The West at a Crossroads: How Radical Compassion and Self-Loathing Are Tearing Us Apart. Pt 2 w/ Dr Gad Saad | Imapact Theory W. Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Podcast Summary: The West at a Crossroads: How Radical Compassion and Self-Loathing Are Tearing Us Apart. Pt 2 w/ Dr. Gad Saad | Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Release Date: May 9, 2026
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Dr. Gad Saad, Professor, Author of "Suicidal Empathy"

---

Overview

In this compelling second part of their conversation, Tom Bilyeu and Dr. Gad Saad explore the cultural and psychological crises facing the West, with a particular focus on the concepts of "suicidal empathy," cultural self-loathing, and the erosion of core values. They debate how unchecked compassion and loss of civilizational confidence intersect with shifting demographics, parasitic government policies, and the feminization of institutions to create what Saad calls a "civilizational seppuku." The discussion weaves together evolutionary psychology, personal anecdotes, and social critique to challenge dominant Western narratives about immigration, welfare, empathy, and cultural survival.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Demographic Shifts and Value Clashes

• Tom Bilyeu: Opens by clarifying base assumptions about Islam being an expansionary, proselytizing religion, and the demographic changes occurring in Europe due to high Muslim birthrates and value differences ([00:47]).
• Gad Saad: Highlights that the prevalence of names like "Muhammad" is not simply a statistical quirk but a marker of profound demographic change. Warns that Westerners tend to ignore or excuse these shifts, lacking the imagination to foresee their consequences:
  • Notable quote: "People who do this is because they're so buried in their ostrich parasitic thing that they don’t have the imagination or courage to extrapolate to what the future trajectory is." ([03:24])
  • Shares the Muslim Brotherhood's explicit strategy to "conquer the West ... through the womb of our women ... immigration ... and using your miserable freedoms against you." ([04:16])
• Tom: Critiques the American tendency to focus on race over values, emphasizing the foundational importance of defending shared values:
  • “Define your values. What do you stand for? What are you willing to ride or die for? And then welcome people in that hit that note and reject as aggressively as you can people that don't.” ([07:48])

---

2. "Reciprocity" and Suicidal Empathy

• Gad Saad: Draws on evolutionary psychology to explain reciprocity and its violation in Western immigration and religious policies. Expresses that Western societies allow mosques and proselytizing while most Islamic countries permit neither churches nor open proselytization by Christians.
  • “What’s not reciprocal is parasitic. ... That’s what suicidal empathy is.” ([10:08])
  • Introduces "cultural theory of mind": the West’s inability to see itself from the perspective of other cultures, which leads to policies that are not respected or reciprocated.
  • Notable quote: "Westerners view these grand acts of compassion with the idea that you will appreciate that ... Not how it works." ([13:27])
• Story: Tells of a Palestinian terrorist (Sinwar) operated on by Israeli surgeons (bound by the Hippocratic oath) who later masterminds Oct 7 attacks, exemplifying suicidal empathy in action ([15:35]).

---

3. The Illusion of Universal Values and Civilizational Seppuku

• Tom: Acknowledges the difficulty of realizing that one's value system is culturally contingent, not objectively universal ([18:06]).
• Gad Saad: Explains with cultural examples (linguistic differences, power distance) how Western assumptions about empathy and reciprocity don't always map onto other cultures.
  • “To assume that your magnanimity and compassion and empathy is going to reciprocate is a perfect case of ... civilizational seppuku." ([23:35])

---

4. Privilege Guilt and Radical Compassion

• Tom & Gad: Discuss self-flagellation and “privilege guilt” as motivators for policies that undermine Western self-interest; tie in Kamala Harris’ rhetoric on equal outcomes; critique conflating generosity with self-destruction ([24:17]).
• Gad: “For the suicidally empathetic, what I just said is a no go. Everybody is entitled to the beauty and majesty of the American experience. ... In a beautiful world where we all sing John Lennon’s Imagine song, we can all hold hands and nobody is unhoused—in the real world, it happens.” ([26:21])
• Personal anecdote: Saad’s experience being grilled on a TV show for opposing uncontrolled immigration, called out the double standard in legal expectations ([27:14]).

---

5. Welfare, Taxation, and Parasitic Policies

• Tom: Argues for pushing responsibility down to individuals, not the state ([29:52]).
• Gad: Critiques the welfare state, “parasitic taxation,” and policies that disincentivize productivity while rewarding idleness:
  • “At the rate that I’m taxed in Quebec ... I work free for the government as a 100% slave until about end of August.” ([34:38])
  • “That’s parasitic taxation. That’s suicidal empathy. Being kind with the sweat and toil of others.” ([35:18])

---

6. Can the Trend Be Reversed? Bureaucratic Bloat and Practical Solutions

• Tom: Posits that too much prosperity and the ability to print money have allowed cultural rot ([35:40]).
• Gad: Suggests drastic measures (e.g., holding politicians personally accountable for deficits) and cutting bureaucratic waste, but expresses skepticism that there's political will for reform ([36:11]).
  • Example: “Developing queer cartoons in Peru ... circumcision of Mozambique men ... When you are suicidally empathetic, you are someone who doesn’t get restricted by national boundaries.” ([38:21])
  • “If you run a deficit and you’re in the government for two years ... we execute you ... do you think the government would run a deficit?” ([39:02])

---

7. Polarization & Loss of Shared Values

• Tom: References Balaji Srinivasan’s idea that America is now “Red America” and “Blue America” with incompatible values and virtually no intermarriage or cultural overlap ([40:26]).
• Gad: Shares personal anecdotes about ending friendships over perceived political differences, underscoring the psychological split in society ([41:58]).

---

8. The Origins of Political Differences: Evolution, Morphology & Social Science

• Tom: Asks about evolutionary roots of left-right divides ([47:01]).
• Gad: Cites research linking physical morphology (like grip strength) and personality to political orientation:
  • “When I literally carry the morphology of power within my ... physical being, I go F you ... may the winner walk away with the loot.” ([50:27])
  • Offers critique of unoriginal academic research, emphasizing the need for studies that reveal counterintuitive truths ([53:29]).

---

9. Institutional Feminization and Its Consequences

• Tom: Raises concern about the “feminization of institutions”—is this driving Western weakness? ([55:07])
• Gad: Attributes much of the spread of “suicidal empathy” to feminization, especially in academia; relates stories about empathy-based policies and the stifling of excellence.
  • “It’s all due to feminization ... It is promulgated with great pride by women. ... It’s the women who hold the 'refugees welcome' sign as they’re about to be gang raped.” ([56:53])
• Tells the notorious story of a white feminist ally in Haiti, who, after being raped, rationalizes it as an act of legitimate resistance to white supremacy ([58:08]).

