Joe Rogan Experience #2263 - Gad Saad

Gad Saad is Visiting Professor and Global Ambassador at Northwood University, and an expert in the application of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. He is the host of "The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad" podcast, and the author of several books, including "The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life." http://www.gadsaad.com Take ownership of your health with AG1 and get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free Travel Packs with your first subscription. Go to http://drinkag1.com/joerogan This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter — 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE at http://ziprecruiter.com/rogan

Joe RoganhostGad SaadguestGuest (unidentified third speaker)guest

Jan 28, 20253h 4mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,074 words

0:00 – 1:59
Intro
1. JRJoe Rogan
  (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays)
2. GSGad Saad
  My man. Joe Rogan. Good to see you again. (laughs) You're gorgeous. You are too, you beautiful bastard. Shut up. Come on. Can I read you something? Oh, okay. You wanna read me something? This is from my son- Okay. ... just before I came on the show. "Hi, Daddy. I was wondering if the show will be live anywhere, and tell Joe that I say hello and I love his show." Oh. You just made his life. How old is he? Well, last week was his bar mitzvah. Oh, so he's 13. He's 13. Okay. And it was- That's about the age you shouldn't be listening to my show yet. (laughs) You used to disturb me, uh, when I would meet my youngest daughter's friends when they were, uh, before high school. Yeah. And they would say they love my podcast. I was like, "Geez, this is really not for you. Like, some of these subjects- Yeah, yeah, yeah. ... is not for you." But the kids today, they're not, uh, 12-year-olds when I was a 12-year-old. Yeah. These kids have a far more advanced understanding of the world, for good or for bad. Yeah. Yeah. Probably l- ... I mean, I don't know if it's good or bad, 'cause I mean, I think, uh, uh, our childhood we were more exposed to things than our parents were. I don't necessarily think that's bad, so why would I think it's bad for kids today? I think the explosion though is- Yeah. ... (clears throat) you could go on and see porn that you and I don't even know they exist. Yeah, it is an issue. Yeah. (clears throat) That, that most certainly is a problem. But I don't know, um, if it's worse or better. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I would rather have the l- loss of innocence that I had as a 14-year-old than the loss of innocence my parents had. I think they just lived in a more ignorant time, and with knowledge, you're also gonna get all the bad stuff. Like, I see a lot of assassination videos. Yeah. Okay.
1:59 – 3:36
The Age of Innocence
1. GSGad Saad
  (exhales) You know, it's funny you say a, uh, the age of innocence, because I've always said that the two things that protect me in life were my Belgian Shepherds, whom, whom I love. And I, I saw by the way that you were talking recently about Belgian Malinois. Yeah. So my, we've ... My kids have grown up with ... By, by the way, the Belgian Malinois is one of four types of Belgian Shepherds. The only difference across the four types is that the Belgian Malinois has short hair- Ah. ... whereas the ones that we had have long hair. They even look more wolfish, more intimidating. And- Scary dogs. And so anyways, so I always said that the two things that protect me when I sort of enter the, the sanctity of my home was the love of my family, my Belgian Shepherds, and the innocence of my children. Mm. Because, you know, the world- Right. ... out there is ugly, and then you go back home- That's true. And so once that becomes polluted, because they just know more, I feel like I'm losing part of them. Mm. That's interesting. Um, I don't think you should think that way. (laughs) I think they're human beings and you should want them to know things. It's just that- Yeah. ... we enjoy the position of being the person that has all the deep, dark knowledge of the world and dealing with this innocent child that wants to watch- Yeah. ... Dora the Explorer. (laughs) You know? << Doo-doo-doo-Dora >> You know? Like you ... (laughs) Peppa Pig. Yeah, Peppa Pig, all those kind of shows. Yeah. And th- there's, you know, there's something beautiful in watching a little person learn stuff about the world, and, and shocking when they find out about, like, murders and danger and scary things. And, you know, and then their, their realm of knowledge expands to
3:36 – 4:51
Political Awakening
1. GSGad Saad
  ... you know. What amazes me is seeing my children get a political awakening. So my son- Mm. ... who's really pre- precocious, he's 13, my daughter's 16, she wasn't as into it, but during the last US elections, maybe because of the TikTok stuff and so on- Sure. ... she became ... she sort of woke up to it, and she would come to me and say, you know, "W- why do we like Trump? Why don't we li-" And so- Mm-hmm. ... I saw an awakening in her that my son already had. I mean, he literally will sit with me, watch ... I mean, Tucker's no longer on, but he would watch Tucker with me and have conversations with me when he was 11, 12. My daughter came a bit later into the game. But it's so rewarding to see them wake up to these things and have meaningful conversations with me on these topics. It's beautiful. God, I didn't know anything about politics. Blissfully, blissfully unaware when I was 13. Is that right? Right. But I did worry about, um, Russia. When I was in high school, everybody was terrified. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, we were terrified that we were gonna go to war with Russia. It was like a thing that was hovering over our head every day. Yeah. That was kind of all I knew about politics. Like, Russia bad, United States good. Russia bad, wants to kill United States. Like, that's what we were basically told. All the movies, like Red Dawn, you know, Russia invades
4:51 – 7:03
Game Theory
1. GSGad Saad
  America. Can I incorporate some professorial elements to what you just said? Please do. So, one of my intellectual heroes is John von Neumann, who was a Hungarian Jewish polymath. He was a mathematician, he was a game theorist, and one of the things that he did, he was one of the pioneers of using game theory. Do you, do you know what game theory is? Yes. In economics? Yeah. Okay. Yes. Do you want me to explain it for our viewers? Yeah. Yeah, please. So a, a classic example of a g- of, of a game theory context would be the prisoner's dilemma, right? You, you capture two prisoners, you take them apart as the cops do. Each of them can either squeal, confess or not. And depending on whether ... So there are four possibilities. Both can confess, one confess, the other one ... So there ... It's a two-by-two matrix, and there are different payoffs in each of these matrices. And then the question is, what is the optimal behavior? So that's called game theory, because you u- you use game theoretic, you know, framework to model what should be some optimal behavior. Well, in the context of the Cold War, that's when game theory was first being applied, that the Russians can, or the Soviets, can nuke us or, or not, we can nuke them or not. Mm-hmm. And so there were all these models that were developed. So for example, mutually assured d- destruction- Mm-hmm. ... is a-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  ... outshoot of understanding game theory. And so for the ones who are watching this show, John von Neumann is the definition of how I think an intellectual should be, very broad thinker. He can both discuss mathematics or economics or game theory. Uh, he died, I think, too young, but he got his PhD at the age of 23. Check him out, John von Neumann.
