The Megyn Kelly Show - Gad Saad on Victimhood, Fighting Back Against the Tyranny of the Minority, and the Differences Between Men and Women | Ep. 119

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Gad Saad, evolutionary behavioral scientist and author of "The Parasitic Mind," to talk about the rise of victimhood in society and Harry and Meghan, fighting back in academia, the tyranny of the minority and "the murder of truth," the differences between men and women, "the oppression Olympics," the collective Munchausen syndrome of our society, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, Gad Sad. Oh, you're gonna love this hour and a half. I don't know how long it was. It was wonderful. Time flew. It could have been two minutes. My team and I were just laughing because it was like a comedy routine. It was like improv, but it was deep and it was profound. And he was so insightful on so many issues. And if you don't already love Gad, you're about to. So prepare to add another hero to your roster because he is among the best and brightest of the people I've ever spoken to. Gosh, listen to his

story and listen to the lessons he's learned and where he stands now. A guy sitting in the middle of academia. He's a university professor of all things. He's actually a professor of marketing at Concordia University up in Canada with Canadian Debbie. And he is what's called an evolutionary behavioral scientist. He's going to explain what that means. And it's actually really cool. And it's going to involve at some point your middle finger and your ring finger. And you just have to stand by to see what I mean by that. Most importantly to me, he is the author of the amazing and very well worth your time book, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. And he hosts a very popular YouTube show called The Sad Truth,

sad spelled S-A-A-D, like his last name. So however you can get Gad, you should take him. And you should certainly take him in the interview that we're about to bring to you. And all I can say is, you're welcome. Enjoy. One minute away. Gad, how are you? Oh, so good to be with you, Megan. I am thrilled to be talking to you. What a fan I am of yours. This is exciting.

Likewise. You know, I tell you, I speak to a lot of interesting people, but none have triggered as much excitement as waiting to speak to you. So there you go. Oh, thank you for that so much. Well, it's funny because I had read your words long before I started to actually hear you saying them. And I didn't realize how funny you are. You are hysterical. Have you always been funny? I mean, has this been something you grew up with?

I did, actually. I remember my mother always saying not only that I was funny, but that I have there's an expression in Arabic where you have this kind of very sharp irony and satire to you. So, you know, I remember being 11 and 12 years old, you know, saying things that would make everybody shake their heads, if not crack up. So it's been with me for a while. Yes. One of the things that's so funny about it is you really are a deep thinking intellectual and have all the academic credentials and lifetime experience to back it up. But you are not afraid to just be the silly guy to make a point. You know, we were laughing before the show because we were looking at one of your videos of you were you shot it while underneath a desk talking about people who are so terrified of the orange man.

You know, I've been down here, orange Hitler or something. I can't remember if you put it. You know, I thought it'd be okay to come out now that Joe Biden won. And you just have this clever way of sort of putting the lie to some of these claims we hear from these lunatics on the far left woke side of things. That makes me laugh in a world in which we want to cry. Thank you for saying that. You know, I often get from, you know, highfalutin ivory tower dwelling colleagues saying to me, but, you know, don't you think it damages your brand by, you know, not always being professorial?

And that is exactly what someone who doesn't have a strong sense of personhood would say, right? I don't need to always be smoking a pipe while pontificating in the air to know that I am a professor, right? I am multifaceted. I'm the jokester. I'm the dad. I'm the serious guy in the classroom. So we're all multifaceted creatures, but it's only those who are insecure about their personhood that always try to display to the world one aspect of their personhood. And I to display to the world one aspect of their personhood. And I'm not, I'm simply not like that. I am authentic to a fault. I love that. I, I, I think I can relate. I, I've always used humor, sometimes weird humor. It's just who I am.

And, um, I was told by a very famous, well-known female anchor one time, don't do that. Humor is very dangerous. I wouldn't do that. And I was also told by O'Reilly of all people, never share anything about yourself personally, anything. And I, I blew off both of those pieces of advice. And I think wisely, right? Because it's like, if you don't give the audience anything to connect to, um, whether you're in your business or mine, what's the point? So true. Listen, I get, I mean, I'm sure you get probably approached more than I do, but I get approached all the time on the street. And I'm always amazed how much people know about me, right?

So, I mean, if my beloved Belgian shepherd has passed away and I was mourning, now, of course, I shared this information on my social media, but someone will come up and commiserate with me. Oh, you know, I'm really sorry to hear about your dog. And so by you creating a, you know, a personal touch with the people who follow you, it only adds to the intimacy of your words. And so I think contrary to those who told you otherwise, I think you've done well by ignoring their advice. Well, the woman turned out not to be my friend at all and actually is kind of out of the business now. So there I had the last laugh on that one because I don't think she's doing she's doing any sort of reporting or

journalism in any way now. OK, so let me let me start with this, because I think news wise, this is the thing that's that jumped out at me when I was reading up on you. What's up with Instagram permanently bannedAD, sad. Is that true? And you believe that? I mean, you would only think photos of me would increase their power, but then here they go again. No, but in all seriousness, I, it was actually a company that I've just signed with to license my show, Pot TV. They were the ones who said, hey, you have a large social media following, but why aren't you on Instagram? And so my answer was, well, I didn't think really it was for me, but they insisted that I get on. So this past Sunday, I wake up in the

morning and I say, you know what? Let me start dabbling with Instagram. So I create an Instagram account. Within two hours, it's gone. I have no idea why. I try to reach them. I try to pull all my connections to find out why it happened. No idea why it happened. So I waited two days, started a new account. And luckily after 48 hours, I'm proud to tell you that it's still up. Did they ever explain why? Nothing. Zero. Never heard from them. Hmm. That's suspicious.

You know, it's like, I do think that there are organized campaigns against people who have taken, you know, strong views against woke culture to get your microphone taken away, whether it's via Instagram or otherwise. They just, they want to silence your voice and they've become pretty sneaky and pretty effective at it. Oh yeah. I mean, listen, I've had also, I mean, my YouTube clips are often demonetized until I then have to file an appeal where they do a manual review. And to their credit, they more often than not reverse the demonetization.

I've had LinkedIn posts censored. So, for example, when I once said, you know, Joe Biden, this is before he became president. Joe Biden hasn't done anything for 47 years. But, you know, once he becomes president, that's when you're going to really see his productivity. That was construed as harassment and bullying. So a professor in the 21st century cannot make a very tepid pronouncement about an incoming president because that's harassment to whom? To him.

So, you know, this whole social media stuff is insane. I mean, you're the lawyer. There has to be some legal way by which we we remedy this nonsense. There is. There are a couple of avenues available to us. And I do think within five years and certainly 10, we're going to be looking back saying, remember that weird time when we just turned over American speech to Mark Zuckerberg and didn't complain about it? You know, I think we're just now at the awakening on many levels about what these tech giants have done to

our lives and the pushback. I don't think it's in full swing yet, but it's starting. Amen. Yeah, let's hope. So I, here's one of the things I love about you because I can really relate that you're a free spirit, you're a free thinker and anything that tries to sort of tamp down on the way you think or speak about things drives you nuts.

It makes you feel like neck under the boot and that's when you get fiery because you're affable and you're funny but you're also fiery and if you get pushed too far, you'll fight. I, I relate to all of that so fully gad, but I will tell you, you've done something I don't think I could ever do, which is how does a man like that make a career in academia? Well, first, thank you so much for, for, I feel as though we've known each other for 20 years because I've got close friends that don't recognize the difference between being affable as a default value and being a honey badger when pushed in a corner.

They're very different things. I could be the most loving guy when I'm tucking my children to bed, but I could be violent if you attack to mug me and rape my wife in an alley. My disposition didn't change. It's the situation that demands that I behave differently. So thank you for recognizing that. Look, the ecosystem of academia is the absolute worst place to be outspoken because that's where all of the imbecilic ideas originate from, right? So how have I been able to do it? I guess I have thick skin. I also think that there is, you know, a unique cocktail of factors that makes it a bit more difficult, knock on wood, to cancel me, perhaps because of my personal history. You know, I win in victimology poker or in the oppression Olympics. So it's very hard for somebody to come at me and, you know, give me their sob story because I'm always going

to outrank you. I'm also, you know, I do have a, I think a, as you said, a warm personality that, you know, makes people, you know, it's a bit more difficult to dislike me. I've had a guy, I won't mention who it is. He, he invited me on his show once. And then at the end of the show, he said, you know what? I'm pissed off at you. I said, why is that? He goes, because I had every desire to support the fact that I should hate you, but there's just no goddamn way to hate you. You're just such a cool guy. So I think maybe the fact that I can be joking, I can be warm. I don't take myself too seriously. It makes it a bit more difficult to come after me. I'm also tenured. So that at least

offers me some, you know, institutional protection belt. If there's ever a justification for having tenure, I'm the embodiment of that. So for all sorts of reasons, I think I've been able to survive in academia, but I can tell you that it's very, very difficult. It's not good for the blood pressure because, you know, I have to really rise to the challenges of being an academic and outspoken every single of every day. I'll tell you a very quick story that hasn't yet fully materialized.

I just received yesterday an email from my university whereby we're going to have to take a mandatory seminar in systems of oppression and intersectionality. Can you imagine how that's going to go when you try to peddle that nonsense at me? So it's tough, but someone's got to do it. So here I am. Here I stand, as Martin Luther said. I can do no other. So are you somebody, like when you say you're winning the oppression Olympics? I know you're from Lebanon originally from Beirut. You're Jewish, but I don't that doesn't count anymore. So it can't be that.