---

10. Gender Roles, Truth-Seeking, and Institutional Balance

• Tom: Asks if the real issue is women in the workforce, or societal confusion about masculine and feminine roles ([60:54]).
• Gad: Clarifies that both masculinity and femininity are vital for civilizational prosperity—the key is using the right trait in the right context:
  • “Femininity is great, masculinity is great. We need both of it. Use it in the right time, in the right context.” ([64:38])
  • Critiques the shift in academia from a truth-seeking (masculine-coded) epistemology to one based on kindness and care (feminine-coded), warning this leads to forbidden knowledge and suppression of uncomfortable truths ([63:00]).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Gad Saad:
  • “What’s not reciprocal is parasitic. ... That’s what suicidal empathy is.” ([10:08])
  • “In suicidal empathy, I call it civilizational seppuku ... the disembowelment of a society.” ([23:35])
  • “For the suicidally empathetic, what I just said is a no go. Everybody is entitled to the beauty and majesty of the American experience.” ([26:21])
  • "At the rate that I’m taxed in Quebec ... I work free for the government as a 100% slave until about end of August." ([34:38])
  • “It’s all due to feminization… It is promulgated with great pride by women.” ([56:53])
• Tom Bilyeu:
  • “Define your values. What do you stand for? What are you willing to ride or die for?” ([07:48])
  • “There’s an idea that I think would really help people, which is the concept of pushing the distribution of responsibility… down to the lowest level possible.” ([29:52])
  • “People need to be chased by a lion.” ([29:52])

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |------------|-------------| | 00:47 | Framing Islam as expansionary; concerns about demographic and value shifts | | 03:24 | Gad Saad on Westerners' "ostrich parasitic thing" about immigration and value clashes | | 04:16 | Muslim Brotherhood’s open plan for Western conquest | | 10:08 | Reciprocity and suicidal empathy explained via evolutionary psychology | | 13:27 | Lack of “cultural theory of mind” in the West | | 15:35 | Sinwar/Israeli surgeons story as a parable of suicidal empathy | | 18:06 | Tom admits Western values are not objective truths | | 23:35 | Civilizational seppuku coined as societal self-destruction | | 26:21 | Gad Saad distinguishes between compassion and self-annihilation | | 29:52 | Tom’s philosophy: pushing responsibility to individuals | | 34:38 | Parasitic taxation in Quebec: “I work free … until end of August” | | 35:18 | Defining parasitic taxation and suicidal empathy | | 36:11 | Could we fix this with the political will? Gad Saad doubts it | | 40:26 | "Red America/Blue America" and the collapse of shared values | | 41:58 | Gad Saad loses a decades-long friendship over political perceived differences | | 47:01 | Evolutionary psychology: roots of left–right political split | | 50:27 | Musculature (e.g., grip strength) correlated with political orientation | | 55:07 | Impact of feminization in institutions and academia | | 58:08 | Story of the Haiti rape victim rationalizing her experience as anti-white oppression | | 63:00 | Universities moving from epistemology of truth to epistemology of care | | 64:38 | Using masculinity and femininity in the proper context |

---

Final Thoughts

Tom Bilyeu and Dr. Gad Saad deliver a spirited, unapologetic analysis of the West's civilizational predicament. Using both theory and lived experience, Saad warns against unchecked empathy and self-loathing policies that ignore evolutionary logic and cultural realities. The conversation is rich with evolutionary psychology, real-world policy critique, and pointed satire—challenging listeners to re-examine their assumptions about compassion, diversity, and the future of Western institutions.

Recommended for: Those interested in cultural criticism, evolutionary psychology, current events, and robust debate about the future of Western society.

---

Dr. Gad Saad's Book:
Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind available May 12, 2026.

Follow Gad Saad:
On X (formerly Twitter): @GadSaad
Podcast: The Saad Truth

---

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

Nine out of the 10 largest banks get it. They get that. VantageScore, the modern credit score, is the leader in predictive power, improving mortgage default predictions and saving lenders billions. Better predictions, better for your business with VantageScore.

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

Are you really buying a car online on autotrader right now? Really?

[Gad Saad]

At a playground?

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

Yeah. Really? Look at these listings from dealers. Wow, your search can really get that specific, right? Really?

[Gad Saad]

And you just put in your info and boom, car's in your budget.

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

Mom needs a second. Honey, you can really have it delivered. Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership.

[Tom Bilyeu]

One sec, sweetie.

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

Mommy's buying a car.

[Gad Saad]

Mommy, look. I think your kid is walking up the slide.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Kyle.

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

Again? Really? Auto trader. Buy your car online? Really?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go. Okay, let's start building the base assumptions that you have. If I get any of these wrong, stop me. But base assumption number one, that shapes your worldview and what you would end up doing if the policies were yours to make. The religion of Islam itself is. You've never used the word colonizing or conquest. But, like, it's expansionary, maybe is the most neutral way to say it. So the religion itself is expansionary. So highly proselytizing. They've got all kinds of things set up to make sure that it grows. It's a different value. I've heard you say this before, though I don't think you've said it today. But it is a value system that is different than the value system that we have here. So I'm trying to use neutral language. So you're importing people that are good at converting. They're very good at maintaining high birth rates, which is something in the west that we have become. Become absolutely terrible at. And you put those together with the fact that they are. It is a very different value system. And now you have something where you're inviting something in. And if Tom is right and values are the thing that matter, and when you have disparate values, you're going to see that country tear itself apart. We are running not even an experiment that we have put something in motion where. And I think that Belgium might be one of the first to go. Brussels is just. The percentage of Muslims in the country, I believe now are the majority. I could be crazy.

[Gad Saad]

In certain areas not. But in many of these places, Muhammad is the number one.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, that's very misleading because let's say that Americans, their top names. There's 15,000 different names that people go for. And so it's just gonna naturally dilute. Whereas if there's eight, like in the World cup and Muslims name their kids Mohammed, and that's basically it, then as a percentage of a single name, it's going to be very high.

[Gad Saad]

