May 21, 2021 • 51 mins
From the radio studio to the classroom, Ben and David wander away from the sports scene to get educated. A man that has traveled far and wide, Dr. Gad Saad, pays the fellas a visit to chat about a variety of things that promises to make you think.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
If you thought more hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
the old republic, the sole fashion of fairness. He treats
crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
(00:24):
Maller starts right now in the air everywhere. We are
back at it again. The weekend is here on a
Friday as we kick off festivities here the Fifth Hour.
If you're new to the show, if some new people listening,
I understand, especially today that probably not normally listeners, that
(00:44):
this is a spinoff of the Overnight show. We do
five nights a week, the Ben Mather Show, and it
is only in the podcast format, and unlike the shackles
of overnight sports talk radio, we can go anywhere, right,
we had the whole landscape that we can go any
place we want on this podcast. And we do this
(01:05):
eight days a week. Podcast drop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,
only available on the podcast format, not broadcast on commercial radio.
And we are joined again by West of the four
oh five David Gascon with his own sound effects. Here
is this is this is gonna be extra spicy hot today.
(01:31):
I am preparing for the negative feedback that we're probably
gonna get, but I I'm okay with that. Excited. So
we've we've actually had our our guests on deck for
about two months and um, so obviously scheduling and whatnot
needed to come into one and it finally did. And uh,
(01:53):
I'm excited about it, especially because of the time that
we're in right now and also with the dead period
of the national from a football league. UM, I'm gigged
up about it. Yeah, So every Friday we try to
have someone on. You know, we've had a lot of
radio friends on that have come in here and hung
out with us. Sports radio guys are colleagues at Fox
(02:14):
Sports Radio. We've had in here. We had a comedian
last week. We've had an eclectic group of people that
have come in. We've had former athletes and now we
can add from the world of academia and not often,
you know, I'm just a dumb sports guy that I
get to talk to somebody who's educated and worldly into
(02:34):
all of that. But I am excited here now before
we welcome in who we're going to chat with. I
must put the standard disclaim around. If you are easily
triggered by a commentary about society and wokeness and cancel
culture and that type of thing, I get it. If
you can't handle a pushback against that, this would not
(02:56):
be the podcast for you if you're closed minded. But
if you're willing to listen in here and you wanna
you want to hear what this man has to say,
we're gonna talk to you here in a second. And
it's a perfect podcast because it really resonates with a
lot of the things we've been battling in the sporting world,
right with the wokeness, the woke mcwoke as we'd like
to call it in these parts, and social media, with
(03:17):
the what's real and what's not real, Like it's all
tied together. So we're gonna get into as much of
that as we can. And the person who is joining
us today a well respected figure on on social media.
He's been teaching, he's he's tenure. Dr goad Sad is
his name. He is the author of The Parasitic Mind,
(03:38):
How Infectious Ideas Are Killing a Common sense? But he
is a Lebanese Canadian and a very public intellectual. He
is the Professor of Marketing at the John Molson School
of Business at Montreal's Concordia University. He has spent time
at several other institute over the years. I guess gun
(04:02):
and I'm looking forward to chatting with Dr. Dr said
here and getting into a number of different things. Yes,
I have. Do you have any friends their Lebanese? I
had when I was When I was younger, there were
a few kids in school, but I currently not my
circle of friends. I don't know I have one. I
went to a small Catholic elementary school in my hometown,
(04:25):
San Pedro, and the rival school which is called Mary Star.
I played up against a guy like flag football as
a kid. But this this kid, who was like eleven
or twelve at the time, looked like a full grown man,
just built like a box, had a receding hairline, sideburns,
and the mustache. And I thought, man, this guy, there's
no way this dude is is my age. And then
(04:47):
we graduated elementary school, we turned into the same high
school and we became really good friends. And we called
him the Moose. His name is Maurice, but we call
him the Moose. Um, he showed me a fascinating scar
when we got to learn about him and obviously his family,
and he showed me his stomach and he's got like
washboard six board abs and a scar in the middle
(05:08):
of his stomach. And I said, Moose, what's that scar from?
And he said it's a it's from surgery. I said,
from one. He said, there's a bullet lodged next to
my spine and the doctors couldn't get it out. He
was shot as a kid in Lebanon, and his parents
obviously fleet Lebanon, I think when he was like three
or four years of age and came to the Nited States. Um,
(05:32):
his parents have gone back on several occasions. But obviously
it's it's extremely dangerous. But the Moose is the one
friend that I had it's Lebanese and still have. And
he's a great guy. And uh, he's personable, he's charismatic,
and he's just like the docks. So, um, yeah, I'm
I'm excited to have the dock in the house. Yeah.
(05:52):
He's got a YouTube channel, The Sad truth S a
a d hundreds of thousands of followers on there. He's
very popular on Twitter as well. And he's done some
big podcasts, Like he's really coming down. I mean, he's
he's hanging out in the mud with the common people
here because he's been on Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin,
who we've had on Jordan Peterson. These are some big,
(06:16):
major figures in the podcast world, and he's done all
those shows and he's he's coming to our level here,
which is cool. And he's in a different for him
because he's taking shots from everybody. But then as much
incoming fire as he gets, he throws it right back,
especially at some of the celebrities, some of the athletes. Um,
he's not afraid of spar at all. All right, well,
(06:38):
let's get into it. We welcome in now to the
Fifth Hour with Ben Maller and David Gascon Dr Gad
Sad from Montreal joining us. And before we get into
the nuts and bolts of this doc, I did read
that you spent some time at you see, Irvine. I
grew up in Irvine, so I feel like we have
a bond there. What was your experience in southern California?
(07:01):
Oh boy, well, listen, uh, I lived in California for
a few years, as you said, as a visiting professor
at U C Irvine. But I but my my relationship
with Southern California goes back to because one of my
brothers had moved to California, I think in eighty four,
and so in eighty five was the first summer that
(07:22):
I hung out in so called at the time, he
lived in Manhattan Beach. So he moved from first Manhattan Beach,
then he moved to a place called Via Ledo and
Newport Beach, and then he moved to Laguna Beach. And
so Southern California has been, you know, sort of a
second home to me since the mid eighties. But yeah,
I mean, my experience is that I'm desperate to return
(07:45):
to live there permanently, and somehow I haven't found a
way to make it out there on a permanent basis.
We gotta get you back. Somebody should hire you, bab.
I don't. I don't know how that works in the
academic world that you are in, but you know, somebody
shouldn't me really, And so you are the professor of
marketing at the your professor marketing at John Molson's School
(08:06):
of Business in Montreal and Cordia University there, and you're
domain I guess that I was reading about psychological evolutionary
psychology rather as applied to business. So for the person
that's never heard of you, get, how would you describe
what you do day to day? Right? So I mean
(08:28):
I wear you mean specifically in my scientific career or
across all differents, just just in jenif for the layman
who maybe has you know heard about you? And you
I know you've been a lot of podcasts and you've
got a lot of media and stuff. But but for
those that haven't heard of who you are, what exactly
is your work? Yeah? So scientifically, what what I do
is I uh, marry if you'd like evolutionary biology, consumer
(08:52):
psychology well as relevant in the business school. So basically
what I look at are the fundamental biologic call drivers
that make us the consumers that we are. And so
how do our hormones affect our behavior? What happens to
Ben and David to their testosterone levels? If I put
you in a Porsche? What happens to Ben and David's
(09:15):
testosterone levels? If you see another guy, a competitor in
a Porsche, And as I'm sure you can predict, you
can you could probably guess what will happen to your testosterons.
In those two scenarios, I look at things like, how
do women's ovulatory cycles, which is of course shaped by
their own hormones, how that affects how they beautify themselves
across the menstrual cycle. So I look at the biological
(09:38):
physiological drivers of consumer behavior. Now that's really quite novel
in the context of the business school, because until I
came along and pioneered the field of evolutionary consumption, no
one was ever applying biology to study who we are
as managers, as employers, as employees, as you know, personnel,
(10:00):
as financial traitors, which struck me as insane, right, I mean,
we don't suddenly lose our biological heritage when we put
on our hats as boss or as employee, or as
consumer and so over the much of my career, what
I've been trying to do is what I call Darwinized
the business school. So that's my scientific work. Now, I
also am someone who's not a stay in here lane professor.
(10:22):
In other words, I like to mix it up, and
so very early in my career I decided that I
also wanted to engage with the public. I didn't want
to just publish, you know, for fellow academics and fellow scientists,
and so I weigh in on all sorts of issues,
some of which are relevant to my scientific work and
others that are not. So I'm really someone who likes
to wear multiple hats and I love that. And in
(10:45):
this climate though, and and I know you're in Canada,
but in this climate in general, Like, how how difficult
has this been for you? Because you don't, you know,
keep your mouth shut on some things where a lot
of other people don't say anything, You're actually putting your
neck out there. So, uh, how what is this last
couple of years been like for you? It's very tough because,
(11:05):
as you correctly pointed, uh, academia is probably the place
that is most you know, paracitized by political bias. I mean,
it's where all of the what I call idea pathogens
in my latest book, they all originate from academia. And
so it's tough because you know, if you know, if
(11:28):
being someone who is outspoken in Hollywood is stuff, or
being someone who's outspoken in the media stuff, then you
really don't want to be outspoken the way that I
am in academia. Now that's one of the reasons, by
the way, why tenure is so important. I mean, not,
by the way, not that just because I have tenure,
I I haven't suffered a lot because I have and
I can share some stories. But you know, one of
(11:49):
the values of having tenure is precisely because it hopefully
allows people who have the courage to speak out to
do so, because people can't just fire you on a whim.
I mean about what happened to Socrates when he was
executed in ancient Greece. Think about what happened to Galileo
when he was placed under house arrest during the Inquisition,
(12:09):
and so so having tenure affords me some protection, but
it doesn't protect me from the thirty three trillion death
threats that I received. It doesn't protect me from a
university in southern California who was desperately keen on hiring me,
but then upon some professors not liking the idea, they
completely derailed the process. So I still bear many costs
(12:32):
in speaking out, but at least tenure affords me some protection. Yeah,
it's it's crazy times that we live in it, but
it seems like all these things that we're going through
as you as you know, because you work in that
world academia, Like this, a lot of this started in academia,
Like who who's the driving force behind this? Like I
(12:53):
I'm trying to wrap my mind around a lot of
things I just shake my head at that have been
going on the last couple of years. But it's you
know who, who's who's pulling the strings on this? Yeah.
So I often joke, although I'm actually being very truthful
in what I'm saying, it that it takes academics and
(13:14):
intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. Uh.