How would it tell us a little bit about your background and what got you to this gold medal in the oppression Olympics? Sure. So I was born in, as you said, Beirut, Lebanon in the 60s. My family were part of the last, you know, remaining Jews that had steadfastly refused to leave Lebanon. I mean, in all other Middle Eastern countries, there had been a, you know, an erasure of all Jews, Iraqi Jews and Syrian Jews and Egyptian Jews and Algerian Jews and so on. But Lebanon still had a very, very small pocket of Jews that remained, most of whom had left by the time the civil war broke out in 1975. And so we were part of that last group. I don't remember the exact numbers, but, you know, well under probably a thousand Jews left in Lebanon. And, but when the civil war broke out Megan it was impossible at that point to be Jewish because there were an endless

cocktail of ways by which you were going to imminently die one of which for example would be that if you went out into the street and were stopped by a militia roadblock the first thing that the militias would do is ask you for your internal ID card in Lebanon you have this internal ID, like a passport, but for internal purposes, domestic purposes. And prominently displayed on that card is your religion. And if you were stopped at a roadblock that had animus towards whichever religion you were, then you weren't going to make it out of that roadblock. And being Jewish, there weren't too many roadblocks religion you were, then you weren't going to make it out of that roadblock. And being Jewish, there weren't too many roadblocks that you were going to make it out. So

it really became impossible to be Jewish. We were there for the first year of the Civil War, saw things and experienced things that no human should experience in 20 lifetimes. But luckily, we were able to move to Canada and the rest is history, as they say. But that, like everything for all of us in our lives, winds up shaping you in an important way, right? It's like some events more impactful than others. And I think it's what eventually would give us the gift of Gad Saad's mind and your take on things and your absolute opposition to identity politics. I mean, there's a reason. It's not just that you feel emboldened to speak out about all this identitarianism.

It's that you must, you clearly, you must do it. I can see that because there's nothing you won't touch. There's nothing you won't say. It doesn't matter how much pushback you get. You don't believe in third rails of conversation. And as I listen to you talk about your history, it seems very a society that is organized along identity politics, you know, with an ethos of identity politics, because as I just mentioned a minute or two ago, everything is viewed through the prison. In the case of Lebanon, it's not your race, but it's what, you know, your religious belongingness, right? Which tribe do you belong to? Are you Maronite? Are you Shia? Are you Sunni?

Are you Jewish in our case? You know, are you Armenian? Are you this? Are you Shia? Are you Sunni? Are you Jewish in our case? Are you Armenian? Are you this? Are you that? So even the Lebanese constitution incorporates within the way seats are allocated in parliament based on religious belongingness. So the president has to be of this religion. The prime minister has to be of that religion. There can't be more than this number of ministers or parliamentarians if you are of this religion. So everything is viewed through the prism of identity politics. Now, again, if you were Jewish, you had a completely extra layer of challenges because, you know, your viewers may not know this, but everything in the Middle East is viewed through the lens of the diabolical Jews. So you now have diabetes. It's the damn Jews. Your wife cheated on you. Well, who put that thought in her head? It must have been the Jews.

It's sunny outside. It's the Jews. It's raining outside. It's the Jews. It's raining outside. It's the Jews. And it's everywhere. It's when you take a taxi and the taxi driver speaks to you, not knowing that you're Jewish. It's in school when the teacher or your fellow students are speaking. It's the politicians. It's the soap oper a lot of that reflex where it's OK to be bigoted towards certain groups as it is now seems to be OK to hate on Jews openly, as we saw a couple of weeks ago. This is something that was my Tuesday in Lebanon. And so it's really bad. And the Jews are truly the canaries in the coal mine. If we normalize this, you're next.

It's kind of the real, the big lie. That actually is the big lie, what they say about Jews. Yeah. I mean, in the context of Lebanon, the hatred towards the Jew might present itself in a slightly different way than it does in a Western context. In the case of the Middle East, it comes from, of course, the noble faith that otherwise loves everyone, right? You know, another reason, by the way, that I'm kind of a nightmare for a lot of the blue haired people is because it's hard to delegitimize me, right? So for example, if I criticize Islam, well, if you were to say the exact same thing, Megan, then they'd say, well, you know, you're just a Westerner, you know nothing. Or they could attack you by, well, you're not an Arabic speaker, well, you're not from the Middle East. So, you know, you have to go pretty far down the list of delegitimization attempts before you're able to find something against me. I've lived in the Middle East. I grew up in the Middle East. I'm an Arabic Jew. Arabic is my mother tongue

and on it, I know Islam very well. And so it becomes very, very difficult to try to cancel me, even when I take on the most cherished of sacred cows, precisely because I come armed with all of the knowledge and the identity that makes it difficult to cancel me. You know, as you were talking, it made me think about this weird coalition that seems to be forming on the side of reason. And it's very diverse. And it's it's very diverse and it tends to include maybe an odd collection of people who you wouldn't see a line necessarily on things. But you look at the people who are fighting these woke warriors or as John McWhorter calls them, the elect, a lot of Jewish people, a lot of Asian people, a lot of gay people, a lot of center left leaning people. And I think a lot of people within those coalitions who have fought for whatever cause at one point or another and have overcome obstacles only to now be told that none of those struggles matter because their struggle isn't the right one.

Their struggle isn't about their gender. Their struggle isn't about their color. Um, or in the case of Asians, not the right color, right? Close, but not quite. And I think people have just had it right. They've, they've all had obstacles thrown at them that they've overcome and they don't believe that life is about skin color or lady parts or what have you. And that's, that's, that's a dogma. You, you're not allowed to reject in today's elect society. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, what I would add to what you said is that some of the staunchest defenders of the foundational values that define the beauty of the West are usually immigrants such as myself. So, I mean, if I were to plug another person, I'm not sure if you've spoken to her or not yet, but Ayaan Hir know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, right? It usually, yeah, she's lovely. She's fantastic. Uh, you know, it, it usually takes

someone who's, who's sampled at the buffet of all possible societies to then warn the West that you really have a really, really good where, where you live, right? It's a, it? The West is an anomaly in the history of humanity, right? All of these incredible values that define the liberating framework of the West is not something that we see very often throughout history. And so it takes someone like me or someone like Ayaan and a few others to say, you know, we come from those other societies. And let me tell you, you don't want to recreate that from which we've escaped. So I do think there's this extra component, if I can use a term that I despise, lived experience. Our lived experience allows us to, you know, to shout from top of the mountain, beware,

you're heading down what I escaped in Beirut. Right. But that's what's also so infuriating, even to me as a non-immigrant, somebody who's born and raised here. I'm sure it's even more infuriating to you, actually having experienced what happens on the other side of this, that we're wasting it. We're killing, we're not just we're killing it. We're actively killing these values that have made the West so special. Exactly. I mean, you know, what my wife often tells me, you already live a very stressful life as a professor.

You're publishing tons of scientific papers and you have grants to write and graduate students to supervise and you teach and blah, blah, blah. Why do you have to take on all this? Because as you mentioned earlier, so kindly, when you're referring to my personality, I simply can't walk away from seeing the murder of truth. So if I were to analogize, there are two types of people that when they're walking by an alley

and they hear someone being mugged, they could kind of furtively keep walking, pretending that they never heard the screams of cry, you know, of help, or the one who says, what the hell is going on? I want to go into the alley and intervene. Well, for better or worse, I'm that guy when it comes to seeing what's happening to the West, it drives me absolutely insane. And I can, I'm being literal now, it truly doesn't help my blood pressure. My blood pressure has gone up over the past few years because I probably am always in fight mode, right? Again, not because I'm cantankerous, because as you said, I'm affable by disposition, but because I just can't stomach all this nonsense. So when I go after someone, say on Twitter, Seth Rogen or Keith Olbermann, it's genuinely because they piss me off.

So people think, oh, you're trying to ride their wave of fame, as if I need Seth Rogen so I could be recognized more on the street. No, it's because he pisses me off. He sits in Malibu with all of the vestiges of the capitalist world that he lives in. But yet he's Che Guevara. So, you know, he pisses me off. So I call him out. So I don't know if there's a way for me to extricate myself out of all these fights. But my physician would certainly like me to reduce my blood pressure. No, but you belong in them. I can relate to this. I you know, after I left NBC and people call me a racist and like the black lives matter thing,

it exploded and George Floyd and more than one person said to me, like, don't, don't touch race. Don't touch BLM. Don't go there. You know, like just sort of stay away from those issues. Right. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but I, I must, I gotta be me. These things, this is insanity. And I don't care what they say about me. Like, that's the thing when people come at you from that angle, it's like, oh, you're still on the other side of caring about that. I, I've left that side and it's wonderful. It's liberating over here. It can be stressful, but it's also really liberating. And I would say that the reason if you forgive me for sort of doing a psychoanalysis and you'll tell me if I'm wrong,

the reason you can do it is because you too have a very strong sense of self, meaning that you're not going to capitulate because the blue haired folks are going to come after you, right? You are a honey badger. Chapter eight of my book is probably wasted on you because I implore people to activate their honey badgers. Well, you you're a badger by disposition. And I think that's what I try to implore people to do. Not not everybody's going to be Megyn Kelly. Not everybody's going to be her name escapes me.

The one who was the press secretary for Donald Trump. What's her name again? Kayleigh McEnany. Yeah. I mean, that's another honey badger. You know, not everyone's going to be Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but from within your small sphere of influence, whomever you are, whether you are interacting with a person on Facebook or challenging your professor politely, get engaged. You know, don't diffuse responsibility onto others. And if everybody were to do their small part, I think we would reverse this nonsense, you know, very quickly. Up next, we're going to talk about the tyranny of the minority. And we're going to talk about a guy named Jack Phillips, who's been in the news lately. He's the baker, the cake baker out in Colorado State, who first he wouldn't bake the gay wedding cake for the gay wedding. And he won at the Supreme Court. Now an activist is back after him. And we'll see where this case goes. But he lost the first round and they just continue coming for Jack Phillips.

