EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,018 words- 0:00 – 1:53
10th JRE appearance, academic CVs, and Saad’s new book on happiness
- GSGad Saad
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) How you doing?
- JRJoe Rogan
This is it. What's going on, man?
- GSGad Saad
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you.
- GSGad Saad
10th episode.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crazy.
- GSGad Saad
Unbelievable.
- JRJoe Rogan
What are the odds?
- GSGad Saad
Short of your regular crew, am I in the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you're in the league.
- GSGad Saad
... Hall of Fame?
- JRJoe Rogan
There's very few people that have had 10 episodes. It's a small handful, for sure.
- GSGad Saad
I mean, that, I should put that as the top thing on my CV.
- JRJoe Rogan
Eh.
- GSGad Saad
All the other stuff is bullshit.
- JRJoe Rogan
What does-
- GSGad Saad
10 times on Joe Rogan, drop the mic.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is how out of the corporate world I am, I don't even know what a CV is.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know what it stands for. I know people say it, I know what it means, but I don't know what it stands for.
- GSGad Saad
Want me to tell you what an academic CV looks like?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure. What just, what does it stand for, what is CV?
- GSGad Saad
Uh, curriculum vitae.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah, okay.
- GSGad Saad
Uh, you basically, in academia, you'll start with your education.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
All your degrees, all of your positions that you've held. I was assistant professor here, from here to there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
Then all of your journal publications, all of your books, all of your conference art, you know, and so on.
- 1:53 – 3:37
Tenure, cancellation attempts, and post–Oct 7 campus security fears
- GSGad Saad
Right, right. Uh, I'm, uh, nothing sticks. They've tried to cancel me in all sorts of ways, but that speaks, by the way, to one of the powerful reasons why tenure, despite the fact that a lot of people despise the concept of tenure, "Oh, it's just a bunch of lazy academics who are going to be dead wood for the next 30 years." But if I didn't have the protection of tenure, I'd be gone long ago. Now, that doesn't mean that I still haven't suffered many consequences, right? So I haven't gotten other jobs that I would have otherwise gotten because of how irreverent I am. You know, d- death threats, so for an example, now after October 7th, it's almost become impossible for me to go on campus because first of all, you know, I'm high profile, my university has a particular demographic reality, and so there are consequences to speaking out, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you, you can't go on campus, literally?
- GSGad Saad
I mean, I have gone, but during the, the points when there were a lot of, uh, protests outside, you know, the campus and so on, or, or on campus, because the, our campus is an urban campus, so it's hard to say where-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- GSGad Saad
... where the school begins and where the, the city is.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right.
- GSGad Saad
Uh, you know, you have death to Jews and the free, free Palestine-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
... and Intifada and, uh, from the river to the sea-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
... and there's 800 of them screaming and you're gonna come in, many of them know who you are, they know that I'm not very supportive of their positions, and so it's going to be, you know, a bit challenging. So on a few cases, I've, I did it via Zoom. Other times, I had to have security with me, so I would, I'd have to check in to security and they'd have to walk with me to s- to class and so on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh.
- GSGad Saad
That's not a good thing. I'll t- I'll tell you another quick story, if I may.
- JRJoe Rogan
Please.
- 3:37 – 5:14
Lebanese-Jewish identity and the return of open antisemitism in Canada
- GSGad Saad
About what happened after October 7th, so I'll first talk about what happened in Lebanon. So the day that we escaped from Lebanon, for those of your viewers who don't know about us, we're Lebanese Jews, we were there until the start of the civil war, we were there in the first year of the civil war and then we had to leave 'cause it became impossible to be Jewish in Lebanon. When we left that day fr- it was from Beirut to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Montreal. As we cleared the airspace of Lebanon, the captain... I, I discussed this in chapter one of my previous book, The Parasitic Mind. Uh, h- he said, "Okay, we're now out of Lebanese airspace." And so my, I said my wife, my mother pulls out a pendulant with a Star of David, puts it around me, my, my neck, and says, "Now you can wear this, be proud and not hide your identity." Now, that's in the past, but now I'm gonna link it to the current reality. About three weeks after October 7th, my wife and son came to pick me up from a café where I was working on my laptop. My, my wife had picked up my son who was playing a soccer match in the east end of the city. And so as I got into the car, he says, "Daddy, if you had come to where I was playing soccer today and you were wearing a Star of David, you'd be dead." So 1975, a, a Star of David is put around me and now I can wear it proudly. 45 years later, I better not wear a Star of David in Montreal, Canada. That doesn't bode too well, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
At a kids' soccer game.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah, because the demographic reality in that neighborhood is such that a Star of David would be viewed as provocative incitement.
