Undocumented Love Making - With Gad Saad

0:00[upbeat music] Hi, welcome to Ask A Jew, where a secular and sinful Israeli speaks to her wholly religious friend. I'm Yael with Chaya Leib. I'm very excited for our guest, Dr. Gad Saad. He is a scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi- Wow... which was also the title of our show, actually, before we changed it to Ask A Jew. [laughs] Uh, such an amazing title, and the author of the new book, Suicidal Empathy, um, that we wanna talk about because it's a lot of fun. Uh, Dr. Saad, thank you so much for coming.

0:39Oh, pleasure to be with you ladies. Thank you for having me. We're, we're so excited to talk to you. You're, you're the product of, of two failed nations, Lebanon and Canada. [laughs] So we wanna talk about that, you know, your dangerous upbringing in both of these countries. [laughs] Although it might be more dangerous to be in Canada now than Lebanon. Yeah. I long for the good old days of the Lebanese Civil War. [laughs] I, I think there are more people in Lebanon that want peace with Israel than people in Canada that want peace with Israel. Yeah. Pretty sad, isn't it?

1:07Yeah. It is true. Um, before we get into it, how, how does one get a blurb from Elon Musk? [laughs] Uh, well, uh, you, you write things, uh, and say things that are sufficiently interesting and unique that Elon notices. You develop a friendship with him, and here comes the blurb. That's how it happens. That's incredible. Wow, okay. He, he retweets you all the time. I mean, he's your biggest fan. I feel like he has a room in his house, the Gad Saad room- [laughs]... where he just has, like, your picture all over.

1:46He's gonna name a, a spaceship after you. I- I, I mean, I've heard- Wouldn't it be great?... that he's got, he's got a poster of me in his bedroom, but those are just salacious rumors- On the ceiling, so he can look- On the ceiling... before he goes to sleep, yeah. [laughs] Oh, my God. No, that's quite an endorsement, actually. Thank you. It's really interesting. Thank you. So we don't need to spend a lot of time on your background 'cause I feel like everybody who listens knows who you are.

2:08But just give us the, you know, the short version of how you got to be where you are right now. Sure. So, uh, starting all the way from Lebanon, if I may, just to kind of give people- Yeah, yeah, yeah... the 30,000- Mm-hmm... foot overview. Yeah. So I was born in Lebanon, uh, in the 1960s. Uh, we were part of the last miniscule group of Lebanese Jews that had steadfastly refused to sort of read the writing on the wall- Ugh [laughs]... that it was becoming increasingly dangerous to be Jewish.

2:39Much, much of my, uh, extended family had already left Lebanon by the time the civil war broke out in the mid-'70s, but my parents and I had not left. Uh, my... I have three older, much older siblings. They had already officially left Lebanon. Uh, but I was a young child when the civil war broke out. I was 10, and so I was obviously still at home. Then the civil war broke out. We went through some very, very difficult, uh, situations, but thank God we were able to, to leave Lebanon, uh, towards the end of that first year of the civil war, uh, in the late 1975. Moved to Canada, grew up there.

3:23Uh, went on to do all of my studies, uh, in various places. Came back to Montreal to start my first professorship. Just for people who don't know anything about my sort of academic background, I marry evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology- Mm-hmm... to study human behavior in general and consumer and economic behavior in particular. What are the biological drivers that make us the consumatory animals that we are? Mm. So that was my scientific training.

3:54In, in the, in, in actually becoming a professor and navigating through the academic ecosystem, I very quickly saw that there were some astoundingly lunatic ideas that were flourishing and being promulgated in academia. That eventually led to my writing The Parasitic Mind- Mm... which explains how human minds can be parasitized by ideological brain worms. Mm. So that was the book that, uh, really started the eventual sequel, which is now Suicidal Empathy. W- what I'm basically doing here, so the, the narrative that links these two books together, is that in order for me to be able to completely hijack your ability to, to reason critically, I need to hijack two systems: your cognitive system, your thought processes, and your affective system, your emotional system- Mm...

4:52'cause we're both a thinking and feeling animal. Mm-hmm. So The Parasitic Mind explains how I can parasitize your cognitive system, and then Suicidal Empathy explains how I can parasitize your emotional system- Mm... which if you'd like, we can get into. So that gives you about a three-minute explanation of my trajectory. That's awesome. Mm. Can I ask you a question about Montreal that has nothing to do with any important [laughs] work you've done? Sure. Do you... Are you familiar with the Jewish community there? Like, did you grow up part of the Jewish world and the- Oh, sure... kosher scene and... You did? Like- Sure. Sure, sure. Oh, you did?

5:26Um, my- Okay, my- Go ahead. No, no, I was just gonna say my dad grew up in Montreal, obvious- so I spent a lot of time there. The best Chinese kosher restaurant was in Ch- was in Montreal called Ernie and Ellie's. Shout out. It's no longer alive. [laughs] And I just felt like I needed to mention it- Wow... 'cause it was really the best kosher Chinese food. W- well, I guess I'm ashamed to say that I've never heard of that restaurant. That is too bad. I do, I do know a lot of, uh, you know, truly classic Chinese restaurants in Montreal, but they're unfortunately not kosher.

5:57Yeah. [laughs] Uh- Yeah... but no, I grew up, uh, I mean, very much, uh, within the Jewish community in the sense that, for example, my bar mitzvah was at- A, actually ortho- by an orthodox rabbi. It's, it was- Oh... it's, well, it still exists. It's the Spanish-Portuguese, uh- Oh... synagogue in, in Montreal. Uh- Wow... unfortunately, the rabbi in question has not too long ago, uh, passed away. Uh, so of course, all of the high holidays, you, you end up- Mm-hmm... going to that Spanish-Portuguese synagogue. Uh, I had...

6:30I don't know if we're gonna talk about this bec- and I, I know that you, you two are the, sort of the, the continuum of- [laughs]... you know, how practicing you are. Uh, I'm not a... And I know you didn't ask this, but I, I'm not- No, no. It's- Uh, I'm not someone who is deeply wedded to all of the, uh, rituals- Mm... of the Jewish faith, but it might be difficult to argue that there are many people who are more wedded to their Je- Jewish identity, which of course- Mm... as you both know, explains the fact that, uh, being Jewish is a multi-faceted- Yeah... construct. So I may not necessarily go by the Chabad rabbi's edict that we should light the candle at 4:21. God forbid it should be 4:22.

7:17[laughs] But then the overlord of the universe would be very upset with that one-minute transgression. So I may not take that very seriously. That doesn't mean, though, that I don't recognize that the Jewish people are part of a lineage, a history, a, a, a, a social grouping, a genetic heritage- Mm... and, and that, that have promulgated, uh, important, of course, and very important ideas throughout the last many millennia. Mm-hmm. And so in that sense, I'm very Jewish.

