The Joe Rogan Experience - #519 - Gad Saad

Episode Date: July 7, 2014

Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing & Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption and author of "The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption" and "The Consuming Instinct"

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. We have, is it okay to call you the Gadfather? Please do. The Gadfather is here, ladies and gentlemen, and this is in reference to a music video that you were a part of.

Gad, how do I say your last name? Saad. Just Saad. That's fine. Gad Saad. It's two A's. It gets tricky when it's two A's. Because it's the guttural sound from Arabic.

Oh, how would you say it? Saad. Saad. But since most Westerners couldn't pronounce that, you just do a double A. Oh, that's got to be annoying. That's weird. Like, we gentrify everything. There's weird. We gentrify everything.

There you go. We smush everything down. And you are an expert in evolutionary psychology. And this is where it gets really fascinating. Evolutionary psychology and its effect on consumerism. Right. So I basically apply evolutionary psychology to understand our consumatory nature. What are the biological forces that compel us to be the consumers that we are?

But I define consumption very broadly. It's not just consuming Coca-Cola, but we consume friendships, we consume religion, we consume marriages. So it's a consumption with a capital C. That's fascinating to me because, you know, we these uh general definitions that we use in in in culture uh and one of them is consumerism consumerism almost always pertains to buying things right but what you're looking at it in is is i i like that better like because it is kind of what we do we do consume relationships don't we exactly i mean we consume cultural products right so uh you know why is it that certain songs are so appealing to us? I mean, what is it about song

lyrics that are, that, you know, trigger an emotional pull in us? Why are movies appealing? Well, you study these cultural products because they say something really about the evolution of the human mind. Do you study songs that are annoying as well? Because I've always wondered why some songs are super appealing to some, but then just infuriating to other people. Yeah, so that would probably be more a musicologist who would study the musical structure of songs to know what makes them appealing or not. I'm specifically looking at the lyrics.

So, for example, if you look at hip-hop videos, they're a wonderful Darwinian laboratory because all the political correctness is cut out. And basically your real Darwinian being shines through. Right. So men are going to signal, hey, I've got the Maserati. I've got the Porsche. Get with me. Women are going to signal beauty markers. It's only women, for example, who denigrate men if they have low social status.

Right. It's never going to be a guy saying, hey, Linda, you don't work hard enough, so you're not ambitious enough. I'm not going to have sex with you. But the other way around, you see a million songs like that, right? Yeah, yeah. She's not a gold digger, but that kind of song. Yeah, that's very interesting. A musicologist, is that a real person? That's a real person, yes. And a musicologist would study lyrics and notes? Well, they would probably study the structure of the musical notes, right? So, for example, what types of notes are innately appealing to people?

So that's certainly not what I do. I'm looking only at song lyrics as one of many types of cultural products. The lyrics would be the thing that would be annoying to most, though. I mean, that would be the thing that would really chime out as being annoying, like some inane, retarded songs. Taylor Swift. Well, you said it, not me. How dare you?

How dare you? That poor little girl. Has she not suffered enough? I know one thing. If you date Taylor Swift, you're a fucking idiot. Because that chick will write songs about you for the end of time. She's got whole books about John Mayer. Is that his name?

Mayer or Mayer? I always say it wrong. John Mayer. That chick's got books on that guy. That's unfair. Imagine that. So your thing would be more along the lines of studying like why people are, why they find it appealing, like the rap type songs, why they find it appealing.

Or the contents of those songs. So for example, if you take a, a, a ancient Greek poem, right? We still study it at university today,000 years later, precisely because that poem is going to speak to certain realities, sibling rivalry, status competition, parental conflicts with their offspring, paternal uncertainty. All of these factors is what makes literature interesting. So we could study those ancient Greek poems today and still it resonates with us precisely because they are speaking about some universal truths. That is amazing, isn't it? That stuff from 2000, 3000 plus years ago is still studied on a daily basis. But some books from like 50 years ago, that's got to be frustrating as hell if you're a writer. If you're an author and you're just like what that you're that guy is so overrated i'm so tired of healing

hearing about you know aristotle like aristotle go fuck yourself bro that shit was so long ago you didn't know anything well they knew a lot they did know a lot they certainly knew the the mysteries of human nature i'm fascinated by that I am absolutely fascinated by what was going on thousands and thousands of years ago. And like, what was the mindset and communication with those people? And you can kind of pull a little bit of it out of their writing. But man, if I could go back in time to some, I mean, it would have to be a culture, obviously, that speaks English, where I could understand what they're saying. But I think that would be incredibly fascinating to go back three or 4,000 years ago and communicate with people and just try to figure out how they see the world. You know, a lot of people are very stuck on identifying cultural differences, right? So the

French eat this type of food, the Malaysians do this type of dance. But what they miss is that underneath all of these important cross-cultural differences is this bedrock of human universals that make us a lot more similar than different from one another. And especially in the social sciences where people are really focused on just identifying differences, differences, differences. But, of course, there are. There are certain beauty markers that if I went to the Yanomamo tribe in the Amazon, they're going to find exactly the same things attractive in the beautiful girls in rap videos as you and I would. And that's because those beauty markers are evolutionary markers. And so, yes, culture matters. Nobody denies the fact that culture is important.

But underneath these cultural differences is a biological heritage that makes you and I very similar to one another. What changes over time that makes beauty markers differently? I've always been fascinated by, if you look at the Renaissance paintings, the women were very, you can't even call them voluptuous. They're overweight.

Rubenesque. Yeah, Rubenesque, like they eat a lot of Rubens. What does Rubenesque mean? Well, Ruben was a painter who particularly had a penchant for drawing these voluptuous women. He was a fatty chaser. He was a bit of a fatty chaser, Ruben.

I must say, this is the first time that I've held an interview where fatty chaser has come up, so thank you. Well, you need to be involved in more podcasting because fatty chasers, it's important. You know, people will say now

that you're fat shaming. That's the newest thing. Right. Do you follow these ultra super sensitive terms and their evolution? Oh, you said we've got up

to three hours. I could talk about this for about 30 hours. Please. I actually went recently to, and we can come back to the Ruben S thing. Okay,

we'll come back to that. I recently gave a talk at Wellesley College. All Women's College. All Women's College. I just dated a chick who wentesley College. All-women's college. All-women's college. I dated a chick who went there. Is that right? Tough times.

Rough. Tough times back in the day. Was it Taylor Swift? No. No. It was a gal who did not shave her legs. Oh, because it was patriarchal to beautify yourself. There you go.

Yeah. She could pull it off because she was blonde, but whoa, her roommate was a hobbit, essentially. She had hairy feet, the whole thing. But hey, you know, whatever. It's just cultural norms. That's it. So anyway, so I give a talk there on this thing called the Freedom Project, which tries to promote sort of iconoclastic ideas

that kind of break the shackles of political correctness. And it was just amazing the kind of stuff that was happening there. I mean, I'll just give you one or two examples. Apparently, it was a form of oppression to assume, for a professor to assume that when he meets students, he right away categorizes them as either being male or female. So for example, if I see you in my class and I say, hey, sir, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, that would be a form of oppression because I'm assuming based on your outer markers that you are male. Rather, what I should do is sort of do a quick polling of each person in terms of how they'd like to be addressed. So you may be biologically male, but you are gender, whatever, transgender.

You could be queer. You could be queer. You could be this. As you know, Facebook has 50 markers. 50? There's 50. 5-0. I could only count about 10. Wow. 50. And for folks who don't know, queer is not a slur. When I'm saying queer, I'm like, yeah, you're queer. I'm not saying it like that. Queer is, they do not want to be interpreted

as male or female. They want to be just whatever they are. Right. And so now you have at universities a discussion as to whether

you should have not male and female bathrooms, but you should have gender neutral bathrooms and so on and so forth. And so, so, so in academia and the world that I reside in, it's, it's, it's there.

Why is it getting so squirrely? What's going on? Are we too soft? Do we have to hunt for our own food? Do we have to like deal with the winter more? Do we have to like, you know, chop wood to keep warm? What, what is making us concentrate on these frivolous matters of like, it's not just a politically correct thing. It's like, it's coddling the most ridiculously oversensitive notions that human beings have ever constructed. I think we've been parasitized by an astonishing form of political correctness. I mean, what is parasitized? Like, like a parasite that, right. So in the same way that, I like that word that viruses can enter your body,

viruses of the mind can also take over your... I mean, religion is an example of a memaplex, a form of... I mean, some people would be upset by what I'm saying, but a form of parasite that kind of rewires your thinking. And so political correctness is an astonishing form of parasitic thinking where everything is viewed through the lens of I should not offend anyone.

And so common sense and just reason goes out the window in the pursuit of non-offense. You know what, though? I have an issue with it, that most people who practice this in the extreme form, they say that they should not offend. But you know who they offend? They offend anyone who does not agree with their say that they should not offend. But you know who they offend? They offend anyone who does not agree with their notion that you should not offend.

They will be violent and angry and fucking incredibly insulting to people who do not agree with their terms of what is offensive and what's not offensive. I have been, some of the meanest, nastiest things have been said to me by people who claim to be in this sort of ultra-sensitive, super open-minded category, which is quite fascinating to me. You're exactly right. I'll give you a fantastic quote. I might be paraphrasing. I think it's Thomas Sowell, an economist, who basically was criticizing so-called diversity. So at American universities or in Western universities,

everybody talks about diversity, but the only form of diversity that's not allowed is intellectual and political diversity. So we want diversity in terms of skin color. We want diversity in terms of sexual orientation. We want diversity in terms of genders. So all forms of diversity are welcome, but don't you dare step out of line with the accepted politically correct positions. Now,

that's diversity that we don't want. Yeah. What is that? I mean, how do they not see that? Stop police. Yeah. And I face it in, I mean, eventually, I guess we'll come back to my work. I face it very much in my work because I rile up all sorts of different people out of the woodwork. So for example, radical feminists hate my work because how dare you say that we are biological beings? How dare you say that there are innate sex differences? Postmodernists will hate my work because truth is all relative. There's no such thing as scientific truth. It's all relative. The religious folks will hate my work because if Darwinian theory is correct, it is, then where is God in all this? So there's this long queue of people who will come out of the woodworks to criticize you, not for any valid scientific reasons, but because it shakes

their ideological beliefs. It's fascinating to me the parallels between religious nutters and politically correct nutters, because it's very similar in a lot of ways that their ideology is just so cemented in in their consciousness it's it's it's immobile it's rock solid it's not going anywhere if you disagree you patriarchal piece of shit you you know male fucking suppressor you horrible thing it's it's quite fascinating. If there are not differences, any differences in the sexes, what do they use, these radical feminists, what do they use to define the reason why humans have such varying behavior between the male and female genders? So you ready for this? Yes. Everything short of genitalia is a social construction, right? So even, for example, the fact that Bubba grew up

to be a block, a center for the University of Oklahoma, and hence he could bunch Prince 500 pounds. That's not due to, for example, any physiological reasons that he is so strong. It's because what happened is his parents aggressively nurtured rough tumble play, whereas for girls they told them, listen, Linda, you should not be playing so rough. And that then either gives the green light or the red light to express your physicality. That's insane. It is. That's absolutely insane. That idea is insane that there's not a difference in the physiological properties of the bodies of men

and women. I mean, the biological differences are scientific. Well, there are some feminists, and again, I'm paraphrasing their quote. They'll say, there is no such thing as a male or female brain as there is no such thing as a male or female pancreas or liver, right? So the organ that defines your personhood is actually gender neutral. Now that is astonishing because we are a sexually reproducing species. So one of the foundational tenets on which biological understanding happens is that we have two types of polymorphisms, if you like, two types. We have a male and a female so that we could sexually reproduce. So the idea that much of this is social construction

is just laughable. I think it comes though, I mean, just to be fair to them, I think it originally comes from a desire to fight institutionalized sexism. But what happens is that they mix equality under the law as being indistinguishable beings, right? We could be different beings, yet we should be equal under the law as being indistinguishable beings, right? We could be different beings, yet we should be equal under the law. But they argue that if you admit to the fact that we are different,

then that makes it easier for the status quo sexist patriarchy to maintain its privileged position. And so they create this edifice of the past 50 to 100 years of social science research that is completely laughable, but that they hang on to like religious belief. It's so fascinating. There was a woman that has a video online on YouTube where she claims that there is no difference in the physical strength of men and women. And it's just that men have been encouraged to engage in weightlifting and all these different things. And if women did the same thing, they'd be just as strong. That is insane. It's so insane.

Men have 10 times more testosterone than women. Is that a social construction? Well, it's also insane because women who are athletes, women who are like elite world-class athletes, if they compare their hand strength to men who don't even exercise, men are stronger. Just the ability to grab things and grip things. Right. There was an issue where there was a woman who was a transgender. She became a transgender woman, and she used to be a man. She was a man for 30 years.

And then she didn't tell anybody. She started fighting women in women's MMA. And I was furious. I went crazy about it. And I got so much hate from people that were calling me transphobic. Because you're transphobic. And I'm like, that's amazing. Like, you don't understand there's a difference in the male frame.

There's a difference in the shape of the hips, the mechanics of the shoulder. Like, everything. The whole body's built different. And not only that, the fact that it takes 30 years. Like, you're 30 years of being a man with full testosterone. And then it takes like 10 years before your bone density even starts decreasing but they wanted to make it so it's completely indistinguishable and they also have support from transgender surgeons which is quite fascinating and completely biased these transgender

surgeons who want to or reassignment doctors and they want to pretend that they're exact equals physiologically. I got a great story on that. So in my first book, I talk about John Money, who was a very famous psychologist at Johns Hopkins, really around maybe the 50s to 70s. He was a big gender theorist who basically argued that everything is due to socialization so that when surgeons would go see him because they had to do gender reassignment, either, for example, let's say at a circumcision, in the rare case where you botch the circumcision and now you have a problem in terms of having a functioning penis. you're unlikely to be a functioning male when you grow up. Well, he would say, don't worry about it. Just have the surgery, put a dress on the kid,

and raise them as a girl, and they'd be absolutely no problem. And of course, the reality is that that's not how biological sex is determined. And the most famous case is David Reimer, who was one of his patients, who, after having gone through the treatment, committed suicide. Yeah, I remember that case. That was a fascinating story. through the treatment, committed suicide. Yeah, I remember that case. It was a fascinating story. The reality of what you said,

one of the more fascinating aspects of it, is the difference between us all being equal as human beings and being the same. Because we are not. We're not equal, but we are very different. But we all should be equal as far as our rights. Right. You know, as far as, rights right you know as far as like

how we're treated by each other and the law and what a person can get away with you know what what keeps our society civil and kind yeah those that we should all have equality including children and old people and everyone everyone should have equality in that in that aspect that's what what makes a civilized caring society but the idea that there's no differences as far as the other, I mean, that we are equal as far as like physical strength or as equal as far as like our wants and desires and needs, that's denying hundreds of years of literature of the struggle, the struggle in all cultures between the male trying to understand the female, the female trying to understand the male. We're completely alien to each other. We exist amongst each other and we gather information over a long period of time. But then we say ridiculous things like, here's one of the things that people love to say, happy wife, happy life. Why is that? Because make her happy and she'll stop screaming. You don't understand her. Just make her happy.

Do whatever she wants. And then she'll calm down and you'll be good. But believe me, you can't just be yourself. Right. You can't just be what you want to be and do what you want to do because that's going to drive her fucking crazy. Because you want to have sex with 100 women. You want to drive 50,000 miles an hour. You want to disappear for weeks at a time.

You've been taught by the patriarchy. You've been brainwashed. I've been brainw at a time. You've been taught by the patriarchy. You've been brainwashed. By the way, speaking of sexual variety, which is kind of a central issue in evolutionary psychology, you should see some of the hate mail I get when I state something as banal as, you know, men would have evolved a greater penchant for sexual variety for terribly trivial reasons to explain, right? I mean, women have a thing called greater parental investment, right? Women, on average, have from when the menses start to when they have menopause, 400 eggs, right? 400 eggs. So it's a scarce, rare resource.

Men, in one ejaculation, have 250 spermatozoa. So our gametes are very cheap and abundant. And then, of course, you add the cost of gestation, right? The likelihood of having mortality when you're giving birth. So for all these reasons, women have much greater minimal parental obligations. Therefore, evolutionary theory would predict that they would be much more judicious when they're making a mate choice, because if they make a poor mate choice, it looms much larger for them. That, on the other hand, for men, the costs of making a poor mate choice are not as great, but the benefits of having multiple mating opportunities are quite beneficial. And therefore, that's why, on average, you expect men to have a much greater

penchant for sexual variety. Now, that's been documented in 17 trillion different ways, and yet you still have people that will send you hate mail saying, my God, are you a sexist pig? How could you promulgate this garbage? Well, I think when you're looking at human beings and you're talking about these variables, you're looking at it as objectively and scientifically as possible. You're looking at it as objectively and scientifically as possible. When people want that concrete world that we've discussed, this political correct concrete world, politically correct, they have this resistance to looking at it in any way other than the way that they have. It's completely non-scientific. And that's why it's religious, right?