3. GSGad Saad
  Wow, 23?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  23 years old.
5. GSGad Saad
  (sighs)
6. JRJoe Rogan
  From Hungary. Incredible guy.
7. GSGad Saad
  Wow.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
9. GSGad Saad
  D- people like that just make you feel like such a dummy. (laughs)
10. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) I mean, I was impressed, uh, with myself because I got my PhD at my, in my late 20s.
11. GSGad Saad
  That's still pretty good.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  But, but he beat me by many, many years so I'm, uh, a little ant compared to him.
13. GSGad Saad
  It gets bizarre when you see, like, young teenagers that are in college already-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. GSGad Saad
  ... because they've gone through their entire high school course-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, yeah, amazing.
17. GSGad Saad
  ... by the time they're 14, 15 years old.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
19. GSGad Saad
  Now it's 16, they're in college.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. GSGad Saad
  So
7:03 – 7:57
Social Development
1. GSGad Saad
  strange.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  But of course, as you know, the danger of that is that you're not s- at the right social developmental phase.
3. GSGad Saad
  Of course, yeah.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  So yes, you can solve calculus really easily-
5. GSGad Saad
  Right.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  ... but you can't speak with people who are four years older than you. So you end up being-
7. GSGad Saad
  Isn't that crazy?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. So it's, it's... So I'm not a- I'm not sure if I, I support this kind of fast tracking because there's-
9. GSGad Saad
  Right.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  ... there's an element of just being with the right people at the right age.
11. GSGad Saad
  That is true, but also when you have an extraordinary mind, you, you wanna give that extraordinary mind fuel. You, you have someone who caught lightning in a bottle.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. GSGad Saad
  You know, and you, you wanna help that.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. GSGad Saad
  I mean, and maybe there's a way to do it where the parents come with the kid to school or something like that.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
17. GSGad Saad
  But isn't it strange, though, that you and I at our age, the idea of talking to someone four years older than us is like, "So what?"
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. (laughs)
19. GSGad Saad
  Like, what's the big deal? Isn't it weird?
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. GSGad Saad
  Like, the accelerated learning that you have as a child is so rapid and so profound that a four-year age gap is nuts.
7:57 – 12:07
Parental Regret
1. GSGad Saad
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, speaking of accelerated learning, uh, my biggest regret, I may have discussed this with you before or not, but, uh, uh, my parental regret is that we never taught o- our children all of the languages that we speak at home. So, so I speak... My mother tongue is Arabic, and I also learned French because from Lebanon and then moving to Montreal. Then I learned English, and I also speak Hebrew. And then my wife, because she's Lebanese Armenian, she speaks Armenian.
3. GSGad Saad
  True.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  So between, between the two of us, we speak five languages. But here's the, here's the, the rub. If I speak to them in Arabic or Hebrew, my wife won't understand. If she speaks to them in Armenian, I won't understand. So we just settled on French and English. So rather than them now being the super exotic, you know, five-language-speaking kids, they only speak the very vanilla French and English.
5. GSGad Saad
  Yeah, but it's still two.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  It's, it's... Well, 99% of Americans-
7. GSGad Saad
  Compared to, compared to Americans, I agree. (laughs)
8. JRJoe Rogan
  They don't even master one language.
9. GSGad Saad
  Barely know English.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Barely know English.
11. GSGad Saad
  And have separate versions of English, you know?
12. JRJoe Rogan
  I actually, I was, uh-
13. GSGad Saad
  Slangs and dialects.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  I was... Uh, I, I posted on, on X that I... Well, I was coming to Texas. I'm also s- soon going to South Carolina, to Georgia, to Florida, to Mississippi. And so I said, "If I'm going to fit in in the South since I'm doing this big... What are some absolute must expressions that I must have?" So the ones I came up with, and you'll add to that. F- I'm fixing to leave.
15. GSGad Saad
  Okay.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Ble- bless your heart.
17. GSGad Saad
  Bless your heart.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Y'all.
19. GSGad Saad
  Y'all.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  All y'all.
21. GSGad Saad
  All y'all.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  That's, that's all I got.
23. GSGad Saad
  Yeah, don't use any of those.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  No?
25. GSGad Saad
  No.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Why?
27. GSGad Saad
  No because-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Too cliche?
29. GSGad Saad
  ... they're gonna know you're faking it. (laughs)
30. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) They're gonna know I'm faking it because I'm not tall enough to be a Texan.
12:07 – 12:53
Canadian Accent
1. JRJoe Rogan
  say that you're gonna get me in trouble because I think I mentioned to you last time that the biggest trouble I ever faced was two shows ago when I was here.... and I made a joke about the French Canadian accent.
2. GSGad Saad
  Yes, you did.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  So-
4. GSGad Saad
  They get very upset at you.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... I, I am hereby stating that in nature, the most beautiful auditory orgasm is to listen to the French Canadian accent.
6. GSGad Saad
  But now they think you're lying, because y- y- now you're a flip-flopper.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  No, I've just learned.
8. GSGad Saad
  You're a flip-flopper.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  I'm f- (laughs)
10. GSGad Saad
  (laughs) Flip-flopper's a weird one to me, 'cause it's like, wait a minute, what do you do when you encounter new information?
11. JRJoe Rogan
  That's right.
12. GSGad Saad
  Don't you change your mind?
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
14. GSGad Saad
  Like, this idea that someone who's running for office, especially, right? It's always, like, presidential candidates and-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
16. GSGad Saad
  ... Senate candidates.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  That you should never-
18. GSGad Saad
  You never flip-flop.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  You should always be consistent, yeah.
20. GSGad Saad
  Which is so crazy. Like, shouldn't you learn from new information?
12:53 – 15:58
Cognitive Traps
1. JRJoe Rogan
  So in, in, in behavioral decision-making, in psychology of decision-making, there's a whole field that studies what are the types of cognitive traps that people succumb to precisely to not alter their original position.
2. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  And Leon Festinger, I don't know if you know, he's the, he's the pioneer who developed the theory of cognitive dissonance.
4. GSGad Saad
  Oh, okay.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, and so he has an amazing quote, which I use in one of my earlier books, uh, in The Parasitic Mind, where he basically says the types of mental machinations that the average human being will engage in to make sure that there is cognitive consistency in his mind, because incoming information that contradicts my anchored position-
6. GSGad Saad
  Right.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... makes me feel icky.
8. GSGad Saad
  Right.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  So what are the kinds of mental gymnastics I'm going to go through to make sure that everything stays consistent in my mind? Which, as you might imagine, is a, is a big obstacle for me, because I'm in the business of administering mind vaccines to people, right?
10. GSGad Saad
  Right.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Getting them to think properly. I- but if the reality is that the architecture of the human mind is not built to change their positions, then I'm up shit's creek.
12. GSGad Saad
  Well, if you pay attention to X, you will see you are up shit's creek.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
14. GSGad Saad
  (laughs) Because especially-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
16. GSGad Saad
  ... liberal people on X, like super, hyper-liberal people that are unwilling to look at any positive-
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
18. GSGad Saad
  ... aspects of any sort of Republican ideas or policies, or-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
20. GSGad Saad
  It's like that's what they're doing. They're doing that 100%.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Albeit, there are a few people that have come around, let's say, to Trump. Y- you know? Don't you think?
22. GSGad Saad
  Oh, yeah.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, so it's-
24. GSGad Saad
  Yeah, a lot of people have. But it's like, they had to see, you know, four years of an awful administration to go, "Oh."
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
26. GSGad Saad
  "Okay, wait a minute. I think, I think these people are bullshitting me."
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
28. GSGad Saad
  "I think these people are fully incompetent. I don't think that guy's really the president. I think there's, like, a bunch of financial institutions and deep state operatives that are involved in this whole thing." Like, and that's-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
30. GSGad Saad
  When... Did you see that, um, interview with Mike Johnson when, uh, he was talking about, uh, conversations that he had with Biden about liquid natural gas?
15:58 – 17:29
Trump
1. JRJoe Rogan
  I'll tell you, b- background story, uh, 'cause we're talking about Trump, and of course he came on your show. I was speaking to one of his senior advisors f- prior to him agreeing to come on your show, and I was saying, you know, "Hey, I would love to have President Trump for a chat," and so on. He goes, "Oh, that's, that's fantastic. What would you like to talk about? What, what angle would you like to do, uh, to pursue?" And I said, "Well, you know, I think that a lot of people have this wrong impression of President Trump. If, if he was given a long-format, uh, setting, where we can just chat, people would see that he's funny and he's not this ogre." And of course he came on your show. There's no point in coming on my show once he's been on your show. And I think you did exactly that with him. So that a lot of people... Several people that I know who hated Trump, after they sort of watched him on your show, he- they're like, "He's kind of cool." And so I... That was exactly what I was hoping to do, had I had the privilege of having him chat with me. And of course you pulled it off.
2. GSGad Saad
  Yeah. It... That's the only way to talk to people, and I wanted to do that with Harris too. I wanted to be able to talk to her as a human, just have a, a conversation with y- I know there's a human in there. I know this, this whole system's fucked, but... I, I've talked about this before, but there's this one interview that she does where she talks about meeting her mother and father-in-law for the first time. And it's so funny. When she talks about her mother-in-law grabbing her face and goes, "Oh, look at you!" You know, and she's laughing, but she's laughing genuine.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
4. GSGad Saad
  It's not that weird-
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Not the cackle, yeah.
6. GSGad Saad
  ... performative laugh...
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, yeah.
8. GSGad Saad
  ... that she does sometimes. It's really funny. I was... I'm like, "There's a human in there." Like-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you, do you-
10. GSGad Saad
  ... that would be fun to just talk to
17:29 – 18:53
Conversation Flow
1. GSGad Saad
  a person.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you... I mean, obviously you've spoken to thousands of people for three-hour chunks. Do you think, had you had the opportunity, you would've been able to pull out three hours of worthwhile conversation with her?
3. GSGad Saad
  I don't know. You don't, you don't know until you do it, you know?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. GSGad Saad
  It's, uh, you don't know, also, based on people's conversations with other people-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  I, uh, uh...
7. GSGad Saad
  ... 'cause people are different. Uh, to some people, they go into conversations like it's an interview, right? And so they don't, they don't... They can't establish a flow, right?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
9. GSGad Saad
  A conversation like we, you and I are having is a dance.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  E- exactly.
11. GSGad Saad
  We're both moving, we're moving up... We have to, like, dance-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  I actually call it a tango. Like, literally.
13. GSGad Saad
  It's... It is a tango.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
15. GSGad Saad
  It's a tango.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
17. GSGad Saad
  It's, it's, it's a dance. And d- you have to know that. And some people literally are having these things and don't know it's a tango.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
19. GSGad Saad
  They think that it's an opportunity for them to expose people's flaws or k-... catch people in viral moments-
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. GSGad Saad
  ... or, uh, a w- an opportunity to flex your intellect. It's th- there's a bunch of thi- uh, so it fucks with the flow. Because as a person listening, I wanna, I wanna feel a genuine conversation.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. GSGad Saad
  That's what I want.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
25. GSGad Saad
  Right? And you can get that out of almost anybody if they're willing to do it. But that you have to s- be skillful in how you negotiate it, in how you do it. You have to think about like it's like a dance.
18:53 – 23:01
Vulnerability
1. GSGad Saad
2. JRJoe Rogan
  So, I'm gonna maybe be a bit more un- l- less charitable than you. I, I don't think she's capable of doing it because it takes couple of things to be able to do what you just said. Number one, it takes vulnerability in that you're laying yourself out there. Right now, I'm speaking straight without any script.
