After Party with Emily Jashinsky - SPLC Bombshells, Big Tech & China, a Covid Cover-Up, and Out-Of-Touch Elites, w/ Gad Saad PLUS Joe Weil

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a deep dive into the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest legal battle involving its questionable actions and how it’s far-left curriculum made its way into America’s schools. Then Emily is joined by Gad Saad, author of the brand-new book “Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind” and Scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. They discuss Ryan Holiday’s recent attacks on Ivanka Trump and Elon Musk, Gad’s new book and what he’s discovered about ‘suicidal empathy’ in academia, why leftists really push for ‘compassionate’ policies, and why Gad is such a strong defender of America. Then Emily is joined by Joe Weil, CEO of Unplugged, one of this show’s sponsors. Joe offers a rare glimpse at life inside Big Tech, sharing anecdotes about his time at Apple, what was really happening there during Covid, his concerns about President Trump’s talks with China, and what Americans don’t understand about the surveillance state. They also discuss Wednesday’s testimony from a CIA whistleblower about how Anthony Fauci may have influenced the CIA’s handling of the COVID lab leak theory, and more…   Unplugged: Switching is simple, Visit https://Unplugged.com/EMILYand order your UP phone today!   ZBiotics: Go to https://zbiotics.com/AFTERPARTY and use AFTERPARTY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to After Party, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Our guests tonight are Gad Sad, author of course, Gad Sad, and then Joe Weil. So we are going to get into all kinds of different topics. It's a meaty show tonight. There's a lot happening across a wide range of subjects in these new cycles. So excited to get into that with all of you. With Gad, we talk about his book, which is called Suicidal Empathy.

We pre-recorded our conversation with him a week ago. He's got obviously a busy media scheduled these days. Since we recorded, there's been some quite interesting discourse about his book. If we had him live tonight, I probably would have asked even more questions based on the reactions that his book has gotten so far. But it's a very, very interesting conversation. So please do stay tuned for that. Joe Weil is actually one of our sponsors. He's from, he's the CEO of Unplugged and the Up Phone, which you've heard about on our show.

So you hear a little bit about the up phone. Of course, he's like I mentioned, one of our sponsors. But actually, he spent a long time inside Apple. And so he's going to talk to us as Trump arrives in China with Apple outgoing CEO, Tim Cook, Jensen Wang of Nvidia. We are going to have a pretty interesting discussion about surveillance. FISA is back on the table. The driver kill switch on the cars.

We've got CBDC also on the table with FISA. and a huge chunk of testimony from a current CIA employee who's now acting as a whistleblower against Anthony Fauci. Today in the Senate, we have video of the Rand Paul whistleblower we told you about on Monday. And Joe, again, as somebody who partially left Apple over starting to see this strange censorship or instinct towards suppression and cooperation with the kind of deep state creep into that company at the time. He's going to tell us some really interesting insights from his time at Apple and his time after being at Apple. Really, really, really, really, really interesting stuff. So make sure to stay tuned for that. But first, I wanted to bring you an update

in the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Of course, make sure to subscribe. It helps us so much of you subscribe to the YouTube channel. That is the most helpful thing you can do to support our journalism here at After Party. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify. It helps us a ton. We appreciate you so much. A reminder, my email is Emily at double make care media.com. Many of you know that because you're right to me every week and I write back to just about all of you. We answer your questions on the Happy Hour edition of our show, which is podcast. Only every Friday, you can check that out, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the Southern Poverty Law Center. There is a development in this case weeks after, of course, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice under, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center

on fraud charges for basically saying that it was fighting extremism, racism, and hatred, but bank records showed that the Southern Poverty Law Center had actually been funding, quote-unquote, informants inside of a lot of groups that are dubbed hate groups, extremist groups, and these are the ones that really are hate groups and extremist groups. the ones in question here where the SPLC had informants, these groups are nasty. We're talking neo-Nazi groups. We're talking Klan groups. We're not talking about the groups that are merely conservative that the Southern Poverty Law

Center gave hate designations or extremist designations to over the years. Now, that conversation has exploded since the indictment came out. that has been really the conservative movements and many people on the left. Too few people on the left, I should say, but that has been a complaint about the SPLC for a very long time, that it was conflating objective hate extremism with much, much, much more subjective designations of conservative groups, people who simply disagreed on issues like immigration or, let's say, immigration is a pretty good example, but DEI, these sorts of things. And this conversation, like I was saying, has exploded as this conversation about the informants

and fraud has exploded. But the Alabama Attorney General has announced that they are opening a consumer investigation into the SPLC, which, of course, is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama. So a new report also is shedding light. into this in one second, too, shedding light on how the Southern Poverty Law Center's curriculum has been integrated into school districts around the country. So let's first start with this new investigation from the Alabama AG, which the Alabama AG discussed with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, one of the SPLC's groups that has been targeted for many, many years. Let's listen to

S4 here. This federal indictment of SPLC pulls back the curtain on decades of of corrupt activity that could be, I think, stunning in what was found out. Yeah, and it's not surprising when it really is just a fundraising operation under the guise of something very different. But yet they are paying those organizations and they wanted to be able to identify as hate groups. And then fundraising off of that same information, clearly there is a conflict there, and that's what we're looking to uncover. When there's fraud occurring, when we also have oversight, generally, involving charitable organizations, we want to know who they were funding money to. What was the purpose of that money? What information they gained and how they utilize that

information to raise money around the country with their donors. We think it's relevant to the powers we have to protect consumers from fraud and we're looking forward to being able to see those documents. All right. So now you will have the powers of the state of Alabama where the SPLC was headquartered, mustard in addition to the powers of the federal government against the SPLC in these fraud investigations. And one thing that has happened since the indictment was announced is a lot of folks on the left who are skeptical of Trump, some people deeply, deeply skeptical of Trump or contemptuous of Trump have rushed to say this is just political targeting because, of course, people have known that the SPLC has this informants program for a really long time.

But I think I find that actually to be distasteful because if the SPLC is sending mailers and they have been big direct mail fundraisers for a long time to regular people around the country saying that they are stopping hatred and extremism. And if you look at their fundraising materials, it is to know what they were doing and then to look at their fundraising materials at least based on these bank records. I do think we should be careful. I mentioned this when we first covered the SPLC story. They have not, we haven't seen their full legal defense of their informant program and of these bank records yet. And I do think there is a legal tying of those bank

records to what was happening inside the groups that it is a blank, what's the best way to put it. That is an empty space right now that needs to be filled. That is a sort of, we need to see the bridge from point A to point B here to be conclusive in the fraud case and to know exactly what was happening with the informant's case. I still think there's some missing information. There's some missing puzzle pieces. And that's why you have courts and that's why you have investigations. But to see these bank records laid out in the indictments where you have money in what, I mean, listen, let me put this up on the screen. This was a good post from the bits of About Money website, bits about money.com, which basically is outlining. I mean, it's like,

it's got to be like 10,000 words, if not more, in detail from a pretty nonpartisan perspective about why these fraud allegations against the SPLC are extremely serious. And almost quote unquote textbook, that's a word that gets used in this piece. And I think rightfully so, because again, if you are a normal person getting an SPLC mailer about stopping hatred and extremism and the like. And then you're just supposed to know that it's public information because some random place has reported it years ago that they're also funding those organizations via this informant program. Again, we need to know more and we will. It'll come out in court. It'll come out in these investigations about what that money was being used for. I think the pattern

of how they set up these bank accounts and then used the money that is documented, based on the records that the DOJ put together. I think the pattern looks very bad for them, but I just encourage everyone to go to this bits about money post. Let me just scroll up to the title here. That's how long it is. If you're watching this, you just saw me scroll up like a mountain, basically.