Absolutely. And that's actually one of the criticisms that you often get about evolutionary psychology. People think that you are trying to justify behaviors. For example, if you explain why people are likely to cheat on their monogamous unions, then they say, oh, well, you're offering father to why people should do it. And, of course, my rebuttal is I'm certainly doing no such thing. Similar to how an oncologist studies cancer. He's not justifying cancer. He's not for cancer. He just explains, he or she explains, cancer. And so I don't have a moral position, right? I don't come to the table when I'm doing my scientific research

hoping for one thing or another. The data speaks for itself. But again, the ideologues will say no, but if this forbidden knowledge gets out, it makes it easier for people to justify this behavior or that behavior. It's absolutely fascinating to me how human beings react and act. And so this subject is quite near and dear to my heart. I love it. I'm fascinated by the chaos of it all. I love watching people flail and scream and get angry about, whether it's religious anger, like people who are legitimately Christian.

I love the God hates fags people, the Westboro Baptist people. I don't love them. I love everybody in one way. I would like everybody to be nice. But I love the fact that they exist because I'm absolutely fascinated by their folly. I'm absolutely fascinated by this idea that they have in their head that's so concrete that they believe that soldiers are dying because men are

being allowed to marry other men. It's unbelievably weird, but compelling to me. And in an equal way, the idea that you saying that there is some sort of an invested commitment that a woman has that a man does not have objectively, just looking at us as a biological reproducing species, that you would experience hate because of that. As a scientist, as a person just analyzing data, I'm amazed and I'm fascinated. I'm just drawn into it. I can't help myself. You want to talk about some religious stuff? Sure. Well, you know, I was born in Lebanon. We're Lebanese Jews, although I'm a non-believing Jewish guy.

How dare you? I know, I know. You believe in some things. Tell you what. I believe in science and truth and reason. And so we escaped Lebanon, actually, during the civil war. My parents in 1980 were kidnapped by Fatah, the very peaceful Fatah, because, you know, it's all peaceful. And then after that, we've never gone back to Lebanon. And so I, from a very young age, I think I already had sort of the innate penchant to question religious belief, which certainly created friction within my family, because you should just believe and shut up.

Right. But then when I saw the hatred that religion engenders firsthand, right, I mean, facing execution as we're trying to escape Lebanon, and then coming to the West, I think I became that much more forceful in my convictions to try to combat religious dogma. And of course, some of the biggest hate mail that you get is when you do that. And I've even had real professional situations where I've lost professionally because of my position. position actually here in california i've had several schools who otherwise were very very interested in making me very very lucrative offers who after maybe doing a bit of due diligence on me and seeing that i'd written stuff that was critical of religion suddenly i became persona non grata really oh yeah really that's fascinating i wouldn't think that that would be the case as

far as there are there are even schools in southern californ that won't, and they do this legally because they are a religiously founded institution. If you're not a Seventh-day Adventist, we can't grant you tenure. There's another school that had a God squad, whereby you go up in front of the God squad. I mean, that's literally their term, where you have to sort of show that you're accepting Jesus in your heart. That's a school? That's a school. A college? A very, very prominent school.

Please then say the name. Come on. I better not. Can you rhyme it? Say what it rhymes with. Loyola Marymount? No, it's not. Okay.

But it's within that general area. There's another school three years ago who was going to make me a huge, huge offer in Orange County that didn't work out. Now, to the person who wanted me to appear in front of the God Squad, this was several years ago when I was at UC Irvine, I told them, you do realize that I am a atheist Lebanese Jew evolutionist, so it's going to be a while before I accept Jesus in my heart. And his answer was, well, no, no, but don't worry. We'll coach you as to what to say.

Oh, good Lord. So that's a euphemism for lying, right? How does that fit with the whole... So, you know, this is right here in 21st century Southern California and academia. You know, you better hold certain religious beliefs. Otherwise, we'll punish you, Jew boy. That's amazing.

And that's some colleges or some universities. And then other universities, the complete opposite. If you're not an atheist, I'm sure that you take a lot of slack. True, true. Well, at other universities or in academia in general, it is quite progressive to criticize certainly Christianity right because you've seen as a progressive guy who doesn't buy into all this branch eight superstitions but there is one religion that you Islam Islamophobia isn't that fascinating I love that there's the same ultra

progressives that you know would give you a million different ways to address someone based on whatever gender they identify with or whatever the fuck else weird ultra-super-sensitive thing. I find that completely fascinating, this Islamophobia thing. There's several websites that I frequent just to freak myself out, and the super sensitive ones on a regular basis will go over this Islamophobia. Well, because it's actually a very astute way to have intellectual warfare. You're actually saying that people who are concerned about particular aspects of this ideology are crazy, right?

They suffer from a phobia. So you are denigrating them at their core. You must be nuts to actually fear this, right? They suffer from a phobia. So you are denigrating them at their core. You must be nuts to actually fear this, right? And actually the term started, as you may or may not know, it started with the Muslim Brotherhood, a very smart strategy, where they knew that the West is very open to being tolerant and so on. And so they kind of piggybacked on that. And so in academia, you just never criticize that one idea. Now that's very dangerous because in a sane world, all beliefs should be open to criticism. Absolutely. And not only that, how about the one that is responsible for most of the suicide bombings? Oh, that's so Islamophobic. I am

Islamophobic. Said it. I'm Islamophobic. I'm Jewaphobic. I'm Catholicaphobic. I'm Christianaphobic. I'm afraid of all of them. You're reason-philic. You love reason. Yes, I do. Well, I was raised a Catholic for a very short amount of time. And I had a very tumultuous childhood. And when I was in first grade, my parents put me in Catholic school.

And up until then, I was, obviously I don't remember much of this because it was, but I was very religious and it was because my parents were divorcing and there was a lot of violence in the household. And I had this idea in my head that like somehow or another, God was the right way and everybody else was wrong. Going to Catholic school cured me of that entirely. The nun that I had, Sister Mary Josephine, I don't remember much about being six years old, but I remember that bitch. She was very important to me. She really straightened me out because I realized that she has no connection whatsoever to anything holy or majestic. She represented and she showed all of the horrors of humanity,

meanness, evilness, being nasty to children, fear-mongering, and this idea. Guilt. Guilt, everything, all the above. It was just nothing holy about it. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly that it was all bullshit. So it was cured from one year of Catholic school. I told my parents I was going to run away from home if they tried to put me in second grade.

Wow. I was like, I'm done. Like, you don't understand what it's like. I went from, you know, being around my mother, who's this great person, sweet. My grandparents are great. To all of a sudden, you know, I didn't go to kindergarten. I just went to first grade. It was my first year in school.

grade to all of a sudden, and I didn't go to kindergarten. I just went to first grade. It was my first year in school to being around these monsters and this monster school that was just filled with darkness. It was like the whole school was just dark that all the priests, they, I remember their faces, they all had these gin blossoms all over their faces from drinking, you know, and the nuns were all overweight and bitter and angry, and their fucking skin was having a bad relationship with their face. It was like hanging off of them. Everything about them was just monstrous, the evilness. I'm keeping a counter of the amount of hate mail that's going to come to both of us. Let it come, bitches.

Let it come. I'll send it right back to you. I don't get it. I don't get it. I'm fascinated by it, but I understand that people need the they have this desire to believe in things. I understand that. But I don't understand how you can be a rational, intelligent, objective person who looks at some shit that people wrote thousands of years ago and say, no, this is this is immobile. This is exact. You cannot alter it. This is what it is. And this is written in stone. There's no way around this. This is God's word.

Anybody questions it is a fool. So I do in one of my latest books, I have a chapter, which I think got me in trouble with one of the Southern California schools that I was getting an offer from because I had given them a signed copy of the book. And then they probably got to that chapter. That chapter is called Marketing Hope by Selling Lies. And so what I do in that chapter is I go through different hope peddlers, of which religion is the greatest, but others would be medical quackery,

self-help gurus, and so on. So different agents that peddle hope, and I argue, again, from an evolutionary perspective, because they're very successful because they cater to these very basal Darwinian insecurities, none greater than the very obvious one of existential angst, right? We're the only animal that we're aware of that actually is aware that we're on a death sentence, right? I mean, I know that I've got another, luckily, maybe 40 years, right? Well, if I have high cholesterol, I go to my physician.

He gives me Lipitor. Boom, LDL goes down. Everybody's happy. But what pill do I take to solve this really looming problem that's at the end of the road called my death? Well, different religions will give you different dances, but they all certainly promise you some form of eternity. It could be in the form of reincarnation. It could be I'll be with Jesus. It could be, we know, with the virgins.

But there are all sorts of ways by which I can secure my eternity. And I think for most people, it's very difficult to not drink that Kool-Aid. I think it takes almost a pathological and dysfunctional honesty to say, I'm not going to buy that. I realize that I've got 80 years and I'm going to really do the best that I can during those 80 years. I think it's a lot more comforting to say, no, this party is going to go on forever. It's certainly more comforting. It's also, there's something about human beings where we realize somewhere along the line

that there's no one alive that has any more answers about what lies beyond the great beyond, after death, what lies beyond the yawning grave. No one has any answers. Can I give you what the answer is? Nothing. Nothing. You would hope so, or you would think that you have that answer,

but have you ever done psychedelic drugs? I haven't. There you go. So don't answer so quickly. But I tell you, there are two ways of seeking to reach immortality. One, of course, is, it might seem a bit crass, but through just the genetic propagation, your children are, in a sense, your form of immortality. But I don't buy that.

You don't like that one? It's not immortal because the earth doesn't last. I mean, unless someone figures out how to get off the planet We only have what a 1.9 billion years of sunlight. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean we don't have enough time for anything There's no way there's no immortality unless there's some sort of a fractal nature to the universe where it's like Life and death is this completely ongoing cycle where the deeper you go it starts again. And yeah I don't know about that. I don't know about that either. But it is possible.

Yeah, it's possible. The universe itself is so bizarre and unexpected. The more you look into the universe. I remember when I was a kid, I used to think space. I used to think of space like a neighborhood. I really did. I remember very succinctly that I would look look at like Buck Rogers and all these different space. I'm like, oh, they're going to go over to this town and they're going to come back.

And this is our neighborhood. They're going to go to that neighborhood and come back. And then as I got older and I started studying astronomy and I started studying the. And as I got older, also the knowledge that they had about the amount of stars changed and they started talking about how there's more stars in our galaxy than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all you know all the beaches on earth and then and then i remember just thinking like well this is a motherfucker of a neighborhood like this this is starting to get really strange right and then as you get older still you realize that they there's no way they know how big it all is.

They have a general sense of 14 plus billion light years. But then there's the fractal nature of black holes, the possibility that inside every galaxy is a black hole that contains an entirely new universe. And this is something that's being thrown about by not by freaks, but by like real serious, legitimate scientists. So that alone is so bizarre. The idea that you live and die seems like very trivial, that you come back again or reincarnation. I mean, why not? If a supernova can exist, you know, why is it so crazy that a person lives for eternity and just continues to reincarnate? Well, and in light of all that vastness that you said, isn't it incredible that all the monotheistic Abrahamic religions

would argue that on some small speck of sand in some bronze age point, God spoke to some prophet and told him, you really better not eat pig. Yeah. So in this great universe, this cosmos, it's really important that you don't wear leather shoes at Yom Kippur or whatever the rule is. It's just astonishing to me that people actually buy this stuff. Well, I think the reason for the pig stuff and there's – I've talked about this recently with my friend Ari who was raised very religious in Judaism.

And then as he got older, just decided to abandon it all. Now he's a dirty comedian. Hilarious. But we were talking about that the pork thing was probably due to diseases. I talk about that in my book. Trichinosis. Yeah. So I don't do the analysis for pork.

I do it for shellfish. And so if you look at shellfish. Red tide and things along those lines. So you can't tell which one is infected. You can't look at the water and predict which one would likely have the bacterium. And so all you know is that once in a while, somebody would eat it and drop dead. Since you don't have any ability during the Bronze Age to refrigerate and so on, well, you don't have any access to the germ theory. Certainly, they didn't know anything

about that. Well, then it must be some malediction. And so you're exactly right that there are very, very clear, obvious biological explanations for most of these food taboos. Yeah, it's just ridiculous that in 2014, people don't realize the origins of these. Like, yes, it was a great idea 2,000 years ago before we understood thermometers that you have to cook your meat to 150 degrees. It kills the bacteria. And then it's perfectly, totally healthy. But if you try to eat pork the same way you would try to eat venison,

you're going to get really sick. And that's why religions like, hey, look, if we want to keep to keep our people alive we got to tell them not to eat this particular animal this is an animal that eats a lot of stupid shit exactly yeah it's so religion has been the biggest uh blowback of your work or has it been actually probably the ones that are that were the the most acerbic in their criticisms have been other social scientists. Really? Yeah, because the social sciences have very much developed over the past hundred years with a complete rejection of biology. How is that a science then? They call it social sciences.

You reject biology, which is measurable, and social science is sort of… Well, what they argue is that what makes us human is that we transcend our biology. So don't use the evolutionary mechanisms that explain the behavior of the zebra and the dog and the mosquito to explain our behaviors. What makes us human is precisely that we're able to transcend these biological imperatives. And so the field of anthropology, not bioanthropology, which is a subset of anthropology that recognizes biology, but, for example, cultural anthropology, is all about going to all of these exotic cultures

and demonstrating how each culture is unique and different, and hence there are no such thing as human universals. Social psychology is pretty much operated without any understanding of biology. So what I did in my work is I came along and I founded this field, which I coined evolutionary consumption, where I apply evolutionary theory and biology to study consumer behavior. But more generally, my real goal is to what I call, maybe it's a grand goal, to Darwinize the business school. The idea is that you can't study anything. You can't study investment psychology or personnel psychology or organizational behavior or consumer behavior without recognizing that all of these players are biological beings, right?

The decision that you make if your blood sugar is low and you're hungry is very different than the decision you make if you're satiated, right? I mean, that's a trivial example but a very obvious one. trivial example, but a very obvious one. So the idea that economists have spent 100 years developing all these fanciful mathematical models without ever recognizing that there are these biological forces that compel us to be the decision makers that we are is astounding to me. So the greatest blowback has been from social scientists who typically have been very reticent to accept what this biology boy is saying about consumer behavior and so on. Fascinating. Now, the good news, can I go on?

Yes, please. I always use a quote by, there's a guy called J.B.S. Haldane, who was a very famous evolutionary geneticist, who was very quotable, had all these great quips. So he said that there are four stages that scientists go through before they accept a theory. And I'll slightly paraphrase it. So stage one, this is bullshit. This is garbage. Stage two, well, this might be true,

but it's rather perverse. Stage three, well, this is true, but largely unimportant. And stage four, oh, I always said so. Now, the reason why that quote captures, I mean, if I ever did an autobiography of my scientific career, that quote is basically my book. Because I've seen people go through these four stages in their responses to my work. At first, I couldn't get an invitation to get 20 minutes at a conference to speak. Because what does biology have to do with anything? And now, of course, science is an autocorrective process. get 20 minutes at a conference to speak because what does biology have to do with anything?

And now, of course, science is an autocorrective process. The evidence is coming in my way, and I don't mean to gloat about it. Gloat away. Gloat away. But now they're all coming fast and furious. Man, you're the man. But wait a minute. I remember 10 years ago, I've still kept your email where you said I was a bullshitter. No, no, that wasn't me. That must have been my research assistant who hacked my email and wrote that to you hal dane is a great guy to quote he had a fantastic quote that i love not only is the universe queerer than we suppose it's queerer than we can suppose is that you know what you're my you're my new coolest guy to to actually know who hal dane is so you're the man well it's that's a special quote. That's just an amazing quote.

There's another one on the beetles. I don't know the exact, do you know this one? No. I think there are something like, I hope I'm not getting it wrong, but maybe 300,000 species of beetles. And so in his quote, he basically says, you know, if God exists,

he must have a particular penchant for beetles for having spent so much effort in coming up with all of these different species variations. Yeah, no kidding, right? Is it frustrating being a man who is an intellectual who is trying to go over the variables and try to figure it all out and piece it together? Is it frustrating to you to see these obvious biases and this obvious muddy thinking that enters into this sort of debate?

