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hey everybody that sound in the back is not me going to the bathroom that's just porn coffee folks don't get crazy this episode of the podcast is brought to you by a new sponsor it's called Blue Apron and Blue Apron uh I just um just tried this out this week um they sent it to me this is what Blue Apron is it's a way to get all the ingredients for healthy meals along with recipes shipped to your house it's pretty interesting um I was a bit skeptical at first I was like what what exactly are they going to do and then they send you this thing it's got this sheet it's got photographs of what everything looks like shows you how to cook everything all the meals are between 500 and 700 calories per serving really interesting and way too low uh the calories low for how delicious they are it's all healthy excellent food and it's all stuff that you don't have to go to a store you don't have to go anywhere they'll ship everything to you it's all like in these um coolers that have like I guess it's like Freez dried or something like um not freeze dried what's that stuff called dry ice dry ice to keep it cold but it uh it sat inside my house for like 10 hours and it was still nice and cold uh when I open it up and put in the refrigerator um they have all kinds of yummy stuff they have the step-by-step instructions I said which picture with pictures totally idiot proof they work around your schedule and your dietary preferences and the cooking takes you know like about a half an hour shipping is completely free and you can make meals like short rib Burgers on pretzel buns kungpow chicken tacos very delicious stuff you cook incredible meals and you can be blown away by the quality and the freshness Blue Apron it's fast it's fresh and it's affordable to end the stress of cooking now go to blueapron.com Rogan and get your first two meals free that's right first two meals free blueapron.com Rogan it's a really interesting idea I I've never heard anything like this before and uh like I said I was kind of like a bit skeptical but the meals were delicious um last night I I had um I had some I forget the name of the the tacos but it was a steak taco but they all the spices they give you like onions garlic all these different things to chop up it was really kind of cool uh so blueapron.com Rogan and get your first
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that's ridiculous folks it's cheap it's easy it's awesome and uh they have been a sponsor of the podcast for a long time so if you were in the market for a new cell phone please give them a try uh they support us and we support them rogan.com go there and save 25 bucks off of a new cell phone then that's it for now let's let's just uh get cracking we got a lot of interesting stuff to talk about ladies and gentlemen we have a very special guest cu the music young Jamie and I'll introduce him to the world Jo podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all [Music] day we have is it is it okay to call you the Godfather please do The Godfather is here ladies and gentlemen and this is in in reference to a a a music video that you were a part of uh Gad how do I say your last name sad s just sad that's fine gadad it's two A's it gets tricky when it's two A's because it's the guttural sound from Arabic oh how would you say it s s but since most westerners couldn't pronounce that you just do a double A oh that's that's got to be annoying that's that's weird like we gentrify everything we smos everything down and uh you are um you're an expert in evolutionary psychology and in this is what Rick it's really fascinating evolutionary psychology and its effect on consumerism right so I basically apply uh evolutionary psychology to understand our consumatory nature what are the biological forces that compel us to be the consumers that we are but I defined consumption very broadly it's not just consuming Coca-Cola but we consume friendships we consume religion we consume is so it's a consumption with a Capital C that's fascinating to me because uh you know we have these uh General definitions that we use in in in culture uh and one of them is consumerism consumerism almost always pertains to buying things right but what you're looking at it in is is I I like that better I like because it is kind of what we do we do consume relationships don't we exactly I mean we consume cultural products right so uh you know why is it that certain songs are so appealing to to us I mean what what what is it about song lyrics that are uh that you know trigger an emotional pull in us
why are movies appealing well you study these cultural products because they say something really about the evolution of the human mind uh that's do you study songs that are annoying as well because I've always wondered why some songs are like super appealing to some but then just infuriating to other people yeah so that probably be more a musicologist who would study the the musical structure of songs to know what makes them appealing or not I'm specifically looking at the lyrics so for example if you look at hip-hop videos uh they're a wonderful darwinian laboratory because all the political correctness is cut out and basically your real darwinian being shines through right so men are going to uh signal hey I've got the Maserati I've got the Porsche get with me uh women are going to Signal you know Beauty markers it's only women for example who denigrate men if they have low social status right it's never going to be a guy saying hey Linda you you don't work hard enough so uh you're not ambitious enough I'm not going to have sex with you but the other way around you you see a million songs like that right yeah yeah all you know like uh she's not a gold digger but you know exactly that kind of song yeah that's that's very interesting um a musicologist is that a real person that's a real person yes that's and a musicologist would study lyrics and not well they would probably study the the structure of the musical notes right so what for example what is it that's what types of notes are innately appealing to people uh so that that's certainly not what I do I'm I'm looking only at song lyrics as one of many types of cultural products the lyrics would be the thing that would be annoying to most though I mean that would be the thing that would really chime out as being annoying like some like inan [ __ ] songs Taylor Taylor Swift well you said it not me how dare you how dare you that poor has she not suffered enough oh I I know one thing if you date terl Swift you're a [ __ ] idiot because that chick will write songs about you for the end of time she's got whole books about John Mayor is that his name mayor Mayer I always say it wrong John May that chick's got books on that guy that's that's unfair imagine that um so your your thing would be more along