It's called Notes on a Nonprofit Indicted for Bank Fraud. It's from Patrick McKenzie, who has been the CEO of a 501C3, and this is very detailed about C3 law, and exactly how serious what the SPLC is alleged to have done really is, and how the evidence kind of fits into where they would be violating the law. But to an average person who's getting these mailers and wants to fight extremism, and it's so stigmatized in the United States rightfully to be bigoted and hateful

because we have made so many strides against real prejudice and bigotry and hate in such a short period of time in this wonderful country full of wonderful people. And you get a mailer about that. It is serious that the SPLC at the same time was done. doing basically what the FBI did in the Gretchen Whitmer case and has done in other cases, basically fomenting, allegedly, in, you know, whether it was Charlottesville, using money, driving people, making the situation worse, creating more problems of hate and extremism, making these events potentially bigger, coordinating, more successful, able to work,

allegedly, that worsens the problem. That is serious. fraud and it's not on the elderly people or good-natured people who are responding to these mailers to like just know that maybe the SPLC is driving people to Charlottesville. Are you kidding me? That is a very serious fraud case. And so on that note, let's take a look at some developments on the other side of this conversation about how the SPLC. I think this is fraudulent in of itself, maybe not legally, but how the SPLC was implemented in curriculum around the country. This is defending education. They're a conservative nonprofit that has audited a lot of curriculum around the country from the vantage point of cracking down on DEI and quote unquote,

wokeness. And so just yesterday, they put out this giant report about how many school districts have integrated the SPLC's program that is called, quote-unquote, learning for justice. It used to go by the moniker, teaching tolerance. This has ended up, in some ways, through social and emotional learning initiatives in curriculums around the country. Total number of school districts here,

according to defending education, which they say is incomplete, and they will keep updating as they get more information from around the country. I saw Fox News covered this earlier today. So I imagine they'll be adding districts to that as people write in, and they're able to confirm some of this information, but 189 total school districts,

total number of state government entities, 30, total number of states, 42 plus the district of Columbia, where this has been implemented, over the years. And so what parents defending education does, in addition to these huge, huge lists, is also give you a glimpse at some of the teaching materials here. So here's teaching tolerance, the cover,

what this is is exactly why. I mean, listen, this is the fall 2018 issue of teaching tolerance, features an article titled, What is White Privilege? Really? Why talk about whiteness? This is another article that has been integrated into curriculum, which claims, quote, the normalization of whiteness and the impenetrable ways it protects itself are cornerstones of the way institutions function in the United States. This is ideological progressivism being smuggled into public school classrooms and classrooms around the country under the guise of fighting hatred and bigotry and the like. This is exactly how the SPLC insinuated itself into media coverage of hatred and extremism and bigotry and smuggled into all of that coverage. These seemingly neutral

designations of conservative groups that disagreed on trans issues, immigration, marriage, religion in some cases, had actual mainstream within the spectrum within the spectrum. of mainstream belief in the United States, good-natured, not always, but sometimes disagreements with the progressive left on that array of topics. They were being designated as hate groups. The SPLC was selling that as a neutral designation, and the media was buying it and then selling it back to the public as a neutral designation. And all of this helped the SPLC get this curriculum into, what, 189 schools around the country talking about how whiteness is a cornerstone. Let me pull this quote back up again. It's worth reading. The normalization of whiteness and the impenetrable ways

it protects itself. What the fuck does that even mean? Sorry, are cornerstones of the way institutions function in the United States. Quote, recognizing white privilege is a necessary but insufficient means for confronting racism and increasing opportunities for people of color. In fact, acknowledging white privilege, but taking no initiative to own it or address it can be harmful and counterproductive. Not even good enough just to acknowledge white privilege, according to the SPLC's curriculum that was integrated in 189 school districts around the country probably still is, and many, many, many of them. Not even good enough to just talk about white privilege. You actually have to, in order to not be harmful and counterproductive, you have to then take initiative to

own it or address it. Here are some of their standards. Learning for Justice has social justice standards in it, which is apparently a set of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains, identity, diversity, justice, and action, which allows educators to engage a range of anti-bias, multicultural, and social justice issues, and focuses on both prejudice reduction and collective action. Under diversity, it says students will express comfort with people who are both similar to and different from them, and engage respectfully with all people. I guess that sounds fine in theory, but we all know how far the theory goes when in the hands of teachers

who have left of center, to say the least, worldviews. Students will develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society, so you're teaching students to balkanize themselves against their peers and their classmates instead of doing the opposite. Students will express pride, confidence, and healthy self-esteem without denying the value and dignity of other people. What if a student did that with white pride? I think they would understandably fall under the hate designation, but that's because what this really is is opposition to the colorblind standard that, was healthy, healthy in public institutions, doesn't mean races unimportant and leads to different life experiences. Nobody is saying that. But to say that it's okay for some races to have pride and other

races, there's no reason that anybody should have pride in immutable characteristics. And when you start introducing this to kids at a young age, yes, it's powerful, it's conditioning, but it's so unhealthy. It's so, so unhealthy. Students will recognize stereotypes and relate to people as individuals rather than representatives of groups. Great. Again, I think I know how that's going to be implemented. They're asked to recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice, and injustice. I wonder how the teachers define injustice. And one of the things, you can actually see some of how it's defined here through the actions.

which we can't go through absolutely every single one of them, but go to the defending ed.org website and you can read them for yourself. But the teachers unions and other institutions have been important in proliferating this SPLC curriculum according to defending education. So that is another important part of all of this. We know that major teachers unions in this country

are dominated by the political left. And so it's no surprise that a consequence of it is curriculum like this being integrated around the country. Here they're talking about the American Federation of Teachers and the like. So really, really, really, really important a glimpse. I think at how the SPLC was influential, why the SPLC was influential and exactly how it did insinuate itself into so many corners of American life, of politics and culture, in this case, education, such a powerful organization. And I can't emphasize enough how important it will be if the Trump administration just mitigates its influence through what appears to be a serious

fraud case. Now, another thing I did want to bring up just very quickly is this, this is the SPLC saying, basically, quote, Blanche wrongly claimed it never shared informant intelligence with law enforcement despite evidence provided to prosecutors before its indictment. So basically the SPLC is saying, listen, we have helped the FBI. We've been sharing our informant material with the FBI and the DOJ for a long time. And of course, there were mentions publicly of this whispers publicly mentions in the media of its informant program going back decades. But what's in that indictment is a pretty widespread informant program, like more than what people realized, again, according to the bank records and the like. And so it does, I think, raise an interesting question.

