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PBD Podcast Episode 164. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Gad Saad and Adam Sosnick.
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About:
Gad Saad is a Lebanese-born Canadian Professor of Marketing at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University who is known for applying evolutionary psychology to marketing and consumer behaviour. He also writes a blog for Psychology Today, and hosts a YouTube channel titled "The Saad Truth".
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: booking@valuetainment.com
0:00 - Start
1:39 - Why Gad hasn't left Canada
7:51 - Taxes
18:20 - Will Gad Saad come to Florida?
21:12 - Should Gad Saad Run For High Office?
37:24 - Under the desk
40:25 - Bill Maher
48:51 - Social Contagion
54:12 - Bruce Jenner
1:05:19 - Jake Paul SLAMS Joe Biden
1:19:20 - AOC Won't endorse Joe Biden
1:29:31 - The political pendulum swing
1:34:02 - The Key To being reasonable
1:41:25 - Why PBD moved from Texas to Florida
1:49:19 - The worst guests to appear on the podcast
Today we have in Flesh Was having a chance to speak to him and his wife in the back and learning about the history.
The soccer tricks.
But it's not even that, man.
You just said off camera that you lost 86 pounds.
You look like you belong in Hollywood.
Oh, I'm serious.
You look like you belong in Hollywood.
You should start casting for some movies, man.
You're too kind.
With the green eyes, the whole facial.
You got the whole thing going on.
You are so sweet.
How you doing?
It is so good to be here.
I've been wanting for this to happen, so thank you for having me.
Yeah, I'm glad it happened.
You guys have never met in person.
Never in person.
You guys did have a little bit of a bromance on your Zoom.
We did have.
We won't bring up the Shaq thing and who's getting what, but you guys did hit it off, which was great.
You know, the Shaq thing was a visual if him and Shaq were to be.
That's where it went.
Well, Gad was like, I'm the man in the relationship.
Okay, buddy.
He's the bottom.
He's the bottom.
You say that to Shaq's face, buddy.
Oh, my God.
So from Montreal to Miami, and you keep going back to Montreal, and you're not staying in Miami.
It's a visit.
So tell us why.
Obviously, you have an incredible emperor.
I mean, I'm sorry, you have a great leader in your country.
He's a fantastic guy.
He's fantastic.
So why does he keep bringing you back to Montreal?
Is it by force?
Is there certain things that we don't know about that he's threatening you?
Why?
Why does extortion thing?
Tell us about it.
No, I honestly, it's because of the golden handcuffs of being a tenured professor.
So, you know, when, so for those, for your listeners who may not know, tenure is a wonderful thing, right?
Because it allows you to have the protection to be able to do the things that I do, right?
Imagine if the university could have fired me for any tweet or any paper that I published that they didn't like.
So tenure in spirit is a great thing because otherwise irreverent professors who are not part of the orthodoxy would never feel comfortable to be able to say the things they want to say.
So in that sense, tenure is great.
How do you reach tenure?
And does it take its amount of time?
It's a amount of hours.
Right.
So after you get your first professorship, you have a certain number of years where you have to build a dossier.
The dossier consists of three elements.
What have you published?
So research, teaching, and service.
The most important part is the research.
How many papers have you published?
How much they've been cited?
How influential have you been as an academic?
And then it goes in front of a tenure committee and they decide either they're going to fire you, you have one year to leave, so you're not going to be granted tenure, or if they grant you tenure, you're permanent forever.
You could never be fired unless you decide to quit.
So tenure is, so it's great in that sense.
But on the other hand, it makes you risk aversive because if you want to leave, you're always in the backdrop thinking, I've got this professorship for life.
And, you know, it takes a while to build your academic career.
You have to have a lab.
You have to have graduate students.
So it kind of weighs you down.
So that even though in spirit, I very much would like to be making the move to the United States.
I just got killed with horrific taxes, which we can talk about.
It's been about five, six weeks.
I've been walking around in a daze, unable to understand how the mathematics of the money that I started with and what I ended up with, how we can go from A to B.
So I'm desperate to leave, guys.
But we have young children, so that even makes me a bit more risk aversive.
If our children were grown already, it would be a lot easier to say, screw tenure, I'm moving to Miami.
If you would, you would leave most likely to a South Florida type of location.
Oh, 100%.
I mean, historically, I would have been a SoCal guy.
I was a professor at University of California, Irvine for a few years.
I have a lot of family there.
Every summer we go back to Newport Beach.
In a week, we'll be going back to Newport Beach.
But then the taxes and the wokeness in California is not that much better than where I am now in Quebec.
And so Texas, of course, and Southern Florida have sort of become a lot of people.
Well, there's like, I don't know, like in Miami, we have Little Havana where all the Cubans hang out.
Right.
I don't know if it's official, but here in Hollywood, Florida, I want to call it like Little Quebec.
Is that true?
Oh, my God.
All the French Canadians are down here in the winter.
You don't know that?
I mean, I know that there are a lot of Beckers down here.
I didn't know it wasn't that specific.
Specifically, right?
Yeah, they're snowbirds, right?
Oh, yeah.
Every six months.
A guy comes up to me at church.
He says, you know, Canadians own 500,000 properties in Florida.
Yeah.
What?
Is that right?
He says, Canadians own, because he's from California, he says, 500,000 properties in Florida.
I believe it.
By the way, when he's talking about tenure, you know what?
The first thing that comes to my mind, you've been very vocal about 20% of the bottom half of teachers, 20% of teachers on the bottom half.
30% need to be fired.
Absolutely.
How do you grapple that with 10?
Because all teachers have tenure of self-support.
But what he's saying is very interesting because a guy with his views in a woke environment should get fired.
Oh, I wouldn't have less than five minutes.
Well, this is when tenure backfires on them on the woke.
But here's my question for you.
How did Jordan Peterson get fired?
And wasn't he tenured as well?
He didn't get fired.
So what happened with Jordan is that when the gender pronoun stuff happened, he actually reached out to me before he became Jordan Peterson of great fame.
And he knew of my show and he knew that I was very irreverent.
I wasn't an Orthodox guy.
So he reached out to me.
He said, look, I don't think many people are going to be willing to be talking to me, especially in academia.
Can I come on your show?
And that's how we became friends.
How many years ago was this?
This was 2016, maybe?
So this isn't crazy long ago.
No, six years ago.
And you're in McGill and he's in Toronto?
I studied at McGill for a bit.
Then I went to Cornell, but I'm at Concordia.
There are four universities in Montreal, two French, two English.
I'm at one of the two English ones.
And he was where?
He was at University of Toronto.
Toronto.
He didn't get fired.
He retired.
And I think he retired.
I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but I mean, we're very good friends.
I know him well.
I think it became untenable for him to stay in academia, especially given the amount of other things he's got on.
And in a sense, I face a bit of a similar dilemma, notwithstanding the tenure.
You know, I could turn on my laptop and reach 100,000 people, or I could sit in a classroom for 13 weeks and reach 30 kids.
And I don't mean to denigrate.
Teaching is very important, and I love it, and it's part of my DNA.
But at one point, when you've got the opportunities that someone like Jordan or myself have, it becomes that much more painful to go through the grind of the daily life of a professor.
So the research is still wonderful.
I still love the idea of doing scientific research and so on.
But the administration, how slow things move.
You know, we will hold a meeting to decide on setting up a task force to have a committee to decide on whether we're going to have coffee in the faculty lounge.
So we've just spent six months and probably $500,000 of professor salary to decide, I mean, literally on whether we're going to have coffee.
The coffee task force.
The coffee task force.
Sounds intense.
Very important.
Yes.
Very important.
So it passed is not like coffee in his offices.
So we had to set up a task force here just to implement coffee.
True story.
So it's very slow.
So for someone like me, very entrepreneurial, very fast moving, it becomes a bit of a grind.
Do you sit there yourself and say, you know, if I stay here and as a tenure professor, I'm going to make XYZ money.
But if I go run my own thing and light it up, I can make this much money.
What am I doing?
Why am I putting myself through this?
Think that all the time.
And I mean, so to speak to what we mentioned earlier, you know, I have two main sources of income.
I've got my professor's salary and then everything else.
And the everything else this past year completely dwarfed my, so for example, the book royalties came in for the parasitic mind.
And, you know, all that other money is not taxed at the source.
So it goes into my bank account.
And then at the end of the year, you have to write those checks.
And I mentioned this recently on Joe Rogan's podcast.
My wife calls me over on May 2nd.
She says, give me the password to your bank account.
We go into my bank account.
There are two boxes.
The Quebec and Canadian governments are already in my bank account.
I enter two large numbers that correspond to the taxes that I owe.
And I press send and all the money disappears.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Did you just say when you go into your bank account, the government's already in the bank account to say how much of that is theirs?
Yes.
What do you mean?
So your money's in a private bank or a nationalized bank?
No, it's a private bank.
And they still have their hands on the private bank to get in there and tell you this portion is ours.
Exactly.
They're just making it easy for me to settle.
What a sweetheart of a country.
So I mean, just think about it, right?
Look at that level of nobility.
Exactly.
You know, if it were a Nigerian prince scam, right?
And you lost $1,000 or $5,000, you'd be pissed.
Now, imagine if it's my words, right?
The book, my words, my thoughts, my lived experience in Lebanon, my 30 years fighting woke ideas in academia, but they own 50-something percent of those book royalties.
So it's a type of existential rape that's very, very difficult to stand.
So I've been literally walking around spewing in venom.
Is this the first year where you're paying taxes?
Like, it's real, real money taxes.
I was just going to ask that.
In the past, you know, I'm making, you know, so it's 30,000.
I'm getting 50,000.
But this year, because the book royalties came in, right, on a very successful book, plus the speaking engagements, plus everything.
So that final amount that I have to settle, it's literally what people would have as a savings in 10 lifetimes.
And it's just disappeared.
So we went from having money for retirement, having money to buy a condo in Florida, to magically gone.
So how do you process that?
How do you, in that moment when you're doing it, does it piss you off enough where you want to do something about it?
Or is it kind of like, you know what?
It's just something we got to deal with.
Oh, much more the former.
Okay.
I want to hear about it.
Look, honestly, I wrote this on Twitter.
I said, going through the Lebanese civil war might have been easier than what happened on May 2nd.
And I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but not much.
I mean, and we could talk about it if you want.
You know, I went through the Lebanese.
You felt financially raped.
But in the most intimate of ways, right?
Because let's suppose I'm a hedge fund guy.
Yes, everybody works hard for their money, but it's funny money, right?
I got a bonus, a million dollars because I did crypto.
I did this.
This is me sitting down, striking the keyboard, telling my story, right?
I'm selling my personhood.
And then the government's with their, you know, they have a cigar and they're smoking cognac somewhere and they say, hey, Lebanese Jew boy, 58% is ours, right?
I mean, hey, we'll allow you to keep your name on your book, but come on, the book royalties are ours, you know, for the good of the collective.
It's almost like when you sat down to write the book, they were sitting right next to you typing with you.
Absolutely.
Jesus.
Plus, all the money that I made extra came from me hustling, right?
I have to fly somewhere to give a talk.
It's not passive money, right?
It's me saying, what else can I do to make more money to advance my family?
And then the government says 58%.
Come on.
By the way, that means a $20,000 speaking gig is really only $8,000.
Exactly.
$20,000 speaking gig is $8,000.
And that doesn't include if you have to cover the flight, food, all the other stuff.
So I remember one time I'm in LA.
I'm eating in Northridge Mall.
We used to go to this one place.
We'd have lunch on Sundays after church.
And one of the girls whose face was always on those, what do you call the bus?
Bus stop.
She was always there.
I'm the realtor, phone number.
Everybody knew her for a decade.
That's who she was.
One day, we're at the restaurant.
I'm saying, hey, we don't see your face anymore.
She says, yeah, I made a decision.
What's that?
You know, I was making good money.
She's making $300,000, $400,000 of your income.
And then I started realizing that half of it's going to taxes.
And my husband and I just made a decision.
It's not worth me working for this much money.
I'd much rather stay home.
So I just stopped doing real estate and I stayed home.
It's not worth me doing the work to get half the taxes.
I said, you're being serious.
He says, yeah, absolutely.
We decided to live a smaller life.
So taxes made this family that they're not trying to change the way.
They're not trying to go be the greatest realtor.
They're just trying to be a good citizen.
They just made a decision and said, yeah, it's just not worth it.
It's not worth me working at that level.
You're saying it disincentivizes success, greatness, achievement, all that good stuff.
You just say, you know what?
I'll just be a housewife.
Well, if you think about in every situation you're in, like even for you to right now, you know, the conversation when you talk about, should I get married, should I not get married in the mind you're going through?
You're a high-ticket item.
You have choices right now, right?
But should you get married?
What are you thinking about?
What's the incentive for you?
This is not a selfish thing.
This is how we're wired, right?
What's the incentive for me to go bust my ass do so much when I know 58% is going to take that away from me?
So the motivation to create at the highest level goes away versus in a different situation, incentives more.
And let me add to this, Patrick.
This is just my income.
Now, in Quebec, we also have sales tax.
We have both sales tax and federal tax.
So whatever 40% that the government allows me to keep, if I spend anything, they tax me 15% on that.
And then property tax, then school tax, then carbon tax, then gas tax.
At the end of the year, I'm left with roughly 30%.
Now, let's think about this in one way.
Guys, I want you to hear this one more time.
Say that one more time for people that maybe weren't fully paying attention on the podcast.
Say that one more time.
Very important what he just said.
Go ahead.
So if we just do my income tax, I'm down to about 40% of what I made.
But then whatever is left, if I spend money, I'm taxed 15% on that because we get double tax, both provincial sales tax and federal sales tax.
But then that doesn't stop there.
Then there is property tax, there is school tax, carbon tax, gas tax.