along the lines of studying like why people are appe why they find it appealing like the rap type songs why they find it appealing like a Taylor or the contents of those songs so so for example if you take a a ancient Greek poem right we still study it at University today 3,000 years later precisely because that poem is going to speak to certain realities sibling rivalry status competition parental conflicts with their with their offspring uh uh a paternal uncertainty all of these factors is what makes literature interesting so we could study those ancient Greek poems today and still it resonates with us precisely because they are speaking about some Universal truths that is amazing isn't it that stuff from 23,000 plus years ago is still studied on a daily basis but some books from like 50 years ago God yeah that's got to be frustrating as hell if you're a writer if you're an author and you're just like what that that guy is so overrated I'm so tired of healing hearing about you know Aristotle like Aristotle go [ __ ] yourself bro that [ __ ] was so long ago you didn't know anything well they knew a lot they they did know a lot they certainly knew the the mysteries of human nature I'm fascinated by that I am absolutely fascinated by what was going on thousands and thousands of years ago and like what was the mindset and communication with those people and you can kind of pull a little bit of it out of their writing but man if I could go back in time to some a cult I mean it would have to be a culture obviously that speaks English where I could understand what they're saying but I I think that would be incredibly fascinating to go back three or four 4,000 years ago and communicate with people just try to figure out how they see the world absolutely you know a lot of people are very stuck on identifying cultural differences right so the French eat this type of food the Malaysians do this type of dance and but what they miss is that underneath all of these important cross-cultural differences is this Bedrock of human universals that make us a lot more similar than different from one another and especially in the social sciences where people are really focused on just identifying differences differences
differences but of course there are also things that are so common so that for example Beauty markers there are certain Beauty markers that if I went to the yomo tribe in the Amazon they're going to find exactly the same things attractive in the in the beautiful girls in rap videos as you and I would and that's because those Beauty markers are evolutionary markers and so yes culture matters nobody denies the fact that culture is important but underneath these cultural differences is a biological biological Heritage that makes you and I very similar to one another what what changes over time that makes beauty markers differently like I've always been fascinated by like if you look at the Renaissance paintings the women were very you would you can't even call them voluptuous they're they're overweight rubenesque yeah rubenesque like they eat a lot of reubin what is rubenesque mean well it's Ruben was a painter who was particularly had a pension for drawing these voluptuous women he was a fatty Chaser he was he was a bit of a fatty Chaser Ruben this I must say this is the first time that I've held an interview where fatty Chaser has come up so thank you well you need to be involved in more podcasting because fatty Chasers it's important you know people will say now that you're fat shaming that's the the newest thing right do you follow these uh Ultra super sensitive terms and their evolution oh you said we've got up to three hours I I could talk about this for about 30 hours I actually went recently to uh and we come back we can come back to to the Ruben we'll come back to that I I recently gave a talk at uh Welsley College uh all women's college allw women's college data check went there is that right tough times rough tough times back in the day was it Taylor Swift no it was a gal who did not shave her legs oh because it was patriarchal to beautify yourself there you go yeah she could pull it off cuz she was blonde but whoa her roommate was a hobbit essentially sh had hairy feet the whole thing but hey you know whatever it's just cultural norms that's it so anyway so I give a talk there under there thing called the freedom project which tries to promote sort of uh iconic classic ideas that kind of break the shackles of political correctness and uh it was just
amazing the kind of stuff that uh that was happening there I mean I'll just give you one or two examples um apparently it was a form of uh oppression to assume for a professor to assume that when he meets students he right away categorizes them as as either being male or female so for example if I see you in my class and I say Hey sir uh you know blah blah blah well that would be a form of depression because I'm assuming based on your outer markers that you are male rather what I should do is sort of do a quick uh uh polling of each person in terms of how they'd like to be addressed so you may be biologically male but you are uh gender whatever transgender you queer you could be queer you could be this as you know Facebook has 50 markers that there's 50 5 Z I could only count I could count about 10 right wow 50 50 and for folks who don't know queer is not a slur um when I'm saying queer I'm like hey you queer I'm not saying it like that queer is they they do not want to be interpreted as male or female they want to be just whatever they are right and so now you have at universities a discussion as to whether you should have not male and female uh bathrooms but you should have gender neutral bathrooms uh and so on and so forth and so so and the world that I reside in it's it's it's there why is it getting so squirly what's going on are we too soft do we have to hunt for our own food do we have to like deal with the winter more do we have to like you know chop wood to keep warm what what is making us concentrate on these frivolous matters of like it's not just a politically correct thing it's like it's coddling the most ridiculously oversensitive Notions that human beings have ever constructed I think we've been parasitized by an astonishing form of political correct I mean what is parasitized like a parasite that ENT you right so in the same way that I like that word that viruses can enter your your your body uh viruses of the mind can also take over your your I mean religion is an example of a mlex a form of I mean some people would be upset by what I'm saying but a form of parasite that kind of rewires your thinking yes and so political correctness is a an an astonishing form of you know parasitic thinking where everything is through the lens of I
