The Eric Metaxas Show - Gad Saad (Encore)

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Gad Saad joins Eric Metaxas to discuss how "parasitic ideas," such as postmodernism, have infected society and are destroying common sense. Saad shares insight of where such ideas originate, and how absolute truth can cure those who are misled. Saad also shares his keys to happiness from his new book, "The Saad Truth about Happiness."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Back again, eh? Glutton for punishment, eh? When will you ever learn? Now, here's the host that you hate to love, the man who was the reason your friend sponsored your last intervention, Eric Matt, Texas. Hey there, folks.

Welcome to the program. It's always a joy to have someone on for the first time. I have heard such good things about today's guest. His name is Gad Saad, at least I think that's how it's pronounced, or God Sad. G-A-D, first name, second name, S-A-A-D, Ph.D. He's one of the best known public intellectuals fighting the tyranny of political correctness. So it sounds to me like he's interested in truth.

He's a professor of marketing at the John Moulson School of Business at Concordia University, where he held the research chair in evolutionary behavioral sciences and Darwinian consumption. It goes on and on. It is just a joy to have Gad Saad as my guest. Welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book. Thank you so much, sir. It's such a pleasure to meet you.

I've seen you on television before. so I feel as though I know you, but it's a pleasure to finally meet you. Well, that's very generous of you. So for my audience, who isn't familiar with you, what is your background? I mean, you've been a voice for truth, which is a very rare thing, especially in a university setting. Where were you raised, and what is your background? How did you get to be who you are today?

Sure. So I grew up in Lebanon. I was born in Lebanon. We were part of the last steadfastly refusing to leave Jews in Lebanon. Most of my extended family had left by the late 60s. They had left some to France, some to Canada, many to Israel. But my family had remained in Lebanon. We were well entrenched within Lebanese society.

And then when the Civil War broke out in 1975, when I was 10 years old, it became very, very difficult to be Jewish in Lebanon. So we experienced the first year at a civil war and then luckily we're able to leave. So that's my background in terms of where I was born. I grew up in Montreal, Canada, and then went to the United States to finish my studies, and then was a visiting professor at several universities in the U.S., but much of my career has been spent at a Canadian university, Montreal University. My general research area, just again for the folks who don't necessarily know who I am, I marry evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology to human behavior in general.

and consumer behavior in particular. What are the biological underpinnings that make us do the things that we do? So that's been my scientific work. But in the process of establishing my academic career, I started noticing that there was a second war that I was facing. The first war was the Lebanese Civil War. The second war was the war on reality,

the war on common sense, on reason, on evidence-based thinking, which then led me to write my previous book, not the book that we'll be talking about today, but my previous book was called The Parasitic Mind, how infectious ideas are killing common sense. And so I've been one of the few voices in academia that holds no sacred cow to be untouchable. I critique any ideology that I feel like critiquing.

Of course, it has made my academic career at times difficult, but you have to defend the truth. Well, you say you have to defend the truth. And I say you have to defend the truth. But many in the academy are not willing to defend the truth, nor even to defend the concept of truth. They don't seem to believe in the idea of truth the way Socrates did. They don't even seem to believe in defending reality, that there's a world, a real world, that there are things that are possible, that are things that are impossible. I mean, that is kind of where we are today. So to believe in reality or truth in the academy is a rare thing indeed. And what

What do you suppose it is about you that made you willing to fight the battle for truth to not be silenced? Thank you. That's a great question. So I think it's just my personhood, the random combination of genes that make me who I am. Okay, now hold on. You're making it sound fatalistic. Sure. You're making it sound like it's not noble. It's just a fatalistic thing. It's just your genes are making you behave this way. Just as Hitler's jeans made him do what he did. That's clearly not what you. you're saying, is it? No, no. I mean, of course, I also have personal agency because I could say, hey, I'm going to succumb to cowardice and not rise up to the call to defend the truth. So you're right. So thank you for that. Maybe I was being falsely modest in my deterministic explanation. But in any case, I'm just, I mean, I'm a very, I think anybody who knows me knows that I'm a very warm, fun, affable guy, but I'm also very combative, not because I want to be combative,

to annoy people. But in a sense, I have this code of personal conduct, Eric, that makes it that when I go to bed at night and put my head on the pillow, for me to be able to not suffer from insomnia, I need to feel that I never modulated my words for pragmatic reasons, for careerist reasons. Then I would feel that I'm a fraud, that I'm a charlatan.

