When Being Kind Goes Too Far

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Morning Wire
Episode: When Being Kind Goes Too Far
Date: May 23, 2026
Host: John Bickley with co-host Georgia Howe
Guest: Dr. Gad Saad, evolutionary behavioral scientist and author of Suicidal Empathy

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Overview

This special edition of Morning Wire explores how Western societies’ growing focus on compassion and inclusivity—often manifesting as unchecked or "suicidal" empathy—can undermine truth, critical thinking, and societal well-being. Dr. Gad Saad, author of Suicidal Empathy, discusses the dangers of empathy unbound from reality, the troubling spread of idea pathogens from academia into mainstream culture, and offers both diagnosis and solutions for regaining balance between kindness and truth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gad Saad’s Personal and Professional Context

[03:27–05:06]

• Saad is leaving his professorial post in Canada for a visiting scholar position at the University of Mississippi.
• Reasons: Difficult climate as an outspoken Jewish professor in Montreal, intolerance of Canada’s harsh weather, and frustrations with Canada’s tax system.
• The rise of "suicidal empathy" in Canada contributed to his decision:

  "It has become increasingly challenging to be an outspoken Jewish professor in Montreal, Canada... Canada is certainly at the forefront of being, you know, some of the biggest sufferer of that malady." (Gad Saad, 05:11)

• He notes university trends such as the drive to "indigenize and decolonize" curricula even in hard sciences, questioning the relevance and impact on educational standards.

  "I teach things like consumer psychology... I didn't know that there was a decolonized way to study that." (Gad Saad, 06:08)

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2. The Concept of "Suicidal Empathy"

[06:41–10:21]

• Saad defines "suicidal empathy" as empathy gone awry—when overextended or misapplied, it becomes destructive.
• The phenomenon has spread across the West, replacing a pursuit of truth ("epistemology of truth") with prioritization of caring and inclusivity ("epistemology of care").
• Dysregulated empathy enables people to reject reality in favor of feelings.
• Analogy: Aristotle on moderation—"too little empathy makes you a psychopath, too much makes you self-destructive."
• Distinction between healthy cognitive empathy (theory of mind) and "suicidal" or dysregulated empathy.

  "If I have hyperactive empathy that is invoked in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets, we end up with suicidal empathy." (Gad Saad, 10:25)

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3. Academia’s Role in Spreading Destructive Ideas

[07:13–09:26, 11:37–13:12]

• Universities produce "parasitic ideas" that separate people from reality (e.g., postmodernism, cultural relativism).

• Notable quote:

  "It takes intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas." (Gad Saad, 08:43)

• The inability or refusal to integrate fundamental biological truths into social science is an example of reality-denial.

• "Cultural relativism" undermines the ability to critique practices like female genital mutilation; this fosters policies (like open borders) that enable the spread of practices previously considered unacceptable.

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4. The Problem of Elite Insulation and Hypocrisy

[09:46–11:15]

• Saad points out that elites often advocate for policies (motivated by ostensible empathy) from positions of safety and insulation, rarely experiencing the negative consequences themselves.
• Memorable soundbite:

  "I can stroke my beautiful, luxuriant hair while looking at myself in the mirror of moral preening, because I don't bear any of the costs of appearing kind, tolerant, empathetic and compassionate. It's grotesque, it's hypocritical, and it needs to stop because we will lose the West." (Gad Saad, 10:25–11:15)

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5. The Scale and "Pandemic" Nature of Suicidal Empathy

[11:37–13:12]

• Suicidal empathy has not been masterminded; rather, it’s a pandemic originating in academia that has spread via students into media, politics, and culture.
• Example:

  "The professors who pontificate those ideas don't have the slap of reality to autocorrect their nonsense... Then their students become our politicians, our filmmakers, our journalists." (Gad Saad, 11:42–12:13)

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6. Solutions: Speaking Out, Courage, and Social Pressure

[13:13–15:43]

• Saad emphasizes the importance of courage and direct confrontation:

  "If everybody stood up and said, we've had enough of this nonsense, the problem would be solved by next Tuesday." (Gad Saad, 14:10)

• There are practical mechanisms to roll back excesses (e.g., executive orders reversing certain policies).