It is on two levels. On sort of the intrinsic level, I'm a dogged pursuer of the truth, and so I almost get offended by these positions. And so in that sense, it's frustrating. But there's also an extrinsic, a real sort of tangible way that it's frustrating. A lot of these gatekeepers are the ones who decide whether I get a position in Southern California or not.

And so if I play within the paradigm, if I do the research that is expected of me that doesn't sort of bust any existing theories, then I'm good. But if I'm this guy from the outside who's trying to biologize the field, well, who does this guy think he is? So in that sense, I think it's also frustrating. I mean, my wife always tells me, well, don't worry. I mean, if you can keep this like, oh, sorry, sorry. It makes a big difference.

Is that better? You can move it around. Oh, sure. Sorry. Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. No, no worries. So your wife tells you?

Yeah. So my wife tells me, you know, I mean, don't worry. You know, you'll get all your vindications. I said, well, I don't want to get you. No, no worries. So your wife tells you? Yeah, so my wife tells me, you know, I mean, don't worry. You'll get all your vindications. I said, well, I don't want to get vindicated when I'm dead. Yeah, post-mortem. I want the rewards now. And not in a narcissistic way, but because there are also perks to people finding out that hopefully you are correct. Now, the reality is that more and more people are coming around.

And so if I look at the level of hostility that I faced 10 years ago versus today, it's night and day. What was the first major backlash that you experienced? From social scientists? Yes. Not being able, I mean, having my papers desk rejected by editors. So desk, are you familiar with that term? Yes. But explain it for people.

by editors. So that's, are you familiar with that term? Yes, but explain it for people. So that means basically when you send your paper to a scientific journal, usually the editor will look at your paper and say, okay, well, here are three reviewers that I think would be appropriate for this paper. And then he sends it off and then the process starts and it goes back and forth for probably several years. When he desk rejects this, he's basically saying that this paper is not worthy of even going out for review. And so, you know, I would send all of these papers to these top journals and the editor would write back to me, sorry, I'm not even sending it through the review process. Do you remember what one of the original ones was, was the subject of? Well, probably the first one was one where I was introducing the theoretical framework of how to apply evolutionary psychology and understanding marketing.

And usually the argument that I would receive, which is breathtakingly inane in its stupidity, is, well, evolutionary theory is just a bunch of just so storytelling right you just come up with these fanciful post hoc stories since obviously you're not conducting an experiment in a lab to demonstrate evolution and of course that that is so laughable because if that were true how is it that astrophysicists study the origin of the universe that's 14 billion years ago right they certainly don't conduct an experiment in the lab. Yeah, to build their own stars. To build their own stars, right? But again, if you're very paradigmatically bound to manipulating something in the lab, then somehow evolutionary theory seems epistemologically, in terms of the philosophy

of science, it seems as though you're just waving your hand and telling stories, post hoc stories. Now, the reality is that that's exactly the opposite of what we do. If anything, there is no intellectual idea that has received as much empirical support as evolution. I mean, it is as clear as gravity, yet people somehow can't get around to understanding how you could explain something that happened hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago. And so the original rejections were always, oh, but come on, we don't take thing at faith here. We need concrete evidence. So that's how it all started. So that was the first blowback. Did you hesitate when you first experienced this? Did you go, man, I'm I was a fighter,

because I was a high testosterone guy, then that only compelled me to come back and say, I'm going to prove these guys wrong. But it delayed the process because I was kept out of many of the leading, you know, consumer behavior and marketing journals. So I kind of went around them. I published books that became bestsellers. I published in medicine and economics and psychology. And only recently have I tried to come back to the folks that I'm most trying to convince, and those are the consumer psychologists. Now, luckily, I'm their friend.

But for years, I was really sort of at the periphery. It's fascinating as well that the attitudes about these subjects have evolved and changed within science and within modern academia. It's really interesting to see this sort of evolution of these ideas and this acceptance of ideas that didn't exist before, but along with the new craziness, the new fat acceptance and all this other nonsense, these new politically correct terms and this parasitic thinking that you so described so well, this is the new threat to unbiased, objective thinking. Absolutely. This desire to offend no one ever. Absolutely. And, you know, the reality is that now there's a thing called, have you heard of trigger warnings?

Love it. I love them. My whole life's a trigger warning. That's exactly what I said. I'm going to put in my course outline, warning. Life is a trigger warning. That's it. So, I mean, imagine that.

Life is a trigger warning. That's it. So, I mean, imagine that. As a matter of fact, in my Wellesley talk that I mentioned earlier, I put up a list of suggested topics that these trigger warning folks were saying require trigger warnings. I mean, it was literally everything. The discussion of pregnancy, of sex, of disease, of war, of criminality, of mating, in that if that's the things that worry people, they should really go spend a day in the neighborhoods where I grew up. And then maybe they'd have a different perspective as to what they should be picketing against. I agree entirely. And my term is, I mean, not my my term my thought is that people are just so used to this soft life of everything being really easy to achieve that they have never developed this

understanding of first of all how fortunate we are to be living this in this time and age to experience this easy life that we live in but but that we're really lucky. We're really lucky. And to focus on a bunch of nonsense and to get carried away thinking about all these ultra super sensitive notions and to dwell on them as if in some way you're going to make the world a better place by doing that. It's nonsense. It's preposterous.

Because they're posers, right? It's a way to demonstrate that I care, but in doing it with very little cost to me. It takes a lot more guts to stand up against Islam than to stand up against some hick, evolution-denying

senator who's Republican. So, for example, if I look at my Facebook friends, if I put up a post that is critical of the senator who is a redneck Republican, I'll get from my academic colleagues 80 likes. And it's some inane, silly thing. But if I put some horrifying reality about 200,000 Syrians being butchered, they are so loud in their silence. Because that's scary, right? And so, for example, the Western feminists are very, very quick to chastise David Letterman if he makes a sexist joke or whatever it was to his intern. That shows

great courage. But to speak against genital mutilation in the Islamic world or other parts of the world or all kinds of other injustices that women face, well, we should be quiet about that. I mean, look at the Ayaan Hirsi Ali issue. I don't know. Are you familiar with that issue? No, no. Do you know who Ayaan Hirsi Ali is? No.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a woman who was born into Islam, who escaped an arranged marriage, moved to Netherlands, became a Dutch parliamentarian, and then was part of a documentary that was offensive to some Muslims. And then she had to have protection for the rest of her life. Now has moved to the United States and has spent pretty much her entire career fighting for the rights of women. and has spent pretty much her entire career fighting for the rights of women, not just Muslim women, women in general, but of course many Muslim women in those areas are mistreated. So Brandeis University decides to bestow her, this is very recently, a couple of months ago, bestow her, I think, maybe honorary doctorate or speech convocation

to speak at the convocation. And then all of the professors rallied against this woman who is speaking on behalf of half the population called women, right? And they said, this is a hate monger, an Islamophobe, blah, blah, blah. And so they rescinded her invitation. And there you go. Oh, God. And there you go. So, you know, I mean, we're pretty much lost as a society if we can't identify who the heroes are and who is on the right side of each issue. Not just that, but the educators are the ones that are having this issue. The educators are the ones that are having a hard time recognizing who's on the right side of things.

I think there's one very important thing that you brought up, and that's the social aspect, the social gratification, the scariness of, you know, criticizing the Muslim world. And then this concept of Islamophobia that's sort of like gotten into people's minds. But that thing that people do where they seek out what I call socially progressive brownie points. Exactly. Like men who declare themselves openly feminist, male feminists. Like, look, I'm a humanist. I believe that we are all just brothers and sisters on this planet, all of us, including people in other cultures and countries. And I'm not a nationalist. I think it's all nonsense. I really do. I mean, I would love it if we could all understand each other. I think it would make a lot more sense if

we spoke one language so I could understand people in China. But I don't feel about them any differently than I feel about a guy who lives down the street. I try very hard to work on that. So when I get this thing where people start identifying with one gender and one gender specifically, and there's another thing that men are doing where they're not only proclaiming themselves as a male feminist, but they're also saying that if they are unjustly accused of something, that they would happily be unjustly accused of something if it could somehow or another prevent women from being persecuted. What martyrs? Isn't that amazing? They're so cool and strong like that.

Well, I think it's, I don't know if you know, do you know the term identity politics? Yes, I've heard the term. So basically you have sort of this balkanization of different identity groups and there is what's called a poker identity game. You know, which identity group has larger victimology and greater grievances? And the top group that you really can't touch are people of the Muslim faith. What about Islamic transgender male feminists? That's the royal flush. You're holding the royal flush right there.

You're a fucking, yeah, you can't be beat, man. You got five jokers. Listen, at my university, at my university right now in Montreal, at one point I sat, precisely because people had a sense of some of the positions I held, they asked me to come in

and sit on a religious accommodation committee. We're a secular university in a secular society, officially, as the official law. So what does it mean to say that we're going to now enact a religious accommodation policy? I mean, that's like saying I am a virgin, but I'm pregnant. I mean, it's really, the term can't make sense, right? So my position was I am equally non-pliant

to anybody's religious beliefs. If Jews come to my class and say, we want to do Yom Kippur, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm Jewish and I'm still going to come to my class and say, we want to do Yom Kippur, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm Jewish and I'm still going to come to the lecture. But now if Muslims come and say, we want to take Hajj for three weeks at Mecca, so we won't be showing up to your class for three weeks. Well, I'm equally unreceptive to that idea. Well, it seemed like most people were pretty happy with my general position, as long as it didn't apply to this one particular group. Now, that's suicidal, right? That can't be because that's already institutionalizing the fact that people are not all equal, right?

Some people deserve more accommodations than others. That's dangerous, right? So in the U.S., freedom of religion also includes, as you know, I mean, it's a cliche, freedom from religion. Be religious. Just don't put it in my face. But I think in our desperate desire to constantly accommodate people, we're going down the wrong path. But not just constantly accommodate people, but accommodate people that are perceived to have been persecuted only. Not accommodate people that have a contrary point of view.

Not debate them or look at them all objectively and consider all the various possibilities. Have we been incorrect in our thinking? Is this a possibility? Like the woman that you were talking about from Brandeis, that's unbelievably shocking for someone who have gone through something so horrifying to be escaping, running for their life really, escaping to America and then to be called an Islamophobe. That's right.

And as you said, who is spearheading that? The professors. And by the way, Brandeis University, as you may know, was founded by a liberal, well, by Brandeis, who was trying to kind of found an institution that would be open to all, that would be pluralistic precisely because of some of the anti-Semitism that Jewish students would have faced at some of the sort of northeastern schools. And so the school is founded on these principles, and then at first opportunity you violate everything that you stand for. Is there any movement to try to change this?

Is there any discussion to try to illuminate this sort of real issue with academia? Well, if I can be modest, I think, you know, it's guys like me who are really in the wilderness who try to come out of the woodworks

and have the courage and the big testicles to try to do that. But I think most people have heard instinct. But even if you say that, you have the testicles to do this how dare you you can't do this with ovaries is that what you're saying more patriarchy i apologize for having said that i have testicles no it's it's an expression it's courage women have balls too i know a lot of chicks with balls yes you know if

you look at it that way but it's unfortunate that a woman has to hear that and go oh well great it's associated with male gender you know well that's true but if a guy is a great guy oh that guy's the tits i mean that is something that people say too like my friend steve he says every everything is good he calls titties like oh that is a titties movie man like you know i was i was i used to be a competitive soccer player and uh the kind of trash-talking that would happen, as you would know, I mean, you're an athlete, is astounding, the things, I mean, that would be said. For example, calling you some homophobic slur name. That's a go-to move. Right, or calling you, I mean, I remember at one point I played in a league called the Black League, where there were only two non-black guys, okay?

I was one of them. And so they, you know, I would, if somebody would tackle me, say, you know, stop whining, get up, white bitch, right? Now, in today's, now, usually the way I fought that is I'd say, I'm now going to get by this guy next time around, and I'm going to score a goal. I didn't kind of curl into a fetal position and start crying. Well, today, they are, I mean, facetiously into a fetal position and start crying. Well, today they are, I mean, facetiously, there are commissars standing around the field, making sure that nobody utters

any of these slur words, because then you could be taken to a hate speech code tribunal, right? I mean, in Canada, we have hate speech laws. I mean, how could that be? Now, of course, I'm not suggesting that we should all be insulting one another. And of course, we should all be kind and gentle to each other. But the idea that if you tell me, white bitch, I could actually impose upon you to go to a hate speech tribunal is astounding. I mean, what's freedom of speech? I mean, freedom of speech is the right to also be an asshole, correct? Yeah. But unfortunately, now everything is sanitized.

Everything is, you know, just. Well, freedom of speech is the right to be an asshole. But in other terms, freedom of speech, on the other hand, in response to your being an asshole, is the right to ostracize you. Like it's the right to just get you out of social groups. And that's how you recognize assholes. Exactly. But when you sanitize the world and remove half the language and put trigger warnings up for everything that everybody says, it's very difficult to get to the heart of what someone's trying to communicate. When we're making mouth noises trying to express our thoughts and we're limited in such an amazing way by so many different forms of expression. Well, here's a great example that's happening all over the West and certainly in Canada and the U.S.

Try to give a lecture or invite somebody either that has a pro-Israel position or an anti-Islam position and see what happens. Go to UC Irvine and see what happens. The former ambassador of Israel tried to come and give a lecture. And I mean, it wasn't an incendiary thing. He wasn't going to be saying some horribly controversial things. And yet they tried to shut him down. Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel, was shut down at my university. Wow.

At Concordia University in Montreal, the prime minister of a democratically elected government, the prime minister of a democratically elected government, our only supposed true ally in the Middle East, was unable to speak because there was great threat of danger. Now, that's astonishingly dangerous, right? I mean, if that guy can't speak, probably you and I are not going to have much of a voice. There was a university in Toronto. probably you and I are not going to have much of a voice. There was a university in Toronto. I forget which one, but there was a speech by a guy who was considered to be a men's rights advocate

with the insult as they call them, MRAs. And he had written a book and he was giving the speech and these feminists were protesting. I think York University. Was it York? I think it was York. And violent opposition. And what they had said that he said and what he actually said, it was so completely diametrically

– I mean, it was so incorrect that it was almost like they had never read what he had said. They had just decided that this guy was a target because he was an example. He was a figurehead of the patriarchy. And so these people were showing up for these lectures. Like, look, like I said, I read websites that I don't agree with. I watch Republican debates. I watch these bizarre Republican Fox News talk shows where they have these insane views of the world.

I don't agree with them. I watch it because I'm fascinated. I watch it because I want to know what this knucklehead thinks about, you know, God and climate change. God has a great sense of humor. You know, look, the world. We played a video the other day of a woman who's running for Congress. This crazy bitch.

She said, I can prove there's no global warming with a simple tool, a thermometer. And she pulls it out. Like, I'm fascinated by that lady. I will watch that lady talk. It doesn't mean I agree with her. So these feminists, these radical feminists, as it were, whenever you're radical in anything, you're usually an idiot. But these radical feminists were keeping people from attending this,

not just the people that were speaking. They weren't protesting the people that were speaking. They were screaming and yelling at the people that were speaking. They weren't protesting the people that were speaking. They were screaming and yelling at the people that were trying to go in to listen to this person talk. Agree or disagree. The idea that you are trying to oppose or trying to stop. You're in opposition of a person listening to a contrary point of view. That's amazing. Very dangerous.

Very dangerous. I wrote an article on my Psychology Today blog maybe about two years ago where this wasn't my study. I was simply summarizing somebody else's work. What he had basically done, or I think there were several researchers, they had looked at the political leanings of professors at American universities, whether they're Democrat or Republican and they actually then broke it down by departments so for example what would be the Democrat versus Republican ratio in sociology versus in physics what they found is that I think if I am going on memory I think that the ratio is about five to one Democrat to to Republican and in some departments, most notably, for example, in the humanities and sociology and so on, it was 44 to 1. Now, I didn't present this as this is good or this is

bad, but I certainly was trying to make the point that on some issues, that's not a good idea. For example, what should be fiscal policy? What should be our position regarding immigration? What is the position regarding the death penalty? These are not clear sort of scientifically, right? I mean, it depends. And to have a sanitized campus where only one group of people really dominate, I thought was dangerous. You should have seen the blowback I got there. I'm sure. Now, the only thing that protects me in such situations is that being Canadian, I could say these things without appearing as though I have a dog in the fight. Hey, I'm not Democrat. I'm not Republican. I'm Canadian. So I must be unbiased. And so in a sense, they'll give me a bit of a get out of jail card because it doesn't appear as though I'm fighting for one or the other.