And he's not alone. That's next. The activists are everywhere. I mean, they're it's they're ubiquitous now. And the case I'm thinking of at the moment was one that made the news just this week where there's a woman named she's a trans woman named Autumn Scardina Scardina. And Autumn is a personal injury attorney in the state of Colorado and decided to pick on Jack Phillips, the guy who makes the cakes. Jack Phillips owns and runs Masterpiece Cake Shop. Right. You know this case. And he wouldn't bake the cake. Colorado. He wouldn't bake the cake for a gay wedding several years ago.

And the gay men filed a lawsuit against him claiming he was in violation of Colorado's anti-discrimination laws. And it went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. And Jack Phillips won. The cake baker won that case. And he actually came on my show at NBC. He's getting targeted again by this autumn. But when he came on my show on NBC, he was wonderful. So first of all, I had the gay couple on. OK, I talked to them and they made their heartfelt case about why it was hurtful not to get the cake. And there's lots

of places they could have gotten the cake from in Colorado. Didn't have to go through Jack Phillips, who doesn't, his Christian beliefs don't support gay marriage, but they did. Anyway, they made their case and he came on and he made his case too. And what you realize in talking to Jack Phillips is he's a real human being and he paid a real price for all the media coverage about him. Of course, they called him a rampant bigot and so on, But he stuck to his religious principle. And I have that teed up because he's back in the news. Listen to Jack Phillips. This is, I think, two, three years ago on NBC with me.

When you see those two young men talking about how it brought tears to their eyes and how they felt like second class citizens. How did that make you feel? Yeah. I apologized to the young man. I told him I'd sell them anything else in my shop, even offer to make other creative cakes. But it's been emotional for us as well. There were days where my wife was afraid.

Actually, afraid to come to the shop. We've had death threats, harassing phone calls. I've been forced by the government to give up 40% of my business, half of my employees. It's been emotional by the government to give up 40% of my business, half of my employees. It's been emotional on our side as well. So he did what he should do, which is he let it play out in the courts. He fought, he defended himself and the Supreme Court sided with him. So what does this Autumn do? She immediately goes in there and tries to get him to bake her a cake celebrating her gender transition from male to female. And he says, Jack Phillips says, if you want to buy like a previously

made cake in this shop, that's half pink and half blue, which is what she wanted. You may, but I can't use my artistic skills to engage in what's effectively speech to support your transition because I don't believe in it. You know, my religious beliefs do not are not. They won't allow me to support this. This woman just basically tried to tweak the guy. She got a court ruling out there in Colorado, which 100 percent is going to get reversed, saying that he violated their public accommodation laws, which don't allow discrimination again. Right. And it's like, first of all, let me just say public accommodation laws. They they're not for the case of Jack Phillips. They're for the case when you're traveling 100 miles and there's only

one hotel back in the day. Right. And they didn't want to make it so that you could kick out people of color, for example. And when when somebody sued over that, that that made a lot of sense because you're there were a lot of businesses like that. So you sue one, you're really suing them all. This is not that case. She manufactured this case against this guy. Notwithstanding the fact that he already fought and won this battle. But this all by way of saying the activists on the other side of this stuff are everywhere. They're clever and they're bullies.

So if those of us on the side of reason don't speak up in whatever way we feel comfortable, but I think it's time for it to be more vocal and more strong, we're going to lose and we're going to deserve to lose. Or if we don't lose and if we win at some point in the future, it will be much more costly to win. Right. So I always tell people we can either win the battle of ideas today, we can win it in 10 years where it will be more costly, or we could win it in 100 years where we'll win it by doing house to house fighting like happened in Beirut, right? So the choice is yours. So even if I were to be optimistic and say, we will win the battle,

it will come at a different schedule of costs, when you win the battle will determine how costly it will be to win it. And so this is why I always act with such urgency when I'm trying to get people, implore them to get engaged. By the way, your example of the trans person in question speaks to something that I talked about in my Canadian Senate testimony in 2017. I had appeared along with Jordan Peterson to speak about the then bill that had not passed called Bill C-16, which was a bill seeking to incorporate gender expression and gender identity under the rubric of, you know, hate crimes. And of course, my position was, I fully support the right of all individuals to live free of bigotry, but that there were some slippery slope issues. One of which is that while I believe that transgender people should not face any, you know, institutional discrimination, you can't force me

to celebrate your unique personhood, right? Like, I don't have to go on that ride with you, right? I could fully fight for your right to be free of bigotry, but you can't compel me to, you know, be celebrating your personhood. So, example, Canada, we're trying to create gender neutral societies where our biological marker is, let's say, removed from our passports because there is some small percentage, 0.01% of people who are non-binary. So 99.99% of people have to lose a fundamental defining feature of their personhood, which is their biological marker, because we need to cater to the possible hurt feelings of 0.01% of the people. This is what I refer to as the tyranny of the minority. Now, my testimony was very, very sober, very serious, very scientific. Well, one liberal senator, when it came his turn to challenge me, said,

you are supporting pro-genocide, to which I answered him. And you can go watch the testimony. It's available publicly. I said, you know, one might want to be careful to tell someone who escaped execution in the Middle East that they are pro-genocide and that kind of put him in his place. But that's the level of how lunatic the discourse is. It's funny because I was reading a piece by Charlie Cook, who I love, on National Review about the case of the baker, Jack Phillips. And he was saying, to your point, this is a quote, it's one thing for a person to demand that he be treated equally by his of 330 million people approve of him, endorse him or consent to. I can't read my own writing consent to be treated on his terms, whatever that that's a different thing. Like we not everybody has to accept you love you.

Those of us who are on the other side of these arguments understand that very well. This seems to have crossed over into another place where it's, no, you must actually approve of me and I will police your actual thinking and absolutely your language to your point about what's happening in Canada. Yeah, exactly. Look, I, one of the things that I talk about in the parasitic mind is that, uh, this idea of anti-fragility. Are you familiar with the concept? Do you know what that is? What do you mean? Robin DiAngelo's or the white fragility?

No, not white. Oh, anti-fragility. Yes, yes, yes. You're talking about how what we're breeding now is just the opposite on college campuses, how everybody, we're leaning into our fragility. Right. So anti-fragility. So if you take, for example, let me give a background explanation. So there's something in evolutionary medicine called the hygiene hypothesis, which basically says that if you want to have children grow up without any autoimmune diseases, say, for example, like asthma or respiratory ailment, then you want to have their immune systems exposed to allergens.

So kids who grow up with pets, kids who grow up with dust, kids who grow up on farms are much less likely to suffer from asthma because their immune system expects to be, wait for it, triggered in order to optimally work. And so I take this principle and I argue, well, that's a manifestation of anti-fragility, right? That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, as the old saying goes. So our brains, our prefrontal cortex are akin to our respiratory system. It expects to be exposed to allergens. In this case, the allergens are contrary positions, right? You may love and want

to celebrate transgender people and the next person doesn't, right? You may love and want to celebrate transgender people and the next person doesn't, right? In a free society, there are all sorts of opposing ideas that are floating around. And so to create an environment that is completely sterile, just like the sterile environment will result in asthma, the sterile environment of the universities will result in lobotomized imbeciles who run countries. And so anti-fragility is an incredibly powerful framework to try to understand some of the nonsense that we're facing today. It's so upsetting though, because of course, as you well know, we're just 100% going the opposite way when it comes to college campuses

and beyond. The safe spaces and the microaggressions and the triggering and the trigger warnings in books, never mind the beginning of conversations. It's like, oh, my God, we're treating everyone like they're these delicate little flowers. And what did they learn from that? That they're delicate little flowers that, you know, the the the fake hypothesis becomes the reality. And then the rest of us who still are living in the actual world have to deal with these little tissue papered people.

Well, exactly. I'll tell you a couple of incredible examples of this kind of, you know, fragile fainting. I've had several people file complaints against me with my university now. But wait till you hear this. Not from my duties as a professor, right? I mean, it'd be quite upsetting and worrisome if let's say students, my students were filing such complaints

because I would potentially be violating something that I shouldn't be doing, right? It's usually someone on Twitter with whom I have gotten into an exchange who somehow loses the battle, as often happens when you come after me and then I decide to roll up my sleeves and come after you. And so because they're now hurt that they have been publicly shamed, and usually I have a bigger forum than they do, they will file a complaint with my university, and then my university will contact me. Usually

they're very polite about it, but I'm usually quite indignant because I simply can't believe that they would even pay any attention to such complaints, right? But by which logic, by which framework does someone who lives in Australia file a complaint to my university because they felt unsafe from the 8,000 miles that they were away from me via Twitter? Your power. Exactly. Well, I know you call it ideological Stalinism and that that's the daily reality now on North American college campuses and and really, truly beyond. But that's this is all part of it. Right. That you you can't say anything. You can't say anything that might offend somebody that especially, God forbid, that they're in a lesser extent, white women. But my God, like if you pick a handicapped person over 40 who happens to be a person of color and maybe as an immigrant, I could go on. Boy, you just keep your mouth shut. You're just not allowed to say anything.