So by the end of the year, I'm left with about 30%.
Now, let's put it another way.
If you start working January 1st and you were a pure slave, let's go back to slavery a couple of hundred years ago.
From January 1st to December 31st, you work for free, right?
For your owner, right?
So let's now contextualize that metric in Quebec and Canada.
I work for free from January 1st till September.
Jesus.
In September, my overlord, Justin Trudeau and his friends say, you are now allowed to keep some of your money.
So it's a level of existential rape that's difficult to compare.
Now, here's the thing.
I was thinking, I was telling my wife, you know what?
Maybe my next book will be to write about what just happened to me so that maybe it can awaken people.
And then I thought, it could never awaken people because 95% of Canadians and Quebecers benefit from that parasitic Ponzi scheme, right?
By the way, 40% of Canadians, from what I read, don't pay a single dollar of tax.
So I am the guy that keeps I and others like me are the ones that keep the system going, right?
Even when I tweet something on Twitter so that I can complain about what a lot of people will agree with me and say, my God, it's unbelievable what's happening to you.
But others will take the position of, stop whining, you rich pig.
I mean, you know, why don't you share your wealth with the rest of us who need it, right?
So there is a sense of envy and entitlement whereby if I were to try to complain about this, most people would not be on board with me because they benefit from that system.
Can I ask you the stat he just put up?
The top 10% of earners bore responsibility for over 71% of all income taxes paid and top 25% paid 87% of all the internet.
And look, I'm sure you'll find the one that says 40% of Canadians don't pay.
Didn't that show the topic?
Okay.
There's another stat that shows that 40% of Canadians don't pay any taxes.
Just do a search on that.
My question was, because Pat asked the question at the beginning of this conversation, was this the first year you've made this, what you call it, like additional income?
You're in your mid-50s, give or take?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
And you've been a professor for more than three decades?
I've made, yes, 28 years.
I've made extra income in the past, but it falls within the digestible, right?
If you're making $80,000 extra and the government takes $30,000, $40,000, you're like, okay, they're raping me a bit more.
But this year was the bonanza year.
This is the year where all of my hard work has finally paid off.
And the government said, oh, no, no, no, it's all ours.
So my question is, it took you 57 years to have this level of disgust for taxes.
And that's not sarcastic comment, but you've been a professor for almost 30 years and it took you 57 years to be like, oh, I'm going to throw up in my mouth.
But there's a reason for that, right?
Because when it's built into your salary, it's like funny money, right?
You just accept it psychologically.
It comes out of your paycheck.
It comes out of your paycheck.
It's invisible.
But when it is that whole big chunk that comes in that's not taxed at the source, and then you will write that amount, press send, and all of your savings disappear, it's psychologically, of course I think.
W-2 versus 1099.
You had the 1099.
But you know, so I'm sitting with Dennis Prager and his wife, Sue, and we're at their house.
And I'm saying, so, Dennis, at what point will you leave California?
Right.
And he says, it's not out of point right.
I said, you, you complain about California, but you ain't leaving.
Right.
If you don't like it, why don't you leave?
So, you know, he's like, well, it's not, at what point?
Give me a number.
What tax rate does it need to go to for you to consider leaving?
He finally says, yeah, probably around 70%.
Okay.
Is there a number that if it got to that you would sit there and because if you're saying 15% state federal tax, carbon, property, eventually your half a million dollar income, your million dollar income, you're really only living off $300,000 income.
Exactly.
Say your 10-year professor's salary.
I don't know what the number is.
Say $150,000 to $200,000.
I'm just giving a number out there.
So if you're making $150,000 to $200, you're making another $800,000 outside of being a professor.
If you only took your $800,000 and you came to the state of Florida, and I'm not trying to recruit for Governor DeSantis, but if you took the $800 and you dropped your tenure, you came to South Florida, and your wife's probably listening to this.
So you're $800,000, you would save an additional, say, 25 points.
At 25 points, I see what happens.
So that makes up for that.
But then you would take that time that you're putting as a teacher, you would make that up in different places by having more exposure.
So is it getting to the point where you're maybe a little bit considering doing something?
It is.
And I appreciate your intimate questions.
And I don't mind sharing details of our lives.
It's okay.
Maybe my university will hear this and maybe give me a higher salary.
I don't think so.
They literally have probably a whole floor called the God Sat Problem reserved just for me.
I think we're there, Pat.
And I actually already started speaking to a lawyer who specializes in immigration.
I don't know if you guys, do you guys know this?
There's a visa track called the Extraordinary Visa.
Do you know what that is?
It's a very, very small number of people who qualify for it.
It's, you know, you have to be a well-known professor or you're a Grammy Award-winning singer or you're an Olympian or right.
And so if you meet certain criteria and you demonstrate that you meet them, obviously, and apparently I do, they kind of expedite your something equivalent to a green card.
And so we're now looking at doing that so that we can have legal, because otherwise, if I don't do that visa, any visa would require for me to be linked to an employer.
I'd have to get a professorship here or, you know, Patrick would have to give me a $1 million a year salary to be your sabotaging.
Yeah, let's have a conversation.
Let's get it written up.
Let's get it going.
Lawyers get it.
So it would have to be.
But this visa, I can get into the country without any employer, just on the merits of my dossier.
And so we have started that process.
Got it.
Makes you think, you know, at what point is the pressure, you know, at a place where you're willing to make the move rather than staying there?
When I asked Jordan Peterson, I said, Jordan, I said, why are you staying in Toronto?
So he says, you know, still staying in Toronto because of different reasons.
I said, are you staying in Toronto because one day you want to run for prime minister?
No, I have no desire.
Why don't you want to run?
If you think you can, well, no, I think I can do more of an impact on what I'm doing versus being a prime minister.
I said, I don't know about that.
I said, listen, philosophers, great.
We'll stick around.
But, you know, I think prime minister, presidents, those guys are going to be, you know, somebody that's going to be remembered.
Do you think Jordan would make a good PM in Canada if he chose to want to do that?
I think he's too honest.
I've been also asked to run for high office.
And so I'll speak for me, but I think it applies to your question about Jordan.
I think all of the qualities that a politician needs to have, duplicity, scamming, cheat, Machiavellianism, I don't think Jordan and I score very highly on those.
So I think we would be chewed up in five seconds.
Again, I don't want to speak for him, but for me, I don't think I could function in that ecosystem.
And so I think I agree with Jordan that our voices are probably more influential doing what we do here because the political system will simply squash you into saying what they want you to say.
And I don't think Jordan or myself are willing to play that game.
So in other words, we have to put up with what's being given to us in regards to politicians.
That's what we have to deal with.
So maybe we need to stop complaining about corrupt politicians because we, the good people, don't want to run.
Is that the right solution?
As you remember, you might remember Plato talked about philosopher kings, right?
That democracy was too important to be given to the common person.
You needed the philosophers to run things.
And so that's, I think, what you're talking about.
It should be someone like Jordan Peterson who's running the country.
But regrettably, in today's world, people like Jordan Peterson are too honest to succeed in such a parasitic world.
And by the way, I remember that conversation right here a few months ago.
You asked that question multiple times.
So have you considered and then you revisited?
You know why, though?
You know why I'm asking that question?
Because if the people that the people wouldn't mind running don't run, then you lose the right to complain about the corrupt people who do.
So you don't have the right to complain about it.
Because I don't know if you understand what I'm saying.
So we're sitting there saying, okay, look at these guys.
They're all clear something about it.
Yeah, no, it's either run and create some real change in policies or don't run and stop complaining about the people that are corrupt and just say, Justin's a great guy, okay?
And he's the best guy that we got today.
But to me, I may be wrong.
You can't do both.
You can't sit there.
Now, listen, I'll give you the flip side of it as well.
The other side of it for me would be the following.
Here's the flip side of it.
If Jordan Peterson, or I'm in this situation, we're just using Jordan, but pick anybody, you know, whoever that has that kind of influence, right?
If a Jordan Peterson-esque type of an individual said, no, I'm not running, no problem.
Why don't you create an academy and go work with the current 25-year-olds and prepare them for the next year, 10 years, so they can run for office and teach them all the Machiavellian stuff that they're going to go through.
Have them read Prince, have them read 40 Laws of Power, have them read all the stuff that's going to happen, and then give them strategies, challenge them, push them, put them against each other, pin them against each other, give them a topic to play for it, against it, argue against it, something they believe in, but argue how the other person would argue against it.
And then try to find the leaks.
And here's Liz, and look at this article.
Look how this person handled this debate.
Then shape their mindsets 10 years from now.
So then in 10 years, you got a roster of 20 people that can run.
But to me, it's one of the two.
Didn't you say Obama did something like that?
I remember speaking at Ritz Carlton.
Exactly.
2,000 African-American kids in their early 20s, good-looking men.
Like I'm talking, and the way they spoke, I'm like, you sound like you could run.
You said they were sharp.
Everybody was sharp.
So I go into sneak peek.
I'm like, oh, my God.
Fire.
Imagine 2,000 Barack Obamas and Michelle in the room.
And I said, what's going on here?
So, well, this is Michelle and Brock are going to be here.
This is an organization that's helping develop the next African-American leaders that may one day become leaders of the free world and presidents.
But they were lawyers.
There's a lot of lawyers in that room.
So you know what I said?
I said, good for you.
That's what you're supposed to do.
Okay.
So there's not a, you know, this whole concept with the academy, the book that I'm, you know, publishing right now that we're going through.
The people like that can do such a great job.
Because there is one thing to do videos and we're glued to the screen and somebody watches, oh my God, Gad.
Oh, wow, what a great argument.
Okay.
So this is a satire approach if you want to go this angle.
Great.
Oh my God, look at this Jordan Peterson.
Great.
But then there is, all right, come into the room, close the door, get rid of all the cameras, leave your phones outside, let's talk.
Here's how you handle this.
There's a difference between that and that.
What you're talking about used to be called universities, right?
I mean, right?
I mean, the way we train people in critical thinking and in debate skills and in evidence-based decision-making, we used to be called a university.
And in a sense, that's what I've been railing against for the past, you know, almost 30 years.
We had these institutions, right?
And, you know, when I first started my career, I'm not sure if we discussed this when I first came on your show remotely.
So what I do is I apply evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to study human behavior, right?
Well, when I saw how social scientists would respond to my work where they didn't like the fact that I'm applying biology, right?
Biology was great to explain the behavior of the mosquito and the zebra and the dog.
But what do you mean you're applying biology to explain consumer behavior?
What are you?
Some kind of Nazi?
And so that's when I first was exposed to this idea that even very educated people, my fellow professors, could be parasitized by stupidity.
And so that really was the genesis of how I eventually wrote the parasitic mind, because originally it started in my scientific career where I would see these incredibly brilliant people who would completely lose it at what I thought was a terribly banal point, which is, of course, humans are driven by their hormones, by their physiology.
I mean, who doesn't think that that's feasible?
But yet in the social sciences, we have erected these edifices of knowledge for the past hundred years completely devoid of any biology.
So you could study anthropology, sociology, economics.
You could be in the business school where I'm housed.
And the word biology is never mentioned once.
But how could you study things like economic decision-making, employee psychology, employer psychology, consumer psychology without ever mentioning biology?
So, you know, the things that you're hoping for, the academy that you're looking for, used to be called the university.
And I'm hoping that we will return, regain the power of the university because we've truly lost it.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's going to go back to that.
But I think what could happen a lot is if individual academies are created.
I think if individual academies are created.
And by the way, that's when you'll go and talk to like, let's just say the Syrian community.
I'm a Syrian, right?
We're talking, your wife is Armenian.
I'm Armenian.
So we're talking Armenian.
And I like how your wife was translating everything I was saying.
She's like, this is what he means.
He just said this.
His mother's Armenian.
His dad's Assyrian.
Please go ahead, tell the people how beautiful she is.
Go ahead.
No.
Listen, you're a very good-looking guy.
And I told you that you look like you're Omar Sharif type of guy that's got to be in Hollywood.
Your wife's dropped it gorgeous.
She's beautiful.
So good for you.
Congratulations.
You guys look beautiful.
By the way, that was your birthday gift, sweetie, from last week.
You just got a huge shout out from Patrick David.
That's your gift.
She's beautiful.
It was great meeting her.
No, but so you're sitting there and you're thinking like this whole thing with academy, right?
And you're saying, okay, what if she's Assyrian, Armenian, where they're talking to, I'm talking to these Assyrian folks and they run a church or they run the club, the Syrian community.
And we'll go in there and you'll all of a sudden say like, no, well, you guys are kids and you don't know what you're talking about.
Listen, why don't you create an academy and develop the next leaders that are coming up and teach them history, ritual, teach them stuff that worked, teach them the 50 biggest mistakes Assyrians made and what we can do to learn from it, right?
Hey, what are the biggest mistakes a candidate has made?
A Republican candidate, a Democratic candidate.
I don't know if that's taking place where those leaders are being developed.
Like I asked is not Hillsdale College.
It is Hillsdale College, but you got Heritage Foundation.
You got Hillsdale College.
You got some of these places that are out there.
Okay, what are you doing to develop the next guys that are coming up?
Okay, Charlie Kirk is doing Turning Point USA and it's growing.
Fantastic.
But I'm more talking about doors closed.
I've developed leaders, but I've given tens of thousands of speeches in the last 20 years.
Take any of those speeches that I've given and then ask who I've built the most.
It was a lot of small groups setting one-on-one, one-on-five, one in 10, one in 20, where it's like sitting there going, that's where real development is made.
So if you don't want to run for prime minister, no problem.
Why don't we create an academy where you take the next 50, 100 guys that are out there and every year create a one-week camp, kind of like how Michael Jordan does his one-week camp.
Kyrie Irving's got his, all these basketball players have their own camps that you go to.