And because of that exacting, punishing code of personal conduct, whenever I see nonsense, I attack it. Well, I'm just guessing, but having lived through what you and your family lived through in Lebanon, I mean, my father came to this country from Greece in the 50s. My mother came from East Germany in the 50s. And having stories, whether your own or those of your forebears, of people who saw that there were consequences to how one lived and that the world can be a very evil place. and that if you go along with it, you're complicit in the evil.

I think many Americans and many Canadians haven't been forced to face that. They don't understand that there is a real battle for truth, and that I have to be careful not to go along with things, because then I am complicit. I'm just guessing that growing up in a home, as you did, having left Lebanon under those circumstances, that that might be a part of why you're a brave voice in this culture. I think you're spot on. And if you look just anecdotally at some of the most vociferous defenders of Western traditions, they're exactly the type that you've mentioned. It's Ayan Hersey Alley, who is of Somali background. It's precisely because we have sampled from the large buffet of possible societies, right? We realize that the Western experience is an anomalous one. It's not the standard default society. That's not how humans have organized.

organized themselves. And so because we've sampled from that buffet, we come to the West and say, guys, be careful. You're not going down the right tracks. I think you're exactly right, Eric. Yeah, I think, you know, anytime I meet somebody who has Cuban background or whatever, they typically they get it. Somebody who's come from Romania or some Eastern Bloc country, they all get it. They all seem to understand, you know, we have to fight for what is right and true. We have to fight for freedom. These aren't normal. This is not the default situation. But many Americans and many people who have had the privilege of growing up in the West, they don't have a clue that what we have is a glorious, fragile thing. It's worth fighting for. Because you're new to the program, I do

want you to talk about your book, The Parasitic Mind, before we talk about the brand new book. Tell us a little bit about that so my audience can understand where you're coming from. Sure. Thanks for that question. So in the parasitic mind, what I try to do is find some metaphor for why it is that living agents can engage in such maladaptive behaviors. And so I found it in what's called the neuro-parasitological framework. The idea is that if you look at the animal kingdom, there are all sorts of parasitic infestations that happen. A tapeworm can infest your intestinal tract.

But a neuroparasite is one that looks to, if you like, alter the neuronal circuitry of its host to suit its own reproductive interest. And so I had my epiphany, so I thought, well, okay, well, human beings can certainly be parasitized by actual physical brainworms, but there's another class of brainworms that they can be parasitized by, and those, I call those idea pathogens or parasitic ideas. So to your earlier point about, you know, in the academy, we no longer talk about some objective truth, well, that's the granddaddy of all idea pathogens, postmodernism, social constructively, is another one. Radical feminism is another one. Identity politics is another one. Cultural

relativism. Biophobia, the fear of using biology to explain human behavior is another one. So what I do in the book is I trace the origin of many of these parasitic ideas and their downstream negative consequences. And then if I've done a good job, I offer a mind vaccine against these parasitic ideas. That's the general idea of the book. Okay. I want to pick up on that. We are talking to GAD, G-A-D, S-A-A-D, and we'll be right back. I wear the black for those who've never read or listen to the world. Weaving its way through the heart of the Holy Land is a well-worn path that once felt the footsteps of our biblical faith heroes.

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available at reallifenetwork.com, or download the app and sign up for free. That's reallifenetwork.com. Check it out. Welcome back, folks. Today, my guest is Gad Saad. He has a new book out called Is True Happiness Possible? We're talking just a moment about his previous book,

The Parasitic Mind. You just were talking about a number of, of these fashionable intellectual theories that you describe as being somehow parasitical. Tell us a little bit about that so we understand that idea better. Sure. And forgive me for correcting you on your show, but it's important. It's not the title for the happiness book is the sad truth about happiness. Oh, I'm sorry.

The title, the page in front of me says, is true happiness possible? That's the question. The book is the sad truth about happiness. Sad is spelled with two A. the sad truth about happiness, eight secrets for leading the good life. Thank you for correcting me. Okay, so how are some of these ideologies, as you put it, parasitical?

