Gad Saad on Antisemitism, Suicidal Empathy, Changing Your Mind and the Evolutionary Mind

High-Level Overview

Gad Saad, a professor of marketing at Concordia University known for applying evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior, makes his tenth appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience to promote his new book, The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life. The first stretch of the conversation is heavy and political: Saad describes the explosion of open Jew hatred he has faced since October 7, his argument about moral standards in the Gaza war, and his theory of suicidal empathy, while Rogan argues that foreign bot networks and deliberate agendas are amplifying the chaos.

From there the mood lightens considerably. The two cover why people refuse to change their minds, scientists who were ridiculed and later vindicated, the evolutionary roots of phobias and memory, clever crows and bowerbirds, murderous chickens, Genghis Khan, Hunter S. Thompson's legendary daily routine, fame and friendship, Dave Chappelle, cults, and finally a long, half-joking riff on artificial intelligence. The conversation swings between serious geopolitics, playful science lectures and classic Rogan tangents.

The Discussion Explores:

• The surge of open antisemitism after October 7 and Saad's personal experience of it
• Saad's intent-based argument about civilian casualties in Gaza, and Rogan's pushback
• Suicidal empathy and parasitic ideas as explanations for Western policy on immigration and crime
• Why people struggle to change their minds, and scientists who were mocked before being proven right
• Evolutionary psychology of phobias, memory, animal intelligence and mating displays
• Consilience, reaching the public through podcasts and books, and the value of reading
• Happiness, friendship, fame and reframing hardship
• AI, simulated realities and the fear of building our own replacements

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Antisemitism After October 7

Saad, whose Jewish family fled Lebanon at the start of its civil war, recalls that when their plane cleared Lebanese airspace in 1975, his mother put a Star of David around his neck and told him he could now wear it proudly. About three weeks after October 7, his son told him that if he had worn a Star of David at the son's soccer game in part of Montreal that day, he would be dead. Saad says that with protests on his urban campus, at times he could only teach via Zoom or with security escorting him, and that tenure is the only reason he has not been pushed out of academia, though he has lost other opportunities and received death threats.

Rogan says he has never seen such open antisemitism, describing it as roaches coming out of the woodwork, and calls the testimony of university presidents before Congress, who said calls for death to Jews depended on context, the craziest verbal gymnastics he has heard. Saad says even checking on his relatives in Israel got him labeled a baby killer, and that the hatred now comes from Islamist, far-right and progressive-left directions at once. Rogan believes much of it is amplified by Russian and Chinese trolls and algorithms that push inflammatory content, and that malleable young people on campuses are being manipulated. Saad offers the example of people who identify as queers for Palestine, which he sees as supporting a cause antithetical to their own identity.

The Gaza War and the Question of Moral Standards

Saad proposes judging war not by equality of outcome, meaning comparing the death tolls on each side, but by intent. He compares a driver who accidentally kills four people with someone who hires a hitman to kill his family but is caught before anyone dies; the law punishes intent. Hamas, he argues, fires thousands of rockets with the intent to kill as many as possible, and only Israel's Iron Dome prevents mass casualties. He stresses repeatedly that every innocent death is a tragedy, and says that Israel drops leaflets and calls civilians in Arabic to warn them, while the information war has been won by Hamas. He rejects the word genocide, pointing out that the Palestinian population has grown substantially over the decades.

Rogan pushes back. Hamas's military capabilities are far below Israel's, he says, likening it to a small person throwing a punch at him and him beating that person to death. What scares people, he says, is a willingness to bomb schools, mosques and apartment buildings knowing many women and children will die to get at fighters. Saad responds that Israel is held to a unique standard, noting far larger death tolls in Yemen, Syria, the Iran-Iraq war and the Lebanese civil war that draw little protest, and cites estimates of combatant-to-civilian ratios that he considers low by historical standards. He paraphrases Golda Meir's remarks about peace depending on whether the other side wants Israel to exist, argues that the conflict is existential rather than about land, and describes Islamic concepts about reclaiming territory once held. He adds that there are both nasty and lovely Jews and Muslims, saying no group has a monopoly on the darkness of the human heart, but says the rhetoric he hears against Jews in his own experience is far more pervasive.

