The Cancelled Professor: Men Are Hardwired To Cheat! - Dr Gad Saad
Dr. Gad Saad (guest), Narrator, Steven Bartlett (host), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Diary of a CEO, featuring Dr. Gad Saad and Narrator, The Cancelled Professor: Men Are Hardwired To Cheat! - Dr Gad Saad explores evolution, Desire, and Truth: Dr Gad Saad Dismantles Modern Myths Dr Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist, explains how evolved biology underpins human behavior, from domestic violence and infidelity to consumer choice and political ideology. He argues that many contentious patterns—such as men’s and women’s differing mating strategies, step‑parent abuse, and status signaling—are best understood through evolutionary logic rather than culture alone.
Evolution, Desire, and Truth: Dr Gad Saad Dismantles Modern Myths
Dr Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist, explains how evolved biology underpins human behavior, from domestic violence and infidelity to consumer choice and political ideology. He argues that many contentious patterns—such as men’s and women’s differing mating strategies, step‑parent abuse, and status signaling—are best understood through evolutionary logic rather than culture alone.
Saad repeatedly distinguishes between explaining a behavior and morally justifying it, warning against the idea of 'forbidden knowledge' and the suppression of research that conflicts with prevailing ideologies. He introduces concepts like mate desirability scores, assortative mating, sexual selection, and the mismatch hypothesis to show how our Stone Age minds struggle in a modern world.
The conversation also covers masculinity, beta males, porn use and addiction, happiness, meaning, birth order effects, and the dangers of what Saad calls 'suicidal empathy' and equality-of-outcome politics. Throughout, he defends free speech as a deontological principle and criticizes contemporary 'woke' movements for subordinating truth to feelings and ideology.
Key Takeaways
Evolutionary explanations are not moral justifications, but they are essential for solving real problems.
Saad stresses that describing why a behavior evolved (e. ...
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Male and female mating behavior is shaped by different evolutionary pressures, but both sexes desire sexual variety.
Across cultures, men report a stronger desire for sexual variety and more partners, but women are not 'Victorian prudes. ...
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Mate desirability is multi-attribute and largely assortative; couples are more stable when their 'scores' track together over time.
Saad proposes a 'mate desirability score' that aggregates traits like looks, status, intelligence, ambition, and personality. ...
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Certain family structures and jealousy triggers carry enormous risk for violence, and ignoring them is dangerous.
Drawing on Daly and Wilson’s work, Saad notes that the presence of a step‑parent is roughly 100 times more predictive of child abuse than other commonly cited factors such as alcoholism or prior abuse. ...
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Status, confidence, and competence are more improvable—and often more important—than immutable traits like height.
Women universally prioritize cues to male status (ambition, dominance, resources, trajectory) more than men prioritize female status. ...
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Porn taps evolved drives and can be benign or highly destructive depending on dosage and self-control.
Pornography is an 'exaptation'—it hijacks preexisting adaptations such as men’s visual orientation and desire for variety rather than being directly selected for. ...
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Happiness is strongly influenced by two big choices—partner and profession—and by aligning work with creativity and autonomy.
About half of happiness variance is heritable, but Saad argues we can meaningfully influence the rest. ...
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Notable Quotes
“The most dangerous individual that a woman will ever meet in her life is her husband, and the overwhelming number one reason is suspected or realized infidelity.”
— Dr Gad Saad
“The idea that monogamy is natural is not true. It is an institutional solution to the fact that we are a bi-parental species.”
— Dr Gad Saad
“Science truth exists independently of whether it supports your ideology or not. That’s why I wrote The Parasitic Mind—because people are parasitized by bad ideologies.”
— Dr Gad Saad
“If you think that there is some knowledge that should not be pursued because it doesn’t support your ideology, that’s a grotesquely dangerous principle.”
— Dr Gad Saad
“Human beings are a hierarchical species. Communism is a great idea—for the wrong species.”
— Dr Gad Saad
Questions Answered in This Episode
You argue that step‑parenthood is the top predictor of child abuse; how should policymakers and social workers use that data without unfairly stigmatizing all blended families?
Dr Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist, explains how evolved biology underpins human behavior, from domestic violence and infidelity to consumer choice and political ideology. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Your 'mate desirability score' hypothesis predicts that divergence in value over time drives divorce—how would you rigorously test that empirically, and what interventions might help couples keep their scores aligned?
Saad repeatedly distinguishes between explaining a behavior and morally justifying it, warning against the idea of 'forbidden knowledge' and the suppression of research that conflicts with prevailing ideologies. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You distinguish between explaining infidelity evolutionarily and morally condemning it; in your own life, where do you personally draw the line between 'that’s natural' and 'that’s unacceptable' when instincts conflict with values?
The conversation also covers masculinity, beta males, porn use and addiction, happiness, meaning, birth order effects, and the dangers of what Saad calls 'suicidal empathy' and equality-of-outcome politics. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You’re a free speech absolutist even regarding Holocaust denial; given your family history in Lebanon and your parents’ kidnapping, is there any speech that emotionally tempts you to want legal limits, even if you reject them rationally?
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Your concept of 'suicidal empathy' suggests we’re overcorrecting for harms to minorities at the cost of system stability—how would you design a concrete decision framework for governments to distinguish healthy compassion from destructive overreach?
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Transcript Preview
Do you know, Stephen, who is the most dangerous individual that a woman will ever meet in her life? Her husband. And the overwhelming number one reason is because of-
Dr. Gad Saad is a evolutionary psychologist.
Renowned for his thought-provoking and challenging insights into the underlining principles-
That shape decision-making, relationships, and societal trends.
If you think that there is some knowledge that should not be pursued because it doesn't support your ideology, that's a grotesquely dangerous principle. So for example, the idea that monogamy is natural is not true. Men are much more likely to want more sexual partners. That's what's been found in many studies across many cultures. But the fact that I explained why it might make evolutionary sense to cheat doesn't mean I'm justifying it. But now here's the interesting part. Women too have evolved a very strong desire for sexual variety. You know when a woman is most likely to cheat? It's when they...
In your book you talk about a mate desirability score.
Yes. So usually we end up assorting on our mating value, which is taking all of our attributes and then saying, "What do you score?" So for example, the number one attribute that women seek is anything that's related to social status. Now, it wouldn't be good for an 87 to go with a 36. That's going to put a huge stressor on our relationship, but here's the good news. There are effective strategies that could improve my score, and let's break them down very simply. First...
Dr. Gad, what are the ideas that you've shared that have got you in the most trouble?
I'm gonna get hate mail for this. Buckle up.
This is a sentence I never thought I'd say in my life. Um, we've just hit seven million subscribers on YouTube, and I wanna say a huge thank you to all of you that show up here every Monday and Thursday to watch our conversations. Um, from the bottom of my heart, but also on behalf of my team, who you don't always get to meet, there's almost 50 people now behind The Diary of a CEO that worked to put this together. So, from all of us, thank you so much. Um, we did a raffle last month and we gave away prizes for people that subscribed to the show up until seven million subscribers. And you guys loved that raffle so much that we're gonna continue it. So every single month we're giving away money can't buy prizes, including meetings with me, invites to our events, and £1,000 gift vouchers to anyone that subscribes to The Diary of a CEO. There's now more than seven million of you, so if you make the decision to subscribe today, you can be one of those lucky people. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Let's get to the conversation. Dr. Gad Saad, what have you devoted your life to?
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