#837 - Gad Saad

Joe Rogan (0:05)

And we're back. What's up, buddy?

You look tan. We've been enjoying the Southern California weather, sir.

Gad Saad (0:13)

My biggest problem every day is to decide which beach between LA and San Diego to hit.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

What are you bragging? Bragging about your lack of problems?

Gad Saad (0:22)

It's my privileged life.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Your brown privilege?

Gad Saad (0:26)

My brown privilege.

Joe Rogan (0:28)

It's like a bronze. It's a very bronze-ish, shiny...

Gad Saad (0:31)

In a few days, it'll settle in, and that's when the true glory of Gad comes out.

Joe Rogan (0:35)

I bet your vitamin D levels are at an all-time high.

Gad Saad (0:38)

I need to take them in for the Montreal winters, right?

Joe Rogan (0:42)

Do you supplement when you're in the winter in Montreal?

Gad Saad (0:44)

I don't.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

You don't? Yeah, 100%. Vitamin D is a critical factor.

Gad Saad (0:50)

Or I just come back to do your show in winter, and then that's how I get my supplement.

Joe Rogan (0:53)

I don't think that's enough. You need that vitamin D. That's a big thing apparently with people that live in Seattle in the winter, is taking vitamin D and even sun tanning beds.

People don't realize that sun tanning beds, although it's kind of counterintuitive, you think they're really bad for you, it's actually not that bad for you. As long as you don't burn yourself, it's actually good.

Gad Saad (1:11)

I did a study, well, a paper I wrote. It was a theoretical paper with a dermatologist a few years ago where we looked at some evolutionary explanations for the epidemiology of sun tanning. So if I were to ask you now, without you knowing anything about it, or not much about evolutionary theory, what's the typical demographic of the sort of obsessive sun tanner? White girls.

Well, it's women, young, single, and they usually tend to discount the future consequences for the immediate benefits, right?

Joe Rogan (1:44)

Right, smoking cigarettes, they probably smoke.

Gad Saad (1:46)

Exactly, so it doesn't matter whether I'll get melanoma when I'm 73, I'm going tonight to the party and Tony might be there and I'd like to have that. And so with this dermatologist friend of mine had written to me, he was doing his fellowship, and he said, look, as part of my research requirements, I have to write a paper.

You're the big researcher, can I do a paper with you?

I said, but you're a dermatologist, what can we talk about? And then I thought, well, let's do the evolutionary roots of suntanning. And that's how that paper came to be.

Joe Rogan (2:13)

How is that evolutionary though? What's evolutionary about white girls that don't think about the future?

Gad Saad (2:18)

Well, no, are there particular ways that we can predict the demographics of people who do certain behaviors? So for example, pathological gambling, who do you think is likely to succumb to that affliction?

Joe Rogan (2:31)

Pathological gambling, I would say adult men in their 30s.

Gad Saad (2:39)

Low status.

Joe Rogan (2:40)

Low status?

Gad Saad (2:41)

Yeah, on average.

And the reason is because it's one of a multitude of strategies to acquire resources, right? It's the same reason that men rob banks, not women. And so you could... Okay, let's do another one.

Eating disorders. Who do you think succumbs to eating disorders more?

Anorexia nervosa in particular.

Joe Rogan (3:00)

Okay, women.

Gad Saad (3:01)

Women. Now, typically the social science explanation is, oh, it's due to exposure to media images.

Now, that turns out to be a laughably premise.

Joe Rogan (3:10)

Why is it laughable?

Gad Saad (3:11)

So here we go. Here's the evolutionary angle.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

Okay.

Gad Saad (3:14)

So Hippocrates, founder of modern medicine 2,000 plus years ago, had documented the exact same epidemiology of eating disorders in women. So it certainly can't be because of media, right? So there must be something biological that explains the sex specificity of these different, you know, dark side consumption. And so the evolutionary perspective is to then look at, to the extent that these human universals manifest themselves in exactly the same way across time and place, what might be some of these biological drivers? Compulsive buying, almost exclusively women, 90% women.

Pornographic addictions, almost exclusively male.

Joe Rogan (3:57)

Right, but let's just stick with this one. Let's just stick with this one, the anorexia nervosa.

First of all, when you're talking about Hippocrates, you're talking about one lone individual, so a completely anecdotal piece of evidence, and he said that women were throwing up. Wasn't it a status symbol back then for women to be overweight?