should not offend anyone and so common sense and just reason goes out the window in the pursuit of non- offense you know what though I have an issue with it that most people who practice this in the extreme form they say that they should not offend but you know who they offend they offend anyone who does not agree with their notion that you should not offend they will be violent and angry and [ __ ] incredibly insulting to people who do not agree with their their their terms of what is offensive what's not offensive I been the some of the ma meanest nastiest things have been said to me by people who claim to be uh in this sort of ultra sensitive super open-minded category which is quite fascinating to me that you're exactly right I'll give you a fantastic quote I might be paraphrasing it's like that I think it's Thomas Soul a u an economist who basically was criticizing so-called diversity so right so American universities or in Western universities everybody talks about diversity but the only form of diversity that's not allowed is intellectual and political diversity right so so you we want diversity in terms of skin color we want diversity in terms of sexual orientation we want diversity in terms of genders right so all forms of diversity are welcome but don't you dare step out of line with the accepted politically correct positions now that's diversity that we don't want yeah that what is that what I mean how do they not see that St police yeah you know and I I face it in I mean eventually I guess we'll come back to my work I face it very much in my work because I I I rile up all sorts of different people out of the wood the woodwork so for example radical feminists hate my work because how dare you say that we are biological beings how dare you say that there are innate sex differences uh postmodernists will hate my work because truth is all relative there's no such thing as scientific truth it's all relative uh the religious folks will hate my work because if darwinian theory is correct it is is uh then where is God in all this so there's this long cue of people who will come out of the Woodworks to criticize you not for any valid scientific reasons but because they it it shakes their ideological beliefs is it it's fascinating to me the parallels
between religious Nutters and politically correct Nutters because it's very similar in a lot of ways that their IDE ideology is just so cemented in in their Consciousness it's it's it's immobile it's rock solid it's not going anywhere if you disagree you patriarchal piece of [ __ ] you you know male [ __ ] suppressor you horrible thing it's it's quite fascinating if if if there aren't not if there are not differences any differences in the Sexes what do they use these radical feminists what do they use to define the reason why humans have such varying Behavior between the male and female genders so you ready for this yes everything short of genitalia is a social construction right so even for example the fact that Bubba grew up to be a uh block center for the University of Oklahoma and hence he could Bunch prints 500 lb uh that's not due to for example any physiological reasons that he is so strong it's because what happened is his parents uh aggressively nurtured Rough Tumble play whereas for girls they told them listen Linda you should not be playing so rough and that then either gives the green light or the red light to express your physicality that's insane it is that's is absolutely insane that that idea is insane that there's not an a difference in the physiological properties of the bodies of men and women I mean the biological differences are scientific well there are there there are some feminist and again I'm paraphrasing their quote they'll say there is no such thing as a male or female brain as there is no such thing as a male or female pancreas or liver right so so the organ that defines your personhood is actually gender neutral now that is astonishing because we are a sexually reproducing species so one of the foundational tenants on which biological understanding happens is that we have two types of uh polymorphisms if you like two type we have a male and a female so that we could sexually reproduce so the idea that much of this is socially construction is social construction is is just laughable I think it comes though I mean just to be fair to them I think it originally comes from a desire to fight sex institutionalized sexism but what happens is that they mix equality under the law as being indistinguishable beings right we we could be different
beings yet we should be equal under the law but they argue that if you admit to the fact that we are different then that makes it easier for the status quo sexist patriarchy to maintain its privileged position and so they create this edifice of the past 50 to 100 Years of social science research that is completely laughable but that they hang on to like religious belief it it's so fascinating there was a woman that has a video online on YouTube where she claims that there is no difference in the physical strength of men and women and it's just that men have been encouraged to engage in weightlifting and all these different things and if women did the same thing they'd be just as strong that is insane it's so insane men have 10 times more testosterone than women is that a social construction I mean well it's it's also insane because women who are athletes women who are like Elite worldclass athletes if they compare their hand strength to men who don't even exercise men are stronger right just hand just the ability to grab things and grip things right there was an issue where there was a woman who is a uh transgender she became a transgender woman and she used to be a man she was a man for 30 years and then she didn't tell anybody she started fighting women in women's MMA and I was Furious I I went crazy about it and I got so much hate from people that were calling me transphobic he your transphobic and I'm like that's amazing like you don't understand there's a difference in the male frame there's a difference in the shape of the hips the the the mechanics of the like everything the whole body's built different and not only that the fact that it takes 30 years like your 30 years of being a man with full testosterone and then it takes like 10 years before your bone density even starts decreasing but they wanted to make it so it's completely indistinguishable and they also have support from transgender surgeons which is quite fascinating and completely biased these transgender surgeons who want to or reassignment doctors and they want to pretend that they're exact equals physiologically I got a great story on that uh so in my first book I talk about John money who was a very famous uh psychologist at Johns Hopkins really
