The Megyn Kelly Show - Happiness in Relationships and Work, and Dangers of Social Media, with Gad Saad | Ep. 595

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Gad Saad, author of "The Saad Truth About Happiness," to talk about whether happiness is something we're born with or if it can be learned and taught, how the media business is not generally conducive to happiness, Saad's very not happy life growing up, how social media is making kids less happy, the personality traits that lead us to happiness or unhappiness, what extroversion or emotionality mean for people, Rob Reiner's lack of a pathway to happiness, happiness in relationships through "novelty," the different kinds of animals and their interest in "variety," how regret affects happiness, whether money leads to happiness, career and happiness, kids and dogs, and more.Saad's book: https://www.amazon.com/Saad-Truth-about-Happiness-Secrets/dp/1684512603Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find 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. Happiness is the subject of today's show. Happiness is a scientific fact. That's good news for us because it means we can study it and we can devise strategies to work on it to make ourselves happier and more fulfilled human beings. One of the happiest people I know, Dr. Gad Saad, is here with us today to give us all the tools we need to get happier. Gad is professor of marketing at Concordia University up north of the border and host of The Sad Truth Podcast. He's here to discuss his new book, The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets for Leading the Good Life. Welcome back to the show, professor.

Ah, so good to be with you. You're looking as radiant as ever, Ms. Kelly. Thank you very much. I love this topic. This is like open a lot. So I definitely feel happy a fair amount, but I'm not like cheery as a default. So do I need to work? Can I work on it? Can I get to the point where I'm cheery most of my life? So there's good news in that about 50% of our genes are inscribed in our, of our happiness are inscribed in our genes. So that we can't control, but that still leaves 50% up for grabs. And so the good news is that while some of us may indeed be born with a sunnier or more sullen disposition, we can all certainly improve in trying to climb Mount Happiness. So of course, there are strategies and mindsets that you could adopt, Megan, to be happier from whatever position you start off at.

Is it at all related to IQ? Because I have a strong belief that if I had a lower IQ, I'd be a happier person. You mean because the more you know, the more you're cynical and the more you hate the state of the world? Is that what you're saying? Yes. Yes, exactly. So I don't think I'm aware of any research that links IQ to happiness, but maybe one of your viewers will correct me once they watch this. But you're certainly right that the business that you're in makes it easier reflexively to be unhappy because you're facing a tsunami daily of all sorts of

things that can trigger you in a negative sense. And so one of the reasons why, by the way, I wrote this book is precisely because I had spent so many years navigating and fighting within the culture wars. I thought, why don't I take a shot at actually writing about the opposite end of that spectrum, writing about something that makes people feel uplifted, happy. And if I've done a good job, we'll see shortly, people will respond well to it. Yeah, because we all have our roles, right? I mean, I don't know. I think I have a happy-ish approach to the news. I don't think people leave feeling depressed most days. But on the other hand, depending on your business, happiness is probably not going to go hand in hand. Like, you know, Braveheart, he wasn't like running around skipping to his loo. He had a lot of people to kill. He had to fight for freedom.

You know, like we all have our mission that may or may not be aligned with, you know, smiling ear to ear all day. But I like these tips because I believe in these fundamental principles that you've put forward. Now, before we've talked about your background on the show before, but for the audience who sadly missed those shows, give us a little bit of your background in Lebanon and and how it wasn't necessarily all that conducive to a happy adulthood. You got off on arguably the wrong foot in the in the womb. And then it went kind of rough for the first several years. Do you want me to tell the story of the womb? So I was once taken aside by my mother who wanted to sort of, like any good Lebanese Jewish mother, she wants to instill tons of existential guilt in you and that you owe her.

And so she told me of a story of how close I came to being aborted specifically. So my parents, they had three children. They got married very young. My mother was almost 16 years old. My dad was four years older than her. And by the time she was 19, she had already had three kids. And then I came along 10 years later as an accident. And so my mother was dead set. And this is in the 60s. She was dead set against having another child. And so she wanted to get an abortion. My father was dead set against that idea. So they kept arguing as the story goes. And then as a last ditch effort, she contacted her best friend at the time, a Syrian woman who lived in Damascus, which is maybe a two and a half hour drive from Beirut, to try to get her, he contacted her to get her to come down because maybe my mother would listen

to her since she's her best friend. And my mother said, once her name was Ahsan, once Ahsan came over, she said, don't try to change my mind. I'm never going to change my mind. The next, on that next fateful day, when they were going to the clinic, they got up the stairs of the clinic where she was going to get the abortion. And she then stopped and told her best friend, okay, I've changed my mind. Let's leave. And then my mother always reminds me, you came this close to being fish food, fish food, which was her rather visual colloquial or not colloquial euphemism for having been aborted. So already that gave me a sense of existential bliss in that I very, well, I came close to never having existed. Imagine if I would have never had the pleasure 50 plus years later of meeting Megyn Kelly. So that's one. But then later by the age of 10, so I grew up in Lebanon. So to answer your question about my background, I grew up in Lebanon where we were part of the last remaining group of

Jews that had not left Lebanon. And then the civil war broke out where it became very, very difficult and precarious to be Jewish in the Middle East. We faced some very difficult circumstances. So in a sense, even though I went through some very harrowing periods in my childhood, that actually, many years down the line, offers me a deep appreciation for life. Because in so many places, my life could have ended even before it started, if not ended when I was very young. And so I do wake up with a sense of existential gratitude. Look at all these people out there think they have it rough. Gad has a mother who's not a very nice person. And on top of that, he grew up persecuted minority in a honey badger fighting these fights in the midst of the academy, the liberal academy. So were you always like this? I've always been a joker. I remember my mother saying that, my God, you have

such a sharp tongue. There are there are specific Arabic words that speak to that. So that that sense of, you know, sarcasm and satire and mockery that you, you see me exhibiting on a daily basis on social media, when I'm taking on all sorts of miscreants, uh, I used to have it when I was a very young kid. So, yeah, I mean, that's the part that, uh, I was fortunate enough to be endowed in my genes with a sunny disposition, but again, uh, life throws all sorts of curveballs at you. And so we can all use certain types of prescriptions and mindsets and decisions that we make that could hopefully always improve our lot and happiness, irrespective of where we start off.