But still, the blowback was astonishing because how dare I point to this as though it were a bad thing? I mean, everybody knows that every Democrat is perfect on everything and every Republican is an idiot, you know, toothless, evolution denying buffoon. And that strikes me as astonishing from otherwise intelligent people. The world is more nuanced, right? There are many issues on which I agree with Democrats as a Canadian. There are a few issues on which I actually agree more with Republicans. And so I kind of pick and choose my battles, but that's not how it is in academia. Well, in their defense, though, the points that are taken by the Republicans so often are they're really – if you had to choose like one side that's paying attention to science and one side that's paying attention to religion, it's pretty clear. Well, listen, and I'm an evolutionist.

So obviously when it's going to come on that issue, I'm going to be a lot more with the Democrats than all the... But, for example, my position, you may disagree. I hope you don't kick me out of here. I will never kick you out of here. You're very kind. The death penalty, I think that if you are caught having raped and killed 10 children and we've got the DNA of you in the 10 children, it's incontrovertible that you are guilty. I don't see it as a terrible moral issue that we could potentially discuss the possibility of executing you. As a matter of fact, I think that in some cases, the amount of rights

that we give to otherwise horrifying monsters, that itself is barbaric. So on that dimension, I'm likely to be much more, quote, Republican. And I am as well. I agree with you 100%. So nuanced thinking is a mark of somebody who kind of has a sense of what the world looks like. Yeah. And I think that that's also a mark of someone who doesn't have a dog in the fight, as you said before. I think when you look at the world, there's a lot of variables that must be taken into

consideration. As soon as you deny those variables because you have a specific stance that it's a predetermined pattern of thinking that you've aligned yourself with, I'm on the left and as a Democrat, like I was having a conversation with someone the other day and they were talking about upcoming elections

and they said, if we lose the House, if we lose, like he's a fucking comedian. He's a comedian that I'm talking to and he's talking about the Democrats and he's on team we. And I'm comedian that I'm talking to, and he's talking about the Democrats, and he's on Team We. And I'm like, wow. I'm 100% for the death penalty in a Ted Bundy-type character, some monster. But my problem with it, my number one problem with it, is that I don't believe that the system is a good system.

I don't believe it's infallible. that the system is a good system. I don't believe it's infallible. I think there's a lot of issues when it comes to people who are prosecutors, who deny evidence, withhold evidence. They know that they're wrong and they still arrest people. They still prosecute people. There's been so many instances of that. I can't trust their judgment. I can't trust. There was a video the other day of a man who was a police officer pulling some woman. She was trying to resist. He threw her to the ground and he's beating her, punching her in the face in Los Angeles. And as long as that is a part of our legal system, that this guy, I mean, she wasn't fighting back. He wasn't fighting for his life. She was resisting. I don't know what the circumstances were, but whatever I know is if that is the only way you

can handle that woman, you shouldn't be a police officer. And that's ridiculous. As long as that exists, that's part of our legal system. That's just a human flaw. That exists on all levels. That'll exist as far as a police officer who's on the street. That'll exist as far as a prosecutor, as a judge, a person running a prison.

There's going to be human flaws in the entire system. And that's the only reason why I hesitate as far as... I hear you. But in that sense, yeah, I'm way more Republican than I am Democrat. I tell you a story about sort of police misconduct. Many years ago, I had met a guy who had served as a public defender in the LA County system. And as we were chatting, you know, I was very interested in all of the stuff that he had to say. He said to me, one advice I could give you is don't ever do anything in California that would have you end

up in LA County jail. I said, Oh, why is that? I said, give me an example of why would somebody like me? He goes, let's suppose you're a recidivist, drink and drive kind of guy, and the cops are pissed off at you. They'll take you to the jail. They'll throw you with all the gangbangers, and they'll simply scream out, fresh fish out of water. That's exactly the term that he used, which basically is the code word for have at him, boys, and we won't hear his screams. And I remember this was in the late 80s. And subsequently, I actually met the son of this guy, coincidentally, and later found out that that was his father.

He was an academic also. But anyway, so that's an example of misconduct where, you know, if you piss off these cops, they could do all sorts of things to you that can have some profound consequences on your body. Yeah. I just want to state for the record, I'm a big supporter of law enforcement. Always have been. One bad cop does not cops make bad, make all cops bad. It's humans. We're flawed. You know, not every doctor is a good person. I have a friend who used to work when he was younger. He worked at a resort and he said

he would overhear these doctors very specifically remember overhearing these doctors bragging about talking this guy into a surgery and about how he's going to buy a car now. That's a new whatever it was, Porsche or whatever. For me he was bragging

about talking this guy into surgery. Incredible. Yeah, I mean, and that's real. That does happen. Sure. You know, there's bad people in all walks of life. And I think that is my number one, my only really resistance to something like the death penalty. Right.

But when you look at the recidivism rates for child rapists, it's just through the roof. It's crazy. I don't know if you've seen the stat, andism rates for child rapists, it's just through the roof. It's crazy. I don't know if you've seen the stat, and I can't cite who came up with it, but apparently when you catch a pedophile, he's on average committed 100 transgressions prior to you catching him for the first time. So why does this guy benefit from all of our legals? I mean, if you've done this stuff so many times, why do we have to be so humane? I would actually argue it's inhumane to be so humane to this guy. I don't know if you remember the case with these two guys in Connecticut who did a home invasion and they raped the girls and the mother and set the house on fire, beat the father, but he survived and so on. And so it was coming up to their death penalty. And so I sort of as a tribute to that case, I wrote an article on my Psychology Today blog, which I think I titled, Is the Death Penalty Barbaric?

And I was arguing that for these kinds of guys, no, it's not. Well, you should have seen my progressive, enlightened cafe sipping academic colleagues scoff at my barbarism, right? I mean, I would, what kind of hick must I be to actually even hold those sentiments? Well, I got news for you, man. If it comes between putting me in jail for the rest of my life in some cage where I have to be constantly in fear of men raping me and stabbing me with toothbrushes that they've sharpened into knives, I'll take death. Yeah, exactly. I think we should all. If there's no possible reasonable hope for parole, the idea of keeping someone in a jail to rot for the rest of their life is probably more suffering.

More cruel, exactly. Yeah. It's just bizarre. The idea that that's that's Somehow or another humane is so crazy and a lot of them by the way solitary confinement Which is probably one of the worst things that you could do to a person Well, especially social social animals that yeah, well person with people are weird We need to be connected so much and one of the worst punishments you could do is just leave us alone. While we're in prison,

surrounded by murderers, rapists, thieves, thugs, drug dealers, the worst thing they can do is put you by yourself. That's exactly right. Amazing. There's a guy, I don't remember his name, a Harvard professor who had studied what makes people healthy for something like 60 years.

And I think the bottom line, if I'm paraphrasing them, is that people need social relationships to be healthy. That's sort of the number one thing that maintains your health, psychological and physiological. And happy social relationships too. I mean, everyone that I know that has these horrible relationships with either boyfriends and girlfriends or with their parents or with their job, they seem to carry those on all the time. It becomes almost a part of the norm of relationships.

But the people that I know that have healthy relationships with their boyfriends and girlfriends or wives and husbands, healthy relationships with their children, healthy relationships with their friends. Those are the happiest people I know. Like you can foster that and you can somehow or another generate this sort of beautiful environment around the closest people to you. You'll have a much better life. It's just that simple. And by the way, evolutionary psychologists study all these kinds of things. You know, why is it that we would jump into a river to save two brothers? Or better yet, why would we jump into a river to save two brothers or better yet

why would we jump into a river to save a stranger and and it it boils down to the fact that it's tit for tat right it's what's called reciprocal altruism uh are you familiar with this yes so so you would hope that someone would do that for you someday exactly yes uh and so the idea that you know as you said that it's a real punishment to put people in confinement is bore out by evolutionary theory. My friend Remy jumped into a river to save a woman. She was in a canoe. The canoe flipped over. Her husband drowned.

The husband's body floated face first past him. And the woman was screaming, help me. And he saw her in the river and he just dove in and he's lucky he's in incredible shape and he's an outdoorsman he's there all the he's he's a very good athlete very good swimmer he's got real good endurance so he got to death's door like literally was on death's door thought it was over thought he's not gonna make it out of here like he just sacrificed his life to try to save this woman and then rescued her. They figured out the way to shore. But when he describes the feeling and the experience, it was almost beyond his control.

It was like he saw this woman. It was only him. There was no one else there. He had to do it and just jumped in. Well, there's this thing, speaking of guys who are in the business of doing heroic acts, you've heard of the fireman fantasy. I mean, the fact that women find guys, well, firemen, to be very attractive. And it actually turns out that there was a study

that was done that actually shows this to be the case. And I discussed this in one of my articles on Psychology Today. If you have a guy approach women either wearing a fireman suit or not, his chances of getting her phone number increases quite substantially if he is wearing a fireman suit. not, his chances of getting her phone number increases quite substantially if he is wearing a fireman.

How do they know this? Do they do a study? They actually got a guy to wear a fireman's outfit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But do they have the same guy not wear the fireman's outfit? Exactly, exactly. With the same approach and the same... Same words, same script, same everything.

One version. It's called the field experiment. In one version, you approach women at a cafe wearing the stuff. In another version, you don't. The guy who actually did that research is a French psychologist. His name is Nicolas Guiguin. And I've actually covered a few of his studies on my website. My most read article ever, over maybe 300,000, 400,000 readers,

is one of his studies where I was simply, because we're going to talk about the blowback issue now and here again, it was a study where he looked at the likelihood of women being picked up as hitchhikers as a function of their breast size. So he actually had the same woman and they, you know, artificially manipulated her breast size. And on different days, she would stand there. And of course, it turned out that men were much more likely to pick up the woman if she had the same woman, if she had bigger breast size. So I just summarized that study, put it up.

And then I remember I'd gone on vacation, came back from vacation, found out that it had completely gone viral. vacation, came back from vacation, found out that it had completely gone viral. But I had a million hate mail, not just from readers, but from fellow psychology today bloggers who were arguing that I was, you know, peddling pornography because I had a picture as the teaser image for that article. I had a photo of a woman sitting in a passenger seat with big, with large breasts. Well, it seemed appropriate for the topic, given that that's what the topic of the study was. But by putting that image, I was objectifying women. I was treating them as mere sex objects.

And so even though I had nothing to do with the study and I was simply summarizing somebody else's work, I was a horrifying pornographic peddler. Isn't it funny that just a photograph of a woman with large breasts is considered pornographic? But now listen to this. So then I've also written articles on Psychology Today where I talk about all kinds of issues dealing with penis size.

So do women want a guy with a bigger penis? Are they more likely to have orgasm if he's got a bigger penis? If you're in a gay relationship, man-man, are you likely to be top or bottom as a function of your penis size? That study has been done by science. And so for those articles, I put sexy images of men. So then I wrote to each of those people

who had written the hate mail, and I said, well, in all fairness, you now have to write an equally hateful thing, because I am also sexually exploiting men's bodies. Of course, they went away and never came back. Yeah, well, the idea being that women are more suppressed than men. It's not equal, but it is equal. Right. Yeah, it's very tricky.

But the idea that a woman with big breasts sitting there in a passenger seat of a car could somehow or another be pornographic is ridiculous. Women have big breasts. Some of them, they exist. Some men have big penises. It's all real stuff. Some people have two eyes. People have noses. Interestingly, some of these psychologists, these are psychologists, were saying, why do you write about these issues of sexuality?

What does that have to do with psychology? you write about these issues of sexuality? What does that have to do with psychology? Why are you... So that psychologists could actually argue that issues dealing with sexuality were outside the purview of psychology, that's breathtaking. Well, it's stupid. It's really, it's scary stupid because it's denying reality in order to fit with your ideology. this ideology of politically correct thinking. And I don't like the term politically correct. I don't like it because it's been sort of overrun and overused, and it's kind of like it's a beaten term.

Right. But it's the appropriate one just to convey the idea. Right. But it's so prevalent. It's so prevalent. And the fact that it's so prevalent amongst academics is really disturbing to me. Yeah. I'm with you.

Have you had many other academics on the show? Yeah. Yeah, quite a few. Okay. Yeah. And how are they like in terms of their general positions? Well, many of them share your points of view. Oh, really?

Yeah, luckily. Now, is it just that you happen to gravitate towards guys that you would think that already would sort of not be these little wimpy guys or or i mean how come it turns out that they're all sharing because we're certainly in the minority in academia so how those are the only ones i'm interested in talking to i guess i mean i'm actually quite fascinated talk i would love to talk to some ardent male feminist who shares these Islamophobic hating ideas, like hating Islamophobia and hating male patriarchy. I'll send you some names.

But the problem is, you know, it would get ugly somewhere along the line. You know, I'm sure one of us would resort to insults. I wouldn't be. I mean, I wouldn't. But I am utterly fascinated by ideology. Ideologies that I support or do not support. You know, all of them. I mean, I wouldn't. But I am utterly fascinated by ideology. Right.

And ideologies that I support or do not support. You know, all of them. I mean, I'm fascinated by the Dalai Lama. I'm fascinated by how many people take a guy who only wears orange robes seriously. Like, come on. Do you really think God gives a fuck what clothes you wear? Is he staying warm in that outfit? He's no different than that fucking Phil Robertson guy that's from Duck Dynasty, always wears camo.

He's wearing a goddamn outfit. And by that outfit, you recognize that, oh, he's a man of peace and of enlightened thinking. No, he's a silly man who wears orange who doesn't have sex. And why does he not have sex? Because he has an ideology. This ideology tells him that he's a holy man from birth. And if you don't think that's fucking ridiculous because he's friends with sharon stone you and i have nothing

to talk about oh he's he's buddies with richard gear he must be holy you get the fuck out of here man you know it's funny you talk about these hollywood types i i wrote an article which one of those really popular ones on psychology today where I was talking about the narcissism and grandiosity of celebrities. Where Madonna, because of her Kabbalah juice, says that the radiation problem in some lake in Ukraine could be resolved by putting some Kabbalah juice on it. What? She's really astounded.

Come on, wait a minute. What's Kabbalah juice? i don't know i don't even want to i don't want to help her in any way by bringing this up anymore gwyneth paltrow had some other thing about beauty um the the play um the the autism girl i've written about oh jenny mccarthy jenny mccarthy the autism girl was shocked that the NIH, the National Institute of Health, was not taking her scientific research seriously, demonstrating that that's what... Is she a scientist? No. She has research?

I think she must have played once at some point. And what I argue there is that if you're walking all day with yes men catering to each of your whims, you actually live in a world where you truly start thinking that you're a deity. I mean, you really did save the world. I'm Tom Cruise and I saved the world in Mission Impossible, whatever. And therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that I have something profound to say about everything, right? Therefore, Tom Cruise says that there is no such thing as psychiatric illnesses. You just have to do exercise and vitamins. And that we don't take that seriously is really an affront to him.

And so I had written an article where I was saying that it's really astounding the type of narcissism that these folks, and I argued that in part it comes from a form of guilt. That deep in the recesses of their bedrooms when they turn off the lights, many of them actually know that they are frauds, that are not really deserving of all of the perks that they've received. And so one of the ways that maybe I could fix that is by demonstrating that I'm much more than a mere actor. I'm really helping in Darfur. I'm really helping solve the radiation problem in the Ukraine and so on and so forth. Because then I seem as though maybe I am more worthy of all the accolades that are being bestowed upon me. That's a very fascinating way of looking at it.

And I think you probably are on to something there. way of looking at it. And I think you probably are onto something there. I think the knowledge and the understanding that they're frauds, the deep-seated knowledge, whether they avoid it and deny it or not, there's a lot of people that are horrible people that are involved in charitable organizations. And one of the reasons being is to sort of show that they are good people. There's a guy who's a pretty blatant plagiarist who's involved in some pretty interesting charities, good charities, very good charities. But I had a conversation with someone about it and they were talking about, hey, you know what?

He does so much good for this organization. I don't care. I go, do you understand that that's probably why he does that? Exactly. The guy's a complete sociopath He's fucked over his friends. He's stolen their work and Passed it off as his own yet. He supports firefighters Do you not understand that that's what's going on there?