• However, Saad expresses pessimism about the willingness of Western society to openly implement autocorrections:

  "I'm optimistic in that there is a solution. I'm pessimistic in that I don't see that there is the testicular fortitude to implement those solutions." (Gad Saad, 15:43)

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7. Performative Empathy and Social Media

[15:43–17:41]

• Saad discusses the rise (and recent subtle withdrawal) of performative empathy on social media (e.g., pronouns in bios).

• Quote on the performativity:

  "If it had been something that was true... I wouldn't have to run away while nobody's looking and slowly scrub that from my bio." (Gad Saad, 17:07)

• He calls out attention-seeking, hypocrisy, and cowardice among elites and influencers:

  "You're a cowardly imbecile who wanted to be invited to the cool kids party in Manhattan, and so you went along to get along." (Gad Saad, 17:12) [referring to Malcolm Gladwell]

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8. Courage as the Antidote

[17:41–17:49]

• Host John Bickley and Saad agree:

  "It just sounds like courage is maybe everything when it comes to addressing this." (John Bickley, 17:41)
  "It's everything." (Gad Saad, 17:49)

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9. Reception of Saad’s Book

[17:50–18:13]

• Saad reports strong international success for Suicidal Empathy.

  "It was certified number one in the world on Audible... Reception has been very good, thank God." (Gad Saad, 18:02–18:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On unchecked empathy:

  "It's grotesque, it's hypocritical, and it needs to stop because we will lose the West." (Gad Saad, 11:15)

• On cultural relativism:

  "If another culture wants to practice female genital mutilation on five year old girls, shut up, racist. So then, because I'm rendered impotent to criticize other cultures, when then I am the architect of the immigration policy, I no longer am willing to say, no, no, no, we shouldn't have millions of people that espouse those practices coming into our nation." (Gad Saad, 12:38–13:12)

• On the necessity of courage:

  "If everybody stood up and said, we've had enough of this nonsense, the problem would be solved by next Tuesday." (Gad Saad, 14:10)

• On the nature of idea pathogens:

  "It takes intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas." (Gad Saad, 08:43)

• On performative empathy:

  "...many of those people have quietly now removed those [pronouns] bios." (Gad Saad, 17:07)

• On the solution:

  "It's everything." (Gad Saad, 17:49; on courage)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:27 — Introduction of Gad Saad; reasons for leaving Canada
• 05:11 — Suicidal empathy’s impact on Canadian higher education
• 06:41 — When empathy becomes destructive
• 08:29 — Academia’s pushback on biology and reality-denial
• 09:54 — Definition of "suicidal empathy"
• 11:37 — How and why empathy went out of balance; scale of the issue
• 12:36 — Cultural relativism and policy consequences
• 13:30 — Remedies: truth-telling and social courage
• 14:47 — Optimism and pessimism about correcting course
• 15:43 — Performative empathy and social media trends
• 17:41 — The central role of courage
• 17:50 — Book reception and closing remarks

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Summary

In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Gad Saad presents a powerful indictment of a cultural shift overtaking the West—empathy untethered from reality. He traces its origins to academia, highlights its damaging impact on discourse and policy, and urges listeners to rediscover balance and moral courage. Saad’s central message is clear: When being "kind" goes too far, it can threaten societal health, and only restoring allegiance to truth, critical thinking, and genuine courage can offer a remedy.

Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Host/Commentator]

A growing number of American institutions that once prioritized truth and open debate are now increasingly driven by emotional consensus and the fear of offending people. Supporters argue it's simply a more compassionate and inclusive way of thinking.