Well, so take, for example, postmodernism, right? Postmodernism purports that there are no objective truth other than, of course, the one objective truth that there are no objective truth. So it's already completely implodes in its own stupidity. Immediately. Well, let me... Right.

So let me tell you. an incredible poignant story that I recount in the book in question that perfectly captures the ethos, that the neolithic intellectual terrorist ethos of postmodernism. So in 2002, one of my former doctoral students had just defended his doctoral dissertation. So we were going out for a celebratory dinner, myself, him, my wife, and he was bringing along a date for the evening. And so he calls me up a couple of hours before the evening to warn me, that the lady that he's bringing along is a graduate student in women's studies, postmodernism,

and cultural anthropology, to which I answered facetiously, ah, the holy trifecta of BS. So then the holy trifecta of BS, nicely said, yeah, yeah. The reason why he was telling me this is because, you know, he was sort of making the point, let's have a good evening, you know, let's not get into it. I said, oh, don't worry, I will be on my best behavior. This is your night to shine, which of course was an abject. lie because about halfway through the evening, I turn to the lady in question. I say, I hear you're a student of postmodernism. She says, yes, there are no objective truths. She goes, no, I said, well,

I'm an evolutionary psychologist, so I do think that there is a universal human nature. There are some universal mechanisms that we can, you know, recurringly document. Do you mind if I propose a universal and then you can correct me? She goes, go ahead. Now, this is 20 years, 21 years ago, Eric. I said, is it not true that within Homo sapiens, humans, it is only women who bear children? Is that not a universal statement? And she looks at me, can't believe that I could be so imbecic scoffs at my stupidity and says, no, it's not true. It's not true that only women bear children?

How so? She said, well, because there is some Japanese tribe off some Japanese island whereby, within their folkloric, mythological realm, it is the men who bear children. So by you restricting the conversation to the biological realm, that's how you keep us barefoot and pregnant. So then when I recovered from the mini stroke I had just had at facing such stupidity, I said, okay, well, can I offer maybe a less contentious example? She said, go for it. I said, is it not true that since time immemorial sailors have relied on the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? And there she used a variant of postmodernism, deconstructionism, Jacques de Rida, where she said,

what do you mean by East and West? And what do you mean by the Sun? That which you call the Sun, I might call Dancing Hyena, literally her words. I said, OK, well, fine. The dancing hyena rises in the East and sets in the West. She said, I don't play those label games. Why do I always tell that story, Eric? Because if a graduate student and I can't have a meaningful place where we can't

agree that women bear children and that there is such a thing as the sun, that's the highest form of parasitic idea. It really is extraordinary because I think a lot of people may be listening to this program who haven't been blessed with spending any time in the academy can't believe that anyone could be dumb enough to spout these kinds of things. It seems hard to believe. And obviously, these people are genuinely divorced from reality. In other words, they have a life that doesn't force them to deal with reality.

If you're raising children or paying bills or defending your home against marauders or invaders, you have to deal with reality. But if you're in this rarefied bubble, you actually don't have to deal with reality and everything can become subjective and a joke. But it's interesting because when someone is talking like that, it's hard not to think of them as mocking reality and truth. In other words, when Derry Dhab, deconstructs everything.

He's really mocking everything because everyone knows that there's this thing called the sun and because we may use different words for it doesn't change the fact that there's this reality of the sun and it's because of the warmth of the sun that we live. But it seems like there's something pernicious, genuinely pernicious about deconstruction

and about a lot of these philosophies that are so popular in the academy. Yeah, and I actually offer a speculative, albeit I think, very plausible explanation for why these otherwise very different parasitic ideas. What do they have in common? And I argue in the book that they free us from the pesky shackles of reality, right? Social constructivism frees me from the reality that people are not born with equal potentiality. If I'm a parent, I would love to believe that if only I could hug my child enough or not hug him enough or give him enough, or give him enough.

Big Max or not give him enough Big Max. He could be the next Lionel Messi. He could be the next Michael Jordan. He could be the next Albert Einstein. That's a hopeful message. So a lot of these parasitic ideas actually start off with a noble cause. But in the pursuit of that noble cause, they murder and rape truth. They murder and rape truth.

