Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - 527 JRE Review of Gad Saad

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Gad Saad's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, breaking down the key ideas around evolutionary psychology, free speech, culture, academia, and the way certain ideas spread through society. In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience Review, Adam looks at Saad's strongest points, Rogan's best questions, and what the conversation says about modern public debate. Thanks to this weeks sponsors: Rappin the Rivers: Go to Eventbrite.com or Sellout Events to get your tickets for Rappin the Rivers Festival 2026, August 7th and 8th in Cardwell, Montana, featuring DaBaby, That Mexican OT, Paul Wall, Kid Ink, Young Dirty Bastard, and more. For full festival details, go to RappinTheRiversMT.com. Camping is included. Draft Kings www.draftkings.com Download the DraftKings Casino app and sign up with code JRER to claim your Flex Spins and experience Cashingo—the feature you can't play anywhere else! For Iphone get from the Store Android playstore    Gambling problem? Call one eight hundred GAMBLER. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit C C P G dot org. Please play responsibly. Twenty-one plus. Physically present in Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia only. Void in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. Non-withdrawable Spins issued as fifty spins per day for twenty days, valid for select games only and expire each day after twenty four hours. See terms at casino dot draftkings dot com slash promos. Ends July twenty-second at eleven fifty nine PM Eastern Time.   Please email us here with any suggestions, comments and questions for future shows.. [e-mail] SUPPORT OUR SHOW! Ad free episodes, exclusive episodes and more.. Head to our Patreon

Hey guys and welcome to another episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Review. Awesome to have you guys with us for this episode. This week, we are reviewing Gadsad. Gadsad's back on. I always like to see Gad on. It's a great name. He's awesome. Quick shout out to a couple of our new patrons.

Thank you so much for supporting the show, Grace and Nancy. A couple of ladies supporting this show. Thanks, guys. If you guys want to, hop over to the bio and sign up. We've got all sorts of goodies over there. Exclusive episodes, episodes without commercials. You know, we're setting up some Q&As and some fun stuff. So it's just a great way to support the show and it helps us out.

We love it. So, cheers. All right, Gadsad. What's he up to this time around? It was a great conversation. It always is. I mean, he's just so fascinating and so well prepared. I mean, there's never like a lull in the conversation.

He's always coming up with interesting points and breakdowns, and his memory is immaculate. I mean, the details that he puts in. I don't know if he goes with a bunch of notes. I don't remember seeing any. He just is that kind of collected when it comes to his communication. but on top of that, you know, a very smart guy. Yeah.

It opens up a little bit about children and like raising them and, you know, highly intelligent children, for one. And I've often thought about this. He mentioned that, you know, some kids get to college, like really early. Sometimes you hear that. And whether they did like AP or they were homeschooled, they tested out, whatever. And, you know, they're finishing their degree at like 19. And it sounds amazing.

That's a gifted child. But I've never really considered the parts that they're missing. Like they may be that intelligent, but they're not going to be socially that mature and clearly, probably physically different. So I wonder how that changes the whole, you know, college experience for them. And I think about it in terms of like, let's say, our kids or, a friend of ours kids is really advanced.

Is it the best move to kind of push them ahead or just let them stay where they are and do very well? Yeah. I think there's a balance there of challenging a child academically, but also, like you said, following the trajectory, the appropriate emotionally, you know, emotional, like, trajectory of like where they're at and making sure that they're that's being accounted for in their success um i personally i mean i graduated on time i just was young for my class so at 17 ended up moving away before i turned 18 and i struggled my first year away you know and i was only three hours from home but it was i just wasn't emotionally mature enough like i wasn't

I wasn't ready for being alone. I wasn't ready for managing my own time, you know, entirely. And every child and every, you know, young adult is different. But I would say some of the fault here I think lies in. I mean, obviously being in high school can be fun. Some people have a really great experience and some people don't. Some people have a really poor experience. You know, we've talked in the past a lot about like bullying and you know the traumas that come with being in the public education system the potentials there but I think a lot of it like parents lean too much on the public education system to help their students develop you know emotionally and it just isn't there I mean they're teaching them curriculum they're teaching them you know be on time and you know

go from class to class kind of thing but they're not teaching them how to like be adults. Yeah. And, you know, it's one thing to teach a smart kid concepts that are kind of above that standard age, right? Complex math or some science or something like that. But is it really appropriate to expect a child to act more adult than his age? Yeah.