So notwithstanding that statistical reality that you just said, if Austria has Muhammad as the number one name, with all due respect to your little adjustment, it is raising a bigger red flag. Right. So it's. What you said is correct. You're right that there are a lot more variety in names in occidental names than there is in Islam, where everybody will call them Muhammad. But the fact that in, you know, Brussels and Vienna and London, that reality is happening, is that suggesting that there is a very noticeable demographic change happening? So let's say we maintain it at that pace. How much more before Pierce wakes up and says, oops? I guess, by the way, at the end of that show, I asked him, I turned it on him using a classic kind of Socratic method, right? You love curry. It's great. What would it take for Piers Morgan to write an email to Gad Saad and say, oops, I guess you were right. He goes, if I were to see that things have really gone bad. No, but you didn't. What would that be? Well, the reality is, until it bites you in the. Look, there is no such thing as diabetes because I don't have diabetes. None of my children have diabetes. Neither my wife has diabetes. As a matter of fact, I was diagnosed with diabetes, but nobody's amputated my leg yet, so it's probably not a serious thing. So people who do this is because they're so buried in their ostrich parasitic thing that they don't have the imagination or courage to extrapolate to. To what the future trajectory is. Right. Look, the Muslim Brotherhood, although it wasn't just them, but they're the most famous one, said, we're going to conquer the west in three ways. We're gonna conquer the west, to your point, through the womb of our women. We're gonna conquer the west through Hijrah. Hijra is the Arabic word for immigration. And then we're gonna conquer the west by using your miserable freedoms against you. It's not me who did a Mossad thing to uncover this. They're announcing it from top of the mountain. Please hear us. That's what we're going to do to you. And what do Westerners do? Oh, come on. That's just a bunch of guys saying nonsense. My friend Ahmad next door is a very sweet Guy and I play cricket with him. He's the real representation of Islam. So if people like me and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who grew up in that world, who had to wear really good running shoes to escape that world, are screaming all day at you, and I don't mean you literally, you Western people and nothing, then you deserve all that will befall you. Now, the reality is you and I might avoid the calamity that's coming to because God willing, we'll live forever, but we are on a clock. But what about our children? What about their children? My wife asked me long ago, you live a very hectic life. Why do you have to take on the world? I say because we have children, right? Angela Merkel can live out, to use Rob Henderson's term, she could live out her luxury beliefs because not only do they not affect her, she doesn't have children, that she has to worry about her policies. So I could do some moral preening in the mirror and go, look how good a person I am. I don't believe in discriminating against any immigrants. I'm a really good person. You see how I'm stroking my hair with my moral preening. Listen to us, we've lived it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, it's, I think, to get out of the yelling at people, not seeing a result. It ultimately comes down to natural selection. God, I'm very sad to report because people, the cultures that live on are the cultures that believe in themselves that have the strength to stand up for what they believe. In Japan, yeah, Japan's a great example. Like, they're not for play. And seeing them respond to immigration has been hysterical. I tried to do business there for a while and you get treated differently as not being Japanese. And I was like, all right, I respect it. Like, I get it. Like, I'm coming to your country, this is your place. You guys stand 10 toes down. But if a culture doesn't believe in itself, if it's not prepared to identify, state what its values are and say, this is what we stand for, and everybody else can fuck off. Because my thing is, I'm perfectly happy to have anybody come to America that is hardworking, not looking to be on public assistance contributes to American values, which I can very easily name. Yeah, I'm all for it. I want to attract the smartest, hard working, most freedom loving people that the world has ever seen. That's the very thing that made us us. But I think people in America are getting confused as to what built America. And they will often talk about the statue of libert. But what they don't realize is the Statue of Liberty says, give me your poor, tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. So these were people under dictatorships who were like, listen, don't give me anything other than a shot like, I want to come here. And the winters killed the vast majority of people in the early days that rolled up on the shores, it was just like, yo, this place is just going to fucking kill you. And so the people that were able to make it were the most entrepreneurial, the most hardcore. And so America's past is covered in blood. It's covered in the conquest of a land. And if you can't look at that and say, cool, this is how we got here, and now we're either going to fight for it or we're not. But it makes me very sad to see this become a question of race in most people's minds and not like a forget the race thing. Define your values. What do you stand for? What are you willing to ride or die for? And then welcome people in that hit that note and reject as aggressively as you can people that don't.

[Gad Saad]

I would say this because you asked me sort of what would be a specific policy. So let me answer that. You probably know this as a fan of evolutionary psychology, Reciprocity as a fundamental Darwinian drive, and if I may step back and kind of give a bit of a evolutionary psychology primer. So in some of my early books, I talk about four key Darwinian modules. Module one, survival. So anything that relates to your survival instinct. So, for example, we've evolved gustatory preferences that cater to the caloric uncertainty and caloric scarcity that we faced in our ancestral past. So both you and I prefer some instantiation of fat more than raw celery. You might prefer mousse, chocolate mousse, I may prefer ribeye steak, but we both prefer fat to celery.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so that's my dismay, but.

[Gad Saad]

Right, so that would be survival module. Reproductive module is every. All adaptations related to mating. Okay, but then there are two other modules that I argue are really key. There is kin selection, which explains altruistic acts towards kin. Why would I jump in front of a bus to save three of my children? Well, from an evolutionary perspective, that makes perfect sense because each of my children share on average, 50% of their genes with me. So even if I die and. And the selection that evolution would have selected for that altruistic behavior, now comes the fourth one. Why would I ever jump into the river to save Tom, who's not biologically related to me, or better yet, a complete stranger. And there the argument is based on reciprocal altruism. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. So there are very clear reasons why social species would evolve that tit for tat strategy. And now let's apply to what we're talking about here. Why is it that Islam can go to a place and build 3,000 mosques in the last 20 years in the United States? Actually, I think the number is much higher than that now. Okay. Are you able to build a church in most of those places? No. Therefore, that's a violation of reciprocity. What's not reciprocal is parasitic. Are parasitic relationships good? Not for the host, right? Yes. So therefore, am I allowed to go openly and brazenly proselytize people in Islamic countries? No. Why do you do it here? Am I allowed to do public prayers in your countries? No. Why do you do it here? That's what suicidal empathy is. Now, let's link it to another concept that I introduce in suicidal empathy. I call it cultural theory of mind. Theory of mind is a. It's actually part of empathy. There are two. There are two features of empathy. There's cognitive empathy and there's emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy is me being able to put myself in your mind to then sort of have a map of the world so that we can have a meaningful conversation. Autistic children fail theory of mind tests. That's how. There is no blood test you can give to. To know that a child is autistic. You give them a theory of mind task, they fail at it. Right. Now, what. So that's what theory of mind is. I introduced the term cultural theory of mind. This is when at the cultural level, you're able to put yourself in the mind's eye of the other culture. Now, the west lacks cultural theory of mind. Why? Because the west views magnanimity, generosity, kindness, compassion, empathy as laudable virtues to be reciprocated. You know what the other side hears? I mentioned five, right? Weakness. Weakness. Weakness. Weakness. Weakness. This is why in Arabic those folks tell me the west is a woman to be effed. Whoa. To be mounted. You're listening. You're taping this. Okay? Now, the reason why they say this is because the west is a woman, and in their reference, she is mounted. Now, they don't say this to me anymore because they recognize me now. So they watch their talk. But 20 years ago, when I wasn't as known and we could talk freely in Arabic and is. And they don't know who I am and what I stand for. But I'm just an Arabic guy. That's what they say. So, for example, in Canada, the Medicare card in beautiful, romantic, free health care. By the way, Canada has a free health care system if you don't include the hundreds of thousands of dollars that I pay in taxes. So, for example, my car is also free if you don't count the fact that I paid $70,000 for it. I my stake was free if you don't count the fact that I paid for it. So it's a free health care system, except that I pay for everybody else. And by the way, I can't do the free health care system because it's so substandard that I'm forced to take private health care through my employer. But keep being romantic about the beautiful Canadian system.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You're preaching to the choir on that one.