Well, I made a joke about your mom, but I think the truth is her mocking you like that a little bit, it's kind of telling you the story in the first place and making light of it. It's, it is a gift from a parent to a child to raise someone who can make fun of themselves. I mean, it is, it's like a really important part of parenthood to teach your child, not to take him or herself too seriously. Right. Because especially in today's climate where everyone is so easily wounded by just the smallest little thing. Exactly right. And, you know, when I, you, I remember you in one of my earlier, uh, appearances on your show, you had mentioned that both you and your husband, Doug, appreciate some of my comedic skits and so on. You know, it takes a lot of courage and self-assuredness to be able to don the, the pink wig, pretending to be, you know, a woke person or to self-flageness to be able to don the pink wig, pretending to be a woke person or to

self-flagellate or to hide under the desk. Some of my colleagues will write to me and say, in a very sort of haughty way, don't you think that that questions the seriousness of you being a professor by doing this? To the contrary, the fact that I can both go to Stanford and speak there and be playful and not take myself seriously speaks to my having a lot of sense of self-assuredness. Since I am your number one video fan, I love the Gadzad videos. They make me laugh out loud. So does Doug, my husband.

We put together just a little, like a montage of a few of them for the audience members who are sad and sorry enough not to have seen them before. Here's just a little sampling. Be quiet. They're coming for you. Why? The Roe versus Wade has been overturned. And what now is going to happen is women are no longer safe in the United States.

Why aren't you hiding under the desk with me? Come under the desk, come on. I hear them coming. Okay, bye, ciao. An acquaintance sent me an article in Salon wherein a psychologist by the name of John Gardner said that the reason why the number of deaths due to COVID is so high in the United States is because Donald Trump is a sexual sadist.

I'm back to hiding under the table. We need to be protected from sexual sadist Donald Trump who's trying to kill people because of his masturbatory urges. Think of me. Ciao. Now I find out that the ultimate white supremacist

and real anti-Semite, Tucker Carlson, is going to be relaunching his show on Twitter. I think Tucker is coming to take me. I gotta go, bye. Bye. Thank God for that desk, Gad.

You seem to have a particular penchant for the under the desk series, because I don't know if you've watched the self-flagellation ones and all the other ones. Yes. No, I love the under the desk. It's my favorite thing. I just love you pretending to be scared like these crazy lefties online who get so upset over the smallest thing. Makes me happy. That brings me happy. All right. So now one of the reasons to think about happiness, if you're not thinking about it out there, but you'd like to work on it is not just because you might feel better and it's fun to laugh and so on. It's because it's actually important to our health, to our well-being. And so, I mean, how does that play out?

Like how big a factor? If you have a happy person who smokes, do you think they're in better shape for a long life than an unhappy person who doesn't? Well, of course, I mean, where we end up in terms of our health is a consequence of, it's a multi-factor, you know, reality, right? And so if I smoke four packs a day and I'm the happiest person, I might still get lung cancer, but you know, life is about navigating through the statistical vagaries of life, right? And so I want to put as many of the odds in my favor as possible. And so certainly, so for example, I lost a lot of weight. Even in the clips that you've shown, there is a clear difference in my weight.

Well, God willing, I won't be stricken by some disease, but by losing a lot of weight, I've certainly put the odds in my favor to hopefully live a long, healthy life. By the same token, happiness does protect us both in terms of our mental and physical health in a myriad of ways. So here's one. It turns out, Megan, that Harvard has been doing a longitudinal study for close to 80 plus years now, looking at what are the key factors of well-being. And the number one factor is the quality of your social relationships, even more so than, say, your cholesterol scores when you're 50. Now, why would that matter? Because it turns out that if you have good relationships, it helps with your

inflammatory response. You're likely to have less inflammation if you are existentially happy with your relationships. And so, yes, of course, happiness affects us both in terms of our mental well-being and our physical well-being. I definitely want to talk about relationships. But before we get to that, the other thing you point out is, so happiness helps your health and well-being, but it also helps you do the things that will help your well-being flourish. Like if you are sitting on your couch right now and cannot find the motivation to get up, it could be that the thing you need to work on is laughing a little bit more each day, like having a little bit more joy in your day. So how does happiness give rise to those better

choices? Right. So it's, it's exactly what you said. It's a sort of an orgiastic circle of feedback loop, right? So if I am happier, I make better decisions. I'm more likely to exercise. I'm more likely to be careful in what I eat. If I become healthier because I am exercising and I'm eating better, that makes me happier. And so goes the circular feedback loop. So it's exactly what you're saying. And it costs very little to have some of these interventions, right? If you're a mental health professional or a physician, trying to get someone to get out of their loneliness slump might be a very direct,

I mean, it sounds wishy-washy, right? It doesn't sound as, quote, scientific as giving someone a pill if they have high cholesterol. But these intervention strategies, there's tons of research, some of which I, of course, reference in the book that shows that the types of strategies that we partake in have a profound downstream effect on our mental health and physical health. So be happy, get happy. We're all worried about social media and children, whether the, I mean, my kids aren't allowed on, but I'm worried about other people's kids too. That's the future. And this is another interesting thing. You suggest that this could be the antidote to your child falling prey to the depression that comes from online social media. So in other words, the happier your child goes in to the internet, the happier he or she will come

out of the internet, even if what they've seen on the internet is the bodies that look perfect and the absolutely amazing filtered faces, et cetera. Indeed. I'm amazed that you've been able to withstand your children's pressures to get online because my children are 14. Right. I'll have to take some tips from you offline. I have found that, I mean, I often joke, but frankly, it's not really much of a joke. I joke that it's easier to get a crystal meth addict to stop, you know, becoming, being a crystal meth addict than it is to pry the cell phone away from my children or cell phone or iPad or whatever electronic device they're on. What has been your rule? You simply say, we're never going to do it. You never allow them on? my children or cell phone or iPad or whatever electronic device they're on. What has been your rule? You simply say we're never going to do it. You never allow them on. I haven't said never, because of course, as they get older, they're going to have to have it going off to college, I'm sure. But not while they're in my house. I mean, I just say you can't, you know, you can have a phone like our 14 year old, he's about to turn 14.