That to me just sounds like just act a way, like a good way for your age. Yeah. You know, you don't want a little kid acting like, you know, an old man. It's like, just be a kid still. Like you're not expected to be able to communicate with 20-year-olds. Like you're saying, the 17, go off to college, you really didn't feel prepared. Yeah. And you knock two years off that.

Sure. You're academically smart, but that doesn't mean you know how to do a lot of other things or you're even really capable of doing that. Yeah. And then, you know, like my personal story, I moved home. I took two years off. And two years later, I was really ready. I was ready to be by myself. I was ready to live alone. I was ready to get good grades. I was ready to, like, make something of myself and had like a mindset of like wanting to be successful and not just, you know, oh, I'm just going to like go from, you know, being in high school where everything's really easy. I mean, academically, I did not have a hard time. Well, it's not easy for everybody. Well, no. But I'm just saying like, it's my personal story. it was not, it was really easy. Like I didn't try very hard. And then I got to college.

I'm like, oh, it's going to be the same thing. But there's all these other distractions of, you know, what's going on in college, you know, partying and so on. And I was like, oh my gosh, I actually have to try. I'm not ready for that. And so while I was like good, you know, ready academically, I just wasn't like prepared for the changes. And I didn't have like the emotional support there, you know,

with me every single day. but I also think there's some element of this where back to like my kind of quarry with the public education system is starting children too young expecting things of them and you know starting children with curriculum at age four and a half five that doesn't feel really right to me either I mean it's not play based in American public schools and really children need like learn so much through play. And so in my mind, really, everything should be delayed in America a couple of years, right? Like, you know, children really shouldn't be able to move away from home at 18. Like, almost no 18-year-old is ready for that, is emotionally mature enough for that. Neither are they intellectually, like, acute enough to make the decision to take on student loans.

Yeah. Right? But, again, you can't generalize. I couldn't have been at home past 16. It was impossible for me. I was like, get me out of here right now. Yeah. And that was probably after two years of already wanting to go.

Yeah. So, you know, it didn't necessarily mean I was prepared for it, but I did all the things that you needed to do once you were gone, make it work and keep an apartment and, you know, bare minimum, I guess, you would call it. So it seems like the solution here is personalized approach, you know. There's got to be some way to test. the emotional and, you know, maturity of a student and sort of gauge their next steps based on that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the individualized experience. I mean, that's also very important back to the gifted child thing. Yeah. They're going to get so bored if they're in a classroom and they're kind of teaching to the middle of the class. It's just, it's just going to drive them nuts.

Switching gears a little bit. Gad talked about the scientific process. And this kind of surprised me. I mean, he's a guy that has done a lot of research. He has published papers and helped students do it, work with grad students, PhD students, so on. And one thing that he said is that, you know, scientific studies, even including the meta-analysis, which are like Harvard does a lot of these. They're very well-respected, peer-reviewed scientific papers.

that are a collection of a ton of different papers. So, you know, you're thinking, oh, wow, this finally has to be the answer. But Gad was talking about the null effect, this effect, where if you're going to do a research paper, and the conclusion is that there's no significant difference or change, I can't remember exactly how he defined it, but you don't see the result that you hypothesize for. that paper is often not published because it's just I don't know not interesting not compelling you know

people don't want to put I guess there's extra time and effort that goes into the peer review process so none of those papers are counted so you're only getting a bunch of the ones that represent the change and even adding those together you don't have the full picture and that was really quite surprising to me I had not heard of that yeah I mean this feels like a huge problem in like the world of psychology and the medical field um studies that are published that only talk about strong effects right uh this episode is brought to you by rapping the rivers festival 2026 filth and foul 406 glass apagy gardens and dirty jones presents Rap in the Rivers Festival,

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For all the details, go to Rappin the Rivers mt.com. Rapping the Rivers' 26 Music Festival, August 7th and 8th in Cardwell, Montana. Don't miss it. There's maybe an inaccurate consensus of like what is happening in that topic, right? like if we only think about like the, the, like one end of the spectrum. Yeah.