7:45Now, I hate the fact that many people always say, "Oh, but, you know, you, but you're an atheist." I'm an atheist in the way that I just described about the lighting of the candle at 4:21. Right. So it's in that sense that I'm an atheist. I'm an atheist in the sense that if the rabbi, the Chabad rabbi, tells me, because that's, that's an actual real story, tells me that, "No, no, no, the, the, the Earth is actually not according to what evolution would say in terms of its date or according to what geology would say-" Right "...

8:15because God put the rocks- Yeah... 6,000 years ago to look as though they were 250 million years old," in that sense, I'm very much of an atheist. That doesn't remove the fact that when that exact same rabbi asked me at the end of my PhD at Cornell to do him a favor and start putting on tefillin, I did so for 11 years after that. Wow. Wow. From 1994 to 2005. I mean, I was basically Maimonides- Wow... if you saw me putting on my tefillin. [laughs] So, so I, I hate when people say, "But, but you know, you're...

8:52" By the way, I mean, literally by the, the canons of Judaism, uh, and I've asked many rabbis, I mean, you could literally say, "I'm a full-blown atheist," and you can't get out of the club. You're part of the tribe. No. True. So the, so the Hitler- If Hitler would kill you, you're a Jew. That's how we see it. E- exactly. Yeah. And so, so I hate when people say... J- just because it's, it almost, it's as if you're trying to remove my Jewish identity- Yeah... by saying, "But you're an atheist." No, no. I'm a Jew.

9:21And there's a, there's a, a section in, in Suicidal Empathy titled, uh, something like, But I'm a Jew Jew. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Which you can absolutely ask me about that section later if you like. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. You, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned that, and we wanna talk about some of the, some of the Jews that we encounter in the world today, the, the wood crickets, I think you call them. [laughs] Yeah. Um, but so you're in Mississippi now. What's that like? Right. Um, what, what kind of, uh, racism and antisemitism are you experiencing there? [laughs] Right.

9:52[laughs] Well, I mean, literally right now as I'm speaking to you, I happen to be in Montreal, but you're correct that I just returned from Mississippi last night. Mm-hmm. Uh, so I've experienced zero antisemitism. Wow. None. I actually feel, frankly, a lot safer in Mississippi than I do in Montreal. Uh, you, you undoubtedly know that Montreal has had a very pronounced demographic shift over- Mm-hmm... the past 20 years or so, maybe a bit longer- Mm... and which resulted in the fact that it has become a bit more challenging to be Jewish in Montreal. As a certain demographic g- group increases, it becomes more precarious to, to be, uh, Jewish.

10:40Well, in Mississippi, uh, contrary to the stereotype that people have, that, you know, there are lynchings on every street corner- Right... they're actually, at least certainly the experience that I've had, have been astoundingly welcoming of myself and my family. The love that I have felt there... And, and literally this happened this week, where I did a launch of Suicidal Empathy there. Then I went to Jackson, where I, uh, they, they had organized an event with all sorts of very wealthy donors and politicians and so on, and I literally had nothing but orgiastic love- [laughs]... from everyone.

11:19And so are there likely to be, you know, racists in Mississippi? No different than anywhere else. Right. But certainly, one of the things that I've been trying to convince people, and, and, and it's not, it's not as though, you know, I was asked by Mis- the University of Mississippi to say this on the show. I'm, I'm saying this straight from the heart. You know, if, if you have a, a, a, a son or daughter who's going to go to one of the Ivy League schools, where you're going to be facing, uh- I know...

11:47Free, Free Gaza all day long, well, maybe come to Ole Miss, where, uh- Mm... most people really do love the Jews. Hmm. I'd rather- That's good... I'd rather go to Mississippi than, you know, than Washington Square Park in Manhattan- [laughs]... honestly. Exactly. I have a question about Canada, though, 'cause I spent a bunch of summers as a kid, like from 1991 to '97, in the Laurentians. I'd go to overnight camp- Oh, right... in the Laurentians by Saint-Agathe.

12:14And I remember then, long before the issues that we're dealing with now, that it was very antisemitic. They were so mean to us in the... Like, the French Canadians, who were, I hate to- Paint a broad stroke like everybody. But I remember we understood that when we went into the city or into stores or in the mall there, we would get yelled at, we would get slurs thrown at us. Is there like a, are French Canadians in general- French Canadians are kind of mean though, right? No, like, yeah. Was it particular to the Jews or was it just they didn't like anyone?

12:46Well, in all fairness, uh, I didn't experience that. Uh, by the way, which... It wasn't Camp B'nai B'rith, was it? It, no, it was a Chabad girls camp called Pardes Chana. [laughs] Ah, okay. [laughs] 'Cause I went to Camp B'nai B'rith, uh, which- Oh... you may or may not have heard of. This was shortly after moving from Lebanon where my parents thought it was a good idea to dump me with a- [laughs]... a, a bunch of, uh, Ashkenazi Jews, and therefore I was different from them because I was this- [laughs]... Arabic-speaking Jew who, who was more French-speaking than English-speaking at the point- Right... at that point.

13:22Throw me in there with a infestation of mosquitoes. One of my biggest- Oh, yeah... phobias in life are mosquitoes. The Laurentians are really- Yes... big on mosquitoes. [laughs] And so, uh, the idea of a Jewish summer camp for me is slightly less attractive than visiting Raqqa, Syria, under ISIS control. [laughs] Uh, but, but other than that- Oh... it was a really great experience. Uh, no, look, my, my experience, uh, in Montreal in general as, as a Jewish person, I faced almost zero, uh- Mm... antisemitism from about 19- N- not zero, but, but- But almost zero. Y- you know, almost. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

14:02Some idiot who wouldn't know that I'm Jewish might say something flippant- Yeah... like, "Oh, you know McGill, it's full of Jews." Yeah. Something like that, right? Right. Not knowing that I was Jewish. But, uh, from about 1975 to 1998, I would say, late '90s, I saw nothing. Mm. No, no, no Jew hatred. Mm. Then as the demographic shift- Mm... started really accelerating, I started seeing a lot more Jew hatred. But that wasn't coming, in, in all fairness, from the French Canadians. You're right. Mm-hmm.

14:33But that said, to your point, there is another feature of French Canadian society that while does not support you saying that, oh, the French Canadians were Jew hate, haters, they are astoundingly sensitive about any linguistic slights- Right. Right... that you, you make against them. And so- Mm... and, and now it's gonna sound as though I'm being humorous, and maybe I am, but it's, it's a real story. Uh, probably the most amount of hate that I've ever faced, and I mean, that's saying a lot because I, I go after a lot of sacred cows and- Right...

15:09a lot of, you know, topics that you shouldn't broach and so on, was a few years ago when I flippantly and completely innocently, and I talk about this by the way in Suicide by Empathy, uh, where I joked about the French Canadian accent on- Yeah... Joe Rogan's sh- show. [laughs] That, that resulted literally in my becoming public enemy number one in Quebec for about a three-week period. [laughs] I mean, the justice minister and the science minister- Wow...