And so you're exactly right that all of these dreadful
ideas all stem from academia. For example, I'll give you one,
and if you want to do more, we can we
can cover other ones. Uh. Post Modernism is the idea
that there are no objective truths. We are completely shackled
(13:35):
by our subjectivity, by by our personal biases, by you know,
my relativity. You know, what's relatively true for you might
be different for me. Well, that's a dreadfully bad idea
because scientists wake up every morning under the working assumption
that there are you know, natural phenomena that we can
investigate as an evolutionary psychologist, I obviously study a haired
(14:00):
human nature. There are things that make the Peruvian consumer
and the Nigerian consumer and the Japanese consumer similar to
each other precisely because they have a shared biological heritage.
So postmodernism is in a sense what I call intellectual terrorism,
because it rejects the idea that there's anything as a
fundamental objective truth. Now, the ones who come up with
(14:21):
these kind of you know, imbecilic ideas, they don't suffer
the consequences of their stupidity. Right. So, for example, one
of the reasons why you don't have many of these
dumb ideas in the business school where I where I reside,
or say an engineering school, is because you can't build
bridges using postmodernist physics. It doesn't exist. You can't you
can't build a mathematical model to understand consumer choice using
(14:44):
postmodernist mathematics. And so this is why my discipline has
been less parasitized by this kind of stupidity. But in
other disciplines and the humanities and the social sciences, it's
literally nonsense. Like if you walk in as a lay
person and see some of the stuff that your children
type be taught. You wouldn't believe that this is actually
being taught, right, I mean I received emails guys from adults.
(15:07):
You know, A fifty year old person will write to
me and say, you know, dear Dr said, I hope
you don't mind if I ask you a question. I
just want to know. I mean, is it still acceptable
to say that only women uh menstruate? Or is that
no longer biologically acceptable? So the fact that a fifty
year old person in the twenty one century has to
(15:29):
contact me because he has lost the confidence to know
whether it's only women who menstruate or whether it's people
who menstruate, tells you how far down the abyss of
lunacy we've gotten. Doc, speaking of that lunacy and getting
into this with you, you had mentioned that obviously things
have been going onward the intellectuals and some don't don't
(15:51):
have that kind of repercussion that other individuals do. Um,
where did we turn where we couldn't question things we
can process, or at least to process information. But it
seems like more more now in the day and age,
that we can't question anything anymore. Why is that? Well?
It really again starts, I mean, and I hate to
keep you know, putting the blame on universities, because of
(16:14):
course universities are also the purveyors of of great enrichment
at great knowledge and so on. But it really starts
in the universities where the reflex in the universities has
been to truly create sterile echo chambers when it comes
to you know, uh, idea diversities right, and here i'd
I'd love to if I could take a minue or
(16:34):
two to analogize from something from evolutionary medicine. So on,
evolutionary medicine. Uh. There is this concept known as the
hygiene hypothesis. The idea being that, for example, if you
want to raise children who are not going to suffer
from asthma, you should raise them in an environment where
they are exposed to allergens you know, pettander for example,
(16:56):
because their immune system will then develop a the proper
immunological response to allergens. So your immune system expects to
be triggered by allergens, otherwise you will end up having
respiratory ailments if you grow up in a sterile environment. Well,
this brilliant neuropsychiatrist then and I discussed this in the
(17:17):
book He analogized this concept too. You know, ideological echo chambers. Right,
Our brains, I argued in the book, have evolved to
be exposed to allergens. In this case, allergens are opposing ideas. Right,
I become a better debater if I learned what is
your opposing idea? Are our big brains expect to be challenged?
(17:39):
And yet what we've done over the past forty fifty
sixty years is create perfectly uniform echo chambers and universities.
And the way I demonstrate in the Parasitic Mind is
I just site studies that showed the breakdown of democrat
versus Republican political affiliations of professors, and it is absolutely insane.
(18:02):
In some fields, it's in the order of, you know,
forty four to zero, you know, a hundred to one.
So how could you then have well trained young adults
go into the world when they are truly, absolutely being
exposed to only one side of two issues. It's grotesque
and that's what I fight again. So on that note, then, doc,
(18:25):
why because you are active on social media then and
I have seen as much, um, why take shots at
some of the celebrities and athletes in our domain that
feel like they're above reproach because in a sense, it's
almost like a no win situation, right where they're not
gonna acknowledge what you are saying as a retort even
(18:45):
though you are correct. So why do that? Right? So
because they've got gigantic platforms, and and and by the way,
I get asked that many times, why do someone you know,
like you, with your credentials worry about what Sarah Silverman says?
Or well, because Sarah Silverman has, you know, twenty five
(19:06):
times my platform, Lebron James has I don't know how
many times my platforms. So in other words, uh, you know,
any syllable that Lebron James utters, regrettably will carry more
weight than the hundred top intellectuals put together. So by
sometimes going to their platform and challenging them, I'm recognizing,
as a good professor of marketing that I sometimes have
(19:29):
to take the message to where the consumers are, right.
I mean, if I only speak to my high salute
and high grow I've rey towered dwelling colleagues in the
ivy leagues, I might convince them, but that's twenty five people, right,
But if I go to Lebron James thirty million people
or however many, and I can get one percent of
them to rethink their position. From an impact perspective, I've
(19:52):
been quite impactful. So I'm not so haughty and so
elitist as to think that I am above communicating with everyone.
That's why I stimes I'll engage someone on social media
has two followers. Most of my colleagues with never you know,
stooped to communicating with the great unwashed. And that's why
I call myself the professor of the people. Well, with
the marketing aspect, then, doc, do you feel like our
(20:14):
society is dumber or smarter because of social media? I
mean it's a two edged sword because on the one hand,
of course, uh, social media allows for the rapid velocity,
you know, spread of information, right. I mean I can
get on Joe Rogan and then he could tweet something
and I could have more impact based on that tweet
(20:34):
than I could in writing academic papers. So on the
one hand, of course, social media affords us unbelievable opportunities
to spread messages. But of course the other side of
the coin is that it allows all sorts of you know, uh,
enemies of reason to also proliferate their message. So I
guess the question is are you a good enough consumer
(20:56):
of information to know which information is the vertical one
and which is the yes one? And that's why I
always keep fighting at the Battle of ideas, because I
always get so upset when I see garbage being espoused
by all sorts of people. Yeah, and dog and following
up on that, you know, we are on social media
obviously all the time. Everyone is in our the media
(21:16):
business that I work in, and how much of it
is real? I've I've taken the position it's kind of
like the matrix, right that you know, you don't know
what's real and what's fake, and there's a lot of
bots and algorithms and all that, and it's it's really like,
as you you deal with the human reaction to you know,
business and products and whatnot. Isn't this a form of
(21:38):
mind manipulation in many ways at the same time because
you really don't know, as you said, you don't know
what's real, what's not, and who's trying to pull your chain? Yeah?
Absolutely listen. Uh A kind of a related note, I
realized that via my use of satire. So for your
listeners who may or may not know this. Why the
(22:00):
many tools of persuasion that I use is, you know,
I'm very very heavy on satire and sarcasm, right and irony,
and so oftentimes I rejoice in having a major media
outlet not realized that I was being sarcastic and then
share my stuff thinking that I actually meant what I
said when I was actually being perfectly sarcastic, and as
(22:23):
as I guess, you guys know that that's very much posed. Well,
a few years ago, I can't remember who it was,
maybe it was PJ Media, and one of these major
outlets had put out the top ten dumbest quotes of
the year, and I think I had landed at number five,
or I can't remember that of the whole year. They
(22:44):
didn't realize that I was aping all of the progressive platitudes.
I was being sarcastic, and of course, once they realized that,
they very quietly removed my quote. But I rejoiced in
being able to to to fool all of these embestoles, because, uh,
it demonstrates what kind of lunatic world we live in.
I loved your your video the other day about you
(23:06):
know what's going Obviously you're very tight and you grew
up in the Middle East, and and what's been going
on in the last couple of weeks there and you
issued an apology of video which was that was a
tan doc guy. That was outstanding. I mean, yeah, how
how weird? You know, how weird if people obviously look
to you for you know, help. Everyone's got different opinions
(23:28):
on what's going on with with Israel and the in
the Middle East and all that, and and you you
obviously live there. You you have your family from there
and whatnot. And how weird is it, you know, seeing
this and it's been going on your entire life, everyone's
entire life, Like it's how weird is that whole situation
from your perspective because you know firsthand what what goes
on in that part of the country or pat Park. Yeah, so,
(23:50):
I mean, for your listeners who may not know this,
we are we you meaning my family were part of
the last remaining Lebanese Jews in Lebanon. Uh. You know,
the Middle East had a you know, a sizeable, albeit
a small minority of Arabic Jewice like Iraqi Iraqi Jewice,
(24:11):
Syrian Jews, Egyptian Jews, Lebanese Jews. But then they all
you know, slowly either left or magically disappeared. Uh, And
we were part of the steadfastly you know, stayed in
Lebanon despite the fact that they were you know, warning
signs that it was no longer a good idea to
be Jewish in Lebanon. And then in the mid seventies,
(24:33):
when the Civil War began, it really wasn't possible to
be Jewish and Lebanon. And so we were in Lebanon
for the first year of the civil war, and then
we were lucky to escape. And I discussed all this
in the first chapter of The Perasitic Mind, and I
discussed it in the context of identity politics because I
explained to people that to the extent that you now
have one of the two major parties in the United States,
(24:54):
the Democrats, that are basing everything on identity politics, I'm
i'm I'm giving people a warning because Lebanon is exactly
what happens to a society when it perfectly adheres to
identity politics. Right. So the the end downstream effects of
having identity politics rule your life is called Lebanon. And
so anyway, so we left Lebanon and moved to Montreal, Canada.
(25:16):
My parents kept returning to Lebanon because we still had
you know, some businesses there and so on. And then
they were kidnapped by FATA, which is a Palestinian group.