Right? It's sort of that like, not the placebo effect, but like if you start thinking. It's basically like cherry picking, really. Yeah. So a good,

a good bit of science is that you incorporate all of the data points. Right. Now you may get some that are called outliers that you don't average in to, you know,

your line on the graph. But, if you're looking at it in terms of how many papers it takes to make a meta-analysis, and then the potential null effect papers that were never written that contradict all of this that are not calculated in, I wonder really what difference that makes. Yeah, I mean, the data is evidently skewed, right? Maybe it's related to why, you know, so many pharmaceuticals or meds are really not that effective or, you know, ultimately they're not very good for your health or there's a bunch of

side effects. It just seems like a system that could be cleaned up. Yeah. And hasn't been. And honestly, it's great that somebody like Gad talks about it because you don't hear this. Right. You just hear, oh, peer reviewed paper, here's the facts. As best we know it, believe this and trying to question anything. Yeah, I mean, this concept is, I think, I mean, it's well known, right? Like, you don't want to, like, with any medicine or any mental health treatment, you don't want to basically talk about, like, anything negative or that may not happen. You only want to talk about what will happen, right?

So in marketing, they would say, oh, Zembek, it'll make you lose weight and it'll lower these things. This is what we know will happen, right, for sure, that we've intended for it to happen, right? but they're not going to advertise, oh, there's a 40% chance that nothing's going to happen or that you're going to have negative side effects. Like, think about how skewed that would make the usage, right? Maybe with something in our world like, Ozambic, not so much. But if it was a mental health treatment and there was all of these potential negative

or just like non-effective side effects, right? Or just like non-effects. It's like who people may decide to not go through with something for that reason. And they're definitely not going to talk. about those in the marketing aspect of it. Right. If like screaming at a patient that, you know, that falls in a category of a percentage of clients that have had no positive effects from therapy.

And the screaming works. And it's like, great. Do that with all the people like this. Yeah. And then you count that as successful. But you don't count in the other 90% of people that got screamed at and actually it got way worse and they didn't like it. Right.

Like, I'm afraid that didn't help them. So we won't count that. Yeah. Well, I think there's like also this concept of like context, right? Like, and sort of wording that can impact how someone understands something. And this is definitely that, you know, leaving out the potential opposite effects or the potential opposite, you know, results of something just to highlight what you want. You know, it's. Sounds like politics.

Exactly. Exactly what's going on. Sneaky. Sneaky. You see. But, you know, it's affecting our overall understanding of so much around us. And I think it's really important that we all keep this concept in mind when we're talking about, oh, well, I feel so confident that this treatment or this medication or this activity is going to work for me because I've read that it works for so many other people.

It's like, yeah, but that's only what you're seeing. You're not seeing what they don't want you to see. Right. And that, you know. Yeah, yeah. talking about kind of sneaky behavior and Joe was very diplomatic with his stance on talking about the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight. So he saw the fight as did many, many other people.

It's very popular. Crashed Netflix. He said, yeah, he said, I'm happy for both of them. I'm glad they made a good amount of money. I'm sure he's talking mainly about Mike. who really needed it and he has a lot of respect for Mike. He said it looked more like a sparring session than a real fight. And I happened to agree.

Now, there was a lot of talk online and, you know, a lot of MMA and boxing kind of analysis guys that I do respect. That really came out and said, listen, if this was faked, you know, like that's a huge legal problem because this is boxing you could bet on it just the idea that they would have somewhat rigged it it just impossible like the legalities all the rest of the things however you go watch that fight and if you know something and i don't know a ton about boxing but you know i've seen plenty of boxing matches and how they move and it's just like it looked very amateur and very protected.

You know, there was not even a dangerous swing that missed from what I can tell. And a lot of people saw that too. A lot of people were pretty frustrated after the fight. And, you know, it's not like everybody is a boxing expert. It's like people know bullshit when we see it, I think. I know literally nothing about. boxing and I knew from the moment it started. This is not real. Look at him. Look at Mike. He's how old in his 70s and he's fighting this person who somehow has become like one of the best boxers of our time.

You know, maybe not that maybe that's a subjective, you know. Jake Paul sucks. He's not even Okay, but he's very popular, right? And he is, I mean, just in general, like in terms of your, his physicality and everything. Like he's got something there, right? But he, yeah, it was obviously staged. Tyson could have punched his head off at any minute. Just at any minute, you could just tell. He was winding up and it was like he's just so much more technical than Jake Paul,

even being old. Yeah. He would have just knocked him through the ring. And probably potential to really. really hurt Jake. So he wasn't, he wasn't down for that. See, I don't know. I kind of see it differently. I see it as they knew that it was going to bring an audience. Jake Paul is in it for the numbers. Like, he's not in it to really be like, you know, like I said, for the best boxer of all time. Yeah, he wants the money. He wants the money. And my, he basically proposed to

Mike, this is how I envisioned that it went down. He proposed to Mike and said, I won't knock you out. I won't hurt you. I'll let, I'll make you look good. but I'm going to win and you're going to make this much money. And Mike's like, I'm in. And I mean, I just see it as Mike was struggling and Jake Paul was like kind of pretending to struggle. I mean, that's kind of what Jake said at the end of the fight. I don't know, right?