3. GSGad Saad
  Right.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  And I might say something stupid that's gonna be caught by millions of people, but I'm willing to take that chance for the joy of sitting and chatting with you. But if you're tight and you can't let yourself go, if you don't have the self-assuredness to be able to be vulnerable, then you can't... That's why she could only speak in those little chunks.
5. GSGad Saad
  Perhaps, but it's also perhaps who is she talking to?
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
7. GSGad Saad
  Do they have the, um, the ability to, uh, uh, uh, d- do they have the personality? Do they have whatever it is that allows people to be comfortable and have a conversation?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
9. GSGad Saad
  'Cause all these conversations is just like the way I, I talk about like these rambling speeches that she does where she kind of rambles on. It's 'cause she's tr- I know what it's like. She's trying to dismount. She doesn't know how to dismount.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
11. GSGad Saad
  So, it's pressure.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. GSGad Saad
  Right? But w- how is she verbally when there's no pressure? I bet she's a lot better.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
15. GSGad Saad
  Everybody is.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Of course.
17. GSGad Saad
  So, that's the goal.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
19. GSGad Saad
  The goal is to talk to her like a human. Like there was a few things they didn't wanna talk about. I said, "I don't care. We could talk about fucking groceries. I don't give a shit. We could talk about flowers. I don't, uh, don't give a fuck. I just wanna talk."
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
21. GSGad Saad
  Like let's talk. You don't wanna talk? Anybody who doesn't wanna talk about something, I don't need to talk to them about that.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
23. GSGad Saad
  You know, if you don't, i- if you've had a UFO experience and you don't wanna talk about it, like okay, let's talk about ghosts.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Let's-
25. GSGad Saad
  Like what, what do you think about Bigfoot? (laughs) Like I'll find out what you're about.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  W- we did. You and I talked about Bigfoot last time-
27. GSGad Saad
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... when you explained to me how you got off the Bigfoot train.
29. GSGad Saad
  Yeah, I wanna believe.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23:01 – 27:36
How would you change your opinion
1. JRJoe Rogan
  you know, earlier we were talking about how would you change your opinion once you have a position that's anchored.
2. GSGad Saad
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  So, and now you're saying, you know, I'd love to believe in this stuff, but then incoming information comes in and then, uh, I kinda have to accept the fact that I can't believe this stuff. Well, that, in a sense, was the exact topic of my doctoral dissertation. 30, I actually celebrated 30 years.
4. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  In, uh, 2024.
6. GSGad Saad
  What examples did you use?
7. JRJoe Rogan
  So, I brought in, uh, subjects into the lab. So, let me tell you what the-
8. GSGad Saad
  Okay.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... topic was and then I'll tell you how I, we ran it, how I ran it. So, the idea was to study what are called stopping strategies, which means when is it that a person has acquired enough information to stop and make a choice?
10. GSGad Saad
  Hmm.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Now, why is that important? Because classical economic theory argues that if you're going to maximize your utility when you're making a decision, you should look at all of the available information. You can't choose the card that maximizes your utility if you leave some un- information unturned.
12. GSGad Saad
  Hmm.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  So, that's called the normative theory, meaning that's how you ought to behave, normatively, if you wanna be a perfect decision maker, rational decision maker. But ob- objectively speaking, that's not what we do, right? Like you and I-
14. GSGad Saad
  Right.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  ... every decision that we make every day, we don't sample all of the relevant and available information before we make a choice. We sample until we have sufficiently, sufficiently differentiated between the choices that you say there's no point in sampling more information. I now have enough information to vote for Trump. I have enough information to marry this girl.
16. GSGad Saad
  Right.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  To choose this employer.
18. GSGad Saad
  Got it.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  So, that's called a stopping strategy. So, I was studying the cognitive strategies that people use when they're making the stopping decision.
20. GSGad Saad
  Mm-hmm.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  And so, what I did, so to answer your question of how I went about doing it-I brought in people into the lab and I made them make sequential binary choices. Binary choices means it's a choice between two alternatives. Sequential means that they acquire one piece of information at a time on these two alternatives. This was done on a computer, and it's called a process tracing algorithm, meaning that it keeps track of every single behavior that the decision-maker is making. It does that in the background.
22. GSGad Saad
  Mm-hmm.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  And so what I was looking at, they could acquire up to 25 attributes, let's say choosing between apartments, and I was tracking the cognitive processes that they were using in deciding when to stop and choose apartment A or choose apartment B. And then later, I applied that to other types of decisions. For example, mate choice, right?
24. GSGad Saad
  Hm.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  So, y- you could apply for anything. You could apply choosing between, uh, fitness instructors, choosing between political candidates to, to vote for, for anything, right?
26. GSGad Saad
  Mm-hmm.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  The reason why it's binary, it's because it only operates once you're down to two final alternatives. You might have used another process to go from 10 alternatives, like let's say the primaries in the U.S. system, we first go through Republican primary, then we choose one final one, and then we go through a Democratic, uh, primary, we choose one, and then the final two go head-to-head. That's when my model comes in. And so my model really explains how we make decisions across a bewildering number of cases, specifically how we stop and say, "I'm marrying her. I'm hiring him. I'm voting for him." So it was a, a big, a big deal.
28. GSGad Saad
  So a t- a tipping point of information, like when you have enough information to make a rational, quality decision.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Exactly, so what you do actually is you set... I mean, if, if, if I could show it to you on a curve, it would really be cool, it's you set, you set a what's called a differentiation, a differentiation threshold, which basically says that I have now sufficiently teased apart the Mazda and the Toyota, that I've hit that threshold, that I'm sufficiently convinced that that decision would never be overturned even if I sampled all of the remaining information.