He has a phone and he, and my, we just got my daughter one. And, uh, but they know that they're not allowed to have any social media on there. So they use it for texting. Um, that's pretty much all they use it for. They don't really have email. They have school email, but it's nice because there's, it's, it's less of a lure when it doesn't have all those, you know, Instagram and all those things calling them. And I've just heard so many moms be like, oh my God, my daughter went on there totally in a great mood. And then she was completely depressed when she put it away. And gee, I wonder what the problem is. Oh, you do? Let me help you out. Yeah. Well, I look, of course it's uniquely problematic for, for children because they don't have some of the, you know the defensive protective mechanisms that allow them to view those images in context.

But it also affects adults profoundly, right? Because what happens on social media, there is a curated set of images of my best self that I'm putting forward, right? So here I am celebrating the anniversary with my wife. Here I'm putting forward, right? So here I am with, you know, celebrating the anniversary with my wife. Here I am in Portugal, right? You're not seeing any of my problems. You're only seeing that I live this wonderful, great, positive life and everybody's doing that. And so our brains end up overestimating

how happy other people are in relation to us. And so we walk away feeling really shitty about ourselves because everybody else seems to have a nicer car than me, a better marriage than me, is going to more exotic places than me. So imagine if it affects adults in the way that it does, children almost have no chance. By the way, can I just add one?

If I add one more thing about this kind of relative comparative thing as relating to happiness, I cite this really cool study in the book regarding the relationship between sexual frequency, you know, having sex and happiness. And no one who is listening to the show is going to be surprised that all other things equal, the more sex that someone has, the happier they are. But now here's the second part. That's actually quite interesting. It's not enough for me to have more sex than you, Megan. Sorry, it's not only important for me to have a lot of sex. Ideally, it's also important that I have

more sex than all of my friends because we are a social comparison species, right? And so I joke in the book, I say, not only do you want to marry someone who has a libidinal drive, make sure that all of your friends are chaste nuns. That's your ticket to happiness. Not only do you want to marry someone who has a libidinal drive, make sure that all of your friends are chaste nuns. That's your ticket to happiness. Oh, my God. This is reminding me one of my guilty pleasures is the Real Housewives of Miami. These women are absolutely terrible in the best sense.

And there's one on there who used to be married to Scottie Pippen, the basketball player, who claims when they were married, which they were married for like 20 years, she claims they had sex four times a night, four times a night. You'd be in an insane asylum. Yeah. There's just no way. There's no way. Okay. Um, here's another thing you write that, um, okay, let me pull it up. Happy people, uh, you say tend to find the silver lining in whatever happens. This is a trait or a mindset that can be nurtured or trained as in cognitive behavioral therapy. Okay. It can stand independent of genetics. So I love this.

I love this because we have three kids. My youngest is nine. And he came home from this sailing competition. They're learning how to sail at the Jersey Shore here. And he was with his little buddy. And he said, oh, you know, we won. And they promised us candy. But there was no candy.

And we got no candy. And it was by that point, it was hot. It was sticky. And, you know, the promises were not kept. And it sucked. And his little buddy was like, oh, but they promised they'd give us candy tomorrow. And, you know, tomorrow we could go back. They said we might even get double tomorrow. He's like, oh, but they promised they'd give us candy tomorrow. And, you know, tomorrow we could go back. They said we might even get double tomorrow.

He's like, yeah. So my husband pulls my son aside later. He says, you know, Thatcher, do you remember how your little buddy reacted there? Like, that's a choice. You could look at it like that, too. You don't have to, you know. So now, Gad, what we have is Thatcher. Thatcher.

I don't mean to complain, but, and then, so every complaint is still there, but I don't want to be a whiner. So we've at least sparked the awareness because of your sentence here. Yeah, nice. Well, I tell, and I think it's around that passage where I tell the, you know, one of those banal moments of life that exactly capture what I talked about there. I think our heater downstairs in the basement, you know, I live in Montreal where it can get very cold in winter and our heater had broken down. And so it was a Saturday. I wanted to just sit and watch soccer. And now we have to call some technician to come in and fix it. And I'm all pissed off and so on. And my wife looks at me and says, well,

isn't it great that it happened early in the winter rather than later in the winter when it's going to be a lot, you know, we would have had a much worse time if it were much colder. And I kind of looked at her and I was kind of irate at her optimism. I'm like, God damn it. Just kind of give me the dignity I was kind of irate at her optimism. I'm like, God damn it. Just kind of give me the dignity of being upset because she can always turn every single scenario into a positive. And of course, that makes her happy as well. And that's why I think one of the reasons we have a very happy marriage is that we're

constantly feeding off the positivity of each other. Yes. And his sense of humor helps too. I would have been like, you're annoying. I'm mad. Let me have it. So you talk about the personality factors that may help drive happiness,

correlation between certain character traits and wellbeing. And the couple that I'm just gonna throw out at you, honesty, humility, emotionality, that's not so good. Extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. But we don't like neuroticism. OK, that's half of our respective countries. Emotionality, I mentioned. Why? What does it mean, emotionality? And neuroticism, that seems like an obvious one, but is there anybody who thinks that that's important to well-being? Well, so what you're describing there is typically the biggest, if you like, taxonomy of personality traits is known as the big five. And you mentioned,

you know, all of those big five. Big five just means that, that on, on the greatest amount of variance that you see across people in terms of their personality types can be captured by those five traits. So something like agreeableness, you know, it doesn't take a fancy psychologist to understand that the higher I score on agreeableness, the more likely I am to be happy, the more neurotic I am. I mean, I was just, just today, I, to link what you just asked me to something on social media, I don't know if you've ever been exposed to the content of Rob Reiner. Have you, Megan?

Oh my God, he's an insane lunatic. I mean, it doesn't take God's hand to have the psychological acuity to understand that that's not going to be a pathway to happen. And actually, I wrote to him. I responded. I said, hey, man, life is short. Every moment is precious.

Maybe now I engage in some shameless plugging. I then shared a link to my book. I said, you really need to read this book because, you know, stop navigating endlessly in this, you know, this political vitriol. Of course, there's room for political discussions, but if every single minute of the day, every second, so that speaks to the question when you mentioned about emotionality. I mean, it can't be a healthy thing.