Every summer.
Yeah, great.
Why don't you create a two-week camp every summer?
I guarantee you there's parents out there that would spend the $5,000, $10,000 for their kids to spend time with you.
And maybe there's going to be an element of, here's $5,000, $10,000.
I'm going to send my kid to be with you for two weeks, but it's going to be all day, every day.
And then if the parents want to also be there, that's another $5,000 for the parents.
They sit all the way in the back.
They're not involved.
Your kids are in the front, you see the curriculum, so you know how to follow up with your kids, but you're in the back, there's a glass or whatever, so you're not getting involved and messing it up.
And he's doing whatever he's doing with the kids, pinning them against each other, debate topic.
What do you think about this?
What do you think about that?
Read this, really, really going through this intense environment.
I don't know if that exists today, but if it did exist and it was by people like this, I think it would blow up.
And not only blow up, the future leaders would be built coming out of many of these places.
Can I give a counter argument?
Do so.
Well, because I'm going to go back to Gad Saad's initial argument: why would I sit down in a classroom with 30 people when I can go onto a YouTube or a webinar or whatever and get 30,000 people on there?
So it kind of comes down to your motivation and how many eyeballs you want.
And is the money the motivating factor?
Is it change?
Is it creating something, the vision that you want?
I'm throwing this to you because you said at the onset of this conversation, why would I sit down and do a lecture in a classroom when I could just do it on YouTube?
So for me, look, an academic has to, it's a two-step process.
Number one, you have to create knowledge.
And I do that, of course, through writing books, through writing academic papers.
But then the second part is disseminating knowledge, right?
Because by the way, do you know how much, what is the average number of times that an academic paper is cited in the academic literature?
Can you guess how much?
Zero.
The mean number of times.
Meaning that on average, most academic papers are cited by no one.
Meaning you do all this work and zero people give a shit.
Zero people give a shit.
Exactly.
Now, not all papers.
Some papers are cited 10,000 times and that person becomes few and far between.
I'm just doing math.
Exactly.
The average person is producing garbage.
And again, I'm not denigrating academia, but academics come in different shades, right?
Some are very, very influential.
Most do research that's only read by their mom and the reviewer, right?
And I've mentioned this story many times before, but it's worth repeating.
So in 2017, I had been invited to Stanford Business School.
So that's pretty much the mecca of prestige in academia.
I was giving a talk on one of my scientific papers.
And the gentleman who took me out, the host, is a fellow professor.
And the night before, we went out to dinner.
And so at one point he asked me, he says, well, you know, I didn't know you were such an academic celebrity.
You hang out with Joe Rogan.
You go on Joe Rogan.
I said, yeah, you know, it's great.
He said, so he says it now, look with the kind of an air of disgust, a haughty air.
He goes, yeah, well, you know, at Stanford, we don't condone that.
I said, you don't condone what exactly?
He said, well, you know, we don't do research so that it could be sexy enough so that we can talk about it on Joe Rogan.
I said, well, I don't do research so I could appear on Joe Rogan, but surely it's better to both do great research and be able to discuss it on Joe Rogan because now 20 million people will see it.
He goes, yeah, well, we don't do that at Stanford.
So look at the mindset.
His mindset was, I only speak to a few of my anointed class colleagues, right?
I don't speak to the great unwashed, the rubes, right?
Whereas for me, an opportunity to come on Pat's show where I can reach millions of people, I'm jumping on that because I don't have that elitism, right?
I want now there's kids who are going to be listening to us saying, I want to be that next guy.
So in a sense, I agree with both of your positions.
We can do it intimately with 20 people, but we could also do it with 2 million people on Pat's show.
Well, can you speak to the mindset of the professor?
Because I'm going back to this like coffee task force.
So I assume it got implemented and there's coffee at your college.
But when you walk into the break room in the coffee room and there's you and a dozen other professors, what's the overall sentiment?
Like, oh, there's a fucking hot shot.
Totally.
What does that vibe?
So look, as you probably know, the seven deadly sins include envy as one of the sins, right?
We also know from the Ten Commandments, don't covet your professor's paper.
Exactly.
And so envy, regrettably, it drives the economy, right?
Keeping up with the Joneses.
Those assholes next door have that fancy car.
I want that fancy car.
So envy is driving me to.
So, what happens to a lot of my colleagues is what's called an ego defensive strategy.
They can't go on Pat's show because they're not interesting and charismatic enough.
But they know how to write academic papers in a certain model, in a certain template.
They have mastered that ability.
But they would love to go on Joe Rogan, but they can't pull it off.
Therefore, they'll denigrate those who can do it, right?
So I'm a sellout, right?
Because if I were really a haughty professor, I would only be publishing in the top academic paper journals.
But here's the thing: I do publish in the top academic journals.
So they can't hold that against me.
So I do both, but to them, you're a sellout for coming on Pat's show.
That's too vulgar.
It's for the masses.
What's the phrase?
Those that can't do teach?
Yeah, right.
How do you process that?
Look, I don't think it's true.
I mean, I think it's a bit of a misnomer to say that only those who can't do teach, because if you study criminal behavior and you're a criminologist, should you have been a corrections officer or a criminal?
So there are certain scientific principles that you could apply.
So I could teach entrepreneurship, even though I may not have been a great entrepreneur myself.
So I don't necessarily buy that.
But it is true that academia, because of the slowness of how things move, breeds a bit of a parasitic culture, a deadwood culture.
So many people, regrettably, after they get tenure, will stop producing.
Whereas the real academic is not encumbered by tenure, right?
I've been more productive after I got tenure than before I got tenure, right?
So my former doctoral supervisor at Cornell just retired.
I just came back from Ithaca.
I saw the video you did with the purple hair.
Do you like that?
Yeah, it was hot.
There you are.
By the way, I received, you can't imagine how many letters from people from Ithaca telling me, thank you so much.
I'm afraid to open my mouth in Ithaca.
Wow.
And your ability to satirize it is just unbelievable.
Every single store, every business, every car had BLM, black transgender lives matter.
How many black transgender people exist?
Four?
I mean, it's just unbelievable, right?
But that's the mindset.
The woke rabbit hole?
Nothing is as bad as Ithaca, which I hate to say because Cornell is where I was trained.
I love Ithaca.
You said, and I watched that segment that you did, which I'm slightly turned out, not going to lie.
You said, look, where's the wokest place in the world?
And you kind of said a few cities.
Is it in Berkeley?
Oregon.
Is it in Oregon?
And then you're like, nope, right where I went to college over here in Ithaca, New York, Cornell.
Brutal.
Why is it so bad there?
So here's one supposition.
I think it started off in the 60s as this super let's all hug, you know, piece through reggae music.
And, you know, that's how.
It's not crazy far from Woodstock.
Exactly.
It's kind of the Woodstock vibe.
And then because it already has the ground for that kind of lovey-dovey stuff, then the woke parasites can come in and then build on that.
So it becomes this kind of beautiful melange of hippie stuff with woke stuff.
And everybody is transgender.
Everybody has blue, blue, you know, pink hair and so on.
It's just, it's unbelievable.
It really is.
It almost feels like a caricature, like a satirical piece.
It's just unreal.
So who's thanking you for pointing this out?
So I had a guy who owns a gym write to me.
And by the way, if they're listening to this, all the people who wrote to me, my apologies if I don't write back.
I do read all your messages.
I always feel so guilty when people take the time to write.
He's busy, guys.
I mean, come here, give him a little break here.
But I, you know, once a month, I will send out a grand apology to everyone because I didn't respond.
But I do read those messages.
So I've got all kinds of people.
A guy works at a coffee shop.
He's not woke, but he's afraid to say he's not woke.
A guy who owns a fitness center in Ithaca, all kinds of people who said to me, you know, we watched your clip.
And, you know, I give them kind of a rope to sanity, right?
Because you start wondering whether because you're not woke, but everybody around you, whether there's something wrong with you.
And then here comes the blue, pink, or what is it, purple-haired professor who's able to have the guts to make fun of these things.
And then they suddenly feel sane again that there's, you know, this imprimature of a professor who is agreeing with them.
Yeah, I feel like this is a perfect segue for the whole Bill Maher segment that he did about.
You and I last time when we were speaking, I think we talked about, I told you the story about my friend who we went to this gay bar in Nashville and the guy says, how do you know you're not gay?
That's right.
And the entire drive back is like, how do I know it's not?
You're not gay.
It's messing with my head.
And he had to find out for himself.
I'm like, you don't need to find out.
I got to do my research like a professor here.
I got to get that tenure.
He had to go figure it out for himself that he's not.
And it was like such a weird thing to go through.
He's like, no, I'm not gay.
I'm like, honestly, you have to do that to kind of go through this process.
Imagine doing that just if I hit guys, good news, I'm not gay.
But I, you know, yeah, me and the buddy down the street.
Can you imagine that story right there?
So I'm like, okay.
But then, and I asked you a question.
I said, so let me ask you, do you think with all these TV shows, like yes, last night we're sitting in the at the house, Merle's in town and we're having conversations, all this stuff, and what movie you watch, all this stuff.
And, you know, we're talking about Jurassic Park, the one that just came out, which honestly, whoever's going to be offended by this, it is what it is.
One of the worst movies I've seen in the last few years.
Well, when all the dinosaurs are gay and trans, what do you expect?
Just horrible.
Okay.
And then you watch Top Gun.
It's better than Top Gun 1.
Anyways, so then we look at cartoons for kids.
So the new cartoon is Toy Story Guy.
What's the guy's name?
Lightyear.
Yeah.
And you know, in there, there is a character where there's LGBT characters that they're kissing each other and they're holding the baby in a cartoon.
And originally, the CEO of the company said, we're not going to do this.
We're going to cut this because this is too much.
And the employees at Disney, Pixar, came out protesting where they finally said, leave it in there.
So it's in the cartoon, right?
So I'm sitting there and we're having a conversation whether we're going to watch this with our kids or not, whether we're going to watch this with our kids.
I said, there's no benefit for me to watch this.
I said, if you want to watch porn, whatever kind of kinky porn you like to, I don't know what kind of porn you watch, whatever you watch, keep it to yourself.
You don't need to put it in a movie for me to watch.
And then it's my choice.
You know, I don't know what his choice for porn is.
He's expressed it a few times.
It's usually men in purple wigs.
That's my kind of thing these days.
I don't know.
With a big basketball player in front of him.
But the point is, I said, it's a little too much where you're selling too many things to my kids and I'm out of it.
And I asked you, I said, Gad, do you think all these shows, all these movies are making us or making kids increase the population of the LGBTQ community?
And you said, no, I don't think it's affecting it as much as it is.
And then Bill Maher three weeks ago comes out.
If you can post that one picture of what Bill Maher put, he says, at this pace, within the next 20 years, we're all going to be gay, is what he said.
Because the percentage of, if you can zoom that in, that's actually very interesting.
He says the silent generation, only 0.8% are gay.
The baby boomer generation, only 2.6%.
Gen X is 4.2.
Millennials, 10.5.
Gen Z, one out of five Gen Z is part of the L they see themselves as part of the LGBTQ.
Right.
They identify as LGBTQ.
So what's causing it?
So I could maybe tease it up, tease it out a bit, tease it apart a bit.
To try to be gay, so for example, if I'm a man and I want to be cool and be part of a fad, it's going to be involved sodomy in dark corners.
That takes a lot of behavioral commitment on my part.
You follow what I'm saying?
On the other hand, if I just have to self-identify as trans, that's not nearly as much of a behavioral commitment, right?
So, so one could be prone to a fad, the latter one, whereas the former one, it's very unlikely that I'm just going to get into anonymous gay sex because it's faddish to do so.
To speak to your point, to the point of your friend who didn't know if he was gay or not.
I know if I'm interested in Turkish guys and gay saunas, right?
So, I don't think that, so, so there's a paper, by the way, by a, I think she was a pediatrician, and I mentioned her in the parasitic mind.
Her name was Lisa Littman.
Do you know her?
Do you know her story?
So, she wrote a paper in Plus One, which is an academic journal, where she was exactly arguing in much more scientific terms, what Bill Maher is arguing there, that the trans movement or phenomenon is really one of a social contagion, right?
Now, that makes sense, right?
Because if I'm a young kid who, you know, is feeling a bit ostracized, I can get a lot of ego strokes by belonging to a group today that feels faddish.
That doesn't require much behavioral investment on my part to simply say, you know, I may be self-identifying as a girl or a boy, whatever it might be.
I think it's a lot harder to be faddish about your sexual behavior, right?
And especially if you're a man.
So, for example, we do know from research that women are a lot more sexually fluid.
In other words, it makes a lot more sense for a woman to say, you know, in college, I dabbled.
Whereas it's a lot harder for Pat and I to say, you know, in college when we were watching an NFL game, then we started wrestling with each other and then sodomy broke out.
So, so when it comes to men, I think there's a lot less fluidity.
I really know if I'm gay or not.
For women, it's a lot more fluid.
And the trans craze for many kids who identify as trans, it's really because it's just faddish.
Now, by the way, Lisa Littman, when she published the paper, did you guys put it up?
Oh, yeah, exactly.
When she published the paper, I right away reached out to her because at first it was published and then it caused all kinds of problems and then they wanted to retract it.
So I invited her on my show because I'm always the guy who invites all these folks who are otherwise getting brutalized by everybody else and no academic is courageous enough to invite them.
And she wrote back to me saying, look, I would love to.
Thank you so much for the offer.
But she was scared at the time because she thought she just wanted it to die, you know, the story to die away.
But I think it's never a good idea to do that because once the blue-haired Taliban comes after you, they're going to come after you no matter what.
So if you try to placate them, if you try to apologize, it's never going to work.
Quick story about not apologizing.
And actually, you just met my wife.
So this is a story about my wife.