30. GSGad Saad
  Hm, that's a good example, a good example.
27:36 – 31:09
What happens to stopping thresholds
1. JRJoe Rogan
  question. So later, once I had gotten my PhD, I started incorporating various types of emotional states to see where people shift those s- stopping thresholds.
2. GSGad Saad
  Hm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  So one thing I did, it never got published, and we can talk about that. (smacks lips) So I loo- I wanted to look at what happens to those stopping thresholds for dysphorics. Do you know what dysphorics mean?
4. GSGad Saad
  Like gender dysphoria?
5. JRJoe Rogan
  No, not gender dysphoric. Uh, e- emotion. So dysphoria is like a mild state of a-
6. GSGad Saad
  Right.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... clinical depression. It's not, "I'm gonna kill myself."
8. GSGad Saad
  Okay.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  But, "My wife left me. My dog died. Life sucks." So that's called dysphoria. It's the opposite of euphoria. So there is a psychometric scale that you could administer to people to measure their dysphoria scores, and so I wanted to see whether non-dysphorics, people who don't suffer from dysphoria, would make their stopping decisions in a different way than dysphorics, and I didn't have any a priori hypotheses. Why? Because the literature was very confused. Some theories said that dysphorics, by virtue of them being helpless and apathetic, life sucks, will actually acquire less information before they commit to a choice. Then there was another school of thought that thought, no, dysphorics are so helpless that one of the ways that they can gain control over their lives is to look at more information. So because I couldn't come up with any a priori hypotheses, and being an honest scientist, I said, "I'm not gonna posit any hypotheses, I'm just gonna run it and see what I get."
10. GSGad Saad
  Hm.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  So I think I had 18 different measures that were comparing the dysph- s- maybe, maybe 17, measures that were comparing the dysphorics to the non-dysphorics, on, of which on 16 out of the 17, I got no effects, right? Now that, to me, was worthy of publishing, meaning that in this particular task, dysphoria doesn't seem to moderate the behavior. I send it to this top journal, actually called Cognition and Emotion, you were asking about emotion. The editor writes back to me, "Gad, gorgeous study, beautiful m- design, beautiful. Unfortunately, given the number of null effects you got, I can't publish it." Now, this is literally called in science the null effects bias, or the drawer b- which means what? You only end up publishing findings that give you an effect and you put into the disappearance bin all of the findings that didn't get any effects, so when you then run a meta-analysis, d- do you know what a meta-analysis-
12. GSGad Saad
  Yep.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  When you run a meta-analysis, it's not an actual accurate depiction of the totality of findings because all of those null effect studies were never published.
14. GSGad Saad
  Wow.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  And so I tried to tell the, the psychologist in question, who, by the way, several years later he was at USC and was hounding me because he's a super wokester. I couldn't believe how much he fell in my esteem. But anyways, that's a separate-
16. GSGad Saad
  (laughs)
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... separate s- I won't even mention his name, although he's worthy of being, uh, shamed on The Joe Rogan Show. And I wrote to him, I said, "But I really think that, you know, you're succumbing to the null effects bias, because I really... It's worthy to publish this." This was, I think, in 1998.
18. GSGad Saad
  It's information.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  It's information that is worthy of the w- the... Uh, certainly the scientific community should know about it. Well-I probably f- one of the first times I've ever discussed it was on this show, so hopefully at least it gets that attention, but it's not on the record.
20. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  What a shame.
22. GSGad Saad
  That is a shame.
31:09 – 32:19
Sponsor ZipRecruiter
1. GSGad Saad
  This episode is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. It's that time again where we all look ahead and plan out what we wanna accomplish in the new year. There's the usual resolutions like wanting to travel more, get a promotion, or get healthier, which I think is a good thing to do any time of the year. If your goal is to hire more talented people for your business though, you've got it pretty easy, because you can use Zip Recruiter. You can even try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. When it comes to hiring, Zip Recruiter does a lot of the work for you. Its powerful matching technology works fast to find candidates for your role. There's also a feature that lets you invite top candidates to apply for your job. That's a smart way to encourage people to apply sooner. Here's to a new year of hiring made easier with Zip Recruiter. Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address to try Zip Recruiter for free. Go to ziprecruiter.com/rogan. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/rogan. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire.
32:19 – 33:56
The Human Ego
1. GSGad Saad
  It's interesting that one of our biggest hurdles is the human ego does not want us to ever be wrong.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
3. GSGad Saad
  It's a giant hurdle. And human beings, for whatever reason, I guess it's part of the motivation of acquiring information and of, uh, uh, advancing your ideas, we attach ourselves to ideas. And one of the things that I always tell young people, like, if you wanna, if you wanna d- do better in life and not get tricked by your own bullshit, don't be married to your ideas. Ideas are just ideas. You are not your ideas. Ideas are some things that you fuck around with in your head, and you explore, and you talk about with friends, but you have to always be honest about them and never be attached to them.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. GSGad Saad
  The problem with ideas is that ideas are just like everything else, human beings grab them and they're stingy and they're like, "Mine, and I want my idea to win." And you'll lie so your idea wins, and it'll advance your career if your idea wins. And if you can, even if you can unfairly dismiss or you, you can be, you can be unethical in how you're ignoring certain aspects of data for your opposing ideas. Like, people do that and succeed because of that, because academia, uh-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  100%.
7. GSGad Saad
  ... rewards them. The media rewards them. The, especially, you know, if they can publish in, uh, The New York Times or something like that, like if they can make a story, like they, you'll get rewarded-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
9. GSGad Saad
  ... for lying.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, so I can tell you a
33:56 – 39:41
Being Wetted
1. JRJoe Rogan
  million, I mean, this is my 31st year as a professor. I can read a paper and I can just by looking at how clean their presentation of the data is tell you that they cheated.
2. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Because the, the, the structure of the reality of data is never as clean as how it is presented in many of these journal. And then, by the way, not, not to sort of tap myself on the shoulder, but some of the top people that I'm, that I know who ended up getting caught for fabrication of data, I was in private circles saying, "I bet you 80% of this guy's research is bullshit," and then it comes out-