[John Bickley]

Evolutionary behavioral scientist Gad Saad says the

[Georgia Howe]

shift has gone much further than most

[John Bickley]

people even realize, and when empathy becomes detached from reality, it can actually become destructive.

[Host/Commentator]

He joins us today to explain why, why he believes many in the west are engaging in suicidal empathy and what he thinks it will take to reverse course.

[John Bickley]

I'm Daily Wire Executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a special edition of Morning Wire.

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[John Bickley]

Joining us now is Gad Saad, evolutionary behavioral scientist, podcast host, and the author of a new book, Suicidal Empathy. Gad, great to have you on.

[Gad Saad]

Thank you so much for having me on, John.

[John Bickley]

So let's start a little bit with your background. You've been a professor at Concordia University in Montreal for a number of years. I was actually a professor for a time myself. Not nearly as prestigious as your tenure, but now you've told the world that you're leaving the university, you're leaving Canada, you're coming here to the U.S. what led to that decision?

[Gad Saad]

This past year I've been a visiting scholar at the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American Freedom at Ole Miss. A big title. And starting next year, I'll be a distinguished visiting professor there. What led to it? Well, it's as in most things in life, it's multifaceted. Number one, it has become increasingly challenging to be a outspoken Jewish professor in Montreal, Canada. So that definitely was not a good thing. But even if that didn't exist, as I get older, I've grown incredibly less tolerant of the bad weather, even though we moved to Canada in the 1970s. You know, my genetic makeup is not made to be living in minus 20 degree weather for, you know, six months a year. So that would certainly be another one. And the third reason is, frankly, the taxation system in Canada is so astounding and if you add Quebec and Canada, it becomes really impossible and so might as well go to the United States so I can experience my inner spirit, which is indeed American in reality.

[Georgia Howe]

Did suicidal empathy in Canada actually play a part into your decision as well?

[Gad Saad]

I mean, it did.

Although suicidal empathy is something that regrettably has taken a hold of the entire West, Canada is certainly at the forefront of being, you know, some of the biggest sufferer of that malady. And so I'll give you a few concrete examples. You know, in Canada, we very much have double and tripled down on diversity, inclusion and equity. And this certainly manifests itself in a myriad of ways within the university ecosystem. So at my own university that I'm going to be leaving this summer, one of the key objectives in the strategic mission was to indigenize and decolonize the entire curriculum. I mean, you have to stop back and imagine what that means.

Every single discipline that is being taught, you should try to incorporate indigenous and

decolonization lens to it.

While I teach things like consumer psychology,

evolutionary psychology, and psychology of decision making. I didn't know that there was a decolonized way to study that. So that would be one example.

And it manifests itself across all of academic excellence.

University of Waterloo recently was looking for top professors in AI, and one of the positions said that you had to be 2, 2 Spirit, non binary, gender fluid, or transgender. That's probably not a good way to organize science.

[Georgia Howe]

No, not at all.

[John Bickley]

So let's unpack this a little bit more.

[Georgia Howe]

You make the case that empathy can actually become destructive when it's misapplied. When did you first start feeling this

[John Bickley]

was really becoming an issue with the West? When did this become a major focus for you?

[Gad Saad]

Well, it actually started, if you can

believe it, straight out of my PhD, where my goal in my scientific work

was to try to incorporate evolutionary biology

and evolutionary psychology in the study of

human behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular.

And I started noticing many of my social science colleagues and colleagues in the business school were very adamantly against the idea that human beings are biological beings, right? Biology mattered for the horse, for the

mosquito, for the zebra.

But surely, Professor Saad, you don't think that biology matters for human beings.

So that was my original exposure to the idea that very bright people could be parasitized by idea pathogens. So that led to my writing the

Parasitic Mind a few years ago.

But then I realized that in order for somebody to completely hijack your capacity to engage in critical thinking, they have to do two things. They have to hijack your cognitive system, your thought processes, and they have to hijack your affective system, your emotional system. That's what then led me to write Suicidal Empathy.