[Gad Saad]

Okay, so let's keep going. The Medicare card in Canada, because we're a very kind and civilized people. The did not have your photo ID on it. So when Ahmed Darwish wanted to bring his uncle to have heart surgery, who lived in Baalbek, in the small town in Lebanon, who wasn't Canadian, he could come and just use the card of his, right? And when they speak to me, they would say, such fucking morons, these Canadians, right? What a bunch of idiots. We're fucking them, right? Then the Canadians woke up and said, hey, here's a way we could reduce, say, fraud by billions of dollars. We could put an ID card on the Medicare. But again, you could have. The French word is largesse. You can be grand in your magnanimity with other people's money. Hence socialism, hence communism, right? It's parasitic. So that's why there's no cultural theory of mind. Westerners view these grand acts of compassion with the idea that you will appreciate that you will come in here and you will reciprocate in a tsunami of gratitude. That's not how it works. So let me give you one more example. Sinwar Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7, was in prison for life, right? But then he was released. During his time in prison, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor that was going to kill him. The Jewish surgeons who are bound by the Hippocratic oath, whereby even your most avowed enemy should benefit from, from you saving him, said, no, we will not let this guy whose entire existence revolves around eradicating all Jews in the world, as stated publicly, they operate on him. So now, when you don't have theory of mind, cultural theory of mind, which regrettably you would think the Israelis would, given the difficult neighborhood that they live in. They were suicidally empathetic. They said, well, if we excise that tumor and save his life, they this will buy us a lot of empathy from him. He said, hey morons, thank you very much for the life saving thing. I'm going to give you this gorgeous gift on October 7th. You ready for it? That's my gift return. And now some of them in government will write to me and say, Dr. Saad, wow, you were right about suicidal empathy. So what I'm saying is when you navigate through the world, you either navigate the world as it exists and act accordingly or you build a unicornia model of the world, which the west is doing.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere now. Audible gives you audiobooks, podcasts, Audible originals and more all in one place. Whether you want to dive into a series, listen to a popular bestseller, or check out the latest episode of a great new podcast, Audible has you covered. Enjoy genres you love like motivation mysteries and sci fi, follow names you know in comedy or true crime podcasts, or discover the Audible exclusive. Everyone's talking about the Sandman. The new Audible is your playlist for life. Try it for 30 days on us. Visit audible.com

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

discover top rated stays Loved by guests Rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews Verbo Book a vacation Rental Loved by guests

[Tom Bilyeu]

thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. It's interesting, you're saying something really profound and for some reason this one isn't catching on. But the fact that as a Westerner, it is very hard to remind for anybody, it's very hard to remind yourself that the value system that I have is not reflective of objective truth. It is a set of things that I've been taught that have been carried on through whatever religious tradition, my family, the things baked into the government, the media, all of it. But if somebody else has a totally different set of values, then they're going to approach the world from a very different way. It's very interesting. I. I am so aware of the concept of theory of mind at the individual level, but I really do forget that I'm not. My value system is not simply mapped to what humans are like. My value system is uniquely like not only American, but like West Coast American. And yeah, sort of the blue collar tinge that my youth had, like, all that stuff really makes up how I view the world. And so projecting my to look back at myself through A different culture is very difficult. And I don't hear anybody talking about that. At the individual level. Yes, at the cultural level.

[Gad Saad]

Well, that's very kind of you to say. And here I want to mentioned my editor at HarperCollins. At one point he said, you know, your term suicidal empathy has gone global. Everybody uses it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I want, I think people forget that that started with you.

[Gad Saad]

Yeah, yeah, yes. So some forget, some give credit, some know that it's me and don't give credit. We've got the whole mixture.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's crazy though. Yeah, cheers.

[Gad Saad]

Thank you. And so he said to me, he goes, I want all these other unbelievable terms in your book to become as much part of the lexicon as possible, one of which is cultural theory of mind. Interesting, because he said it is so powerful in explaining, you know, everything. Look, I'll give another example of how lack of cultural theory of mind creates these completely parallel and non intersecting worldviews. In the west, if you see someone who could potentially be a victim, you come to their defense. In the Middle east, where might is right. If you see a victim, that's an opportunity. Now again, I don't mean every single individual and I don't want to do this preface. It's a mindset, right? Men more important than women, humans more important than animals, Muslims more important than not. Every dynamic is one of power and strength. And if you are on the negative end of that calculus. Sorry. Okay, you follow? So I remember even in our home, and I mean, we're not, right? When you're children, sit down at the children's dinner, shut up your children, we're adults, right? By the way, there are western psychologists who've come up for with a metric that captures this. It's called power distance index. So Geert Hofsted, who is arguably the most known cross cultural psychologist in the world, Hofstede is H O F S T E D E Hofsted. So he came up with the analog to the big five personality traits. He argued that there is a similar set of traits, but at the cultural level. So one of them is power distance index. And that speaks to what we're talking about. Power distance index refers to whether a society is very much hierarchically organized or not. And so you see this for example, in linguistic. So let me give you one example. When we moved from Lebanon to Canada. So in Lebanon, of course we speak Arabic, but we also speak French because Lebanon used to be a French protectorate. So most educated Lebanese used to be bilingual at the very least. Well, because it's the French model from France. In. In the way you address someone in French, depending on the power dynamic, if they're older, if they're your professor, if they're, you know, whatever, you don't know them, you address them in a different way than if they're familiar. Is the colloquial right? Vous, which is also used for plural, is used. So if you were my professor and you're older than me, I go, comment, allez vous? How are you? I wouldn't say comment va tu. That's disrespectful. Quebec has a much more egalitarian ethos, even though it's French speaking. So when a child speaks to a grown up, they address them as tu, which is viewed as very impolite. Now, why am I saying that story? Because when my parents first moved to Montreal, they used to get offended when the little schmuck who's eight years old speaks to them as if they are your friend. So cultural values matter. Now, some cultural values are universal. So, for example, the incest taboo is known as a universal taboo because there is no culture where you say, yeah, yeah, have sex with your son. That's a great idea. But other. Yeah, but other values are completely culture specific. And so to assume that your magnanimity and compassion and empathy is going to reciprocate it is a perfect case of. Here's another term that my editor would like to see go. I call it civilizational seppuku. Seppuku is the disembowelment of the Japanese when they have shame, while what we're doing with suicidal empathy is civilizational seppuku.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Walk me through that, because that's what exactly I was trying to get at earlier, where it's like we have this sense of original sin, of how our country came into existence. You couple that with, you know, decades and decades and decades of success, and all of a sudden we've got people that are eager to commit civilizational seppuku.

[Gad Saad]

Okay, so let's do it. If you believe that all differences and outcomes stem from nefarious first causes, Kamala Harris. It's not right we should all end up in the same place. And we certainly didn't start at the same place. I am here, the beneficent government, to equalize. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This makes me want to chew through a coffee table.