- 5:14 – 9:15
Rogan on antisemitism after Oct 7: normalization, institutions, and online amplification
- JRJoe Rogan
What, what's crazy to me is regardless of how you feel about how the Israeli military and the army is pursuing the war in Gaza, regardless of that, the blatant just out and the open antisemitism that we see today-
- GSGad Saad
It's unbelievable.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Like, like roaches coming out of the woodwork. Like, what? Like, you see it all over social media and it's like, this, if this was September and not October, like if this was just, uh, y- you would be, you would be shunned, everybody would be like, "This is horrible. How the fuck could you say this? How are you... You're openly anti-Semitic? You're openly blaming the Jews for all the world's problems?" Like, this is crazy. This is Nazi shit. And yet you're seeing it-... everywhere now. When those teachers were in front of Congress, when those principals of those-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... universities were in front of Congress, and they were saying that it's not harassment to say death to the Jews unless it's actionable.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is the craziest-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... mental, verbal gymnastics I have ever heard anyone say that's in that position, in a position of being the head of Harvard. It was so crazy to watch. It's so crazy to see. It's almost like we live in an alternative timeline.
- GSGad Saad
I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like we entered into a new dimension. Like, in our sleep, we woke up.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're in a new place.
- GSGad Saad
You know, uh, nothing should surprise me, given the history that I have growing up in the Middle East. But I was taken aback after October 7th at the Jew hatred that I was exposed to. Now, my positions are really not inflammatory. So for example, I'll say things like, uh, you know, "I'm, I'm worried about my f..." I have a lot of extended family in Israel, right? So after the October 7th happened, for me to just kind of call around to make sure that none of my cousins and their children and aunts and so on, no one was harmed, will take a while. Well, that itself, the fact that I cared about my family was incitement, was... (laughs) I, I'm a Zionist. I'm a baby killer. Right? I am personally responsible for the IDF killing any innocent children. But it's not just that. It's coming at you from all directions. So in the past, you could say, "Okay, Islamic sources are going to send you Jew hatred." And I'm used to that. You could say, "The Neo-Nazi alt-right types, you know, Jews will not replace us." They're coming after me. You've gotten, of course, the academic progressive left types who are also anti-Zionists, which is just cold, sweet word for anti-Jewish. And so everywhere you turn, there is Jew hatred, and it's so normalized. Now, of course, in part, it is, uh, emboldened by the fact that a lot of them are anonymous. They don't put their real names, so they can take the liberty to be this-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
... orgiastically, you know, Jew hater. But it just, it, it, uh, it's so disenchanting to see that that guy could be my gardener. He could be my surgeon. He could be my dentist.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
I don't know who he is, but there are millions of those folks who hold those beliefs. It's unbelievable.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think a lot of them are fake as well. I think a lot of them are Russian and Chinese trolls. I think there's a, a disturbing amount of them that's responsible for, uh, d- d- taking this kind of discourse and, uh, and pushing it to a much higher level, and, and making it more ubiquitous. I, I really, really believe that. And there's a lot of data to support that. And I think that's part of what's going on with social media. It's je- definitely a big part of what's going on with Twitter and TikTok and a lot of these things we see is very inflammatory messages that seem to be pushed. They're, they're, they're, they're pushed through and promoted and like-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to the fact that you get them all the time. They, they, they show up in your feed all the time. Even if you're not subscribed to these-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... even if you're not following these people, you'll find this disturbing content will show up in your feed.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- 9:15 – 11:17
Campus protest culture, virtue signaling, and ‘Queers for Palestine’ as parasitic thinking
- JRJoe Rogan
And I really w- firmly believe that we're being manipulated. I really do. And I think there's a lot of these young kids that are on these campuses that are very malleable. They're very easily influenced. And they don't need, they d- I mean, so many... I'm, I'm so, sure you've seen Konstantin Kisin from Trigonometry.
- GSGad Saad
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's done these interviews with these people, these protests.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so many of them are completely ignorant. They have no idea what... They're just doing it because they think they're a good person.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They're, they're putting up their flag of virtue by saying-
- GSGad Saad
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
... free Palestine, from the river to the sea, and they don't even know what that means.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what do you s- do you know what you're saying? Do, you're saying-
- GSGad Saad
What-
- JRJoe Rogan
... you're saying wipe out Israel? Is that what you're saying?
- GSGad Saad
Not only that. In a lot of cases, they're supporting regimes or ideologies-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
... that would be perf- perfectly antithetical to their main identity. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
... Queers for Palestine-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
... chickens for Kentucky Fried Chicken-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
... or I like to use geese for foie gras-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
... because I'm from Montreal. Uh, I mean, imagine if you present yourself to the world with your queer identity, which is great. Good for you. And now you decide, "Okay, let me see. Should I be supporting Tel Aviv, which is one of the most queer friendly places? I mean, short of Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Tel Aviv is right up there." So you would think that if my key identity, my def- definitional identity is my queerness, that I'm certainly putting all my chips with Tel Aviv. No, it's with Queers for Palestine. So, that's exactly what parasitic thinking is, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And I think, I really do think that's supported by other countries. I think they, they realize how vulnerable and idiotic a lot of Americans are, and they're just pushing that. And to, whether you realize it or not, social media, even if they're saying something ridiculous, it's very influential. And they can just move the boundaries a little bit by having the most extreme content-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the most ridiculous things be so common than less extreme content that would ordinarily be considered ridiculous now becomes accepted as normalized.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is what you're seeing.