4. GSGad Saad
  Wow.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to be the case. Because I'll, I'll give, I'll give you an example. So I did a study and, speaking about being wedded to your ideas, so I had a graduate student that worked with me on a really, really cool project, which we ended up publishing in 2009, gorgeous paper on testosterone and so on, really beautiful paper. I noticed that as we were getting ready to run these studies, there was always a delay wh- where he wasn't yet ready to kind of cast the die. And so one day we had gone fo- for coffee and I said, "You know what I think? I think that maybe you're afraid that if right now in the rarefied world of us having just posited the hypotheses but not run the study, we live in a world where we, it hasn't been falsified yet, so you're, we're, you're wedded to the idea. But you're, I think you're scared that if we run the studies and the data doesn't come out in support, then the... but guess what? It doesn't matter because we're gonna reap some benefit from that." "Well, true," and he looked at me and he was like, "Actually, you're exactly right, Professor. I'm afraid to find out whether we're correct or not." I said, "Just, let's do it." It was actually a study on, um, so there was two parts of the study and I'm not sure if I've ever discussed it with you. So I wanted to look at what happens to men's testosterone levels when they engage in acts of conspicuous consumption and what happens to men's testosterone when they see other men engaging in acts of conspicuous consumption.
6. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  And the general story, as you might imagine, is when I engage in an act of conspicuous consumption, my testosterone goes up because I, I, I had a social win, and when I see you, who's a competitor to me, getting into your fancy Maserati, then my tail goes between my legs, so-
8. GSGad Saad
  You feel bad.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... so my testosterone goes down. So we designed two gorgeous studies, we ran them, it was gorgeous, it was beautiful. By the way, I always joke that for study one, we actually had people drive a Porsche that we rented and a beaten up old, uh, sedan, and after each driving condition, we took salivary assays so that-
10. GSGad Saad
  (laughs)
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... we could measure their testosterone. And I always joke, try to get from a granting agency research funds so that you could rent a Porsche.
12. GSGad Saad
  (laughs)
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? Now only when you can do that you're a good scientist. Anyways, and so we ran the studies and several of the hypotheses that we posited-... turned out to be veridical, but several were falsified. But to the credit of the editor, unlike the other guy, he found value in even the, the findings that were contrary to what we had expected, 'cause we had an ex- post hoc explanation for why it didn't work out.
14. GSGad Saad
  Hmm.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  And so lesson to everybody who is an aspiring scientist, always be honest. Don't fudge the data. Don't go back and s- pretend that you have hypothesized the stuff after you see what the data results are.
16. GSGad Saad
  Oh, is that what they do?
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, tons. Tons. As a matter of fact, I-
18. GSGad Saad
  Human ego.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Human e- ... Well, that's, that's-
20. GSGad Saad
  Yeah.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  I told this whole story to your point. Exactly.
22. GSGad Saad
  Yeah, it's awful. It's awful because we rely on experts.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
24. GSGad Saad
  And a lot of times, experts are just like everybody else. They're competing with these other experts and they're trying to get ahead, and they're willing to bullshit. And also, there's financial reward in bullshitting. There's, there's people that would like them to bullshit a little bit-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
26. GSGad Saad
  ... it would make it a lot easier for us to pass this thing that we're trying to do, do a little bullshitting.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Exactly.
28. GSGad Saad
  Yeah.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  I, I, I'll add something else. Actually, I'm gonna ... I'm, I'm giving a talk at one of the universities here in Austin as part of this trip, and I'm gonna talk about the ... So I'm old enough at this point, although I'd like to think that I'm s- still have many years left, but, uh, that I can sort of look back at, you know, what are some of the great things that I've faced as a professor? What are some of the things that I, that I'm disappointed in? Probably the number one thing that most disappoints me in my fellow academics, and I, I don't mean that as a haughty thing, is how non-intellectual most of them are. Most of them are just playing a game. I mean, obviously they're intelligent, they're ... in the sense that they've gotten a PhD, they've gotten a professorship. They, they, they are stay-in-your-lane professors, they know their little methodology. But you can't sit with them at a party and talk about things that is not within their areas of specialty.
30. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
39:41 – 47:16
Why We Have War
1. JRJoe Rogan
2. GSGad Saad
  Well, that competition, it creeps into medical science as well.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
4. GSGad Saad
  And the really scary thing ... I was w- seeing, reading about this case where this doctor was treating people for cancer that didn't have cancer, and he was giving chemotherapy to all these people that didn't have cancer. And, um, e- e- and when they confronted him, one, one of the things that he said is, "You have to eat what you kill in this business."
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
6. GSGad Saad
  So it was essentially, he was saying in order to thrive as a cancer doctor, he had to diagnose more people with cancer than actually had cancer, and he was in some way j- just d- if not justifying, explaining-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
8. GSGad Saad
  ... the thought process that led him to do this, which is so crazy to think that-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  That's unbelievable.
10. GSGad Saad
  But that's the reality of being a person. It's like your, your ego and your mind and the justifications that you can make for doing certain things. I mean, this is why we have war, right? It's this is what war is, the ultimate expression of that justification of the most horrific things-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
12. GSGad Saad
  ... because you believe it's the right thing to do.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Exactly.
14. GSGad Saad
  Or because it benefits you, or because if you don't, something's going to happen.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
16. GSGad Saad
  You know? And ...
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, I, I, I always say, and you, you might have seen me post it often on X, I always say the most dangerous force in nature i- are parasitized minds.
18. GSGad Saad
  Yes.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? It, it's ... I mean, the tsunamis is devastating, but it's a one bleep.
20. GSGad Saad
  Well, what's interesting about you and your work is you predicted essentially the entire COVID-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Yeah.
22. GSGad Saad