15:37and the education minister were weighing in on the- Oh... ingrate immigrant that we've let into our country, and he's now committing a linguistic genocide against us. [laughs] I speak French better than all those guys combined. Right. Right. Linguistic genocide. [laughs] But the fact that I had dared, you know, uh- Right... mock the most foundational feature of their personhood, uh, was really problematic. So, no, I did not- Maybe it was that. Sorry? Maybe it was that.

16:05Maybe they hate, they didn't like that we made fun of them for speaking French [laughs] in a bad accent. Maybe that's what it was. So, well, that's the sense I got. I never, I mean, I, frankly, I, I hope my wife doesn't mind me saying this, I dated some really beautiful French Canadian girls- [laughs]... and, and they didn't seem to mind that I was Jewish apparently, so- [laughs]... I think it all worked out okay. Okay. Good. Good to know. Yeah. I don't, don't think they're the, they're the big problem there. [laughs] Um, I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you about magical, raping IDF dogs.

16:35[laughs] Um, I don't know if you've heard- Magical? Say that again. I missed that. Raping IDF dogs. So I'll- Oh, yes. [laughs] I'll, I'll, I'll start from the beginning. When I was, um, coming of age or, you know, when, when I was a student in Israel, I traveled to the US to do, like a, you know, peer-to-peer kind of student thing to talk to people about Israel. And the biggest criticism, uh, and I don't know if it was hatred, but you know, there was obviously a lot of problems, were about, like settlements and, you know, uh, uh, '67 borders, uh, right-wing, left-wing.

17:10It, it was all in the realm of reality. Now, when I go on Twitter and I'm looking, looking for legitimate, real criticism of Israel, all I see is people accusing Israel of m- training magical IDF dogs to rape Palestinians. [laughs] So my question is how, how has everything become so stupid? [laughs] Well, that, that's exactly why The Parasitic Mind, if I may be immodest, was the international bestseller that it was. And so maybe let me explain that framework because then it might be able to help us explain how magical IDF dogs rape people. Uh- [laughs] So in the animal kingdom, there is a field called...

17:57Well, it's, it's a animal kingdom, but also it includes human. It's called parasitology. Parasitology is the study of host-parasite interactions, and there are endless examples of that in the animal kingdom. A, a classic example might be a, a tapeworm that can parasitize your intestinal tract, right? Mm-hmm. You meaning a human. Uh, but there are endless manifestations of parasite-host interactions. There is a subfield within parasitology called neuroparasitology. Neuroparasitology is the- Study of specific types of parasites that end up, instead of going to your intestinal tract, they need to get to your brain and then altering your brain circuitry to suit their interests, typically- Mm-hmm...

18:47their reproductive interests. And so to, to your earlier point when you mentioned wood cricket or, you know, wood cricket Jews, so let me now explain that term. So a wood cricket, which is, you know, an insect, despises water. It wants nothing to do with water. But when it is parasitized by a hairworm, the hairworm needs the wood cricket to jump into water- Hmm... happily and, m- you know, uh, gleefully committing suicide because the hairworm needs the wood cricket to go into water in order for it to complete its reproductive cycle. It can't com- Oh... complete it outside of water. Mm-hmm.

19:27So it has literally hijacked its brain so that the wood cricket is now the executor of the hairworm's interests. Wow. And so that was my epiphany. Aha, I'm now going to use the neuroparasitological framework to argue that human beings can not only be parasitized by actual physical brainworms. For example, Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that goes to our brain and can alter our behavior. It makes us, for example, more risk-takers. But we can also be parasitized by a second class of parasites, which I call idea pathogens or parasitic ideas, that can exactly do what happens with the wood cricket.

20:13Instead of jumping, though, into water and committing suicide, it causes us to jump into the abyss of infinite lunacy. Hmm. Well, so now you can see how I link it to your original question. Right. It is precisely that neuronal mechanism that then allows me to say, "Oh, there's absolutely incontrovertible evidence that there are Belgian Malinois that are being trained by the IDF to hunt Palestinian people, to rape them." That makes perfect sense to me. Mm-hmm. Because I have actually, my, my brain... So if you imagine, instead of an actual physical lobotomy, right? If you, if you know what a lobotomy, right?

20:52I literally put a, a pick through your brain so that I can... By the way, the guy who, who, uh, pioneered the lobotomy, I'm going on a slight tangent, won the Nobel Prize for- Mm-hmm... that practice, which basically argues that the Nobel committee was lobotomized to give- [laughs]... the Nobel Prize for lobotomy. But- [laughs] So, so an ideological lobotomy or a parasitic infestation of your mind is precisely what leads to what you're seeing on Twitter when you're going through all of your feed.

21:30It's a complete erasing of your capacity to think critically. And now, if you wanna do animal manifestations of Jew hatred, I've got the best one. Uh, there are many, many laughable examples. [laughs] Did you know that the shark attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh, wh- which is a- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm... resort area in Egypt that happened, I think, if I, if my memory serves me right, it was in 2010. After a thorough investigation by the Egyptian authorities, did you know that they actually were absolutely able to demonstrate that those sharks were Zionist sharks trained by the Mossad? [laughs] I, I believe it.

22:10Because that was the way... Sorry? You, do you- I believe it, yeah. [laughs] Exactly. And so, so the, the Jews are so powerful in their duplicity that they have a means of communicating with sharks to get them to attack tourists so that the tourism industry in Egypt could be harmed. Now, this is not coming from a quack that you're seeing on your Twitter feed. It's coming from the Egyptian authorities. Mm-hmm. And I think that answers your question. It's...

22:37Yeah, just today I saw, I think the PA or somebody, some authority, um, said that I- Israel is now, um, dispersing rats in Gaza to specifically attack children. Oh. And i- it's kind of a, part of it is kind of adorable. Like, they really, they think we're, like, magical. [laughs] They think we- we're like, we can do everything. [laughs] It, it's almost like a compliment. But, uh, the, these wood cricket Jews- Maybe they read the 10 plagues. Maybe they read- Yeah...

23:04the 10 plagues in the Torah, so they think, "Oh, if, 'cause they could get locusts and turn water to blood," you know, we have a lot of power. That's why when people, people say, like, "Oh, Israel knew about October 7th," I'm like, "Oh, it's kind of a compliment because you think that we're so capable that there's no way. Like, it just doesn't compute that we could have screwed this one up." I know. But just to, to sort of talk about this, this, uh, conspiratorial mindset of the all-powerful Jew, there have already been several articles written about suicidal empathy even before it had long come out, where the general timbre of the story is there is this, the, the, the intellectual Jew behind the scenes- Mm...