I mean, absolutely. And I'll tell you even something more worrisome these days. Every single email that I receive seems to be some accolade of what I call stories of first. Congratulations to person X. They are the first indigenous person to get a B plus in this course. Congratulations to transgender, disabled, person of color. I mean, so what if I win a Nobel Prize and I'm a heterosexual white male? Will I get some kudos, guys, or I need to be disabled or transracial or transgender? So, I mean, again, it goes back to the points we talked about earlier with identity politics. The beauty of the scientific method is that it liberates us from the shackles of our personal identities, right? I mean,

that's what makes it the epistemological marvel that it is, right? Because we found a way, an unbiased way. Now, this doesn't mean that some scientists are not biased. They're human, so they have frailties. But epistemologically speaking, the scientific method is a way for us to adjudicate, you know, across competing ideas. And so it doesn't matter whether I'm a Lebanese Jew or a transgender Muslim or whatever, the distribution of prime numbers are the distribution of prime numbers. But even something as non-identity based as mathematics,

Megan, has now become parasitized by this nonsense. So let me just give you the background to what I just said. I have a background in pure mathematics and computer science and so on. And so a few years ago, true to my prophetic satire, I released a clip where I satirically stated, although the way I presented it is as though I wasn't being satirical, that I had founded a new discipline called social justice mathematics. And so I went through all sorts of mathematical properties, you know, irrational numbers. And then I said, we need to change that word because to use the word irrational

marginalizes mental illness. And so I went through a whole panoply of mathematical operators and so on, you know, using my whole woke BS language. Well, guess what? Three, four years later, reality caught up to my prophetic satire and we now have social justice mathematics. Yep. We do. And everything. I mean, yes, there's, it's no longer a simple calculation, which, you know, for some of us was never simple. We finally learned the math and then they told us the math was, could just be disregarded based on skin color. The math didn't add up for certain groups. Then it wasn't good. But now, you know, there was a story just in the news last week about Xavier Becerra, the head of HHS, changing the language in the budget to provide for maternal health care. Except there's no you can't say mom anymore. There's no more maternal health care now.

It's it's health care for, quote, birthing people, birthing people. And and when pressed on it, I think it was Senator Lankford who pushed them on it, saying, come on, you can't say mother. Oh, you know, well, we'll look into it. But then there was another administration official. I think it was Becerra's deputy who said 100 percent. We stand by it. We're trying to be as inclusive as possible. So for those, I don't know, four people who are biologically female, who cross over and are trans men, who decide to still use their female organs and give birth to a baby, we have to get rid of the word mom because they consider themselves dads who gave birth. Well, you know what? The only reason you are still able to perform that miracle is because you are a biological woman. Well, you know what? The only reason you are still able to perform that miracle is because you are a biological woman. And if you identify more as a man, I will support you.

I will use your pronouns. I will be kind. But I am not going to deny that it is your uterus and your birth canal and probably your ovaries that allowed you to deliver this miracle. And that is something that is uniquely and awesomely female. And we're not giving it up to be inclusive, quote unquote, for 17 activists who don't even speak on behalf of the entire trans community. Well, so I'm going to take you back to 2002 because a personal anecdote was very prescient as to what was going to eventually be the story that you just mentioned, the birthing people. By the way, I refer to people as multicellular, carbon-based, non-arboreal agents.

Non-arboreal. Yeah, that's a much better way to say it. That's very inclusive, Gad. Well done. Thank you. So in 2002, one of my doctoral students had defended his doctoral dissertation. And so we were planning on going out for a dinner, a celebratory dinner. It was myself. We didn't have any children yet at that point, my wife and I.

So it was my wife, myself, my doctoral student and his date for the evening. And so my doctoral student called me earlier that day, before the night that we were going out. And he just said, I just want to give you a heads up. The person that I'm bringing to our evening is a graduate student in postmodernism, women's, and cultural anthropology. I said, ah, okay. So the Holy Trinity of bullshit. Am I allowed to say, or should I have said BS? Sorry. Yeah, go for it. No, no, you're good. Okay. And so I said, oh, okay. I understand. You want me to be on my best behavior. No problem. Mom's the word. I'm going to be good. Which of course wasn't going to be true. So about halfway

through the evening, I turned to the lady in question i said oh i i hear you're a postmodernist studying post-modernism yes yes uh okay well i'm an evolutionary psychologist so i do study you know things that are supposedly human universals therefore they are objectively true as far as we know do you mind if i propose what i consider to be some universal truths and then you could tell me how they are not universally true? Because postmodernism purports that there are no objective truths. We are fully shackled by our personal biases, by subjectivity, by relativism, and so on. So it's a perfectly anti-scientific framework. That was a very helpful definition. That was the most user-friendly definition of

postmodernism I've heard. Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that. So I said, okay, let's start with an easy one first. And so that's going to speak to your example, Megan. Is it not true that within Homo sapiens, within humans, women bear children? Is that not a universal fact? Do we need to go back to medical school and alter that understanding of how these things work? So she looks at me with complete disdain, rolls her eyes, scoffs at my misogynistic idiocy, and says, absolutely not. I said, it is not true that only women bear children. How is that? Explain this to me. She goes, well, there is some tribe, Japanese tribe off some Japanese island,

whereby within their mythological realm, within their folklore, it is the men who bear children. So by you restricting the conversation to the biological realm, that's how you keep us barefoot and pregnant. And so when I recovered from my mini stroke, I then said to her, okay, let me pick a less contentious, a less corrosive, a less poisonous example. Is it not true that from any vantage point on earth since time immemorial, sailors have relied on the following cosmological reality that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west? And here she used a trick called deconstructionism

as espoused by a French postmodernist called Jacques Derrida. And so deconstructionism basically says that language creates reality. So she said, well, what do you mean by east and west? And what do you mean by the sun? That which you call the sun, I might refer to as dancing hyena. I said, well, fine. The dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west. And then she said very indignantly, well, I don't play those label

games. So that student, Megan, in 2002, wasn't willing to concede. She didn't have a shared sense, you know, sense-making with me that we could agree what is women, what is man, what does it mean to bear children? What does it mean to say East or West or the sun? She wasn't an escapee from a psychiatric institution. She was an escapee from a graduate department in postmodernism. So that's what we are teaching our students. So not only are we poisoning them with parasitic garbage, but we're wasting their parents' hard earned monies. Up next, we're going to get into language control, right? Language control. And this came up recently, and I mentioned this with Gad on our trans activists interviews, you know, the two cis girls filed a lawsuit against

the school saying they shouldn't be forced to race against trans girls. And we had a great trans woman on the show who kind of corrected my language on this. And I gave it to her pretty quickly. I don't need to have those battles on the show just in trying to get a discussion started, but kind of a thoughtful exchange between Gad and yours truly on whether I should have done that. How much does the language matter in these debates? We'll get into that next. But first, we're going to bring you a feature here on the show called Asked and Answered, where we answer some of our listener mail. And Steve Krakauer, our executive producer, has got today's question. Hey, Steve. Hey, Megan. This one comes to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com,

where anyone can send in their questions and we can answer some of them on our show. This is coming from Becky Takashima. And she says she's a huge fan, always listens, loves your book. So because of those compliments, I'm asking a pretty personal question that she asked. But that is says she's a huge fan, always listens, loves your book. So because of those compliments, I'm asking a pretty personal question that she asked. But that is, she's curious how you feel about women taking the husband's last name. And if you legally change your name when you marry Doug, she says she's engaged to be married to her second husband, not simultaneously, she parenthetically says. She's not convinced she's going to change her name, but ask you to persuade her. Well, I wouldn't.

I would never dare. I mean, that's such a personal choice, right? I did not. I actually have done it both ways. My maiden name is Kelly. I was raised Megan Kelly. And when I married my first husband, Dan, I did change it to Megan Kendall and, um, I shouldn't have done it. Yeah. I loved Kelly and I didn't really want to give it up, but I was sort of raised in a more traditional family and kind of just like, okay, I'll do it. And I liked Kendall. It was a nice last name, but just, you know, it didn't sound right. That's not the name.

It wasn't my name. And then here's the story for you. When I got a divorce, I'm like, I'm totally changing it back to Kelly. And Brit Hume actually came over to me. He was like, don't do it and was trying to persuade me that Kendall was better than Kelly and that, you know, the sound of it was nice. And I don't know what his objection was specifically to Megan Kelly, but he really preferred the other name. And all I could say was Brit, I'm doing it. So you're wasting your breath. And I did change it.

And it's actually a fun thing because it's, I think it was in getting my updated license or social security. I talked about this with Janice Dean when she came into the show. That's when I first got to be friends with Janice. She had just married Sean and she was changing her name and I was changing mine back. And we met at one of those offices and became such close and dear friends. I didn't change it with Doug. Yeah. Brunt. It's tough. It's definitely not better than Kelly. As I remind Doug daily, you know, like if we were one of those couples, those super modern couples where you just choose the best last name, we 100% would have gone with Kelly. Hello. But it's fine.