[Gad Saad]

Exactly. Exactly. Me too. Okay, so if. But if you internalize that message, let's now apply it at the collective level. Why is it that we in the west get to have such a beautiful life? Tom is. I Don't think I'm saying a secret is a very successful, very wealthy guy. There are hundreds of millions, if not billions of people that don't make per day what Tom could potentially make in the time that we've sat together today. That feels icky. That feels existentially wrong. I don't like that feeling. So the way that I'm going to self flagellate existentially is I'm going to right that wrong because I suffer from privilege guilt. I'm privileged. What about the Guatemalan people? Don't you think that they have a right to live this wonderful dream? Well, in a beautiful unicornia, that's true. But as Thomas Sowell also explained to us, life has trade offs. There are opportunity costs. I would love for every homeless person to have a home. That doesn't mean that I let in thousands of homeless people into my home. That doesn't make me callous. I would love every single child on earth to be free of abuse, truly. But I think both of you and I would sign that thing. That doesn't mean that I invest in Rwandan random children as much as I do in my own own children. And I have the strength of personhood to say both of these two statements are true. I would love existentially for all children to be free of abuse, but my job is to protect my biological children. For the suicidally empathetic, what I just said is a no go. Everybody is entitled to the beauty and majesty of the American experience. So if they are let in, here we are. Why are you an asshole? By the way? There's a producer, I'll keep it unnamed, but there's a producer of a very, very high profile show in LA that wanted me to come on for suicidal empathy. And as she was grilling me during our phone chat and I didn't take too well to that kind of grilling approach. I'm not auditioning for your show, she said. But okay, I know about your Islam stuff, but what about if the Hispanic guys are coming here with who are collecting our tomatoes? Which by the way, that itself could be a form of racism. Because why are you expecting that all the Hispanic are only. Why are they not neurosurgeons? Why are you assuming they're only tomato pickers? But anyways, you don't think that they have a right to come here. So I flipped it on her. I said, wait a second. Every in the United States, all the administration knows Gad Saad. I work at a center called the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American freedom at Ole Miss. So I am about as rah rah American as you can be. Yet if I want to go work at Ole Miss, I need a visa. So are you saying that Hector the tomato picker transcends that rule? It applies. So are you saying there's a two tier system whereby Gad Saad must abide by the law, but not Hector? I didn't hear her respond much on the phone. I don't think I'm gonna be offered to go on that show. I mean, I think the host would want me to come, but I think the gatekeeper doesn't want me to come. So the reality is, in a beautiful world where we all sing John Lennon's Imagine song, we can all hold hands and nobody is unhoused in the real world. It happens. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Taking a short break. But there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

You never know where your next unforgettable experience will pop up. That's why bringing along an American Express card opens the door to wherever you go. Morning coffee, run with an old friend, earn cash back, weekend getaway, earn miles. Dinner at the hottest restaurant in town. You get the idea. No matter the place or the plan, Amex rewards your inner explorer. Learn about card [e-mail] terms apply when you manage procurement for multiple facilities. Every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. Yeah, so here's the phrase I'm trying to get to catch on, okay? Some people need to be chased by a lion. When. When you have to fight for your survival, when things are hard, when they're difficult, when you realize the reality that if I don't get that loaf of bread or whatever, my kid goes hungry. All of a sudden people get pretty sharp about like, hold on a second, I need to draw some borders. Yes to you, no to that person. There's an idea that I think would really help people, which is the concept of pushing the distribution of responsibility, the distribution of success, the distribution of pain, all of it down to the lowest level possible. That ultimately the only way for a society to function well is if Every individual is carrying their individual burden. And I. So speaking of cultural theory of mind, I didn't realize how sort of Christian that is, that there's this idea of there's a spark of divinity in all people and that makes the level of analysis the individual. And once you start thinking about the individual, it's not that, oh, well, that's that person's burden to carry. It's just, you're not looking upwards to the state to say, hey, take care of us all. It's like, okay, I'm going to do my bit Good Samaritan, help this person, because I share some sort of proximity or whatever, and there's a celebration of helping people, but there's not. The universal God is just going to carry everybody. You don't have to do anything. It's pick up your cross and carry it. And I think as we lose that sense of personal responsibility, people need to. Instead of the state sort of grabbing up everybody's resource and then disseminating it, if we can get people back in the mindset of, like, okay, I need to do my part for me, like, I'm not even saying we have to do it for the collective or anything. Just if everybody goes, okay, cool by me carrying my burden, then it's not a burden on somebody else. And then if that person takes care of themselves, it's not a burden on somebody else. And you can deal with things a lot more effectively.

[Gad Saad]

And I mean, to that point, why is it that in Canada, and I mean, it's not that different in the US but certainly not as bad as Canada. Why do you have such a huge welfare safety net? So that people can literally have three, four, five generations of only welfare recipients. Now, they are not mentally incapacitated, they are not physically incapacitated, but they are literally, in terms of my investment in them, my biological children, but I didn't sign up to raise them. But. Right, so that shows you. I mean, Margaret Thatcher was right when she said. I'm paraphrasing. Right. So socialism is, you know, it's great until you run out of other people's money. Right? So in suicidal empathy, I have one of the last chapters is on parasitic taxation and so on. Because it's a form of suicidal empathy. Right? Because the government's saying it's unfair that Tom has more money than Joe, and therefore I'm gonna take away from Tom. You could apply it to climate activism. It's not fair that the rich countries have more. Let's tax it and give it to Rwanda. Why? What's the moral principle that says that you're entitled to other people's money doing nothing in return. Okay, you want money, then serve as a cross guard at the school. Paint my. Do something clean. The right. But we entitle people. So in Quebec, you get these unbelievable benefits, but they're not free. You have to make. I don't want to get upset, but I'm going to talk about it. If you look at the royalties that were taken from me for, say, Parasitic Mind, the amount of years that I have to work as a professor, at the rate that I can save on my professor's salary, adds 10 years to my career as a professor. Is that fair? What's the moral calculus that says that the government can do this to me? Let's put it another way. And some people say, wow, I never heard it mentioned like this. Imagine you're a slave. That I mean, a literal slave. From January 1 to December 31, every ounce of your labor is owned by somebody else. Okay, now let's look at Quebecers. At the rate that I'm taxed in Quebec, when you add up all the taxes, I work free for the government as a 100% slave until about end of August.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yo.

[Gad Saad]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's wild.

[Gad Saad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Take notes. Okay. In end of August, the government says that the product of my mind. You know those things called books?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Gad Saad]

Where I talk about my story in Lebanon, they own the right to that. What I went through in the Lebanese civil war is theirs to gain. Is that moral? Is that ethical? Well, if I'm a loser, if I'm a parasite, you know what I. You know what I write to Gad Saad when he complains about parasitic taxation. Why are you such an asshole, Jew? Why can't you be kind to the other people who didn't get to make it as an author like you did, Jew? That's parasitic taxation. That's suicidal empathy. Being kind with the sweat and toil of others.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so I have a hypothesis about how we ended up here, which I'll oversimplify to. Things have been too good for too long that people have forgotten. Also, we can print money. So to me, this is an economic question. How do you think we ended up here? And is there a way to reverse this? Or is this where the government becomes ever so more suicidal? Where we've got the civilization seppuku knife buried into the abdomen? Like, do we take it out? Do we get stitched up? Like, how does it work?