around maybe the 50s to 70s he was a big gender theorist who basically argued that everything is due to socialization so that when surgeons would go see him because they had to do gender reassignment either for example let's say at a circumcision you in the rare case where you botch the circumcision and now you have a problem in terms of having a functioning penis or if you have for example condition micro penis where you're unlikely to be a functioning male when you grow up well he would say don't worry about it just have the surgery put a dress on the kid and raise them as a girl and there'd be absolutely no problem and of course the reality is that that's not how biological sex is determined and the most famous case is David Rymer who was one of his patients who after having gone through the treatment committed suicide yeah I remember that case that was uh that a fascinating story the um the reality of of what you said one of the more fascinating aspects of it is the the difference between us all being equal as human beings and being the same cuz we are not we are not equal but we are very different but we all should be equal as far as our rights right you know as far as like how we're treated by each other and the law and what a person can get away with you know what what keeps our society civil and kind yeah those that we should all have equality including children and old people and everyone everyone should have equality in that in that aspect that's what what makes a civilized caring Society but the idea that there's no differences as far as the other I mean that we are equal as far as like physical strength are as equal as far as like our wants and desires and needs that's that's denying hundreds of years of literature of the struggle the struggle in all cultures between the male trying to understand the female the female trying to understand the male we're completely alien to each other we exist amongst each other and we gather information over a long period of time but then we say ridiculous things like here's one of the things that people love to say happy wife happy life right why is that because make her happy and she'll stop screaming you don't understand her just make her happy do whatever she wants and then she'll calm down and you'll be good
but believe me you can't just be yourself you can't just be what you want to be and do what you want to do because that's going to drive her [ __ ] crazy because you want to have sex with 100 women you want to drive 50,000 miles an hour you want to disappear for weeks at a time you've been taught by the patriarchy you've been you've been uh I've been brainwashed you've been brainwashed by the by the way speaking of sexual variety which is kind of a central issue in evolutionary psychology uh you should see some of the hate mail I get when I State something as banale as you know men would have evolved a greater pension for sexual variety for terribly trivial reasons to explain right I mean women have a thing called greater parental investment right women on average have from from their men when the menes start to when they have menopause 400 eggs right 400 eggs so it's a scarce rare resource men in one ejaculation have 250 spermatozoa so our gametes are very cheap and abundant and then of course you add the cost of gestation right the uh the likelihood of having mortality when you're giving birth so for all these reasons women have much greater minimal parental obligations therefore evolutionary theory would predict that they would be much more judicious when they're making a mate choice because if they make a poor mate Choice it looms much larger for them that on the other hand for men the costs of making a poor mate Choice are not as great but the benefits of having multiple mating opportunities are quite beneficial and therefore that's why on average you expect men to have a much greater pensent for sexual variety now that's been documented in 17 trillion different ways and yet you still have people that will send you hate mail saying my God are you a sexist pig how could you promate this garbage well you I think when you're looking at human beings and you're talking about these these variables you're looking at it as objectively and scientifically as possible when people want that concrete rete world that we've discussed this political correct concrete World politically correct they have this this resistance to looking at it in any way other than the way that they have it's completely non-scientific and that's why it's religious right ex absolutely and
and that's actually one of the criticisms that you often get about Evolution psychology people think that you are trying to justify behaviors for example if you explain why people are likely to cheat and their on their monogamous unions then they say oh well you're offering father to you know why people should do it and of course my rebuttal is I'm I'm certainly doing no such thing similar to how an oncologist studies cancer he's not justifying cancer he's not for cancer he's right he he just explains he or she explains cancer and so I don't have a moral position right I I don't come to the table when I'm doing my scientific research hoping for one thing or another the data speaks for itself but again the ideologues will say no but if this Forbidden Knowledge gets out it makes it easier for people to justify this Behavior or that behavior it's it's absolutely fascinating to me how human beings react and act and so this subject is is quite near and dear to my heart I I love it I I I just I'm I'm fascinated by the chaos of it all I I love watching people flail and scream and get angry about whether it's religious anger like people who are like legitimately Christian like I love the the God hates [ __ ] people the Westborough Baptist I don't love them I love everybody in one way I would like everybody to be nice but I love the fact that they exist because I'm absolutely fascinated by their Folly I'm absolutely fascinated by this this idea that they have in their head that's so concrete that they believe that soldiers are dying because men are being allowed to marry other men I mean it's it's unbelievably weird but compelling to me and in in in an equal way the idea that you saying that there is some sort of an invested commitment that a woman has that a man does not have objectively just looking at us as a biological reproducing species that you would experience hate because of that as a scientist as a person just analyzing data I'm amazed and I'm fascinated I'm just drawn into it I can't help myself you want to talk about some religious stuff sure uh well uh you know I I was born in Lebanon uh we're Lebanese Jews uh although I'm I'm a non-believing Jewish guy how dare you I know I know you believe in some things tell you what I believe in science and truth and