It's strong. I like that. And it's my kid's name. So I really shouldn't rip on it publicly. It really just the reason I didn't take it is just it's not my name. You know, I just I just didn't feel connected to the name. And I understand some people take it like they want to have the same last name as your, your kids. I'll let the little neighborhood kids call me Mrs. Brunt because they know me as my kid's mom. That's fine. I don't know

for me, I didn't feel connected to it. I felt like Megan Kelly and I felt like a fraud when I had somebody else's name and I was never going to go back and do that again. And I feel like, I don't know, Becky Takashima, that's a good name. It's like Becky, it's got like the, it's got the, um, the consonants that you hit kind of strong. It's nice. But then Takashima, it's got like some, something elegant about it. I don't know. Makes me feel like, yeah, cool. She's somebody you want to have a Manhattan with her, a Cosmo. Um, so I don't know. It's, it's very personal. No judgment whatsoever for taking it or not taking. I think it's a very personal choice. I totally I like tradition. I'm not against it. This for me personally, it wasn't resonating. So I had to reject that one. Anyway, those are my two cents

for whatever they're worth. And it may not be anything. But either way, Becky, we appreciate you listening and you let us know if you update it so we can keep your email and stay in touch. And Steve, if there are other would be commentators or questioners, the address is? Yeah, Becky or anyone else can email us again at questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. By the way, she should. Becky, you do need to email us and let us know what the competing name is. Like maybe it's somehow even cooler than Takashima. I don't know. Takashima is probably at the top though, right? How are you going to, how are you going

to upgrade? It's a strong name. Anyway, I like it. Right. Yeah. She'll let us know. And now back to GAD after this. It's interesting. You know, a couple of weeks ago I had on a, um, we had a debate on trans athletes, trans. It's always trans female athletes that wind up in the news because they're supposed to just the biological girls, cis girls supposed to just shut up and take it. But sometimes they don't and they wind up in the courts and then they wind up in the news. That's how they wind up on this show. And we had a trans woman who was herself an athlete defending, to some extent, the right of these trans athletes to compete against the biological girls, the cis girls. And she kicked it off. And I like this woman. She was great. She was she was an honest broker. You know, she she gave on some point,

she said, you know, these these biological whatever the boys, the kids who are identified boy at birth, they should be forced to undergo gender, you know, hormone therapy and so on. They shouldn't be able to just run as boys in this in the spring and then as girls in the fall without doing anything. And that's, by the way, what what happened in this case in Connecticut. Her name was Joanna Harper. And but she kicked off the debate by challenging my language on calling the kids at issue,

the athletes at issue, biological boys. They're trans girls. They ran as boys in the spring, as girls in the fall. So they're trans girls. She didn't like me calling them biological boys. And I understand that the trans community doesn't really like that. They want to say that they were biological girls in this case all along. They had just been labeled the wrong thing and treated as the wrong thing. And, you know, we're given the wrong like sexual organs that didn't really correspond to who they were. I get it. I'm not like that into having that debate. Like if somebody wants me to say that they're a biological girl, even though they were, they have XY

chromosomes, I don't feel that strongly about it, but just listening to you talk and some of my other guests have made this point too, like the language battle might matter. Like maybe, maybe I shouldn't have. I, what I said to her at the time was, look, we're having a debate about trans runners and I really just need to like short form it. The biological girls versus the trans girls, you know, like I can't be using 50,000 words to couch every statement in a debate like this, but maybe, maybe it matters. Well, yes. I mean, while it is wrong to, from an epistemological perspective to say that reality doesn't exist outside of language, that is obviously an incorrect statement, but it is also true to your point that language matters,

right? Because that's the means by which you and I are able to have a conversation right now. So that, you know, within the Venn diagrams, there has to be a place where you and I agree as to what words mean. Otherwise, we can't have a conversation. Then it would be just pure chaos. And so I'm certainly not suggesting that we shouldn't be fighting linguistic battles. I think what I was pointing to in that personal anecdote. No, but I was suggesting it.

I'm saying I had sort of surrendered pretty quickly on it. Like, whatever. I understood her point. I didn't want to offend her. I kind of moved on. But maybe I should have stopped and said, what is inaccurate about calling these runners biological males? Yeah, no, I agree with you. So, so I agree with you that maybe you shouldn't have, uh, seeded that territory. So I'm with you there. Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to think about that more, you know, cause I, I have

no wish to offend, you know, that's not, that's never my goal. Like if I can give you something without too much hassle to myself, you know, and it makes you feel better, I'll usually give it to you. But I don't know, maybe this is a front in this battle that needs more thought because they they definitely do use language as a weapon. These wokesters, they really try to make you talk about things in exactly the way they want you to talk about them. And it's infuriating. Well, and here's an example, by the way, of exactly what we're talking about now. I predicted, as did certainly Jordan Peterson, because we're talking about trans issues here, that it wouldn't stop at people asking you address me by this pronoun. And I agree with you, by the way.

If I can address you in a way that you feel comfortable with, it's no skin off my back. I'm going to be, by default, polite and will do so, but don't make the government compel me to do it or my university, or don't tell me that every day you might change your gender identity. So I have to sit there spending 18 hours a day memorizing each person's preferred gender pronoun for that day, right? So there's a difference between being kind and nice and acquiescing as a default value or having someone, you know, compel you to do so. Now, we warned that this wouldn't stop there. So for example, it then went to, you know, please put your pronouns,

but it's not mandatory. Please put your pronouns in your official signature, right? Dr. Gadsad, he, him. Well, of course, I don't do it, but if I were a castrato, I would, right? But then it goes from, we're suggesting that you put it to, you better do it because otherwise you're being transphobic in your inaction. And so this kind of ideological fervor doesn't stop with the first inch that you see. It continues until there's a big blowback. What did you say? Castrato? If I read castrato? Castrato, yes. Without testicles. Well, I am without testicles and I too will not do it. No, no, sorry. You may not have official testicles, but you have metaphorical big ones.

I do. Thank you for noticing. Indeed, indeed. I appreciate that. Well, I wanted to talk to you about another thing that is from your book and I love the way you put it. And I know you've talked about this in other forms, but collective Munchausen's and that our society is suffering from collective Munchausen. Can you

explain that? Sure. So let me give you the background to how I coined that term. So in 2010, I had written a scientific paper in a medical journal where I was trying to use an evolutionary lens. And maybe if you want, we can at some point talk about what I do in my scientific work. I basically apply evolutionary psychology and the behavioral sciences. And so you were studying gender before it was cool. Exactly right. Indeed. And so, so I, I was writing a paper in a medical journal where I was trying to argue that

Munchhausen syndrome, Munchhausen syndrome is when someone faints in illness so that they can garner empathy and sympathy munchausen syndrome by proxy is even more diabolical this is when you take someone who's under your care your pet your elderly parent typically your biological child and you harm them so that you can garner the empathy and sympathy by proxy. Oh, look at me. I'm a poor parent who has a diabetic child, but in reality, they're not diabetic. You're screwing them up by imposing an injury on them or a medical condition. So it's really quite a dark psychiatric condition. It's usually women who suffer from it. And it's usually

their biological children who are, you know, in harm's way. And so I had written a, a, an academic paper on the topic. So that's how I was familiar with this concept of Munchhausen. And so now fast forward, seven, eight, 10 years later, where I'm seeing this orgiastic competitive Olympics where everybody is trying to establish that they are the biggest victim of all, right? So Jussie Smollett, it wasn't good enough for him to be a highly paid actor. I mean, fine, he's not Al Pacino, but he certainly was a well-remunerated actor. But that wasn't enough. If I really am going to get my ego strokes, I have to have a victimology narrative. And if I don't have a victimology narrative, well, then I'll manufacture one. Then we've got Senator Elizabeth Warren, who engages in

collective Munchausen by proxy, by usurping the real historical tragedy of a people by, you know, surfing on their history by pretending that she is, you know, Native American. And so that's how I had the epiphany of, aha, I shall call this collective Munchhausen and collective Munchhausen by proxy to explain this orgiastic. Why do people do it? Why?

Because, I mean, I understand it's like winning now to be victim-y, but what, is it satisfying some psychological need? Well, I mean, is it satisfying some psychological need? Well, yeah, well, I mean, what, what usually happens when, when you are, someone is a victim, you go to them, you're, oh, I'm so sorry, you pay attention to them, you, you, you, you, you commiserate with them, you, right? There's a, there's a whole slew of psychological needs that are uniquely met in, in, in me being a victim. And of course, there's also the idea that, hey,

maybe I'm going to overcome my victimhood, right? I mean, in my case, there is true, actual, brutal victimhood. By the way, I didn't mention this, but after we escaped Lebanon, after all the horrors that we went through, my parents returned to Lebanon because they still had business interests in Lebanon. And on one of their return trips, several years after we had emigrated to Canada, they were kidnapped by Fatah, one of the Palestinian groups, and some horrifying things were done to them and so on. So there's real power, if nothing other than to have people pay attention to you and having a victimhood story. Now, you might imagine to people who have truly been victimized, what I'm most proud of is that I've overcome my victimhood, right? I'm not defined by my victimhood. It's part of me, but I'm much larger than whatever happened to me in my childhood. 25 years after I escaped Lebanon, I would have recurring, unbelievable nightmares. And it was always of one of two types. I wake up, you know, in a complete terror state, because the gun that I was using to protect myself, this isn't the dream, it didn't actually happen. The gun that I'm using to protect myself against the bad guys that are coming to get

me in the house jams. Or in a second version of the dream, I run out of ammunition. And I actually did a sad truth clip on my YouTube channel where I discussed this. And I also discussed it in the book. And then all sorts of military folks wrote to me and said, oh, Dr. Saad, that's actually called the warrior dream. And many of us have had it, who've been in combat. And so yes, I have faced victimhood, but I'm bigger than my victim. I've overcome it. But to most of these four victims, they want to wallow in their victimhood, because that's what brings that's what garners them empathy and sympathy. It's grotesque. It's diabolical. I hate it. I know that you've made this connection. I

have as well. But hello, you're totally describing Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. That's what they've been doing for the past year. Fake victimhood. It's like somehow they reached the top of the castle. I mean, literally in their case, they made it to the castle and it wasn't enough. And so they decided to craft this narrative where we were all supposed to feel sorry for them. Yeah. So here I've got another explanation, if you'd like. By the way, I released a few months ago when the Oprah thing had taken place, where I said that my three heroines were Megan, Marco, Oprah, and Princess Harry. So just to be clear, these are my three favorite ladies in the world. But in any case, I've argued that. So let me step back. So if you take, for example, Hollywood celebrities,

why is it that they so often exhibit such weak epistemic humility, meaning they don't know what they know and the things that they don't know, right? I mean, Madonna is going to solve radioactive lake waste by throwing Kabbalah juice on it because, you know, she's better than physicists, right? So how is it that they overshoot their knowledge? Why is it that they have such poor calibration of their, you know, epistemic status? And I had written an article a few years ago where I basically argued, and it's going to speak to the point again of victimhood in a second. I'm going to link it all back. You know, in the deep recesses of my mind, when I am an actor who makes $20 million and there's, you know,'s 100 people outside my hotel waiting

to meet me because I'm some sort of God, because I pretended to play Superman, I know that in the deep recesses of my mind, I'm a fraud, that I'm not worthy of all that adulation. Because six months earlier, I was a barista at Starbucks until someone whisked me and made me the new Avenger or Superman or whatever the show is. So I know that I'm a fraud. But now one of the ways that I can fix that existential angst or that existential guilt is by showing to the world that I'm actually a lot deeper than that. I can cure cancer. I could cure aging, as Gwyneth Paltrow explains to us.