[Gad Saad]

Amazing question. Look, the good news is there is a template by which you could reverse the trend. The bad news is I see no evidence that anybody has the stomach to do it. So I don't know where you fit in terms of politically, how much libertarian you are and so on. I want the government to have a police force, maybe the firemen, maybe the military, maybe remove the snow if we're in Canada. And I want you to fuck off, okay? You don't get to decide by having a 21 year old police woman standing at the corner of our residential area in hiding to make sure that if we jaywalk on a residential street where it turns out that I've got the cognitive acuity on a one way street to look in the middle of winter and say, oh look, there isn't a car barreling down at me, I will use my personal dignity to cross the street. But there's a 21 year old who is much younger than some of the socks that I wear that says, hey, you jaywalked. $82 ticket. That's overreach of the government, right, by the way. Literally that story, I was telling it to my then 9 year old son, he's older now, when I was explaining to him the concept of libertarianism. Okay, so how do we do it completely? Elon Musk came into Twitter and bought it, turned it to X. What was the number that he got? Was it 80%?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, basically.

[Gad Saad]

Where's X today? So how can we live in a world where you could cut off 80% of the people? X didn't collapse. Well, there is nothing that is as orgiastic in its bureaucratic bloat as the government's right. I mean, in suicidal empathy, I list. I mean, it almost seems like it's satirical, right? Developing queer cartoons in Peru. 4 million circumcision of Mozambique men, 18 million. In what world does the US or Canadian government pay for circumcision of Mozambique men? But when you are suicidally empathetic, you're a good person. You are someone who doesn't get restricted by national boundaries, the world. Peter Singer explained to us who he happens to be a degenerate himself, but he explained to us that we have to increase the moral circle, right? To be kind to animals, which I agree with, by the way. But the suicidally empathetic see no borders. There is no border to my house, there is no border to my biological children. The Mozambique guys who can't afford a circumcision, we pay for it. The queer people who want to have a drag queen show in Peru, we should pay for that, get rid of all that stuff. I mean, let's do an experiment. How about this? If you run a deficit and you're in the government for two years, I'm being hyperbolic, but just play the game with me. We take you to the back of the building and we execute you. Do you think that the government would run a deficit if that were the case?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Probably not.

[Gad Saad]

Probably not. So in other words, there is a template by which we could fix the problem. But I don't see the fact that anybody has the stomach to do it. Because while I am serving in government, I won't have to bear the consequences of all the actions that I will. Maybe my asshole children will by having a $39 trillion debt. But F them, who cares? I'll be gone by then. I'll be retired. So you know what? Let's double down. Let's blow it. Let's print money. So politicians are the only folks who literally are not within the purview of cause and effect relationships. Right. If I jump off a building, there's this thing called gravity that will make sure that my brain will splatter. But. But politicians can do this stuff for generation after generation. What's the cost? The biggest cost is you don't get re elected. Well, fuck it. Print money.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, the printing money thing is a big part of that equation. Okay. So if I look at all of this, one of the things that I see that's really playing out in a somewhat violent fashion is that I don't think it is. The people are not concerned about their, you know, this being bad down the road. I don't think they understand economics. And I think that Balaji Srinivasan has a really interesting concept that there's no longer a United States of America. There's a red and a Blue America. They don't share values. And so when you look at what's going on, it's already the thesis that I'm laying out, which is values matter almost more than anything. What you have is a collision of values. And so we have this. We have these two almost literally different ethnic groups. Because if you look at the stats, they don't intermarry almost at all. And so they're pulling away from each other. They're in their own echo chambers. They listen to different influencers, they're on different apps. So there isn't this sort of shared overlap world. There's grotesque misunderstanding of economics. And so they're just running out their value system.

[Gad Saad]

1.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you think that makes sense? And if it does make sense, because I agree with you in terms of balancing the budget and getting the government to stop trying to take care of everything and being parasitic in terms of taxes. But if that really is true, I think we have a slightly different problem where you'd have to address that first before you can get to those.

[Gad Saad]

No, I agree with you. Look, I could share some personal stories. There's a. To your point, about building separate worlds, there's a great guy who I consider to be a very good friend. We haven't seen each other much throughout the years, but he was pursuing his MBA at Cornell when I was doing my PhD. We became very good friends. Very gentle guy, very poised, elegant, lovely guy. And every few years, we'd see each other as if we've never left each other. I was traveling to give a lecture in Savannah, Georgia, and he's in the Atlanta area. And so I reached out to him and I said, hey, I'm coming to your area. Is there any possibility that we could meet? He writes me this long, private message on LinkedIn, actually, where he says, unfortunately, given some of the posts that I've seen you put up on Trump. Yeah, yeah. So. And I was thinking about what did I now, first of all, I'm Canadian, so if, if, if your concern is whether I voted for someone, I did not vote for Donald Trump. But from his perspective, what he was most upset about is I, I showed absolutely no evidence that I thought that Trump was an existential threat to the United States. As a matter of fact, I was in Mar a Lago, you were there. So I was even sharing the same oxygen as him. And he said, unfortunately, we can no longer be friends. And so he's actually in suicidal empathy. In the book, I didn't mention his name out of courtesy, but that speaks to your point. How could somebody with whom. So we would have met probably in 1991, so we've got three plus decades together. I'm Canadian, so I literally had no influence in terms of my voting behavior or anything. I mean, yes, you could say I'm in the Donald Trump sphere, the Elon, the this, but in what way would it make sense for you to have the calculus that says, I loved GAD and he was a great guy and a close friend of mine. Right now, what he's done, I could no longer have a relationship with him, you heard?

[Tom Bilyeu]

But you're marching up to that with Tucker, and I know you'll say, well, okay, that's a little more personal, given anti Semitism, but what if somebody were like, Blue hair, posting and being like. What do they call it? Septum, core. Like, just like, all in. God, what is you're posting recently? Camel toe. Karen's like, that was just. That's what I thought you were going

[Gad Saad]

to talk about, actually.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No, no. That is hysterical, by the way, and shame on you, because there are certain people. I'm perfectly fine if they're going to camel toe up, let me tell you. But I can see anybody saying, okay, yeah, whoa. Like, that person's into something that now I'm like, I'm not so sure about that. So can you not see from their perspective how for them, it's like we just don't share a value system anymore?

[Gad Saad]

Look, nearly all of my academic colleagues are not of the same political persuasion as I.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And that doesn't bother you?