reason uh and so we escaped Lebanon actually during the Civil War um my parents in 1980 were kidnapped by fat the very peaceful because you know it's all peaceful uh and uh and then after that we we've never gone back to Lebanon and so I from a very young age uh I think I already had sort of the innate pension to question religious belief which certainly created friction within my family because you should just believe and shut up right uh but then when I saw the the the hatred that that religion engenders firsthand right I mean facing execution as we're trying to escape Lebanon and then coming to the West uh I think I became that much more forceful in my convictions to to to to try to combat religious dogma and of course some of the biggest hate mail that you get is when you do that and I've even had real professional uh situations where I've I've lost professionally because of my position actually here in California I've had several schools who otherwise were very very interested in making me very very lucrative offers who after maybe doing a bit of due diligence on me and seeing that I'd written stuff that was critical of religion suddenly I became persona non grata really oh yeah really that's fascinating I wouldn't think that that would be the case as far as there there are even schools in Southern California that won't and they do this legally because they are a religiously founded institution uh if you're not a seventh Seventh Day Adventist we can't Grant you tenure if there's another school that had a god Squad whereby you go up in front of the god Squad I mean that's literally their term where uh you have to sort of show that you're uh uh accepting Jesus in your heart and I remember when I a school that's a school a very very prominent school please the say the name I better not can you rhyme it say what it rhymes with Mar Mount no it's not but it's within that general area uh there's another school 3 years ago who was going to make me a huge huge offer in Orange County that didn't work out now to to the person who wanted me to appear in front of the god Squad this was several years ago when I was at UC Irvine I told him you do realize that I am a atheist Lebanese Jew evolutionist so it's going to be it's going to be a while before I
accept Jesus in my heart and it his answer was well no no but don't worry we'll we'll coach you as to as to what to say oh good which I answer so that's a euphemism for lying right how's that fit with the whole so you know this is right here in 21st century Southern California and Academia you know you better hold certain religious beliefs otherwise we'll punish you Jew boy that's amazing and that's some colleges and then or some universities and then other universities the complete opposite if you're not an atheist I'm sure that you take a lot of SL true true well at at other universities or in Academia in general it is quite uh Progressive to criticize certainly Christianity right because you're seen as a progressive guy who doesn't buy into all this Branch a superans but there is one religion that you Islam islamophobia I isn't that fascinating I love that there's the same ultr progressives that you know would give you a million different ways to address someone based on whatever gender they identify with or you know whatever the [ __ ] else weird Ultra super sensitive thing I I find that completely fascinating this islamophobia thing you find I there's several websites that I frequent just to freak myself out and uh the the super sensitive ones on a regular basis will go over this islamophobia well because it's it's it's a it's it's actually a very astute way to to have intellectual Warfare you're actually saying that people who are concerned about particular aspects of this ideology are crazy right they suffer from a phobia so you are denigrating them at their core you must be nuts to actually fear this right and actually the term started as you may or may not know it started with the Muslim Brotherhood uh in a very smart strategy where they knew that the West is very open to being tolerant and so on and so they kind of Biggy backed on that and so in Academia you just never criticize that one now that's very dangerous because in a in a sane world all beliefs should be open to criticism right absolutely and not only that how about the one that is responsible for most of the suicide bombings oh that is so islamophobic I am islamophobic said
it I'm islamophobic I'm jeop phobic I'm Catholic phobic I'm uh I got very L I had a very tumultuous childhood and when I was um in first grade my parents put me in Catholic school and up until then I was obviously I don't remember much of this because I was but I was very religious and it was because my parents were divorcing and there was a lot of violence in the household and I I had this idea in my head that like somehow or another God was the right way and everybody else was wrong going to Catholic School cured me of that entirely the the none that I had Sister Mary Josephine I don't remember much about being 6 years old but I remember that [ __ ] uh she she was very important to me she she really straightened me out because I realized that she has no connection whatsoever to anything holy or Majestic she represented and she she showed all of the horrors of humanity meanness evilness being nasty to Children fear mongering and this this this idea guilt everything all the above it was just it was nothing nothing wholly about it it was pretty obvious pretty quickly that it was all [ __ ] so I was cured from one year of Catholic school I told my parents I was going to run away from home if they tried to put me in second grade wow yeah I was like I'm done like you don't understand what it's like like I went from you know being around my mother who's this great person sweet my grandparents are great to all of a sudden you know I didn't go to kindergarten I just went to first grade it was my first year in school to being around these monsters and this monster school that was just filled with Darkness it was like the whole school was just dark that all the priests they I remember their faces they all had these Gin Blossoms all over their faces from drinking you know and the the nuns were all overweight and bitter and angry and their [ __ ] skin was having a bad relationship with their face was like hanging off of them everything about them was just monstrous the evilness I'm I'm I'm keeping a counter of the amount of hate mail that's going to come to Let It Come [ __ ] let it come I'll send it right back to you I don't get it I don't get it you know I I'm fascinated by it but I understand that people need the the they have this desire to believe in