And our our home itself are our home in Beirut
was occupied by Palestinians, Palestinian refugees, and so yes, I'm
very very familiar with the area. Now. Look, I don't
(25:37):
hold any ill will against Palestinians, because yes, they were
Muslim militia that wanted to kill us in Lebanon, but
it's also Palestinian militia who protected us and drove us
out of you know, out of to the to the
Beirut International Airport. So I don't condemn people based on
the action of someone else. Right, So by the same token,
it breaks my heart that Jews now are being attacked
(26:00):
all over the place, including in Montreal, because you know,
they're Jewish, and then somehow they are collectively guilty for
what Israel you know, uh, you know, is doing, you know,
to pass things and so on. I frankly think it's
an intractable problem. I don't think that it will ever
be solved until people recognized recognize their common humanity. The
(26:23):
problem in the Middle East is that that's probably never
going to happen, because everything, as I said, is viewed
through you, through tribal allegiance, through the religion that you
belong to, and unfortunately, very few of those tribes view
the Jews positively, and so I fear that these realities
will always exist. Be sure to catch live editions of
(26:43):
The Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven
pm Pacific. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio
app and doc. On that note, with travelism, I mean
Ben and I talked about this at pretty good length
because it has now seemed and bled into sports, into
(27:06):
our arena of work and enjoyment. Were now it seems
like you're either on one side of the aisle or
the other side of the aisle. Do you think that
the power of money has has pushed this thing to
the edge where it's it's irreversible that sports and I
guess media as as a whole, will will never get
back to a constructive black and white like this is
(27:30):
exactly what it's intended for information or for sports entertainment.
Do you think we ever get back to something like that. Well,
I hope that we're able to get back to a
time where people don't take their political positions in arenas
where those arenas precisely exists, so that we don't act
(27:51):
tribal in a tribal way. Right. So sports is a
place where uh, you know, I could hopefully forget that
I'm Jewish or Muslim, or I support the Democrats or Republicans,
and I have allegiance to whatever the Dallas Cowboys, right,
I mean, it's it's an opportunity for people to look
for their common love for for competition. And but by
the way, just to link it, link your question about
(28:13):
sports to what we were talking about in the previous
question in the Middle East. In in my book, I
talk about the following story because it relates to sports.
My brother, actually the brother that I mentioned earlier, who
had moved to California in the four My brother was
was the champion of judo judo champion of Lebanon several
years in a row. He actually, by the way, represented
(28:36):
Lebanon in the nineteen seventy six Olympics in Montreal. Well
in around nineteen seventy three, nineteen seventy four, before the
Civil War started, he was visited by some men who
told him that it was time for him to retire,
because you know, it's not a good look for a
Jew to constantly be winning a combat sport. And so
(28:57):
the writing was on the wall. He wasn't going to
quit his judo career, so he moved to Paris, France,
where actually the French are very good at Judeo historically,
and he continued his career there. But I listened to
the irony the guy who had to leave Lebanon because
he was a Jew who was always winning the Lebanese championship.
His jewishness no longer mattered when it came to him
(29:20):
representing Lebanon in the nineteen Olympics. At that point they
were willing to forgive, you know, that dirtiness of him
being a Jew. So that shows you what happens when
we start incorporating all these tribal divisions within sports. Sports
should unite us, not divide us. So it's really regrettable.
I mean, we we have we have issues now with meritocracy.
(29:43):
It seems like like you can't the scoreboard doesn't matter anymore.
It feels like even outside the sports world, you know,
resumes with degrees, whether it's a bachelor's, a master's, and PhD,
it doesn't matter anymore. I mean here in California they're
doing away with standardized testing for you for universities. Well,
(30:06):
it is actually much worse than that. So uh, at
the at the academicals on academia, you would think that
just like a hundred meter dash is judged based on
who crosses the line first, right, Uh, I mean, if
there's ever a case of a pure meritocracy, it would
be the hundred meters tacks while you would think that
(30:27):
academic excellence, you know, for professors should be the same,
but now shared professorship. So the highest level of professorships
that are endowed by the Canadian government are bestowed a
lot more based on what I call the Die religion.
Die is an acronym that I use for diversity, inclusion
and equity. Right, So I call it the Die religion
(30:49):
because the application of Die principles is exactly where meritocracy
goes to die. Right, So, so we no longer judge
you based on the strength of your scientific dosia, which
ug you if you are the right skin you, if
you've got the right gender orientation, or sexual orientation or ethnicity.
I mean, it is really grotesque. And what upsets me
(31:09):
the most is that all of this perfectly illiberal nonsense,
it's cloaked under the robe of progressivism, right. I mean,
in the old days, the racists wore ropes, they were
called the KKK, and we disavowed them. But today they
wear cloaks, the robes of progressivism. They could be fully racist,
(31:30):
and we're supposed to say, wow, bravo, bravo, it's so
great to hire people based on their skin color. It's grotesque.
I mean, for someone like me who escaped the Middle East,
it breaks my heart to see what we're doing to
the West. Yeah. And and doc, I mean, we saw
this week the mayor of Chicago, major city, obviously you here,
saying they would she would only or limit the media
(31:52):
interviews to people of color, not people have got a
Journalists of color. Yeah, yeah, journalists have color. I mean,
it's it's crazy. It I despise this fill in the
blank of color, communities of color, soccer players of color.
I mean, I guarantee you that in ten years, some
(32:12):
some some you know, language police person will arise and
say it is no longer acceptable to say this, and
you know what, I will be the one clapping because
I find it ridiculous. What what is this journalist of color?
What is a by the way in universities? Now you
have all these activist students who will you know, occupy
(32:33):
the President's office saying things like we need a speaker
series of color, we need mentor of colors, we need
mathematicians of color. Really, I thought mathematics is where you
leave your identity at the door. Right. The distribution of
prime numbers is the distribution of prime numbers irrespective of
(32:53):
whether I'm indigenous or an Orthodox Jew or a Islamic
I mom, I mean, it's insane. Doc. At a lighter note,
I know, obviously the parasitic of mind is something that
that Ben and I have talked about a little bit.
But you guys do share something else in common, and
it's the uh. It's the diet. Now. Ben is a
(33:14):
huge fan of the intermittent fasting. And I know that
you're getting the uh the pounds down to what inspired
you to to lose the weight and UH and do
you dip it? Do you dip your toes into the
deep end of the intermittent fasting at all? Right? Yeah,
thank well, thank you for that personal question. Uh So,
actually I just played myself today, um at one, which
(33:36):
is the lowest I've been probably I don't know in
twenty years. Uh one two is still way too heavy
for someone of my height, So probably another twenty pounds
will be ideal. But as I always joke, I always
need to keep a bit of extra fat because sin
God will cause social uh strife and will cause marital instability.
(33:58):
Then God is simply too good looking to walk in public.
But any case, Uh what what what motivated me to
do it is, frankly, uh, the realization that I have
young children and I want to put all the odds
in my favor. And for many years I've wanted to
lose weight. I would sort of lose a bit of weight,
but then I would clutau and finally I said, look,
this is not rocket science. There's gotta be a way
(34:21):
for me to train enough, although I've always been very athletic.
But really, of course, as you know, the main problem
is what you put in your mouth. And so I
think this time. The way that I've been able to
crack it is I try to keep my food to
about fifteen six hundred cowries a day, and I always
do at least fifteen thousand steps, so I call it
the fifteen fifteen regiment. And the weight it has come
(34:42):
after the tune of about forty pounds since intermittent fast thing.
I've only done it within the daily windows, so like,
for example, I've gone on those sixteen hour windows where
I don't eat, but I haven't done intermittent fasting in
the sense of, you know, some folks will do, you know,
forty eight hours, so it's nothing that's severe. But I've
certainly dabbled with the twelve to sixteen windows, if that's
(35:05):
what you mean. Yeah, Doug, I love food and I
was a very large man for a long time. And
the only way I've really been able to keep the
weight off is the inner minute fasting. But because I
you know, once I start eating, it's hard. I cannot.
I don't know how you do the sixteen hundred calories
a day thing, because I once I get god, it's
very hard to stop. I've got a wife who I
(35:27):
call her get stop mode when she when she gets
on it and she sees me hovering around the kitchen,
she'll give me one of those looks. I will swallow
my saliva and go back and sit down. That's maybe
that's what I'm joking. She's not that diapolic because she's very,
very lovely. But look, I really think it's having having
(35:47):
young children really helps. Uh. You know, I used to
when I would get on a flight before, I never
thought about the plane crashing. Whereas the minute that I
had a child and I would get on a plane,
I would have this whole ex potential angst. What if
the plane crash, I'll never see them grow up on it.
So I think that really accelerated my desire to lose
(36:07):
weight because I want to be hopefully around for a
long time, and being very overweight it's not really doing
I mean, there aren't too many hundred year olds who
are you know, fifty pounds overweights? Right, Yeah, you go
to the retirement homes. There's not a lot of large
people in entirement homes, unfortunately. But uh, but I wanna
go back to, you know, some of the things that
the issues of the day here. And I saw something
(36:28):
you said the other day. You said that this whole
woke revolution is like a religion, and I thought that
was that was great because it seems like everyone's trying
to one up each other and trying to be more
more woke, woke mcwoke and all that. Can you can
you expand on what you were getting at with that phrase, Doc, Well, so,
(36:48):
I mean, what's the religion? It has certain revealed truth
that are inviolable. Right, So the difference between science and
religion is that science always grade under provisional truths, meaning
what we might think something is true, and we might
think it's true for three d years. But if new
data comes in that causes us to reevaluate what we
(37:09):
thought was was true for hundreds of years, then we
have what's called the epistemic humility to alter our beliefs.
Of course, religion doesn't operate that way. Right, It is
true because my book says it's true, and therefore it's
true because it's in my book. That's what that's why
we say it's revealed true. It is impervious to uh falsification. Well,
(37:30):
a lot of the woke tenants are exactly that, right,
There is a tenant right you are no longer allowed
to say that there are two sexes, that the default
phenotypes of male and female are of humans is male
and female. That's not acceptable. I have to say that
there are eight hundred and seventy three genders, and that's
the revealed truth. And if I don't say that, I
(37:52):
should be canceled right in the Middle East, we just
execute you. In the West, we we only cancel your
career and ostras as you. Right. So, so in that sense,
there is this you know, blindness to incoming information because
it's a form of quasi secular religion. So it's in
that sense that I compared to the other thing that
(38:14):
I would say that is very similar between religion and wokenus.
And I discussed this in the parasitic mind. So if so,
Shariah law is the Islamic law, and under Islamic law,
it is exactly antithetical to the US justice system. The
US justice system is supposed to be blind, right, blind
to your identity. Well, Shariah law is exactly not that. Right. So,
(38:35):
for example, if a Muslim man kills the Jewish man,
it's a very different penalty then if it's the other
way around, and that's codified in Sharia law. Well, progressive
ism or woke woke is m is exactly like Sharia
la right, So if I can say the N word,
depends on whether what my color of skin is right.
So the crime, whether it be a linguistic crime or
(38:58):
a thought crime or an actual physical crime, depends on
the identity of the perpetrator and the victim. So the
progressives are thinking that they are being liberal, whereas in
reality they are mimicking Shariah laws of which I escape.