I mean, you are one of the luckiest persons. You're a Hollywood person. You've had a very successful career. I get it. The Republicans are Nazis and Donald Trump is Hitler. Move on, man. Read a book, exercise, hug your wife. But, you know, he is stuck. He's a neurotic, emotional freak. And I'm sure that, you know, he's probably scoring on the highest end of the most unhappy, miserable people alive. That is so true. Gosh, you're right. You can see it on certain people. Now, what about extroversion? Does that mean introverts are less happy than extroverts? Is that the way we use this term here?

So the way that I think the mechanism works there is that by my being more extroverted, it opens me up to greater sociality, more opportunities to interact meaningfully with others. And therefore, by being extroverted, it inoculates me against a sense of social isolation and loneliness and so on. So I think that's the pathway by which that particular trait works. And I'll give you a snippet of that that just happened to me in Portugal. My family and I went on a 16-day trip. Oh, did you? Isn't that incredible? Amazing. Yes. And by the way, my wife told me to tell you, oh, remind her that we had a similar Guillaume story. Not quite as incredible as your Guillaume story, but her

luggage was lost and it took three days for Air Canada to find us in the Algarve, which is on the southern coast of Portugal. So we empathize with whatever you went through, although your story was perhaps more harrowing. But in any case, once we finished our first 12 days on the beach, we then went on to Lisbon. And on our first day in Lisbon, as we were kind of walking around somewhat tired, it was incredibly hot. I saw a gentleman look at me and smile and say, hello. I figured, oh, maybe it was presumptuous of me. I thought, oh, maybe he recognized me. He's a fan. But then I quickly realized that he hadn't recognized me. He just looked at me and said, do you mind if I ask a request? I said, sure, go ahead.

He said, oh, well, I'm working on a project where I just identify people who have interesting faces and take their photos. And then I asked them, what are their two secrets to happiness? I said, oh, my goodness. Well, it might interest you to know that I'm an author and I have a forthcoming book on happiness. I said, oh my goodness, well, it might interest you to know that I'm an author and I have a forthcoming book on happiness. And then we ended up spending about 20, 25 minutes, Megan, just the serendipitous moment where two strangers are locked in this really honest, authentic conversation. And I don't think that that conversation would have happened had I not been an extroverted person, because I probably would have not sent the cues that would have given him the courage to approach me. But I

have an open face. I am smiley. You know, I try to say hello to everyone, even strangers, and that gave him the courage to approach me. And then we had a wonderful moment together. All right. I'm going to try that. I think I have more of a resting bitch face. We had somebody come on recently to say, you have to be, you have to be friendly. because already women have to put up a more defensive shell when they're out in public. If you're an attractive woman, then you even have to do that more. Because if you now smile innocently at a man, just innocently, he is much more likely to attribute that as meaning that there is sexual interest, whereas you're just trying to be nice. No, because I did not grow up attractive. I was an unattractive child, which was a gift to me. That was actually a blessing to grow up with an unattractive

face and body, to be honest. So I had to rely on my personality. I was actually more extroverted, I would say, as a kid than I am as an adult. And it has nothing to do with looks as an adult. I think it's just, you know, you live in New York City. Of course, I was for 14 years at Fox News while living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, kind of like your circumstance where you're this heterodox thinker in the middle of academia. And so you just kind of get more guarded. You know, you just try not to make as much eye contact and keep your head down and, you know, your mouth shut. It's not a great side effect of those choices. But I will say this, Gad, having now moved out of the Upper West Side, out of Fox News and into a sort of different line of work, I am much happier. And I actually am a little bit more open to people approaching

me and me reaching out. Maybe the guy would have stopped me. Maybe he wouldn't have. But it's good to know that it's good for us to say yes to that if with our face and or our voices. All right. How about dough money? Raul, great one. Yeah. So that comes all those discussions about personality and happiness and money and happiness. I have a whole chapter where I just enumerate a whole bunch of correlates to happiness. We can, if you want, have to talk about religiosity and happiness and so on. But to your point about money, money only garners you happiness up to an inflection point. Now, people can debate. Originally, there was a famous classic study that said beyond $75,000, you don't get much bang for your buck. In other words, someone who makes $200,000 may not be noticeably happier than someone who makes

$100,000. Now, the $75,000 is not difficult to explain. It's because it allows us to put food on the table, not have to worry about whether we're going to hopefully pay our mortgage and so on and so forth. Other studies have now shown that that number might be a bit higher, but generally speaking, money is not the pathway to happiness because it doesn't give you purpose and meaning. And I actually tell the story. Well, I tell several stories in the book regarding that link, but one powerful story is in, I think it was 1992, I was finishing my second year of my PhD. And one of my intellectual heroes, a psychologist by the name of Herbert Simon, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1978, was coming to Cornell to speak. And my former doctoral supervisor knew him well.

And so I was just excited that I would get to meet this great man and so on. And so I was telling a family member with whom I was traveling to Rio on vacation, the Rio Carnival in Brazil, I was telling him, oh, I'm so excited that I'm going to be meeting Herb Simon, this great man, and so on. And this family member looked at me at this family member, by the way, you know, one of his claims to fame is that he he was incredibly wealthy. He owned many Ferraris and an Aston Martin. And so he was very much in the pursuit of pecuniary things, money. And so he looked at me with complete arrogance and said, who the hell is this guy? I could probably buy him over 500 times. And I said,

well, maybe you could buy him over 500 times, but 500 people will line up to speak to him. Whereas nobody gives a damn about anything you have to say. There goes my sharp tongue again, Megan. And so that really captures two mindsets. This family member of mine viewed his sense of self worth and his success simply by the material possessions that he had accumulated. And I said he was wealthy because he ended up losing all of his money, as often happens to these people who spend their money lavishly. Now, I'm not saying this in a vindictive or gleeful way.