But you're casting murder and rape as negative things. And who's to say what's positive or negative in these topsy-turvy times? Well, played, sir. Well, it's so fascinating because, again, you can't have any kind of conversation about anything if you subscribe to the acid nealism of deconstruction or any of these ideas. But these ideas have trickled down, in effect, into the culture. And they are no longer just in faculty lounges, but they've really, in many ways, come to destroy the culture. at large, which is why I think it's interesting that you're being vocal about these things, because we need people to fight against these things.

Thank you, yes. I'm really glad that you mentioned the point that, you know, people often used to wrongly presume that these esoteric ideas would only be in the highfalutin ivory tower. And I've been warning, I hate to say to people, remind them that I've told you so. That's exactly the response that I would get from people, Eric. or you're just taking some extreme example from some silly humanities seminar, and you're going to presume that it applies. And I say, well, in the same way that an actual virus escapes from a lab,

these ideas do not stick in the faculty lounge. Eventually, they become the Prime Minister of Canada. Yeah, that's the virus escaped, and he's now Prime Minister. Let me ask you, the new book is a play on, your name, your last name, Saad, S-A-A-A-D, and it's the sad, the sad truth about happiness, eight secrets for leading the good life.

So what made you want to focus on the concept of happiness and what do you mean by happiness? Right, indeed. So I'll take the second part first. Happiness, I don't mean it as an ephemeral, temporary thing. It's not because I just ate a juicy steak that I'm happy. Yes, I got a dopamine hit, but that's not what I. I really mean it as an existential sense of bliss.

I'm sitting on my proverbial porch when I'm 85 and I'm looking back at my life. I'm saying I've had a good life. I've had a meaningful life. It's in that sense. I'm talking about existential happiness. Why did I decide to write it? If you would have asked me three years ago, Eric, when the parasitic mind came out, if I was going to be writing a book on happiness, I would have said, you're crazy.

No way. It was actually through the serendipity of life that I decided to write it. What would end up happening often is that people would write to. me saying, how come you tackle such thorny, difficult subjects, but you're always seemed to be playful and joking around and, you know, you can act silly and, you know, what's your secret to you always being affable and happy? So that was number one. Number two, whenever I would post on social media, some prescriptive advice, I noticed that that would be some of the most viral stuff that I would post. I'd never thought of being a prescriptive psychologist. I've always

navigated in this scripted world, right? I just describe why people do what they do. But I said, okay, well, if people are really looking for guidance, they trust my voice, they appreciate that I am the happy warrior, as some people call me. Why don't I take a shot at writing a book on happiness, which, of course, as you know, Eric, is a very daunting exercise because probably the topic that philosophers have most written about through millennia is about how to live the good life. So, if I've done a good job, I've offered something unique in the book. And just because I'm a writer and a kind of amateur etymologist, I like to think that in some ways what you're talking about is joy more than happiness in the strict sense, because happiness

has to do with happenstance or happenings, that things that are, we have no control over in a way. So the word happy and happiness, it's a little bit, it's a little bit loaded. I think generally you seem to be speaking about joy, but we're going to go with happiness. And we're talking to the author of The Sad Sad Truth About Happiness. Gad Saad will be right back. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question.

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and I know in the book Gad Saad that you refer to the ancient Greeks, how does their version of this speak to us today? Their version of the concept of happiness? Right. You know, I don't know. Do you know who Nasim Talib is, the fellow Lebanese author, Nassim Talib, T-A-L-B? I don't think so. Well, he's actually a pretty prolific author.

I think you might enjoy some of his writing. He wants quipped with me. He's kind of a playful guy himself. and he once told me, I don't know what you guys study in psychology got, because everything that there is to say about human nature, the ancient Greeks have already said. And at the time, I thought, yeah, you know, ha-ha, that's funny to seem. But then as I was doing my deep dive to, you know, doing the research for the book,

I sort of, his quip kept coming up in my head. Every time I thought I had an original insight, here comes Seneca, having already said it 2,000 years ago. Here comes Epictetus. Here comes Aristotle. and so on and so forth. And so I don't think you can have a full coverage of the concept of how to live the good life without talking about the gigantic, gargantuan amount of stuff that the ancient Greeks talked about on the topic.