- 11:17 – 20:01
Israel–Gaza moral calculus: outcomes vs intent, casualties, and the ‘genocide’ language battle
- GSGad Saad
Yeah, exactly. Uh, can I point... I mean, you alluded to it, uh, earlier about, you know, what the IDF might be doing. Can I just mention a few things about that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- GSGad Saad
And I'm hardly the spokesperson of the IDF, but just, it's an idea that I've been toying with, and I'll pitch it here for the first time. So you know this notion of equality of opportunities with-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- GSGad Saad
... versus equality of outcomes?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
Typically, we, we, we link it to all of the woke stuff, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
So, equality of opportunities is great. Equality of outcomes is a, is a cancer to, to human dignity. Okay. Let's now apply that concept, equality of outcomes, to war casualties. So I think this is what happens when people say, "Oh, but the IDF is being grotesque." Because the currency that then matters becomes how many dead on each side? Equality of outcome. But let me change it to a different moral currency. Okay? Let's talk about intent. So for example, in, in the, in the, uh, justice system, you could have a person who is found guilty of involuntarily vehicle, vehicular homicide and he kills four, four people. Okay? So f- four are dead. So that's equality of outcome. Four were died. Versus someone who-... took out a hit on his entire family, his, his brother, sister, and parents, so that he can gain- wi- win the insurance money. But it's an undercover operation. The cops catch you. Even though, in that case, there were zero killed, correct? That person will get a higher sentence because we understand in the law that intent matters. So, now I think you know where I'm going with the analogy. So in the Palestinian-IDF conflict when, say, Hamas launches 6,000 rockets, every single one of which is intercepted by the Iron Dome. Had they not had the Iron Dome, then the, the outcome could have been that 50,000 would have been killed, right? I- in an ideal world, from Hamas's perspective, our intent would be to eradicate every last Jew. They have it in their charter. So yes, it is true that if we just count the number of people who were killed on October 7th versus the number who were killed in the retaliation, if that's the only calculus that matters, then, oh yes, the IDF has gone way overboard. But once you change it to an existential intent issue, then maybe it's not such a, a- as bad of an outcome as, as you'd think. E- notwithstanding that a single innocent dead is a tragedy.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's ... You could say it that way, but the problem with that is the Iron Dome does exist, and Hamas' military capabilities f- are far below Israel's. It, it would be like if, uh, some small person tried to punch me and I moved out of the way and then beat them to death. And I said, "No, I had to defend myself, I beat them to death." But I didn't have to beat them to death, they're just small person. If, even if they hit me, it wouldn't really hurt me.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not ... there's ... You know what I'm saying?
- GSGad Saad
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, defensively, I'm not worried about a, a real small person that doesn't know how to fight who throws a punch at me.
- GSGad Saad
So what would, what would be, in your moral calculus, the ideal outcome that should have happened as a retaliation to October 7th?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a very good question. Obviously, I'm not a military analyst. Uh, if I was, y- you know, you, you do have to take in consideration the tunnels, you do have to c- take into consideration the infrastructure. The question is, did they just knowingly bomb places where there was gonna be hundreds and hundreds of innocent civilians knowing that there's gonna be a few Hamas?
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's what scares people. What scares people is that someone is willing to kill women and children just to get at bad guys, and they just say that's just part of the game. That, that seems horrific in the 2024, uh, understanding of human life and morality and the, just the horrors of war. That, you know, they're blowing up mosques, they're blowing up schools, they're blowing up apartment buildings, everything, anything where they think Hamas is.