And I'm not sure that I trust the Department of Justice. Do be honest about this, but I look forward to some of the evidence coming out in trial that the FBI was, maybe under Comey, maybe under Mueller, maybe under Chris Ray, relying on information, was basically using the SPLC as a way to have paid informants in those groups. Entirely possible. And some of that may come out as well. But this is how powerful the SPLC has been from politics to the classroom. And I wanted to bring that update because we've been covering this case in some great detail. Listen, I'm looking forward to seeing more about this come out in court. I think there are still missing pieces of the puzzle and don't want to get ahead of the skis on it.

But the evidence is strong that the SPLC could really be crippled by what comes out in this AG. investigation in Alabama, as we mentioned, and also through the legal process in court as well. This year, I'm focusing on small changes, tweaks in life that can make a really big difference because they have that, like, effortless presence in your day-to-day. And this one might sound counterintuitive, but for me, that actually means planning ahead so that I can truly live in the moment when I'm out enjoying a few drinks. Of course, just a few. No more than that. My simple trick for staying balanced is taking Zbiotics pre-alcohol before I start. Zbiotics, pre-alcohol, probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle those rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works.

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most of every sunny Saturday. Don't let those beautiful days, the beautiful weather go to waste this spring. Head over to zbiotics.com slash after party and use the code after party at checkout for percent off. We're going to be joined now by Gad Sad. As I mentioned, he has a new book out called Suicidal Empathy, and we did pre-tape this last week. There's been a lot of talk about Gad's book since then. Unfortunately, I can't follow up and ask more questions about some of the controversies and the criticisms, but did have this very interesting conversation with him about the book last week, and I hope you all enjoy it. Well, we are joined now by Gad Sad. He is the author of the new book, suicidal empathy, dying to be kind. He's also the scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center

for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. Gadzad, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having it. Pleasure to be with you. Now, as I mentioned, the book is called suicidal empathy. So a great place to begin, actually, is by wading into the controversy swirling around daily stoic Ryan Holliday, who has been all over the inner. internet and social media as we're talking because he recently did a video criticizing Ivanka Trump for expressing on Diary of a CEO her inspiration, inspiration that she draws from Marcus Aurelius and meditations. And Ryan Holiday in response was criticized for not being very stoic. So people are digging up old Ryan Holiday clips and one of them happened to fit the theme of your book

quite well, Gad said. Let's take a listen here to Ryan Holiday talking about what he sees as right-wing attacks on empathy on The Daily Show last October. I think Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan and he said, you know, empathy is going to cause the destruction of Western civilization. That is a profoundly stupid thing to say and think. I mean, to say that Elon Musk is not smart is like saying he's not rich. She's clearly very smart. But that is what is so scary about it, that you could be so brilliant, so gifted, so informed, you could have been so successful. And then social media can still break your brain. And it did. It did. This is a guy who went from reading Soviet rocket manuals to figure out the aeronautics business to following like cat turd

seven on Twitter and Russian bots from whom he now gets his information and his worldview. And that is, I think, a tale as old as time. You become successful. You think that you're smart. And that is when you start to get real dumb because, as the Stoics say, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. All right. So this is a very typical glimpse at elite liberal conventional wisdom about the new argument. It's not a new argument, but I should say the new kind of conservative movement against empathy and its weaponization by the left.

Gad, you responded. Let's put F2 up on the screen so folks can see what you said. Dear Ryan Holiday, neither I, Elon Musk nor myself or purporting. that empathy is bad. In my forthcoming book, I provide a detailed evolutionary and psychiatric explanation of how adaptive empathy is an evolutionarily selected virtue, but suicidal empathy is the dysregulation of that rational virtue. Given your take on stoicism, you might want to read my book rather than spewing more geastic misconceptions. Those are fighting words, Gad said. Can you take us to that point? I was trying to be nice there. That's not even fighting.

That's me. That's me being cajoling. But go ahead. No, no, no, I read the book, and I would love to hear you talk a bit about the psychiatric element of this, because that is definitely what I think conventional wisdom on the left is conveniently not dealing with in your argument. Right. So, look, empathy, as I explained in that tweet, is a perfectly rational from an evolutionary calculus perspective, in that we are a social species. Part of being a social species is for you and I, if we're going to have, a meaningful interaction for me to put myself in your mind and vice versa. That's called, by the way, cognitive empathy or theory of mind. For example, autistic children, the way that we diagnose them as being autistic is that we give them a theory of mind test, which they fail. So the problem

arises when adaptive empathy starts misfiring. And it can misfire in several ways. It can misfire by becoming hyperactive. It can misfire by being invoked in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets. And so let me draw an analogy here from psychiatry. If I were to go around and scan the environment for environmental threats, that's perfectly rational from an evolutionary perspective. So if I were to see you at a party, Emily, and I noticed that prior to you shaking my hands, you're incessantly sneezing into your hands. And I noticed that, I will very discreetly, so that I don't offend you, after I've shaken your hand, go to the bathroom and wash my hands. I noticed a threat and I attenuated it.

I mitigated it. But someone who suffers from OCD, germ contamination OCD, is stuck in the hyper-firing of this otherwise adaptive mechanism. They're stuck in an infinite loop, washing their hands for eight hours a day and scalding hot water until the skin off their hands is falling off. So Aristotle, since Ryan Holiday likes to reference the ancient Greeks, Aristotle explained to us more than 2,000 years ago in his Nicomacian ethics about the golden mean that too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good, and much of life is trying to identify that sweet spot. So no empathy makes you a psychopath. Too much empathy towards the wrong targets makes you a suicidally empathetic.