It's grotesque. And in that sense, walkasm is just another
grotesque religion and doc in a sense to it almost
(39:19):
sounds like you can classify the United States as a religion. Right,
you go to Texas, you go to Florida, you might
go to Oklahoma. It's a lot different of a feeling
in nature and also mind that it would be if
you came here to California or Washington or Oregon. Countries
that are are states that are blue versus the states
(39:40):
that are read. Yes, that's true, and but this is why,
by the way, So if you want look to be tribal,
is really to be human. So we have a involved
coalitional psychology where we view the world as blue team
and red team US versus then. So so it's very
difficult to eradicate that instinct to be coalitional or tribal.
(40:00):
But one of the beauties of the American experience is
that its places the Constitution. I mean not to it
almost sounds like I'm being religious here, but the Constitution
as a as a document is what then unites Americans.
And and and I'm amazed that I have to be
the one saying that as a Canadian and speaking to Americans. Right,
so it should be that we don't have blue states
(40:22):
and red states, but we only have allegiance to the Constitution.
That's what made America the great experience, the great uh,
you know, societies that you've built over two hundred plus years.
But now we don't have that. We don't have adherence
to the Constitution. We have adherence to parties, and hence
we are succumbing to that basal instinct of tribalism. Yeah,
(40:43):
really shameful, and people forget obviously we are a constitutional
republic and exactly democracy democracy is one thing, but obviously
the republic is another. But don't you do you feel though,
I guess in that sense because when you look at
some of the things that make up the country right
now is the United States. They are dominant by one
political party, so you can't help in certain circumstances that
(41:06):
you need to acquiesce to to the ones that are
writing the paycheck for you. Look, I mean, I understand
the stressors, and I understand that you know, people shouldn't
be unnecessary martyrs. But whenever people send me I mean,
I received you a million emails in a given week,
and many of them will kind of end with the
following final sentence. You know, I love you, DR said,
(41:30):
thank you for your blah. Please, if you're going to
read my email, don't mention my identity. Right, So, if
you are so cowardly that you're not even courageous enough
to simply stand next to the one who's taking all
the risks, how should we can contextualize your cowardice comparing
it to say, the young men who landed on Normandy
(41:53):
and knew that they would be mowed down by Nazi
machine guns like little insignificant mosquito, so that you and
I could be sitting having this conversation today, how does
your cowardice compared to that so in a war, whether
it be in ideological war or in actual physical war,
there are casualties. That's why it's called the war. So
I understand that everybody wants to be safe, but you
(42:16):
also have to be anti fragile. Right, So when I
see kids today complaining about whatever they complain about, you know,
my god, maybe I'm going to be miss gendered. I say, yeah,
you should have lived ten minutes of my childhood and Lebanon,
where I didn't know every minute whether I was going
to live to the next minute. So people have to
stop being invertebrates. They have to grow a spine. We
(42:37):
are a vertebrate species. We have a spine, So try
to find your spine. Try to grow a pair. If
I can be colloquial in that way and speak out, Now,
you don't have to be an unnecessary martyr, but you
don't subcontract your voice to those who are willing to
take the risk for you. You have to activate your
inner honey badger and speak out. So that in a way,
(42:59):
in a roundabout way, it does sound like you you
are acknowledging that I am. I'm brave for working with
Ben Mallorca and his audience is they're relentless on their attacks.
So yeah, we gotta have you are my hero. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,
(43:20):
this whole cancel culture thing, right, like, you know, is
is there any going back? I mean, I remember when
I was a kid and and people you know, back
in my day, and we you know, I didn't have
the life you had obviously, but you know, in my
life experience, I had a mother that was liberal and
a father that was conservative, and they were battle it
out at the dinner table and then they'd hug it out.
(43:40):
I had buddies of mind that you know, we were
from different backgrounds and we'd bust each other's chops and
then we'd be fine. But now it's like, if you don't,
if you're not in lockstep, as we've talked about, and
you've got into great detail here, you know, you've got
to you know, distance yourself or now the cancel culture.
What's the path to getting back to closer to the
way it was? Doc? Right? It has to be costly
(44:03):
for the Cretans who are promulgating the cancel culture ethos
right right now, there are no consequences to their tactics.
So let me give you an example. If I start
engaging someone on Twitter about some issue whatever, the Israeli
Postinian thing. Right, you may have a different position from mine,
(44:24):
and we we we we look it out on on Twitter,
and then whatever, either I convince you or you convince me,
or we don't budge in our respective positions and we
live to love another day. But now what they will
do is they will then tag my university and say,
how do you keep the skuy this this, this uh
you know, uh justifier of the general side of the policy,
(44:47):
and they start tagging my university. Well, I can't engage
in the same terrorists tactics on them because you know,
they're not public figures. I don't know where they were,
even though I would never do it to them, So
that a symmetry. The fact that they can try to
terrorize me in this way without any repercussions on them
is what emboldens them to do it. Right. The fact
(45:08):
that administrators and universities allow this nonsense to take place
by allowing the you know, blue haired people to d
platform everyone with whom they disagree is what. But now,
let's suppose a donor who's giving a hundred million dollars
at this university suddenly says, if a single person at
this university is d platform and the next ten years
(45:31):
you won't get a cent from me. Suddenly that one
hundred billion dollars that I might lose as the president
of that university suddenly my ears per cup. So in
other words, we have to incentivize these cretans into fighting
against council cultures. As long as there are no costs
for the mob not coming after you and terrorizing hits
(45:52):
will go on. So what I'd like to see is
that people wait. And by the way, you're starting to
see it now with critical race theory, right, So a
lot of parents are now mobilizing to fight against this nonsense.
And I can assure you that if more and more
parents start going through these, you know, education board meetings
and screaming and shouting against the racist nonsense of critical
(46:13):
race theory, it will suddenly, uh disappear and the administrators
will acquiesce. So there is no magic recipe. People have
to be engaged and we can hopefully very quickly turn
this around. Now, Doc, I don't know if you're aware
of this, but this sounds an awful lot like SEC football.
Like SEC football is king in the United States when
it comes to college athletics, and donors will have the
(46:35):
heads of head coaches that they can't perform and compete
against the Alabamas of the world or Georgia or Tennessee
or whatnot. So it sounds like a lockstep football kind
of brings the country back into the full smooth unity.
So I'm sorry, glad, I'm interrupted. Also say, when you
when you mentioned critical race theory, you're actually gonna be
(46:56):
speaking with someone that's been a driving force on the
pushback in exactly this Monday, actually, well tomorrow, I'm speaking
to Amy Chua, who is the colloquially she's referred to
as the Tiger Mom. She she's a Yale University, UH
law school professor who wrote, I mean, she's written many books,
one of which actually is relevant to what we were
(47:17):
talking about. Tribes. She wrote a book on you know,
political tribes and so on. But earlier she had written
a book about, you know, the battle him of the
Tiger Mom. And she's a real honey badger, right, because
she's existing in an ecosystem of ultra liberals, and you know,
she certainly is a lot more conservative and she doesn't
just you know, conform to the ideology and Christopher Ruffo,
with whom I'll be speaking on my show on Monday,
(47:39):
has become a real nemesis to all these crt you know,
racists because he you know, they're winning legal, you know,
legal victory over legal victory all over the country. So look,
this guy didn't start off, you know, with with the
clear idea that that's what he was going to be.
But for whatever reason, I guess we'll talk about her
on Monday, he decided he wants to take on this,
(48:00):
you know, he wants to take on dismantle and and
look where he's scott in him. So, you know, often
I will get people who write to me and say, well,
you know, I don't have Joe Rogan's platform. I'm not
some fancy professor with your platform. Professor, I who's gonna
listen to? Well, you don't. You don't have to effect
change in the millions. If your professor says something that is,
you know, inbecilic and contrary to common sense, why don't
(48:22):
you challenge him or her politely? If if your friend
says something at the pub that you disagree with, rather
than worrying about if you disagree with him, he might
unfriend you, why don't you grow up pair and actually
challenge him politely. So, in other words, we can affect
change within the small sphere of influence of our daily lives.
And and and I guess Christopher Ruffo is as a
(48:43):
perfect example of that. He didn't start off as a
fancy professor or as Joe Rogan, and look at the
influence he has now, Yeah, it's it's amazing. Dog. One
last question for me before Benson's it out, Um, do
you feel that the political activities of the far left
are sophisticated marketing programs? I mean, I don't know. I
(49:04):
mean yes and no. I mean there's susistic there. They're
they're smart, and that they found a way to infiltrate
that they dominate all of the key structures that define intelligentia, journalism, academia, Hollywood. Now,
I don't think that that was sort of a planned
conspiratorial thing. On the other hand, as you probably have
all heard the standard joke that you know, the right
(49:26):
has better means the right has better sense of humor.
So I don't think that, you know, marketing ability is
restricted to one political tribe or another. I think though,
that to the extent that all of the choke points
of the intelligentsia are completely controlled by one party. They
(49:47):
don't even need to have good marketing because they control
the full narrative. Right. I mean you have Fox in
the US and that's it, right. Who who else has
an opposing view to the mainstream media. So I think
that's what's unhealthy. And if we can just infuse diversity
of thought at each of these structures, will be a
much more vibrant and healthy society. Well, Doc, I know
(50:10):
we've taken more of your time than we said we would. Uh,
bad job by us. But how can for those you
know when you mentioned the book we mentioned a few
times Parasitic Mind? How can people find it? You've got
a YouTube channel which is very popular, which is great,
and I know you're obviously very big on Twitter. How
can people follow you? Get in the book the whole thing,
promote all of this, Doctor, Oh, thank you, sir. So
(50:32):
my my book, my list book is called the Parasitic Mind,
How infectious ideas are killing common sense? They could certainly
get on Amazon or whatever books are sold. Uh. My
Twitter handle is at gat g A D S A
A D. I have a podcast and a YouTube channel.
It's called the sad truth s A A D. I
have a public uh Facebook page. I'm everywhere. I hunt
(50:55):
your dreams. It's not difficult to find and listen. You're
gonna be a dangerous man if you can and west
of the four oh five. Back to that beach. Document
is a little bit more weight. No, no, you can
come back to irv or Irvine is is west and
east of the four oh five, so you could you
could be an Irvine to be east of the formula. Anyway, Doc,
Thank you so much, have a great day, appreciate it.
My pleasures. Cheers, guys. Chip. Be sure to catch live
(51:18):
editions of The Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am
Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Be sure to catch live editions
of The Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern
eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I
Heart Radio app.