- GSGad Saad
So again, let me preface, and, and I shouldn't have to say this, that a single person killed-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
... that's innocent is a tragedy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- GSGad Saad
But compare that reality to almost any other war that you have in working memory. Why is there a unique, unbelievably high threshold of morality that is placed on the Israeli nation, right? Now you probably already know this. The IDF does go through a lot of e- painstaking effort to try to minimize that, right? They drop leaflets in Arabic, they even sometimes call people in Arabic and say, "Don't go in this area." They hold ... So of course they've killed many, many innocent people. But they're placed between a rock and a hard place. What, what can you do, right? The other side knows exactly that if they do exactly how they, what they're doing, uh, either you don't retaliate and we win, or you retaliate very harshly as they have, and then you still win, right? Today, the propaganda war has been completely won by Hamas, right? Uh, there's a complete genocide in the informational war against the IDF, right? One other point, and then I'll cede the floor back to you. This, the term genocide, Jacques Derrida was a very famous, uh, postmodernist who developed the field of deconstructionism. Language creates reality, right? He was one of the guys who allowed the, the ecosystem of up is down, men could be women, left is right, slavery is freedom, right? It's that postmodernist game that allows these kind of insane ideas to flourish. Well, when you misuse words like everything is a genocide, that's, that does, that does no one, uh, a service. There is no genocide. There is a, uh, uh, a killing of a lot of people. Again, every single one killed is a tragedy. But if Israel wanted to commit a genocide, by the end of my appearing on this 10th time on this show, there wouldn't be a single Palestinian left. So if they were genocidal in their intent, then they really are shitty genocidal maniacs, because first of all, uh, the p- population, as you know, of, uh, the Palestinian territories has gone up, uh, five folds, right? So that's really sucky genocide. And they've killed, uh, depending on the count ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but that's all previous to this, this military action that's going on now.
- GSGad Saad
What are the numbers that-
- JRJoe Rogan
The population-
- GSGad Saad
... that you know of-
- JRJoe Rogan
... is going on right now? It's hard to say. You know, I mean, Israel has one statistic and then there's other statistics by human rights organizations that it estimate at least 12,000 missing in the rubble that are probably dead and 30,000 dead. Now, at the, uh, the number of those 30,000, what percentage is Hamas? I'm not sure.
- GSGad Saad
So I've heard the, the, the most favorable estimates to, to the IDF are about one-to-one ratio. The less estimate, it's about one to 1.5, okay? One to two- up to one to two. So if they-
- JRJoe Rogan
So if they killed 30,000 people, 15,000 are Hamas?
- 20:01 – 30:53
Why peace fails: ideology, Islamism, and historical claims over territory
- GSGad Saad
There is another way, but I don't think it'll happen. Can I share it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
So Golda Meir, who was the fourth or fifth, uh, prime minister of Israel from, I think, 1969 to 1974, has two quotes, which I'm gonna paraphrase. I don't have the exact quotes. She said, "If the, if the Jews put down their arms, uh, there'll be a genocide. If the Palestinians put down their arms, there'll be peace." So just remember that for a second.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
Second one is, "If the Arabs..." and she means, in this case, the Palestinian-Arabs. "If they were to, uh, love their children more than they hate ours, then there'd be peace." So why am I saying these two quotes? Because this battle is really not about land. It's... And, and in a sense, we've already addressed this on previous shows where I've come and discussed about some of these Islamic issues. It is an existential affront that the Jewish states, state exists in the Middle East. So look at all other religious minorities across Arabia. Egypt used to be completely Coptic Christian, 100%, many hundred years ago. Today, there are 10% Copts left. What happened to those Copts? There used to be tons of Christians in Syria. What happened to those Syrians? There used to be tons of Christians in Lebanon. They still are some, about 30%, 35%, but it, Lebanon used to be a majority Christian country. So the goal of Islam, not individual Muslims, right? Again, I don't need to preface by saying there are millions and millions of lovely, kind, peaceful Muslims. Of course there is. But Islam as an ideology, does it tolerate others? Well, we have 1,400 years of history that either says it does or it doesn't, right? We don't have to watch TikTok videos. And nothing could be clearer than what the words of Muhammad were, the Prophet of Islam, who said that you need to rid Arabia of Christians, but certainly the Jews. So the existence of the land of Israel is an affront to that. One more point and I'll cede the floor back to you. In Islam, there's a concept called Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. That means the House of Islam and the House of War. Anything that's under the Islamic control is good. Anything that's yet to be under Islamic control is under the House of War. Once a territory is under Islamic control and you lose it, you have to get it back. It is your dominion forever. This is why, for example, Andal- Andalusia, which was at one point controlled, which is in current Spain, which was controlled by the Moors, an Islamic, uh, Con- Conquistador. Uh, a lot of Ji- Jihadists will say, "Inshallah, we have to reconquer Andalusia. It is our land." Because once it's under... So Israel existentially cannot exist. So why am I saying all this? You can't have peace if you have the other side that truly never wants for you to exist. That's the bottom line. If you can change people's heart where they say, "Look, I get a piece of land, you get another piece, let's build an incredible, vibrant, co-society together," you'll have peace. But if you're taught from straight out of the womb that the Jews is the reason for every calamity in the world, you're not going to have peace.
- JRJoe Rogan
But don't you think that there are Jews and there are Israelis that treat Palestinians as if they're less?
