#2148 - Gad Saad

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

What's going on, man? Good to see you.

Gad Saad (0:16)

10th episode.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

Crazy!

Gad Saad (0:18)

Unbelievable.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

What are the odds?

Gad Saad (0:19)

Short of your regular crew. Am I in the Hall of Fame?

Joe Rogan (0:25)

There's very few people that have had 10 episodes. It's a small handful, for sure.

Gad Saad (0:29)

I mean, I should put that as the top thing on my CV. All the other stuff is bullshit. 10th time on Joe Rogan. Drop the mic.

Joe Rogan (0:36)

This is how out of the corporate world I am. I don't even know what a CV is. I don't know what it stands for. I know people say it. I know what it means, but I don't know what it stands for.

Gad Saad (0:43)

Want me to tell you what an academic CV looks like?

Joe Rogan (0:45)

Sure. What does it stand for? What's CV?

Gad Saad (0:47)

Curriculum Vitae.

Joe Rogan (0:49)

Ah, okay.

Gad Saad (0:50)

You basically, in academia, you'll start with your education, all your degrees, all of your positions that you've held. I was assistant professor here from here then. Then all of your journal publications, all of your books, all of your conference art, and so on.

Joe Rogan (1:06)

Right.

Gad Saad (1:07)

So it can end up being a pretty beefy CV. I think mine is about 47 pages long.

Joe Rogan (1:12)

Oh my goodness. Look at you. You accomplished academic.

And managed to stay logical. How did you do that? Oh, you got a new book.

Gad Saad (1:20)

Dropping on May 14th on happiness.

Joe Rogan (1:22)

The Saad Truth 2A's about happiness. 8 Secrets for Leading a Good Life.

Gad Saad (1:28)

Enjoy it. How have I been so productive?

Joe Rogan (1:31)

How have you managed to, I mean, people have gotten annoyed at you, but you've somehow or another avoided like a full scale cancellation. Well, with your positions, it's kind of amazing.

Gad Saad (1:43)

It really, it truly is. I'm kind of like the Velcro Don, the Teflon Don, Velcro is obviously opposite.

Right, right.

Nothing sticks. They've tried to cancel me in all sorts of ways, but that speaks by the way to one of the powerful reasons why tenure, despite the fact that a lot of people despise the concept of tenure. It's just a bunch of lazy academics who are going to be dead wood for the next 30 years. But if I didn't have the protection of tenure, I'd be gone long ago. Now, that doesn't mean that I still haven't suffered many consequences, right? So I haven't gotten other jobs that I would have otherwise gotten because of how irreverent I am. Death threats, so now after October 7th, it's almost became impossible for me to go on campus. Because first of all, I'm high-profile. My university has a particular demographic reality, and so there are consequences to speaking out.

Joe Rogan (2:43)

So you can't go on campus, literally?

Gad Saad (2:46)

I mean, I have gone, but during the points when there were a lot of protests outside the campus and so on, or on campus, because our campus is an urban campus, so it's hard to say where the school begins and where the city is.

You know, you have death to Jews and free Palestine, and Intifada, and from the river to the sea, and there's 800 of them screaming, and you're going to come in. Many of them know who you are. They know that I'm not very supportive of their positions, and so it's going to be a bit challenging. So on a few cases, I did it via Zoom. Other times, I had to have security with me, so I'd have to check into security, and they'd have to walk with me to class, and so on. That's not a good thing. I'll tell you another quick story, if I may, about what happened after October 7th. So I'll first talk about what happened in Lebanon. So the day that we escaped from Lebanon, for those of your viewers who don't know about us, we're Lebanese Jews. We were there until the start of the Civil War. We were there in the first year of the Civil War, and then we had to leave, because it became impossible to be Jewish in Lebanon.

When we left that day, it was from Beirut to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Montreal, as we cleared the airspace of Lebanon, the captain, I discussed this in chapter one of my previous book, The Parasitic Mind, he said, okay, we're now out of Lebanese airspace. And so I said to my wife, my mother pulls out a pendulant with the Star of David, puts it around me, my neck, and says, now you can wear this, be proud and not hide your identity. Now, that's in the past, but now I'm gonna link it to the current reality.