I don't know either way. It's like maybe that was how it went. But something was off. Even for Jake to say, oh, yeah, I just, I pulled some punches. I didn't really want to, you know, hit him, which, you know, you can kind of respect, but it's also a boxing match. A lot of people are watching. Like, you know, give him a few more body shots then. People can take that.

It's not going to give him brain damage. Yeah. And then, I mean, I think Mike, this is not verbatim, but he essentially said afterwards, I don't care that I lost. I didn't care if I lost. I basically did it for the money. And, you know, that just goes to show. I think it was all staged. I think, you know, obviously we wouldn't have known what would have happened going into it,

like, but it was going to go one way or another and it being orchestrated by Jake Paul, we know, I knew who was going to win, like one way or another. I would say moving forward, he's a good bet. If Bucies are taking bets, yeah. Then because they probably are rigged in his favor, you know, unless it's like an actual young boxer that can box, that's the only loss he's had. Even that was, I don't know if it was close, but it was close enough. Yeah.

He didn't get knocked out, even by that guy. But yeah, he'd be a safe bet to bet on. Me personally, I'm sure I'll get around to watching some highlights of his next fight, but there's no way I'm sitting there on Netflix and doing that whole thing. It's just, yeah, absolutely not worth it. It was so much time and, you know, just a massive letdown, honestly. jumping over to something that Gad was saying kind of like the psychology of a billionaire spending habits, which I found quite interesting. So, you know, he's talking about people that are kind of newly wealthy, you know, probably everybody has somebody in their life that's like that.

You know, they got to buy the BMW or they get the big house. And, you know, this is new to them. They're showing off. maybe they're even, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, so they're really stretching their budget, that kind of thing. Then you've got the millionaires you see on TV, the rappers, the actors, whatever, they've got to have all the flashy cars, all the flashy gold chains. It's like very much, what would it be, peacocking type thing.

It's like, look at me. I'm obviously rich. I'm obviously wealthy. But Gad was saying with billionaires is a lot different. You don't often see them driving a Ferrari, you know, or even a supercar or it's like because all of their peers can literally buy everything that they want, anything that they want. So then it's no competition. You're not really showing anything off. Even if you go and buy a really big house, which often the billionaires will do, they're not really posturing that house against their peers because they can all buy a mega,

a castle. They could probably buy like a block of Manhattan. Yeah, I mean, you look at the billionaires right now, sort of like that billionaire space race concept. It's like, that's something that a single person with one billion dollars is not doing, right? That's true. Someone who has $200 billion, they're trying to get to Mars. I wonder, I wonder what Bezos and Zuckerberg think thought when Elon bought Twitter for like 40 billion. Like that's such a ridiculous move in terms of finances and a risk. You know,

it like halved in value right away. And Elon was just like, yeah, no worries. Here you go. Yeah. There's that and it's done. I wonder if they look at it like, oh, he is seriously bowling. Like there is nothing he can't purchase if he wanted to. I think with when you get to this point, to that point,

not this point. We're no way of that. But, you know, the... What are you talking about? I'm a billion. Okay, okay. But like the, you know, this concept of like influence and like namesake and like, you know, what Elon has done sort of playing into and getting involved with the presidential election, this recent 2024 presidential election, I mean, that's not something that just anyone can do. You need not only money. I mean, he invested like 80 something billion or something whatever to get um Trump elected million million and he's increased his wealth by 160 million since then who has Elon oh no he's increased it by billions billions okay but so like the return on investment he got to half a trillion dollars in his stock

though shortly after so he invested 80 million to get Donald Trump elected and within like a week after him getting elected he his wealth went up 150 billion, right? Something along those lines. Regardless, like... I don't think that that was his primary motivation, though. Do you? No. Well, what I'm saying is that that's a different level of wealth that, like, in this concept, that his peers, you know, I mean, other than like maybe three people, five people

on the planet, could even imagine getting involved in, right? And so 40 billion here and there, it's like, yeah, okay, like, I have the potential to increase my wealth so drastically with my influence, not just money, not just, you know, intelligence, but now it's influence. It's all of these things that he has his fingers wrapped into, you know, social media and now politics and the space race and, you know, AI technology. Like, he's done it the right way. And like, it's this formula that almost no one can replicate. And obviously he's a unique human being. Like he's so incredibly unique and special. People are going to talk about him for centuries to come.