So we had gone...
Your hot wife.
My hot wife.
Thank you.
We had gone to a cafe, a local cafe that we always go to in Montreal.
And my wife had just met this new barista who looked as though they were transgender.
So she came back to me and said, you know, you know, God, I felt very uncomfortable because I don't want to say something that would offend that person.
I didn't know how to address them.
And so I wrote out a tweet where I said, you know, she was frozen in fear, not sure about what to say because she didn't want to hurt the person's feelings.
That tweet was meant to demonstrate how empathetic and kind she was, that she was so unsure of how to handle them.
26 million tweet impressions later and two, three days of millions of mob coming after me, including Valerie Bertinelli, you know, the former child actress, who basically said, my wife is mentally, they completely misconstrued the tweet.
The tweet was about my wife didn't want to say something that would hurt that person's feeling.
She was being empathetic.
She was speaking because she didn't want to call them by the wrong pronoun.
By the wrong pronoun, okay.
So I could have easily taken down the tweet.
I could have apologized.
What did I do being the king of all honey badgers?
I then satirized their bullshit.
Do you guys know the series that I do under the table where I'm under the desk?
So this is where I mock the idea that I'm always afraid, right?
Donald Trump has just become president.
I'm hiding.
Brett Kavanaugh just became justice.
I'm hiding.
So I hit under the table and I said that unlike the ISIS folks that I had to run from in Lebanon in the mid-70s, the pronoun Taliban are incredibly scarier than the guys that I ran away from in Lebanon.
So what I did is I mocked their hysteria.
I waited out.
I didn't apologize for anything.
And guess what?
They got bored and went away.
So life lesson, guys.
Unless you really have something to apologize for, never apologize.
Wow.
Can we stay right here on this topic?
Because this fascinates me.
And I know that you have had some strong feelings about this, but you used the word social contagion.
You used the word last time with Pat on the Zoom interview.
And I looked up the definition.
It says it's the behavior and emotions spread spontaneously through a group or groupthink.
And then you also use the terminology, which I had heard before, courtesy of Eminem, which was the terminology called Munchausen syndrome.
Yes.
Right?
Which he basically said he was a victim.
Do you remember when he talked about his, you know, why he hates his mom so much for all our hip-hop fans out there?
Oh, she used to do this thing?
That's his whole thing.
He's like, why he hates?
I'm sorry, mama.
I never meant to hurt you.
I don't know that.
He's like, he was a victim of Munchausen syndrome, that whole thing.
Tyler, you might know this.
You're a rap guy.
And that's where you deliberately used to know the line by heart.
There you go, buddy.
And so you deliberately produce symptoms of illness so that people care for them.
So you're the center of attention.
Are you saying that's kind of what's going on with the LGBTQ is you want to, it's almost like don't do as I do, do as I say.
Like I'm identifying as LBG, LGBTQ or whatever it is, or trans, but I'm not really doing it behind closed doors.
So let me, let me, yeah, let me build on that.
So thank you for that question.
In 2010, I wrote a paper which I published in a medical journal.
It was on Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
And so let me let me describe both, and you could probably pull out that paper.
Munchausen syndrome is exactly what you said, Adam.
This is when I feign a medical illness in order to garner empathy and sympathy.
That's Munchausen syndrome.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is even more diabolical.
This is when I take someone who's under my care, my biological child, my pet, my elderly parent, and I harm them so that I can garner the empathy and sympathy by proxy.
So by harming the kid, then everybody comes to me, oh, poor you, poor parent, you have this child.
So a lot of the transgender craze from the parental perspective is a form of Munchausen by proxy, right?
Look at me.
I have a child who has, you know, gender identity issues.
So it's in that sense by proxy.
It's that paper that I published in 2010 that then led me in the parasitic mind to diagnose the victimology currency that we see today in society as a form of collective Munchausen and collective Munchausen by proxy.
The idea being that it is no longer the mechanism by which we ascend the hierarchy through meritocracy, right?
I am the most accomplished professor, therefore I should get the big reward.
Now it's, am I a bigger victim than both of you, right?
And if I am, then I win, right?
Feel bad for me.
Feel bad for me.
You should feel the baddest for me.
Exactly.
So now, so I warned now nearly two decades ago, I've been warning people that once these type of parasitic ideas take hold in the universities, it's the end of science.
Now, I don't mean to be the guy sitting telling you, I told you so, but I told you so.
And let me explain how it manifests itself in academia.
You could no longer now apply for a scientific grant without submitting as part of your grant, what's called a diversity, inclusion, and equity statement, which I call in the book DAI, because that's the acronym, right?
Diversity, inclusion, equity is where meritocracy goes to die, literally.
Why?
Because now we no longer adjudicate whether we're going to give you $300,000 to do your research based on the merit of your scientific research.
Is your DAI statement woke enough?
Now, what is the DAI statement?
Are you going to be hiring transgender people of color?
Is your methodology going to incorporate indigenous ways of knowing?
It defies even Gad Sad's satire and caricatures, right?
What does it mean to do indigenous way of knowing?
There is no indigenous way of knowing.
There's only the scientific method, right?
There is no Lebanese Jewish way of doing evolutionary psychology.
There's just evolutionary psychology.
There is no, is it Assyrian or Syrian?
Assyrian.
There is no Assyrian mathematics.
There is just mathematics.
That's what makes the scientific methods such a democratic epistemology.
It allows us to keep our personal identities at the door, right?
You just do math.
You just do chemistry.
You just do psychology.
But now we're reverting back to the epistemological dark ages, whereby whether I get a grant or not is literally encoded in terms of how woke I am.
I have a colleague of mine at McGill.
He's a physical chemist.
He's been denied two grants.
He's a very serious scientist.
He actually came to dinner.
When Jordan Peterson came to Montreal two weeks ago, he also came to dinner with us, this gentleman.
His name is Pat.
He was denied two grants as a physical chemist.
By the way, he's a brown person.
I mean, much browner than we are.
I mean, he's from India.
Okay.
So he checks the box of person of color.
He's been denied because he won't play the woke game.
So imagine how outrageous it is that in the 21st century, whether we give scientific grants to people is not based on the scientific merit of their grants, but based on how woke they are.
It's grotesque.
It's unbelievable.
Can I ask one follow-up question with this?
Because I got to tell you, this might be, I might get canceled for bringing this up right now, but I'm going to bring it up anyway because I'm not scared, Pat.
But as you're saying the social contagion and Munchalge's syndrome and how basically you want people to feel bad for you because you want more attention, you want more attention.
The name that comes to mind for me, speaking of trans, of who's the face of trans these days?
Caitlin Jenner.
Caitlin Jenner.
Bruce Jenner.
So I have a theory.
You tell me if I'm crazy, if I'm wrong, if I've got it all wrong, feel free.
As Pat says, tear me a new one, whatever.
Tear down my argument.
I've been around Bruce Jenner.
People that follow the podcast people know I used to be friends with Chris Humphreys and Kim Kardashian.
I used to be in that kind of world for a little while.
And I spent a lot of time around Bruce Jenner.
This was when he was Bruce Jenner.
And all he talked about was the 1972 Olympics.
Was it 72 or 76?
76, Montreal.
Okay.
That's all he talked about, Gad.
Okay.
This is 2011.
All right.
And, you know, we're getting ready for the wedding.
I'm a groomsman in the wedding, right?
Like my boy's about to marry Kim Kardashian and he's like, come here, Adam.
And he's helping me like fix my tie.
He's like, let me tell you when I was in the 76 Olympics and what we did, I was like, this guy really talking about the seven.
Like, this is what his story was.
And my theory is this.
He's surrounded by women, right?
Kim, Chloe, Kendall, this one, that one.
All right.
Chris, all the K-girls.
And he's the one guy, right?
And, well, there's the brother, but he kind of was like shunned.
And they're getting all this attention and eyeballs and eyeballs and eyeballs.
And if you fast, you know, rewind, he was the Kathlon winner is the biggest name in the world at one point.
And now he's like an afterthought in this feminine world.
And at some point, he said, you know what?
I've been a man's man for 50-something years.
Now I'm Caitlin.
Now all the eyeballs are on me.
Diane Soar is interviewing him.
He's, what was he?
Woman of the year?
He was woman of the year.
In like 2016, whatever it was.
So all these eyeballs are on him.
Look at me, look at me, look at me.
So am I crazy for identifying this as sort of some sort of, what do you call it, social contagion Munchausen syndrome?
Am I completely off base?
Take it.
So I don't know enough about his personal story to be able to confirm if it's not.
I mean, you certainly have a set of causal links that might make sense.
But it seems to me that it would require a big behavioral commitment for him to engage in all that he's engaging simply because he wants that kind of attention.
I mean, did you get a sense that he was starving for attention when you would interact with him?
Again, his only claim to fame via, you know, up until 2016 was that he won the Olympics in 1976.
So anytime, like imagine if you're citing all your soccer stories from the 1980s.
Right.
It's like at some point it's like, God, we get it.
You played soccer, but what's up now?
Yeah, yeah.
It's like if Pat only talked about being a bodybuilder and he had nothing else to offer.
So at some point you're like, you know what?
This might get some eyeballs.
Anyway, that's my thing.
Have you heard him speak?
Have you heard him in interviews?
Have you heard him give his point of view and perspective?
Have you actually seen him or?
Hunt, why are you calling him him?
Oh, have you discussed him?
I met him in 2003 at Tom Hopkins seminar.
Yeah, I met him.
We have a picture together.
But when you see him speak, do you see him as a person that is, have you seen how he answers questions, how he processes issues?
Then or now?
Today.
Yeah, I've seen him a little bit.
Yeah, I mean, he's very, you know, he's kind of like woke, but on the right, Republican, but LGBT.
It's kind of confusing.
Yeah, he doesn't come across to me as an airhead.
He comes across as a very, the way he gives us answers and processes issues.
And he doesn't come from an angle of feel sorry for me or sympathy.
It's a very interesting, you know, situation with him when you hear him speak.
But it's also kind of confusing.
But it is.
But so there's a part of what you're saying maybe makes sense because it's very, very hard for you to walk into a room and get all the attention.
And all of a sudden you walk into a room, you're not even in the top seven of getting all the attention.
Right.
That can really, and I'm talking about in your own family.
Yes.
So it's okay if you go out there and you're getting all the attention and then all of a sudden you go to a different environment and another person is getting all the attention, but it's not your family.
Then you go from your family, you're the guy that gets all the attention.
Then all of a sudden it's your wife.
Then it's one of your daughters.
They're like, all of a sudden you disappeared.
Hey guys, I'm also important here too.
That could happen for you.
You bring up an amazing point.
You go from number one in your family and there was no doubt in the zero doubt.
But he was number one.
And then boom, Daughter famous, daughter famous, wife famous, daughter famous, younger daughter, younger daughter.
And now you walk into a room where you go into a red carpet and they're like, hey, would you step out of the way?
We're trying to take pictures of all the ladies.
And he's standing in the corner.
And at some point, he said, you know what?
Fuck it.
I got to become a lady.
I might be crazy here, but there's some element of like.
This is going to be, this is going to sound strange for me to bring this up, but I mean, whoever interviews him to have this conversation, if he's, it's a personal question, but, you know, do you think he's had any kind of a sexual experience with a man since he's had the sex change?
See, and let me explain to you why I'm going in this, in this direction.
Like, this is not, I'm not being silly.
I'm not being, I'm not at all trying to be funny or sarcastic at all.
Because if he has, then it's a desire.
If he hasn't, the motive was a different motive.
Yeah.
It was just to get the attention.
You understand what I'm saying, right?
I could be wrong, but I still think he likes women.
Yeah.
I think he's just identifying as a woman.
Yeah.
So now he's a lesbian.
Now he's a lesbian.
I could be wrong.
Yeah.
But I don't see him hanging out with dudes.
But again, go back to the power of the power of peer pressure, the power of peer pressure being around you, the power of, you know, the eyeballs, the power of what fame does to you, the power of some people don't know how to handle fame early, you know, the power of when it's taken away.
It's taken away being an afterthought.
Yeah, but like, like, you know, like, okay, so you know how, think about how much it sucks to be Michael Jordan's son.
Okay.
Think about that.
Like one time I'm having a conversation.
What's his name again?
Exactly.
Exactly.
So one time I'm having a conversation with one of my guys, and I said, you know what's more annoying than a bad example?
He says, what's that?
I said, a great example.
He says, what do you mean?
I said, okay.
So a kid who had a, let's just say, a bad example as a father, let's just say, you know, that kid's got a point to prove to outdo the father.
So then he does, and he becomes a better man than his father.
But it didn't take a lot to earn that, what do you call it, that stature.
You know, I'm more successful than my dad.
Okay.
So now you got what you wanted.
You've done better.
You're a better man than your dad is.
Now, flipping and put, your dad is a person that is very powerful and you have to outdo that person.
Okay.
But now go be that father.
And that father who is on top of the world and everybody thinks nobody's going to outdo you and then somebody does.
So I think in those cases, the best advice that I can give the child is to not follow in their parents' footsteps.
I agree.
Right.
So for example, your dad is Michael Jordan, become a neurosurgeon.
But this is not even the conversation.
The conversation is what if you are Michael Jordan and your son outdoes you?
That's this situation because he's Chris, you know, he's the guy who's Bruce Jenner, you know, crushes it.
And then you're everywhere you go, you're that guy.
And now your kids do bigger than you.
They're more famous than you.
They're more successful than you.
They're richer than you.
How does he process that?
It's a very different situation that he's going through.
Speaking about Montreal 1976 Olympics, I would be remiss if I did not mention the fact that my brother was in the same Olympic village as Bruce Jenner because my brother was an Olympian in the 1976 Olympics in judo.
Did something happen between them?
Is that kind of where you're going?