things I I understand that but I don't understand how you can be a rational intelligent objective person who looks at some [ __ ] that people wrote thousands of years ago and say no this is this is immobile this is exact it's you cannot alter it this is what it is and this is this is written in stone this is there's no way around this this is God's word anybody questions it as a fool so I do in in in one of my latest books I have a chapter which I think got me in trouble with one of the Southern California schools that I was getting an offer from because I had given them a signed copy of the book and then they probably got to that chapter it's called that chapter is called marketing Hope by selling lies and so what I do in that chapter is I go through different hope pedlers of which religion is the greatest but others would be medical quackery self-help gurus and so on so so different agents that pedal hope and I argue again from an evolutionary perspective because they they're very successful because they cater to these very basil darwinian insecurities none greater than the very obvious one of existential angst right we're the only animal that we're aware of that actually is aware that we are on a death sentence right I mean I know that I've got another luckily maybe 40 years right well if I have high cerol I go to my physician he gives me lipor boom LDL goes down everybody's happy but how what pill do I take to solve this really looming problem that's at the end of the road called my death well different religions will give you different dances but they all certainly promise you some form of Eternity it could be in the form of reincarnation it could be I'll be with Jesus it could be you know with the virgins but there are all sorts of ways by which I could secure my eternity and I think for most people it's very difficult to not drink that Kool-Aid I think it takes almost a pathological and dysfunctional honesty to say I'm not going to buy that I realize that I've got 80 years and I'm going to really do the best that I can during those 80 years I think it's a lot more comforting to say no this party is going to go on forever it's certainly more comforting it's also there's something about human beings where we realize somewhere along the line that it's there's no one alive that has any
more answers about what lies beyond the great beyond you know what after death what what lies beyond the yawning gravee no one has any answers you can I give you what the answer is nothing nothing you would hope so or you would think that you have that answer but have you ever done psychedelic drugs I haven't there you go so don't don't answer so quickly but I tell you there are two ways of of seeking to reach immortality uh one of course is it might seem a bit crash but through just the genetic propag your children are in a sense your form of immortality but I don't buy that it's not Immortal because the Earth doesn't last I mean unless someone figures out how to get off the planet we only have what a 1.9 billion years of sunlight yeah okay I mean we don't have enough time for anything there's no way there's no immortality unless there's some sort of a fractal nature to the universe where it's like life and death is this completely ongoing cycle where the deeper you go it starts again and yeah I don't know about that I don't know about that either but it is possible yeah the universe itself is so bizarre and unexpected the more you look into the univer like remember when I was a kid I used to think space I used to think of space like a neighborhood I really did I I I I remember very succinctly that uh I would like look at like Buck Rogers and all these different Spa I'm like oh they're going to go over to this town and they're going to come back and this is our neighborhood they're going to go to that neighborhood and come back and then as I got older and I started studying astronomy and I started studying the and as I got older also the the knowledge that they had about the amount of stars changed and they started talking about how there's more stars in our galaxy than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all you know all the beaches on Earth and then and then I remember just thinking like what this is a [ __ ] of a neighborhood like this this is starting to get really strange and then as we get older still you realize that they they're 's no way they know how big it all is they have a general sense of 14 plus billion light years but then there's the the fractal nature of black holes the possibility that inside every Galaxy is a black hole
that contains an entirely new universe and this is something that's being thrown about by not by Freaks but by like real serious legitimate scientists so that alone is so bizarre the idea that you live and die seems like very trivial that you come back again or reincarnation I mean why not if if a supernova can exist you know why is it so crazy that a person lives for eternity and just continues to reincarnate well and in light of all that vastness that you said isn't it incredible that all the monotheistic abrahamic religions would argue that on some small Speck of sand in some Bronze Age Point God spoke to some prophet and told him you really better not eat pig yeah that so you know so in this great un Universe Co you know this Cosmo it's important that you don't wear Le shes at yum whatever the r it's just Asing to me that people actually buy this stuff well I think that the reason for the Pig stuff and there's there's there's I've I've talked about this recently with my friend Ari who uh was raised uh very religious in Judaism and then as he got older just decided to abandon it all now he's a dirty comedian hilarious but um we were talking about that the pork thing was probably due to diseases I talk about that in my book Tris yeah so I I I don't I don't do the analysis for uh pork I do it for shellfish and so if you look at shelf red tide and things on those so you you can't tell which one is infected you can't look at the water and and and predict which one would likely have the the the the bacterium and so all you know is that once in a while somebody would eat it and drop dead since you don't have any ability during the Bronze Age to refrigerate and so on well you don't have any access to germ Theory certainly they didn't know anything about that well then it must be some malediction and so you're exactly right that there are very very clear obvious biological explanations for most of these food tabos yeah it's just ridiculous that in 2014 people people don't realize the origins of these like yes it was a great idea 2,000 years ago before we understood thermometers that you you have to cook your meat to 150 de it kills the bacteria and then it's perfectly totally healthy but if you try to eat pork the same way you will try to