- GSGad Saad
Uh, uh, there, there is that in, in Texas in terms of treating people who are Hispanic. Uh, the darkness of the human heart is not monopolized by one group. There are super nasty Jews and they are incredibly lovely and kind Jews. There are super nice Muslims and incredibly brutal Muslims. So there is no monopoly on the darkness of the human heart. So I can see that. Of course there are Jews that are not very keen on having Palestinian neighbors. But as someone who grew up in the two worlds, right? I'm an Arabic-speaking Jew. I hang around with tons of Muslims. I hang around with tons of Jews. Have I ever heard somebody in my Jewish family say, "Oh God, I can't wait for us to eradicate the 1.52 billion Muslims in the world"? I've never heard that. Have I heard incessantly all the time about, "Inshallah, we'll get rid of the Jews," every second? You just have to say, "Hi, Ahmad." The next line is, "God damn it, we gotta get rid of the Jews." Now, it's, it's become a lot-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it really that common where you are?
- GSGad Saad
It, it's as common as the heat in Texas. It is definitional. As a matter of fact, I introduced a game, I mean facetiously, but I mean it seriously, Six Degrees of Jew. So that, that's a play on Six Degrees of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Kevin Bacon.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly. So I give you a calamity in the world and you've got up to six causal steps to blame the Jews. So an Amazonian frog just died in the Amazon. Go.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- GSGad Saad
And so I will post these on Twitter and people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh.
- GSGad Saad
... give answers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
Now, oftentimes they're just playing along, but that's the mindset. You got diabetes?Well, that's because the Jews, who are controlling the pharmaceutical industry, are not releasing the drug. I'll give you an a- a- a recent one that I faced.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- GSGad Saad
So I put up a, uh, police lineup of some guys that had been caught in Huddersfield, which is a town in England, who had been grooming and raping young British white girls. And you may or may not know this, I'm not sure if we've discussed it in the past, in, in Britain, over the past 25 years, there's been an unbelievable industrial scale level grooming and raping of young white girls by Asian men. That's a euphemism for men of a certain religious heritage, but you say it's, they're Asian. So their names are, let me summarize them for you, Mohammed, Ahmed, Mohammed, Ahmed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Ahmed, Ahmed, Mohammed, Ahmed, Ahmed, Mohammed, Ahmed, and Mohammed. Okay? So I put those up and I sarcastically said, "Um, I don't have a big enough brain to do the big data analytics to understand what is the commonality across all those gentlemen. Could anybody help me?" Do you know how many people wrote to me and blamed it on the Jews? Not facetiously. So now I'm gonna ask you, Joe, on-
- JRJoe Rogan
How?
- GSGad Saad
... ex- I was just gonna ask you that. How is it when three Mohammed's rape your 12-year-old British girl, you blame it on Mordechai? Three Mohammed's lead to Mordechai. Tell me how. You tell me.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know. How do they do it?
- GSGad Saad
Who let them in? It's the Jewish cabal who controls immigration policy. It's George Soros, the Jew, who controls the open society, uh, ideology.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think you could really just connect George Soros to Jewish if you look at his policies.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
He seems anti-western civilization.
- GSGad Saad
I, I agree. But for the, for the Jew hater, a- a- any, any causal explanation-
- JRJoe Rogan
So one individual who just happens to be Jewish.
- GSGad Saad
Or they point to some other one. There's one, I, I never... I don't even know who she is. I think Barbara Lerner or something. Somebody will correct us in the comment section, where they show her saying something, "Oh, you know, we need to flood." And she happens to be Jewish. But for every Jewish person who is pro open door policy, there's a counter Jewish person, here is one, who is not for open border policies, right? Stephen Miller, who worked in the Trump administration is Jewish. He's probably the biggest anti-open door immigration. So, but that's the mindset of the Jew hater. Everything is blamed. There, there's this incredible diabolical feature of the Jew that they're able to, at times, pretend that they're victims, but really they're diabolical and genocidal. It's grotesque, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's weird. It's just weird that it, it came, became so out in the open, and that's what makes me think that they're being influenced. I just, I just can't imagine there was that much antisemitism before October 7th.
- 30:53 – 37:51
Immigration, ‘suicidal empathy,’ and whether chaos is intentional
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, let me ask you this. Why do you think that stuff is happening? Why do you think there's this mass immigration?
- GSGad Saad
So that's, that's a great question. So it's, it, it's covered partly in Parasitic Mind, my earlier book, and in my next book, which I call Suicidal Empathy, right? So empathy is a emotion that has evolved for very clear evolutionary reasons. So just like any of our other emotions, for example, envy, there, there are evolutionary reasons why we've evolved the emotion of envy, right? It can compel us forward. I see that Joe's doing well.... keeping up with the Joneses, maybe it'll get me off my fat ass so I can work harder. So there are very clear evolutionary reasons why empathy exists. But the problem is when empathy misfires, it either becomes hyperactive or it misfires in, in directing the empathy to the wrong person. So for example, uh, illegal immigrants more important than American vets. Right? Uh, and I can show you many public policies where you have these insane policies, all of which are due to suicidal empathy. So to answer your question, I think that the Western mind is we are kind, tolerant, compassionate, empathetic people. There are people out there, they're Guatemalan, they're Honduran, they're Yemeni who don't have it as well as we do. Wouldn't it be nice if we open up our doors? So the reflex is a noble one. It's a nice one, but it exists in unicornia. The real world doesn't operate that way. If you let in people that have a huge hatred of homosexuality, are you going to have an increase in homophobia in your country or a decrease, right? So, so I think that's the, the answer, the answer is misdirected empathy across the West.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it really that simple?