Of course, they're not the only ones. Other cultures have also talked about that. But, boy, it's just amazing to look at the ancient Greeks and their wisdom. I mean, I don't know what they were drinking in that water. I'll just give you one or two quick examples, if I may. So one of the chapters I talk about the inverted U curve, which I argue is the most ubiquitous relationship in nature. The inverted U is simply too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good, and the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Well, Aristotle has a whole treatise on that, which he calls the golden mean, right?

If the soldier is too cowardly, that's not good. If the soldier is reckless and his courage, that's not good because he's going to get killed. somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot. And so what I demonstrated that chapter is that there is a bewildering number of phenomena across a wide range of domains that exactly adhere to that principle. And so the good life ultimately ends up being finding the sweet spot across all of these different domains. So that would be one example. Can I give you one other example?

Of course. Yeah. In one of the chapters I'm talking about, you know, persistence and resilience and anti-fragility. And I start off with an epigraph from Seneca. I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but he basically says that the strongest trees are those that have the deep roots are those that have been exposed to strong wind stressors because that causes them to become more resilient. Trees that have not been exposed to wind stressors become brittle and break off very easily, which of course is the adage, squeaky doors don't break. that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So pretty much every single

thing that you could think of when we're talking about the good life today, the ancient Greeks have already thought about it quite profoundly. And so they're truly, I mean, I already had great respect for them, but I found a new level of awe and respect for those guys. Although Seneca was a Roman.

He was a Roman. You're right. All right. We'll give the Romans a little credit, but not much, because I'm Greek, mostly the Greeks, most of the Greeks. So you mentioned anti-Feroman. fragility. I mean, that seems to speak to exactly what you're talking about. When you're exposed to some measure of adversity, it strengthens you. It toughens you up, and that's a good thing. We're not talking about the kind of adversity that's traumatic, that wounds you. But that's what we're

dealing with now in the woke culture, that there are people that are unable to deal with anything, and then they're seeming way of dealing with being unwilling to deal with anything is to hide even further from anything that might trigger them. It seems fundamentally unhealthy. It seems demonstrably crazy. Do you talk about that idea? I do.

And actually, after the book came out, the book came out exactly three weeks ago, The day that the book came out, I was appearing on Joe Rogan's show. I'm going to mention something that happened that speaks to antifugility, which is not in the book because it happened after the book came out. During the chat, we were joking around Joe and I about accents that we may find less attractive, auditorily speaking. And so I had just returned from Portugal with my family on vacation.

I said, well, you know, I'm not really a fan of the Portuguese accent. And I speak Hebrew and I'm not a fan. I think actually Hebrew is violently ugly. But it's the next statement that got me into trouble, Eric. And then I said, because I'm based out of Montreal, Canada. I said, oh, when it comes to French Canadian, well, that's just an affront to human dignity. Now, that's a running gag that I've been using hyperbolicly.

You know, the Beatles are in a front to human dignity. Anybody who doesn't love Lionel Messi is an affront to human dignity. So anybody that has three neurons firing in their brain would know that I said this completely innocently. I'm having fun. I am from Quebec. I'm fully francophone. Eric, the next week after that, I was public enemy number one in Quebec. And luckily, I was already in Newport Beach because otherwise I think I would have been lynched and feather and tart.

Imagine an entire society spending a whole week sending me death threats, racist comments, anti-Semitic comments, go back to your shithole, Arab, Jew, because I made a joke about an accent. That's not anti-fragile, and that certainly is not a prescription to leading a good life. What do you think accounts for the flourishing seems like a perverse word to use, but I'll use it for now, the flourishing of this kind of hypersensitive, woke fragility. What do you suppose accounts for it? Actually, I'm asking you a question. We're going to a break.