I didn't wish this upon him. But on the other hand, I have made a lot less money in my life than he has, but I get the honor and privilege to speak to Megyn Kelly and Joe Rogan because people are interested in the ideas that I have to share with the world. I think that makes me a lot wealthier than someone who owns three Ferraris. And you write also about earning the money as opposed to sort of finding the money via lottery or inheritance. And this is something people think about, you know, like I didn't grow up with any money, but now, you know, God willing, I'll be able to pass some on to my children. And you really do have to think about that because

it's not really the greatest gift to come into a bunch of dough. I mean, it's nice to have a nest egg and all that where you don't have to worry about paying your bills or you can pay off your college loans. However, it doesn't actually, it really doesn't make you happy when you didn't earn it. Indeed. And there's a lot of very compelling research going back to the 1970s, looking at the correlation between happiness and lottery winners. And again, there is some kind of conflicting results. But the general storyline is that exactly to your point, Megan, lottery winners have a very short momentary uptake in

their happiness. But over the long run, it doesn't lead to, you know, an enduring sense of existential happiness. One of the reasons being exactly as you said, because I didn't earn it, right? When, when I make money off my hard work, uh, then I can feel proud of what I did. I, you know, the market has spoken and has said, Hey, we love the stuff that you put out there. And therefore I can feel it can carry me, carry me much further. So yeah, you're exactly right. I think about this a lot because you know, we will go to these fancy places or on vacation, what have you. And nine times out of 10, you look around and it's these investment bankers or these hedge fund guys. And a lot of times the wives don't work or never worked. And that's fine.

If you, that's your choice as a woman or a man, God love you. But it wasn't our choice. And I will say in my case, I love knowing that I earned the money. It's mine. It's ours now. But like I earned it. And there's there's I'm proud of it. You know, I'm proud. I'm happy when like the waiter or the hotel manager comes over and they just kind of assume whatever they go right to Doug. They shake the hand. I like sitting there like, you're such a dumbass. It brings me joy.

It makes me happy. Right. And I suspect, I mean, you know, not to pry into your financial situation, but I'm willing to bet that you probably don't have to be working. And, you know, you started this great new show and now it's hugely successful, one of the top podcasts. But you do it because you love what you do, right? I mean, I'm almost willing to bet that it was never the case that you said, oh, I've got to start this new podcast because I need to make more money.

That's going to make me happier. Would that be a safe assumption? That's right. That's correct. Because you get to meet interesting people. You get to have wonderful conversations. People get to come up to you and say, hey, I love this show or that show. And that gives, okay, thank God I had the opportunity to speak truth, to set the record straight for people out there for myself. So yeah, I mean, I've, I found the right, the right profession and the right job within it. But it seems to me from reading the book, that's not nearly as important as finding the right partner. Okay. So there's

the social relationships. We know that you mentioned that of course we need friends, but relationships, I mean, there's number one, there's one that's the most important in your life. And you spend a lot of time urging people to get it right and have thoughts on comes to mate choice. There's the opposites attract maxim, and then there's the birds of a feather flock together maxim. And this may not surprise you, Megan, but for short-term mating, if I'm just looking for a short-term dalliance, then the opposites attract maxim might be operative, right? I may be introverted and sexually restrained. You may be the exact opposite. That might get me out of my shell. And the fact that we are opposites might result in me having a more enriching encounter with you, at least in a short-term context. But for long-term mating, if you want to increase the probability of your marriage being

successful, the research is overwhelmingly in support of the birds of a feather flock together, Maxim. Now, the next question might be, but you flock together on which attributes? Is it your eye color? Is it your hair color? Of course, when we're talking about birds of a feather flocking together or in the language of evolutionary psychology, it's called assortative mating. We're assorting on like traits. We're talking

about shared life mindsets, shared belief systems, shared values. You greatly increase your chances. It doesn't guarantee you're going to be happy, but boy, statistically speaking, do you increase your chances if you assort with someone who shares values with you. So that's already a good strategy if you wish to increase the likelihood of having a successful marriage. I love this saying. They say that men marry women thinking that they'll never change, and they do.

And women marry men thinking that they won't change or that they will change, and they don't. Yeah, right. But you're, you make the point in the book that love does not conquer all like you have to be smart. And if you have like profound religious differences or severe differences in your backgrounds or your approach to problem solving and power structure and all that, don't do it. It's not going to work out. Put yourself in the shoes of the parents of arranged marriages and make an executive decision on some of these things. I know I'm feeling lustful for this person right now, but I have to think about how that lust can grow into

long-term love and, as you point out in the book, connection. Indeed. Look, I don't know if you know who this is, and not to sound as though I'm a publicist, but Helen Fisher, who's an evolutionary anthropologist whom I've had the pleasure of interacting with in the past, is arguably the guru of studying the neuroanatomy of romantic relationships. And so the response that you get when you're in the lustful phase of your relationship, when you're getting the butterflies, when you're getting the knot in your stomach, that's not going to last 20 years into your marriage. Not, and that's not to be cynical.

And that doesn't mean that you won't be sexually attracted to your partner 20 years later, but it, it, it changes, right? And so the dopamine hits that come typically with the pursuit of lust, right? Catering to lust is what you want is the serotonin. If we're going to use an endocrinological or a neurotransmitting framework, it's the serotonin, which is contentment, right? It's, it's you and Doug sitting together and saying, you know, we're, we're on the right path. We're doing a good job. We've raised three great kids. We are sympathical.

We see the world through similar, you know, a similar prism. And so if you can identify those traits on which you should assort. So in my case, for example, I didn't marry my wife because she too was Lebanese. I mean, in other words, I didn't set out with a priori decisional rule that says I only will marry a Lebanese woman. But the fact that we met, the fact that we had a lot of this cultural compass that was identical, it just made it easier than if I married an Anglo-Saxon girl, right? So I'll give you a quick example. The first day that I met her parents, I mean, literally the first time. So, you know, Lebanese people, we play a lot of backgammon.