eat venison you're going to get really sick and that's why religions like hey look if we want to keep our people alive we got to tell them not to eat this particular animal this is an animal that eats a lot of stupid [ __ ] exactly yeah it's so religion has been the biggest uh blowback of your work or has actually probably the ones that are that were the the the most aeric and criticisms have been other social scientists uh even more yeah because the social sciences have very much developed over the past hundred years with a complete rejection of biology how is that a science then if they called social sciences you reject biology which is measurable and social science is sort of well what they argue is that what makes us human is that we transcend our biology so don't use the evolutionary mechanisms that explain the behavior of the zebra and the dog and the mosquito to explain our behaviors what makes us human is precisely that we're able to transcend these biological imperatives and so uh the field of anthropology not bioanthropology which is a subset of anthropology that recognizes biology but for example cultural anthropology is all about going to all of these exotic cultures and demonstrating how each culture is unique and different and hence there are no such thing as human universals uh social psychology is pretty much operated without any understanding of biology so what I did in my work is I came along and I founded this field which I coined evolutionary consumption where I apply evolutionary theory and biology to study consumer Behavior but more generally my my real goal is to what I call maybe it's a grand goal to darwinizing psychology or Personnel psychology or organizational behavior or consumer Behavior without recognizing that all of these players are biological beings right the decision that you make if your blood sugar is low and you're hungry is very different than the decision you make if you're satiated right I mean that's a trivial example but a very obvious one so the idea that economists have spent you know a 100 years developing all these fanciful mathematical models without ever recognizing that they are these biological forces that compel us to be the decision makers that we are is astounding to me so the greatest
blowback has been from social scientists who typically have been very reticent to accept what this biology boy is saying about consumer behavior and so on fascinating now the good news can I can I go on yes please uh I always use a quote by there's a guy called uh JBS haldane who was a very famous evolutionary geneticist who who was very quotable very had all these great quips so he said that there are four stages that uh scientists go through before they accept the theory and I'll slightly paraphrasing so stage one this is [ __ ] this is garbage stage two well this might might be true but it's rather perverse stage three well this this is true but largely unimportant and stage four oh I always said so now the reason why that quote captures I mean if I ever did an autobiography of my scientific career I that quote is basically my book because I've seen people go through these four stages in their responses to my work at first I couldn't get an invitation to go to to get 20 minutes at a at a conference to speak because what what does biology have to do with anything and now of course science is an autoc corrective process the evidence is coming in my way and I don't mean to to to gloat about it but Glo away GL away but now they're all coming Fast and Furious man you're the man and I said but wait a minute I remember 10 years ago I've still kept your email where you said I was a bullshitter no no that wasn't me that must have been my research assistant who hacked my email and wrote that to you howan is a great guy to quote he had a a fantastic quote that I love not only is the universe queer than we suppose it's queerer than we can suppose exactly you know what you're my you're my new coolest guy to to actually know who howan is so you're the man well it's a special quote that's just an amazing quote there's another one on the Beatles I I don't know the exact you know this one no I think there are something like I I hope I'm not getting it wrong but maybe 300,000 species of beetles and so in his quote he basically says you know if if God exists he must have a particular pension for Beatles for having spent so much effort and coming up with all of these different species variations yeah no kidding right what
what is it frustrating being a man who is an intellectual who is trying to go over the variables and try to figure it all out and piece it together is it frustrating to you to see these obvious biases and this this obvious muddy thinking that enters into this this sort of debate it it is two levels on sort of the intrinsic level I I'm I'm a dogged pursuer of the truth and so I almost get offended by these positions and so in that sense it's frustrating but there's also an extrinsic a real sort of tangible way that it's frustrating A lot of these Gatekeepers are the ones who decide whether I get a position in Southern California or not and so if I play Within the Paradigm if I do the research that is expected of me that doesn't sort of bust any existing theories then I'm good but if I'm this guy from the outside who's trying to biologized the field well who who does this guy think he is so in that sense I think it's also frustrating because I mean my wife always tells me well don't worry I mean if you can keep this like Clos sorry it makes a big difference you can move it around oh sure sorry sorry I don't mean to interrupt no no worries so your wife tells you yeah so my wife tells me you know I mean don't worry uh you know you you'll get all your Vindication I said well I don't want to get Vindicated when I'm dead postmortem I want it I I I want the rewards now and not not in a narcissistic way but because there are also perks to people finding out that hopefully you are correct now the reality is that more and more people are coming around and so if I look at the level of hostility that I faced 10 years ago versus today it's it's night and day what was the first major backlash that you experienced what uh from social scientists yes uh not being a I mean having my papers desk rejected by editors so desk are you familiar with that term yes but explain for so so that means basically when when you send your paper to a scientific journal usually the editor will look at your paper and say okay well uh here are three reviewers that I think would be appropriate for this paper and then he sends it off and then the process starts and it goes back and forth for probably several several years when he desk rejects it he's basically saying that this paper is not worthy of even going
out for review and so you know I would send all of these papers to these top journals and the the editor would write back to me sorry I'm not even sending it through the review process what do you remember what one of the original ones was was a subject of uh well the probably the first one was one where I was introducing the theoretical framework of how to apply evolutionary psychology in understanding marketing and usually the the the argument that I would receive is which which is breathtakingly innan in its stupidity is uh well evolutionary theory is just a bunch of just so storytelling right you just come up with these fanciful post Haw stories since obviously you're not conducting an experiment and a lab to demonstrate Evolution and of course that that is so laughable because if that were true how is it that astrophysicists study the origin of the universe that's 14 billion years ago right they certainly don't conduct an experiment in the lab uh and to build their own stars to build their own Stars right so but but again if if you're very paradigmatic rally Bound to You Know manipulating something in the lab then somehow evolutionary theory seems epistemologically