Suicidal Empathy and Parasitic Ideas

Saad cites a 2010 Pew survey that he says found 95% to 99% of respondents in many Muslim-majority countries held unfavorable views of Jews, and argues that large-scale immigration from such places inevitably raises antisemitism. He emphasizes that many Muslim immigrants want nothing to do with such views and simply want to live the American experience, but says there is no machine that can look into someone's heart, so it becomes a statistical game. He points to Germany, France and Denmark as warnings.

His explanation is suicidal empathy, the subject of his next book. Empathy evolved for good reasons, but it can become hyperactive or misdirected, for example caring more for illegal immigrants than for veterans, or more for criminals than their victims. Saad says "the most dangerous weapon in human context is a parasitized mind", and argues that most Western leaders were educated in universities infected with parasitic ideas and genuinely believe they are being noble. Rogan thinks it is both misguided nobility and deliberate planning, pointing to border policy and to George Soros funding lenient district attorneys. Rogan also criticizes the legal cases against Donald Trump for setting a dangerous precedent of prosecuting political opponents.

Why People Won't Change Their Minds

Asked by a psychiatrist what human phenomenon surprised him most in 30 years of research, Saad answered: the inability of people to change their opinions once they are anchored. Rogan agrees strongly, saying you should never marry your ideas, and that refusing to admit a mistake out of pride is far weaker than being wrong. He quotes Patrice O'Neal: "you could hold your opinions, but don't let your opinions hold you." Rogan then criticizes Anthony Fauci, recommending Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s book The Real Anthony Fauci and arguing that officials dismissed the lab leak theory while knowing about gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

Saad says scientists are no different. He tells the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, who urged doctors to wash their hands after handling cadavers before delivering babies, was ridiculed and died in an asylum, and of the scientists who were laughed at for claiming ulcers were caused by bacteria and later won the Nobel Prize. He jokes to students that if people laugh at your idea, it is either terrible or you should prepare to go to Stockholm. He cites J.B.S. Haldane's four stages of acceptance, from worthless nonsense to I always said so, and reveals he is an email hoarder who has messages from the same people calling his work bullshit in 2001 and inviting him as a plenary speaker in 2019. He recalls giving the same talk at the University of Michigan's psychology department, where it was welcomed, and its business school the next day, where senior professors wedded to the blank slate view interrupted him constantly. The blank slate idea, he says, is hopeful but wrong, and he traces cultural relativism to Franz Boas, who was trying to counter the misuse of biology.

The Evolutionary Lens on Fear, Memory and Animals

Saad explains that clinical phobias cluster around ancestral dangers like snakes and spiders, not cars or guns, even though those kill far more people. He confesses an intense phobia of mosquitoes, recalling hunting them until 2 a.m. in a condo in Antigua early in his marriage, and notes that mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal. On memory, he describes research showing people better remember faces tagged as social cheaters, and better remember the locations of high-calorie foods, evidence that memory is tuned to evolutionarily relevant information. He mentions a University of Washington study in which crows remembered a masked researcher who treated them badly and spread the warning through the group, and marvels at New Caledonian crows using tools.

Rogan praises elephants and dolphins as underrated intelligences, calling dolphins in marine parks a form of slavery, while Saad notes male dolphins' brutal mating behavior. Saad describes the bowerbird, which builds elaborate structures decorated with blue objects to attract mates, a rare case of artistic display as a mating cue, which he compares to Picasso's appeal. Rogan tells the story of his chickens tearing apart a baby mouse like dinosaurs, argues that factory farming steals animals' souls while well-raised pasture animals live far better lives than they would in the wild, and says regenerative farms like White Oak Pastures and Polyface Farms can even sequester carbon. He also suggests plants communicate through mycelial networks and mentions Paul Stamets. Saad brings up research extracting ancient DNA, including mammoth DNA, from soil, and Rogan recommends Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series on Genghis Khan, noting that the Mongol conquests killed so many people that forests regrew.

Consilience and Reaching the Public

Saad introduces consilience, the idea popularized by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson that the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities can be unified, in Saad's work through evolutionary theory. His mind, he says, is synthetic, which is why he refused to stay in his academic lane. He recalls a Stanford professor telling him in 2017 that Stanford does not condone going on Joe Rogan's show; Saad replied that publishing a paper and then exciting millions about it beats having only his wife and mother read it. Today, he says, professors write asking him to help get them on the show. He also describes being invited by Inter Miami's majority owner to a match after praising Lionel Messi on a previous episode, meeting Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham, as an example of what opens up when you step outside your narrow world.