[Georgia Howe]

Can you actually further discuss this. So the pushback against the concept of biology influencing our actions, for you, was a major trigger, a major clue that there was something wrong here. What's the fear from those that are pushing back against that idea that you come to some hard realities about human nature or something was their issue?

[Gad Saad]

Right? That's a great question.

So in the parasitic mind, I basically

argue that all of the parasitic ideas, all of which were spawned on university campuses because it takes intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas.

All of those parasitic ideas free us from the pesky shackles of reality.

Right.

So postmodernism basically says, up is down, left is right, men are women, freedom is slavery, war is peace. Everything is relativistic, and therefore we're not

shackles by this thing called reality.

So to then argue that, no, no, no, people are born with specific phenotypes. They're called male and female, and you can't alter that becomes very mean. It becomes non empathetic. Be kind. So what happened in the university is we switched from an epistemology of truth to an epistemology of care, which is one manifestation of suicidal empathy.

[Georgia Howe]

Yeah, coming back to that, the central premise of your new book, the idea that the elites really advocate for policies whose consequences, you know, rarely do they actually have to experience themselves. Do you think that that's mostly the ideology of this class of people, or is it a result of them living insulated lives?

[Gad Saad]

It's both. But before I, you know, expand on what you just asked me, let me

just, for the listeners and viewers, explain

what is suicidal empathy?

Empathy is a perfectly laudable virt virtue

for human beings to exhibit. Right. We are a social species.

So for you and I to have

a meaningful conversation, I need to put myself in your mind and vice versa. That's called cognitive empathy or theory of mind.

So the book is not an attack on empathy, period. It's an attack on dysregulated empathy. Aristotle explained to us several millennia ago that all good things in moderation.

Too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good.

And that exact principle applies to empathy. If I have no empathy, I'm likely to be a psychopath. If I have hyperactive empathy that is invoked in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets, we end up with suicidal empathy. But to come back to your point, yes, the Pope behind the very high Vatican walls could pontificate about the love and brotherhood between Israel, Islam and Christianity as thousands of Christians are massacred in Nigeria. So I can stroke my beautiful, luxuriant hair while looking at myself in the mirror of moral preening, because I don't bear any of the costs of appearing kind, tolerant, empathetic and compassionate. It's grotesque, it's hypocritical, and it needs to stop because we will lose the West.

[Georgia Howe]

So the balance here is key. Can you speak to that a little bit more? How did we get so out of balance? Do you look at, you know, most of our society and see good levels of balance and just key players that are calling the shots, really pushing this empathy on others? Or is this actually more like a pandemic that's taking over in the West?

[Gad Saad]

It's a pandemic. I don't think that suicidal empathy was

designed at a Davos meeting, you know, at the World Economic Forum. Right. That would be too conspiratorial. I think what happened is a bunch of terrible ideas were spawned on university campuses. And to your earlier question, the professors who pontificate those ideas don't have the slap of reality to autocorrect their nonsense. So they could stand on the podium, pontificate nonsense and not worry about those consequences. And then their students subsequently become our politicians, our filmmakers are journalists. But let me give a concrete example of how a parasitic idea can lay the groundwork for suicidal empathy. Take the parasitic idea of cultural relativism, which basically purports that you don't have the right to judge the beliefs and

practices of another culture.

If another culture wants to practice female genital mutilation on five year old girls, shut up, racist. So then, because I'm rendered impotent to criticize other cultures, when then I am the architect of the immigration policy, I no longer am willing to say, no, no, no, we shouldn't have millions of people that espouse those practices coming into our nation. So cultural relativism leads to the suicidal empathetic position of open border policy.

[Georgia Howe]

Yeah, absolutely. And we're seeing that play out dramatically in so many countries like the UK with their immigration policies.

[John Bickley]

So what's the answer? Does it just have to be, you

[Georgia Howe]

know, hard facts hitting people in the face? Does it have to be more people telling the truth about the reality on the ground? What is the solution?