I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up there.
They were in the locker room.
Hey, guys, it was just locker room talk.
Another thing, by the way, I think you guys are MMA guys, are you?
Yes.
We have them here all the time.
So before the whole thing with MMA started, where the idea was, can you get guys of different fighting traditions to go into the octagon and fight each other?
I had had that conversation probably 15 years before the MMA came to be with my brother, who was an Olympic judica.
And my brother is really small of stature, but he's a bulldog, right?
We would go to clubs in Southern California in the early, late 80s, early 90s.
And he always walked as though he's six foot eight, right?
He just has this confidence about him.
You know, we'd be interacting with bouncers and so on.
And I would always say to him, do you think that you would be able to take this guy?
And so as a preemptive thing of the MMA, he would say, God, as long as the guy doesn't knock me out as I'm approaching him, if I get him, he's finished.
And that's exactly what you would see in the MMA now where the guys who can take you down on the floor are usually the ones who win.
The Khabibs of the world.
Right.
Right.
So my brother was already saying that as a judo cop, you know, back in the late 70s and early 80s.
Maybe you could put him up anyways.
Is that Michael Jordan's son?
Put up God Sad's brother.
By the way, I want to apologize to our audience.
Our young friend Tyler over here Googled Michael Jordan's son and Michael B. Jordan, the world famous actor, showed up.
That is not Michael Jordan's son.
I hope he'll be happy that I'm giving him this.
That's your brother?
That's my David Saddam.
David Saad.
So he used to be a badass, is what you're saying.
Look at those.
Look at this.
Go to this.
Let's have this.
This is him, huh?
No, that's me.
That's you.
That's me.
Jesus.
With the eight-pack.
Guys, stop the podcast.
Let's just get it.
I mean, what's going on here right now?
Are you questioning your sexuality right now?
You're throwing some double hair there, God.
Holy moly God.
This is so.
Listen, then it makes sense.
Then it makes sense why you got a model out there that you call your wife.
By the way, she told me many times, how come I never got the eight-pack push?
And now I told her.
I'm only with this guy.
No, I'm not eight-pack now, but I'm sort of closer to this.
You're back, baby.
I'm back, baby.
Did we resolve the issue with Bruce James?
But do I have a crazy point there?
I think it's a bit speculative, so I'm not willing to grant you the professorial imprimatur.
But I'm not 100% wrong.
Not 100% wrong.
A bit speculative, though.
I said that.
I could be crazy for this, but that's my theory.
Well, let's look at some of the stuff that's going on right now.
So Jake Paul, you're familiar with Jake Paul?
I don't think so.
So you're like the one guy in America who isn't at this point.
You don't know Logan Paul or Jake Paul?
No.
The blonde guys who are boxing everyone?
You're being sarcastic.
I swear to God, I'm not.
You just said you were a UFC guy.
I'm not a UFC guy.
Oh, gotcha.
I'm not actually.
Do you recognize this character?
Okay.
Oh, yes, I think I recognize this.
So Jake Paul, who is setting up all these fights.
Okay.
And his brother has said before that he has aspirations to be a president one day.
Jake Paul comes out, which, by the way, these guys have never talked politics before.
They're not a, would you agree?
They're not necessarily a political brothers where they're going out there saying stuff about politics.
But yesterday he puts out this tweet.
Can you put that up there?
He says, Biden's accomplishments, highest gas prices, worst inflation, plummeting crypto prices, highest rent prices ever, created new incomprehensible language, which we don't, many people don't speak.
If you're reading this and voted for Biden and you still regret it and you still don't regret it, then you are the American problem.
That could literally be a Gatsat tweet.
I'm already a fan of this guy.
Well, we just introduced you to this guy named Jake Paul.
Jake Paul.
So Jake, meet Gad, Gat, meet Jake.
What do you think about what he said, Taylor?
Tyler, what do you think about it?
I mean, I mean, obviously it hurts your feelings.
You don't like this kind of stuff.
I think it's interesting that you're seeing such a revolt against Joe Biden, specifically from the influencer community.
Like, there were a few rappers that came out in 2020 that were wearing MAGA hats.
You're seeing the Paul brothers come out.
Like, you're seeing, or at least Jake Paul, rather, you're seeing this pushback on the far left, the progressives, against their policies and their ideologies.
And to your point about the Academy, I mean, that's why it's so important that Jake Paul does this or Gad Set or you or Joe Rogan that we're doing what we're doing because, yes, the Academy is great, right?
That's a wonderful idea.
But we have to have a full-blown cultural revolution.
I mean, like full-on, like we had in the 60s.
Because even if Donald Trump wins the election or Jordan Peterson wins PM in Canada, it doesn't make a difference because the tentacles are so far wrapped around the institutions that it doesn't matter what you do.
Think about Lisa Page, Carter Page and Lisa Strucker, whoever it was, the FBI agents that were going actively campaigning against Donald Trump.
I mean, it's the FBI, the DOJ, HHS, everybody.
It doesn't matter.
And so Donald Trump wins.
What's he going to do?
He's going to rule by executive order and be a tyrant.
I mean, that doesn't work.
So I think it's wonderful to see this.
And it's wonderful to see the younger generation, or at least some of them, start to wake up and realize what's going on.
Because, yeah, teaching a select group of people how to be leaders is great in theory, and it's probably what we need.
But more so than that, we need a real, real cultural revolution.
You know, I feel that way about guns.
I feel that way about guns.
You know how they're saying there's been 246 mass shootings this year so far.
And by the way, there was another one potentially yesterday.
You heard about that, right?
What happened yesterday in Texas?
I did not.
No, we were about this.
A guy walked into, maybe this morning or yesterday, but the guy walks into a school class with a gun and they got him.
Oh, the school resource officer shot him.
Yeah, the school resource officer shot him.
So with all these mass shootings that they're talking about, yesterday we're talking about you and Michael Francis, and the conversation was about, well, you know, what about the idea that Matthew McConaughey pitched, right?
Raise the age, automatic background check, you know, and certain weapons you can't have and, you know, how many magazines you can't.
Anyways, all these things that they're pitching.
And at the end, I said, okay, even if we do that and you move that in, that only prevents 5% to 10% of the mass shootings.
That doesn't prevent the majority mass shooting.
So, Tyler, can you mute?
So even if you do that, you're getting still the issue is not going to go away.
It needs to be more of a long-term cultural change where every other channel is turning these guys into heroes, but all of a sudden the next person wants to rise up and do it again.
So I think it's more values and principles.
To your point, I think it's more values and principles.
But for a guy like Jake Paul to make that comment, for Jake to tweet that out, it makes no sense.
I can't see Jake saying something like that.
But for him to say he's got a lot of young followers that follow him.
I mean, look at that.
How many likes did he get?
156,000 likes that he got.
That means 156, and by the way, it is his most liked tweet ever, I believe, on the amount of likes that he gets.
And most of his followers are younger people to agree with that.
This is a guy that's got 20.
Look at his YouTube channel, how many subscribers he's got.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's this guy, Kay, that he made a comment like that.
20.4 million subscribers.
So I agree with you that long term, but I also think the Academy part is more a longer term thing.
Like even secret societies.
What secret society still exists today?
I would argue the power that they once had.
The World Economic Forum Young Leaders Foundation.
You say that's a secret society.
Oh, I mean, they produced Justin Trudeau came out of there.
There's a ton of political leaders that have come out of the collaboration.
Is that a secret, though?
I mean, it's not.
What do you mean by secret?
I mean, there's only 50% of the people who are in the city.
But it's not a secret.
Freemason is how many presidents were former Freemason?
What's the number they talk about?
13 or 14, right?
Skull and Bones, secret society.
That's from Yale, right?
That's from Yale.
You got it.
The Illuminati is more like a Hollywood thing or the whole thing that they do.
Does it exist?
Does it not exist?
Whatever.
But there's certain secret societies.
But the outcome here is to develop leaders.
Those are the presidents.
Look at this, Freemason presidents.
Wow.
People that were Masonic presidents of the United States.
What's the number?
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe.
It's 15.
Polk, Buchanan, Johnson, Garfield, McKenzie.
FDR is a part of it.
Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, FDR, and Truman.
What's the distribution of Republicans to Democrat in that list?
Well, none of them because there's zero Republicans there because the first Republican was Lincoln.
So these are all federal, you know, these are all like original, original type of a.
Yeah, he's a Democrat.
And then who's on the bottom right?
That guy is Truman.
Democrat.
FDR.
Democrat.
There we go.
But again, you know, to pull back up to Jake Paul tweet to that.
I've got some feelings on that.
Go for it.
Share your thoughts.
What, you were going to say something?
No, no, go ahead.
Well, look, I'm going to remove the person from the statement because the person is an absolute troll clown.
Some might call him.
Some may call him one of the most hated men in America, but he does get eyeballs.
So I'm going to remove the troll clown part.
This is the MMA guy.
Exactly.
Well, no, the boxer, YouTuber, influencer, troll, clown.
You would agree he's an all-time troll.
Internet.
He's a great troll.
He's a great troll.
He knows how to get under people's skin.
And I'm not even saying troll in a bad way.
He serves the pot.
He's a pop stir.
Absolutely.
But as someone who has voted for Biden, he's basically saying, hey, buddy, what does he say?
If you've read this and you voted out and you still don't regret it, then you are part of the American, you're part of the American problem.
Here's what I will say.
I'm not fixated on, I'm a Democrat and that's it.
I'm going to stand behind my men.
No.
At some point, and this is for everyone, left, right, middle, center, blue, yellow, red, green, whatever.
At some point, you have to be like, shit, maybe I was wrong.
I don't know.
Maybe I thought he was going to do a better job than he is.
I don't like this.
I had a conversation with my mom last night and I was like, studying the notes and my mom, I was like, mom, how much do gas prices need to go up for you to like, for you to vote for Trump?
I would never.
He's disgusting.
What a horrible human.
I go, but mom, look, my mom does not have a lot of money, you know?
I go, you know, five bucks.
Yeah, I'd still vote.
10 bucks?
Well, that's 20 bucks.
And she's like, well, I don't like, you know, so you can see kind of her wrestling with her mind.
But this is why I'm full-on independent at this point.
I mean, thank you, PBD Podcast.
Thank you, Valutaine, for basically saying, all right, Adam, you're no longer a quote-unquote Democrat.
I think it's, and by the way, I don't identify as a Republican either.
I don't think a lot of the things that Trump has done or even the McConnell's of the world have done are exactly something I can get behind.
But I think this is the advantage of just being independent, open-minded.
Because at some point, a lot of people who voted for Trump, no matter what he did, I could sit there and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and I still wouldn't lose a vote.
Well, that's a fucking problem.
If you're just going to vote for somebody who shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue, that's my guy.
At the same time, Jake Paul does have a point here.
At what point when there's a recession and gas prices, inflation, do you have to question what you've always thought?
So can I come in with some hardcore science here?
Sure.
So as someone who studies psychology of decision-making, one of the things that we study is what's called the anchoring and adjustment problem.
When you anchor yourself in a position, what does it take for me to be able to move you away from that position?
I'm saying that's very hard to do.
It's very, very, very hard to do.
And so this, not to engage in shameless plugging, but in chapter seven of the Parasitic Mind, I offer a methodology for precisely doing that.
Can I share it with you guys?
Please.
So in chapter seven, I talk about how to seek truth.
And part of seeking truth is that when incoming evidence comes in that is contrary to your position, you should have the epistemic humility to change your opinion.
Most people do not have that.
People don't have that.
So here's what I propose.
There's something called nomological networks of cumulative evidence.
Now, it's a big mouthful.
So let me break it down for you.
Let's suppose I wanted to prove to you that toy preferences are not socially constructed.
Most social scientists think that the reason why we have the gender roles that we do is because your parents are sexist pigs.
They teach little Johnny to play with the truck.
They teach little Linda to play with the Barbie doll.
And that starts a cascade of gender role specialization.
Okay.
I want to prove to you that no sex-specific toy preferences are rooted in our biology, are rooted in our evolutionary history.
How would I go about altering your position?
So very much like Jake Paul is saying, what does it take for you to alter your position on Biden?
I'm saying, how could I convince you of my position?
And so it's a very, very powerful methodology.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to find as much data sources, as much lines of evidence, distinct lines of evidence that will hopefully sway you away from your position.
Let me give you examples.
So I can get you data from developmental psychology where children are too young to have been socialized.
And I can show you that those children already exhibit those sex-specific toy preferences.
In other words, they can't verbalize why they like this, but they will go towards the truck or the doll.
So that already negates the possibility that it's due to socialization because they're too young to have been socialized.
So that's box one.
I can get you data from vertebr monkeys and rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees, other species, where their infants also exhibit the same sex-specific toy preferences as human infants.
That's the second box.
I can get you data from sub-Saharan Africa, different societies, not Western societies, and I can show you that their children exhibit the exact same toy preferences.
I'll just do one or two more, although the network is much bigger.
I can get you data from 2,500 years ago from ancient Greece, where on funerary monuments, the children are depicted playing with exactly the same toys as we see today.
And then one final kicker, I can get you data from pediatric endocrinology, whereby little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, it's a disorder that masculinizes their behavior, little girls who have that disorder will have toy preferences akin to those of little boys.
So look what I've done.
Bit by bit, I have put the epistemological noose around your neck because I'm giving you data from across cultures, across time periods, across species, across disciplines, all of which triangulate to my position.
Now, you'd like to think that someone is honest enough that if they see all that tsunami of evidence, they will then be swayed.
But here's the bad news.
Even with that much evidence, most people put their hands in their ears and go, la la la, I don't want to hear it.
Anchoring.
Anchoring.
So what Jake Paul, notwithstanding that you guys are saying he's a troll and so on, he's actually, you know, he's actually espousing a very deep point, which is the architecture of our human mind is not structured to change our position.