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A complete set normally, 7998, but for a limited time for all my listeners, go to Mypillow.com, use promo code Eric to snag this set for just $39.99. That's a 50% discount. Visit mypillar.com today, or dial 800, 978-3057,000 to grab this deal with promo code Eric, act fast, it won't last. Use promo code Eric for more specials. 800-97783057. Use promo code Eric or Mypillow.com. Folks, welcome back. I have the privilege of speaking with GAD, SAD, SAD, SAD, his new book is the SOD truth about happiness, the sad truth about happiness. Dr. Sade is known to hundreds of thousands as the therapist for everyone. And in the book, he argues that

happiness is both a fact and an attainable goal, not merely a changeable mood, but a process toward which all people can strive by following basic steps known to humans for millennia. I'm fascinated by that idea that for millennia, you were referencing the people from the classical period, the ancient Greeks and Romans, that they knew something about this. So what is some of the basics because we were talking about fragility. We know that's a path to sadness or to misery, really. Right. So one of the chapters, one of the early chapters, I talk about the two most important decisions that one can make that will either impart great happiness or great misery, depending on whether you make the right choice, choosing the right spouse and choosing

the right profession. Now, when it comes to choosing the right spouse, I pit two evolutionary Maxons against one another. There's the opposites attract Maxim versus the birds of a feather flock together, Maxim. And it turns out, Eric, it may not surprise anybody that's listening to us that for long-term success of a marriage, it's very much the birds of a feather flock together, Maxim. Now, the flocking on which feathers you might ask, if we have shared values, shared foundational principles, shared attitudes towards, you know, deontological principles, those would be the types of things that you should look for in an ideal mate. Opposites attracts works well if I'm looking for a short-term sexual dalliance.

I may be restrained and introverted and sexually shy. You may be the opposites. We may complement each other. But for long-term union, you really want to pick people that share your fundamental values in life. So you mentioned the person we choose as a spouse, and then you mentioned career. Sure. So yeah, so for career, now to the extent that that's possible, I understand that some people are, you know, shackled by pragmatic realities, they need to put foot on the table. But even in their case, we have a solution. But if possible, all other things equal, I argue that there are two metrics that are fundamental for occupational happiness. Number one, any job that allows you to immerse yourself in the creative impulse, you could be a stand-up comic, you could be a podcast, or author, you could be an architect or a chef. So these are very, very different professions, but they share one thing.

They create something out of nothing. Until that person came along, the dish didn't exist, the bridge didn't exist, the stand-up comedy routine didn't exist. Just creating novel things grants me access to purpose and meaning. So that's number one. Number two, I argue that, again, if possible, a job that affords me temporal freedom is one that's going to make me happy. So in my case, I work very, very hard.

I work all day. But I feel like I'm always playing. Why? Because nobody's telling me what to do when. I can go off to the cafe and work on my next book idea for four hours. Then I can have the privilege and honor to chatting with Eric on his show. Then I can head off to the beach if I don't feel creative. So the fact that I could float through life as a vagabot, even though I'm working very hard, gives me great existential bliss.

So if you can hit those two markers, you hopefully will have occupational happiness. There are a few notes here. You say that there's a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness. What do you mean by that? So on average, the research shows that people who are more religious tend to be moderatively and moderately happier than the irreligious. Now, that could be for very earthly reasons, right?

because by being religious, it grants me greater access to communality. There's greater cohesion within the in-group. There is a greater likelihood to engage in meaningful reciprocal bonds with members of my faith. And so there might be very earthly reasons for why simply being religious grants me greater access to happiness. Now, that said, while I concede that being religious does increase one's happiness, I don't want the irreligious to walk away feeling as though they're doomed to a life of unhappiness. So there I argue right after that passage that you can seek spiritual experiences that are truly divine, even if you're not religious. So, you know, meeting someone on the street who recognizes me and comes up to me and we have a serendipitous, really profound conversation for 30 minutes, is a measure of the majesty of life.

So I can still find a way to be in spiritual awe. It's great if I'm religious, but I can also try to access that if I'm irreligious. You also talk about really basic things. Like you say, a long walk can physically reduce stress responses in the brain. I guess I've heard that. But can you say something about that? I've always wondered why that is. What is that?

I mean, because these are simply practical things. You're talking about practical things. We're not getting into the deeper meaning. of some of these things, but just practical things. Well, and that's the beauty of some of these prescriptions because they're just that simple, right? It's not just some fancy person who could implement them because they have great cognitive acuity.