I can cure radioactive lakes lakes as Kabbalah juice Madonna has told us. Therefore, I am worthy of all the adulation. And so something similar, I think, happens with all the victimology stuff, right? Meghan Markle and Princess Harry and Oprah, they know that they're not worthy of having this kind of accolades. I'm not suggesting that, you know, Oprah doesn't deserve her accolades, but maybe not $10 billion. And therefore, maybe I could be more deserving of it if I can show that I was a victim and I've overcome.

That shows that I'm truly special. Now, if I'm not a victim, then I will manufacture one. So I really think it all boils down to a sense of existential guilt, which I then redress by manufacturing a BS story. Hmm. You know, I also think in her case, Markle's case, she was getting beaten up by the press after all of her, you know, behind the scenes stuff in the palace. And she tried to wokeify Harry and she went to some women's shelter and wrote messages like be strong on bananas and thought it was going to be life changing.

And lo and behold, it wasn't. And people didn't find that particularly empowering from her. A woman who gave up her country, gave up her religion, gave up her entire family, gave up her job to move across the pond so she could marry a prince. So they really didn't they didn't really want her feminine empowering messages on bananas. But it happened. Anyway, the press started to turn on her as it as it often does. I mean, they just love to build you up and tear you down no matter who you are. And in her case, she gave him enough fodder that they had it. And I think for her, it was a bit of a Hail Mary, too. Like it was a you know, you can't write any more bad things about me because I am someone to be pitied. I am someone who has mental health challenges.

I am someone who's been the victim of bullies in the press and inside the palace. And I'm warning you all, I, I'm not going to take any more of this because I'm playing the ultimate card. Like the suicide card is the ultimate card, um, to shut you down because I don't, I don't like what you're saying about me. Exactly. It's diabolical, isn't it? But by the way, this kind of victimhood ethos, I see it even in the context of day-to-day life in academia. And here, I don't mean to belittle the real possibility that people do suffer from real mental health disability issues. So I'm certainly not trying to do that. But I've been a professor long enough, almost 30 years, I'm in my 27th year, that if I were to do a

longitudinal study of the number of emails that I received from the Office of, I don't remember the official name, but the Office of Disabilities at my university, say in 1994, when I had finished my PhD and became a professor to now, there seems to have been a huge increase in the number of disabled students. Now, some might fully be true that they truly do suffer from very serious situations. And of course, we should fully accommodate them. But for example, when you suffer from exam-induced anxiety, yeah, that's called life, right? Right. Most people, before they go to an exam, their heart races, right? It's called the natural state of things.

But now we pathologize that. So therefore, I get all sorts of students that require extra accommodation. Now, I never find out what their stories are, and I don't want to find out. I just simply acquiesce to whatever the office wants me to do because I'm just mandated to do so. But if I just look at the longitudinal data, there seems to have been a huge spike in students who suffer from these sort of amorphous disabilities. So again, that speaks to the fact that we are rewarding this fragile mindset. And if I may, I want to share a personal story with you that is exactly the opposite of the ethos of victimology.

And I discussed this story in The Parasitic Mind. So after I finished my MBA, I had always planned on going on to do my PhD. I always wanted to be an academic. But after I finished my MBA, I was visiting several doctoral programs that had invited me, one of which was at the University of California, Irvine. And at the time, one of my brothers lived in Southern California, and he was very keen on having me work with him. He was in the software business. This is in 1990. And so he said, you know what, why don't you consider, you know, putting on the proverbial suit after your MBA, working with me for a few years,

and then you can go back and, you know, obtain your PhD. Now, I wasn't really interested in doing that, but, you know, he's my older brother. So I was, you know, agreeing to, you know, I was humoring him by agreeing to his suggestions. Now, when I returned to Montreal and my mother had caught wind of the fact that my brother was trying to convince me to take a break after my MBA, she took me to a side room and she said, God, I heard about this story. Are you really thinking about it? I said, well, why do you ask? She goes, well, do you want people to know you as somebody who dropped out of school? So let's step back here and think about this.

I had a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science from a leading university. I had an MBA from a leading university. But to my mother, if I walked away temporarily from my education, I would bring shame to the family as a school dropout so you know part of who we are is our genes but part of who we are is the cultural ethos that we are inculcated with so I come from an ethos of winning right now I'm not saying I did my PhD because of my parents of course not but that's the kind of level of excellence. That's the threshold of excellence that is set for me. And that's, by the way, one of the reasons why people say the Jews are so successful,

because you can hear similar stories to the one that I just enunciated across many, many Jews. Is that not what we want to be bottling? Or should we be saying, please roll over, suck your thumbs in a fetal position and cry that you're a victim. It annoys the hell out of me. Where's personal agency? Where's dignity? Where's the strive for excellence? We're not breeding students who do this. And then we call that empowering. We call that leaning into one's victimhood, one's weaknesses, one's traits that are not so attractive, empowering. You're just supposed to embrace them and that's owning it. It's like the whole,

I said this recently, the whole Naomi Osaka thing. She doesn't like to talk to the press. She has some social anxiety when speaking in public, allegedly. It didn't stop her from going out there with her BLM masks and making points when it came to her social activism. But when someone wants to ask her why she's not so good on clay, suddenly her mental deficiency or challenge, whatever it is, makes it impossible for her to go out there. OK, back in my day, you know, my mom would have said that boo effing who get out there and do your job. This is part of the job. All the other players are doing it. You're not going to be the weak one who's going to be crying in her soup back in her hotel room. This is how life works. And honestly, Gad, if I had avoided the microphones, every time the

press said something nasty about me or went to the place that hurts, I wouldn't have anywhere near the success I have right now. Right. It's like, it's part of it. Overcoming challenges and difficult situations. It is, as you say, life. And instead, now we've got 50,000 articles on how she is a leader and is setting the example on female empowerment. They taught her in my daughter's school last week as an example of that. And I said, no, no, Yardley, she's not. Let me give you another way of looking at it. Yeah, you're exactly right. I would add this. I think we both have young, pretty young children. I don't know how you feel about this, but let's explore it. For example, I find it ridiculous that we have to spend 600 different events to celebrate someone graduating from kindergarten or grade six. My doctorate at Cornell garnered less attention than my daughter's grade six graduation. Now, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be celebrating her graduation, but I'm not

sure that we need to book summer of 2021 with 7,000 events because you graduated from grade six. Now, this is not an attack on my daughter, right? But it's a manifestation of that celebratory ethos, right? It's the trophy, right? I mean, I used to be a celebratory ethos, right? It's the trophy, right? I mean, I used to be a very competitive soccer player, right? When we played soccer, I always joked that if I had a recording of the trash talking that went on amongst competitive soccer players

on the field, that every single one of us would have been sent to St. Quentin for linguistic capital crimes, right? But guess what? I learned to love again, right? You trash talk me, I trash talk back to you, I scored a goal on you, you called my mother this. Now again, I'm not suggesting that we be crass and uncouth and impolite, but anti-fragility breeds strong personhood. So stop being wimps. And the irony of it all is that these are the nastiest people on the internet. The ones who want to lecture the rest of us on their mental health and how to protect it and how we need to not bully and use the proper inclusive language are the meanest, nastiest

bullies out there. No kidding. Absolutely true. Well, I mean, Freud was wrong on many things, but he certainly wasn't wrong about the process of projection, was he? So let's talk about your background on psychology and your understanding of the differences between men and women. And this is one of the reasons

why you take editorial risks, I think, in your selection of topics that you'll focus on. So this is good. You were actually talking about the differences between men and women and the differences in what hormones will do to your testosterone levels and so on. And like a woman may buy more beauty products when a certain part of her cycle, right? Do I basically? Yes. Thank you for having done your homework. Yeah. So what I basically do in my scientific work is I apply the evolutionary lens. So in the same way that we could use evolution to explain how a species has evolved, the way we explain how biodiversity exists.

Right. Why does the salamander make the way that it does? Why does a particular flower have its morphological features? So evolution can be used to explain the evolution of biodiversity, but it can be also used to explain a particular trait in a particular animal. So why do we have the pancreas the way that we do? Why is our eye shape the way that it is? Now, evolutionary psychology is simply taking this exact framework and applying it to the most important organ that defines our personhood. That organ is called our brain, our mind, right? Now, to all sorts of imbeciles, this is a contentious idea because they're

perfectly happy to use evolutionary theory to explain everything as long as the everything stops at the neck. Everything above the neck must be due to some mysterious other force. It must be due to culture, it must be due to socialization, it must be due to God. But don't you dare, Dr. Saad, use the same evolutionary principle to explain the behavior of the mosquito, the dog, and humans. Humans somehow exist on a supraplane above their biology. Now, in some small way, of course, it is true that humans are both a cultural and a biological animal. But to negate the fact that we are biological beings is basically to reject realities that are as obvious

as the existence of the sun. And so what I do in my scientific work is I take evolutionary psychology and I apply it to understand human behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular. So the example that you said about the beautification products. So with one of my graduate students, I had done a very, very large study where we looked at the patterns of consumer choices and preferences that women engage in as a function of where they are in their menstrual cycle. The idea being that, of course, these kinds of physiological and behavioral changes didn't come mysteriously from God or from the cloud. They came because of certain evolutionary principles. So, for example, when it comes to beautification, it turns out that

across many, many animals, females of the species are much more likely to engage in sexual signaling when they are in the maximally fertile phase of their cycle. So for example, female chimps will have engorged and reddened genitalia. Well, fortunately in the human context, it's not quite as conspicuous, but women will engage in behavioral patterns that speak to the exact same phenomenon. So for example, women are much more likely to dress in a scantily clad manner, to wear stiletto heels, to beautify their faces with cosmetics when they are in the maximally fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. Wait, now here's a question for you. Is that true of a lesbian in a lesbian relationship too?