Yeah. But he, you know, yeah, I mean, this, this concept of a $300 million yacht, it's like to him, whatever. Like, he's out here building things for humanity. Yeah. Why would you give a shit about a big yacht when you have your own rockets? Yeah. The starships that can land on, not that he can like fly around in him with his buddies, but

I mean, it's ballers. Yeah, I mean, you even think about like the billionaires the way that they dress. Like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, they just wear like t-shirts. Like they're not even like dressing up in anything flashy, right? They don't want to be known for that. They want to be known for what's inside their head. They want to be known for something bigger that. Zuckerberg does have a bunch of super dope expensive watches.

Well, of course. Yeah. But you know, you think about like when a like a musical artist makes their first 10, 15, $20 million, they steal out and they spend it on flashy things to sort of indicate that they have this. Yeah. It's like Kanye said to Dave Chappelle when he got to billionaire status and somebody asked him where his gold chains are and he's like, billionaires don't wear gold chains.

Right. Yeah. That sounds like a really sick rap line. And I won't go into too much detail on this, but, you know, my family has been involved with some some of the work that my family's done, like, um, essentially developing real estate for like this market, maybe not like the Elon Musk market, but those in the billionaire sector and, um, but more in like the multi-million, you know, those that are between 20 and 300 million dollars and well, very, very wealthy people. And, you know, on the development side, like not really having any personal

connection with them, but what has been noticed about it and what I've personally witnessed is, um, those that have 20 million, you know their names. Those that have $300, $500, $900, $900 million, they don't want you to know their name. You know, you don't know who they are. They're unassuming people. Oh, they're very private. They're very private. And you don't know anything about their families. They don't have Wikipedia pages about them. Like, they're not celebrities that have, the celebrities actually have less money typically than a lot of these individuals. You just don't know who they are. That's interesting. It is. I mean, it makes the most sense. you, if you get to mega money, you don't need the attention.

No. Like people are after. They love to hate on that. They like to get your money. They like to sue you if they can. Yeah. Another concept with this is like old money, new money. And being in the UK for a few weeks or two months that we just were like,

we heard a lot about this. Like, oh, those that have the old money, it's like they have older things. They drive vintage cars, you know, like, but they're not. not out being obnoxious with their money and like you those that have new money it's like it's almost like frowned upon it's like you're a nuisance kind of yeah there's weird class stuff like that yeah for sure the behaviors are different because you know if you're coming from like you're a lord right or a duke or something then your family's used to having money they have all the lawyers and financial advisors and trust all in the right place you know advising you on how to spend and where

and, you know, what polite societies to be in. I mean, if you just rolled up in the dopest Ferrari or, you know, a super pimped out BMW, it doesn't really fit that lifestyle of those people. They probably just go to Monaco and gamble. They have this concept in, like, fashion, in designer fashion of, like, you know, like the masses want something that says Balenciag on it, right? What? The designers.

Okay. You're talking to zero percent of my audience right now. I'm just saying like, you know, anything that says the name brand costs a fraction of what's something that actually was represented in the brands like designs and style is, right? So, you know, a bag. Okay. Michael Coors. Do you know Michael Coors? There's all of these things out there that say Michael Coors on them and those cost $100 a piece.

But something that's like a true, genuine like. designed by Michael Coors, like, you know, product, you don't even know that it's Michael Coors. And that's just like an example. I mean, there's hundreds and thousands of different designers out there, but it is that sort of like people that have less money want to show that they have money. And once you have it, you don't really care. It's more, it's less about the status. It's less about the awareness that you are wearing something specific or that you have something. It's just you're doing different things with your money. I think there's a lesson there for anybody with any level of money though it's just like you know don't feel the need to show off because no one

gives a shit like no one's really envying you at all because you have a nice this and that and if they do they're they're just thinking that kind of same way it's like i've done it before i bought a car that i thought everyone would think i was cool if i bought it did nothing it was expensive and uh i learned from it and i won't do it again you're never going to have another one just like not going to do that but um back to Elon and and kind of the things that he's getting involved in um Mark Zuckerberg as well and there's a lot of talk about in the White House is um AI and where AI is going and Sam Altman from chat uh gbt it's uh that whole world's been kind of thrown upside down with the release of what was it deep mind or deep seek or something what is that Chinese app called