If you thought more hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
the old republic, the sole fashion of fairness. He treats
crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse, to clearinghouse of hot takes,
break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
(00:24):
Maller starts right now in the air everywhere. We are
back at it again. The weekend is here on a
Friday as we kick off festivities here the Fifth Hour.
If you're new to the show, if some new people listening,
I understand, especially today that probably not normally listeners, that
(00:44):
this is a spinoff of the Overnight show. We do
five nights a week, the Ben Mather Show, and it
is only in the podcast format, and unlike the shackles
of overnight sports talk radio, we can go anywhere, right,
we had the whole landscape that we can go any
place we want on this podcast. And we do this
(01:05):
eight days a week. Podcast drop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,
only available on the podcast format, not broadcast on commercial radio.
And we are joined again by West of the four
oh five David Gascon with his own sound effects. Here
is this is this is gonna be extra spicy hot today.
(01:31):
I am preparing for the negative feedback that we're probably
gonna get, but I I'm okay with that. Excited. So
we've we've actually had our our guests on deck for
about two months and um, so obviously scheduling and whatnot
needed to come into one and it finally did. And uh,
(01:53):
I'm excited about it, especially because of the time that
we're in right now and also with the dead period
of the national from a football league. UM, I'm gigged
up about it. Yeah, So every Friday we try to
have someone on. You know, we've had a lot of
radio friends on that have come in here and hung
out with us. Sports radio guys are colleagues at Fox
(02:14):
Sports Radio. We've had in here. We had a comedian
last week. We've had an eclectic group of people that
have come in. We've had former athletes and now we
can add from the world of academia and not often,
you know, I'm just a dumb sports guy that I
get to talk to somebody who's educated and worldly into
(02:34):
all of that. But I am excited here now before
we welcome in who we're going to chat with. I
must put the standard disclaim around. If you are easily
triggered by a commentary about society and wokeness and cancel
culture and that type of thing, I get it. If
you can't handle a pushback against that, this would not
(02:56):
be the podcast for you if you're closed minded. But
if you're willing to listen in here and you wanna
you want to hear what this man has to say,
we're gonna talk to you here in a second. And
it's a perfect podcast because it really resonates with a
lot of the things we've been battling in the sporting world,
right with the wokeness, the woke mcwoke as we'd like
to call it in these parts, and social media, with
(03:17):
the what's real and what's not real, Like it's all
tied together. So we're gonna get into as much of
that as we can. And the person who is joining
us today a well respected figure on on social media.
He's been teaching, he's he's tenure. Dr goad Sad is
his name. He is the author of The Parasitic Mind,
(03:38):
How Infectious Ideas Are Killing a Common sense? But he
is a Lebanese Canadian and a very public intellectual. He
is the Professor of Marketing at the John Molson School
of Business at Montreal's Concordia University. He has spent time
at several other institute over the years. I guess gun
(04:02):
and I'm looking forward to chatting with Dr. Dr said
here and getting into a number of different things. Yes,
I have. Do you have any friends their Lebanese? I
had when I was When I was younger, there were
a few kids in school, but I currently not my
circle of friends. I don't know I have one. I
went to a small Catholic elementary school in my hometown,
(04:25):
San Pedro, and the rival school which is called Mary Star.
I played up against a guy like flag football as
a kid. But this this kid, who was like eleven
or twelve at the time, looked like a full grown man,
just built like a box, had a receding hairline, sideburns,
and the mustache. And I thought, man, this guy, there's
no way this dude is is my age. And then
(04:47):
we graduated elementary school, we turned into the same high
school and we became really good friends. And we called
him the Moose. His name is Maurice, but we call
him the Moose. Um, he showed me a fascinating scar
when we got to learn about him and obviously his family,
and he showed me his stomach and he's got like
washboard six board abs and a scar in the middle
(05:08):
of his stomach. And I said, Moose, what's that scar from?
And he said it's a it's from surgery. I said,
from one. He said, there's a bullet lodged next to
my spine and the doctors couldn't get it out. He
was shot as a kid in Lebanon, and his parents
obviously fleet Lebanon, I think when he was like three
or four years of age and came to the Nited States. Um,
(05:32):
his parents have gone back on several occasions. But obviously
it's it's extremely dangerous. But the Moose is the one
friend that I had it's Lebanese and still have. And
he's a great guy. And uh, he's personable, he's charismatic,
and he's just like the docks. So, um, yeah, I'm
I'm excited to have the dock in the house. Yeah.
(05:52):
He's got a YouTube channel, The Sad truth S a
a d hundreds of thousands of followers on there. He's
very popular on Twitter as well. And he's done some
big podcasts, Like he's really coming down. I mean, he's
he's hanging out in the mud with the common people
here because he's been on Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin,
who we've had on Jordan Peterson. These are some big,
(06:16):
major figures in the podcast world, and he's done all
those shows and he's he's coming to our level here,
which is cool. And he's in a different for him
because he's taking shots from everybody. But then as much
incoming fire as he gets, he throws it right back,
especially at some of the celebrities, some of the athletes. Um,
he's not afraid of spar at all. All right, well,
(06:38):
let's get into it. We welcome in now to the
Fifth Hour with Ben Maller and David Gascon Dr Gad
Sad from Montreal joining us. And before we get into
the nuts and bolts of this doc, I did read
that you spent some time at you see, Irvine. I
grew up in Irvine, so I feel like we have
a bond there. What was your experience in southern California?
(07:01):
Oh boy, well, listen, uh, I lived in California for
a few years, as you said, as a visiting professor
at U C Irvine. But I but my my relationship
with Southern California goes back to because one of my
brothers had moved to California, I think in eighty four,
and so in eighty five was the first summer that
(07:22):
I hung out in so called at the time, he
lived in Manhattan Beach. So he moved from first Manhattan Beach,
then he moved to a place called Via Ledo and
Newport Beach, and then he moved to Laguna Beach. And
so Southern California has been, you know, sort of a
second home to me since the mid eighties. But yeah,
I mean, my experience is that I'm desperate to return
(07:45):
to live there permanently, and somehow I haven't found a
way to make it out there on a permanent basis.
We gotta get you back. Somebody should hire you, bab.
I don't. I don't know how that works in the
academic world that you are in, but you know, somebody
shouldn't me really, And so you are the professor of
marketing at the your professor marketing at John Molson's School
(08:06):
of Business in Montreal and Cordia University there, and you're
domain I guess that I was reading about psychological evolutionary
psychology rather as applied to business. So for the person
that's never heard of you, get, how would you describe
what you do day to day? Right? So I mean
(08:28):
I wear you mean specifically in my scientific career or
across all differents, just just in jenif for the layman
who maybe has you know heard about you? And you
I know you've been a lot of podcasts and you've
got a lot of media and stuff. But but for
those that haven't heard of who you are, what exactly
is your work? Yeah? So scientifically, what what I do
is I uh, marry if you'd like evolutionary biology, consumer
(08:52):
psychology well as relevant in the business school. So basically
what I look at are the fundamental biologic call drivers
that make us the consumers that we are. And so
how do our hormones affect our behavior? What happens to
Ben and David to their testosterone levels? If I put
you in a Porsche? What happens to Ben and David's
(09:15):
testosterone levels? If you see another guy, a competitor in
a Porsche, And as I'm sure you can predict, you
can you could probably guess what will happen to your testosterons.
In those two scenarios, I look at things like, how
do women's ovulatory cycles, which is of course shaped by
their own hormones, how that affects how they beautify themselves
across the menstrual cycle. So I look at the biological
(09:38):
physiological drivers of consumer behavior. Now that's really quite novel
in the context of the business school, because until I
came along and pioneered the field of evolutionary consumption, no
one was ever applying biology to study who we are
as managers, as employers, as employees, as you know, personnel,
(10:00):
as financial traitors, which struck me as insane, right, I mean,
we don't suddenly lose our biological heritage when we put
on our hats as boss or as employee, or as
consumer and so over the much of my career, what
I've been trying to do is what I call Darwinized
the business school. So that's my scientific work. Now, I
also am someone who's not a stay in here lane professor.
(10:22):
In other words, I like to mix it up, and
so very early in my career I decided that I
also wanted to engage with the public. I didn't want
to just publish, you know, for fellow academics and fellow scientists,
and so I weigh in on all sorts of issues,
some of which are relevant to my scientific work and
others that are not. So I'm really someone who likes
to wear multiple hats and I love that. And in
(10:45):
this climate though, and and I know you're in Canada,
but in this climate in general, Like, how how difficult
has this been for you? Because you don't, you know,
keep your mouth shut on some things where a lot
of other people don't say anything, You're actually putting your
neck out there. So, uh, how what is this last
couple of years been like for you? It's very tough because,
(11:05):
as you correctly pointed, uh, academia is probably the place
that is most you know, paracitized by political bias. I mean,
it's where all of the what I call idea pathogens
in my latest book, they all originate from academia. And
so it's tough because you know, if you know, if
(11:28):
being someone who is outspoken in Hollywood is stuff, or
being someone who's outspoken in the media stuff, then you
really don't want to be outspoken the way that I
am in academia. Now that's one of the reasons, by
the way, why tenure is so important. I mean, not,
by the way, not that just because I have tenure,
I I haven't suffered a lot because I have and
I can share some stories. But you know, one of
(11:49):
the values of having tenure is precisely because it hopefully
allows people who have the courage to speak out to
do so, because people can't just fire you on a whim.
I mean about what happened to Socrates when he was
executed in ancient Greece. Think about what happened to Galileo
when he was placed under house arrest during the Inquisition,
(12:09):
and so so having tenure affords me some protection, but
it doesn't protect me from the thirty three trillion death
threats that I received. It doesn't protect me from a
university in southern California who was desperately keen on hiring me,
but then upon some professors not liking the idea, they
completely derailed the process. So I still bear many costs
(12:32):
in speaking out, but at least tenure affords me some protection. Yeah,
it's it's crazy times that we live in it, but
it seems like all these things that we're going through
as you as you know, because you work in that
world academia, Like this, a lot of this started in academia,
Like who who's the driving force behind this? Like I
(12:53):
I'm trying to wrap my mind around a lot of
things I just shake my head at that have been
going on the last couple of years. But it's you
know who, who's who's pulling the strings on this? Yeah.
So I often joke, although I'm actually being very truthful
in what I'm saying, it that it takes academics and
(13:14):
intellectuals to come up with some of the dumbest ideas. Uh.