Oh, wow. What a great question. So I was going to answer exactly that question with one of my graduate students who has since gone on to pursue other interests, where we were trying to take all of these evolutionary principles that I've been studying for nearly three decades and precisely applying in the same sex market. So regrettably, I don't have that answer for you, but I was hoping to have that answer for you. Yeah, so you've got to go get it. Because, you know, obviously the question is, right, when there's no chance of biological reproduction with this mate, do I engage in the same, you know, strategies?

It would be interesting to know, or even just, I don't know, like a couple in which I would assume like the guy had a vasectomy. All the same instincts are probably still there, even though they know reproduction is not possible. Exactly. So one of the ways that we were planning on to getting at what you're so beautifully getting at is through the sex roles of the same sex couple. So they are working hypothesis.

And again, I'm sorry, I'm going to leave the listeners, you know, without closure because we haven't read more. Wanting more. Thank you. What we were hoping to study is, for example, when it comes to same-sex male couples, of course, there are, as you know, there are what are called versatiles. There are what's called exclusive bottoms and exclusive tops. Are you familiar with these terms? No. No.

So an exclusive top would be someone who is the giver in the sexual act. Oh, in a male sex relationship. Okay. Yes. I've got it figured out now. Took me a second. Yeah. Okay. And of course, so you get the bottom and you get versatile. And so what we were hoping to study is whether that sexual differentiation, since in lieu of the fact that you don't have male and female in this case, you have same sex, but with different sexual proclivities, might we be able to see the same sex differences in the heterosexual context replicated in this way with same sex? So I was really, really excited about that project. And I actually had discussed it, uh, on air once with, uh, Dave Rubin, uh, but it never materialized. So maybe if some,

because I have also discussed male sex positions with Dave Rubin, that literally did happen on my, on my program. Wait, I have, I have one question about something that you wrote, um, because it raised sort of a joke that I've made before for me. And I'm like, oh my God, I was actually right. This is from your paper in 2009, the effect of conspicuous consumption on men's testosterone levels. And you write in here about how testosterone levels increase after driving an expensive sports car for some guys and decrease after driving an old family sedan for guys, some guys, and decrease after driving an old family sedan. And then there was a line about how testosterone also increased when

men's social status was threatened by wealth displays of a fellow male in the presence of a woman. And Gad, let me tell you what this reminds me of. Some girlfriends and I were joking about, forgive the term, but all these dick pics that guys decide to send to women. It's like, no woman wants that. And I've said, like, jokingly, you'd be better off sending her a picture of your pay stub. I think I'm right. I think you have proven me right in this. You are 100% right. So many things to unpack here. Okay. Number one, I have to tell you, and I'm not trying to blow smoke up your proverbial, you know what, but I've never been on a show where someone is as well prepared. That's why you are the honey badger, Megyn Kelly. So thank you for having actually read those papers. It's been my pleasure. Yeah, thank you. Regarding the, to use your term, dick pics, I recently held a chat with Eva Lovia,

who is a, that's her professional adult film star name. I've been on her show and she's been on mine. And we've talked about dick pics. And there what I tried to explain exactly in line with what you said, men are exhibiting a lack of theory of mind in this case. Theory of mind is the mechanism by which, you know, in order to have human sociality, you have to have theory of mind, meaning that I have to know what is they fail very early developmentally on these theory of mind tests. Well, men in sending pictures of dick pics are failing in theory of mind because what are they doing? They're saying, I, as a man, I am sexually aroused by visual stimuli.

Therefore, it must be the case that women are under the same physiological response patterns. Therefore, if I send her a picture of my genitalia, she's going to find me desirable beyond belief. And so that's why they should be taking Dr. Saad's Evolutionary Psychology 101 course, because as you said, women are not interested in dick pics. But now to come to the conspicuous consumption testosterone, do you want me to comment about that study?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I understand the reason why the testosterone increases when you see another wealth display by a fellow male in the presence of a woman over there. It's like, oh, he's doing better than I am in the society that values wealth. Exactly. But I'm going to give you the background to both the study that you just mentioned and the previous one where you talked about the menstrual cycle. I decided to run both those sets of studies. One was published, the menstrual cycle one was published in 2012.

The conspicuous consumption testosterone was published in 2009, I had chosen two graduate students to work with on these projects precisely because I wanted to find physiological-based phenomena that I could demonstrate so that it would make it a lot harder for social constructivists to argue, oh, but Professor Saad, that's just due to social construction, right? When you're showing data that is hormonal-based, it's a lot more difficult to argue that it just due to social construction, right? When you're showing data that is hormonal based, it's a lot more difficult to argue that it's due to random patriarchy and socialization. So that's kind of the background for why I honed in on these studies. Yeah, probably of all the studies that I've ever published and I've received tons of media

attention to, the one that you honed in on is the one that garnered, not surprisingly, the most attention. But let me give you some sort of cool background stories to that study. So this was a study that I had done with a former graduate student of mine named John Vungas, who's now a professor himself at Ithaca College. As we were running the studies, well, first of all, I always joke, although it's true, that imagine trying to obtain scientific grant money where you are saying we'd like to rent a Porsche for weekends for scientific purposes and actually convince a scientific granting agency to give you that money. Well, guess what? We were able to do it. You did. Yeah, exactly. But what was incredible is one day I received, it was maybe 9.30 at night,

I received a frantic call from my co-author, who was then my graduate student. And usually, they don't call me that late at night. And he's frantic because one of the participants had jammed the gear of the Porsche, and now it was going to cost us a lot of money to fix it. And we didn't. So that's sort of some of the background to, you know, you only get to see the final version of the study. You get this erudite final product. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, it's like, holy shit, it's stuck in fourth gear. Exactly.

Yeah. But that's what's beautiful about science is that it's such a beautiful, fun journey. I mean, that's why I always tell people that if you're really going to make a go of it as an academic, you have to view research as play. I mean, it's serious. You have to do it seriously and in an austere manner. But I can't believe that I'm being paid to look for interesting problems and go out there and see if the data supports my hypothesis. It's like I'm a kid in a candy store. It's wonderful. Don't leave me now. We got more coming up in 60 seconds. Let me ask you a personal question on this same sort of subject. My audience has heard me say

before, I've always sort of thought that I was a woman who had a little bit more than the normal share of testosterone. And I've said that just in terms of the way I approach life, a lot of times I feel more like a guy in my thinking. Today, they'd be telling me I secretly am a guy and I need to transition to man, even though I'm all woman. This is one of my problems with this whole these transgender activists. Stop trying to recruit people from our gender. We're fine. Women being a woman is a big tent. Being a man is a big tent.

You have to cross over because you're not you're not conforming in every way. Sorry, that's an aside. But I actually did. And, you know, all the many batteries of tests that you get annually, whatever. At one point they tested testosterone. Maybe I was pregnant. I can't remember why trying to get pregnant. And it was totally normal. So I don't actually have higher levels of testosterone. So what do you think explains, you know, a woman who

thinks more like a man and that has a higher risk tolerance, like a lot of men do and so on. And a man who may have more sort of traits of a female, but, but isn't, you know, they're not gay and they're not trans and that, you know, like if the, if the actual hormones don't reflect that, how does that happen? That's just all socialization, would you say? I mean, look, uh, on any, you know, most traits are normally distributed, right? Meaning that, you know, most people are at some mean. So take, for example, height. Very few people are six foot eight and very few people are, you know, four foot nine. And there's kind of a normal distribution. So even within, you know, clearly

sexually dimorphic traits, meaning, for example, you know, men on average are taller than women, men on average way more than women, the statistical distributions overlap, right? You know, every single WNBA player, female player in the women's league of NBA is taller than most men walking today, right? That doesn't mean that it falsifies the idea that men are taller than women, right? A single datum doesn't disprove something that is true at the population level. So whether it be testosterone or whether it be social dominance orientation, right? So for example, some women are a lot more socially dominant than even most men. So you can take a test to see how you score on social dominance.

I suspect that if you took it, Megan, you'd probably score high on that. I think it's a combination of genes and socialization. For most traits, we are an inextricable mix of both. And if I can give a vivid way of remembering this, because it's one that I use in my lecture. So take, for example, a cake. When you first begin to bake the cake, before you actually do anything, each of the ingredients is clearly shown. Here are the eggs, here's the butter, here's the baking soda, here's the whatever. But then I bake the cake. Now it becomes an inextricable melange. If I told you, please point to the eggs, you wouldn't be able to. Please point to the sugar,

you wouldn't be able to. Well, nature versus nurture is exactly that. For most traits, we are an inextricable mix of both. The only question is, depending on the trait, will determine how much is nature or nurture. So to answer your question in a long-winded way, it is both due to your genes and to your environment and your socialization. Now, I could tell you this, by the way. You might want to test this.