I think it's deep seek. Yeah. Yeah. And I heard that Texas is trying to ban it. If you go and use it on the desktop, which I did recently, it is like the format for format copy of chat GPT. I mean, to the point where I've used chat for a while now, you know, period, you know, just sporadically here and there for things. and when I brought up the deep seek page, it is deep seek right. I've got to double check this.

Otherwise, it just sound dumb. Come on. All right, I can't find it. It doesn't matter. But yeah, I knew how to navigate the page immediately. It was just no surprises. And that's a really smart way to grab a bunch of people that want to check out your technology. And what was it called?

Deep seek. Deep seek, okay. Yeah. And, you know, if it is not just that they stole the format, which is very clear that they did that, it's like, no doubt. Yeah. But if it's stolen tech, did they hack in?

You know, how did they get it? Do they have people on the inside? What does this mean for, I think the AI community is shaken because they were sure that the U.S. were ahead of this. You know, I don't want to say arms race, AI race, but maybe not. I mean, they might even be doing it with much cheaper technology. Yeah, it's so funny. Even, I can't remember what the name of it is, but the, like the little icon when you search it,

it like almost looks identical to the chat GPT one, but it's different. It's black and white and like swirly black. Like it's scary similar. And then they have a different icon that's like its actual icon. Favicon, that's what it's called. Right. All of this absolutely terrifies me. All of these platforms in general,

the concept that, you know, the concept that, you know, AI is coming to be. Quantum computing. We're on the verge of that. Those combined will be unstoppable. And I, I mean, obviously, I know that if you can learn to use it

for your benefit and get ahead of it, then you're going to be able to be able. okay. I just fear that, you know, not only myself, but so many people are going to get left behind by this and, and it just get overwhelmed by the possibilities and the potential here. And there's obviously so many implications of this in terms of like global security control and just power dynamics. It's super important that, you know, we have to, you know, we have countermeasures and the only ones are other smart AIs that can stop attacks and hacking stuff from I mean it's it's going to be wild yeah they'll be using this stuff to fight wars for

sure and we don't know what the capabilities are it's turning into like robots with guns and drones that explode with hacking AI well yeah I think it's going to be all just like technology wars essentially you know like I mean our our Like no people die. It's just like a bunch of robots blowing each other's systems and, and, you know, stalling our operations.

I mean, we can't, you know, people won't get paid, you know, logistics will shut down. Like literally they can just shut down our country if you can hack in and make enough happen,

right? Well, they say, they say about the power grid, that's a big concern. Yeah. Like being able to turn off our power so quickly, we're all screwed.

Yeah. We're useless. I mean, that's like, like apocalyptic style like we will fall apart and i mean america being as vast and as sort of independent and um you know people having so many what's the word like uh opinions in general and like thoughts and sort of like autonomy in their thought like it's going to be fucking chaos if our power goes out if our internet goes out if our you know access to government you know systems goes out like what will

happen. You know, I mean, obviously, if you have billions of dollars and you can be like, I'm going to the Mars and I'm just going to bypass this whole issue, that's one thing. But the average person, even, you know, above and below average people, like, we're all fucked. Yeah, basically everyone. Well, this is why Zuckerberg, I think, just spent like 200 million on a doomsday bunker. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure a bunch of them are doing it. I'm sure Elon has one. Yeah. You know, just because they have so much money they could do it. Maybe then they even think, We're not going to use this. It's not necessary.

But it makes you think. And of course, like, there is no easy, there's no solution for the rest of us that is comfortable. There's no comfortable solution. No. It's, you better hope that other groups of people like you a lot. Otherwise, it's death. Yeah.

I just, I see this point where combat is irrelevant, you know, individuals. I mean, a human life is going to be measured in, I mean, basically to nothing. Like the impact that a human soldier can have on technologies like this that are so vast and think 20 times, 20,000 times quicker and deeper and, you know, harder than a human. Like combat is going to not exist. It's all going to be intelligence, you know.