We are built not to seek truth, but to win arguments.
And therefore, I don't want to hear about your contrary evidence.
I'm sticking to my discussion.
This is why people want to live in echo chambers and only just listen to news that they agree with.
Exactly.
But the good news, based on the scientific breakdown, and I'm full-on MAGA at this point.
Thank you for that.
I appreciate that.
But what you just said, Adam, good for you for sharing where you're at and what Jake is saying for you to say, okay, cool.
Here's kind of what I'm seeing in the conversation I had with your mom yesterday.
And you said, you know, what happens here?
This is what I've said, and I've been saying this for a while after a conversation Tom Ellsworth and I had, is the middle runs America, period.
Okay.
You don't need to win the left.
You don't need to win the right.
You need to win the middle.
If the middle sides with you, you're going to win the election.
So, for example, if the middle is 12%, if 80% to 12% is going to vote for you, you're winning.
Not Republican, not Democrat.
If 80% of the middle votes for you, you're going to win the election.
So, whoever's going to win the next, like they ask AOC, I don't know if you saw that when they asked AOC and she didn't want to answer the questions.
Like, hey, so what do you think about Tyler?
Do you have that story here?
I was one of them running again.
Yeah, hey, do you think if Biden ran again?
Or she equivocated.
Yeah, she's like, well, listen, the only thing, you said page number four.
Bottom of four to bottom of four.
Okay, so you know, hey, if Biden ran, would you support Biden?
And she's like, uh-uh, uh-uh, well, you know, what we first need to do is Ocasio-Cortez won't commit to backing Biden in 2024.
We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, CNN.
I think if the president has a vision, then that's something certainly we're willing to entertain and examine when the time comes.
A Democrat who wields a significant amount of influence over the party's progressive wing told CNN Dana Bash on State of the Union when asked if she plans to support Biden in the 2024 election.
And that's not a yes, I said, to which the congresswoman replied, We should endorse when we get to it.
But I believe that the president's been doing a very good job so far.
And, you know, should he run again, I think that I, you know, I think we'll take a look at it.
But right now, we need to focus on winning the majority instead of presidential election.
So, in other words, that's a professional way of avoiding the answering to questions.
So, that's what happens when you're in that business for a while.
But people on both sides are sitting there saying this guy is the least popular president we've ever had with polls.
So, you know, if you're going to use polls when you're winning, you also ought to use polls when you're losing.
And it's not in a good situation.
So, I think the middle's running America right now.
And if there is a party that's recruiting the most people today, if there is a party that's recruiting the most people today, I think it's the middle.
I don't think it's the left.
I don't think it's the right.
I think it's the middle.
Can I bring in some more psychology and so I feel like I should pay you for this?
I'm getting a whole full-on mental breakdown right here.
So, I want you to imagine this as the cork of a wine bottle.
Okay, I've explained this previously, but it's worth repeating.
So, there's an expression in Arabic.
Arabic is my mother tongue.
So, there's an expression in Arabic that basically says, getting drunk simply by smelling the cork of the wine bottle, which basically refers to when someone doesn't is so weak in his constituency that they don't need to actually drink the wine to get drunk.
They simply whiff it and they're already drunk.
Now, how do we apply this to psychological processes?
So, look, now I'm going to drink from the Obama cork, right?
Oh my God, he is so tall and lanky, and he has a mellifluous voice, and he speaks with the cadence of a Baptist minister.
Now, every single syllable that he utters is pure, empty, vacuous bullshit.
But my God, I'm getting drunk by the Obama cork, right?
On the other hand, I'm going to now smell the cork of Trump.
He's disgusting.
He's an ogre, right?
He speaks like a brash brawler from the Bronx, right?
In both of those cases, when I got drunk, I never said anything of substance.
I didn't say I like Obama because of his fiscal policy, I hate Trump because of his immigration policy.
What I'm using are peripheral cues, meaning cues that don't really matter to base my decision on, right?
One is presidential-looking and acting, the other one is brash and an ogre.
That's the problem with the psychology of voters, and that is that instead of activating their cognitive system, here are the seven reasons, the substantive reasons why I love Biden or Trump.
Most of the populist doesn't do that, they base peripheral cues, and that's why we end up with people voting for Biden, even though on every single position they might prefer Trump.
I know a lot of my colleagues who, when I challenge them on why do you vote for Trudeau, they could never enunciate the position.
He looked young.
He looked youthful.
He was handsome.
He had a young family.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, right?
None of these reasons should be valid reasons for why you should vote for him.
But yet, that's why what happens?
We get intoxicated by smelling the core.
But you're giving the personality versus policy debate.
Exactly.
But a lot of people do vote based on personality.
Exactly.
So it's not based on policy, you're saying, right?
Right.
Isn't that sad?
I don't think a lot of people are smart enough to break down policy by policy.
And that's not a knock on the American voter.
I think most people just vote with their pocketbook.
You know, as James Carville said, we brought up yesterday.
It's the economy stupid.
Clearly, people are not happy with the economy right now.
But a lot of times people will just look on screen and just say, yeah, I like that guy.
Exactly.
Or, no, I don't like the way they talk.
I'm into it, or I'm not into that.
What's more important, that or winning the middle?
Is it that or winning the middle?
Because I think the average voter does that.
But the middle voter is sitting there, the independent voter, the guys in the middle, the independent, the libertarian, those guys are sitting there saying they have, okay, so the pendulum of being able to reason.
Okay.
Whoever can reason the most leads the country.
The complainers are the complainers are the loudest.
So they seem to be the biggest party.
And the complainers tend to recruit a lot of the people that are kind of like, oh, that's what, oh my God, so that's what's going on?
Okay.
So the complainers recruit the naive, but the complainers cannot recruit the reasonable people that know how to reason.
The people that are in the middle that are able to reason and they eventually have enough of a voice, you sit there and you say, huh, okay, this guy makes sense.
Yeah, I agree with them.
You know what?
Yeah, that's what I'm going to vote for.
Rogan.
Okay, again, goes back to Bill Maher, the conversation we had briefly yesterday.
I think the currency, again, you're going to hear me saying this a lot.
I think the currency of reasoning is becoming very valuable today.
Not sensationalism, not crying, complaining, all of that stuff.
Crying, complaining has been a very hot commodity the last 10, 20 years, especially the last two, three, four, five years, right?
But you're going to see the ability to reason become valuable again.
This sounds weird for where people should say, well, this should have been valuable for a long time.
No.
When social media came out, complainers got a hot mic and complainers got a chance to go out there and blow up.
And complainers became celebrities.
AOC is a queen of complainers.
And look what happened to her.
That was a hot commodity, right?
She threw a lot of complaining.
She got a lot of eyeballs and she got people to say, yeah, that's exactly right.
And then people are like, you just cost New York City 25,000 jobs at $150,000 your salary Amazon and Amazon went elsewhere.
So your complaining just cost us 25,000 good jobs.
Yes, but if Amazon would have came, your rent would have gone up.
Of course.
Do you want those $150,000 of your jobs?
No, they should go elsewhere.
Other cities are like, dude, Amazon, we will gladly take you, buddy.
They had a bidding.
Bring those jobs to us.
We'll take it.
So it's becoming sexy again to reason.
Those who can reason, people are finding it very, very attractive.
And that's generally the people in the middle.
Well, and I think if I can speak about the platform that guys like Jordan and I have been able to build, I mean, I could have never imagined that 10, 15 years ago, I could ever have the type of platform that would have been reserved for rock stars and actors and so on, right?
So I think to your point, I think there is in the middle, the silent majority are starving for commonsensical people who come and actually say exactly what they're thinking.
This is why, by the way, notwithstanding what you're talking about, the academy, I agree with having those programs.
If we can just instill the courage in the silent majority to speak out, already the battle will be won.
This is why I talk about activate your inner honey badger, right?
Because I receive a million emails every week from people who say, I'm on your side, and they're corrections officers and their truck drivers and their fancy professors.
But for whatever reason, they have this impediment whereby they're scared to speak their mind.
They actually overestimate the risk.
I understand that you could be canceled, you could be fired.
They underestimate the risk, not underestimate.
So they think it's going to be worse than it's actually going to be.
Exactly.
So, for example, the administrators at the university who are beholden to the few loud activists, why are you always acquiescing to them?
Like, why is it that you are always catering your policies to the 10 people who are the most committed activists?
Or the corporations, too.
Right, exactly.
The corporations do the same thing.
They think as though Disney is going to completely fall apart if we don't have ultra-woke stuff.
So you overestimate the risks from the woke when in reality, look, I'm still standing.
I don't want to jinx it, but apparently I'm uncancelable.
I truly am like the Teflon king.
Well, I don't think it's because there's a magic recipe.
It's simply because I don't care.
I'm not so afraid of it.
Now, you might come along and say, oh, but that's because you're tenured.
Therefore, you're not afraid to lose your job.
But listen, when I get a million death threats where I have to walk in on campus with security, tenure didn't protect me there, right?
So when I almost got an anxiety attack because I don't know who's going to come at me, we had to file a police report with the Montreal police at my university because of the number of death threats.
But I walk around like a honey badger.
I'm not trying to toot my horn, but look, it's better to live five minutes with integrity than 500 years as a coward, right?
And so a lot of people.
Who's that, William Wallace?
Is that true?
I don't know.
That sounds like I just came up with it from the top of my head.
I guess many people have had similar things.
But the honey badger takes what he wants.
The honey badger does.
I mean, for those of you who don't know who are listening to the show, the honey badger has been ranked as the fiercest animal in the world.
It's the size of a small dog, and yet it could withstand the attack of six adult lions.
The reason why I say six is because you could probably go on YouTube now and see the six adult lions that are intimidated by this one honey badger.
Why?
Because it's fierce.
So be ideologically fierce.
If you've got a position that you think is worthwhile, you know, standing on, don't cower away.
Don't be a little fuck.
There you go.
There you go.
Yeah, this guy's a badass.
Can I ask you a question?
And this goes to Pat's point: the middle runs America.
And I guess my question is: is America bipolar?
Because every eight years, every four to eight years, the pendulum swings left to right, Republican to Democrat.
When's the last time we've had consecutive Democrats in office or consecutive Republicans in office?
To Pat's point, in 2016, you know, Hillary didn't campaign in the Midwest.
She took it for granted.
Trump came in.
He was all over Michigan, all over Ohio, all over Iowa.
Boom, shocker alert, he won the election.
2020, the blue wall held, what as they say, and Biden won the election.
But every four to eight years, the pendulum swings.
I think it's because hope springs eternal, right?
Someone else said this.
So basically, at any given point, after a certain number of years that someone is in power and my pocketbook is not doing well or whatever it is that I'm upset about, then the only thing that triggers in my head, why don't I switch now and go with the other folks?
Maybe they have, but that's change, change, change, or change agent, right?
Change agent, right?
So, you know, one of the things that I found out in studying decision making for 30 years is that we are far from being sort of the hyper-rational creatures that we are otherwise made out to be by classical economists, right?
Classical economists have this view called homo economicus.
Homo economicus means ultra-rational.
You apply these decision-making procedures, you maximize utility.
Whereas in reality, when you study human decision-making, we're ultra non-rational, right?
We choose someone based on their height as a politician.
Well, what does your height have to do with your policies?
But you simply look more presidential if you are tall.
We haven't had a president under like six foot in forever.
Well, by the way, whenever someone tells me, hey, why don't you run for prime minister?
I say, sorry, I'm too short to be there.
It doesn't matter what's in here.
The fact that I don't clock in at six feet, I'm out.
But it is a thing.
It is a thing because people use these peripheral cues.
If I'm tall, that means I'm dominant.
I'm to be trusted, right?
By the way, CEOs of companies are taller than average, right?
So the Napoleon Bonaparte, who is five foot four, is a very rare phenomenon.
Most elected people, whether it be as a CEO or as a president, are tall.
Well, what's the story with Nixon and JFK in that debate?
If you listened on radio back in 64 or whatever it was, 61, if you listened on radio, you thought Nixon won the debate.
Exactly.
But if you watched on TV, because I think it was the first televised debate, right, Pat JFK won the debate because he was more polished.
He looked better.
Nixon was a little more like disheveled, kind of bearded, five o'clock shadow.
So attractiveness does matter.
Yeah, exactly right.
So then that means Joe Biden is sexy as hell.
He's hotter than Leo.
Well, he's hotter than the orange man, I guess.
That's hotter than the orange man.
Yeah, somebody just commented saying, whether you vote Rockefeller Red or Rockefeller Blue in a new world order, the joke's on you, right?
I mean, I don't know what that, obviously, we know what the guy is trying to insinuate.
And he rhymed too.
Congratulations.
Yeah, Smed Lee Butler, good for you, man.
Total rapper.
But, you know, you're saying all this stuff about where it's at and what's happening.
But again, for me, my confidence and peace of mind of the future being bright is this new movement of people who are able to reason.
Because if we go through the sequencing on how I believe it happens, first there's a complainer.
When there's a complainer, the guy that has the ability to reason, he's got better things to do than to argue with the complainer.
Okay.
So then the complainer all of a sudden creates momentum.
And he recruits eight people, 22 people, 79 people, 328 people.
Now he's got 1,200 people.
Then the guy who's got the ability to reason sitting there saying, dude, this guy's creating some momentum.
Then the complainer starts converting some of the people that the guy who has the ability to reason thought they used to be reasonable.
Okay.
Then he says, I got to now get involved.
Then the guy that has the ability to reason and he's got a backbone gets involved and starts talking and reasons through all these issues.
Then those people say, yeah, I forgot.
I'm a guy that leans more towards a reasonable side.
This complainer, you don't know what you're talking about.
I flip.
I think there's a big awakening of people that can reason today.