He urges listeners to read, saying the number of books in a home is a strong predictor of children's success, and admits he owns around 600 unread books. He worries his children lack the reflex to choose a book over scrolling. Rogan says he consumes most books as audiobooks while working out, in the sauna or driving, while Saad prefers paper. Rogan admits the algorithm now shows him the most morbid videos after months of trading them with Tom Segura.

Happiness, Friendship and Reframing Hardship

From his happiness book, Saad shares two stories. Bijan Gilani, whom he met at a cafe near UC Irvine, earned a PhD studying the homeless community, later lost his wealth and lived in his car, yet said he was happy because he was a moral person with a library card to nourish his mind and a gym card to stay healthy. David McCallum spent 29 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, yet told Saad his sister with cerebral palsy, bedridden but still smiling, put his suffering in perspective. Saad also notes research showing the tightness of your social network predicts longevity more than cholesterol levels, and research that couples who match on playfulness have more successful unions.

Rogan says he tries not to engage with the negativity of fame or read comments, and advises against it because online interactions are unlike real life and heighten anxiety. He describes his long friendships with comedians like Joey Diaz, Tony Hinchcliffe, Ari Shaffir and Tom Segura, praises Dave Chappelle as a rare master craftsman who drops into comedy clubs unannounced, and says his own approach is simply to do things that are fun. Rogan also shares that he has come to see people as babies who had bad things happen to them, a more empathetic view, while acknowledging personal agency still matters. Saad adds that in French there are separate words for positive and negative pride, and that pride is traditionally considered the sin from which the others flow.

Hunter S. Thompson, Gödel and the Mysteries of the Mind

Asked who he would invite to a dream dinner, Saad picks Leonardo da Vinci, the ultimate polymath and embodiment of consilience, while Rogan picks Hunter S. Thompson, whom Saad has never heard of. Rogan reads aloud a journalist's account of Thompson's daily routine, beginning at 3 p.m. with Chivas Regal and cocaine and ending with writing from midnight to 6 a.m., and praises Thompson as a brilliant writer despite it, recommending Hell's Angels and noting his rumor about presidential candidate Ed Muskie.

Saad tells how mathematician Kurt Gödel, author of the incompleteness theorem and Einstein's walking companion at Princeton, became so convinced he would be poisoned that he ate only food his wife tasted, and starved to death when she was hospitalized. It is, Saad says, the mystery of the human mind: genius and paranoia in the same person. They also discuss a documentary on the abusive Ivy Ridge school, the Raëlian UFO cult, and Saad's recollection of a study where people randomly given red or blue stickers began clustering by color, showing how readily humans form tribes. Saad recalls briefly becoming the most hated person in Quebec after joking on this show that the French Canadian accent was an affront to human dignity.

AI, Simulations and the Future

Rogan predicts technology like Neuralink could eventually create simulated realities indistinguishable from life, where people could visit ancient Egypt or watch dinosaurs, and fears most people would choose that over real life. He says AI-controlled jets are reportedly beating top human pilots in simulated dogfights, and that humanity is giving birth to a godlike life form that may lie to us and have no morals. Saad, who studied computer science and was taught by someone involved in chess-playing AI, is surprised AI is not already more widely used in medical diagnostics and radiology, since they are pattern recognition problems.

Saad proposes an AI application of his concept of nomological networks of cumulative evidence, in which you prove a claim by gathering many independent lines of evidence. His example is sex differences in toy preferences, supported by data from infants too young to be socialized, from vervet and rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees, from girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, from ancient Greek funeral monuments and from non-Western cultures. An AI could assemble such networks automatically. The episode ends with Rogan half-jokingly imagining battlefield robots fueled by biomass, a claim Jamie fact-checks, and a plug for Saad's new book.

Conclusion

This tenth conversation between Gad Saad and Joe Rogan moves from grave subjects, the open antisemitism Saad has faced since October 7 and a contested debate over the Gaza war, to his broader thesis that misdirected, suicidal empathy and parasitic ideas drive many Western policies. Rogan both agrees and pushes back, especially on civilian casualties and on whether chaos is organic or engineered. The episode's most universal lesson is about intellectual humility: people and scientists alike cling to ideas out of pride, and progress often comes from those who are mocked first. Along the way, Saad's evolutionary psychology, from mosquito phobias to bowerbirds and toy preferences, and his stories of people reframing hardship offer a more hopeful counterweight to Rogan's worries about AI.

This is a summary of "#2148 - Gad Saad" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.