Robots and drones. Robots and computers and drones. And yeah, I mean, obviously, I think new. nukes are still an issue. But that's still, that's all technology-based. Like, no one's, like, picking the nuke up and, like, put loading and stuff in it. Like, it's not how, like, it's all just ready to go. It's just a button.

Drones with tiny nukes? Yeah. Nukes that just blow up one house. Oh, yeah. It's terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. I don't want to be, I want it to happen after I'm gone. Let's get on to some of the, like, weirder parts of the pod in terms of, you know, what are the odds or the

coincidences of it. They mentioned a few novels. And this kind of blew my mind. And I was curious what, you know, the listeners thought of this when they heard this on Rogan's Pod. There's a couple of books. So one is by Werner von Braun, 1950s novel. And it's about this person named Elon that takes the humans to Mars. And it basically becomes like the president of Mars. That's wild. Now, Gad took a good guess and was like,

maybe his dad read the book or someone read the book and then they named Elon after that. Fair enough. But Joe brought up, and I was thinking the same thing. Like, yeah, but so what? You can name, I could name my kid Jordan. He's not going to become the best basketball player in the world, right?

It's just, it doesn't matter. Right. Or I can name him Maximus Decimus Meridius. He's not going to be the gladiator that saves Rome or some other civilization, as much as I would like that to be true. Yeah. But then it did turn out that Elong's dad did read that book, liked it, and named that character. But still, the coincidence, like the idea of fate with it all, or just like a foreseeing,

foreshadow, like, it's madness. it is I mean when they first started talking about it my mind because this is my first I've heard of it I'm sure people listening you know listeners have this has come across your your feed be it all before I mean this wasn't brand new um but my mind went to that like there has got to be some explainable coincidence here with the name right like if um you know I mean it's it was a novel like it was a public novel of a public figure you know he was a rocket scientist what whatever. There is also probably some like influence that this person to give Elon's father was a scientist who was interested in these things. Maybe named Elon after this person. Maybe Elon was aware of it, even though he's indicated supposedly on his social media that he's like, oh, what are the odds? Like, what's the coincidence? Like he didn't know. I'm sure he knew where he was named after. Most people do. And it's sort of because of his father's interests. And, and, and it's sort of, because of his father's interests and sort of this like namesake that he was that he had like he had kind of led into a life

and an interest of science so it's not like a pure coincidence that he has some involvement in science and technology right so there's there's definitely some things that have led him the fact the whole mars thing i think definitely is astronomicalically low odds yeah that you would name them set them on this trajectory and then they also happen to become the richest person they ever lived and the most likely person to get to Mars. Yeah. You know, I guess in the same way, another book they talked about Ingersoll Lockwoods,

Barron Trump novels. So novels about someone called Baron Trump. Now, it's reasonable to believe that maybe Trump knew about this book and liked the name Baron and thought that was cool, or someone in his family knew of these books, you know, because you would know books that have your name in it. But they're from the 1890s,

And some of the predictions are like kind of eerily similar to this person's life. Mm-hmm. It is. I mean, I think both of these are very interesting or the very thought-provoking. You know, the fact that the character had lived in a castle, Castle Trump. Well, that was the name of the book. Right. And his mentor's name was Don.

Like this one feels like more, like I get more, I have more questions about this one than, you know, this, not this, a Warner Von Braun's novel, you know, hidden connection with Elon. And Dawn was from, you know, Manhattan. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it, you know, those eyebrows go up at, you know, thinking about Trump's family. And then there's the next book called The Last President. And the parallels are even more kind of. unsettling there. And to think that, that, you know, Baron is possibly not planning this in the future

or his dad's planning it for him. I mean, if you think of his sons, the other two that are a bit older have not really stood out as the kind of leaders that could come become president. Maybe. Maybe they can. Who knows? Wild world. But it feels like, Barron could be kind of trained and put on that trajectory to a higher degree almost. And he's very young, but there's just something about his role in the last election. It's like, okay. Yeah, that's what I was going to say is his role and his sort of like being involved with the campaigning.

Like that says a lot about one, his enthusiasm, his interests, but also his potential for building a life in politics, whether it's a career being a career. career politician or finding a role, you know, like Donald Trump has where he's built businesses. He's, you know, built his empire. He's got his celebrity, you know, accolades that he's got. And then he's decided that this is what's next for him. And who knows, Barron could be bigger than his father. He could be wealthier than his father. He obviously is intelligent. He's got a good foundation of, you know, education and resources. And he may do better than Donald Trump. And he could be a president in the future.