And that's what's happening.
And it's exciting because most people that have the ability to reason and they're driven by logic and they can have an argument and kind of go through and listen to both sides, they're typically so busy living their lives.
They have no tolerance or time to go and fight every single battle.
Complainers want to fight every battle.
Those who want to reason, they don't have that kind of motivation.
What do you think?
Because Gad Sad talked about anchoring.
Nope, this is how I believe.
I'm doubling down on my position.
You're talking about being reasonable.
What are the key elements in being reasonable?
You have to hear both sides.
You have to hear the motivations on both sides, the whys of both sides, the stories of both sides.
And then, like, for example, like right now, for me, okay, I'm trying to identify who's going to be the next CEO of one of the companies, you know, two, three, four, five years from now, whatever the timeline is.
Okay.
So I have to go through everybody and have to process everybody and have to see the situation of what everybody else is in.
That guy's motivation is this.
This guy's motivation is that.
He's got a shorter lifespan.
That one's a little bit scared.
This one's fully capable, just doesn't want the responsibility.
That one wants the responsibility and wants the job, but is not capable.
So you have to, and that guy needs a little bit more to it.
That guy's more about his, you're looking at everything, and then you sit there and you say, okay, I think this is the best candidate.
What you're describing is literally one of my lectures in my psychology decision-making class.
What are the types of decision rules that people use when they're making decisions in multi-attribute choices?
You just described many attributes, motivation, lifespan, and so on, right?
So typically, you could do one of two things.
You could either look at all of the attributes weighted by their importance, right?
So for example, if I'm choosing between different cars, if gas efficiency is a more important attribute to me than price, then I will weigh it differently.
I'll put it all together and I'll pick the car that scores the highest on all of those attributes.
But oftentimes people don't do what you just said, Pat.
What they do is what's called the lexical graphic rule.
Lexical graphic rule means I only look at my most important attribute and I choose the alternative that scores highest on that attribute.
So for example, if I were choosing between toothpaste and price is the most important attribute, I'll pick the toothpaste that has the cheapest price and that's it.
So all the other 10 attributes I never looked at.
That's what I use, by the way, as a psychological mechanism to explain why a lot of people voted for Trump, right?
Because even if Hillary Clinton, when you put all of the attributes together, might have scored higher than Trump, many of the population only looked at a single attribute.
Let's suppose I'm an immigration guy.
I only care about immigration.
And if rightly or wrongly I think that Trump scores better on immigration than Hillary, I stop right there.
I choose Trump.
I was using that to explain the psychological mechanisms for why Trump won to Sam Harris.
Sam Harris is a guy who went completely Trump derangement syndrome, right?
I mean, every single person who voted for Trump must have been a Nazi.
And I said, that's what Sam Harris said?
I mean, not.
No, I'm not saying said, but that's the position he was sort of advocating.
Sam Harris, you tell him any phenomenon, he'll link it to Trump.
You just got diabetes.
He's going to explain to you.
By the way, he's super brilliant.
Is this the same Sam Harris who debated Pen Affleck?
And actually, it's funny because I've always loved Sam.
I appreciate him.
He's supposed to be a rational guy, a meditation guy.
But he's got Trump derangement syndrome.
He's got such Trump derangement syndrome.
By the way, so does 50% of America.
Exactly right.
Except that they don't pretend that they are the hyper-rational guys that Sam Harris is.
But Trump truly did break Sam's brain.
And so I use that explanation to at least offer him a possible way to understand why people who are not Nazis and who sleep with their sisters could have voted for Trump, right?
If I prefer, as I said, immigration, and that's the only attribute I look at, it will be perfectly rational for me to choose Trump over Hillary.
I don't have to be a Nazi who sleeps with my sister.
And so decision-making is really an incredible field because it allows us to understand the cognitive processes that people go through in making a decision.
How do I choose a mutual fund?
How do I choose a politician?
How do I choose a mate?
So this is pretty much what I've done in my academic career, study psychology of decision-making.
So you really are in my wheelhouse here.
I will tell you, you know, for me years ago, when you're going through the conversation about, you know, when you're younger, all you want to think about, what's the key to success?
What's the key to success?
Hard work, choosing the right spots, doing this, doing that, doing this.
From everybody I've watched win in business or they did very well in life, the best ones were those who were better at making decisions and processing issues.
So I always wanted to talk to a person and then ask them, how'd you come to this conclusion?
Because that process of how you came to this, if they're willing to tell you the real truth, because sometimes people will just give you the lazy answer.
I don't want the lazy answer.
Give me the real answer.
How did you come to this conclusion?
And if they give you the real methodology of how did they came to that conclusion, you just figured out a formula.
Got it.
So first there was that experience with your dad that you watched, and I left a mark.
Okay, so that's deep, that's emotional, that's painful.
Got it.
Then you notice that maybe you were yourself wrong, but that happened to you when somebody treated you and judged you the way you judge your dad.
And you realize you didn't like it.
And you said, your dad must have not liked it as well, because that's got it.
Three, you were hanging on to something that your dad did years ago to your mom, and that's between them, but you took it personally to you.
He never did it to you.
He did it to your mom, but you love your mom.
Fair.
Okay, get it, but that doesn't mean he did it.
Got it.
So you were able to let that go.
How did you let that go?
Through an experience you had spiritual, you had rock bottom.
Girl broke your heart.
You lost somebody in your life.
So did you need to go through that to make that decision?
Yes.
No.
Who knows?
And then eventually, so there's a certain way you just went there?
Yeah.
Was that autobiographical?
I was going to say he just went, boom, boom, boom.
No, no, but yeah, but we don't talk like that.
Right.
But we decide like that.
So if we're able to call a timeout and say, got it, here's what we're doing with this part.
This totally makes sense.
Here's what we're going to do next.
Like when we wanted to move from LA to California, from California to Texas, I sat in a room and I'm looking at everybody.
I got Moral, who's about to get married.
I got her husband.
Certified stud, but I got a shout out to Texas.
Yeah, totally.
I got all these guys sitting in front of me.
I'm like, okay, how am I going to sell Texas to these guys?
So I start with an open-ended question.
I'll never forget this meeting.
It was in 2011.
And I say, so guys, what do you think about Texas?
Texas?
Oh, man, I've heard such bad things about Texas.
Really?
Tell me what you've heard.
Did you know that Texas, this, this, this?
So now they start saying about the Texas stuff.
Man, I could never go to work in cowboy uniform.
Like, you know, you have to wear these belts.
I say, you think people in Texas wear buckles?
Yeah.
I mean, that's born with a belt belt.
It's like you think on a freeway.
It's like, you know, hey, I'm going to go to a house.
I'm living in a free car.
So then eventually, gradually, I took all the concerns and I brought back stories to address every concern.
And I did it over and over and over again.
And then I had to sell Jen.
Jen didn't want to move.
I had to sell Melva.
Melva didn't want to move.
I had to sell family.
I had to sell implant seller.
And eventually, I'm like, guys, we have a meeting with Governor Perry and Mayor of Frisco, Mayor Masso.
And we're going to go meet with Nolan Ryan and we're going to meet with Don Nelson.
And we're going to make a decision whether we like Texas or not.
But look, we may not like it.
Let's just see what it's like.
Then we go to Texas.
We spend a whole day with them.
Then on the flight back, I'm like, so what do you guys think about Texas?
Well, you know, this is more impressive than I thought.
And I was like, okay.
And then two months later, guys, we're moving to Texas.
So it sounds like they weren't anchored on their four.
It took four years to move everybody to Texas.
So why did you move from Texas to here?
Why did I move from Texas to here?
Yeah.
So you went to California to Texas, then to here.
And you remember how hard I was fighting to stay in Texas?
You remember what you had to walk me through those lists of issues?
Adam is in love with Addison.
Adam used to live in this community called Addison, and he was Jason.
QB and M.
Yeah, he was Jason, Jason, Yardhouse.
He knows Jason from Yardhouse.
Born and raised in Miami.
I did not want to come back to the city.
This is a very good question, though, because this argument of Texas to here is a different story.
So to me, Texas on a golf score is probably the best place to live on a golf score, raising kids, career, job, travel, airport, taxes, regulation, balance, left alone, mixture.
You got every nationality, cost of living, in every way.
And I would specifically put Dallas at the top, and I would probably put, you know, Dallas, Houston, Austin, pick and choose.
Okay, San Antonio, Barkley's not a fan of San Antonio for different reasons, but we're not going to get it.
The basketball player?
That's why he's not a fan of Texas.
San Antonio women are pretty.
Yeah, he's a partner.
But you got all these markets that you're looking at.
So for us, it got to a point where we kept coming to Florida for Breakers Hotel, which I love Breakers Hotel.
I don't know if you've stayed there before or not.
It's beautiful.
I spent all day yesterday at Palm Beach.
Beautiful.
I love Breakers.
I love Palm Beach.
And then we started one day, accidentally.
We're sitting outside.
I'm having a cigar and it's like midnight.
Jen and I are having a glass of wine right outside of Breakers.
And I said, babe, this reminds me of Bandar Paul Avi in Iran when my grandparents had a place there and it was by the water.
It was humid.
It was bipolar weather.
One minute is raining.
Next minute it's so emotionally I got connected.
I love the water.
I'm a water guy.
And lifestyle-wise, I love the lifestyle here.
And I said, for 20 years, I've been going 80 hours a week.
I want to still go 80 hours a week, but I want to do 80 hours a week by the water.
And so we kept everything there and we moved the media company here because I felt it'd be a lot easier recruiting talent from New York or D.C. or Baltimore to South Florida than it would be to recruit people to Dallas.
I don't think we can build a media company out of Dallas based on the people that we wanted to recruit.
So that's how the decision makes it.
It's very instructive, the decision-making that you've been going through because I just came back from Austin where I gave two talks at UT Austin and they might be interested in extending an offer.
And then I met the people from University of Austin.
I don't know if, have you guys heard of that new university?
Barry Weiss's University.
Barry Weiss.
I don't know if that's the right name, but yes, she's involved with it.
So it's a new university that's trying to sort of position itself as a classical liberal school, anti-woke, you know, critical thinking.
And so I met the president of that university.
And so my wife and I are exactly facing that decision.
If we decide to eventually leave Montreal, is Texas better or is Florida?
But I guess your final consulting advice would be come to Florida.
Well, here's the other part with Florida versus Texas.
The left has really targeted Texas the last 20 years.
They've moved people to Texas to convert Texas and they're winning.
Turn it from red to purple to blue.
To blue.
You got it.
Right now, Texas is probably, it used to be Florida being a purple state.
Right now, it's probably more Texas being a purple state.
If it isn't already there, it's on its way to being there.
Florida just flipped red.
They got two more on the right.
So now it's more of a red state than a purple state.
Adam doesn't like that, but it is now a red state.
Florida.
The governor is young.
So if your run rate is, you assume this guy's going to run.
Some say he's going to run.
I don't think he's going to run against Trump.
I don't think it's a good idea.
But let's just say he runs.
If he runs, you know, would one of his guys replace and take Florida as the governor?
Who knows?
If he stays for six years and he's done a good job, the state's probably going to want another guy like him to run.
So let's say that protects you for another 10 years.
So the next time a leftist type of a person takes office to be a governor is probably going to be 10 years from now, which is 2032.
Between now and 2032, you have enough run rate to do whatever you want to do and build up for yourself.
So I think life's, and I think Austin, I don't know if you've been to Austin with the homelessness.
It's not a good situation when it comes down to the homelessness.
And Austin's probably also the most woke city in all of Texas.
I know a lot of people love Austin.
I know Musk is there.
I know a lot of people are there.
But I think Austin is going to be the stepping stone to end up in Florida.
I think it's like a pit stop for a lot of people.
I think it's going to be two, three, four, five years.
And the next thing you know, people are going to say, well, I think I'm moving to Florida.
So you don't regret your decision.
Let me tell you why else, because what is a very big influence in where you live is a community that gravitates to a place.
Like Armenians moved to Glendo, California.
Right.
Okay.
So guess where we moved to?
Glendale, California.
Assyrians are in Torlock.
If you live in Torlock, Modesto, you know a lot of Assyrians.
If you're in Detroit, there's a lot of Assyrians.
You can say where the Irish moved to.
You can say where Italians live, you know, New York, certain parts, where Dominicans live, where Mexicans live, Salvadorians live, Puerto Ricans live.
I look at the youngest movement that's taken place that are, for the most part, independent thinkers that think for themselves and they can reason.
That's the crypto community.
The crypto community are filled with, they think for themselves.
Okay.
This doesn't mean they're left or right, but they will think for themselves.
They don't like control.
They don't like authority.
They don't like people telling them what to do.
They want to be left alone.
They don't like centralized.
They want decentralized.
That's the mindset of somebody that can think for themselves.
The crypto capital of the world is becoming Miami.
If the crypto capital of the world is becoming Miami, those types of thinkers are moving to Miami.
So then if you think about you wanting to move to South Florida, then you have to go based on age.
The younger you are, the more South you are.
If you want to be around people that are older, the more North you are.
So if you're in your 70s and 80s, move to Vero Beach.
If you're in your 40s, Fort Lauderdale's good.
If you're in your 40s acting like you're in your 20s, you may want to live in Miami.
I don't know anybody like that, guys.
I don't know.
So that's the processing when it comes down to Florida.
Thank you for that.
And your tan, which is on point, right?
Like I may add.
You're going to like that a lot better here in South Florida than in Canada.
My wife looked at me.
She goes, how the hell do you get so dark so quickly?
Literally, we're just walking around.
You're like a Middle Eastern.
Hello, what are you talking about?
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
You have the same problem you have.
But if you talk to Nikki Freed, Nikki Freed would say a lot of people in Florida are not happy with Florida.
Did you see what I think?