schmuck. And when we look at and drill down to some specific examples, I actually just want to stay with Elon for one moment, the now famous or infamous image of him with the chainsaw, Javier Milay at CPAC, is really interesting because Elon comes in after the conservative movement spends decades talking about cutting the size of government dramatically. And he goes up on stage with the chainsaw in, I don't know what he would say, but I bet there are a whole lot of you know, kind of professional Republicans here in Washington who would say, listen, there were people at VAs around the country losing their jobs, politics, optics of it probably weren't great for Doge in the long term. But, God, I just wanted, now that we have about a year of separation,

and I know, you know, Elon Musk a bit, what do you make of images like that just around Doge, with, again, a year in the rearview mirror and this view of suicidal empathy? Look, we are both persuaded through our cognitive system and through our affective system. So, for example, if I want to sell you a mutual fund, I will develop an advertisement that caters to your cognitive system. I want you to think about why you should buy my mutual fund. So I'll tell you, here are the seven reasons why you should purchase my fund. If I want to sell you a perfume, I don't tell you here are what Harvard physiologists think about, the science of olfaction. Instead, I will try to trigger your affective system. I'll show you a beautiful

girl with flowing, luxuriant hair on a horse, and I'll just give a brand name called Miste. Why am I using this example? Because imagery matters, because oftentimes it caters to our affective system. So when Elon shows up with that chainsaw, he is maybe being a bit over the top, but he is trying to demonstrate the fact with one image, what he could describe with many more words, that there's a lot of fat, whether it be when he took over Eck or Twitter, whether it be in government, there is a lot of fat. And I agree with him, smaller government is better. And so he's going to cut out the fat. Now, for the people who are unhinged and who are suicidally empathetic, they will become hyperbolic and, you know, they're so afraid of his chainsaw. But the reality is he's sharing a very

simple message. The government is too big. It has too much corruption. It misspens all of our taxpayer money. Let's try to cut the fat and the corruption. And it's interesting to me because you write about immigration in the book. You also mentioned Doge in the book. But on the immigration point, it seems to me if you were having this conversation in a vacuum with someone on the left about Lake and Riley, for example, they might be inclined to agree with you and say, you're right. People who want to close the border are being suicidally empathetic. We need workers in this country. Our birth rate is declining.

The Lake and Riley example is just an exception. This is an anecdote. It is suicidal empathy for the U.S. Have you found that? Because your argument is basically that this is a problem that is mostly on the left. But isn't it really something that it's kind of easy? It's a pitfall for everybody ideologically to fall into. Not quite, though, because we know that the Democrats are called the party of empathy, right?

So it's not that the, it's not that human minds could not be parasitized by people in both sides of the political aisle. But as I explained in my earlier book in the parasitic mind, when I talk about how our cognitive system could be parasitized and suicidal empathy is about how our affective system could be parasitized, I argue that the specific parasitic ideas that I am discussing are those on the left, not because people on the right can't be parasitized, but all of those bad ideas. come from academia, and academia is almost exclusively populated by leftists. So I'm not implying that people on the right don't have the architecture of the mind that allows them to also have a hijacking of their brains, but the specific bad ideas that I'm talking about are very much in the ecosystem of the left. I think a lot of Republicans believe that what started giving them the edge around 2024, both on immigration and on trans issues, which you address in the book as well, is these anecdotes of Lake and Riley, which is part of a broader pattern. Absolutely. I'm not

dismissing it as an anecdote at all whatsoever. I think it was important because it was broadly representative of a real trend. But also, let's put F3 up on the screen. This is our friend here at After Party, Katie Pavlisch, just looking at a CNN headline about a Trump administration investigation into Smith College for investigating, they're investigating Smith College for admitting trans students. And so the headline in CNN, the post on X was, in the Trump administration's latest move to limit trans rights, the Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Smith College and all women's college in Western Mass for admitting trans women. Katie says, let's rewrite this. In the Trump administration's later moved to protect women's rights,

the Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Smith College. in all women's college in Western Mass for admitting men. Very easy to rewrite that from an anti-suic empathic perspective, GAD. But I wonder in these cases where you have a Lake and Riley versus the left's image of, you know, the poor asylum seeker, or you have a Riley Gaines versus Alia Thomas. Why is it that some case studies win out in the mind of the law? left is? Is it because they fit a pre-existing narrative? What is it? Well, because remember when I said that suicidal empathy involves the hyper-firing of the empathy module, invoking it in the wrong

circumstances and toward the wrong targets. So when you are in the mind of the suicidally empathetic, the empathy that is owed to thousand of actual women is much lesser than the empathy owed to that one woman with a nine-inch penis, she is deserving of a lot more empathy. That's exactly how the mechanism of suicidal empathy happens. Now, I should mention, and I'm not doing this to sort of pat myself on the back. In 2014, I went to Wellesley College, another all-women school, and I went in there, and after I came out of that exchange, I was standing on top of the mountain before anybody knew about trans rights and all that stuff, warning people. And let me, let me, let me, let me, me tell you why. It's not because I'm a profit. It's because I've been a professor now for 32 years,

and my main area of research is to try to apply evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to study human behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular. And it may or may not surprise you, Emily, to know that the great majority of my social science colleagues were outraged by the fact that I was taking on this project, because to them, biology might matter for the mosquito, the zebra and your dog, but surely, Professor Saad, you don't think that biology matters to human beings. And if you think it matters for human being, surely you don't think that it matters above the neck, meaning to explain the human mind. And so that's, so the parasitic mind is a book that I may have published in 2020, but it's the trajectory of having spent three

plus decades in the ecosystem of lunacy called academia. So none of this trans stuff surprises me. I went in front of the Canadian Senate in 2017 and exactly predicted that Leah Thomas and similar folks would be coming down the pipeline and yet people scoffed and mocked me. It looks like I was right. No question about that. Now, you also argue there's a class element to this. So you quote Thomas Sowell. in the book, his 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed with which folks should absolutely go check out.

You say he explained how the intelligentsia espoused policies that make them feel virtuous in their unlimited compassion while being fully decoupled from the negative consequences of said policies, which in many instances are borne by those whom they are supposed to help, e.g. marginal or marginalized communities, what Solo identified more than 30 years ago has been expanded to include the associated concepts of moral licensing, luxury beliefs, and performative allies. I'll add just as we're talking about immigration, it wasn't until Republican governors in Texas and Florida started busing more and more migrants to places like Washington, D.C. and New York City that, honestly, people who are just kind of normal center-left folks in New York, who I know, started to think

much, much more about the flip side of the suicidal empathy or of the empathy coin that the media had been selling them. So, Gad, I think a lot of people understand this in the context of blue cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles. But can you help us see a little bit why there's a real element of classism to suicidal empathy as well? Because if I am a suicidally empathetic person that lives behind the high walls of the Vatican,

I'm referring here to the Pope with all due respect to all of my Catholic friends, it's nice for me to have tears in my eyes and pontificate about how peacefully and beautiful Christianity and Islam can coexist. And even though there are thousands of fellow Christians that are being massacred as he uttered those words in Nigeria, not only in Nigeria, but let's just take Nigeria. So therefore, I could project to the world how kind I am while I stroke my luxuriant hair and admire myself in the mirror of moral preening. But I always know that I can

go back to the safety of my gated, armed community, or my Vatican walls. That's the ideal situation. I express to the world my virtue, my compassion, my infinite tolerance, my suicidal empathy, while bearing none of the costs. And if I may, very briefly, if you grant me the opportunity to explain a concept, thank you, a concept from evolutionary biology. The peacock's tail, which is a very big burdensome tail, could not have evolved for its survival advantage because it actually reduces the peacock's survivability. It makes it more conspicuous to predators. It makes it less likely that he can take flight and avoid predators. It actually has evolved because it confers reproductive advantage to the peahens.