23:49of Elon Musk and going all the way to Donald Trump, is this Canadian professor who is trying to puppeteer them- Hmm. [laughs]... to create a dark world where empathy m- is no longer viable, right? Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, just, I, I didn't know I was that powerful. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, it's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. I mean, I, I think my f- my wife is finding it quite a turn-on, actually, that I have this much power. [laughs] And, and so, and of course, just not that I need to, to try to rebut this silliness, but just to be clear- Empathy is a wonderful thing. As a matter of fact, as I explained very early in the book, we have evolved as a social species- Mm-hmm... to have empathy as part of our repertoire of values.

24:39For you and I to have meaningful conversations, we need to both exhibit what's called theory of mind, which is- Mm... a, a part of cognitive empathy. I need to put myself in your mind and vice versa. Autistic children typically fail the theory- Mm-hmm... of mind test. That's how we diagnose them as being empathetic. So there's nothing wrong with empathy. The problem arises, like most things in life, when there's too little or too much of it. Many psychiatric disorders follow exactly that signature. Mm-hmm.

25:08Too little empathy or no empathy is likely to make you a psychopath. Too much empathy that hyperactivates, hyper fires towards the wrong targets in the wrong situations, results in suicidal empathy. So adaptive empathy is great, suicidal empathy is deadly. Can you explain the... Is there a meaningful difference between empathy, sympathy, and kindness? Right. Like, how, how would you describe that? So there are these very small, granular differences, but precisely to address your question, very, very early in the book, uh, I said, look, there are these, you know, slight differences in meaning.

25:54I shall be using the term empathy interchangeably- Okay... with this cluster of traits. So empathy, compassion, sympathy, while in a technical sense have slightly different meanings, in the way they are used colloquially- Mm... they are used interchangeably. Right. But if we're going to get technical, empathy has two features: cognitive empathy and e- uh, uh, emotional empathy, and if I were to summarize them with a, with a maxim, I understand your pain is cognitive empathy, I feel your pain- Mm...

26:35is emotional empathy. Wow. One is based on cognition, one is based on affective. Mm-hmm. Uh, but yeah, just use them interchangeably. I'm, uh, I'm not an evolutionary scientist, but I- Oh, really?... I think I can say... I know, right? [laughs] I think I can say with, with certainty that the people who say things like, "Be kind," or, "Kindness above all," are usually some of the worst people I've met. [laughs] 100%. Right? Especially- Uh-... on, like, dating sites- Yeah... and stuff. Sorry, not to get into this, but people who say things like they value empathy above all or kindness above all, I'm like, "Nope." [laughs] Exactly.

27:13Because look, it's... For most things in life, there isn't, if... Forgive me, for I'm going to use a professorial term, and I'm happy to explain it. Yeah. It- there isn't a deontological rule that applies across all con- So let me... So deontological versus consequentialism is, are two differing ethical systems. Deontological would be if I say, "It is never okay to lie." That's an absolute- Mm-hmm... statement. Consequentialist statement would be, "It is okay to lie if I'm trying to spare the- Mm... feelings of a loved one." So I- Mm-hmm...

27:47I often give this example because it's actually very powerful and true. If you wanna have a successful, long-lasting marriage and you hear the following question, "Do I look fat in those jeans?" [laughs] Then very quickly put on your consequentialist hat. Even though your spouse might have put on a bit of weight, you might, you might say, 'cause you care about your spouse and you don't wanna hurt their feelings, you might say, "No, no, you've never looked more beautiful."

28:13Maybe technically I have lied, but I've- Right... done it for a valuable, consequentialist reason. Now, for most things in life, we are consequentialist. For a few things, we have to be deontological. Freedom of speech should be deontological. Freedom of inquiry should be deontological. Presumption of innocence in the justice system should be deontological. But for many things, it depends on the situation. Right. Mm-hmm. So to argue, like you said that y- you see in the dating app, be kind in all situations, is you're saying that you should apply a deontological rule. It's an absolute statement. Mm-hmm.

28:50Irrespective of the situation- Mm-hmm... I should be empathetic and kind. Well, I'm not empathetic to somebody who's trying to rape my daughter, God forbid, in a- Mm... in an alley. Mm-hmm. As a matter of fact, I'd love to kill them and maybe kill their ancestors. Oh. [laughs] That, that didn't make me a mean person. Right. It says that if I w- to tuck my children to bed, I'm going to be kind and sweet, but if I have to fight for my life in an alley, I'm going to be violent and, and unforgiving. It didn't change my disposition.

29:19It says that we have behavioral plasticity. Hmm. So there you go. It's so interesting. Yeah. I was just teaching a story to my students from the Talmud between Hillel... There were two rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, who often disagreed with each other. I don't know if you're familiar with these, Hillel and- Yeah, yeah. A little bit. Hi- they're great, two of the most quoted rabbis. And Hil- uh, the question comes up, what do you do if there's an ugly bride? Do you say, "Oh, you look beautiful," or do you- Wow... have to be honest?

29:45[laughs] And Shammai said, the house of Shammai says, "No, you can never lie." Right? Absolutely no lying. You must tell her on her wedding night- And Hillel, Hillel says-... that she looks ugly... "No, you have to tell a bride that she's beautiful." And it's not even really a lie, because, y- you know, inherently, a bride is beautiful no matter how she actually looks, right? And then the rabbis- Wow... go into a whole discussion about, you know, what does it mean and, you know, not to get used to lying, and you shouldn't make it a practice.

30:11But for Shalom Bayit, which is, like, for harmony and peace in the home, like you're saying, you know, it's okay to say that someone's beautiful even if maybe they look like my ass on a rainy day, you know? [laughs] But the point is, the rabbis were grappling with this exact question even 2,000 years ago in the Talmud, and so it's- I'm, I'm gonna blow your mind even more than that amazing story. Remember, so first, you remember earlier I said- Uh, when I was talking about, you know, are you an ethic- atheist Jew? Or I said- Yeah...

30:41look, there's a long tradition of very deep and profound thinking that I could be proud of in terms of Jewish teachings without, again, caring about the 4:21- Exactly... lighting of the candles, right? Yeah. Well, you just gave exactly an example of that, right? [laughs] And, and n- now the story that I'm going to tell you, uh... So what, when do we date Hillel and the other gentleman? When, when is that? How long- They're there d- like around 2000, like 1800 years. Okay. 1700 years. So this is a bit, a bit later with- Yeah... Maimonides. So in my first book, let me see if I could look at this one.

31:14In this book, which was, which was my first academic book, so it's a, it's a lot more technical and scientific- Yeah... uh, I tell the story when I'm trying to explain the evolutionary roots of philanthropy and, and giving and altruism, tzedakah, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, I tell the story of Maimonides', uh, eight level- Mm... of tzedakah- Mm-hmm... where he then argues... Now, he doesn't couch it in the language of evolutionary theory, but what I do is I say, he is exhibiting an- Right...