  ... reaction and-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
24. GSGad Saad
  ... and the freak out-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
26. GSGad Saad
  ... and the woke mob, the, the whole f-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
28. GSGad Saad
  ... the whole left freak out way before it was going on.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
30. GSGad Saad
  You caught like the first sounds of the drums-
47:16 – 49:46
Interdisciplinarity
1. GSGad Saad
2. JRJoe Rogan
  So one, one thing about, uh, sort of this broad education, I was mentioning earlier, John von Neumann, who's this kind of polymath. He, he's an expert in so many things. He's a generalist. Y- Joe, many of the biggest, um, scientific innovations have happened at the intersection of interdisciplinarity, because many of the biggest scientific problems necessitate expertise in many different domains.
3. GSGad Saad
  Hmm.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  So the mapping of the human genome could not come from only one discipline. It took biostatisticians and biologists and geneticists and bio eng- all kinds of different expertise to put it all together, right?
5. GSGad Saad
  Hmm.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  And so one of the things that I've been trying, I mean, I s- certainly in my own research, I, you know, I publish in medicine and in marketing and in psychology and in behavioral science and evolution. Uh, I- I've lived my life as an interdisciplinarian, but we don't train our students to be this way, right? You are a accounting major.
7. GSGad Saad
  Mm-hmm.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  You are my-
9. GSGad Saad
  Stay in your lane.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Stay in your lane.
11. GSGad Saad
  Yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  You, you stay in your silo. As a matter of fact, our universities are architecturally designed so that we never speak to people who are... If you're in the psychology department, you never talk to someone from the finance department.
13. GSGad Saad
  Uh-huh.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  But what if we were to speak to each other to study the psychology of personal finance? And now we've just created a synergy that we never thought of before, right?
15. GSGad Saad
  Right.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  So one of the things that I'm hoping to do with some of the universities that are now interested in, you know, making me an offer, is to build something that I've long dreamt of, which I call the, the Consilience Institute. Consilience. Have we ever talked about consilience on this show?
17. GSGad Saad
  I don't know.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay. So b-Even if we have, let me repeat it.
19. GSGad Saad
  Please.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  So, consilience is a term that was sort of reintroduced into the vernacular by E.O. Wilson, who's a, he recently passed away, a Harvard entomologist. He studied social ants. In the late '90s, Joe, he wrote a book called Consilience: Unity of Knowledge. So consilience refers to, are you able to create links between different disciplines? Can you create an organized tree of knowledge? So, he was arguing, as I believe as well, that evolutionary theory is the meta-consilient framework that can link many different disciplines. So for example, you could study literature using evolutionary theory, and this field is called Darwinian literary criticism. And can you guess what that might mean? Or do you want me to just jump into it?
21. GSGad Saad
  Yeah, just jump in.
49:46 – 53:17
Darwinian Literary Criticism
1. GSGad Saad
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay. So, Darwinian literary criticism means when you study certain literature narratives that have stood the test of time, the reason why they tickle our fancy is because at their base, they have certain universal themes that map onto key evolutionary, right? Paternity uncertainty, sibling rivalry-
3. GSGad Saad
  Hm. Mm.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  ... romantic jealousy. So in other words, there are six, seven, eight key evolutionary templates that drive much of the great literature, whether it be Arabic literature, whether it be ancient Greek literature, whether it be Japanese literature. There's always that same template, and that's why they, they cater to our scent. That's why I can understand what an ancient Greek poet had wrote 2,500 years ago, and I get what, how he's feeling jealousy.
5. GSGad Saad
  Mm.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Because you and I are running on the same softwares that that guy did. And so that would be called Darwinian literary criticism. You could apply evolutionary theory to architecture, okay? So I- I'm trying to give examples that you wouldn't have thought of. So architects usually are trained in how to design buildings to minimize cost and maximize the speed with which you can build a thing. They're not trained to design buildings that are consistent with our biophilic nature. Biophilic means love of nature. So there are certain architectural designs that actually make us be more productive. Here's a simple example. Just having more windows increases productivity. As a matter of fact-
7. GSGad Saad
  Hm.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  ... there was a great study that was published in maybe Nature or Science, one of those two journals, in 1984, I think, where the researcher did only the following experimental, experimental manipulation. Half the people who had just done surgery were placed in a room with a window, and the other half were placed in a wind- in a room without a window. Everything else is controlled. It's the same surgery, everything else was controlled. The one that was in a room with a window had many better outcomes, different metrics. Just that one manipulation, being able to see the light, right? So...
9. GSGad Saad
  Oh.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  So there are all... So by the way, there's a field called biophilic architecture, which tries to incorporate our innate love of nature in the design of architectural, you know, buildings or interior spaces and so on. So that would be another example of using evolutionary theory in a completely different field. You can use evolutionary theory in medicine. You could use evolutionary theory in consumer behavior. And so I argue that we can build an institute called the Consilience Institute where filmmakers from Hollywood can come to this institute and do a six-month stage studying about how to de- develop cool scripts that adhere to evolutionary principles. And, uh, evolutionary computer scientists can also come in. What's unifying all of us is an understanding of the importance of evolutionary theory in these very dis- disparate disciplines.
11. GSGad Saad
  Hm, that's fascinating.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Pretty cool stuff, huh?
13. GSGad Saad
  It's very, very cool stuff. 'Cause it's, it's always so interesting to think of what, what are the motivations of human thinking and how w- w- where, where do we trip on ourself, where do we trip on our own, just our own programming...
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. GSGad Saad
  ... essentially? When we're essentially operating with a system that was in place back when we were hunter and gatherers.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
17. GSGad Saad
  We have the same system.
53:17 – 56:31
Mismatch Hypothesis
1. GSGad Saad
2. JRJoe Rogan
  And that's, by the way, called in evolutionary medicine, what you, the exact words you just said, it's called the mismatch hypothesis.
3. GSGad Saad