I mean, he's pretty obvious if you listen to him talk for any long period of time. There's something wrong There's like some some connections inside the mind that are not being made and he's had a strategy and a strategy to avoid Criticism is to show charitable work like Lance Armstrong whenever he was confronted about his drug use and always talked about how much he's doing For cancer for cancer research, right? That was his whole thing despite the fact that he'd sued people that had claimed that they their lives Had been affected by his drug use right that they they you know that people that they love had been affected by his drug use, that people that they love had been drug tested and that they lost their entire career and that they were aligned with Lance Armstrong,

did drugs with Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong would sue these people. And then finally came out and told the truth and passed off his organization to other people. Now he's a fucking broken man rightly so because he's a goddamn sociopath but that this instance or this insistence rather of being a part of a charitable organization and being the figurehead not just silently like i don't i'm a big fan of not talking about charities that i contribute to i don't like to because i

think there's something sneaky about, it's almost like if you give $1,000 to a charity, but then you let everybody know, hey, I just gave $1,000 to a charity. I talk about that in my books. Let me tell you that. So there's something, you know who Maimonides is?

An old Jewish philosopher from the 12th century. He's a very, very important guy in Jewish moral philosophy. He talked about eight levels of tzedakah. Tzedakah is charity, giving, in terms of the purity of the act. The most pure form of tzedakah is where the altruist and the recipient of the altruism don't know of one another. And he said this a thousand years ago where he had no evolutionary training, but I then package it as an evolutionary argument. Because there's great social signaling rewards that come from you writing the Joe Rogan cancer war, right? If you are in a... Why do the upper uppers don't drive Maseratis? Because everybody in their circle can also buy a Maserati. So they actually drive

pretty oftentimes pretty, you know, cheapish cars, because that's not going to be a very honest signal of my true value because everybody in my social group can imitate it. But if I can give a hundred million dollars to the so-and-so cancer or buy a hundred million dollar painting that a two-year-old could have otherwise painted, boy boy that's an honest signal of my quality right yeah and so i actually talk about this exact idea of of not advertising your generosity yeah i call it happiness bombs when i leave a big tip at a restaurant i get out of there before the waiter could see what the tip is nice i like to do that i like to leave big tips and then run get the fuck out of there i don't want to see that person i say thank you to them on the way out the door but i don't want to see that person. I say thank you to them on the way out the door,

but I don't want them to see the tip and then thank me back. Cause it almost like, you know, it takes away from it. It's like, like I said, if someone donates a thousand dollars, but then tells the world they donated a thousand dollars, I think you owe another thousand. You know, you, you owe a silent thousand. Do you know the show? Do you know, you must know the show Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Yes. So there is an episode on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yes. So there is an episode on Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David is at some function with Ted Danson. They both gave anonymous donations, but everybody keeps walking up to Ted Danson telling him, oh, congratulations on this donation. That was so generous of you. So Larry David goes crazy because he goes,

that's bullshit, man. You're benefiting from this whole thing. It's not anonymous. Nobody knows. It's exactly what we're talking about. So that whole episode was a great episode because whoever wrote it actually understands our human nature. Yeah, it's a fascinating, fascinating aspect of human beings, this need to be considered altruistic, just need to be considered benevolent, you know, to advertise it instead of just being, you know,

that you can't exist in the silence of the personal satisfaction of contributing and giving out love and generosity, that you have to be rewarded for it. Well, I have a section in my first book which I titled Philanthropy as a Costly Signal.

The costly signaling in biology, so the peacock's tail is a costly signal because it actually serves as a really honest signal of my worth. For me to carry this burdensome tail and avoid predators, then you really should take me seriously, all you female hens, because here I am here and I've survived. So that's called an honest signal or a costly signal. Well, philanthropy, I argue, in many cases, is that honest signal, precisely for the reasons that we're talking about. I am fascinated by peacocks. I'm fascinated by black guys who go to clubs with $100,000 with a jewelry on them.

It's amazing that aspect of especially the rap community. Well, you know, the throwing the money in all the videos. Yeah, making it rain. I've got an article on that, man. Did you ever think that you would have a scientist on your show talking about the evolutionary roots of making it rain? No, no. I'm so happy to talk to you now.

Well, I was happy to talk to you already, but now more so. What is that? Like the diamonds and the gold chains. And why is it specifically connected to the African-American community as opposed to, I mean, the Italian-American community was always gold chains, but not as much diamonds. I mean, black people took it to a totally new level. Right. I can't speak to why one culture decides to use one particular form of status symbol. If you're the Maasai tribe in Africa, it might be the number of cattle heads that you have that is the peacocking, right?

So what we do know is that different cultures will use different forms of peacocking. But in all cultures, it is going to be the males in that culture who engage in the act. That's the universal. males in that culture who engage in the act. That's the universal. The peacocking in the African-American community is most fascinating because a lot of these rappers come from these very poor neighborhoods. So they're dealing with a lot of poverty and crime as they're growing up. And then as they get older, their identities, once they become connected to success, are also connected to firearms and diamonds. Specifically diamonds.

Yeah. They're all, they have blinged out everything. Blinged out teeth. I mean, how crazy is that? You're walking around with $100,000 worth of dental appliances. I mean, probably more. I don't understand diamonds, so I don't own any diamonds. So when I say $100,000, I might be way off.

There was a company called, I don't remember the name of the company, but the project was called American Brandstand, a play on American Bandstand. Dick, what was the guy's name? Yeah, Dick Clark. Dick Clark. So what they did is they did a content analysis of brand mentions in Billboard Top 100 to see how often brands are mentioned. You know, hey girl, I've got the Maserati. And what they found, not surprisingly, is that it's almost exclusively in hip-hop videos.

It's almost exclusively male rappers who do this behavior. And it wasn't diamonds, actually. The number one product was cars. So cars were overwhelmingly the most often cited form of peacocking in rap video in rap songs i was at a uh an event a kickboxing event in los angeles the other day with my friends eddie and tate and we uh we when we showed up this guy pulled up in this bright orange lamborghini this crazy car with the gold wing doors that pop up. And we were talking, and I'm a fan of cars.

I love cars. But I do not like Lamborghinis. I think they're foolish. I think the doors are foolish. I mean, they break all the time. I have a friend who reviews cars, and he reviewed this Lamborghini Aventador, and he said it broke down after like two days.

They had it for two days, and the transmission exploded. And I was laughing about it, and I was like, what the fuck? Why would you spend a half a million dollars on that car? There's some brilliant pieces of... I'm a big fan of cars. I'm a big fan of engineering in general. I love well-engineered watches. I love a well-engineered table.

I love laptops. I'm fascinated by human innovation. So when I see certain cars, I am fascinated by them. But when I see that one, I just think, that's just so goofy. And my friends were like, bro, that car gets you pussy. And I was like, really? Does it really? Like, come on, man.

Is a girl, would a girl bang? So we had this debate. Would a girl have sex with you if she saw you in that car? Let me answer the question for you. As opposed to, please do, as opposed to, let's say a Corvette. And like, no, man, anybody can get a Corvette. A Corvette is a, like my friend Tay goes, man, a girl will hop in your car just to see where you live if you have that car. They just want to see where your house is.

You got a $500,000 car. What the fuck does that dude's house look like? So I'll tell you three scientific studies one of which is mine and then a personal story of my brother who lives in southern california uh so nicolas again the guy who did the breast and french guy french guy did a study uh very much similar in spirit where instead of manipulating the fireman suit he had the same guy approach different women as a function of and manipulated which car he was driving. I can't remember the exact details, but something like, there's a three-time increase in the likelihood of a woman giving you her phone number if you are driving a high-status car

versus a low-status car. It's the exact same guy. Three times? Three times greater. Wow. And the same guy, by the way, did another study where he was either, the guy who was approaching the woman was either with a baby or not, and in another version with a dog or not. Having a dog increases digits of attention, and interacting with a baby also increases it.

So I joke that you should be driving a Lamborghini while having a dog next to you and a baby while wearing a fireman's suit. You're going to get all the ladies in Orange County and Newport Beach. So that's one. Another study, and then I'm going to come to my study in a second. And another study, not by this guy they took the same man put him either in a bentley or in a whatever fort fiesta and did the same thing with the same woman with a woman and then it was opposite sex rating so the women would rate the two guys and the same guy when he is in the bentley was viewed as astonishingly more handsome which of course objectively can't be. I mean, your physical traits don't change, but there was a glow effect from the car that he's driving. He's handsome.

He's a Brad Pitt in this car. He's a loser in this other car. But the same manipulation on women, men didn't care. In other words, their evaluations of how attractive the woman was did not depend on which car she was seated in so i would think that with men and with women that the women it would be more intimidating to the men if the women drove a bentley all because they have high status yeah perhaps well especially if you have a toyota some crappy car yeah nice car toyota you know not a bad car but just not a high status car but if you pulled up in a you know whatever you know name it chevy cobalt or you pulled up in a, you know, whatever, you know, name it Chevy Cobalt or something like that. And the, you know, the girl you're

going to go on a date with pulls up in a Lamborghini. You're like, Oh, what the fuck? I would think that for some men, they find that some men find women that are very successful, intimidating and unattractive. They were just asking them how good looking do you think they are? So it was specific to physical attraction. Okay. Yeah. So the, yeah, I would say the physical attraction

wouldn't change, but I would say that the desire to approach that person or the willingness to approach that person. I'm with you. Yeah, I think women with like a really expensive car

would be intimidating. Third study. And then the personal story from my brother. I did a study a few years ago where I brought, this was a former graduate student of mine. We brought people into the lab and then we rented a Porsche.

This wasn't imagined you're driving a Porsche. We actually rented a Porsche. And as I tell in one of my TED Talks, try to get a granting agency to release money to do research where you're saying, basically, I'm going to rent a Porsche for the weekend as part of my research. So we rented a Porsche, and then we had some other beaten-up car, and we had the same men drive both cars either in downtown Montreal on a Friday evening where everybody could see you driving the car or on a semi-deserted highway where nobody could see you. And at the end of each of the driving conditions,

we collected salivary assays to then measure their fluctuating levels of testosterone. And the idea being that when you put them in the Porsche, it's going to explode. And that's exactly what we found. And now one of the reviewers had written, he said, but how do you know that? That's just not because they're driving fast?

And so that's causing a rise in testosterone. And the way we could control for that is on downtown Montreal on a Friday evening, it's bumper to bumper traffic. I mean, it's like being in a parking lot. So it's certainly not because you were driving fast. It's because everybody could see that I am sitting in a Porsche. So your endocrinological system exploded simply because of this imbuing of social status to you. And we know this from other animals, where if you and I fight, if we're two males, we fight. If you win, your testosterone goes up. If I lose, my testosterone goes down.

And so here we were applying this exact idea to the consumer setting. So the person that was in the fast car that was on a deserted stretch of highway just going fast, their testosterone didn't rise? No, it did. We actually predicted that it would rise in both those conditions, but it would rise more when there's a public audience to see you doing it. Right. That makes sense. Right? What we found is that irrespective of the environment, you put a young male in a Porsche, his endocrinological system explodes. So the environment didn't matter. Just the fact that you are imbuing me with this immediate social status resulted in the same increase in testosterone. Well, isn't it also an engine thing too with young men? I know that they have done studies where they had young men rev engines,

just like a V8, a powerful V8, just the sound of... And that increases testosterone? Yeah, it increases testosterone. I don't think I know that study. You're going to need to send me that. Yeah, I will as soon as I find it. But the test that you give them, how much of a variable, how much of a variance was there between not driving that car and driving that car?

Well, statistically significant. So it was certainly strong enough to pick up a big difference from the Toyota to the other car. Right. Do you remember the percentage? I don't. I could send you the paper. I think that would be big. For athletes, just drive around in a fast car and it would be good for your recovery.

Right. Right? Because your testosterone would increase. For athletes, just drive around in a fast car and it would be good for your recovery. Right? Because your testosterone would increase. Well, I always joke with my wife and I tell her that since men, as they enter middle age, their testosterone goes down. If I now have to buy a luxury car, that's just medically mandated. Well, is that what's going on when men have this midlife crisis? Like that's what women, I mean, it's always the joke with women that they see a guy in a Ferrari and he's like 50 years old.

Sorry about your penis, you know? Yeah. But is that? Well, I have a study that's not yet published. Speaking of the car you drive and some morphological feature, you're going to like this one. So this is not published yet

with one of my former doctoral students. We actually have have we created online dating profiles of a man where everything is the same except that in one version his prized favorite position is a fancy red porsche or some shitty kiki or whatever it is and then we asked men and women who were looking at this profile to evaluate the guy's height. Watch what happened. Men, when they evaluate the guy in the Porsche, denigrate his height. He's shorter.

Women increase his height. This is exactly what you would expect from an evolutionary perspective, right? Sure. Right? Status is a threatening cue for men. Therefore, it serves as an intrasexual rivalry cue. So if you're in a fancy car, oh, Joe must

be some short, wimpy guy. Women, on the other hand, will look at Joe, the exact same Joe. Your height didn't magically change. They'll say, wow, Joe was a tall guy. That's fascinating. You should study haters. You should study, like, haters of celebrities,

like someone who becomes like a justin bieber type character especially someone who's a a famous person who women just go like if justin bieber goes anywhere in public women will literally scream and faint and pass out like almost elvis like in some certain ways you just study like what the reaction is to man i wonder if there's a way to study that that is that's to me. Studying haters. That's a good one. So let me tell you about my, are we still okay on time? Yes, we're great. We have an hour. Oh, great. So I have a brother

who's lived in California for 30 years who, by the way, I think I'd sent you this by email, was a fighter, was a judo, Olympian judo fighter who played in the 19, who competed in the 1976 Olympics. And he used to always say, by the way, before there was ever an MMA,

I would always ask him, if you were in a fight at a bar against some boxer or some karate guy, who would win? Which was kind of what started the whole MMA thing. And he used to always tell me, oh, I will destroy them because they might get one hit on me.

But once I get them and once we go down on the ground, they're done. So anyways, so he made a lot, a lot of money in the software industry in Southern California. And so he was the classic kind of peacocking guy. He owned three Ferraris and A Aston Martin Lagunda, and so on. And so we would play this game. To my chagrin, he liked to play this game. We'd go to a nightclub. This is before I was married, in case my wife is listening.

No, but this was before we were married. We would walk into a bar, these fancy schmancy clubs, and he'd say, take your time and look around and find the most stunning, unattainable woman in this place. Now, take your time. So I'd go around, look around.

I'd pick the girl who's not only the most beautiful, but the one who is clearly accompanied by a guy who looks like a brute and they seem to be very intensely in love. So now it's, I've really raised the bar of him not being able to get her. Now my brother is about five foot three. So he's not tall and so on, but boy, is he carrying the big testicles of owning all those Ferraris. And so he'd say, okay, that's the girl you want me to approach?

Okay. So he'd wait like a shark, and then the guy would go to the bathroom. He'd approach the girl. He'd come up to about here on her. I mean, it was just incredible to watch. He'd come back to me and say, she'll call me tomorrow. I'd say, absolutely zero chance, David.

It's not going to happen. Next morning, he'd say, yeah, come over here. At the time, we had the answering machines. This is like maybe early 90s. Hi, David. It's Candy. We met, yes.

Well, what got him Candy? It was the fact that he owned... So what would he say to them? I don't know. I have three Ferraris. Come with me. I like that you're putting Arabic accent. I know you have a man, but he is stupid.

He's big, but he does not have cars. Something like that. Well, look, the reality is that whenever we went anywhere in one of those cars, I just noticed anecdotally that the women would be all over the place. Is that changing with time when people become more aware of how kind of peacocky and it becomes more of a cultural sort of caricature? Right. So I think what happens is that the product that we use

for the peacocking might change. So, for example, maybe in the cafe sipping parties in Hollywood, it might be that I drive a Prius. I was so happy you just said that. Right? So that now makes me the top dog. There's actually a paper by a colleague of mine, I think it's called Green to be Seen. Which is basically a form of conspicuous consumption based on being green rather than being in

the big Hummer or whatever. So the bottom line is that the signal itself will change, but the need to signal as a form of a mating strategy is always there. More progressive brownie points. More progressive brownie points. I keep track of the amount of Priuses that I catch throwing cigarettes out the window. I'm up to eight. Eight Priuses in my life I have observed throwing cigarettes out the window.

I get fucking furious because I know those fucks. I know what they're doing. A lot of them drive those things, not for the consumption, not for gas, keeping gas prices down. They're doing it because they want to appear green.

Exactly. There are actually studies that look at how much are you willing to pay extra for a green product? And oftentimes, what people say attitudinally and then what they do, if it affects their dollar, there's a big incongruity. So you see the hypocrisy of people, right?

Again, it's the posing, right? I mean, I want to appear as though I'm enlightened, progressive. I care about Mother Earth and so on. Well, most certainly. I mean, I'm a hunter and I've experienced this weird thing where people who wear leather and eat meat get angry at you for hunting. And one of the reasons why they're angry at you for hunting is somehow or another what you're doing is animal cruelty, that you don't have to do it. Do you understand that the animal that you sit on every day suffered unimaginable cruelty? The animal that I shot didn't even know I was there until I put an arrow through its heart.