31:50understanding that is that of the evolutionary psychologist 1,000 years ago. Wow. Because what he basically argues that the highest level of tzedakah is when the, uh, recipient of the altruistic act and the altruist do not know each other's- Mm... identity. Right. And which is a very rare situation. Mm-hmm. And, and the idea, and the reason why that's a very powerful insight, it's because I was arguing in that book that philanthropy, even the most purest form of philanth- uh, philanthropy always has a ulterior motive to it. Mm-hmm. It's not called the XXX Anonymous Donor Cancer Unit. [laughs] Right.

32:36It's called the Bronfman Cancer Unit. Yeah. I want the credit. I want all of my important friends to know that... Uh, and by the way, forgive me if the Bronfmans are listening. I- It's okay. [laughs] It's not... I, I just put that as a random thing only because they're a very- Yeah... uh, important family out of the Montreal Jewish context. So, so even people who are truly philanthropic and have a pure heart are ultimately going to be able to, uh, you know- Yeah... get some juice out of that- Right... philanthropy. Right.

33:09And only when you reach that purest level of tzedakah will you not have that, which almost never happens. Maimonides told us that 1,000 years ago. I love that. Hmm. He also says the best thing to do is get someone a job, which is- [laughs]... real capitalism, actually. There you go. Even before Adam Smith. [laughs] Exactly, before Adam Smith. Maybe Jews really are behind everything. [laughs] We really are. It's starting- Even, we're even behind communism, that bastard Karl Marx. That's true. Yeah. I know. Yeah.

33:38So when people forget all the Nobel Prizes of Jews, they remember that the Frankfurt School, which is where many of these parasitic ideas come from, were dominated by Jews. And they also remember that Karl Marx was Jewish. So whenever the Jew does something really great, we don't really remember that. Whenever some- Hmm... idiot Jew espouses an idea that is terrible, "Look at the Jews, they're polluting the world." There's a, there's a Jew for everything. There's a Jew for everything.

34:07We, uh, [laughs] we recently had, uh, Sal Mercogliano on, who does a amazing podcast about shipping, and he says that the Houthis play, uh, six degrees of Israeli. So wherever they, whenever they see a ship they wanna attack, they'll be like, "Okay, how do we connect this to Israel?" [laughs] "Oh, the- Ah... owner's wife grew up in Israel," so. No, I, I'm sorry, I'm gonna in- have to interrupt you there. I hope he gave me credit for that, because six degrees of Israeli comes from- [laughs]... Dr. Goodlook's six degrees of Jew.

34:36[laughs] And so I feel as though someone needs to be giving proper attribution. I wa- I wanna bring you guys on together to debate. [laughs] So I think you d- in the beginning of the book, you do a really good job of explaining this concept of suicidal empathy, and everyone should read it because I, now I can't see anything without noticing this concept, really. Mm-hmm. I n- I notice it every day in different ways, like even in personal relationships and li- in the broader world.

35:05And so I, I wanna just touch on it for a second, because we live in an affluent country, in an affluent age with lots of affluence, and the most affluent among us think that they have the answers for the least affluent and the most marginalized, and they wanna in- put on them rules, regulations, policies that will have zero effect on their own life, right? And like you give the greatest example, you know, open borders, but I'm gonna live with 24-hour security behind my gates and, you know, I'll protect my family.

35:40Where, how did we get here, and is this a new concept or is this something that has existed for a long time that's been sort of repackaged, or do you find it something actually brand new? Yeah, like did the French aristocrats care- Yeah... about the- Right... this kind of virtue signaling? Right. So several things that- Yeah... I could, I could unpack here, so let me try to tackle it, tackle the question from several areas. There are many ways by which societies can commit suicide.

36:11And as a matter of fact, very early in the book, I, I give a few quotes from really eminent, uh, historians and politicians where they had the insight that ultimately the demise of a great civilization does not come from outside. It comes from... And so w- the, the one great quote by, uh, Arnold Toynbee, uh, where he did a, he did a 12-volume, uh, mammoth history of, you know, the, the, the decline of civilizations, and the, the... His most famous maxim is, "Civilizations don't die by murder but by suicide." Mm-hmm. So, so the idea that civilizations commit suicide is not- Something new to the current zeitgeist. Okay.

36:57What is new to the current zeitgeist, and hence why my concept has so resonated with people, is that the means by which you're committing suicide- Mm... is through the dysregulation of empathy. Mm-hmm. That's the unique- I get it... feature. And, and so... And let me explain here again the sort of evolutionary background to how I developed that insight. It, it's perfectly reasonable, well, it, it's, it's true, that humans, as part of their evolutionary repertoire, have evolved mechanisms to scan the environment for threats, right? And so for example, if...

37:38Th- this is the example I always like to use because it's really vivid in people's imagination. If I were to meet you in person, uh, and I notice that prior to us shaking hands you had been sneezing incessantly into your hand- [laughs]... and then you give me your hand to shake it, although I suspect, Jaelea, maybe- Yeah... you don't, you don't do the handshaking. Uh- [laughs]... so if you were to, uh, shake hands with me, I have coded that you probably have a really nasty cold. And so hopefully when you're not noticing, I'll head off to the bathroom- Mm-hmm...

38:09wash my hands to make sure that I don't catch your, your, your cold or flu or whatever you have. Right. So it made perfect evolutionary sense for me to have scanned the environment, identified potential threats, and acted accordingly. The problem, say with OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and in the specific manifestation of OCD called germ contamination fears, I will now head off into the bathroom, wash my hands for the next eight hours in scalding hot water- Mm... until the skin is falling off my skin. I can't get to my job in the morning 'cause I'm stuck in this infinite loop. Mm.

38:46So what started off as an adaptive mechanism, adaptive meaning it, it has evolutionary benefits, becomes maladaptive when it misfires. Mm-hmm. And so that was my insight, aha. Now I'm gonna apply that exact framework to argue that in the same way that germ contamination fears is the maladaptive misfiring of an- Mm... otherwise adaptive process, that's exactly what suicidal empathy is. It's the maladaptive misfiring of an otherwise w- adaptive, well-modulated empathy- Right... mechanism. Mm-hmm. And so that's... So that is novel.

39:27Now, but to your other point, which is the highest soci- the higher people are... don't care about the fact that they are supporting policies, that's also a term that if you r- know Rob Henderson's work, he introduced- Mm-hmm... the term luxury belief. Oh, yeah. We've had him on. Right. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. Well, luxury beliefs- Mm-hmm... are instantiated through the mechanism of suicidal empathy. Right. 'Cause what, what's happening, I can tell all of my cool friends when I go to my billionaire parties that I am astoundingly empathetic, kind, compassionate, and so on, while suffering none of the costs of those positions.

40:10That's the perfect storm. Right. All the benefits, zero of the cost. Let the assholes in the lower classes- Mm... have to succumb to the consequences of my enlightened ideas. Sure. And so that's exactly why very early on I take all of those terms that have now become part of our parlance, and I argue they all come from suicidal empathy. That's so true. Mm. And the, and the ad- adaptive to maladaptive would be, like, the difference between, I don't know, caring for a, a sick animal and f- filling up your entire apartment with animals so that you can't sleep or eat or live there anymore.