And so you're exactly right that all of these dreadful
ideas all stem from academia. For example, I'll give you one,
and if you want to do more, we can we
can cover other ones. Uh. Post Modernism is the idea
that there are no objective truths. We are completely shackled
(13:35):
by our subjectivity, by by our personal biases, by you know,
my relativity. You know, what's relatively true for you might
be different for me. Well, that's a dreadfully bad idea
because scientists wake up every morning under the working assumption
that there are you know, natural phenomena that we can
investigate as an evolutionary psychologist, I obviously study a haired
(14:00):
human nature. There are things that make the Peruvian consumer
and the Nigerian consumer and the Japanese consumer similar to
each other precisely because they have a shared biological heritage.
So postmodernism is in a sense what I call intellectual terrorism,
because it rejects the idea that there's anything as a
fundamental objective truth. Now, the ones who come up with
(14:21):
these kind of you know, imbecilic ideas, they don't suffer
the consequences of their stupidity. Right. So, for example, one
of the reasons why you don't have many of these
dumb ideas in the business school where I where I reside,
or say an engineering school, is because you can't build
bridges using postmodernist physics. It doesn't exist. You can't you
can't build a mathematical model to understand consumer choice using
(14:44):
postmodernist mathematics. And so this is why my discipline has
been less parasitized by this kind of stupidity. But in
other disciplines and the humanities and the social sciences, it's
literally nonsense. Like if you walk in as a lay
person and see some of the stuff that your children
type be taught. You wouldn't believe that this is actually
being taught, right, I mean I received emails guys from adults.
(15:07):
You know, A fifty year old person will write to
me and say, you know, dear Dr said, I hope
you don't mind if I ask you a question. I
just want to know. I mean, is it still acceptable
to say that only women uh menstruate? Or is that
no longer biologically acceptable? So the fact that a fifty
year old person in the twenty one century has to
(15:29):
contact me because he has lost the confidence to know
whether it's only women who menstruate or whether it's people
who menstruate, tells you how far down the abyss of
lunacy we've gotten. Doc, speaking of that lunacy and getting
into this with you, you had mentioned that obviously things
have been going onward the intellectuals and some don't don't
(15:51):
have that kind of repercussion that other individuals do. Um,
where did we turn where we couldn't question things we
can process, or at least to process information. But it
seems like more more now in the day and age,
that we can't question anything anymore. Why is that? Well?
It really again starts, I mean, and I hate to
keep you know, putting the blame on universities, because of
(16:14):
course universities are also the purveyors of of great enrichment
at great knowledge and so on. But it really starts
in the universities where the reflex in the universities has
been to truly create sterile echo chambers when it comes
to you know, uh, idea diversities right, and here i'd
I'd love to if I could take a minue or
(16:34):
two to analogize from something from evolutionary medicine. So on,
evolutionary medicine. Uh. There is this concept known as the
hygiene hypothesis. The idea being that, for example, if you
want to raise children who are not going to suffer
from asthma, you should raise them in an environment where
they are exposed to allergens you know, pettander for example,
(16:56):
because their immune system will then develop a the proper
immunological response to allergens. So your immune system expects to
be triggered by allergens, otherwise you will end up having
respiratory ailments if you grow up in a sterile environment. Well,
this brilliant neuropsychiatrist then and I discussed this in the
(17:17):
book He analogized this concept too. You know, ideological echo chambers. Right,
Our brains, I argued in the book, have evolved to
be exposed to allergens. In this case, allergens are opposing ideas. Right,
I become a better debater if I learned what is
your opposing idea? Are our big brains expect to be challenged?
(17:39):
And yet what we've done over the past forty fifty
sixty years is create perfectly uniform echo chambers and universities.
And the way I demonstrate in the Parasitic Mind is
I just site studies that showed the breakdown of democrat
versus Republican political affiliations of professors, and it is absolutely insane.
(18:02):
In some fields, it's in the order of, you know,
forty four to zero, you know, a hundred to one.
So how could you then have well trained young adults
go into the world when they are truly, absolutely being
exposed to only one side of two issues. It's grotesque
and that's what I fight again. So on that note, then, doc,
(18:25):
why because you are active on social media then and
I have seen as much, um, why take shots at
some of the celebrities and athletes in our domain that
feel like they're above reproach because in a sense, it's
almost like a no win situation, right where they're not
gonna acknowledge what you are saying as a retort even
(18:45):
though you are correct. So why do that? Right? So
because they've got gigantic platforms, and and and by the way,
I get asked that many times, why do someone you know,
like you, with your credentials worry about what Sarah Silverman says?
Or well, because Sarah Silverman has, you know, twenty five
(19:06):
times my platform, Lebron James has I don't know how
many times my platforms. So in other words, uh, you know,
any syllable that Lebron James utters, regrettably will carry more
weight than the hundred top intellectuals put together. So by
sometimes going to their platform and challenging them, I'm recognizing,
as a good professor of marketing that I sometimes have
(19:29):
to take the message to where the consumers are, right.
I mean, if I only speak to my high salute
and high grow I've rey towered dwelling colleagues in the
ivy leagues, I might convince them, but that's twenty five people, right,
But if I go to Lebron James thirty million people
or however many, and I can get one percent of
them to rethink their position. From an impact perspective, I've
(19:52):
been quite impactful. So I'm not so haughty and so
elitist as to think that I am above communicating with everyone.
That's why I stimes I'll engage someone on social media
has two followers. Most of my colleagues with never you know,
stooped to communicating with the great unwashed. And that's why
I call myself the professor of the people. Well, with
the marketing aspect, then, doc, do you feel like our
(20:14):
society is dumber or smarter because of social media? I
mean it's a two edged sword because on the one hand,
of course, uh, social media allows for the rapid velocity,
you know, spread of information, right. I mean I can
get on Joe Rogan and then he could tweet something
and I could have more impact based on that tweet
(20:34):
than I could in writing academic papers. So on the
one hand, of course, social media affords us unbelievable opportunities
to spread messages. But of course the other side of
the coin is that it allows all sorts of you know, uh,
enemies of reason to also proliferate their message. So I
guess the question is are you a good enough consumer
(20:56):
of information to know which information is the vertical one
and which is the yes one? And that's why I
always keep fighting at the Battle of ideas, because I
always get so upset when I see garbage being espoused
by all sorts of people. Yeah, and dog and following
up on that, you know, we are on social media
obviously all the time. Everyone is in our the media
(21:16):
business that I work in, and how much of it
is real? I've I've taken the position it's kind of
like the matrix, right that you know, you don't know
what's real and what's fake, and there's a lot of
bots and algorithms and all that, and it's it's really like,
as you you deal with the human reaction to you know,
business and products and whatnot. Isn't this a form of
(21:38):
mind manipulation in many ways at the same time because
you really don't know, as you said, you don't know
what's real, what's not, and who's trying to pull your chain? Yeah?
Absolutely listen. Uh A kind of a related note, I
realized that via my use of satire. So for your
listeners who may or may not know this. Why the
(22:00):
many tools of persuasion that I use is, you know,
I'm very very heavy on satire and sarcasm, right and irony,
and so oftentimes I rejoice in having a major media
outlet not realized that I was being sarcastic and then
share my stuff thinking that I actually meant what I
said when I was actually being perfectly sarcastic, and as
(22:23):
as I guess, you guys know that that's very much posed. Well,
a few years ago, I can't remember who it was,
maybe it was PJ Media, and one of these major
outlets had put out the top ten dumbest quotes of
the year, and I think I had landed at number five,
or I can't remember that of the whole year. They
(22:44):
didn't realize that I was aping all of the progressive platitudes.
I was being sarcastic, and of course, once they realized that,
they very quietly removed my quote. But I rejoiced in
being able to to to fool all of these embestoles, because, uh,
it demonstrates what kind of lunatic world we live in.
I loved your your video the other day about you
(23:06):
know what's going Obviously you're very tight and you grew
up in the Middle East, and and what's been going
on in the last couple of weeks there and you
issued an apology of video which was that was a
tan doc guy. That was outstanding. I mean, yeah, how
how weird? You know, how weird if people obviously look
to you for you know, help. Everyone's got different opinions
(23:28):
on what's going on with with Israel and the in
the Middle East and all that, and and you you
obviously live there. You you have your family from there
and whatnot. And how weird is it, you know, seeing
this and it's been going on your entire life, everyone's
entire life, Like it's how weird is that whole situation
from your perspective because you know firsthand what what goes
on in that part of the country or pat Park. Yeah, so,
(23:50):
I mean, for your listeners who may not know this,
we are we you meaning my family were part of
the last remaining Lebanese Jews in Lebanon. Uh. You know,
the Middle East had a you know, a sizeable, albeit
a small minority of Arabic Jewice like Iraqi Iraqi Jewice,
(24:11):
Syrian Jews, Egyptian Jews, Lebanese Jews. But then they all
you know, slowly either left or magically disappeared. Uh, And
we were part of the steadfastly you know, stayed in
Lebanon despite the fact that they were you know, warning
signs that it was no longer a good idea to
be Jewish in Lebanon. And then in the mid seventies,
(24:33):
when the Civil War began, it really wasn't possible to
be Jewish and Lebanon. And so we were in Lebanon
for the first year of the civil war, and then
we were lucky to escape. And I discussed all this
in the first chapter of The Perasitic Mind, and I
discussed it in the context of identity politics because I
explained to people that to the extent that you now
have one of the two major parties in the United States,
(24:54):
the Democrats, that are basing everything on identity politics, I'm
i'm I'm giving people a warning because Lebanon is exactly
what happens to a society when it perfectly adheres to
identity politics. Right. So the the end downstream effects of
having identity politics rule your life is called Lebanon. And
so anyway, so we left Lebanon and moved to Montreal, Canada.
(25:16):
My parents kept returning to Lebanon because we still had
you know, some businesses there and so on. And then
they were kidnapped by FATA, which is a Palestinian group.
