a loving father, just wants to be a loving father with his husband.
gad saad
And that basically speaks to a point that I make in Chapter 1 of The Peristic Mind where I say, while I will be focusing on idea pathogens of the left, because the ecosystem that I inhabit is academia, so therefore all the bad ideas stem from leftist professors, This doesn't mean that I'm implying that the right cannot be parasitized by bad ideas as well.
So the fact that I don't focus on the right doesn't mean that I am implicitly saying I support the right and not the left.
Academia is run by leftists, therefore they're the ones who originate and spawn all those bullshit ideas that I discuss in the book.
So you're exactly right.
The political aisle that you lay on It's not going to predict whether you can be parasitized.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not.
There's plenty of really shitty right-wing ideas, too.
gad saad
Exactly.
joe rogan
And there's plenty of shitty libertarian ideas.
There's shitty ideas in all sorts of ideologies.
And again, I think you should engage with each idea individually.
gad saad
This is, by the way, why people think that I'm being coy when they ask me, so what do you identify in terms of your politics?
And I say exactly what you just said.
I'm an ideas guy.
If you ask me what's your view on immigration or on the death penalty, you'd think I'm an ultra-conservative.
If you ask me about gay rights and transgender rights, you'd think that I am a Portland, Oregon inhabitant.
So depending on the issue you ask me, I move around to different parts because I'm an ideas guy.
I think if more people had that commitment, then we wouldn't be quite as tribalized, if I can put it that I'm with you, and I think that's the only way we get out of this.
joe rogan
Look, I lean far more left than I do right because I grew up on welfare.
I grew up in poverty.
We had food stamps when I was a kid.
I remember those times.
I remember being poor.
And I will never say that I don't believe in social services or a social safety net.
I think that's crazy.
That saved my family.
It saved me.
And my parents worked their way out of it.
My mom and my stepdad worked their way out of that and eventually got off of it and eventually did well.
I saw it happen.
So I saw the benefit of hard work, but I also saw the benefit of having a social safety net.
So I'm very progressive in that.
But I value hard work and discipline more than fucking anything.
And when someone says, oh, I can't this because I'm triggered by this, shut the fuck up.
I know what that is.
I know weakness.
I know nonsense.
I know excuses.
I know slovenly behavior.
And it should never be praised.
Ever.
Because it's not good for you either.
And the feelings that you get when someone leaves and pretends that everything you're doing is fine.
You need a mental health day.
I get it.
You need a mental health day.
A friend of mine who's an employer, she employs people, and she was saying that some of her employees are saying, I need a mental health day today.
She's like, You're not sick.
Get the fuck to work.
What are you talking about?
You want to get paid for this mental health day?
Show the fuck up.
We're not talking about your parents just died in a car accident.
No, you're just, you have a high level of anxiety today.
You know, it's this Roe vs.
Wade thing.
I saw it in the news and I need a mental health day.
Fuck you.
Show up at work.
Show up at work and work harder.
Get Get the fuck out of here with this.
gad saad
You need to be a bit more animated, Joe.
joe rogan
I get so crazy about it because I know what it is.
gad saad
By the way, I see it in my own environment with the number of students who now file for special services through the Office of Disability or whatever it's called.
So for the first 20 plus years as a professor, I almost had no one.
Because when you file with them, for example, you'll get 50% more time on your exam.
But you never find out because it's confidential.
So I never find out this person suffers from this issue.
So all I get is an instruction that person X needs 50% more time on the exam, right?
Well, I used to never have any of these filings.
And now, in any given semester, I may have, you know, quite a large percentage.
10% of the students are somehow in there.
So what happened?
There's been a growth in the incidence of, you know, whatever disability you had to follow.
But no, it's part of the grievance infrastructure, right?
joe rogan
There's been an infestation of indulgence.
gad saad
Exactly.
Exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah, and look, you can always find reasons why you can't get out of bed.
I could find reasons every day.
We could always.
And by the way, those things, thinking in negative ways like that, it becomes a pattern.
It becomes a part of the way your mind interfaces with the world.
And it just creates more and more incentive for you to continue those patterns, and those patterns become comfortable.
Just like becoming a loser, failing, falling apart, not following through with things, fucking up jobs, getting divorced all the time, gambling away all your money, going in, like, all those things are patterns.
I don't have to tell you, you're literally a psychologist.
But all those patterns, they're so easy for people to fall into and you can't accept that.
You cannot accept that because there's been plenty of people out there that have had those patterns to turn their life around and that's what I encourage people to do.
I don't say the things that I say because I'm a mean person and I want to shit on people that are weak.
I want people to be strong.
I want people to be strong with themselves and I want people to recognize that there's value in being disciplined.
There's value in getting your life together.
There's value in truth.
There's value in honesty.
There's value in hard work.
There's value in camaraderie and friendship and love and being a good person.
And it's hard to be a good person.
gad saad
And Aristotle has already said all those things that you just said.
joe rogan
Yes.
gad saad
But you go on thinking you're the first one who said it.
joe rogan
No, I'm not thinking.
I definitely am not.
gad saad
I'm teasing you.
joe rogan
By the way, we're three hours in.
unidentified
How about that?
gad saad
Crazy.
You know, I didn't even know if it was an hour or two or three.
joe rogan
Crazy.
It flies by.
gad saad
You are amazing.
joe rogan
The Parasitic Mind is available now.
Did you do the audio book?
Please tell me you did.
gad saad
No, it's from the time when you got angry at me, nothing has changed.
It's not me.
unidentified
Goddammit.
gad saad
I know.
joe rogan
Why don't they let you do it?
Tell these fucks.
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
Your silky smooth voice?
gad saad
I know.
joe rogan
It'd be so much better than some fucking actor reading your bullshit.
With the next book, will you read it?
gad saad
I am going to do everything in my power to adhere to your edict.
joe rogan
Who is the publisher?
gad saad
The publisher of the book is Regnery, the audio book.
unidentified
I can't remember who it is.
joe rogan
Regnery, please get your shit together.
The Godfather should be reading his own book.
gad saad
I am the Lebanese Barry White.
joe rogan
Yes.
I mean, the smooth voice.
I need it.
I need it on the audiobook.
If I heard some other guy reading your words, I'd be like, look.
gad saad
Not just my words.
In many cases, it's my personal history in Lebanon.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Exactly.
This is nonsense.
gad saad
I'm with you, brother.
joe rogan
Let's go.
Come on.
Delete that old one.
Start fresh with a new one.
But either way, the book is fantastic.
Just read it.
Don't even get the audio.
Do whatever you want.
But know that this man wrote it.
It's available and it's awesome.
I appreciate you, brother.
gad saad
Oh, thank you so much.
joe rogan
And your podcast is available.
gad saad
The Sad Truth on podcast, Apple, on YouTube.
unidentified
It's everywhere.
joe rogan
On everything.
gad saad
Beautiful.
joe rogan
Always a pleasure.
Always a pleasure, my friend.
gad saad
All right.
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