It's basically saying, despite the fact that I'm carrying this burdensome tail, shouldn't you be choosing me as a mate? So therefore, it's an honest signal of the peacock's quote. Now, why am I saying all this? Because an honest signal has to have a cost associated to it. Otherwise, all the virtue signaling scammers can mimic it with no cost. So it's specifically because it is a costly signal, because it is handicapping, that it has evolved as an honest signal. While when the Pope sits behind the Vatican walls and says Christians and Muslims are beautiful friends, he is not adhering to the costly signaling that we know from evolutionary biology because he is bearing zero costs for his virtue. Interesting. And you're right. This maybe gets us back into the

science of how we get to exactly the point you were just explaining. This implies that the ability to empathize can be developed using a wide range of creative tools, including via the use of art, movies, and literature. Professional schools recognize the importance of empathy. And according seek to educate their graduates on its value, including in medicine, law, education, and business. What's interesting to me about that is it would probably explain why, as Charles Murray documented in 2012, this process, and coming apart, this process of socioeconomic sorting that the United States has undergone in recent decades where people now in higher concentration live based on their socioeconomic status, highly densely packed superzips, densely packed with

the ultra-rich, the upper-middle class, and the like, tend to now be blue areas, even deep-blue areas like the suburbs here in Washington, D.C., suburbs of New York, suburbs of Los Angeles, even Chicago. Is that, am I right? Am I wrong? Am I pulling at the right thread there, Gad? About which part, just so I know which part to answer, about the links between socioeconomic class and empathy, but what just so I'm going through.

Yeah, no, absolutely. as you're saying, that if your empathy is being developed in the academy, places that have more college graduates in the professional space might be overpopulated with the suicidally empathetic. Yes. So, I mean, the way I will answer that is to go to behavioral genetics. So typically, when we're trying to understand how much of a particular phenomenon is due to your genes versus your environment. So for example, my previous book, prior to suicidal empathy,

was a book on happiness, and it might interest your listeners and viewers to know that about 50% of individual differences and happiness scores come from our genes, but 50% are up for grabs, meaning that some of us start off

with a sunny disposition, some of us start off with a more sullen disposition, but depending on the life trajectories that we choose, depending on the decisions that we make, we can get ahead of someone who had a sunny

disposition to start off with. I think the similar principle applies for empathy. Some of us are born with a greater endowment for empathy. And you know this. If you have multiple children, you know that there are individual differences between them. Person, child A seems to be a lot more empathetic than child B. But to your point that of what I mentioned in the book about, you know, you can, you can become more empathetic by interacting with the arts. By reading, for example, reading fiction actually improves your empathy. Why? because you are now putting yourself in the minds of many of the protagonists and antagonists in that literary narrative.

And so even if you started off being very poorly on, scoring poorly on empathy, it is something that you can hopefully improve on. And the best place where I see this, a place that frustrates me when I don't run into empathetic people, is precisely the bedside manners of physicians, right? I mean, when I have to go for even just to do my yearly blood work and my blood pressure, I'm in a complete panic. I'd rather face ISIS because I'm so afraid of how abrupt most of those physicians are.

Boy, they should be in a seminar on empathy, given that this is probably the most intimate context when we feel the most vulnerable. We don't want somebody to be, you know, chat GPTing us. We want somebody that exhibits a bit of empathy. Right. I wanted to get your reaction to this conversation. It was a – the whole podcast was really interesting. But the conversation here is between Ezra Klein and Helena Rosenblatt, who has a new book

on kind of the history of liberalism, the word liberalism, the concept liberalism, as it emerged, really, as Helena argues, I was just on a panel with her, actually, and she laid this thesis out after the French Revolution, they start talking. And Ezra picks up on a really interesting point about how the root of the word liberalism is in freedom and how some of what that meant was the freedom to pursue virtue in earlier iterations of liberalism. Of course, we're talking lowercase L. liberalism. And this is kind of what we were just discussing is cultivating empathy, but cultivating also discernment and responsibility as a member of a community. So let's take a listen to the clip.

This is Ezra's podcast for The New York Times. I think this is quite important, and it's something threaded through your book. You write at some point that this idea of being a liberal, which comes way before liberalism is a political philosophy, is designed by and for the free, wealthy, and well-connected men who are in a position to give and receive benefits in ancient Rome. And some other things that emerge as a book goes on, one thing it makes clear is that if today your problem with liberalism and liberals, is you find them to be a bunch of smug condescending elites, that problem goes way back. That's always been braided into the issue here. And that there was, like, it was a set of virtues that was associated with, like, the noble born

and set them apart in a way that would make them the ideal citizens. And that feels to me actually like a quite profound tension at the heart of the project. Yeah, absolutely. You know, they don't even always live up to the ideal. Sure don't. But they had that ideal, and they talked about it. And they designed an educational system, a liberal arts education, that was supposed to cultivate these virtues, this liberality, in elite boys.

But there was a lot expected of the elite as well. Now, we live in a meritocratic society and one of the, a meritocratic liberal society, at least in theory. And one of the wonderful things about that is we have an education system that was designed at this point in 2026 for everyone, not just elite boys. You are able to take advantage of what used to be considered a wonderful experience preparing you to serve as a good citizen. That is the education system, K through 12, college, particularly college. And nobody really even thinks about it that way, Gad. It's now thought of really as a ticket to the middle class, which it's not really even that anymore, but also as kind of a transaction between you and the university.

You go there, you drink for a few years. And then by the time you graduate, you'll be ready to maybe enter the working world. That concept, even now as we have it, you know, they were talking about Tocqueville and how Tokeville looked at the American version of liberalism as a contrast with European versions of liberalism, we really take for granted. It seems to me now that we have these opportunities in front of us to cultivate discernment.

I would argue that even a greater thing that Americans take for granted, and I say that not as a Canadian, but as someone who was not born into the anomalous reality of the United States. And what I mean by anomalous, in the most positive sense. I mean, there's a reason why it's the Canadian who is the scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the study of American freedom

because I actually have internalized the ethos of what the American spirit is. It's not just being born within certain boundaries that makes you an American. Now, to your point about taking things for granted, one of the reasons why many of the stanchest defenders of the American experience are usually immigrants

who have sampled from the wide buffet of societies out there, who can then come to America and say, be careful, don't think that the liberties that you have here are just some natural default value. That's why, by the way, Ronald Reagan, if you remember the famous quote when he said, I'm paraphrasing it, I don't remember the exact quote, but he said, you know, every generation,

there will be new miscreants who are trying to bring down, you know, the freedoms that you take for granted, and you have to every generation fight for them. So it's Ayan Hersey Ali that protects American freedoms. It's Gadsad that protects American freedoms because the typical American thinks that that's just the way around the, that's how it is everywhere around the world. Whereas if you look at the entire human experience, America is a very small bleep. That's why I love America so much. Oh, Gadsad, author of suicidal empathy.