Do you ever feel any gumption at doing it or no? Yeah. No, definitely. It's not an easy thing to do. I eat meat. I like meat. I've always eaten meat. I work out a lot. I've tried being a vegetarian once when I was competing, back when I was fighting. I didn't perform as well. I didn't have as much energy. I didn't feel as good. Granted, in all fairness, my knowledge of nutrition was far less then than it is now. And I didn't have the best diet in the world. And I was also very young. But, you know, animals, like humans, live a finite life.

And I think that they eat each other. The world that they live in is unbelievably cruel. And if it wasn't for getting killed by a hunter, it's not like they're going to live forever and become magic. Right. Okay? They get killed by coyotes and mountain lions. And I like going into that world and acquiring meat. My goal is at the end of 2014, all the meat I eat at home to only be from my hunting.

No kidding. Yeah, because I feel like that's the most ethical way to acquire meat. So where do you do this? I go to different places. I've only been hunting four times. I shot two deer. I shot a pig and a wild pig. And I shot a bear recently. Only animals that I eat. Only animals that I want to eat. And my freezer is filled with bear meat and venison.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's what I try to eat. I try to eat that. First of all, it's super healthy. You know, the animal you know hasn't been shut up with antibiotics and hormones it's just a natural animal and again it's living its life in a wild way until i dip into the food chain and remove it but it's not it it doesn't it's it feels good to accomplish it like the first time i did it it was much more somber than it is now. Now it seems like I've sort of accepted what it is and I'm happier after it's over.

I don't have this sort of somber feeling. The first time, it was happiness, but also like, wow, I just took an animal's life. Big animal, 180-pound deer. Like this is a lot of, there's a lot involved in this. This is, this is real. But what about, what's your position? We're talking about conspicuous consumption and signaling. How about trophy hunting? I don't like that at all. I have a real problem with that. Not only do I have a real problem with trophy hunting, I have a real problem with, um, um, what they they're doing in Africa these days is a high fence hunting, but it's very

strange. And here's the contradiction. Here's where it's horrible. But it's very strange. And here's the contradiction. Here's where it gets weird. I had Louis Thoreau. Do you know who he is, the documentarian from England? Not sure. Great guy and really fascinating and a beautiful documentarian. He's just really wonderful documentaries.

And he had this one where he went to this African hunting camp for several weeks and stayed there and tried to really understand what it was all about and interviewed all these people, and a lot of them were just despicable. They're just these real hickey people, like, yeah, I'm just going to, I'm going to try to get the big five. I'm going to get a rhino, I'm going to get an elephant.

All they want to do is, like, spend money and bring home tusks and horns and all this different shit. It's pretty gross because it's just, they're killing to acquire trophies and what what they're doing is they're killing inside these high fences where these animals it's not like you're out there yeah you're going to and it's not to say that i'm opposed to high fence hunting because i think if you're hunting like deer or an animal that you're just going to eat, it's essentially, uh, like not that much different than going to a lake that's been stocked. You know, if you're going to a lake and they stock the lake with trout to ensure that there's fish deficient, those fish

are not going to get out of that lake and fly to Nebraska, right? That's where they live. They're stuck there. And I don't think there's any difference between that and like these high fence hunting operations in Texas, which I don't have any problem with at all. They have like these thousand acre, and one of them I know of is 14,000 acres and they, they keep deer on it. And why do they have the fences up? Well, to keep poachers out, to keep, and they also, they make a living off of guiding people to hunt these animals. And for them, it's like the ethical acquiring of your your own meat and it's venison it's very delicious it tastes good it's good for you it's very healthy meat i don't have a problem with that what the african thing is so confusing because there was a woman recently um that was on the

news uh this this past week she was 19 years old she went to africa and took all these photos with her that with a lion that she killed i might've shared that on my, but that wasn't a week ago. I did one. You did recently, but it was a different one. Oh, it was different. I went, I've followed all your stuff. Oh, thank you. For a while.

But you had, you said it's disgusting. She was holding the mouth of the lion open. Yeah. That's dark. There's something dark about that, man. I mean, if you're not going to eat that animal, I mean, I don't know. I have a friend who's going lion hunting in the wild. He's a bow hunter. His name's Cameron Haynes.

He's going to eat a lion, though. Wow. He's going to go over there, and he's going to hunt it not in a high fence. He's going to Zimbabwe in the actual jungle. He's going to hunt a lion, and he's going to eat it. He's fucking crazy. To collect salivary assays from these types of guys pre-kill, post-kill.

Well, he's got planio testosterone before and after. Oh, right. But I guarantee you that it jumps up when he shoots it. He's the one who took me bear hunting. Wow. Yeah, he's probably one of the most famous bow hunters in America today. Probably in the world, actually. He's a legit bow hunter.

I mean, he makes his living doing that. And he's very famous because of it. Very ethical, though. He does not shoot anything he does not eat. Right. Everything he shoots, he eats. And I think that's where I have an issue with this Africa thing. But where it gets weird is that those animals, many of them were on the verge of extinction.

But now they're in very high numbers. The reason being is that they're in these high fence operations, so it's such a catch-22. On one hand, they were on the verge of extinction, and on another hand, now they have these high populations and they're super healthy, but they only exist as a commodity to be hunted down. I mean, and the way they're doing it is like there's a water hole, and there like a hundred animals in front of the water hole. And these people just sit there and they just shoot one. They go, look what I did on my hunt. Like, is that even a hunt? You're in a park. I mean, you're in a fenced in, like, you know, it's someone's yard. Yeah. You're not tracking or anything. They're like pets. I mean, it's, it's, you're not only not tracking those animals, they're never going to leave and go a hundred away to a different place and then, you know, go across a river.

You know, it's mule deer. They discovered that mule deer in America. This is a really recent discovery. They had no idea how far they migrate, but they migrate as much as 150 miles in a year. 150 miles is a lot of walking, man, for a deer. That's like here to fucking San Diego for a deer. And they're just starting to understand their migratory patterns. Wow.

But that's a wild animal. Now, that's what I consider fair chase. Right. You go out hunting, you find a mule deer that's walking 150 miles, you figure out where they're going to be and, you know, and then stalk them and get into a good position and, and shoot them and eat them. It's about as fair and ethical way as you can acquire your own meat. If you're going all the way to Africa and you're not even going to eat that animal and you're just going to like stuff it and stick it on your wall to let everybody know how Billy badass you are. That's weird, man. That's a weird aspect of human beings that we would even consider that to be a form of recreation, you know? And people go, well, Hey, it's totally legal. And

well, Hey, there's nothing, you know, they, the, the money goes to conservation and I guess it does in a way, I guess it does, does go to keep these animals alive so they can keep killing them. Right. It's weird. It's very weird. So are you also a paleo guy? Well, you know what? That whole paleo thing, I don't like that term, paleo, because the term has been debunked by science. Right. When you talked about what people did or did not eat,

I think that natural foods are more easily digestible. I try to stay away from bread as much as possible. Although I do, I have started eating more sprouted bread recently, like Ezekiel type bread. I feel like my body digests that more easily. I think it's a little healthier. I keep away from white flour and pastas and things along those lines. And I try to avoid processed foods as much as possible and sugar as much as possible. So in that sense, yeah, I eat a lot of vegetables. I eat a lot of protein, animal protein, fish and things along those lines.

But I just think that I'm just real, I noticed because I work out so much and because I do athletics where you sort of measure your progress, you know, whether it's my workout routines like strength and conditioning routines or martial arts, I can kind of see when I'm on and when I'm off, and I can anecdotally or directly correlate that to my diet. And I find that when I take supplements and I make sure that I have plenty of vitamins and plenty of green leafy vegetables, that's one of the most important ones, I think, and healthy proteins. So in that sense, I eat along the lines that a lot of those paleo guys eat.

Right. You know, when I used to be a very competitive soccer player, I was grossly underweight my whole life. I mean, 125, 130 pounds, 4% body fat. Just from running all the time. Running all the time, training. I even ran some marathons. The day that I stopped training was this sort of pernicious and insidious weight gain. Where it wasn't sort of you saw me one year, I was 125.

And the next year, I was 180. It was always four, five, eight pounds a year. And then one day, eight, nine years later, I get on the scale and I'm tipping 200. And the most I got up is 252. I'm 5'6". 252? Whoa. You're a heavyweight. Exactly. And now I've6". 252? Whoa. You're a heavyweight.

Exactly. And now I've lost about 25, 30 pounds. But still, even now, I mean, I'm over 200 pounds. And one of the things that I've been doing is eating, as you said, a lot of vegetables and a lot of protein, staying away from all the starchy stuff. And I'm using, do you know myfitnesspal.com? Do you know this thing, this calorie counting program? No.

It's part of this whole quantify yourself. So basically, I have to give credit to my wife. She literally counts every single calorie that goes into my body. I have to basically have 1,400 calories net a day, including exercise and so on. So as long as I hit 1,400 calories net that day, and I've lost so far 25 pounds in maybe three months. That's amazing.

Yeah. That's a great number. 25 pounds in three months is really healthy. I mean, now I'm towing. It's not too fast, too. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Now it's getting a bit rough.

I can't seem to break the next sort of hump. What do you do for exercise? So I'm a cardio guy. So maybe, I don't know, maybe you'll, you'll, you'll guide me in better ways. Uh, so I just do tons of cardio. So it could be, I run on the treadmill or I do stationary bike or I do elliptical. I usually try to average between 45 minutes to an hour. But cardio is great. No, no doubt about it. And you know, there's nothing better than having a good gas tank and having a healthy heart. Right. But,

um, one of the things that burns calories the most is muscle. Yeah. And the more muscle that you can put on your body, the stronger you can make yourself. It's kind of strange, but you get leaner. Yeah, your metabolism goes up, so yeah. Yeah, and I just feel better when I'm stronger. My body works better, I like the way it feels better, and I think that I can eat more. Right.

I'm a pig. I like eating, but I'm pretty lean I think that I can eat more. Right. You know, I'm a pig. I like eating, but I'm pretty lean for someone who eats as much as I eat. Like, have you ever seen me eat? People freak out. Like, especially, like, after comedy shows, I'll do, like, two shows in a night, and I'll have two entrees and a salad and an appetizer. Right.

Like, to the point where waitresses think I'm joking. And I'm like, nope, I'm serious. I'm going to eat all that, too. Right. Wow. I eat a lot of food, and I love it. So the way I make sure that I'm going to eat all that too. Right. Wow. I eat a lot of food, but, and I love it. So the way I make sure that I stay lean is I do a lot of exercise and a lot of weightlifting. I think that weightlifting, and by weightlifting, I'm not doing like a lot of the traditional stuff like bench pressing.

Most of the stuff I do is full body exercises, kettlebells, things along those lines. But when I do that, all that intense strain, that's not available through cardio. Through cardio, you could do sprinting and you could really get your heart rate up and really get exhausted. You certainly burn off a lot of calories, but that intense strain of fucking, you know, that's what makes bone density. That's what makes your tendons and your tendons stronger, muscle density, strong, more thick. And I think that also helps your calorie consumption. Oh, cool. Speaking of comedians, because it's very organic what's going on,

I just hired a postdoc whose claim to fame so far, until he gets into my research program, was he was studying the evolutionary roots of humor. Oh, that's interesting. And so what he basically looked at is humor as a sexually selected trait as a proxy for intelligence. And so with his former doctrinal supervisor, who's a well-known evolution psychologist,

they would go into comedy clubs and rate people's impressions of how funny the comedian is and then would administer IQ tests to them. And it turns out that funnier people are actually smarter people. And so when women say, you know, I love, you know, they always say, I want a guy with a sense of humor. I want a guy who makes me laugh.

What they're effectively saying as a proxy measure is, I want a guy who's intelligent, because intelligence is a heritable trait. Interesting, but I bet that's wrong. Here's why I bet that's wrong. My favorite comedian of all time is my friend Joey Diaz. I think he's the funniest guy that's ever lived. And he is a very smart guy as far as like street smarts and wisdom, and he knows a lot about life. He is a very smart guy as far as street smarts and wisdom.

He knows a lot about life. If you gave him a fucking IQ test, though, he might barely beat a chimp. Right. So I think what you're basically saying is that IQ might not be the way to measure intelligence. But you are admitting that he is probably very intelligent. Oh, he's most certainly very intelligent. So then that's supporting the general theory. Oh, it's the general theory's on. I just think that IQ intelligence doesn't measure social intelligence.

Fair enough, yeah. He's very socially intelligent. Like, he spots, like, he's a predator in some ways. Like, he spots, like, the weakness a person has and is like, look at this motherfucker

with his goofy, you know, he'll find out the one thing about you. Oh, yeah, that's not what you're thinking. You know, he'll like, he'll find the one thing that, you know, you're trying to pretend you're not, but you truly are. And it'll illuminate itself, glowing.

Ding! Here, this guy's actually this. He's actually that. He's lying about this. Most certainly. You know, there's a study that was done with CEOs. And the number one thing that they all had in common, other than on average being taller than the norm. CEOs are taller than the norm?

Yeah. Fascinating. They're, I think, six foot two or something. I can't remember exactly the number. Is that they had very high social intelligence.

Yeah, it makes sense. Well, it makes sense, right? If you're an operating officer, you're trying to keep everybody in line. There's a lot of social intelligence required to do that, to manage a giant you're trying to keep everybody in line there's a lot of social intelligence required to do that to manage a giant group of people and keep everybody happy and

you know and foster morale and yeah there's a lot involved in that here's an interesting one uh remember earlier we were talking about uh you know how these uh hollywood types are lying to themselves and the privacy of their bedrooms yeah i'm glad we brought that back up again. There's more to talk about there. Yeah, so you're going to like this one. So I've often wondered whether they believe the hype that they say. In other words, when somebody is posing in this way, do they truly kind of internalize this or not?

There's a fantastic evolutionary theory that looks at the evolutionary roots of self-deception. In other words, why is it that we are so good at self-deceiving ourselves? This is by a guy by the name of Robert Trivers, phenomenal evolutionary biologist. And he proposed a theory that I think is brilliant in its simplicity. And then what I usually do is to demonstrate the phenomenon, I go to a television show like Seinfeld to find a manifestation of that phenomenon, which I'll talk about in a sec. So he says that one of the biggest dangers that we face as humans is to navigate all of these social threats in our environment, right? So I'm trying to manipulate you while you're trying to read me to see my

manipulative intent. That's called Machiavellian intelligence or social intelligence. So one of the ways that I could fool you without you picking up that I am fooling you is if any visual cue in my face that would signal that I am lying, I would shut it off. Because then you can't read that. And the way you do that is by deceiving yourself. In other words, you understand what I'm saying? Ah, yes.

So I want to lie to you. I want to deceive you. I want to make you do A. But you're going to be looking at me to see whether there is any visual signals that shows that I'm lying. If I could suppress those by first lying to myself, then you can't pick up that I'm lying. If I could suppress those by first lying to myself, then you can't pick up that I'm lying.

So there's a show on Seinfeld. So I said, you know, how can I demonstrate this to make it sort of more sexy in my book? So there's a show on Seinfeld where George Costanza, who was kind of a duplicitous, devious guy, is trying to teach Jerry how to be a better liar. And one day, as he's about to leave his apartment, he looks at him and says,

remember, Jerry, it's not a lie if you believe it. And I said, that's it. That's exactly the evolutionary roots of self-deception, right? So, you see, evolutionary theory is everywhere, man. It explains everything. I certainly think you're correct in that. And I think there's definitely something there. But I can also offer some unique insight to the celebrity thing and what it is because I've been a part of it.

And I've also experienced it myself. I've experienced my own self-deception or my own ego swelling like in an unnatural way. It's because of the environment that you're constantly in and the data that you're getting. The data that you're getting if you're a star. Like I've seen, now I'm a nice person, but I've seen people get shows and become these fucking ruthless dictators.

Like people that have sitcoms or shows that revolve entirely around them. Like, you know, not Seinfeld. He's supposedly a very nice guy. But, like, there's this famous story of Brett Butler who's from that show Grace Under Fire about what a ruthless monster she became when she was on the show.

Granted, substance abuse was in there as well, which I think may also, you know, not just because of the fact that she probably had addictive tendencies to begin with. A lot of comedians tend to be impulsive, and a lot of them tend to have addiction issues as well. I'm sure that played into it as well. But also the pressure of being the one, the pressure of being this one person where when Brett Butler shows up on the set, everyone has a coffee for her.