[Gad Saad]

It bothers me ideologically that in my view, they are parasitized. It hasn't stopped me from being super collegial with them in the tea room or the coffee or the faculty lounge. In other words, I can still be fully. I mean, there is no ecosystem that is more lopsided in its parasitic tendencies than academia, because all of those parasitic ideas originate in academia. And yet I've been a professor for 32 years, so in a sense, that exactly speaks to your point. I could still operate in that environment, still be bewildered by some of the insanity that my colleagues. But I could look at them as individuals and say, but, you know, he's a nice guy to completely shut up. I could no longer be friends with you because you said nice things about Kamala. I literally would have nobody to talk to on campus because I don't. I mean, I'm pro. You know, actually, let's go back to Thomas Sowell. Do you remember when Thomas Sowell, and I'm paraphrasing him, he said, whenever someone speaks to you about diversity, ask them how many Republicans are in their sociology department. Okay? That's exactly it. There's almost no one that I've ever met, by the way. That's why I love Ole Miss, because the people who hired me in that center are actually of the same political persuasion of me. They actually think that the very difficult conundrum of identifying who's male or female has actually been solved because there have been 117 billion people who have existed as Homo sapiens who seem to have navigated through this very difficult conundrum until 15 minutes ago, when we lost the ability. So if I were to start disassociating, I'd have nobody to talk to. In academia. And yet here I am now.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you think that there's something to the. I think evolutionarily there is a reason that some people lean left and there's a reason that some people lean right. I think that to get us to cooperate as a species, you need both.

[Gad Saad]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So if that's true, do you think there's something about left leaning people that makes them more likely to reject, to do the purity test, that kind of thing?

[Gad Saad]

I do. But before I answer this one, so please remind me if I don't, I think I often now joke around that I should get some royalties from these guys because the number of times that I've plugged their book. There are these two French psychologists, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. They wrote a book called the Enigma of Reason. They're evolutionary psychologists where they argued that are faculty of reasoning did not evolve to seek some objective truth, but rather to win arguments. Once you concede that that's true, it's actually quite a pessimistic realization because you realize that when I'm trying to give you the mind vaccine by showing you tons of evidence in support of my position, you just go la la la la la, I don't want to hear it. If anything, it actually further solidifies your own position that is exactly opposite to the one that I just gave you with my evidence. Right. Leon Festinger, the pioneer of cognitive dissonance theory, has a great quote which I cite in chapter seven of Parasitic Mind where he basically literally says the more evidence you give someone to their against their anchored position, the stronger they take that as proof that they are right. I mean literally it's hallucinatory. Right. So to your point, I think we already are facing an uphill battle.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So just humans.

[Gad Saad]

Humans are like. Humans suck. Because I am committed to my position, if that position becomes a central feature of my personhood, then I'm even more anchored. It's not just an abstract thing about which prime numbers do I like versus it's a foundational. I'm an empathetic person. I don't believe we should have. It should be open borders. I'm a kind person, therefore I'm a Democrat. Right. The Republicans are callous, so on. Okay, so I don't. So to your point, to answer your question now I do think that there are certain architectures of personality types that are more likely to gravitate towards the left than towards the right. And to that point there is great research which I cite in Parasitic Mind, that some of those realities are not only Captured by our personality types. They're captured by our morphology. Yeah. You ready?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm ready.

[Gad Saad]

Okay. So I wish these were my studies because I love them. They're amazing. But they're from a colleague, a Danish guy. You give people men a grip strength test.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I can see where this is going.

[Gad Saad]

Oh, yeah. Isn't it amazing? Yes. Okay. I mean, there are different metrics you could use, but let's do grip strength. Yeah, that's perfect grip strength. Then you ask them, what do you think about military interventions? What do you think about socioeconomic redistribution? Yeah, go ahead. Give me the height.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Go ahead. If you can't squeeze it close, you're going to want to redistribute. If you can see, smash that clothes. You're all for military intervention.

[Gad Saad]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. When. When I literally carry the morphology of power within my. My being, my physical being. I go f you. Yeah. The. The world is a tough place. We fight for things. And may the winner walk away with. With the. With the loot. Yeah. When I cross my legs like Barack Obama, like Justin Trudeau, when I am castrated, when I'm a girl, when I cry at Bridget Jones diary movies, when I ask my wife if I'm looking fatter in my jeans because I'm so kind, when I wear the foulard, then I think that economic redistribution is the right way to go. And look, I'm starting to tear up thinking that Rwandans don't have my opportunities. Right. So not just your personality, your morphology is deeply embedded within your political system. By the way, here's a great. You're going to like this one. There's a great paper. I'm going on a tangent, but it's relevant to what we're talking. There's a great paper published in 1971, which I assign to all my PhD students. It's a paper titled. That's interesting, exclamation point. It's a sociologist who wanted to argue that good research is not just research that has what's called internal validity, meaning you controlled for the right controls, you manipulated the right variables. It has to be more than having methodological rigor for it to be good science. The most important feature of science is to trigger the. That's interesting. So as I was saying, the thing I saw on your face, you spoke. That's interesting. Because what this sociologist was arguing in this paper, he listed 12 criteria, epistemological criteria, of what would constitute interesting research. And all 12 were a surprising effect that heretofore you would not have thought were related so it is very unlikely for people to imagine that your economic and political orientation is linked to your musculature. That's interesting.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That is interesting.

[Gad Saad]

And so when I give lectures in front of all kinds of fancy scientists, I say, most of you do research. That's pure, utter shite, to borrow a term from our friends from the Irish UK region. And they're like, what? How dare you? I say you're both your own great methodologist, you do the science well. But here's, let's take a study. I'm going to do a study demonstrating that if customers were very happy with the restaurant, they're more likely to return to this restaurant. Holy shit. Who could have thought of that? Brilliant insight.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I never would have guessed.

[Gad Saad]

Who would have known this. Now if I show you that paper, it has a lot of very fancy mathematical stuff. So you go, ooh, this is nice. No, no, just give me the bottom line. So more satisfied customers return to this restaurant. Why aren't you on the plane to Stockholm to receive your Nobel Prize already? This is unbelievable. Right? So that's not interesting. So in my 32 year career, when I review papers, I literally can take the exact same paragraph and cut and paste it to every paper. This is, this was greatly designed and executed. The end result, pure shit. Everybody could have guessed it. My 2 year old son could have known this, right? And so the example that I just gave is exactly what I try to get my students looking for a research project to come up with. Come up with something that goes, holy. I could have never imagined putting these things together.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well along the lines of the actual morphology thing. How much of the trouble that we see, see today, full stop, is born of the feminization of institutions writ large.

[Gad Saad]

All of it. I've sat in academic departments. How's everybody doing? How's everybody? It's so nice to see you all. And I look around, I go, am I in a kindergarten class or am I in a academic department at a top business school in the world? Because the chair was a woman and the associate dean was a woman and the dean is a woman. And they're all so kind. They're also empathetic. Not this chair with the kindergarten affectation, but the previous chair had also been a woman. She had asked the department to, whenever they had an accolade, to send it to her so she could announce it in the major thing. I took her to her word. So I sent her the tsunami of accolades. But you know what she responded? She's kind, she's very empathetic. What do you think she said to me?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Don't ever do that again, Jew?

[Gad Saad]

Not quite. No. No, she's empathetic, so she wouldn't. She wouldn't use such a. She resist. No, she. She said, maybe don't send all of your accolades because it's making some of your colleagues feel bad. So you mean the losers in the department who last published something in 1971 and have been Deadwood will feel bad if the winners who publish tons of stuff exhibit their productivity?