And of course, as he just mentioned, scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. Sippy, thank you, God, for your time. Thank you so much for having me. Cheers. Well, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro-birth. I'm pro-life. And being pro-life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why I partner and partner very, very proudly with pre-born.

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which of course you've heard about on our program and doubtless other programs. So, Joe, thanks for being with us today. Thank you, Emily. I'm super happy to be here. I said doubtless, but I think I meant to say no doubt on countless other programs because unplugged and the up phone is ubiquitous. And a lot of people are talking about it. So, Joe, I wanted to start.

We have some news to get to just with the trip to China on the radar. But if you could start by telling us a bit, because it's relevant here, about how you ended up. with Unplugged, a little bit of your background. That'd be great. Sure. Thanks, Emily. Yeah, I was happily at Apple for a long time. I had a really fun job designing and creating new products at Apple. I got to work with great people on big scale products that everyone uses. And around COVID time, actually really went the first Trump administration, but then big time during COVID, things really started changing. And a company that had been really apolitical for most of my tenure there suddenly got very politicized. And actually a lot of the

stuff we see in the news today around COVID and China and censorship and all that stuff started becoming like front and center at work. And as I was increasing in my concern about these issues and like wondering kind of what was I contributing to for my kids' future as I was supporting a company that was, I thought, taking the world in a really dangerous direction more and more. I saw my now partner Eric on another podcast talking about a new phone platform he was building. Eric is not a technology guy. He's the founder of Blackwater and his sort of military background. Eric Prince. Eric Prince, that's right. And their goal in what they were doing was to build a phone that instead of being designed to make money off customer data was designed to protect customer data.

And that to me is a very important clarion call. And it's really representative of, I think, big pivot we need to really be thinking about as a culture because we're really living in like two countries right now. Like we're in the United States with all these constitutional rights and we're on iPhones and Google phones where we don't really have the rights we think. So yeah, that's how I ended up connecting with Eric. I reached out to him blindly on the internet. A few days later, we were like having dinner and somehow he convinced me to leave my dream job at Apple despite, you know, this huge family and having already done the startup thing, long time ago. But here we are, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.

So I want to get back to that in just one moment because I have some questions about the phone, but let's talk about this pivot that you were just discussing. The president, he is, as we speak, en route to China with Tim Cook, with Jensen Wang, with all kinds of CEOs. But just if we focus on Cook and Wang in particular, he obviously cut that deal on the Nvidia chips, those H20 chips with China, allowing them to be sold to China. 15%, I think, comes back to the U.S. I forget the particulars of the deal, but there were a lot of surveillance hawks that were, and China Hawks, that were a bit perplexed about that decision from the Trump administration. There has been some reporting to the extent that Trump is considering a $1 trillion deal

for U.S. factories to be cut with China. Reuters, I think we even have this tear sheet, is reporting or is opining on how likely it is to see, quote, Chinese cars on U.S. roads is a matter of time, is a matter of when, not if, according to this recent Reuters headline, those BYD cars, Chinese cars, could be coming to our roads, which are already going to become more and more politicized for the surveillance state ahead of the kill switch implementation. We'll see if Republicans are actually able to stop that.

But tell us, you know, what's on the last? line from your vantage point, having been at Apple, now at an anti-surveillance tech company, what's on the line as the president looks to make a deal? Maybe that has great foreign policy ramifications. Maybe we get closer to world peace. I don't know. We'll see. But it could be a deal that involves more Chinese surveillance on or Chinese surveillance potential on U.S. soil, whether it's factories or cars. Yeah, I mean, these are really important topics. And my big concern is just looking at what's happened over the last 25 years, we should really pause and reflect on the choices we make

when we prioritize short-term convenience and short-term profit and the impact that can have on both civil liberties, our culture, and our national security. So I'm super concerned about the current thrust. I also just wonder, you know, from an optics perspective, I personally, I'm a very like Teddy Roosevelt, go get him, American type person. So I love, in some cases, I love Trump's bravado.

In this case, it's a little weird to me to him be like, for him to be like rolling up with the boys. And many of them are more China's boys than our boys. You know, I think if I were she seeing Trump roll up with Tim Cook and a bunch of other CEOs who seriously peddle and push China first policy in the United States, I'd be delighted to see Trump coming with that group. So I think there's a little bit of, I think there can be a little bit of confusion we have about like what an American company is and what interests it's protecting and defending. So, you know, that said, there's a lot of dynamics I'm not aware of and big world problems to solve. However, I think we're seeing really clearly what's at stake. And, you know, we just live through it. This is one of the things that's a little bizarre for me is we can talk about the surveillance state.

and this dystopian prospect and what about the future, as if we didn't just live through COVID, when we saw firsthand the interrelationship between the big tech companies whose products we live in and one party, the Democrat Party, and the Biden administration. Incidentally, I'm not of the opinion that our tech companies should be aligned with any administration, right? That's the whole point of our system of government

is it's designed from the ground up with our amendments, to our Bill of Rights, to the design of the post office. The whole system is designed to prevent the government from having access to our private information. And the system we're living in now is the exact opposite. It's, in fact, very much like how China works, where there's like a central system, a central government eye of Sauron that can see everything. Except here, at the top of the pyramid, it's an advertising system. And the government is one of the largest purchasers of that data. So here it's strangely commercialized, but it's just as dangerous.

And again, we just lived through it with COVID. And nobody will close the loophole. I mean, Ron Wyden has been trying to close that loophole for a very long time with very little luck. And on that point, I'm really glad you brought this up because a lot of my friends on the right, one of the things I started to hear as the TikTok debate was really raging when that was still under Chinese ownership was that, listen, our social media companies during the Biden administration, whether it was meta, or others were doing this as well. They were trying to manipulate the discourse via cooperation between the federal government. We saw this through the Twitter files.

And so what's the big deal? Well, just on this point about Chinese cars, B-Y-D, Kill Switch, I mean, actually, what's such a threat is when you have the confluence of two world powers, particularly, or potentially, in your own country. And I guess I'm just curious, if you have thoughts on that because the Kill Switch thing hasn't happened yet. it's being implemented in cars unless it gets stopped, that basically we don't know whether the government will have access to it. It's supposed to just go to the manufacturer as far as I'm concerned to monitor drunk driving or as far as I remember from reporting on this at the time.

And people don't believe that. They don't believe that that's just going to go to the government. And if BYD were to hit American streets, Chinese cars were to hit American streets, I don't think people would believe that it would stay with even our government, that it might be in the hands of another government. So just thinking about the car thing as somebody who's in the space with phones, what are your thoughts on how that could transpire? My thoughts are that this issue applies across technologies. In the late 70s, there was a Supreme Court case called Smith v. Maryland, which established what we call third-party data doctrine. So basically, if data is deemed to be willingly given to a third party, like your car manufacturer or your bank or Apple or Google or whatever, then it has no constitutional rights.