And so I looked at her dad and I said, OK, Mr. So-and-so, if I win the game, I get to keep your daughter. And he said, OK, let's do it. And so we played and I won. Now he now jokes. He said, well, you seem like a really nice guy. So I let you win. I don't know about that, but the fact that we can have those kinds of humorous moments, right. You know, I didn't get someone who graduated from Wellesley who said to me, how dare you be playing for the hand of my daughter? That's patriarchy. That's sexist. He

understood my joke. He understood our language and we can kind of quickly see that we were likely to get along. And so, yeah, birds of a feather do flock together. And check out the family. I have interviewed Helen and, uh, she, she made a point that you just raised earlier, which is, you know, about the, uh, sexual interludes about how like that is a physical response that will bring you happiness. I know people are tired. Ladies, I get it. You're tired. The men have the drive, I think, pretty much most of the time. But do it for if you're not going to do for your partner, do it for yourself. You actually will feel better. It's a it's a hormonal response

that it's like a gift you give to your spouse and to yourself all in one, not to mention it, of course, builds intimacy. She had a lot of strong thoughts on that. On the subject of the job. Sure. How realistic is that? Right. A lot of people don't have the luxury of choosing a job that, you know, they look forward to doing. It's like they got to get out there and they got to work on the toilets and that's that pays the bills and that's good. But like they don't they don't enjoy it. Can they be happy, notwithstanding spending eight to 10 hours a day doing something that is just mediocre for them? Right. So before I answer this, the second that this part, let me first sort of explain the general framework. What I argue in terms of, you know, which profession is going to bring you happiness is I basically say there are two

factors that are crucially important. And I understand that the person who cleans the toilet may not be able to do that. I'll address that in a second, Megan. Number one, you want to be able, if possible, to pursue a profession that allows you to instantiate your creative impulse. So I can be a chef and be creative. I can be an architect. I could be a podcaster. I could be a playwright. I could be an author.

There are many, many ways by which the need to immerse yourself in creativity can manifest itself. So that's one. The second important attribute in terms of finding the right profession is if you can pick a job that grants you maximal temporal freedom. And I understand that it's not very realistic for most people to be able to shoot for that. But temporal freedom means, let's contrast, say, a factory worker who is given the exact time that he or she is allowed to go on a bathroom break and a lunch break. Everything is

mandated by someone else versus in my case, or I think perhaps yours, where much of the day I could immerse myself in very serious work, but it depends on my mood, right? If I feel like going to a cafe now and work on the next section of my book, I can. If I feel like jogging, I can. So just having that temporal freedom allows me to really flex my creative muscle. But now to your question, for most people, they may not be able. I mean, life is that I've got to put food on the table and I'm an insurance adjuster. And yes, I would have loved to be an artist, but I can't do it because I've got real responsibilities. Well, then how about when you finish work, instead of spending four hours watching television, you sign up at the Adult Life Learning Center and take that ceramics course that you'd always wanted to pursue ceramics. So there are still ways by which I could implement many of the edicts that I talk about in choosing the

right profession, even if it's not in the context of my professional life. Ideally, if I can find that in my profession, I'm really winning. But even if I can't, I think there's a way for me to still implement some of those prescriptions. Abigail Finan, I would like more temporal freedom. Please factor that into your scheduling of my life. Here's an easy one. I love it.

And it's easy-ish, easier for some of us than for others. Get a dog. Talk about that. I love your Belgian Shepherds. We had a Belgian Shepherd growing up. So I love it in the post picture. Yeah, we did. The actual Belgian, not the German, the Belgian. So I relate to you on this and you are a big fan of the dog. Oh my God. This is Samra. Samra regrettably passed away five years ago. Samra in Arabic means dark one, because as you can see her, her black mask, her face has a black marking. We also had Amar who in Arabic, he was the male. Amar in Arabic means moon. It also means it's an adjective for great beauty. You're beautiful like the moon. And I tell you, Megan, I live my life with two enduring fears, at least when I have Belgians. Number one, I call it the dark cloud, which is I'm constantly obsessing about their short lifespans and that one day they're going to die. So that just drives me crazy. The second one,

which we may or may not talk about since we're talking about happiness is I'm always fearful of my children losing their innocence. And I can tell you that now that my daughter is 14 years old, I'm losing that battle because, you know, when they're very, very young, uh, you, you, you, it garners you great solace to be protected in their innocence. So I go out there into the ugly world and I pick fight with someone on social media and I write an article about some idiot. But then I come home to the sanctuary of my home and I've got these two beautiful innocent children. I've got these majestic Belgian shepherds. And so I've always been fearful that theyds. And so I've always been fearful that

they will die. And I've always been fearful that my children will grow up. Regrettably, that's an inevitable part of life. But yes, one very direct way to happiness is get a dog. All that the dog wants to do is take care of you, protect you. All they want back is give me food and make some time to play with me. That's a pretty good deal. Now, some dogs are easier than others. My audience, I know about your dog. Yeah, I've had some troubles. But can I tell you, even with my very troublesome little dog, and he's not little, he's like 75 pounds now. I, I agree with everything you just said. He, he brings me way more joy than he does consternation. He is like the sweetest dog. He's such, he gets up, he wants to hug you, you know, and I know you're not supposed to, supposed to

let him get up there. And like when you're on the couch or on a chair, but he actually puts his paws over your shoulder and like nuzzles in and you hold him and you're hugging and like, how can I be mad? It's sweet, sweet strut. Oh, stop it. No, that's bad. Stop it. He's off to do something terrible. Anyway, he does bring me even my naughty dog so much joy. And so if you can afford it and take the time to take care of them, I agree with you. And by the way, I mean, and of course they give you the companionship and all that kind of stuff, but even in a very pragmatic way, the fact that you have to take them for walks, right? I mean, our Belgians, I mean, I'm delighted

to hear that you had a Belgian, you know, half of the battle with Belgian shepherds is I call it energy management, right? These guys are like turbo engines. If you don't take them out constantly playing, running, walking vigorously, they will, I mean, they're very, very hard to handle, right? You've got to exhaust them. And so that forces you in the, you know, winter of Montreal to say, it doesn't matter if it's minus 20, these two crazy Belgians are looking at me. And if I don't go out for a 45 brisk walk, there'll be trouble to be had. And so it forces you to be physical. It does. Having a dog gets you out there in the world in a way where you definitely otherwise wouldn't be. And you see other dog owners or you see like your neighbors

and you have, even if it's just a momentary hello, you come home feeling a little bit more social, a little bit more exposed to other people in a good way. I agree with that. All right. So let's talk about action. We touched on the topic of sexual satisfaction, but I would like to find out more about gorilla and chimpanzee balls because somehow they have something to do with our happiness. Yes, yes. Well, there. So let me let me put what you just said in context, because some of the listeners may say, what are we talking about testicles?