40:51Right. Exactly. So in that case, you... It is misfiring in, in that the, the hoarding of animals ultimately becomes a cruel practice, right? Mm. So you started off with this empathy to animals. In so doing, you end up harming the animals that you apparently cared for. It's having #BLM- Mm... let's reimagine policing so that we no longer bring really, uh, tough-looking cops with guns to the tough neighborhoods, but we bring empathetic social workers to walk through the domestic violence.

41:27That ends up resulting in an increase in criminality in those neighborhoods- Mm-hmm... in those neighborhoods of color. I despise the semantic structure of blank of color. Mm. He's a mentor of color. He's a professor of color. Jews of color is a thing now- Jews of color... which is also very annoying... of, of which I am a proud member of. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. I hope you use that card from time to time. As a matter of fact, I mean, I, I know you might be saying it flippantly. [laughs] I have... Because I understand the psychology of the degenerates, I have literally used that term- [laughs]... when someone...

42:04So let's say some person from, I can't remember which famous magazine. It might... I don't know if it was Newsweek or... Well, Forbes maybe, writes to me and is sort of attacking me. I say, "Look at this privileged white woman- [laughs]... attacking a refugee Jew of color." [laughs] "Does she hate me because I'm a Brown person? Does she hate me because I'm a refugee? Is it, is it her Arabophobia?" Yeah. Because I'm Arabic. Her brain exploded. She shut down her whole... Because I understand the currency from which she operates. Right. I troll her using the metrics that she cares about. She can't come back at me.

42:45I've gone after Black people in the United States where I say, "Be very careful if you're going to attack me, because my victimology score outranks you by orders of magnitude." [laughs] And guess what? It's true. You do have a lot. They back off very quickly. [laughs] I was laughing Speaking of, of trolling though Yeah... I wanna ask you about your, your Twitter activity. You're, you're very active on Twitter. Yes. Um, you write a lot of books, though- Right... so I don't know how you manage, 'cause I get sucked into it all the time. Um, it, I mean, are you having fun? Do you get angry? I, I get angry a lot. Right.

43:24No, that's a great question. Uh, of course, there is so- uh, points where I'm pissed off at this person because how dare they say such defamatory things, but most of the time it is actually driven by exactly what you said first, fun. [laughs] So that even when I attack someone, the people who truly understand me know that I'm doing it with a twinkle in my eye. Mm-hmm. I'm doing it with a smile. The ones who understand me get that. The ones who don't, you know, think I'm unhinged, right?

43:52[laughs] And, and, and the reason why, but to your point about how could I be, you know, writing books and being so professorial but also, you know, get in the mud and de- you know, debate people in the way that I do online, it's because I recognize through psychology of persuasion that there are many modalities by which I can achieve my goal, which is to spread, hopefully, good idea and defeat bad ideas. Mm. If I were uni- m- m- and, uh, you know, u- uni- modality, if you like- Right... in my approach, which by the way, many of my academic colleagues who might very much support all that I do are unable- Mm...

44:36to be multifaceted in their approach, right? Yeah. So the fact that I am satirical, the fact that I'm funny, to them, serious people should always look into the sky and pontificate with a- [laughs]... even if it's a fake pipe, because that's what professors do. Right. Real professors cannot have a sense of humor, right? Because it's too, it's too serious what we do to have a sense of humor. That's why they are read by only their wives and their mother- [laughs]... and that's why I can draw Elon Musk's attention. [laughs] I was crying from laughter.

45:15One sentence you wrote where, and 'cause it's so silly, right? You write, it, it, it's not a sentence, but you wrote, "Homeless equals unhoused," which we all know now we have to use that term. It's, it's so, it's, it's so silly. And then you write, "Home invader, surprise guest." [laughs] And I just, it just summarizes exactly the moment we're in right now. Right. And- Like, someone's invading my home, I'm gonna s- uh, surprise guest. Chas v'Shalom, I should say a burglar. No, I would never use that. [laughs] And what's rapist?

45:42What's the, what's the Gad Saad Twitter- Oh, it's, uh, equi- something equity, uh- No... relationship equity. [laughs] Undocumented love maker. Yeah. [laughs] Oh my God. [laughs] But it is, it, you know, it wouldn't be funny if it wasn't, if it wasn't so real. I mean, ev- every, I just, you know- Totally... I, I look on, I wake up every morning and look at Twitter, which is wonderful for my mental health. [laughs] And if I don't look at Twitter, I look at WhatsApp, where people are sharing annoying things from Twitter that they've seen.

46:13[laughs] And you see Mahmoud Khalil, who is a terrorist supporter, by his own admissions and words, being featured on the cover of, I forget if it was New Yorker or New York Magazine New York, New Yorker Magazine. Yeah. Yeah. A- as, like, the sad, you know, um, uh, victim of, of ICE. And you're like, "I don't even know what's satire anymore." I know. I mean, think about it, right? And I, I don't mean to turn this on me, but since I'm here presenting myself- Yeah, go ahead... the New Yorker Magazine wakes up in the morning and says, "There are two possible people that we could put on our front cover." [laughs] "We could put Mahmoud Khalil, or we could put Gad Saad. Let's take a vote.

46:5912 to zero, let's go for Mahmoud. The Jew Nazi should not be here. Mahmoud is the guy that is congruent with our society and who's the real intellectual. Gad Saad is, we don't, we don't know what he is, but he certainly is a Jewish Nazi." Mm. That's the world we live in. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's just- It's amazing... I don't know how, I, I just, I don't know, uh, perhaps I should read more of your, your tweets and all of your work because I'm, I'm really, uh, sometimes I think that we got to where we are, the three of us, let's say if we have, you know, a c- common outlook on life because of our life experiences.

47:35I don't know if that's- Yeah... that's true for you, but, you know, I think we've all, you know, when we were younger, we had certain views of the world, and we, you know, you think everybody's good and your parents are protecting you, whatever. And then you go out to the world and you get punched in the face a few times, and you're like, "Okay, I need to be realistic." Are people just not being punched in the face enough? You know, it's so good that it's, uh, uh, it's powerful what you just said because in chapter one of The Parasitic Mind, I tell this story. So I'm, I'm trying to explain there what are the two fundamental ideals that drive my life, and I basically argue that it's truth and freedom. Mm. And, and one feeds into the other. And because of that, I have a very purist bent on defending truth and freedom, and one of the most powerful things that my mother ever told me that speaks exactly to what you just said, she had told me, this was probably, I must have been maybe in my early 20s, somewhere around there, maybe late teens. She said to me, "You know, Gad, the quicker you find out that people do not abide to your purity bubble, the better it will be for you." Mm.