So this idea that like, oh, it's okay, the data will only go to the car company. It's like according to what promise, what guarantee. And that's, I think, the prospect with the cars reflects what's happening with our phones and our toasters and everything right now. I'll also just add personally, I hadn't experienced the other day here

that gave me, I felt like a real, maybe sort of prophetic moment. I was taking my oldest son to his church group on Friday night. It's like 6.30. And I take my wife's Tesla, which I love, by the way. She has this model Y. I drive this like big truck.

She has this model Y. It's amazing. I love the self-driving. And I'm getting my son to this thing. He has this appointment. And I'm late. And she texts me. And she goes, the car said you just went 85 miles an hour.

And then she proceeded to break my chops, like turning on the seat heater when I was turning it off. And I was like, okay. don't like this like interactive car where my wife like this is not good so that for me was a little bit of a moment because it it had this uncanny valley experience I really mean it I love the car it's I would say arguably the best car I've ever had and it doesn't cost a lot of money and that moment totally pierced this veil and I was like I hate this car now like it's not my car I don't control this car something else is happening so when it comes to I just raise this as like a sort of personal

version of this sort of stack of issues, when it comes to data control, sovereignty, I think we should be extremely suspicious of these promises of privacy and security. And you're right, when China's involved, I mean, to me, it's a real kind of mirror moment. Just having been through COVID, just having had, again, it wasn't only a party of ours that had access to all this commercial data. it was a party of ours that was largely reflecting Chinese interests at that time. So, I mean, you know, separate topic, but like, you know, a major issue was the conspiracy theory that COVID was from China. And that was off limits on more than just social media platforms.

That was a tech-wide issue. And Joe, can we pause on that? Because there's breaking news on this front, actually, that I was going to ask you about. This is going to be S3. This is a whistleblower who is a current CIA employee. that as the deadline to prosecute Fauci for perjury lapsed just this week, Rand Paul said, all right, we are bringing this CIA employee to testify as to how Anthony Fauci allegedly influenced the CIA to avoid to have this like neutral stance about COVID origins instead of just saying lab leak.

So let's take a listen here. I want to get your reaction on the back end to what we heard in the Senate from this whistleblower just today. But your conclusion is that changing from the scientific consensus of it being from a lab to a neutral position by the CIA was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci? It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci's injecting himself into the IC. And to go to the second part of your question about what happened, particularly during the 90-day study, we have documentation that shows that, as of August 12th, the CIA was considering calling this a lab leak, August 12th of 2021. And then that changed on August 17th of 2021. And unfortunately, because the CIA would not provide us documentation that we asked for,

we have no idea why that changed. And that's... And they weren't alone because we know the FBI was coming to the same conclusion that it was lab leak as well as the FBI. Yeah, and so this is coming actually just within I think a day since the news broke that Tulsi Gabbard over at ODNI is like auditing 120 bio labs that have been funded by taxpayers for a really long time. So you can see kind of a picture emerging of Fauci and the government kind of wanting the public to not get some insight into

what was happening in these labs. What's your reaction, Joe? When I see that, it really gives me, it makes my sort of hair stand on end and I get goosebumps because I was I was inside Apple at this during all of this. And I witnessed a really intense and surprising internal policy focus around COVID origins, which I know sounds crazy because what does that have to do with? I know. I know. So I would say there were like two elements that really drove this. Everything that was just described was on the heels, you know, about a year earlier, there had been this massive racial reckoning.

And that racial reckoning reset the standards of what we could talk about at work and what was it, what work was about. And, you know, fixing the racial problems in the world became like a major serious, persistent topic and that had downstream policy results around who you could hire and all that kind of stuff. What was very interesting to me though is as these new tools or approaches to political information at work became normalized, the next piece of data that entered that system was COVID coming from China and from a lab is a racist conspiracy theory that's supporting white supremacy, which I know sounds insane.

But that was like a real topic. Like we need to keep this lie off the platform. People shouldn't hear this. You know, it's not true. It's racist. We're supporting Trump. It was like very bizarre. And of course, I was like, but wait, it did come from a lab in China.

What are we talking about? And, you know, so when I see that, one of the things that makes me wonder is, all right, it wasn't just like the IC that was. being co-opted or, you know, captured. There were, yeah, there were all of these centers of American power that really control our daily lives, whether it's what apps we can get access to or what information we can see. And this was a very, very real topic.

Like, I mean, like, I'd be in meetings with leadership of the company being educated about how COVID wasn't from a lab and chat. Really. So this, you know, this topic, I think, is interesting to me. because it just makes me really wonder like, all right, if there's elements of our government that are so captured by foreign power that they're now intent on either, by the way, either they're captured by foreign power or they're trying to hide our working with China to develop the virus, whatever the intent was. This really showed up at the tech companies.

Now, of course, we also saw that one level lower at the social media apps and who could say what. So I just personally am aware that just as that testimony was describing as things were changing in the IC, they were changing on the tech platforms, meaning the operating systems, and then also the applications we use. So to me, this is really important because it's very similar to the car question, right? A lot of these issues are really much more about the water we're swimming in. We don't realize that we're reliant on a very small number of companies for most of what we do. And those companies tend to all have like very consistent perspectives.

And during COVID, we saw them all line up on one side. And, you know, for me, the really big eye-opening experience here and the big sort of moment, the shoe dropped, was when the debate on these issues got totally shut down because, as you recall, anyone who was saying, you know, the COVID lab origin from China, from Wuhan, was getting taken off of the meta platforms and then Twitter and then everything else. And there was basically one platform left called Parlor, where people with, you know, countercultural ideas could express those concepts. And right after January 6th, that app was removed from Apple and then Google and then Amazon Web Services.

So on one day, three companies decided no more debate about this stuff. And that for me was a very consequential moment because these topics about the origin of COVID or were there problems in the election or whatever, just things we should be able to debate. We lost the ability to debate them on the Internet. So it's very concerning to me. And it makes me wonder what forces are involved in, the concert or the sort of the joining

of intelligence agencies' perspective and those of the tech companies that we live on. So to me, this is adjacent to privacy. This is a very big concern is are we living in environments

digitally? Are we spending our time? Are we living on platforms digitally where we are allowed to express ourselves, have diversity in perspective? Or are we living on platforms where when something becomes unpopular with a ruling party, we lose our ability to communicate. And my concern is we have the answer.

It just happened. What I'm describing was a few years ago. This isn't like ancient history. We have our answer. And my concern is we are marching right back into the same situation. You know, it could be a debt crisis. It could be anything. Pardon me.