And our our home itself are our home in Beirut
was occupied by Palestinians, Palestinian refugees, and so yes, I'm
very very familiar with the area. Now. Look, I don't
(25:37):
hold any ill will against Palestinians, because yes, they were
Muslim militia that wanted to kill us in Lebanon, but
it's also Palestinian militia who protected us and drove us
out of you know, out of to the to the
Beirut International Airport. So I don't condemn people based on
the action of someone else. Right, So by the same token,
it breaks my heart that Jews now are being attacked
(26:00):
all over the place, including in Montreal, because you know,
they're Jewish, and then somehow they are collectively guilty for
what Israel you know, uh, you know, is doing, you know,
to pass things and so on. I frankly think it's
an intractable problem. I don't think that it will ever
be solved until people recognized recognize their common humanity. The
(26:23):
problem in the Middle East is that that's probably never
going to happen, because everything, as I said, is viewed
through you, through tribal allegiance, through the religion that you
belong to, and unfortunately, very few of those tribes view
the Jews positively, and so I fear that these realities
will always exist. Be sure to catch live editions of
(26:43):
The Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven
pm Pacific. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio
app and doc. On that note, with travelism, I mean
Ben and I talked about this at pretty good length
because it has now seemed and bled into sports, into
(27:06):
our arena of work and enjoyment. Were now it seems
like you're either on one side of the aisle or
the other side of the aisle. Do you think that
the power of money has has pushed this thing to
the edge where it's it's irreversible that sports and I
guess media as as a whole, will will never get
back to a constructive black and white like this is
(27:30):
exactly what it's intended for information or for sports entertainment.
Do you think we ever get back to something like that. Well,
I hope that we're able to get back to a
time where people don't take their political positions in arenas
where those arenas precisely exists, so that we don't act
(27:51):
tribal in a tribal way. Right. So sports is a
place where uh, you know, I could hopefully forget that
I'm Jewish or Muslim, or I support the Democrats or Republicans,
and I have allegiance to whatever the Dallas Cowboys, right,
I mean, it's it's an opportunity for people to look
for their common love for for competition. And but by
the way, just to link it, link your question about
(28:13):
sports to what we were talking about in the previous
question in the Middle East. In in my book, I
talk about the following story because it relates to sports.
My brother, actually the brother that I mentioned earlier, who
had moved to California in the four My brother was
was the champion of judo judo champion of Lebanon several
years in a row. He actually, by the way, represented
(28:36):
Lebanon in the nineteen seventy six Olympics in Montreal. Well
in around nineteen seventy three, nineteen seventy four, before the
Civil War started, he was visited by some men who
told him that it was time for him to retire,
because you know, it's not a good look for a
Jew to constantly be winning a combat sport. And so
(28:57):
the writing was on the wall. He wasn't going to
quit his judo career, so he moved to Paris, France,
where actually the French are very good at Judeo historically,
and he continued his career there. But I listened to
the irony the guy who had to leave Lebanon because
he was a Jew who was always winning the Lebanese championship.
His jewishness no longer mattered when it came to him
(29:20):
representing Lebanon in the nineteen Olympics. At that point they
were willing to forgive, you know, that dirtiness of him
being a Jew. So that shows you what happens when
we start incorporating all these tribal divisions within sports. Sports
should unite us, not divide us. So it's really regrettable.
I mean, we we have we have issues now with meritocracy.
(29:43):
It seems like like you can't the scoreboard doesn't matter anymore.
It feels like even outside the sports world, you know,
resumes with degrees, whether it's a bachelor's, a master's, and PhD,
it doesn't matter anymore. I mean here in California they're
doing away with standardized testing for you for universities. Well,
(30:06):
it is actually much worse than that. So uh, at
the at the academicals on academia, you would think that
just like a hundred meter dash is judged based on
who crosses the line first, right, Uh, I mean, if
there's ever a case of a pure meritocracy, it would
be the hundred meters tacks while you would think that
(30:27):
academic excellence, you know, for professors should be the same,
but now shared professorship. So the highest level of professorships
that are endowed by the Canadian government are bestowed a
lot more based on what I call the Die religion.
Die is an acronym that I use for diversity, inclusion
and equity. Right, So I call it the Die religion
(30:49):
because the application of Die principles is exactly where meritocracy
goes to die. Right, So, so we no longer judge
you based on the strength of your scientific dosia, which
ug you if you are the right skin you, if
you've got the right gender orientation, or sexual orientation or ethnicity.
I mean, it is really grotesque. And what upsets me
(31:09):
the most is that all of this perfectly illiberal nonsense,
it's cloaked under the robe of progressivism, right. I mean,
in the old days, the racists wore ropes, they were
called the KKK, and we disavowed them. But today they
wear cloaks, the robes of progressivism. They could be fully racist,
(31:30):
and we're supposed to say, wow, bravo, bravo, it's so
great to hire people based on their skin color. It's grotesque.
I mean, for someone like me who escaped the Middle East,
it breaks my heart to see what we're doing to
the West. Yeah. And and doc, I mean, we saw
this week the mayor of Chicago, major city, obviously you here,
saying they would she would only or limit the media
(31:52):
interviews to people of color, not people have got a
Journalists of color. Yeah, yeah, journalists have color. I mean,
it's it's crazy. It I despise this fill in the
blank of color, communities of color, soccer players of color.
I mean, I guarantee you that in ten years, some
(32:12):
some some you know, language police person will arise and
say it is no longer acceptable to say this, and
you know what, I will be the one clapping because
I find it ridiculous. What what is this journalist of color?
What is a by the way in universities? Now you
have all these activist students who will you know, occupy
(32:33):
the President's office saying things like we need a speaker
series of color, we need mentor of colors, we need
mathematicians of color. Really, I thought mathematics is where you
leave your identity at the door. Right. The distribution of
prime numbers is the distribution of prime numbers irrespective of
(32:53):
whether I'm indigenous or an Orthodox Jew or a Islamic
I mom, I mean, it's insane. Doc. At a lighter note,
I know, obviously the parasitic of mind is something that
that Ben and I have talked about a little bit.
But you guys do share something else in common, and
it's the uh. It's the diet. Now. Ben is a
(33:14):
huge fan of the intermittent fasting. And I know that
you're getting the uh the pounds down to what inspired
you to to lose the weight and UH and do
you dip it? Do you dip your toes into the
deep end of the intermittent fasting at all? Right? Yeah,
thank well, thank you for that personal question. Uh So,
actually I just played myself today, um at one, which
(33:36):
is the lowest I've been probably I don't know in
twenty years. Uh one two is still way too heavy
for someone of my height, So probably another twenty pounds
will be ideal. But as I always joke, I always
need to keep a bit of extra fat because sin
God will cause social uh strife and will cause marital instability.
(33:58):
Then God is simply too good looking to walk in public.
But any case, Uh what what what motivated me to
do it is, frankly, uh, the realization that I have
young children and I want to put all the odds
in my favor. And for many years I've wanted to
lose weight. I would sort of lose a bit of weight,
but then I would clutau and finally I said, look,
this is not rocket science. There's gotta be a way
(34:21):
for me to train enough, although I've always been very athletic.
But really, of course, as you know, the main problem
is what you put in your mouth. And so I
think this time. The way that I've been able to
crack it is I try to keep my food to
about fifteen six hundred cowries a day, and I always
do at least fifteen thousand steps, so I call it
the fifteen fifteen regiment. And the weight it has come
(34:42):
after the tune of about forty pounds since intermittent fast thing.
I've only done it within the daily windows, so like,
for example, I've gone on those sixteen hour windows where
I don't eat, but I haven't done intermittent fasting in
the sense of, you know, some folks will do, you know,
forty eight hours, so it's nothing that's severe. But I've
certainly dabbled with the twelve to sixteen windows, if that's
(35:05):
what you mean. Yeah, Doug, I love food and I
was a very large man for a long time. And
the only way I've really been able to keep the
weight off is the inner minute fasting. But because I
you know, once I start eating, it's hard. I cannot.
I don't know how you do the sixteen hundred calories
a day thing, because I once I get god, it's
very hard to stop. I've got a wife who I
(35:27):
call her get stop mode when she when she gets
on it and she sees me hovering around the kitchen,
she'll give me one of those looks. I will swallow
my saliva and go back and sit down. That's maybe
that's what I'm joking. She's not that diapolic because she's very,
very lovely. But look, I really think it's having having
(35:47):
young children really helps. Uh. You know, I used to
when I would get on a flight before, I never
thought about the plane crashing. Whereas the minute that I
had a child and I would get on a plane,
I would have this whole ex potential angst. What if
the plane crash, I'll never see them grow up on it.
So I think that really accelerated my desire to lose
(36:07):
weight because I want to be hopefully around for a
long time, and being very overweight it's not really doing
I mean, there aren't too many hundred year olds who
are you know, fifty pounds overweights? Right, Yeah, you go
to the retirement homes. There's not a lot of large
people in entirement homes, unfortunately. But uh, but I wanna
go back to, you know, some of the things that
the issues of the day here. And I saw something
(36:28):
you said the other day. You said that this whole
woke revolution is like a religion, and I thought that
was that was great because it seems like everyone's trying
to one up each other and trying to be more
more woke, woke mcwoke and all that. Can you can
you expand on what you were getting at with that phrase, Doc, Well, so,
(36:48):
I mean, what's the religion? It has certain revealed truth
that are inviolable. Right, So the difference between science and
religion is that science always grade under provisional truths, meaning
what we might think something is true, and we might
think it's true for three d years. But if new
data comes in that causes us to reevaluate what we
(37:09):
thought was was true for hundreds of years, then we
have what's called the epistemic humility to alter our beliefs.
Of course, religion doesn't operate that way. Right, It is
true because my book says it's true, and therefore it's
true because it's in my book. That's what that's why
we say it's revealed true. It is impervious to uh falsification. Well,
(37:30):
a lot of the woke tenants are exactly that, right,
There is a tenant right you are no longer allowed
to say that there are two sexes, that the default
phenotypes of male and female are of humans is male
and female. That's not acceptable. I have to say that
there are eight hundred and seventy three genders, and that's
the revealed truth. And if I don't say that, I
(37:52):
should be canceled right in the Middle East, we just
execute you. In the West, we we only cancel your
career and ostras as you. Right. So, so in that sense,
there is this you know, blindness to incoming information because
it's a form of quasi secular religion. So it's in
that sense that I compared to the other thing that
(38:14):
I would say that is very similar between religion and wokenus.
And I discussed this in the parasitic mind. So if so,
Shariah law is the Islamic law, and under Islamic law,
it is exactly antithetical to the US justice system. The
US justice system is supposed to be blind, right, blind
to your identity. Well, Shariah law is exactly not that. Right. So,
(38:35):
for example, if a Muslim man kills the Jewish man,
it's a very different penalty then if it's the other
way around, and that's codified in Sharia law. Well, progressive
ism or woke woke is m is exactly like Sharia
la right, So if I can say the N word,
depends on whether what my color of skin is right.
So the crime, whether it be a linguistic crime or
(38:58):
a thought crime or an actual physical crime, depends on
the identity of the perpetrator and the victim. So the
progressives are thinking that they are being liberal, whereas in
reality they are mimicking Shariah laws of which I escape.
