#2497 - Gad Saad

**Joe Rogan** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience.

**Gad Saad** (0:06)
Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

**Joe Rogan** (0:12)
Good to see you, sir.

**Gad Saad** (0:14)
Oh, so good to see you.

**Joe Rogan** (0:15)
What's happening? How you been?

**Gad Saad** (0:17)
Doing great, got big news. Big? I'll talk big, very big. Big, really big? Before I start with that.

**Joe Rogan** (0:22)
Okay.

**Gad Saad** (0:24)
Drops.

**Joe Rogan** (0:25)
The book. Suicidal Empathy.

**Gad Saad** (0:27)
Suicidal Empathy.

**Joe Rogan** (0:28)
The quote that we use all the time.

**Gad Saad** (0:29)
That's right.

**Joe Rogan** (0:30)
Yeah, it is a good quote, and it is a very accurate quote for the Times. I like this where they're carrying the sign, free the wolves, the lamb is carrying.

**Gad Saad** (0:39)
Well, I wanted the cover to be as evocative as the concept, right?

**Joe Rogan** (0:45)
Dying to be kind. There you go.

**Gad Saad** (0:48)
Just in the last two days, there have been so many new cases of suicidal empathy that I regret that I couldn't include them in the book.

**Joe Rogan** (0:56)
Like which ones?

**Gad Saad** (0:57)
So did you hear about the one where the guy who tried to assassinate President Trump?

**Joe Rogan** (1:02)
Oh, yeah.

**Gad Saad** (1:03)
The judge then went and said, I am so sorry that you're not being treated nicely. You have a room without a window. This is just, it's mean.

**Joe Rogan** (1:13)
See, I don't think that that's suicidal empathy at all. I think that's signaling. I think that's signaling that he wishes that that man was successful and that he supports his endeavor.

**Gad Saad** (1:23)
Fair enough. The second example, actually today, Dave Rubin shared it with me.
It was the one where a felon of color who had just been released ended up pushing, right? And the previous person that he had been entangled with didn't want to whatever press charges because she didn't want another black man to be in prison.

**Joe Rogan** (1:47)
Oh, boy. Oh, boy, boy, boy.

**Gad Saad** (1:50)
So we can, so I hope to get into the book in a second. But the other big news is that this past year, I've been a visiting scholar at Old Miss University, Mississippi. I had taken a two-year leave from my school in Montreal.
Starting this summer, we are moving permanently to Oxford. The Lebanese, Jews, Canadians are going down to Oxford, Mississippi, and we're very excited.

**Joe Rogan** (2:19)
Wow. So you're going to be there for two years? So how does that work? Do you get a green card or a visa?

**Gad Saad** (2:26)
Yeah. So the previous two years that I did, it was a leave of absence, so I only had to get a TN visa. But now that we're moving, I applied for an EB1A visa, which gets you a green card. They're called extraordinary visas.
You have to pass certain criteria to them.

**Joe Rogan** (2:43)
You are extraordinary, aren't you?

**Gad Saad** (2:45)
And rather easy on the eyes.
And so that went through. Thank God. And so we're very excited.

**Joe Rogan** (2:55)
Congratulations.

**Gad Saad** (2:55)
Yeah. Hopefully this will be a fast track to, my inner spirit is American, but maybe we can legalize it and turn the Saads into Americans.

**Joe Rogan** (3:05)
Wow. You're going to join the team.

**Gad Saad** (3:09)
If you'll have me.

**Joe Rogan** (3:10)
I will have you. Come on. Welcome aboard.

**Gad Saad** (3:13)
Yeah.

**Joe Rogan** (3:13)
We need more people that are thinking straight.

**Gad Saad** (3:15)
So that's the big news.

**Joe Rogan** (3:16)
That's awesome, man. Congratulations.

**Gad Saad** (3:17)
Thank you.

**Joe Rogan** (3:18)
That's a fantastic thing. That's beautiful.

**Gad Saad** (3:20)
Do you want to get into the book and then we'll talk about other stuff?

**Joe Rogan** (3:23)
Sure.

**Gad Saad** (3:23)
Whatever. So I thought maybe I'd give you, because I know that you know the parasitic mind really well, and I wanted to kind of contextualize this book in relation to that book.
So we are a thinking and a feeling animal, right? Both our cognitive system is important and our affective system is important. For example, advertisers recognize that if I'm trying to sell you a mutual fund, I need to engage your cognitive system. Here are the seven reasons why you should buy my mutual fund. If I'm trying to sell you perfume, I don't tell you this is what Harvard physiologists think about the science of olfaction, right? I need to engage your affective system. So in that case, I will show you a pretty girl on a horse with beautiful hair and the brand name will be Mystere, right? I'm just engaging your emotional system. Well, the parasitic mind was the story of what I need to do to hijack your cognitive system, your ability to think rationally. And hence, there were all these parasitic ideas that destroyed your capacity to think. But for me to completely zombify you and hijack you, I also need to zombify your affective system. That's where Suicidal Empathy comes in. So if I can hijack both your cognitive and emotional systems, you become a wood cricket, which we could talk about what that reference is, if you want.