No, no. I think that's actually really important. I want to turn back domestically and talk more about the phone, actually, because I think there's been the, raising of awareness after COVID with a certain sector of the public, not enough people, I think, realize exactly what you're laying out. And the Twitter file showed the FBI's relationship with some of the tech companies and the like. So there's a lot going on that people aren't seeing on a day-to-day basis. But for example, if we just take FISA 702, which is in the process,

there's a 45-day extension that Republicans voted for. That lapses on June 12th. Chip Roy, just today, I think, was saying they're going, quote, unquote, gloves off to try to have a either reform or killing of 702 in FISA and to block a CBDC, Central Bank, digital currency. I think we have a sought of Lauren Bobert. The Freedom Caucus is basically showing signs of life, is what I'm trying to say here. Let's see this from Lauren Bobert. This is F1. Now, I've heard it said before that if you, you know, think that just because we have this Fourth Amendment right and if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried. Well, that's just like saying I don't need my first amendment right to free speech because I have nothing to say. This is very

important to protect our constitutional rights. Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter expanding the investigation into how the Biden administration spied on me and other members of Congress, including demands for records from my bank, my private bank that was subpoenaed. The Biden DOJ was treating us like criminals with no evidence. It's time to stop the deep state's unconstitutional spying on the American people. And that's why we're fighting for real reforms on FISA. So, Joe, I could see that was like getting you animated as we were watching. I have my phone right here, the up phone right here.

And I think a lot of people see what's happening with Republicans. And then they look at, you know, maybe the fact, as you mentioned, Eric Prince's involvement, I think General Michael Flynn is on people who have worked with the government before you come from Apple. And they look at this and are like, Republicans are flip-flopping on 702. And now these like deep state Republicans are going to try and sell me a phone. How does up really protect people? How do you guys, how do you focus on that? Given the government right now has surveillance power. like 702 that Republicans seem intent on preserving where they can. I mean, we're leaving a footprint,

a digital footprint constantly with our iPhones. So what's a tell me about why people should trust that. Yeah. So I mean, I think, well, first of all, no one, no one should trust without verifying. So no one should take my word for it. There are ways to discover the truth about these things yourselves. And it's it's very important to do that. So we do a little bit. lot of third-party auditing and we want everyone to sort of look under the hood and reach their own conclusions. I see that the 702 issue, and of course it's concerning, but I, boy, it really, what worries me is not FISA as bad as it is, but I feel like we're ignoring the lion that's chasing

us because of the pebble in our shoe. And there are much larger topics at play here. of course the government should not have the FISA capability. I'm very concerned about this. The much, much, much bigger issue is we are living in ubiquitous technical surveillance in which data about all of us can be purchased and is purchased by the government constantly, both for investigations into individuals, but also for social profiling. January 6th, of course, was a big example of this.

Commercial data was used to figure out who to arrest. So the Google Yeah oh yeah I mean it's it's it and also banks surrendered all the information so it's um we we tend to think you know I think a lot of us think about this issue as if we're watching like an episode of law and order and we're like oh the detective has their eye on the person and they need to get a judge to get the record to prove where they were but FISA you know allows them to get around that it's unfortunately so much worse than that like

We're worried about a back door being open when, in fact, the front door and the garage and the front windows are totally open. So, yeah, the Arctic Frost thing, which was also a big revelation recently, it's a similar type of story where we keep getting surprised that the government's not following Fourth Amendment protocol properly. We should probably reset our perspective to align with reality because it's, again, what we're hearing about are the very small examples of, data that required warrants. The whole thing we're not seeing is data that doesn't require warrants, which includes where you had breakfast, where you sleep at night, all who you call. All of that can be easily obtained without warrants. So, I mean, certainly wiretapping and like listening to someone's call requires a warrant. So when it comes to this much bigger issue of data harvesting for the purpose of advertising and the civil liberties and individual safety issues that can come from

that. This is where we really, really focus. So we've designed a phone with a unique technology in it. We call it the DMZ. It's like a layer in every app that runs in the phone where we insert ourselves into the process of the application and prevent the app from exporting any identifiable information about where you are, what cell network you're on, the identifying characteristics of your device, all the things that are used to fingerprint us. Because what we don't realize is the apps on our phone, they're not free. They each represent a business trying to monetize as efficiently as possible. Where we are, what we do, what our preferences are, who we're around. All of that can be discerned very easily. And here's what we've discovered, which is wild. Even if you turn a VPN on,

right? Awesome. It hides your IP address. Your app does not, the apps on your phone don't need your IP address to figure out where you are. This was a big discovery when we rolled this technology because we can literally see on the phone every file that each app is trying to export. So that gets back to your first question. Why trust us? Don't trust us. The feature is designed so that every customer can see every file. So literally everything is inspectable.

Every call to a server, this is happening millions of times a day from every phone. Every single call can be inspected on the device. And again, don't take our word for it because really, that's the problem is like assuming that something's safe and then just because it's convenient has put us in this place. So our objective here is to reset the standards. We think we have the best product to do this. If we simply help move the needle and reset the standards of other big companies, great. That's also success. But the real underlying issue here is not whether you have our phone or not, which again, ours is the best in this space. Check it out on plug.com. But the real

issue, the really important issue is we cannot move forward as a civilization. when our rights, our privacy, our information are basically for sale. And that's the current status quo. We don't really notice it so much until we have these weird moments, you know? Like, you ever go to a party, Emily, and like the next day, like, Instagram suggests a friend that you met physically at the party that you never exchanged digital information with? I'm not invited to parties, Joe. You're not invited, okay.

Me neither, but I had this experience. That is exactly happened. I actually have had this happen. And I'm also completely lame, just like a homebody. But like I literally was shown people from my church that I might want to be friends with. And I'm like, how the hell this Instagram know that I go to church with these people? This is completely weird. It's not just weird.

That actually indicates something much bigger. And this was, by the way, the insight that Eric had at the beginning of the company was he was using this technology to target our enemies. Like when you see, you know, the Iranian generals getting destroyed or ISIS, all of its phones, 100% of the targeting. his phones. And he realized, like, wait, we're carrying these targeting vectors around. All of this information I'm using to construct a pattern of life on an adversary, a high value target. This could apply to anyone in the United States. And it does. So this was really the sort of inciting incident, was realizing, wow, like the battle lines in this new sort of gray third world war were in, cold war we're in, have actually moved into consumer technology. And, you know, the stuff that

feels really convenient and safe is actually representing a whole different system that we don't understand. We're pawns in. We're not the buyers of these products. We're the product of the system. And our safety and our privacy is not a priority of it. Joe, this has been so, so interesting. I really appreciate it. You can check out the upphone from Unplugged at Unplugged.com slash Emily. That is Unplugged.com slash Emily. And Joe, just appreciate you know, I mentioned at the top, Like I have my up phone right here. I've had plenty of questions about it. I'm so glad that you stopped by the show to help us understand it a bit more.

And share your experiences from Apple and inside of this world right now as you watch the craziness unfold around us. So thank you, Joe. Thank you, Emily. Take care. Well, that does it for us on tonight's edition of After Party. Thank you so much for joining the fun tonight. We appreciate it. Please subscribe if you haven't yet.

It helps us so much to subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Email me, Emily, at double make hairupmedia.com by tomorrow afternoon. If you want your question to be included in this week's edition of Happy Hour, that's the Friday edition of After Party that you just get on the audio side over on Apple or Spotify, wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. We'll be back here with more soon.