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is like shutting down AP classes and stuff.

[Gad Saad]

Exactly.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So ridiculous.

[Gad Saad]

Exactly. So it's all due to feminization. By the way, while both men and women could suffer from suicidal empathy, boy, it is promulgated with great pride by women. It's the women who hold the hashtag refugees welcome sign as they're about to be gang raped by said refugees. Christ. But they're kind, by the way, in the book, in suicidal empathy, you're going to read parts or. I don't know, if you listen to the book. Listen, listen. Actually, I just did the narration. This was my first book that I've narrated. At some points I had to stop because I was cracking up reading what I had written.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I love that.

[Gad Saad]

Okay, so there are some cases that you go, this can't be. God made this up just for satire. But of course I've got the references, so they're real cases. There's a woman, okay, speaking about feminization, there's a woman, a white woman. She's an ally. She's an ally to people of color.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Camel toe, probably.

[Gad Saad]

Camelto, undoubtedly. Cameltoe. She decides to go to Haiti.

[Tom Bilyeu]

People that don't know your Twitter are really gonna wonder why I keep saying that.

[Gad Saad]

I could explain it after if you want. And there is a sequela to that story that happened yesterday. That's really cool. It happened in person. You might want to hear that. Okay, so this woman goes to Haiti, you know, white, liberal, empathetic woman.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, my God. I know this story from you, but you do. I know where you're headed. From you, from you, from you.

[Gad Saad]

Okay. She goes to Haiti to demonstrate that the stereotype of the black male violent guy is completely promulgated by, you know, white supremacy and so on. And she's going to just dismantle this? Well, she's taken to a rooftop where she is repeatedly, violently raped by a Haitian man on the rooftop. And as she is being raped, she's begging him to stop because does he not realize that she is a Malcolm X fan? What? You're a Malcolm X fan, abort rape. And I am a Haitian man from Port au Prince. And so Malcolm X is really within my mental model. So imagine for a second what your calculus in navigating through the world must be. That number one, you thought, absolutely, I can walk around as a woman in Haiti and there is no trouble that will befall me because obviously this is all promulgated by white supremacy. There's error number one. But then error number two, when you told him that you are a black ally, you were at the BLM rallies and you're a Malcolm X scholar, that didn't dissuade him from raping you. Now, but this doesn't finish there. At the end, she said, notwithstanding that my brother, whatever was raping me, I know that it wasn't against me, but he was fighting against the injustice of the white man. And as such, I am thankful for the experience. Yeah, okay. Okay. So therefore I went there because there's going to be no rape. Because we know for a fact that black men don't rape. That's just a fact. Okay. Only white men rape. When he does rape me, it's really an attack on white supremacy. Not me. I'm just a vehicle for his rage. And then when I told him I'm Malcolm X, he didn't stop. So how many things wrong went in your mental model of the world for you to arrive to all of those bifurcations in the road? Yeah, that's what suicidal empathy. That's what the feminine ethos is.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. Okay, so let's ask the hard question. Your daughter can hear us speaking right now.

[Gad Saad]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And if it is true that one of the things that's really going wrong is the feminization of a just vast swath of our institutions, have we created a civilizational level problem by inviting women, women into the workforce?

[Gad Saad]

No, but they're. Look, we are a sexually dimorphic species, meaning that there are evolved sex differences between men and women. So for example, there are many bird species that are non sexually dimorphic. You can't tell unless you do a intimate exam who is male or female. Other bird species you can clearly tell. The males are a lot more extravagant. Typically they're sexually selected. The females are drab. So there are wonderful traits that women possess for civilizational flourishment. There are wonderful traits that males possess and the trick is to know which trait is optimal under which condition. So it is not true. It would be wrong to make the blanket statement women don't belong in the workplace force. But it is equally wrong to say that universities should be built on an epistemology of care rather than an epistemology of truth. And these are actual real world words. A lot of the feminization of the, of academia argues that the epistemology of truth seeking, the epistemology of elite knowledge, the epistemology, epistemology of excellence are masculine traits that lead to, you know, toxic masculinity. We have to have an epistemology of care. No, we don't. We don't. Okay, so for example, if so, that leads, by the way, to forbidden knowledge. Forbidden knowledge is the idea that if there is some scientific knowledge that can result in negative downstream consequences, then you shouldn't do it. So, for example, if I find that people from Islamic immigrant backgrounds are oh, say 400 times more likely to commit rape than say, the native population, what's the point of publishing that? You're simply marginalizing those poor immigrants. Even more so, you're using an epistemology of care and empathy rather than the pursuit of truth unencumbered by political correctness. So no, I'm certainly not comfortable to say women don't belong in the workforce. Of course they do. But I'm saying that apply your feminine power or your masculine power and men and women can have both of those traits, right? Women do love a guy who is kind and empathetic, but not in an alley when they're being accosted to be raped. Then they don't want an empathy guy, they want a brute. Yes, to stop the rape. To stop the rape. So what you want life is about triggering the right response at the right moment. So for example, it's not true that we are a thinking animal and not a feeling animal. The problem arises when we trigger the affective system when it should be the cognitive system or vice versa. When I go down a dark alley, I have evolved the emotional system to have a fear based response. Because I see some young men loitering, my heart starts going up, my blood pressure goes up. That's an autonomic affective response. That makes evolutionary sense. If I'm trying to do well on a calculus exam where I should be triggering my cognitive system, if I get that autonomic fear response, it's not going to help me much. So femininity is great, masculinity is great. We need both of it. Use it in the right time, in the right context. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Gad said, every time I get to spend time with you, it is glorious. Where can people spend time with you? Find the book.

[Gad Saad]

Thank you. Well, I'm only glorious because I have unbelievable guests, hosts that orchestrate the best out of me. So thank you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, let's not downplay your sex appeal.

[Gad Saad]

That is true. And thank you for not pointing out to the fact that I'm about 10 pounds heavier than the last time I was here.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Gad, you could put on 10 more

[Gad Saad]

and I'd be okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I just want to make sure there's camel toe somewhere. That's all I'm gonna say.

[Gad Saad]

People are going to now go check

[Tom Bilyeu]

to go see his ex. Yes, I assure you.

[Gad Saad]

Go check it. Well, my book comes out on May 12th. You can pre order it right now. It's titled Suicidal Empathy, Dying to be Kind. You can even order signed copies.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Great title.

[Gad Saad]

Have you seen the COVID I haven't

[Tom Bilyeu]

seen the COVID because I got the PDF.

[Gad Saad]

The COVID is a. It's really beautiful. Sort of archival antiquarian cover that shows a sheep holding a free the Wolves sign.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Nice.

[Gad Saad]

Boom. So anyways, so you could. You could please pre order the copy. It'll be out May 12th. You could follow me on Xad G a d s a, a d. And I also host a show not nearly as popular as Tom's or his wife's called the Sad Truth. S A, A D Truth. I love it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

[Ad Read / Advertiser Voice]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of millions of products in fast, dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Gad Saad]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.