There's a script. Can we get anything, Brett? They're all treading lightly. They're all worried constantly that she's going to be upset at them. So their data, the data that a person like a Brett Butler or some star has, is that they are special. That's all the data they're getting. The data that someone who has, you know, someone who's not attractive, they're the only data, like a lot of data that comes from a person who is not physically attractive is like well i found out that i can get people to like me if i make them

laugh right so i'm gonna develop a good sense of humor because my nose isn't getting any smaller my ears aren't getting any littler i'm not getting any taller i'm fucking not losing any weight so let me just let me just become funny and then you know you see a lot of funny guys that are my friends that are not good looking at all but have beautiful girlfriends. What is that from? Well, they figured out the one thing that they do have that they can find that's attractive. The data that these actors and these people that are famous, they're constantly getting love. And they're getting love from people that don't know them.

They only know their work. They only know this thing that they've pretended to be in a movie where they were a superhero. Or in this thing where they were a doctor. Or in that show where they always had the right answer and they were on top of things. How many people that we've seen in movies that we thought were really smart, intelligent people, then you see them in an interview and you go, oh, he's a fucking idiot. He's an idiot who's playing a role. role. Their data that they get is completely unnatural. That environment where you, for whatever reason, they decide that you're going to be the guy, they put you in this thing, they project you on a screen that's 60 feet wide. Every time you talk, the words that come out of your mouth were carefully constructed by a team of writers and they labored over those words for weeks and weeks.

There's music playing. I mean, it's amazing. So that environment is so completely unnatural. The data that they get because of that is so unnatural. When Brad Pitt shows up at some awards party or something like that and he goes down the red carpet and people fucking go bananas and scream he handles it remarkably well for someone who's in that scenario because that is a completely unnatural scenario and must be insanely difficult to maintain objectivity and that's in that situation so that has to be taken into account just the data that those people get

is so different from the data that a guy who is working at a camera shop gets. A guy that's a normal person in a normal life, the data that they get is when they interact with people, people judge them based on their appearance, how they talk, what their background is. They start communicating. They gather up data. When you see Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, you automatically like them. You automatically have all this attached to them. And that's a totally unnatural world to live in. There is actually some studies that have looked at why is it that people love celebrities so much. And the argument is that it's because it's tricking our ancestral brain, right? You're coming into my television screen every day on news radio. I actually, you now become part of my, what's called my,

you know what Dunbar number is, right? 150 people. Very nice. So you, you know, Joe Rogan, I know this guy. I mean, I remember when my kid was born, Joe Rogan, I know Joe Rogan. And so I think what ends up happening is that since we obviously didn't evolve in an environment where there were televisions, but I now feel so intimately connected to you, that barrier is removed. Yeah, it gets even weirder when you do something like this, like podcasts, because this is even more intimate because we're in people's ears.

We're in earbuds. I'm inside your head. I'm talking to you right now. Maybe you're on a treadmill. Maybe you're on a plane. Maybe you're on a plane. Maybe you're sitting on the subway. Buy my books. Buy God's books.

Remember those subliminal things? Did those work? Those things like buy popcorn? Remember those things? Yeah, yeah. The flash in the movie? That famous sort of popcorn and Coke? Apparently the, I don't know the exact story,

but I think apparently the company that commissioned that study maybe did some massaging with the data. A little fuckery. I had a group of undergraduate students do a similar project in one of my courses. What they found is that if you put, let's say, buy Crush or buy Big Mac, it's not specifically the desire to buy that product that increased, but rather your hunger and your thirst increased. Right. You see what I mean? So it didn't increase your likelihood of saying, yes, I'd like to buy a Big Mac.

But when they were asked post the subliminal thing, are you hungry? Then the subliminal cue would affect their hunger and their thirst, but not to the specific product. Oh. So the evidence is equivocal. So there's a little something in there. There's something a little thing. Like if you see somebody eating a piece of cake on TV and it looks awesome, you do say,

oh, I like that. Yeah, right. And that's real, right? Yeah, exactly. So that is kind of a subliminal message or is that not subliminal? Well, it's not subliminal because it's conscious. Right. It has to be below my conscious awareness for it to be subliminal.

Do you remember those things they used to sell? I don't think they have them anymore, but they used to be subliminal. Do you remember those things they used to sell? I don't think they have them anymore, but they used to be CDs or audio tapes, and you would hear like the sound of the ocean or something like that, but then behind it was supposedly a message. Yeah. For secession of smoking and so on.

Yeah. Well, I don't know if those work because I don't think they're on the market anymore. No. I think the market has spoken. Yeah, they were quite popular for a while you hear like yeah yeah yeah yeah and somewhere in there apparently was like lose weight stop eating cheetos right well isn't that doesn't scientology have a similar thing with getting

the clear state or something yeah yes i had a neighbor who was poor bastard there was a piece of property that he wanted to buy, and I found out he was a Scientologist because of this conversation. He wanted to buy this piece of property, and I said, yeah, it was right next to his house. I said, would you build on it? He was like, well, you know what, I can't even buy it right now because my wife is about to go clear.

And I go, what does that mean? I didn't know what it meant. And he goes, well, you well, we're Scientologists. And then so I tried to just be as objective as possible and kind. I started asking him, what does that mean? He was telling me that she will no longer be influenced by any outside stimuli, any outside influence, any outside suggestions, and that she will be able to go through this world without being affected by negative anything and anybody yelling at her anybody insulting her they will

no longer get in there but it costs fifty thousand dollars that's it that that's that's the ringer and then i remember i was going like what is this what happens and he was explaining that she goes through the ceremony i'm like that costs grand. Why does it cost 50 grand? I don't know. It's just, you know, it's worth it. Fucking poor bastard. Now, why is it that so many, since you're in that industry,

why is it that it is particularly accepted within the Hollywood crowd? Good question. I've only met a few. I've only met a few legit Scientologists. And one thing that they radiate is this weird sort of positive energy, this alien, artificial positive energy that's very difficult to put your finger on. Like, hey, Gad, nice to meet you, man.

That's amazing. So you're doing evolutionary psychology as it applies to marketing. Amazing stuff. I like it a lot. Like there's something. It's not like a genuine enthusiasm it's this weird extra level right that's not but it's it's almost like you want to follow i want to see how long you can keep this up i want to follow you all day i want to

know when the crash is coming you know i'm pretty sure that if i followed you around i'm just guessing but based on our two hour and a half conversation that if i followed you around you're pretty much like this all The time this is you yeah, but when you're talking to a Scientologist you fucking know that this is gonna end right? You can't keep this up, man. It's like if a guy's putting on a fake English accent I'm talking all day like this is a important time. We're gonna know that I can't do this forever You know and this is something that they're doing when they've got this amazing stuff gad i love it love what you're doing like like man you're gonna hit the rocks bro you're gonna

crash something's gonna go wrong but they're um their centers that they have in la one of the most interesting ones is they have this anti-psychiatry anti-psychiatry center psychiatry kills and they have this big billboard where a guy's got like shock, electric shock therapy shit on his head, screaming in agony. And what you don't realize when you go to that is that it's a Scientology front. I mean, you go in there and they, they, you know, they get you hooked on Dianetics. Wow. And the story of this guy is quite extraordinary, right? Amazing. He's amazing. Amazingly bad, too. Amazingly bad writer. And the fact that

he openly spoke about creating your own religion. That if you want to have real power and real money, you need to make your own religion. And then made his own religion. And his books are fucking atrocious. His movie Battlefield Earth, have you ever seen the John Travolta movie? No. Oh my god, we were

talking about it last week. my friend Eliza Schlesinger and I were laughing about it it's a insanely bad movie with John Travolta who's he's like a monster kind of

giant alien guy and it's him and what's the fucking dude's name with the lazy eye the black eye Forrest Whitaker

Forrest Whitaker is in it, too. He's also a Scientologist? I don't think he's a Scientologist, but he's an alien in this movie. You'd be amazed at how many Scientologists there are. Right. Of, like, high-level people, when you start, like, looking, like, weird ones,

like Beck, the singer Beck. Is a Scientologist. Juliette Lewis is, like, as you go, like, down the list of people that are actual Scientologists, it's pretty extensive. I think what it provides them is a scaffolding for, I think, Hollywood and the idea of being, and most notably, actors. Because acting itself is one of the most unstable professions. You have to be chosen. Because what you do is based entirely on the merits of your

work. What you do is based entirely on your education, your qualifications, and the data that you've provided and the writing that you've done based on that data. It's all really rock solid stuff. It's all right in front of you, despite the fact that the ideologues attack you and the fucking politically correct knuckleheads will go after you. What you're doing is, it's all based on the merits of your work. What an actor is doing is trying so desperately

to get other people to accept them and choose them. Right. And it's very weird. It's ephemeral. It's fleeting. It's not just fleeting. It's so weird that they don't have their own, it's very rare that you talk to actors and they have their own opinions.

It's like what they have is this sort of conglomeration of opinions that they've sort of subscribed to because they believe that this is going to ingratiate them with the overlords of Hollywood. So everyone is goddamn politically correct. Everyone's driving a fucking Prius. Everyone's voting Democrat. You know, everyone is wearing pink ribbons when it's the appropriate time because it's breast cancer awareness Hashtag bring our girls home. Mm-hmm Hashtag yes all women you better fucking have that shit. You better have a good quote about it Right hashtag hashtag go fuck yourself

So they all they all get up they become a part of this sort of really They all become a part of this sort of really unstable. And to be fair, to someone who wants to be an actor in the first place, oftentimes you're incredibly unstable at first, the original you, before you get to Hollywood. Why do you want to be an actor? Because you want to be super special, not just regular special. You want to be the guy. I actually wanted to ask you about this because my theory is that very few actors want to be actors because of the love of the craft i mean

yes there's al pacino and robert de niro who who really do this because you know they're just they're real artists but most people are really looking for the extrinsic perks right it's really cool for me to walk around and people throwing themselves off balconies when i when i make an appearance appearance, right. And to make tons of money. So is, would, would you agree that that's true? I mean, is that, yeah. It's a sickness. You know, the, the, there's a lot of people, they see like a guy, like go back to Brad Pitt, for instance, they see the love that Brad Pitt gets. They want to be like him. And what's the best way to be like him to do what he does. And so what does he do? He acts. How hard is that that? It's just pretending I'm gonna get into acting, you know, they just they want they have a hole in their soul They need to fill up with other people's attention and almost all of them that are like really extremely successful

Had some fucking wacky childhood right me personally. I had a very bad childhood It was was not good, you know and because of that bad child, it wasn't the worst I have friends that have way worse childhoods. But it was enough to create a deficit that I had this burning desire to fill in, to show that I wasn't a loser. That it wasn't this child who was ignored and treated like shit, that I wasn't that. That I'll show you. And that I'll show you is what sort of leads to. By getting fame, by becoming like that. Or being great at athletics. I'll show you is what sort of leads to... By getting fame, by becoming...

Or being great at athletics. I mean, that's what initially led me to fighting. That's what initially led me to comedy. It wasn't as much I'll get fame as I'll show you. Like, I'm going to get great at something. And then somewhere along the line, I started acting. But that was completely by accident. I never...

Oh, really? Yeah, I'd never taken any acting classes or anything like that. I just got a development deal because of stand-up comedy. And I took a handful of private one-on-one acting classes with a crazy person. Oh, this crazy lady was constantly trying to get me to, if I did get a show, to cast her as my mother and working her way in. Oh, so in, Oh, so gross. Oh,

the conversations that I had with this lady were so brutal. And it sort of like, that was one of the first interactions that I'd ever had with someone who has is deep, deep in the acting world and the business. And I got it to be around some of these people that were also taking her classes. I'm like,

you people are fucking gross. There's something gross about the, just the disingenuous behavior. but i again as we said i think it all boils down to like what is that world so are many of your personal friends in the industry or are they more in fighting or most of them are comedians most of my good friends are stand-up comics because stand-up comics is like and the other ones are martial artists. Those two worlds are as solid as you can get. If you're not funny, no one laughs.

If you don't know how to fight, you're going to get your ass kicked. You know what I mean? Even if you don't know jiu-jitsu, someone's going to strangle you. These are all rock-solid worlds. There's no getting around them. Where things get weird and airy-fairy is when you're pretending to be a superhero, or you're pretending to be a... Just think it's an unnatural position to be in. And for human beings, as you were saying, we have this evolutionary trait where we

look at successful behavior and we want to emulate it. Well, if you find the guy who's the head of the tribe, who's got the scars and the wisdom, that's the guy that you want to emulate it well if you find the guy was the head of the tribe He's got the you know the scars and the wisdom That's the the guy that you want to pay attention to because you can learn from other people's mistakes He shows wisdom you can emulate his behavior, and you can become successful Well when someone is on TV and or in a movie theater and their heads 60 feet tall and they're everything They're saying is perfect you want to be be them. You want to follow them. You want to worship them because they seem to be exhibiting this evolutionary thing. And I also think that the media itself, whether it's music or whether it's movies and television,

there's an inescapable quality to being on film that is unavoidable in some very strange way. Right. In that your body's not designed to absorb it. Your body is not designed to absorb movies. Your body's designed to absorb the wisdom of the natural world. Like the wisdom of, you know, that guy got bitten by a tiger. Stay out of the tall grass. Right.

You know, it's real fucking simple. You know, like, oh, he went in the river and he drowned. Don't go in the river. You know, all these lessons we learn from the natural world all these things that we see that exist in the material you know world that's in front of us but when this world has all of a sudden been changed and now you're looking at dragons and you're looking at you know spaceships and fucking lightning bolts and all these things are taking place on a screen that aren't real the whole thing gets very squirrely in our minds.

We don't know what to do with it. Cool. So do you ever get blowbacks? We were talking about blowback about being. Do you get blowback from people in the industry for speaking so critically of the Hollywood types? They're scared, especially actors. Terrified to have an opinion on anything. They have an opinion on someone shitting on actors.

Because the problem is then it would be exposed. People would start examining, well, let's examine your behavior. Let's examine what actors really are. Let's examine some of the things you said. They'd probably get mad. Fuck him, but I'm not going to say it. So you won't get actors on this show? Oh, I've had actors on this show. It's not all actors. It's like saying,

I mean, a lot of comedians are fucked up, but it's not all comedians. A lot of fighters are fucked up, but not all of them. I mean, there's a lot of actors that are really up. But it's not all comedians. A lot of fighters are fucked up. But not all of them. I mean, there's a lot of actors that are really nice. I mean, I've done some, like, I've done movies with people like Rosario Dawson, who's beautiful and famous. She's about as nice and normal as you're ever going to be around. She's so cool.

Like, when you're around her, you would never believe in a million years that she's famous. She seems completely unaffected by whatever mechanism. I don't know how she got there. And not fake modesty. No, she's totally normal. I wish I had a video of her playing with my daughter when my daughter was two. It was hilarious. She was grabbing her and stuffing her whole hand in her mouth.

My daughter would scream, laughing, and she kept doing it again. It was so funny. She's really funny. My daughter was crying at the monster outside. Oh, the werewolf? Yeah, sorry, man. I should have warned you. I didn't know you were going to bring kids.

Yeah, yeah. Werewolf's a motherfucker. Thanks, Gary. No, there's a lot of nice people that are actors. Like, there's a lot of nice people, I'm sure, that do all sorts of things. I know a lot of dudes that are in special forces that are nice as hell.

Right. And they've killed folks, you know? It's like, there's a lot of nice people out there. I got, uh, last year when we came to California, we come here every year to vacation. I don't know if you knew. This is the wrong time.

Why don't you come in the winter, man? I know, I know, I know. You live in Montreal. I know. I, we, I was at UC Irvine for a couple of years and then had to head back to Montreal and have been trying to get back to California ever since. Yeah, that winter's a motherfucker up there.

Woo! You've been to Montreal? Oh yeah, many times. Yeah. Well, Georges St-Pierre, I guess. Yeah, that winner's a motherfucker up there. You've been to Montreal? Oh, yeah, many times, yeah. Well, Georges St-Pierre, I guess. Yeah, well, I grew up in Boston, and I used to do comedy at the Montreal Comedy Festival every year. Oh, there you go, which is happening soon, I guess. Yes, every summer.

I started going up there in, I think, 92. Oh, cool. So you were saying about the Special Forces. So we always hang out at one of the beaches. We meet people. We chat. We're very friendly. And so I met, who's become now a very good friend, a FBI special agent whose job it is to tailgate all of these Muslim extremists around UC Irvine area.

Whoa, tailgate them. Well, yeah. I hope he's not going to be upset that I said this. Well, I haven't said it in years. Well, yeah. I hope he's not going to be upset that I said this. Well, no worries. So, yeah. So he's told me some unbelievable stories. And he, too, I mean, he's an FBI agent who's been under a lot of pressure to do the politically correct thing, right?