[Gad Saad]

Right, so in the last chapter of Suicidal Empathy, I offer a vaccine against suicidal empathy. But to your more general point, look, we all have to speak out against this nonsense.

You don't know how many emails I receive.

I mean, literally in the thousands and thousands where people say, dear Professor Saad,

then they list a bunch of beautiful, kind words and compliments and then the last line is, if you decide to read this email on your show, please

don't mention my name. And then I typically write back to

them and say thank you for your kind words.

Don't you think? The last sentence in your email is

precisely why we're here. So most people realize that men can't bear children and that men can't menstruate, but they are so overcome with cowardice, they are so willing to diffuse the responsibility on a few of us that are willing to speak. That's how the monster of lunacy can come after all of us. If everybody stood up and said, we've had enough of this nonsense, the problem would be solved by next Tuesday.

[Georgia Howe]

Have you seen any progress? Obviously, you speak to a lot of people, you've got a large audience. Have you seen some progress on this front? Or do you feel like we're still losing ground when it comes to this sort of battle?

[Gad Saad]

So I'll give both an optimistic and a pessimistic answer. Not to be coy or equivocate, but that's the truth. I am optimistic in that there is a prescription by which we can solve the problem. Right. Donald Trump came in as the new president and signed an executive order and suddenly trans insanity and athletic competitions went

away in the ncaa.

So there is a mechanism by which we can solve it. My pessimism stems from the fact, and to your question, that I don't see many folks in the west willing to implement the autocorrections. Now in the United States, it's a bit better. But for example, in Canada, I see the doubling down and tripling down of the lunacy. So I'm optimistic in that there is a solution. I'm pessimistic in that I don't see that there is the testicular fortitude to implement those solutions.

[Georgia Howe]

Now, this is kind of a wrinkle on this, but the idea of performative empathy on social media, we see a lot of people putting on the guise of empathy, portraying themselves as supporting ideas that they actually don't off the camera. Is there actually some hope, in a weird way in looking at it from that perspective, of the sort of performative nature of messaging out there, right?

[Gad Saad]

Look, if you noticed around five, six, seven years ago, everybody started putting their pronouns in their bios, right?

And certainly all of the progressive folks, because until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people who had lived on Earth,

that's a real estimate, they were able

to fully adjudicate the very difficult conundrum of identifying who's male or female. But 15 minutes ago, we lost that ability and we needed to put those bios. Well, to your point about all it being performance and theatrics, many of those people have quietly now removed those bios. Had it been something that was true that we actually, you know, you can't tell that I'm a male based on my voice and my morphology. I actually need to tell you, John, oh, by the way, I'm he him. Had this been a real thing, I wouldn't have to run away while nobody's looking and slowly scrub that from my.

From my bio. So.

But even if it is performative, because most people are cowardly, they take the signals from the herd and then they nod along. That's what happened with the imbecile Malcolm Gladwell, who recently came out and said, oh, yeah, I guess I wasn't telling the truth when I said that there are no differences between men and women, but I lied for a valuable reason. No, you're a cowardly imbecile who wanted to be invited to the cool kids party in Manhattan, and so you went along to get along.

[John Bickley]

Well, one of the takeaways from just hearing you discuss this now is it just sounds like courage is maybe everything when it comes to addressing this.

[Gad Saad]

It's everything.

[John Bickley]

Well, we're really excited about your book here so far. How's the response been? Do you feel like the message is being received well by the audience?

[Gad Saad]

Well, given the question you asked me, I hope you'll forgive me if it doesn't sound as though I'm being a braggart.

It was certified number one in the world on Audible. It's been number one in Canada.

It's top 10 globally. So reception has been very good, thank God.

[John Bickley]

Well, congratulations on that success and thank you so much for talking with us today. Really enjoyed it.

[Gad Saad]

My pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

[Host/Commentator]

That was Dr. Gad Saad, author of the new book Suicidal Empathy. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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