48:44And so one of the things that I have had to face in life is I first started off thinking that everyone adheres to my standards of purity, and regrettably, I found out that 99.9% of people don't. Now, that can have incredibly, uh- Onerous manifestations that are very serious or lesser so. Let me... I don't know where I would place the example that I'm about to give you, but so let me t- let me tell you it, and then you tell me what you think. One of the reasons why I don't collaborate with many invitations to collaborate with people on papers- Mm...

49:26is because I never trust that the authors with whom I might collaborate will have my level of ethics- Mm... whether it be in how they handle the data- Mm... in h- in whether they attribute proper references to the right things- Mm... whether they don't engage in any plagiarism. What happens if I have a co-author in a, on a paper, and that the part that was written by one of the other co-authors- Right... ends up having a plagiarism thing? Mm. So I have literally taken a huge penalty in instead of ha- I mean, I've, I've published tons, so it's not like I'm, I'm lamenting- Right... how much I've published.

50:08But I could have probably published three times the number of- Right... papers I have, but I walked away from it. And I don't mean to imply that all my potential colleagues are all scammers. Right. But because I can't, with full assuredness, know whether this guy from somewhere that I've never met before has my purity level, I end up walking away from those opportunities. So I, I hear you. It's interesting. Mm. I have a question. Yeah, it's a high-risk kind of, I don't know, or lo- or low, low risk tolerance, which I think is, makes sense for people who are very individualistic- Right... and, you know.

50:42I have a qu- a personal question. Please. There is an evolutionary biologist who I used to really love and follow, and, and he changed a lot of how I think about the world, and I'm not, I don't wanna speak Lashon Hara, bad, you know, gossip. But his name rhymes with Rhett Heinstein, [laughs] and I really loved him, and I am really struggling with what has happened to this person, and I'm curious, how do you deal with thinkers and scientists and, uh, just in general, people who maybe had good ideas or have good ideas, but are very questionable in many of their other ideas?

51:25Do you, do you throw out everything with, in the garbage, or how, how do you deal with this reality we're facing? Uh, wh- what was the guy's name? Rhett Heinstein? [laughs] Yeah. Maybe he, he might have a brother, too, so. Y- yes, yes. Uh- Shemeric. Y- yes. Shemeric. Yeah. Rhett Heinstein. Yes, I, I, I know, I know those twins. [laughs] Uh, I've even gone to a Shabbat, uh, dinner with one of the two imaginary, non-existent- Yes... existing. Uh, yeah, I could, I could have things to say, but in the, in the pursuit of the edict that you mentioned earlier about not gossiping, I'll refrain from that and answer it- Yeah... more generally.

52:05We can gossip after we turn off the microphone, and we- But can I trust-... can have a personal conversation... you have my purity level to be- Yes... honest about not gossiping? [laughs] And oops, my- Definitely not... right. Uh, I, I've actually faced this with, uh, several m- you know, I've had a long history of that with, because I've had a long academic career, obviously. Uh, it, it's not that I always throw away the baby with the bathwater. It really depends on the level of the transgression. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right?

52:36So if, if someone suddenly comes out and says, "You know, as, as a biologist, I can confirm that there are 873 genders," now I really do have to question anything that you ever say because it's as- astounding that you could make such a statement. Right. If, on the other hand, you hold positions that might be politically a bit unhinged, but that has still, in some form, is still, you're still anchored to reality- Mm... in some form of a epistemology of reality, then I might say, "Okay, I'll, I'll be a bit more, uh, forgiving." But, but I've had to actually make those calls- Mm... in very real ways with, with real people.

53:20Now, one of them, I just recently mentioned today online, so I don't feel bad in mentioning it again. No, it's okay. Uh, there's another evolutionary biologist. I'll mention his name. His name is David Sloan Wilson. His wife, uh, not his wife, his daughter is now the sitting, uh, mayor of Seattle. Oh. Yeah. Um, okay, right. So you've heard some of her positions- Real winner. Yeah. Right. Now, David Sloan Wilson and I we're, were good friends. David Sloan Wilson invited... He's, he's a really eminent evolutionary biologist. I respect his scientific work greatly. We were good friends.

53:57He's come to my home for dinner- Wow... or lunch rather. My wife prepared for him. I've invited him to Concordia. He's invited me several times to his university. Uh, so there was this great mutual, uh, adm- admiration and so on. At one point, you obviously both know my, my social media feed. Mm-hmm. I had posted some less than, uh, warm posts about Nancy Pelosi and about the prophet, peace be upon him, Barack Obama. [laughs] And he came back and wrote something, you know, I, I'm paraphrasing 'cause I don't have the exact tweet- Right... in front of me.

54:37You know, uh, "Gad Saad is a good friend of mine and a great scientist, and I, you know, I appreciate him greatly, but some of his political posts suggest that he has lost his humanity." Mm. "I hope that he finds his way to being human." So I literally was no longer classified as Homo sapien. [laughs] I had, I had been removed from being human. Mm. Had become some manifestation of being subhuman, but he, he held out hope that I could find my way to becoming human again. Well, that is an example of how someone's mind could be so parasitized- Yeah... that...

55:24Now, by the way, I didn't say really nasty things about his family members. I was critiquing Nancy Pelosi- Mm-hmm [laughs]... and Barack Obama, but I had transgressed so badly that I was no longer human, so it, it- Wow. But do people believe- Wow... their, their stuff or their, their bullshit, or are they signaling? I mean, I tend to think people believe it. People convince themselves- That's a great question-... that this is the correct thing... and I often ask myself that, and I've often asked that of others, say, on my show. "Do you think that when they go to bed and put their head on their pillow...

56:02" I, I think there's a bit of both. There are some- Mm-hmm... that are exactly... You know, I, I so internalized this. Uh, you know, you remember the old, uh, Seinfeld bit where I actually discuss it in this first book? "Remember, Jerry, it's not a lie if you believe it." If you believe it, yeah. Right? And so that's... So for me to be able to promulgate complete nonsense if I'm one of those degenerates, uh, I have to first truly internalize it. But I do think that in the deep, deep, deep recesses of their mind, most of them don't believe the nonsense. Mm. And let me give you an example of that. Uh, this I call the Malcolm Gladwell effect. Mm.

56:43[laughs] And I mean, he is a public figure, so I- Yeah, yeah... don't feel as though I'm gossiping. I'm, I'm attacking him. Well, I have gossip about him for after we turn off the microphone. [laughs] Oh, okay. Perfect. Yeah. So Malcolm Gladwell is, more power to him, is a bestselling author. He takes other people's ideas, regurgitates them in some way, and yourself, great. You're a great storyteller. Good for you. But he recently, as you know, was one of the front runners in defending the idea that it's completely antiquated to think that we know what the definition of male and female is, which by the way, until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people who had existed on Earth, that's a real number by the way, a real estimate- Wow...