As you probably know that you're not supposed to say Islamic extremists or Islam or this or that. to say Islamic extremists or Islam or this or that. And so when he hears me in some of my discourse, he finds it quite liberating because here's a guy whose job it is to protect us from some of these dangers who faces some of the politically correct shackles that we've been talking about. Well, our mutual friend, Sam Harris,

has had an incredible amount of blowback in his honest and objective assessment of Muslim extremists. The Muslim extremists that he's documented, that he has put on his blog, like he had this thing where he was saying, like, there's a video of this guy who's speaking, I forget what country he's in, but he's speaking in English to this group of Islamic people. And he's talking about the differences between what people think of him as radical Islam and what is just Islam.

And he starts talking about it. He goes, how many of you believe in the works of the Quran, in the word of the Quran, and how many of you follow it? And they all raise their hand. How many of you believe that the word of God is the best way to deal with homosexuals and that what, whatever the Quran says, whether they,

it says they should be stoned to death, that this is the word of God. And this is the, and they all raise their hand. And like, he goes into this thing about how many of you think that women should be silent and then they should You know should listen to their man because this is what God has said they all raise their hand and he's like see this is This is not radical Islam. This is just Islam. So all these people that say oh, they're so radical

They're radical Islam and the key doesn't even realize that he's a Demonstrating radical Islam. Yeah, he demonstrating. Sam Harris got so much fucking hate just for putting this video up. I saw all these people, oh, I see what you're doing, shielding your Islamophobic with one person and your Islamophobia. And what's astonishing is that, you know,

he is a true liberal. Yes. And yet he is painted to be some hate monger. Well, he also gets painted that way because it's perceived that he supports war because he wants to suppress this aspect of humanity. And why is it? Well, it's because it's not over here yet. If it was over here and it was invading and you were getting suicide bombs on a daily basis, you would have a real issue with it too. I'll tell you a great story along those lines.

A woman approached me who used to be a friend. Now she no longer is a friend. You'll know by the end of the story why. She said, you know, you know a lot about this issue, Gad. You grew up in the region. What is the position on Islam regarding Jews? Okay. Well, I mean, we escaped Lebanon because we were going to be executed. Okay. It wasn't by the Amish. Okay. So I said, you know what, rather than kind of go into a whole treaties, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to share with you a montage of imams from around the world. So this is not culture specific. There's an Indonesian imam, a Malaysian, Kuwaiti, Yemeni. So these are at their sermons. This is at the mosque where they are preaching what should be done to the Jews. And one of the particular imams was showing images of the Nazis bulldozing skeletons into the ditches. And he was lamenting to God, why God didn't you give us the pleasure of exterminating those Jewish rats? Why do you hate us so much? Those Jewish rats?

Some version of that, right? So I mean, it was, even by that standard, it was diabolical. So I share with her the link and I make, I made absolutely no interpretations, right? I wasn't saying it's good, it's bad. I just shared the link. Now she's a Jewish woman whose grandparents, I can't remember on which side, had suffered in the Holocaust, her response back to me, well, in you sharing this video, you're exhibiting the same extremism. So when your moral compass is so broken that the guy who shares a video in response to a question that you asked me is no different than the people who are generating the content in the video were doomed. We need a better term for political correctness because that's even more extreme than political correctness. It's denial of reality based on your own ideology

and that's what it is. It's just this crazy sickness that people who consider themselves intelligent, intellectual, progressive, open-minded, these are the people that exhibit this ridiculous trait. Because I think they just have this instinct that to criticize an other is gauche, is wrong. Especially when that other is their religious views. But is that true? Because they have no problem criticizing the hick Republican senator who believes in creationism and wants to teach it in school.

That's true. They'll fucking hate to the end of time about that fool. That's true. But if it's some imam who thinks that, you know, women should cover themselves up

like they look like Jabba the Hutt or what is it? Was it Boba Fett? Whichever one. Whatever it is. Please direct your hate mail to Joe Rogan.

Come it. Bring it on, on bitches it's silliness it's and my silliness is not i almost have more disdain for the people that are progressive that have an issue with someone criticizing this than i do the people that were brainwashed and and ingrained with this religion. Because the people that are supposedly intellectuals or supposedly responsible for guiding the thought of the young people, the people that are supposed to be the folks that are the ones that are the curators of these ideas,

the ones that are the ones who are teaching children in school, these are the wise ones who are professionally intelligent. You're supposed to be professionally objective, professionally wise, and you have this ridiculous notion because of the environment that we live in

where this politically correct, whatever you want to call it, ideology has gotten so infected. It's such a bizarre computer virus of the mind. Well, the king of these guys, although it has nothing to do with Islam, is Noam Chomsky. I don't know if you know much about him. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I jokingly play a game called the six degrees of separation of Noam Chomsky. So I

give you a calamity and in six causal links, you have to link it back to why the US is evil. So, links, you have to link it back to why the U.S. is evil. So, you know, an Amazonian frog died in six causal links or less. You have to tell me why it is the fault of the U.S. military industrial complex as to why that frog died, because he views the whole world through very, very, you know, myopic lens, right? Hamas is nice. Israel is a evil apartheid racist state. And you think this is a Jewish guy who's spewing this from his safety of his confines in MIT office. Now, I grew up in that world. I promise you, they're not going to take too kindly to you when the lights are off. And so it's just, it really is amazing to kind of understand the schizophrenic position. Or for example, Queers for Palestine is another one, right?

Queers for Palestine? Yeah. That's a huge movement. I need a t-shirt. I need a Queers for Palestine t-shirt. We have to find a cafe press. Which area in the Middle East can you be open and assume your sexual orientation? It's in Israel.

Yes. Yet what's going to happen to you in some of those other areas is not going to be very pretty. And yet these people are able to completely disassociate from that reality. It's like Uncle Tom's, right? Right. It's kind of along those lines. I suppose. In a way.

Right? Right. It's kind of along those lines. I suppose. In a way. Yeah, the idea that for whatever reason, this one religion is the one that you're not supposed to criticize. I don't understand how that happened.

I wonder if it's connected in some way to the suppression of the people that live in these places where their natural resources are being stolen by the war machine, which is undeniable. Undeniable what's going on in Iraq or in Afghanistan, how much of it, how much of the hustle has to do with the natural resources, whether it be the poppy fields, whether it be the minerals in Afghanistan, whether it's the oil in Iraq, undeniable that these people are being, for sure, they're subject to the war machine that's coming in to steal the resources. For sure, they're subject to the war machine that's coming in to steal the resources. Right.

And that's something that people are aware of. And you see these images of these people in these Islamic countries that are dying, that are getting bombed on. And also the dehumanism that they're subjected to by a lot of people that are trying to justify these wars. That is the only thing that makes sense to me. And also the fact that this has happened over the course of, since 2001, this is when this anti, this Islamophobia notion has been really, really pushed harder and harder. Well, I think it's also because that's the way

that I demonstrate how tolerant and progressive I am by showing that I am not going to lump everybody with those crazy 9-11 people. And so again, it's part of that progressive posing. No ideology, no belief system is free from mockery, from criticism. And the quicker we find that out and the quicker we kind of fix this problem, the better we'll be off. Do you think that that's possible? I mean, this is the internet and this is where it gets really weird.

The internet is supposedly where the ideas come to be vetted out. You know, I mean, this is the age of information. This is where it's all on the table. So you're saying, is it going to be possible to suppress criticisms of Islam for much longer? Yeah, is it going to be possible to suppress criticisms of islam for much longer yeah is it going to be possible to keep up this ridiculous facade well i think i think one of the ways that you suppress it is by creating an ethos of self-censorship so right so uh if i open

up my laptop and i can write on my Psychology Today blog to 3 million people, I have a real clear choice to make that day. Am I going to write something that can bring heat to my young children? And then I have to decide whether I'm willing to do that or not. Now, the fact that I've already engaged in that calculus and that calculation suggests that we are, I mean, the canary is singing in the coal mine. And so I think we have to be in an environment where we don't engage in this type of self-censorship. So I think we're definitely down the wrong road. I think many academics privately will speak about these issues very openly with me, but will never even so far as go as to like something on Facebook,

lest they will be found out. That's so crazy. You got to worry about your standing. You got to worry about your public standing. You got to worry about your job. You got to worry. That's more people should be self-sufficient, less to think about in that regard. But when you're an educator, how can you be?

In one sense, you have tenure. That kind of helps a lot. But tenure creates a lot of hubris. There's a lot of guys who have tenure that all of a sudden become untouchable, and they force-feed their students their ideologies. Yeah, absolutely. And actually, I wrote an article on my Psychology Today blog where I was talking about the necessity for tenure,

but also its potential for misuse, right? Because you do get an incredible amount of deadwood with tenure, right? Do you foresee a time where universities won't be the main source of education that somehow or another will be taken care of online? That's a good question. I mean, right now there's a development of, have you heard of, you know what MOOCs are? No. Well, I know what Joey Diaz calls MOOCs.

There's a fucking MOOC over here. Oh. You dummy. Okay. I said the wrong term. Oh, yeah. You goofball. Right.

You're a MOOC. No. MOOCs are massive online. I can't remember the rest of the acronym. Okay. These are courses that are oftentimes offered under the auspices of a university, but they're free courses where people can massively register. You have, you know, teaching a course, 100,000 people.

MIT does that, right? MIT does that. And actually, I try to hook up with these guys called Coursera that organizes a portal for this, but they don't have a contract with Concordia, and it has to be between a university and the organization for it to fly. So I do see a potential eventually for sort of a more democratization of knowledge. But I don't suspect that we're going to lose the university anytime soon.

This is a social aspect of it that's so interesting. People go away and they party and they have fun. They find themselves. Not in Canada, though. It's very interesting because I've studied both in the U.S. and in Canada. Yeah, it's part of my study. And so this Greek system, going away to college, not being close to your parents, the drinking games, that's very much, much more so of an American rite of passage than it is a Canadian. Most Canadian students end up going to the school that is physically closest to them.

That's interesting. Is that because it's paid for by the government? That's it. You got it. So in Canada, you don't have historically, I mean, now some programs are getting a bit more privatized, but historically, everything is big brother. So there isn't this huge hierarchy of universities, right? The Harvard and then whatever. All schools are public.

And so yes, McGill University is more famous than some other Canadian university, but on average, all Canadian schools are quite good. And you have about 40 universities. And so there's really no point in choosing between them and going across the country. In the US, you have 3000 colleges and universities. There's widely varying on everything in terms of price, in terms of quality. And so I think that's what makes it a bit more exciting to choose and pick. But in Canada, they're all good. That's interesting. And in the United States, they also have universities that cater specifically to religious ideas. What was the one that someone got in trouble for

during one of the elections for taking support from and that they wouldn't allow interracial couples? Remember that? Was that Brigham Young? Was it Brigham Young? It might have been Brigham Young. I don't remember which one it was, but it was some southern university.

And I forget who they were supporting, but it became a big problem with them. Right. That they had become aligned with this university that didn't allow interracial couples. Like, whoa. You know, at what time... You know, the real problem with that,

obviously it's racist, but also the varying scales of race. Yeah. Like, is it only pure blood? You know, what are you, a fucking vampire? Like, what if someone is like one 16th Native American? Is that, you know, is he

interracial? If he's dating a blonde woman from Norway? What if the woman, you know, is like one eighth Chinese? One quarter? Like, when do we draw the line? Half? If she's half Chinese? Like, what the fuck? What if she lies about it and says she's Eskimo?

To think that if only I converted to Seventh-day Adventist, I could be living in Southern California, man. Dude, you could have been rocking it and teaching bullshit and lying about Jesus. It would have been awesome. Maybe I still might accept him. Tanning? Yeah, you've been tanning. You can tan in Montreal, too, for about three weeks. Montreal, you probably know this joke we have four seasons winter winter winter and july

that's true well july is pretty awesome though and everybody's very festive yeah one of the things that i love about uh any place like canada or uh like a lot of parts of canada is that they really appreciate the summertime because of the fact the winter is so brutal. We overcome. That's exactly right. It's the festival sort of city of the world because we're completely cocooned from, say, end of November till, say, mid-April. And so we make up for it.

I think it also develops character, too. I've talked about Los Angeles and that a lot of people that are born and raised in Los Angeles are like spoiled rich kids that also won the lottery. Right. They don't realize how easy they've got it. The worst the weather gets here, you have to hit a button

and turn the AC on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the most brutal thing you have to do is use your finger to press a button. Well, I remember when we lived here

when I was at UC Irvine, one time we were driving on the highway and there was a warning weather advisory because there was going to be 10 minutes of rain and when it rains, the roads apparently become a bit more slippery because of the oil state. I don't know exactly what it was. And so I'm thinking, you know,

we drive in minus 30 degrees in snow storms. They have warning advisories when it rains for 10 minutes. It's true. You guys have character. We have none. We're done. We're done here. I'll give up my character to move to Southern California. Well, you've lived a bunch of years up there. You realize that the winters are not worth it. They are brutal, especially if you have to go anywhere. If you could work out of your house all winter long and you had a good supply of wood and water and food ready for you. And a bear once in a while to shoot, then you're set. There you go. Then you can stay warm and full. But California, there's pros and cons.

The con is obviously that everybody knows about it. So you've been here? Since 94. Oh, okay, so you've been here for 20 years. Yeah, but I grew up in Boston and also delivered newspapers, so I drove every day, 365 days a year. So snowstorms, everything.

One thing is good, I know how to drive in snow. I know how to drive real good. Right. Like when the ass end of my car kicks out, I don't sweat it at all. I just countersteer. It's like instinctive. But, you know, it's more pleasurable to live here. But you don't have the, I mean, could you break out into the Bostonian accent if you wanted to?

Yeah, I kind of of you know what i fought once in the bay state games which was this uh big uh olympic festivals when taekwondo was going into the olympics okay and uh i won it so i got interviewed on television i heard myself on tv i was like oh my god i sound like a fucking idiot it was my accent was so strong yeah we've been working hard training hard for this i was I was like, oh, I didn't realize. I didn't realize how gross it sounded. So I abandoned it. You worked hard to, okay. I just abandoned it.

I mean, it comes out every now and then if I have a couple drinks with me. You hear a little bit of it. Right. But it's a weird accent because I have a little bit of New Jersey, too. Right. I'm from New Jersey. Man, we're just about out of time. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about before? Just wanted to

thank you. I can't believe all the... Three hours? Three hours. Feels like three minutes, man. I know. Just flew by. You're the best interviewer ever. Ah, that's ridiculous. You're the best guest ever. Well, thank you. It was pretty easy to do. Look, we could do this a hundred times, man. Let me know when you're back in town again. We'll do this again for sure. You're on. Your books, what can

people buy? Where can they buy it? What do you suggest? So, probably if they want the sort of trade book, the book that's written for the masses, The Consuming Instinct. The Consuming Instinct. Yeah, what juicy burgers, Ferraris, pornography, and gift-giving reveal about human nature. So that they could get on Amazon, and there'll be a listing of my other books there. They could check out my Psychology Today blog, Homo Consumericus, where I write about everything, religion, politics. When you say homo,

you better say something else real quick. You can't have a pause. What are you, some kind of homo sapien boy? What are you, kind of homo consumerist? You got to be real careful.

Okay, well listen, thank you very much. Thank you so much. It was a really fun conversation. I really, really appreciate you coming down here and spreading some knowledge and information it was really fun

to talk to you too cheers really appreciate it likewise you can follow Gad on Twitter it's Gad Saad did I say it right

yep G-A-D-S-A-A-D G-A-D-S-A-A-D on Twitter and the links there are also to his website and you can find his books on Amazon

do you have any on books on tape? They're not. No? I need to do that. God damn, son. You need to audio tape your books, man. You're so right.

Just read your books. I know. And with that sexy radio voice. That's what I'm talking about, dog. Do it. You got it. You got it. Flaunt it.

All right, folks. So we got another podcast coming up in a little bit tonight with David Seaman. He'll be here in about 10 minutes. So until then, much love, my friends. Much love. Please support our sponsors. Blue Apron. Go to blueapron.com forward slash Rogan.

That's Blue Apron. Is that it? Why am I having a hard time finding it here? Where's the copy? Oh, there's two copies here. Okay. Blueapron.com forward slash Rogan. That was correct. And you will get two free meals. Delicious, healthy, nutritious, low in calories. I just started using it and I really enjoy it. I love the fact that I don't have to go to the supermarket when I'm busy. It's all delivered to your house. Give it a shot. And like I said,

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