So at one point in one of the chapters, I'm talking about variety seeking, the importance of variety seeking in life. And my point there is to argue that in some cases, variety seeking is condoned. In other cases, of course, it's not condoned quite as clearly. So I talk about sexual variety seeking, food variety seeking, exercise variety seeking, intellectual variety seeking. And so your question fits under the sexual variety seeking. And there, what I am speaking about is that while of course men on average, and this finding, by the way, is one of the most robust findings you can find in the behavioral sciences, while men certainly have a greater penchant for sexual variety seeking than women do, that is not to say that women are these chaste Victorian prudes, because there's all sorts of converging lines of evidence that suggest that women are also very

much into, at least have the drive for sexual variety seeking. And so what I do in the book is I describe several of those lines of evidence. So for example, before I get to the testicles, number one, women are much more likely to cheat on their regular partner when they are maximally fertile, and they are less likely to insist on the guy that they're cheating with using contraception, which you would think should be the opposite, right? And that, by the way, is called the shopping for good genes strategy. You are literally trying to get better genes from another male who typically has a superior phenotype to your regular partner. And hopefully the chump at home would actually think that that's his child, right? So that's one mating strategy that women have evolved. To your point about testicles, it turns out that across primates, the size of the male's testicles is an adaptation to how much promiscuity the females engage in within that species.

So let's look at several species. Mountain gorillas have what's called a polygynous mating arrangement, meaning there is one dominant male that restricts sexual access to a whole bunch of females. Now, once in a while, these females will go on the side behind the bushes, but he really tries to be very sexually territorial over them. So there isn't much sperm competition within their mating system. And therefore, mountain gorillas, despite the fact that they are these gigantic muscular specimen, these really impressive specimen, actually have very small testicles. On the other hand, chimpanzees have their walking testicles,

basically. Their whole body is there to support these massive testicles precisely because females engage in rampant or geastic, Caligula-like sex with everybody. And therefore, there's a lot of sperm competition. Now, how does that relate? They're sluts. Those chimps are sluts. I always knew it. So now, where do humans fit on that scale?

Well, I'm sorry to tell the men who are listening to this show that we, meaning humans, tend to be closer to chimps than we are to mountain gorillas, meaning that my female ancestors and yours, Megan, would have been quite likely to have had multiple sexual partners within a 72-hour period. Can I just say one more thing before I turn it back to you? So Robin Baker, who has since retired, wrote a book, I think it was in the mid-90s, called Sperm Wars, where he talked about what's called the sperm competition hypothesis, where he argued that there are really three phenotypes of spermatozoa. There is the classic spermatozoa, which is the fertilizer, the one that we're all used to seeing depicted. But then he argued that there are two other types of spermatozoa in a man's ejaculate. Number one, there is a type of sperm that's

called a killer sperm that simply goes inside the reproductive tract of a woman looking for other men's sperm to kill. It's not looking for the egg. And another kind of sperm is called the blockers, which is literally standing guard, making sure that another man's sperm doesn't enter the reproductive tract. Now, given that sperm is only viable for 72 hours within a woman's reproductive tract, that means that if men have evolved that chemical weaponry, the likelihood that our female ancestors mated with two or more men within a 72-hour period would have been pretty high. So it's not just men who seek sexual variety seeking.

Women do it too. We're sluts too. We're sluts. You are sluts too. Chimps are sluts. The only ones who are not sluts are the gorillas. God bless. That's amazing. So, but also alarming because if, if we need variety, male and female needs like variety and yet we're supposed to be a monogamous culture. We, we marry, we marry for life. Does that mean everyone's going to cheat?

Or, because you mentioned Helen Fisher. I remember she said the secret to keeping love alive in a long-term marriage is, and I quote, novelty, novelty, novelty. Like just keep doing- Novelty within the monogamous union? Yeah, exactly. Doesn't even necessarily have to be in the bedroom, but just like within the marriage, you could take a cooking lesson together or you could go skydiving together.

You could take a walk in a newfound, you know, set of woods together. But if you want to bring it into the bedrooms, bedroom so much, the better. Exactly right. That's why, uh, blonde wigs exist. If you're a brunette and brunette wigs exist if you're a blonde. I mean, I say that somewhat facetiously, but I mean, that's speaking exactly to Helen's point, which is we always have to remain playful both in our couple outside and inside the bedroom.

That's one way to try to forestall our desire for sexual variety. Look, it's a conundrum, Megan, because humans have both evolved the desire for long-term coupling. Why? Because we are officially, biologically, we are a biparental species, precisely because it takes a very, very long time. There's a long juvenility period before our children become sexually mature. So both parents, the man and the woman, have to be bonded long enough together to see their children through that reproductive window. And so one of the ways by which we do that is that we've evolved all of the mechanisms associated with long-term coupling, romantic love, and so on. But as I mentioned earlier, we've also evolved a deep desire to

stray. That doesn't mean that we will all stray. That's the action. But we will all certainly have the thought and desire of straying, whether you instantiate it or not, depends on your moral compass, I guess. I mean, as soon as you stray, it's like these quote unquote open marriages are doomed. That's just the first step to divorce. Nobody has an open marriage that works. I mean, I don't know. I have no statistics on it. That's just my gut step to divorce. Nobody has an open marriage that works. I mean, I don't know. I have no statistics on it. That's just my gut feeling.

I agree by the way. No, you're exactly right. Forgive me for interrupting you. Although it's much more of a death nail. So if you look at when a man cheats on a woman or a woman cheats on a man, the stats of the relationship ending are not symmetric. If a woman cheats on a man, the stats of the relationship ending are not symmetric. If a woman cheats on a man, it's about 90% guarantee that it's the end of the relationship. If the other way around, it's about 30%. So it's still very serious infraction, but women can be quite more forgiving. And I think we might have briefly touched on this in an earlier conversation we had on your show. Again, that's not because women are more loving and forgiving.

The evolutionary calculus is very clear. When a woman cheats on a man, it triggers the most fundamental threat to a man's psyche, which is paternity uncertainty, right? We didn't evolve in an era where we had DNA paternity testing and Maury Povich show so that we can check whether the kid is mine or not, right? And therefore, if you cheat on me, we're done, because I'm not going to be investing in a kid for the next 18 years, not knowing if he's mine, or if it was the sexy Greek gardener who sired him. The other way, while it's still very serious, it's not nearly as much of a death blow. And for women, the greater threat, and I think we did discuss this last time I was on your show, is emotional infidelity.