- GSGad Saad
I, I do-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it seems like it's happened so rapidly that it, it seems like a plan, like a plan to create more chaos.
- GSGad Saad
I ... So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it's, it's happened ... The, the border policy in America is puzzling. It's very b- it's baffling because it seems like there's a plan, the, the flood the country.
- GSGad Saad
So it's a, it's a c- sort of a conspiratorial kind of cabal-
- JRJoe Rogan
I- it, it seems like there's something going on that's allowing it to happen, even though everyone recognizes it's a problem and it's solvable, but they don't solve it. In fact, the, the, the United States government is actively tried to stop Texas from enforcing-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... their border.
- GSGad Saad
So what ... But I think that's just ... So I've often tweeted that the most dangerous weapon in, in human context is a parasitized mind, right? I mean, a bomb is dangerous, but it is, it is the human mind that activates that bomb, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
It's, it's a guy with a little mustache that said that Jews are the real problem in the world, and I need to get rid of the world-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
... of that parasite, right? So parasitic thinking, I mean, the ... one of the reasons I think that that book did so well is because it really explained how all of these parasitic ideas came to a head together, and they were all spawned on university campuses over the past 40 to 80 years. So one, one hypothesis is what you said, which is there is kind of a grand scheme that's willfully doing this. Another one is that all of the Western leaders of roughly the same age, I mean within 20 years of each other, are all a product of a Western education, university education, that was completely infected with these dreadful parasitic ideas so that when these leaders go out there and have the power to enact policies, they enact these policies. So my view is slightly different from yours in that I don't think that there is a supra, mega, you know, willful, uh, plan. It's just that all of those Western leaders are the product of a really shitty university system.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Right. But there's obviously two schools of thought, right? There's the left wing school of thought and the right wing school of thought in regards to this. The right wing school of thought wants to seal our borders, wants to secure the borders, wants to stop illegal immigration. The left wing wants ... I mean I don't know what they want because they, they start talking about border policies being a problem as well, and they start talking about the issue with the border, and they try to blame Trump for the issues with the border-
- GSGad Saad
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... which is always hilarious.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But they're just so ... With that kind of stuff, with blaming, like when Biden blames Trump for things that he clearly did, it's just gaslighting, right? And it's just, it just shows you how little respect they have for people's ability to understand what's actually-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... going on.
- GSGad Saad
Well, look, suicidal empathy, we ... I mean we can move beyond the border. How about, say, in the justice system? Suicidal empathy results in you caring more about the perpetrator than the victim. That's suicidal empathy, right? Because that argument h- ... So here's how the ... that leftist argument works. If a person, especially a criminal of color, commits a crime, that's probably because he grew up as a person of color, so he's already been marginalized by the society.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
So now he commits a crime. You're now double whamming him by putting him in the penal system, so you need to be more caring. So he's already got fif- 57 previous arrests, let's give him a 58th chance. So again, I don't think it comes from ... It, it comes from really parasitized thinking, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. But that ... those policies are supported by George Soros-
- GSGad Saad
That's true.
- JRJoe Rogan
... specifically. And then when he actively goes after DA's-
- GSGad Saad
DA's, exactly.
- 37:51 – 43:52
Trump trials, precedent-setting prosecutions, and the psychology of changing one’s mind
- GSGad Saad
Right. What do you think about what's going on with, uh, your boyfriend Trump these days?
- JRJoe Rogan
What? Oh, the, the trials?
- GSGad Saad
The trials.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fascinating. You know, I had Mike Baker on, who was a formerly a CIA operative, formerly, uh-huh.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, but y- y- we were, we were talking about that, that no one's ever been charged for something like that before. No one's ever been prosecuted for something like that before, certainly no political opponents. And my, my thing is the danger, the, the people that are on the left that don't understand that now you've set a precedent, you've set a terrible precedent, and if Trump does get in office, what is to stop him from going after all of his political enemies-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in the same exact way?
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Y- y- are we gonna do this now? Every time someone's i- a position of power, whether it's a governor or whether it's a president or what have you, when they have a political opponent, they, they will hire people to go after that political opponent and, uh, j- trump up a bunch, trump up, w- no pun intended-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... a bunch of bullshit charges and drag 'em through the courts so that everybody's, y- the people that only have a peripheral understanding of what's going on say, "Oh, my God, he's a criminal. Keep that criminal outta the White House." Like, okay.