  Hm.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  The argument is that many of... And I know you're very interested in health, so I think you'll like this. This is, uh, this is not my research. This is from o- other evolutionary medical guys. I think the top nine killers in health are related to the mismatch hypothesis, which means that something that could have been perfectly adaptive 100 years ago, in the modern world, becomes maladaptive. So for example... And hence the mismatch. So, so whether it be colon cancer or diabetes or heart disease or so on, what ends up happening with each of these diseases is that misalignment between what was evolutionarily adaptive back then and evolutionary maladaptive now creates that health condition. Let me give you a concrete example. We've evolved the taste buds, the gustatory preferences, to prefer fatty foods, wheth- because of caloric uncertainty and caloric scarcity. That makes perfect evolutionary sense when, as a hunter-gatherer, I have to spend 30,000 calories to go out and hunt, and I may not return with game. And but then when I do get the, the, the game, then I, I gorge on that meat because I don't know when I'm gonna eat next, right? In today's environment of plentitude, I don't face caloric uncertainty and caloric, uh, uh, scarcity. I become fat. I overeat. Because that mechanism of gorging on fatty foods still is in me.
5. GSGad Saad
  Mm-hmm.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  So we still have that mechanism, but it becomes maladaptive.
7. GSGad Saad
  Mm-hmm.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  And so incorporating an evolutionary lens into medicine often ends up with completely different medical interventions than that which the typical physician who's not trained in evolutionary medicine would have come up with.
9. GSGad Saad
  Hm.That makes sense.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
11. GSGad Saad
  D- well, unfortunately, so many doctors don't even take into account so many factors in health.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. GSGad Saad
  And this thing that you're talking about, this, uh, desire for fatty foods is, uh, that's a great example. And y- you know, one of the best ways that people have found to sort of mitigate the effects of that is to only eat protein. When you go on one of those carnivore diets, one of the things that's so interesting about it is you naturally limit the amount you eat.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. GSGad Saad
  Your body achieves sort of a homeostasis-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
17. GSGad Saad
  ... with your food because you're not consuming, like... I- I can e- sit down and eat a steak, a steak alone, and I'll be fine. But if there's mashed potatoes sitting right there, with gravy-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
19. GSGad Saad
  ... or there's some pasta or there's a piece of bread with some butter, like, I'll go in. I'll go in. But if I'm only eating steak, I don't f- feel-
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. GSGad Saad
  ... the need to eat anything else.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. GSGad Saad
  I- I'm fully satisfied. I'm not starving.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
25. GSGad Saad
  I'm not like, "Oh my god, I need more food." It's like, I've had plenty of food, but ooh, that looks good. And that is just the trick. That's the trick.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
27. GSGad Saad
  But if you can get past that trick and just be disciplined with your diet and eat as much as you want of eggs and fish and meat, and... You will lose weight, like, at a- in a shocking way. And you'll feel a lot better.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  I n-
29. GSGad Saad
  And it's-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  True.
56:31 – 1:15:33
Food
1. GSGad Saad
  disturbing. 'Cause-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  So are you, are you on a- all protein diet right now?
3. GSGad Saad
  I'm, I'm like 90+% only meat.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
5. GSGad Saad
  90+%. Every now and then, I'll eat a cookie. Like, I'm not ridiculous.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
7. GSGad Saad
  Like, I'll have tacos if they're... You know, I love tacos. Good, solid Mexican taco.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
9. GSGad Saad
  But it's like, I know the reality of what food is. Dessert is just fun, it's just mouth fun.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
11. GSGad Saad
  It's just mouth pleasure. So, I- it's like, "Oh, this is so good. This tiramisu's delicious." I love it, but i- that's just because I enjoy life. I like, I like going to a restaurant and a great chef cooks you a great meal. I don't think, "Oh my god, there's gluten in it." I'm not doing that for f- nutrition. I'm doing that for enjoyment.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
13. GSGad Saad
  This is for p- passion and love, and a glass of wine, and, you know, good conversation with friends, and, you know, eating delicious food. You're just enjoy- you're taking part in a pleasurable experience that's essentially art that was created by a chef.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
15. GSGad Saad
  So, that's different to me. But when it comes to food, like, what do, what do I use to k- to fuel my body, it's mostly meat.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
17. GSGad Saad
  Mostly wild game meat and, and rib eye steaks.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
19. GSGad Saad
  That's what I eat.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  I had a rib eye yesterday at my hotel.
21. GSGad Saad
  S- I need fat, I need a lot of protein, and then I'm good. And if I just eat that, my brain operates better, my body feels better, less inflammation. The brain fog's the craziest one. When I went back to the carnivore diet, I took a lo- a lot of time off and then I went back to it, I was telling Jamie, I was like, "Dude, I feel like I have, like, a whole nother gear, like intellectually." Like, I-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Amazing.
23. GSGad Saad
  ... I'm not t- I'm, I don't s- search for thoughts as much when I'm eating only like that.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  It's palpable. You feel that.
25. GSGad Saad
  Palpable. Yeah, but well, for me, it's, it's... 'Cause I have so many conversations with people, I know when I'm off. I know when I'm like, "Oh, I'm slow." Like, if I just flew in from fucking-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
27. GSGad Saad
  ... Italy or something like that, I'm tired-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
29. GSGad Saad
  ... and I'm jet lagged, it's a little harder to get the gears turning. You know, I don't feel like I'm at my best. And I always n- notice the difference when I'm eating well. Always.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Right. What are your thoughts on, uh... And I know very little about this, so I'm really asking you, 'cause I- I don't know anything about it. All that Ozempic stuff, are you, are you for it? Are you against it? What's your-

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Intro

The Age of Innocence

Political Awakening

Game Theory

Social Development

Parental Regret

Canadian Accent

Cognitive Traps

Trump

Conversation Flow

Vulnerability

How would you change your opinion

What happens to stopping thresholds

Sponsor ZipRecruiter

The Human Ego

Being Wetted

Why We Have War

Interdisciplinarity

Darwinian Literary Criticism

Mismatch Hypothesis

Food

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