Look, Eric, I lost 86 pounds during the COVID lockdown. Well, it started slightly before, but then it continued during COVID. How did I do it? Number one, I would walk 15 to 20,000 steps every single day, no matter what. It could be minus 20 degrees in the middle of winter in Montreal, I'm doing the walk.

Number one. Number two, I watched what I ate. I ate between 15 and 1700 calories. And guess what? 18 months later, I got on the scale and I was more than 80 pounds lighter. It didn't take brain surgery. It's not complicated. You just have to have the discipline, the resilience, the persistence to do it.

Now, I don't know if you remember there's a famous story about Goet. Was it Goet? I can't remember his name. and Einstein, the mathematician. Oh, Gerdl. Gertel, sorry. I knew that I was off Gertes and much earlier that. Gertel, and I should know this because my undergrad is in mathematics,

Einstein used to say that he would go to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, not so much to do anything just so that he can hang out with this guy and they could go on these long walks. Because going for a nice moderate, you know, intensity exercise, opens me up, right? And so just go out for a walk, interact with nature, instantiate your biophilic instinct. Biophilia is a fancy term for innate love for nature. All of these things are such simple things we can do to improve our moods from day to day. I'm so sorry we're out of time. A joy to have you on the program, GAD, S-A-A-D, and the new book is The Sod Truth about how.

happiness. Gad, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Cheers. Take care. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Robert Netzley right now, who is with Inspire Investing. Robert, I can't help but get excited about what you've created an opportunity for people to find out if their money is funding wicked things, if they have money in a 401k or a retirement fund, whatever it is, that is invested in companies that are doing, evil things. That is promoting pornography, promoting abortion, promoting any number of things or ideologies with your money, folks. So Robert Nestle has created something where you can get a free report that tells you where your money is and they will help you get your money into

companies that are doing good things. So you have to go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric, you get a free report. But this is something I, you know, Robert, I guess it just gives me hope that it's possible to turn things around in America because when I think of how much money people have invested out there, if they would understand what's going on and shift that money to good stuff, it's just huge. It's just absolutely monstrous. Like what is enormous.

It's enormous. And we are seeing fruit from that labor. It's remarkable. It doesn't have to even be trillions of dollars to change things. I've been on the phone, you know, in recent weeks, you know, with investor relations and CFOs and whatnot. We regularly engage with companies that we invest in or are like to invest in or kind of just speaking biblical truth, the corporate power. And, you know, one of the things we hear is often that, number one, these people have never heard, they tell us they've never heard from a faith-based investor before. They've been doing their job for 20, 30 years.

years, you know, executive major organizations never heard from a faith-based investor. So, number one, they need to hear our voice. Number two, they're thankful to hear it. Even in some of these sort of, you know, woke businesses, you think that this don't care, there are people in those businesses of influence that actually do care about what we have to say and oftentimes have enough influence to change things. So, for instance, Costco stopped giving money to gay pride parades. Chevron stopped giving money to Planned Parenthood.

There's a laundry list of other organizations that have changed things. That is unbelievable. Robert Nelson. That is unbelievable. It is so wonderful. I want to tell people, folks, what you do and don't do, you can change the world if you take an interest in this. When I hear that a company like Costco would stop giving money to something like that or Chevron, these are huge, huge companies. And you shop there.

Your money may be invested there. When we get involved in these things, we can change the world. So I want to say the action point is go to invest. I'm sorry, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. You'll get a free report that will help you figure this out. And I know, Robert, that you guys will help people if they want to transition to invest in companies that believe in their values.

But this is a gigantic thing that we have. I mean, it's to me scandalous when we have power and we don't use that power. It's like when I say, I'm not going to vote, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. When you don't do those things, people who don't share your values, who share opposite, who have opposite values, they're going to prevail. So I just want to say to you, Robert, thank you for taking this on because it is game changing. Like you said, it's a movement.

the more people that do this, it's an amazing thing when we think of the money that is out there, that many people of faith with traditional values have invested in woke companies. Ladies and gentlemen, you've got to do something about it. You've just got to do something about it. This is like a mandate that we've got to live our faith out in every sphere and where your money is. That's a big deal. So please go to InspireAdvisors.com. slash Eric. This is a free report, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Robert Natsley, thank you.

Pleasure. Thank you, Eric.