It's grotesque. And in that sense, walkasm is just another
grotesque religion and doc in a sense to it almost
(39:19):
sounds like you can classify the United States as a religion. Right,
you go to Texas, you go to Florida, you might
go to Oklahoma. It's a lot different of a feeling
in nature and also mind that it would be if
you came here to California or Washington or Oregon. Countries
that are are states that are blue versus the states
(39:40):
that are read. Yes, that's true, and but this is why,
by the way, So if you want look to be tribal,
is really to be human. So we have a involved
coalitional psychology where we view the world as blue team
and red team US versus then. So so it's very
difficult to eradicate that instinct to be coalitional or tribal.
(40:00):
But one of the beauties of the American experience is
that its places the Constitution. I mean not to it
almost sounds like I'm being religious here, but the Constitution
as a as a document is what then unites Americans.
And and and I'm amazed that I have to be
the one saying that as a Canadian and speaking to Americans. Right,
so it should be that we don't have blue states
(40:22):
and red states, but we only have allegiance to the Constitution.
That's what made America the great experience, the great uh,
you know, societies that you've built over two hundred plus years.
But now we don't have that. We don't have adherence
to the Constitution. We have adherence to parties, and hence
we are succumbing to that basal instinct of tribalism. Yeah,
(40:43):
really shameful, and people forget obviously we are a constitutional
republic and exactly democracy democracy is one thing, but obviously
the republic is another. But don't you do you feel though,
I guess in that sense because when you look at
some of the things that make up the country right
now is the United States. They are dominant by one
political party, so you can't help in certain circumstances that
(41:06):
you need to acquiesce to to the ones that are
writing the paycheck for you. Look, I mean, I understand
the stressors, and I understand that you know, people shouldn't
be unnecessary martyrs. But whenever people send me I mean,
I received you a million emails in a given week,
and many of them will kind of end with the
following final sentence. You know, I love you, DR said,
(41:30):
thank you for your blah. Please, if you're going to
read my email, don't mention my identity. Right, So, if
you are so cowardly that you're not even courageous enough
to simply stand next to the one who's taking all
the risks, how should we can contextualize your cowardice comparing
it to say, the young men who landed on Normandy
(41:53):
and knew that they would be mowed down by Nazi
machine guns like little insignificant mosquito, so that you and
I could be sitting having this conversation today, how does
your cowardice compared to that so in a war, whether
it be in ideological war or in actual physical war,
there are casualties. That's why it's called the war. So
I understand that everybody wants to be safe, but you
(42:16):
also have to be anti fragile. Right, So when I
see kids today complaining about whatever they complain about, you know,
my god, maybe I'm going to be miss gendered. I say, yeah,
you should have lived ten minutes of my childhood and Lebanon,
where I didn't know every minute whether I was going
to live to the next minute. So people have to
stop being invertebrates. They have to grow a spine. We
(42:37):
are a vertebrate species. We have a spine, So try
to find your spine. Try to grow a pair. If
I can be colloquial in that way and speak out, Now,
you don't have to be an unnecessary martyr, but you
don't subcontract your voice to those who are willing to
take the risk for you. You have to activate your
inner honey badger and speak out. So that in a way,
(42:59):
in a roundabout way, it does sound like you you
are acknowledging that I am. I'm brave for working with
Ben Mallorca and his audience is they're relentless on their attacks.
So yeah, we gotta have you are my hero. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,
(43:20):
this whole cancel culture thing, right, like, you know, is
is there any going back? I mean, I remember when
I was a kid and and people you know, back
in my day, and we you know, I didn't have
the life you had obviously, but you know, in my
life experience, I had a mother that was liberal and
a father that was conservative, and they were battle it
out at the dinner table and then they'd hug it out.
(43:40):
I had buddies of mind that you know, we were
from different backgrounds and we'd bust each other's chops and
then we'd be fine. But now it's like, if you don't,
if you're not in lockstep, as we've talked about, and
you've got into great detail here, you know, you've got
to you know, distance yourself or now the cancel culture.
What's the path to getting back to closer to the
way it was? Doc? Right? It has to be costly
(44:03):
for the Cretans who are promulgating the cancel culture ethos
right right now, there are no consequences to their tactics.
So let me give you an example. If I start
engaging someone on Twitter about some issue whatever, the Israeli
Postinian thing. Right, you may have a different position from mine,
(44:24):
and we we we we look it out on on Twitter,
and then whatever, either I convince you or you convince me,
or we don't budge in our respective positions and we
live to love another day. But now what they will
do is they will then tag my university and say,
how do you keep the skuy this this, this uh
you know, uh justifier of the general side of the policy,
(44:47):
and they start tagging my university. Well, I can't engage
in the same terrorists tactics on them because you know,
they're not public figures. I don't know where they were,
even though I would never do it to them, So
that a symmetry. The fact that they can try to
terrorize me in this way without any repercussions on them
is what emboldens them to do it. Right. The fact
(45:08):
that administrators and universities allow this nonsense to take place
by allowing the you know, blue haired people to d
platform everyone with whom they disagree is what. But now,
let's suppose a donor who's giving a hundred million dollars
at this university suddenly says, if a single person at
this university is d platform and the next ten years
(45:31):
you won't get a cent from me. Suddenly that one
hundred billion dollars that I might lose as the president
of that university suddenly my ears per cup. So in
other words, we have to incentivize these cretans into fighting
against council cultures. As long as there are no costs
for the mob not coming after you and terrorizing hits
(45:52):
will go on. So what I'd like to see is
that people wait. And by the way, you're starting to
see it now with critical race theory, right, So a
lot of parents are now mobilizing to fight against this nonsense.
And I can assure you that if more and more
parents start going through these, you know, education board meetings
and screaming and shouting against the racist nonsense of critical
(46:13):
race theory, it will suddenly, uh disappear and the administrators
will acquiesce. So there is no magic recipe. People have
to be engaged and we can hopefully very quickly turn
this around. Now, Doc, I don't know if you're aware
of this, but this sounds an awful lot like SEC football.
Like SEC football is king in the United States when
it comes to college athletics, and donors will have the
(46:35):
heads of head coaches that they can't perform and compete
against the Alabamas of the world or Georgia or Tennessee
or whatnot. So it sounds like a lockstep football kind
of brings the country back into the full smooth unity.
So I'm sorry, glad, I'm interrupted. Also say, when you
when you mentioned critical race theory, you're actually gonna be
(46:56):
speaking with someone that's been a driving force on the
pushback in exactly this Monday, actually, well tomorrow, I'm speaking
to Amy Chua, who is the colloquially she's referred to
as the Tiger Mom. She she's a Yale University, UH
law school professor who wrote, I mean, she's written many books,
one of which actually is relevant to what we were
(47:17):
talking about. Tribes. She wrote a book on you know,
political tribes and so on. But earlier she had written
a book about, you know, the battle him of the
Tiger Mom. And she's a real honey badger, right, because
she's existing in an ecosystem of ultra liberals, and you know,
she certainly is a lot more conservative and she doesn't
just you know, conform to the ideology and Christopher Ruffo,
with whom I'll be speaking on my show on Monday,
(47:39):
has become a real nemesis to all these crt you know,
racists because he you know, they're winning legal, you know,
legal victory over legal victory all over the country. So look,
this guy didn't start off, you know, with with the
clear idea that that's what he was going to be.
But for whatever reason, I guess we'll talk about her
on Monday, he decided he wants to take on this,
(48:00):
you know, he wants to take on dismantle and and
look where he's scott in him. So, you know, often
I will get people who write to me and say, well,
you know, I don't have Joe Rogan's platform. I'm not
some fancy professor with your platform. Professor, I who's gonna
listen to? Well, you don't. You don't have to effect
change in the millions. If your professor says something that is,
you know, inbecilic and contrary to common sense, why don't
(48:22):
you challenge him or her politely? If if your friend
says something at the pub that you disagree with, rather
than worrying about if you disagree with him, he might
unfriend you, why don't you grow up pair and actually
challenge him politely. So, in other words, we can affect
change within the small sphere of influence of our daily lives.
And and and I guess Christopher Ruffo is as a
(48:43):
perfect example of that. He didn't start off as a
fancy professor or as Joe Rogan, and look at the
influence he has now, Yeah, it's it's amazing. Dog. One
last question for me before Benson's it out, Um, do
you feel that the political activities of the far left
are sophisticated marketing programs? I mean, I don't know. I
(49:04):
mean yes and no. I mean there's susistic there. They're
they're smart, and that they found a way to infiltrate
that they dominate all of the key structures that define intelligentia, journalism, academia, Hollywood. Now,
I don't think that that was sort of a planned
conspiratorial thing. On the other hand, as you probably have
all heard the standard joke that you know, the right
(49:26):
has better means the right has better sense of humor.
So I don't think that, you know, marketing ability is
restricted to one political tribe or another. I think though,
that to the extent that all of the choke points
of the intelligentsia are completely controlled by one party. They
(49:47):
don't even need to have good marketing because they control
the full narrative. Right. I mean you have Fox in
the US and that's it, right. Who who else has
an opposing view to the mainstream media. So I think
that's what's unhealthy. And if we can just infuse diversity
of thought at each of these structures, will be a
much more vibrant and healthy society. Well, Doc, I know
(50:10):
we've taken more of your time than we said we would. Uh,
bad job by us. But how can for those you
know when you mentioned the book we mentioned a few
times Parasitic Mind? How can people find it? You've got
a YouTube channel which is very popular, which is great,
and I know you're obviously very big on Twitter. How
can people follow you? Get in the book the whole thing,
promote all of this, Doctor, Oh, thank you, sir. So
(50:32):
my my book, my list book is called the Parasitic Mind,
How infectious ideas are killing common sense? They could certainly
get on Amazon or whatever books are sold. Uh. My
Twitter handle is at gat g A D S A
A D. I have a podcast and a YouTube channel.
It's called the sad truth s A A D. I
have a public uh Facebook page. I'm everywhere. I hunt
(50:55):
your dreams. It's not difficult to find and listen. You're
gonna be a dangerous man if you can and west
of the four oh five. Back to that beach. Document
is a little bit more weight. No, no, you can
come back to irv or Irvine is is west and
east of the four oh five, so you could you
could be an Irvine to be east of the formula. Anyway, Doc,
Thank you so much, have a great day, appreciate it.
My pleasures. Cheers, guys. Chip. Be sure to catch live
(51:18):
editions of The Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am
Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Be sure to catch live editions
of The Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern
eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I
Heart Radio app.
Host
Ben Maller
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