If I develop a bond with another woman, that actually might be a lot more threatening to you than if I have a one-time sexual dalliance with someone that I'll never see again. Yes, we wound up in the New York Post because- We did! I said something like, I'd much rather find out that Doug had a one-night stand with somebody than that he was laughing with another woman on me. I don't want to see emotional bonding by Doug and any other woman. And then Doug said, his friends texted him saying,

Hall pass! No, no, it isn't. That was a funny moment. It is not a regret of mine, however, because as you know, from earlier discussions, I don't have, I'm just not a person who's got regrets just I don't maybe I just have a bad memory, but I really don't have regrets. And maybe this is why I am, despite my natural curmudgeonly news cynicism, relatively happy because regret is a is a buzzkill. Indeed, and by the way, I loved when I think it was maybe a month or two ago, I had posted something about something regretful. And then you came in and said, I already thought we covered that, Gad. We've been over this, Gad. We've been over this, Gad. And as you probably know, there are several passages in my book that specifically quote interactions that we've had. So you have definitely left an eternal impression on me, certainly as immortalized in the book. Look, regret, actually, the pioneer of the study of psychology of regret is one of my

former psychology professors in my PhD. His name is Thomas Gilovich, and he basically argued that there are two sources of regret, Megan. There is regret due to action and regret due to inaction. So regret due to action, I regret that I cheated on my wife and now my marriage is over. So I did something, I committed an act, an infraction. Regret due to inaction is I really regret that I became a pediatrician only because my dad is a pediatrician. The reality is I always wanted to pursue my interest in art and architecture. And it turns out, Megan, that towards the end of your life,

when you look back at your life, the most looming regrets are those related to the what if. So the regrets due to inaction. And so I'm delighted to hear that you don't have any such looming regrets, because it means that you've always made the optimal decision at the time that you made it. I mean, yeah, I guess so. I just like who's got time, you know, they always say live in the moment. And I, I know people who go to workshops every other month on how to live in the moment. I don't know, is that a skill you can learn for me? I just do. And I think one of the ways I just do effectively is I'm busy, like stay busy. And then you don't really have a lot of time to worry about yesterday. Right. I mean, look, but there is value in feeling regret. So think of regret as either forward-looking or backward-looking. So if I'm 85

and I say, I really regret that I never pursued my interests in basketball, well, there's really nothing that I can do about that because I can't suddenly join the NBA, right? But on the other hand, there's what's called anticipatory regret. This is where you make decisions now in the moment in such a way that you minimize the likelihood of experiencing regret in the future. So Jeff Bezos has a famous quote, which I cite in the book, where he basically said that the reason why he left his secure, well-paying job, whatever that job was, and went off and started this really risky proposition called Amazon is that he didn't want in the future to look back and say, I regret that I never did it. So he was, if you like, under the purview of anticipatory

regret. So contrary to what you said, I think that there are moments where having the calculus of regret can be beneficial if it's forward-looking. That makes sense. It's the serenity prayer kind of, right? The God grant me the serenity to change the things I can, the courage to not mess with the ones I can't and the wisdom to know the difference? That's not it exactly, but I'm close. No, but I guess you're exactly right. That's right. So, all right.

So for the people out there who are now thinking, where do I begin? You know, like, all right, so I got to get a dog. I got to get a good partner. I got to have more sex and have it be kind of kinky after we've been together for 20 years. These are the basic takeaways. And how much of an uptick could they get? If they're running around right now at a three or a four on a scale of one to 10, how high could they go?

Well, I mean, it's tough to quantify it exactly, right? Do they also suffer from some debilitating disease or not? So it's hard to give an exact number, but look, it's a multifactorial proposition, right? There are several elements that contribute either to your misery or to your happiness. The more of those prescriptive strategies that you implement, the more you're likely to move from your three to some higher number. I don't know what that number will be, but it will certainly be higher than three, which by the way, this is kind of a concept called chunking. So when I lost a lot of weight, if I looked at, well, you know, I need to lose 50, 60, 70 pounds, that seems very daunting. It's very hard for me to imagine ever

being able to be successful at this grand task. But if I chunk it down to daily wins, right? So every day, one of three things can happen. My weight can go up, my weight can stay the same, or my weight can go down. Even if it's a micro of an ounce, if it goes down, I won that day. Well, guess what, Megan? If I can have a string of consecutive days for, say, 18 months where every single one of those days I was on the negative end, I lost some weight, I wake up one day and I'm 86 pounds lighter as I was. And so, again, I don't know if we can go from a three to an eight with only one decision, know, one decision, but make all of the right choices, adopt all of the right mindsets. And what I can guarantee you is that you'll go from three

to some much higher number. It's worth it. Okay. I looked it up. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. That is just, that really is full of wisdom. That quote right there, that does bring it home and helps avoid things like regret. It's called the sad, like double A, like Gad's last name, sad truth about happiness. You want to buy it because you want to be happier. You want to buy it because it's a fun read, because Gad reveals some fun personal stories that will make you laugh out loud. And because we want to support Gad, who is fighting the good fight, as I said, in the midst of the left-wing belly up in Canada,

no less. They're even worse than we are. And he is never deterred and not sad, not sad at all about any of it. Great to see you, my friend. Good luck with the book. Thank you so much, Megan. Great to see you too. Cheers. All right. Don't forget the sad truth about happiness. Eight secrets for leading the good life. Get it right now and get happier. I wanted to tell you that tomorrow we have got a true crime story you are not going to want to miss.

Have you heard about the new hit podcast Scamanda? My family and I listened to the whole thing during our recent vacation. We went to France, we had all this downtime in the car going from A to B. And the whole family listened to it. We were talking like, could we get another Scamanda in? Do we have time? Well, tomorrow we have the host and the producer of the show. Her name is Charlie Webster. And she's going to take us through the whole incredible story. She's British. That's why I'm talking like this, though. She's now an American. And she's going to reveal some never before heard details. You will enjoy this. We'll talk then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.