There is something called... Now, some people disagree about this morphological trait, but there is quite a bit of evidence in support of it. There's something called the 2D, 4D digit ratio, which I'm sure you'll run quickly after our meeting to measure yours. The 2D, 4D is basically your index finger to your ring finger. And this is a sexually dimorphic trait in that. Wait, I'm doing it now. You put your index finger next to your ring finger? That's right. So in women, the lengths of those two fingers tend to be the same length. In men, the ring finger is quite a bit longer than the index finger. Now, you might say, well, why?

So who cares? What is that? Well, it turns out that that morphological trait is a putative marker of how much you've been exposed to androgens, testosterone, in utero. So on average, men will have longer ring fingers than index fingers. Women will have more equal, but within men and within women, there will be differences so that some men will have more feminized digit ratios. And so I'm wondering, I'd be very curious whether you want to share it now or at some future point, if what you're saying is true about you, quote, having higher point, if what you're saying is true

about you, quote, having higher testosterone, even though you ended up not having, I wonder how your 2D, 4D ratio would look like. All right, I'm looking at it right now. So when I tried to take the right index finger and shove it over there next to the left ring finger, I couldn't do it. It wasn't, but now just putting my left hand up in the air and looking at them, you know, because the middle finger gives you a sort of a standard by which to judge where they land. My ring finger is slightly longer, but they're close. It's not dramatic. But it's slightly longer. They're not equal. No, they're not.

You're a man. You should be transitioning. You and your husband are in a same-sex union. Oh my God, that's great. I qualify now as one of the protected classes. One more. Bingo, you're no longer a white woman with zero oppression Olympic points. That's right. My God, I'm giving you a run for your money, Lebanese Jewish man. Well, we've got all of my audience members now doing the same thing and questioning what happened to them in utero i my biggest problem in utero is uh 100 my mother slept on whatever side smushed my right face i'm telling you i'm so much more attractive on my left than my on my right and i i don't not to get too detailed but i'm telling you like all the way down let's just say i'm better on my left than my right and i know happened. She was like having a martini and smoking a cigarette

and sleeping on the side that smushed my right side. Okay. Hey, you want to hear something that's brilliant about some evolutionary psychology. And we can probably talk about this for another 10 hours. Uh, breast symmetry changes as a function of where you are in your menstrual cycle. What? Yes. Yeah. So it gets better or worse when you, when, when is it ideal? If I remember correctly, when, when you are in the maximally fertile phase of the menstrual cycle, that's when all physiological markers are at their best. So your skin use better and so on. So I'll give you a background to the story. So several years ago, when I was working with that graduate student on the menstrual cycle stuff, one of the studies that we wanted to do, because we are

based in Montreal and Montreal is sort of a hotbed of exotic dancer clubs. It's not quite as puritanical as some places in the US. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we wanted to run a study to see whether the behaviors that exotic dancers, female exotic dancers would engage in as a function of where they are in their menstrual cycle. So for example, how much tips they receive as a function of their menstrual cycle. So I was at a conference, an evolution conference, a scientific conference, and one of my good friends comes up to me and says, hey, Gad, I want to tell you about a study I'm doing with some of my co-authors.

And he tells me that exact same study, which basically shows you how, you know, in science, just like in anything else, you better get to it quickly because someone else will beat you to the punch. So it turns out that they ran the study rather than us. And if I can share their data with you, it turns out that female exotic dancers receive larger tips when they are in the maximally fertile phase of their menstrual cycles. Now, this could be due to two- Tips. That was tips, audience members. Yeah, tips. T-I-P-S. Yes, indeed.

Right, right. And now there are two separate mechanisms that could explain that effect. One, it could be that the women are, for example, dancing in a more lascivious manner. Yeah, they're bringing their A game. They're bringing their A game because they're feeling more sexy and so on. Two, it could be that the men are detecting subtle cues. So to go back to our earlier point where you asked me, so when is it that they are at their

best? So it could be that men are detecting subtle cues of fertility, that your you looks better, your breasts look more enticing. And so either or, I don't think in their study they were able to tease apart which of these two mechanisms were operative. I suspect that's a bit of both. But that shows you how there could be all kinds of cool stuff that you could study at the intersection of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior.

Well, I think it does go to show you, too, that like maybe if you have a big job interview, you schedule it for the for your the day you ovulate. Or maybe if you're trying to catch a man, you know, who you're really interested in, schedule it for a certain day, because we women can can pretty well predict when that time is coming. Anybody who's tried to get pregnant knows exactly how to check her ovulation schedule. Who knows, you know, in this day and age. And it also, of course, puts the lie to this story that we have nowadays that there is no thing as biological sex even. I mean, that's really an argument to our point earlier that, you know, we're just all the same and everything else has been socialized and, you know, that there's no inherent difference between us, notwithstanding the thousands of years of evolution we have,

and we can look back and see. And just with our own heart and eyes and ears and, you know, senses, we know it isn't true, but too many of us go along, right? So as not to offend, which leads me to my last point with you, Ged. One of the things I love, I loved this about you. This is so funny. I love the way you put this. This is why they call you the Gadfather. You touched on it earlier, how to help, how to fight. And you were talking about, you wrote about academia and how it selects for cowards, the present company obviously, except it. And you were saying an academic who's too insecure to step into the public arena and who hides from difficult conversations is not worthy of being labeled an intellectual.

Then you write, moving forward, this is the part I love. It is imperative that we attract people into academia who not only possess the necessary cognitive abilities to succeed, but also the obligatory temperaments to be Navy SEALs of ideas. Yes. Yes. It's not just academia. It's everyone. It's all of the people listening to this. Anybody who's on the side of reason and sanity and wellness and rejecting all this nonsense. We all must be Navy seals of ideas. How? How does that appear for my imaginary listener, Madge, who's in Iowa? She's not going to be an activist. She's not going to start a podcast, but she's with us and she wants to help. So how should she be compelled? How could she be a Navy SEAL of ideas? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so first, before I answer that question, let me just say that of all the people

who write to me, and I get quite a sizable number of communications from people from around the world, the ones that bring me the greatest pleasure perhaps are the corrections officers, the police officers, the special forces folks, precisely because I admire such people, right? I despise cowardice. I despise tepidness. History is not shaped by apathetic fence-sitters. And therefore, when I get a guy like the one who killed bin Laden, who came on my show, I think he's been on your show recently too, right?

Yes, he was great. And these are the guys who write to me and say, oh my God, I love you, Professor Saad. Guess what? I really love their compliments. How can we get, what did you call her? Marge? Marge? Madge.

Madge with a D. Yeah, how do we get her to, we tell her that, listen, we will lose this battle. We will lose this great experiment called the West if every person who has the ability to weigh in doesn't. And so I recognize that not everybody could have the courage of that gentleman who went and killed bin Laden. But at least if we're at war, everyone should contribute in some way. Some people will be nurses, other people will be making the food for the troops. But we are all saying,

I'm going to stand up and be counted for in this battle. So again, me saying that I want people to be Navy SEALs also recognizes that not everybody has the capacity to be a Navy SEAL. A lot of people who want to be in the Marines go through hell week and then fail the physical component, right? But they could still then find some other way to channel their contribution. So I don't want people to feel as though they can't participate unless they are a supreme intellectual Navy SEAL. Just please don't diffuse the responsibility onto others. Activate your inner honey badger. And again, for those of you who don't know why I use the honey badger, the reason why I use that imagery is because a honey badger is the size of a small dog, and yet it is so fierce that it could withstand the attack of six adult lions. They will run away

feeling intimidated because of its ferocity. So if you have a set of ideas that you think are well articulated, that you're well informed, that you could defend, then be a honey badger. And by doing so, then you will be a Navy SEAL of ideas. And Godspeed, that's all I can say. Yes, this is why everybody needs to buy the parasitic mind. Your chapter eight is called to action. This is just a couple. You've got to read it for yourself, peeps,

but trust me, it's worth your time. Do not be a bystander as truth, reason, and logic call out for your help. Do not fear the loss of friendship. Anyone who is willing to end a friendship because of a reasoned difference of opinion is not worthy of your friendship. In the battle of ideas, every voice counts. Even if your circle of influence is limited to your family, friends, and neighbors. And then you say, my best advice is if you're going

to fight, go all in. Make your engagement count. When dealing with miscreants, appeasement is seldom a winning strategy. Be a honey badger. Never back down when attacked by ideological bullies. And you say, I implore you to get engaged. The cure is before you. It is the pursuit and the defense of truth. It is the recommitment to the virtues of the Western scientific revolution and the age of enlightenment. March on, soldiers of reason. Together, we can win the battle of ideas. Oh, preach. Preach, Gad. Professor, love you. Love the way you think. And I'm so honored to get to speak to you. Likewise. It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much, Megan. And I look forward to staying in touch with you. All right. And don't miss Friday show. This is actually going to be fun. I've got

to know Kevin McCarthy a little bit over the past few years, you know, the house minority leader, he's a great guy and she's constantly in the news. You know, of course, they've painted a caricature of him in the media that doesn't bear up to reality. So I think you're going to get to know him firsthand and you're going to be entertained. You're going to like him. He's smart, strategic thinker, along with Joni Ernst, who is a senator out of Iowa. Remember Joni when she ran and she did the thing about castrating pigs and people were like in New York, they were like, huh? But across real America, they were like, cool. She's cool. And we're going to talk to them about the state of play in Washington and what's

going to happen now that we're already looking forward to these midterm elections. Are the Republicans likely to regain one or both houses? And are we likely to see the filibuster go away in this contentious body that Senator Ernst is in? I mean, that would really change America as we know it. So anyway, a lot on the table. Looking forward to this discussion. We'll get into America and its legislative state, something that we don't talk about enough on this program, but there's plenty to discuss. So don't miss it. Go ahead and subscribe while I have you. See you next time. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.