- GSGad Saad
Do you think a lot of people who historically had been against Trump are now honest enough to see what a sham this whole thing is and are revising their positions, or do you think that-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's quite a few, yes.
- GSGad Saad
Y- really? Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but it takes a lot of bravery to do that, and it, it, depending upon your social environment, you know, there's a lot of people that just can't step outside the lines of-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... whatever the ideology their neighborhood is attached to and their, their community is attached to.
- GSGad Saad
The, the reason why I asked the question is because I, I recently appeared maybe about five, six months ago on a British psychiatrist show, it was small show, but I thought he was a really interesting guy. He wanted to talk about how you apply evolution in psychiatry and so on. So I was like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GSGad Saad
... "Let's do it." At, towards the end of the show, or maybe it was even the last question, he, he said, "In your 30-year career as a behavioral scientist, as a professor, what is the singular human phenomena that has surprised you the most?" Which I thought was an amazing question I had never been asked before.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Good question.
- GSGad Saad
So, yeah, i- it's amazing one because, you know, I've seen tons of stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
And so I paused for a moment, and then I said, "I think it's the inability of people to change their opinions once they are anchored in a position."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- GSGad Saad
And so that, so it was in that spirit that I was asking you the question-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- GSGad Saad
... have some... Because in my experience, despite the fact that I have a chapter in The Parasitic Mind on how to seek truth, and therefore I'm offering a vaccine against falsehoods, I'm actually quite pessimistic for some people who go, "La, la, la. I don't wanna hear it."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- 43:52 – 51:25
Ego in science: Semmelweis, ulcers, blank-slate ideology, and academic resistance
- GSGad Saad
Yeah. And, and I'm glad we're talking about the inability to admit to a wrongdoing in science. Because oftentimes when you think about people who are anchored in their positions, you think about political arguments. You think that somehow, you romanticize scientists as being unbiased purveyors and pursuers of the truth, and nothing could be further from, from the truth. B- So I'll give you just a couple of examples, historical examples.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- GSGad Saad
I mean, of course Galileo...
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- GSGad Saad
... is, is a perfect example. Copernicus is a great example.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GSGad Saad
Uh, Darwin is a great example. But let's look at some other ones that people may not be familiar with. So, I think his name, I don't know, not sure how you pronounce this, Semmelweis. He was the gentleman who arguably has saved more people than anybody else in medicine. Do, do you have any idea who it is?
- JRJoe Rogan
No. Is it the, uh, penicillin guy?
- GSGad Saad
Not the penicillin. That's, um, what's his name? Sir Fleming.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- GSGad Saad
I think that's Fleming. He's a, I think he was a Scottish, um, uh, physician, if I'm not mistaken. No, this guy is the gentleman who, uh, told other physicians that they should...
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wash their hands.
- GSGad Saad
Wash their hands.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- GSGad Saad
So, do you remember? He was a, I think he was a Hungarian, uh, physician, who was noticing that a lot of ... there was this huge mortality rate of women as they were giving birth. And so he started running these naturally occurring experiments where you either ... So, the, the physician has just worked on a cadaver...
- JRJoe Rogan
(inhales deeply)
- GSGad Saad
And then goes and does the obstet- obstetrics.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- GSGad Saad
Okay. So when he said, "Wash your hands," he, he, he died, I think, penniless, destitute, in a mental asylum or something. Right? And then later people said, "Oops, he was right." Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause they didn't understand bacteria back then.
- GSGad Saad
They didn't understand bacte- What, what? Yeah, that guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right?
- GSGad Saad
That's it. Semmelweis, exactly.
- GUGuest
C- Cadaveric particles? Does that mean...
- GSGad Saad
Cadavers.
- GUGuest
Cadavers.
- GSGad Saad
Cadavers.
- GUGuest
Right, yeah.
- GSGad Saad
So...
- JRJoe Rogan
So every case of childhood fever was caused by re- resorption of cadaveric particles. Oh my God.
- 51:25 – 1:04:08
Evolutionary psychology deep-dive: phobias, adaptive memory biases, and animal intelligence
- GSGad Saad
So I ... uh, 'cause you mentioned memory. So, maybe I could talk about how you study memory from an evolutionary perspective.
- JRJoe Rogan
Please.
- GSGad Saad
Uh, so is that where ... Can I ask you this before we start?
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- GSGad Saad
Do you think that's where like ophidiophobia and g- arachnophobia and things like that come from?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So there is actually a lot of research looking at the evolutionary roots of phobia. That's studied in evolutionary clinical psychology and in Darwinian psychiatry and-
- GSGad Saad
But the, the ones for me or that are fascinating are, uh, ophidiophobia and arachnophobia, fear of snakes and fear of spiders.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah.