57:24all those 117 billion people seem to be able to navigate through the very difficult conundrum of identifying what's male or female very, very easily with full accuracy. [laughs] But we now know because we all attended a seminar of progressive biology at Oberlin College, whi- which was headed by Professor Malcolm, uh, Gladwell- [laughs]... that that's complete nonsense. And so he was not only promulgating the idea for trans rights, some women do have nine-inch penises, and therefore they could also be with your 13-year-old daughter. It's just two girls having fun in the shower, right?

57:55[laughs] One of them happens to have been Bubba yesterday and has a nine-inch penis, but they're just two girls. They're teenage girls just frolicking. Yes? Okay. Yes. [laughs] So, and so he was even going after guys who would, who were against the trans activism. He di- He, to my best knowledge, he never came after me. Probably he knows better not to. Yeah. But he did go after a lot of other people who were defending real women's rights. But then recently when he... Let me, in my usual style, look, I'm gonna... Let me smell the air a bit.

58:26[laughs] He's now seeing that the winds are changing. Mm. Right. Yeah. It's no longer as cool to say that some women do have penises. He came out, if you remember, if you saw- Yeah... and said- You, you wrote it, wrote about it too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, yeah, I guess, you know, I was lying, but I was lying for really good reasons. Right. Mm-hmm. So, so, so that answers your question. He knew all along that he was full of pure bullshit, but yet it was more important for him to be invited to the cool kids' party in Manhattan, whereas guys like me, really mean Arabic Middle Eastern types, we're mean in defending the truth and real women's rights.

59:06He ha- He, he, he does this with the pinky when he drinks the espresso. [laughs] He's a lot more sophisticated than I am. He speaks with a progressive lisp, whereas, you know, I'm just harsh in that Middle Eastern way. No, it's, it's really true. It's funny because I w- I work for a national organization, Hillel, that has campus clubs on every campus, and we do a lot of good work. One of the challenges I find is they have a very kind of old-fashioned view of like what a person of color is, for example, or h- or what diversity looks like, and they're still kind of working within that model of like, you know, it means a Black Jew, or it means a, you know, a whatever.

59:46Like, they're, that's still the way they look. Yeah. But really if you look at the s- like actual demographics on the ground, the, what the diversity is of co- of young Jewish college students is, uh, Jews from Sephardic homes, Persian Jews, Russian immigrant, young, you know, their children. They're all very conservative. Right. So if you really wanna think about diversity within the Jewish community, you have to like put aside the old ideas that weren't, that maybe worked in the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s and, and readjust how you think about it, you know?

1:00:18And I look at you, and you're like a good example of that. Like, if we wanna be diverse in the Jewish community, we should be having Dr. Gad Saad on every panel, right? 'Cause like you bring a lot of diversity. I await the invitations. And what? I have to do a lot of trigger warnings for the students. I was gonna say, I await the invitations. I mean, you- you're, you're a part of this national organization. I must have lost all the paid invitations to speak- I know... at all the Hillel events. I know. I know. Listen, just the other day we were celebrating, and, and I don't mean this as a put-down, um, but it is- Uh-oh...

1:00:49maybe inadvertently a put-down. Not, not to you. [laughs] But the other day there was incident number 30,564 of antisemitism at UCLA. I don't even remember what it was, to be honest. Yeah. But the head of the Hillel chapter there put out a very strong statement. Excellent. And it wasn't one- He will not tolerate Islamophobia. No. No. [laughs] No. No, he was really good. It was excellent. He was good. He was like, "This is bullshit-" Yeah... "and stop with this bullshit. Enough is enough." He's like, "We apologize for nothing." He's great. Yeah. He's just really great. I know.

1:01:20And we celebrated that because it was a wonderful statement, but like how bad are things that we're like, oh, some... Like- We're way past beyond of strong, like, the, the place of strongly worded statements. Yeah. Our, our bar is so low from Jewish organizations that, you know, if you see all these, um, these messages coming out from England after the, the terror attack in Golders Green, it's like, "Oh, we come together and this and the community and we're praying and..."

1:01:47Has no place in Britain or Canada. No, nobody... Take your prayers and shove them up your ass, sorry. [laughs] And just, like- I like it... do something about it. Well, that- Like you should have done 10 years ago. They're all wood cricket Jews, right? I mean, that's exactly it. Yeah. And then they say, "As a wood cricket- [laughs]... I wanna tell you that..." [laughs] Yeah. Shoot, I have so many issues I needed to discuss with you. I wanted to talk about nature and nurture. We'll have to do another episode 'cause I, I, there's so- Yeah, write another book so we can have you back. I know.

1:02:12I know. I hope. No, it was great. Or come back whenever. I do wanna- But we'll link to the... The book is really, really fun, especially, it's such a fun read, especially if you're- It is... following Dr. Saad on Twitter. If you're not, you should. Um, because it really, you, you, you write like you tweet, which is very- Yes... funny and very kinda tongue in cheek. But I- Um. Yael, before you end, I do wanna say one thing. There's not just, you don't just prescribe the problem, or describe the problem.

1:02:37You, I think you do a good job at the end of giving a list of things we could be doing- I do... that could help, and one of them that I wanna leave our listeners with is w- and I'm really thinking about this a lot, is the idea of choosing who you give your empathy to carefully, right? Mm-hmm. Like, really consider who you're empathizing with. And if I walk away with one lesson that I wanna give over to my students, it's gonna be that. Like, it's good to have empathy, it's good to be a good person, but choose wisely who you're, who you're empathizing with. So leave us- It's not Muhammad Khalil, I'll tell you that much. Yeah, not Muhammad, exactly.

1:03:09Not Muhammad Khalil. Leave us with one last thought. Uh, well, I, you mean as relating to promotional issues or a deep thought? Yeah, anything. Whatever. Every thought is on your mind. We don't care. What you wanna have for dinner tonight. [laughs] Anything. So I, I, I'd say this. You know, people often say, you know, they'll write to me privately and say, "I, I can't take this. I can't take the lunacy. I can't take all this stuff. What can I do?" Well, here's one thing you can do, and I, I know it's going to sound self-serving. But you can actually buy a book- [laughs]...

1:03:39that offers you what the ailment is and- Right... as you so kindly said, the, what the prescription, what the vaccine is. At the very least, support those who are doing all the heavy lifting on your part. So please, please, please consider, uh, purchasing a copy. It's, and it's not, it really is not coming from, "Oh, I'd like to make more money so I can buy a house in California." It's coming from a place that I really do care about your children and mine. I do think that there is a possibility for us to implement the auto-corrections. Mm.

1:04:10I worry that the West is not exhibiting the fortitude that would be necessary to implement them. So at the very least, arm yourself with the knowledge and then hopefully act on it. And thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you so much for coming on. Buy the book. Buy it for your friends and family. Don't, uh, check it out of the library like a cheap person. Uh, buy, uh, the hardcover. And, uh, thank you so much, Dr. Gad Saad. Thank you. Thank you. That was so much fun. Appreciate your time. Cheers.

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