She's running for governor of Florida.
Oh, I see.
She was kind enough to come and be on the podcast last Saturday.
Not last Saturday.
This Saturday or last Saturday?
Like eight days ago or something like that.
And then we had Jedediah Beela here, which Jedediah just launched her show, Jedediah Beela, live.
She's now doing her show three times a week.
She's from Fox, right?
She's from Fox and she was on The View.
Oh, right.
Now she's here with us.
She just moved here a couple months ago and we're hosting her podcast and she's crushing it.
She's an absolute beast.
You're going to see that the show blow up with what she's got going on.
Her and Nikki had a exchange.
If you've not seen it, you have to see it.
By the way, did we put the exchange of them two on YouTube for just to put Jedediah Bila versus Nikki Freed?
Have we put that together or not?
There's a few of them up here.
Okay, yeah, because I thought that exchange was so powerful.
Them going back and forth.
By the way, Nikki Freed, some of her policy positions and her talking points, I didn't exactly agree with, but I got to give her kudos for coming on, holding her own.
She's welcome here anytime.
She wants to come back.
She's welcome here anytime.
Have you ever had a guest that you were incredibly excited to have?
Hence, you invited them, but then once, you don't have to give names, but then once they came here, they completely tanked and you're physically without giving names.
There might be a certain candidate for president that has been here.
So when I used to, when I used to do, I mean, listen, Joe Jorgensen, I will say the name because now it's like people talk about it, not because in a bad way, but I wanted, like, I brought Joe Jorgensen because I wanted to go deeper in libertarian policies.
You know who George Jorgensen is?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she didn't want to do that.
And when basic questions were asked, I didn't, you know, push her too hard.
I asked her basic questions.
Who's the toughest debate you've ever had?
You know, because a lot of times people in your world, they just talk a lot and there's no pushback.
There's no debate from the world, like the Stanford people that you're talking to.
You're going to get pushback because if you're in the circle, people are going to push back.
Oh, you're wrong.
You're this, you're that.
And you'll banter with them, whether it's on Twitter.
There's a part of you that I think actually likes that to have that banter.
I don't think she has been punched.
It's like the person that's read all the books on boxing and has watched all the fights, but hasn't been in too many fights.
That's the concept of anti-fragility, right?
You need to be exposed to stressors for your system.
He's a beast, by the way.
He's a beast.
Have you done stuff with him or no?
No.
Anti-fry fragile.
Of course.
Asim is a good friend of mine.
Oh, yeah.
He's somebody that I listen.
I had every single one of my executives in the company read Skin in a Game.
Everybody.
Folks, if you haven't read Skin in a Game, even if it's not a newer book, it's like five, six years old, whatever, eight years old, highly recommend reading that book.
You know, one of the things that I can put on my CV with pride is sick book.
Who's the author?
Oh, you've never read that?
Nassim Paul.
Oh, buddy, this is like mandatory read for anybody that wants to become better at reasonable.
Let me tell you a story about Nassim.
Nassim basically hates 99% of humanity, right?
To him, everybody is a fraud.
Everybody's a charlatan.
Now, I'm lucky enough to have never made it into that camp.
I've always been in the, you know, psychologists are full of shit.
This is Nassim speaking, except God sad.
All these academics are full of shit, except, you know, Gatsad.
And so I've always said, as long as I've got Nassim on my side, I think I'm doing the right thing because this guy truly is a, I mean, he's a honey badger, maybe on steroids in the sense that he tends to go after people sometimes in a rough way where they don't necessarily deserve it.
I mean, I don't know if you agree with that.
He's a fantastic guy.
He's a lovely guy.
He's a very good friend.
We spoke on the phone.
He's in Lebanon now a couple of weeks ago.
He's Lebanese as well.
He's also Lebanon.
This guy is hit.
And he does not suffer fools gladly.
Gotcha.
He goes after you.
By the way, you're a self-identified honey badger.
Trivia question for the both of you.
What NFL Pro Bowler, Heisman candidate, is nicknamed the Honey Badger.
Oh, no.
Famous name.
It's like the nickname for position.
What position?
Plays defense, a defensive back.
Yeah, I like the offense.
I figured you would know this.
This is like this guy's nickname.
He's like a safety.
That's true.
For Pittsburgh.
My son actually pointed.
I don't remember his name, but he said, Daddy, look, they're using your term.
Who did he play for?
Who did he play for?
Plays for Kansas.
Matt played for Kansas City for a long time.
It's you.
How do you say it?
Tyrone.
Is he a recent guy?
Number 32.
He's a famous guy.
32.
He almost won the Heisman.
He might have even won the Heisman.
I don't know.
Very famous.
Who's this?
Tyrone Matthew.
Yeah, number 32.
Okay.
Pro Bowl.
Yeah, number 32.
Honey Badge.
Yeah, that was his nickname.
Badass dude.
He's a beast.
By the way, the hardest thing.
Brady talks so much trash today.
They went back and forth, but this guy didn't back down.
Brady didn't back down.
And by the way, going back to George Orgenson, I walked away.
I walked away thinking to myself, are they prepping candidates?
Like, are they doing the behind the closed doors conversations?
Like, what is the process for somebody to be the candidate?
And then we had Dave Smith here, and I said, how does the Libertarian Party, do you know how the Libertarian Party chooses their VPs?
No.
The candidate doesn't.
The party does.
So did you know this or no?
So the Spike Jones was explaining that.
Not Spike Jones.
Spike Cohen.
Spike Jones.
Spike Jones.
You went to a completely different.
This guy threw you off, by the way.
So, no, but Libertarian Party, you don't pick your VP.
You run and you run to become the VP.
So you run not only to become the president, then nominee, but you also run to become the VP, which means there is no synergy between the two, which I think that system is broken because they got to get along.
They got to be on the same page.
Very weird.
There's certain changes that parties got to make.
There are arguments.
A lot of them I fully agree with.
But George Orgenson threw me off.
But I've had a few other interviews that I did where I was like, this is going to be not that good, but it ended up being great.
Those are the ones that are very.
Why do you ask that question, by the way?
Oh, just because I'm someone who just lives life to its fullest.
And so I'm always, when I wake up and I have a guest coming, I'm always kind of gleeful.
I'm excited.
I'm ready to go.
Who was yours?
Have you had one or of the one that impressed me or the ones that negative?
Yes.
I had a political scientist from, I think, Boston University that was a total dud.
As you know, inviting someone simply because they have good credentials won't necessarily lead to a good conversation.
They have to also have the personality.
So if you bring someone and you're pulling teeth because they answer you very dry, and especially if you're doing it remotely, where, you know, it's, you need, I need to get a bit of fire out of you, man.
And if I can't get that, it's going to die very quickly.
And for us to maintain it for an hour.
So I would say probably that guy, just because of his personality.
Who was better than expected.
Meaning you're like, oh, I'm excited for this, but whoa, bam, that turned out to be incredible.
Well, the most powerful one was a gentleman who spent 29 years in prison for a murder that he didn't commit.
And I actually have him in the last chapter of my next book that I'm working on now, Recipe for the Good Life.
I use him as an example for how to live without anger in your heart.
Because as we were chatting, I said to him, you know, you must be the new age Buddha.
Because if I were in your position, you're a much better man than I am.
Because if I were in your position, I'd want to be burning down the world, right?
Because I would be so angry and venomous.
And yet the guy was so gracious.
He had such gratitude at life.
And actually, he said something very powerful to me, which I did discuss in the book.
His sister, I think, suffers from cerebral palsy and she's bedridden her whole life.
And so I said, well, how did you do it to stay so grounded?
He said, well, look, I see what my sister's going through, and yet she has a smile on her face.
So I had no reason to be filled with hate in my heart.
So a guy just spent almost three decades in prison and is acting with such incredible grace.
And so I said, I need to have so far.
So I would probably say of all the great guests I've had, that guy's life lesson is right up there.
David McCallum, by the way, that's his name.
When I hear stories like that, it's heartbreaking.
And then how they can be positive about it all.
But we did have a guest recently.
I won't say the name where he was, what I would say, non-committal.
What are you talking about?
You could go either way with it.
Older gentlemen, you know what I'm talking about?
By the way, we took him out to dinner.
Yeah.
And during dinner.
I remember the dinner.
Do you remember the dinner?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you know what?
Do you like food?
Not really.
I was so excited for him, too.
I was like, I've been watching.
Was he your guest?
He was you nominated?
I've been following that guy for five or six years.
I always say that.
And by the way, he's a qualified genius.
Like, he's got.
Well, that's the problem, right?
Yeah.
I don't like fence sitters.
I always say that the ones who equivocate are never the ones who are interesting to hang out with.
You want people who, I mean, you want that if they're opinionated, they can back it up.
But the ones who are always equivocating on the fence, they're very boring.
Would you say that this gentleman that we have in mind was a fence sitter?
Yeah, but you know who I liked a lot?
Who called me a freaking asshole on the interview at the end?
Do you know who?
Thomas Jefferson's name.
He's got one of those Lucian Truscott.
Yes.
You ever seen this one?
No.
Yeah, I had Lucian Truscott on, and I asked him a question.
I said, so you want Thomas Jefferson's statue to be replaced by Harriet Tubman and you want it to be removed to a different place.
I never said remove.
I said, but you want it to go to a different location.
Yes.
I said, what's your problem with Thomas Jefferson?
It's his great, great, great, great grandfather.
And I said, so why do you have such a big problem with Thomas Jefferson?
He just kept saying stuff, saying stuff, saying stuff.
Find a clip real quick because it's very entertaining.
It's right off the bat.
You'll see it.
Anyways, eventually I said, so who's your favorite president?
He didn't want to answer it.
I said, tell me who's your favorite president?
And he said, Barack Obama.
Click on it.
He said, Barack Obama.
I said, and then go all the way to the end.
Just take it all the way to the end, all the way to the end, all the way to the end, all the way, little bit back, a little bit back, a little bit back.
I've had a blast with you.
Yeah.
One of my favorite interviews of all time.
Yeah.
I wish you nothing but the best.
Okay.
All good.
Take care of yourself.
Goodbye.
Bye-bye.
He doesn't seem happy.
Listen, go back, go back, go back, go back.
Oh, fucking asshole.
I wish you nothing but the best.
Okay.
All good.
Take care of yourself.
Goodbye.
Bye-bye.
What a fucking asshole.
You always say this is all the notes out of him.
And I got to tell you, it's one of my top 10 favorite interviews of all time.
You know why, though?
You know why, though?
Because he actually has a position.
Yeah.
And he was pushing so hard.
And he was not like he was hardcore on his position.
And we had banter.
And it was exciting.
So why were you an F asshole?
Because you were challenging him on his positions?
Because the only people he interviews with is people that agree with them.
And I was surprised that he said yes because I asked for him.
He said yes.
I said, great.
See, this is the challenge when sometimes like, oh, he's just a YouTuber and they're like, oh, shit, I'm sitting down with you.
You're sitting with this guy.
Oh, I wasn't ready for this.
Well, you should have done a little research.
I had no idea.
I thought this was just, that's all good.
I'm kind of glad you didn't do any research.
Thank you for not doing research because it allows us to have a little more fun.
Here's another question for you.
Do you think that given your Middle Eastern background that you take your foot off the pedal and are nicer to guests precisely because of the hospitality culture?
And before you answer, I do that because on Twitter, when I engage people, I can be quite irascible, right?
If you start pissing me off, I'm going to come after you and your ancestors and your future descendants, right?
I can be combative, right?
But if you come on my show, all that goes away because you're now a guest of mine.
And it's just simply gauche for me to.
So people will sometimes get upset at me and say, why didn't you destroy this guy?
I said, well, but he was a guest.
I can't.
There's a code of conduct once you agree to be in my home.
And so I'm wondering if you have the same kind of etiquette.
Yes, but if it gets okay, so for me, many times I've done interviews and I've looked like a fool because I didn't know the information and the other person's, but I'm learning.
So I'm not doing this because I'm trying to teach the world about what I know.
That my expertise is business.
I'm doing this because I'm going through the process of learning and recreating myself and I have certain philosophies and beliefs and I want it to get stronger.
And the only way that happens is by people saying, you're wrong.
And tell me why.
Never thought about that before.
How about this?
And then we go into that mode where he gets heated and there's a lot of banter.
Then comes out good ideas.
So I enjoy those and I'm respectful, but I have no problem pushing the envelope.
I mean, you have to realize.
I've sat with Sammy de Bulgarvano.
I mean, this guy's not like a, you know, I've sat with Michael Francis.
Yes, sir.
I've sat with the mobsters.
I've sat with Phil Leonetti, the former under boss of the Philadelphia crime family.
I've sat with, you know, people that I've done 30 years jail time.
I want to know like what the motive is with certain things.
So very respect no matter who the individual is.
This doesn't mean you support what life this person lived, but it's purely respect to want to learn.
And it's worked out well.
But today, listen, it was great having you on.
Finally to meet your face.
What a pleasure, guys.
Truly, I've enjoyed it so much.
Thank you so much for coming out.
And I'm looking forward.
Sorry, I liked it yesterday.
We had a descendant of the godfather on yesterday with Michael Francis.
Shout out to him.
And now we've got the actual Godfather on it.
Two guys are back to back, different kind of godfathers.
Exactly.
Folks, if you haven't read his book, please put the link below for people to be able to go buy his book.
Thursday, we're doing a podcast again.
Stay tuned for that.
We'll see you guys in two days.
When is your podcast?
You're doing Thursday as well.
Thursday afternoon.
And is there anything you got something going on with the dating surprise?
Figuring it out.
Some surprise.
We'll see what's going on.
Sounds good.
Jedediah today.
1 p.m.
Jedediah today, 1 p.m.
Having said that, brother, thank you so much for coming out.