- GSGad Saad
Because, uh, that evolutionarily makes sense. Exactly. We, we-
- JRJoe Rogan
If you either got bit and survived or you saw someone get bit or you s- ... you know, and you see a spider and you're like, "Oh, shit."
- GSGad Saad
But that's why, by the way, y- you don't go see your clinical psychologist because you have a fear of guns or fears of cars-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- GSGad Saad
... even though cars and guns kill a lot more people if, if, if-
- JRJoe Rogan
Than spiders. Right.
- GSGad Saad
Exactly. If, if you go ... if you study the manifestations of clinical cases of phobia, they're exactly what you're saying, uh, because you get-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, 'cause I ... you know, from doing Fear Factor-
- GSGad Saad
Oh, that's it. Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
... we would encounter people that had both of those.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And man, when you see it in real life, it's like a person's possessed by a demon.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's crazy.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
When you see like high-level ophidiophobia and people see snakes, their whole body starts shaking. They can't keep their hands still. It's crazy, man.
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not like, you know, I see a dog who looks like a scary dog. Like, "Whoa. Keep away from that dog." It's not like that. It's like your whole body ...
- GSGad Saad
By the way, I, I actually ... I, I don't think it's at the clinical level, but in, in The Parasitic Mind, in chapter one, I talk about the maladaptive or maybe adaptive phobia that I have of mosquitoes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- GSGad Saad
So if, if ... So early in, in my marriage to my wife, maybe that was one of the best ways to test if she'd, she'd go the r- the whole route with me, is we were traveling to Antigua and we had the misfortune of some ... you know, it's in the Caribbeans. There are a lotta mosquitoes. And there are ... a couple of mosquitoes got in. I spent with her, with her complete patience, probably till 2:00 in the morning, tracking and killing every single mosquito in that, uh, condo-
- JRJoe Rogan
Damn.
- 1:04:08 – 1:38:26
Food ethics and ecology: factory farming vs regenerative systems (and ‘plants are alive’)
- GSGad Saad
But here's the... I'm scared to ask this. They become pets, you don't eat them, right? Or do you-
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I don't eat... I will, I will if somebody fucks around, if somebody tries to hurt somebody. I'll grab those little fuckers.
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They're little dinosaurs. When, when, uh, one of them was younger, um, uh, this was my old group of chickens that I had when my youngest daughter was a baby. They were pecking her feet. And I, I, there was this one county chicken that we had and, uh-
- GSGad Saad
Ah, I feel like this is gonna be a-
- JRJoe Rogan
... and my, my wife was like-
- GSGad Saad
... Christine known moment.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, no, no.
- GSGad Saad
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, no, no. Nobody died.
- GSGad Saad
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
My wife... Unfortunately, they all did. They all... Coyotes got them.
- GSGad Saad
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
And dogs. Long story. Anyway, point is, I go, "No, she's trying to eat the baby's feet."
- GSGad Saad
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you gotta understand, this is not, this is not like-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... she thinks that's a worm.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
She thinks she can get away with eating... They eat each other. They fucking peck at each other. They, they'll ki- they'll murder a mouse. Have you never seen a chicken and a mouse together? Whoo.
- GSGad Saad
Really, huh?
- JRJoe Rogan
We had a fence, and this is very unfortunate, but we had a fence that was glass. And, uh, one of the side effects of this glass fence was hawks. And hawks would be swooping down trying to get a rat or s- some other rodent or something and they'd bam-
- GSGad Saad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... nosedive into this glass, and we lost like three hawks. We're like, "This is fucked up." You know, I was like, "Maybe we should go back to the other fence." My wife was like, "Fuck you. I like this fence." (laughs) So it was, it was one of those conversations where we were like, like, th- this seems like it's our fault that these hawks died.
- GSGad Saad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? So one of them made it. One of them lived and they took the hawk and they put it in like a big, like, washing machine box and contacted this wildlife rescue thing. And they said, "Well, okay, if you're gonna have it, 'cause we're not open until Monday, you gotta feed it then." So what do you feed it? So you have to go to the store. So we went to the pet store, they get these things called pinkies. And what pinkies are just baby mice. They're baby mice that have... They're not gonna live. They're, they're separated from their mother, you feed them to reptiles.
- GSGad Saad
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's gross, right?
- GSGad Saad
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, uh, so the hawk ate most of them, but he didn't eat one. So they were like, "We're gonna raise it." I go, "Listen, you can't just do that. You can't just like feed a bunch of these little things to this giant raptor and then say, 'Now we're gonna take this one that survived and raise it.'" First of all, the nightmares that little fucker would have. But second of all, it's not viable, it's not gonna... It needs-
Episode duration: 3:30:24
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