The concept of the last president, that's a bit scary. I don't know exactly. I obviously didn't read the novel and like what that is indicative of in terms of the storyline. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely kind of unsettling and very eerie the parallels that exist here. Yeah. Yeah, that one was, that one was unusual. I really don't know what to think about it. I mean, even Elang's one is.

It's just like, you know, they bring up that whole idea of it. simulation theory. Is it that? I just, sometimes it makes you think, and it's fun. It's fun just to be like, look how weird that is. That's freaking whatever. I mean, where do you go from there? Yeah. They talked a little bit about like consumer behavior marketing stuff. I mean, that's kind of, Gads talked about that before. A little bit about political correctness, free speech, you know, Gad is very outspoken and gets away with a lot because that's kind of his personality. He's a tenured professor. He's not getting fired for that.

He's unusual in academia because he's not very left-leaning. He pushes back a lot on, you know, the pronoun woke stuff and says when he needs to, which is, I think, why Joe connects with him and respects him. lot and why he resonates so well with Rogan's audience. Yeah. And it's so often back on. And he's writing a book, right? Yeah. I don't know.

The sad truth about happiness, eight seekers for leading the good life. Mm-hmm. Kind of breaks down how happiness isn't just about success or wealth. And it's tied a lot to personal freedoms, you know, comedy, humor in your life and being authentic and sort of embracing your authentic self. He talked a bit, a bit about cancel culture and like how hypersensitive people can be. And how it's sort of like people have a hard time expressing themselves nowadays without sort of any pushback. And that can really in turn affect your well-being, like not feeling like you can actually say what you want and put your true, you know, authentic self out there and feeling like you're always having to like appease those listening and those out there that, you know, you want sort of in your corner. You know, you don't want to offend anyone.

Yeah. We've walked, we've walked, you know, the line for so long trying to not offend people. and I think as, you know, there's definitely a correlation. And he may or may not talk about this too much in the book, but like just hearing him talking about this, you could visualize the correlation between this, you know, politically correct, political correctness and wokeism sort of increasing in like popularity and in like influence and people sort of,

um, self like identifying as like someone who follows that. like religious, like a religion and the deterioration of mental health in our country. Yeah. Like, you know, if you don't feel like you can just be yourself without judgment, which is like, which is sort of like contradictory to what the whole like wokeism like argument is, it's like, oh, don't put people down for who they are. But it's like, I can't say that I have a problem with something because it's going to offend

someone else. And it's like, but then I can't be who I am. Right. Right. Or I can't say, I just don't understand something. but then you're like, oh, well, that means you're a bad person. That doesn't, like, that's like just creating one problem, you know, fixing one problem and creating another. But yeah, you don't want to live in a world where everyone is intentionally trying to hurt your feelings or insults you.

But at the same time, you can't move the bar to where everything you hear insults you or offends you. Because then you're stopping every single person from saying anything at you. Even the idea of the microaggressions where it's like, oh, it's tiny aggression. It's like, well, it's also very relative to the conversation, you know, and it's individualistic. It's like you could mean your very best not to upset anybody and be very careful about what you say, but you're just trying to talk about some complex ideas that are based in reality. Somebody can find offense to that. if they are sensitive enough.

And that's kind of what's happening. It's almost like a victimhood mentality that's being encouraged. Right. You know, under this like careful umbrella of like, no,

it's all about including everyone and their uniqueness and their, no, it's just within the rules and the parameters that you like. Yeah, fall within the narrative of what they want

and everyone will be happy. But that's like just obviously not the truth because there's, no one's ever going to fit like our country and the people within it are never going to align entirely. Yeah, it's almost not that it is like this, but it's an example like communism. Before it was tested, it sounds really nice that everyone shares everything and everyone has a piece of the pie and no one goes hungry. And then time after time it's been tested and it was a disaster. And I feel like this experiment will turn out the same way each time.

And, you know, right now you're seeing a shift. There were a lot of votes where people went. I think I've had enough of that for a minute. That's a lot. Yeah. I don't want to deal with that. Yeah. Yeah, the sad truth about happiness.

So it sounds like a great book. Check it out. All right. So that was it from us and Gad. A great episode. Love the guy. Looking forward to checking that book out. Everyone listening.

Thank you so much. As always, you guys are the best. Thanks for the support, and we will talk to you soon. Cheers, Joel.