in terms of the philosophy of science it seems as though it's you're just waving your hand and telling stories post Haw stories now the reality is that that's exactly the opposite of what we do if anything there is no intellectual idea that has received as much empirical support as Evolution I mean it is as clear as gravity yet people it somehow can't get around to understanding how you could explain something that happened hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago and so the original rejections were always oh but come on we don't take thing on at Faith here we need we need concrete evidence so that's how it all started so that was the first blowback did you when did you hesitate when you first experienced this did you go man I'm going down a dark Road right no because I and and that's a great question because I I think I was fortunate enough to to have the personality for this endeavor in other words it's not just that you had to have the the brains to do what I was doing if if I would suck my thumb go into a fetal position and start crying every time
somebody rejected me uh rejected my work then I it would but because I was a fighter because I was a high testosterone guy then that only compelled me to come back and say I'm going to prove these guys wrong but it it delayed the process because I was kept out of many of the leading you know consumer behavior and marketing journals so I kind of went around them I I published books that became bestsellers I published in in medicine and economics and psychology and only recently have I tried to come back to the to the folks that I'm most trying to convince and those are the consumer psychologists now luckily I'm I'm their friend but for years I was really sort of at the at the periphery it's fascinating as well that the the attitudes about these subjects have evolved and changed within science and within modern Academia it's it's it's it really interesting to see this sort sort of evolution of these ideas and this acceptance of ideas that didn't exist before but along with the new craziness the new fat acceptance and you know all this other nonsense this new politically correct terms and this parasitic thinking that you so described so well right um this is the new threat to to unbiased objective thinking absolutely this desire to offend no one ever absolutely and and you know the reality is that now there's a thing called have you heard of trigger warnings M love it I love them my whole life is a trigger warning that's what that's exactly what I said I'm going to put in my course outline warning life is a trigger warning that's it so I mean imagine that it as a matter of fact I I in my Welsley talk that I mentioned earlier I put up a list of suggested suggested topics that these trigger warning folks were saying require trigger warnings I mean it was literally everything the discussion of pregnancy of sex of disease of War of criminality of mating all of these things could potentially uh cause some distress to somebody and should therefore come with a trigger warning now for somebody who escaped Lebanon under immediate threat of execution I look at that and I say we're we're uh this is a decadent society and that if that's the things that worry people they should really go spend a day in the in the in the
neighborhoods where I grew up and then maybe they'd have a different perspective as to what they should be picketing against I agree entirely and my term is I mean my not my term my thought is that people are just so used to this soft life of everything being really easy to achieve that they have never developed this understanding of first of all how fortunate we are to be living this in this time and age to experience this easy life that we live in but that we're really lucky we're really lucky and to to focus on a bunch of nonsense and to get carried away thinking about all these Ultra super sensitive Notions and to to to to dwell on them as if in some way you're going to make the world a better place by doing that like it's nonsense it's imposturous because it's they're posers right it's a way to demonstrate that I care but in doing it with very little cost to me it takes a lot more guts to stand up against Islam than to stand up against some hick Evolution denying Senator who's Republican so for example if I look at my Facebook friends if I put up a a post uh that is critical of the senator who is a redneck Republican I'll get from my academic colleagues 880 likes and it's some inan silly thing but if I put some horrifying reality about 200,000 syrians being butchered they are so loud and silence right because that's scary right and so the for example the Western feminists are very very quick to chastise David Letterman if he makes a sexist joke or whatever it was to his intern that shows great courage but to speak speak against genital mutilation in the Islamic world or other parts of the world or or all kinds of other injustices that women face well sh we should be quiet about that I mean look at the ion hery alley issue I don't know are you familiar with that issue no do do you know who ion hery alley is Ion hery alley is a a woman who was born into Islam who escaped uh an arranged marriage moved to to Netherlands uh became a Dutch parliamentarian and then was part of a documentary that was offensive to to uh some Muslims and then she had to have then protection for the rest of her life now has moved to the United States and has spent pretty much her entire career fighting for the rights of women not just Muslim women women in general but of course many
Muslim women in in those areas are are mistreated so brandise University decides to bestow her this is very recently a couple of months ago bestow bestow her a I think a maybe honorary doctorate or speech convocation to speak at the convocation and then all of the profess professors rallied against this woman who is speaking on behalf of half the population called women right and they said this is a hate Monger an islamophobe blah blah blah and so they rescinded her invitation oh God and there you go so you know I mean we've pretty much lost as a society if we can't identify who the heroes are and who is on the right side of each issue right not not just just that but the educators are the ones that are having this issue the educators are the ones that are having a hard time recognizing who's on the right side of things um that I think there's one very important thing that you uh you brought up and that's the the social aspect the the social gratification the the social reward aspect of supporting things that we all agree upon like that these hick senators are bad that you know and then the the scariness of you know Islam the uh the scariness of uh you know criticizing the the Muslim world and then this this concept of islamophobia that's sort of like gotten into people's minds but that thing that people do where they they seek out what I call socially Progressive brownie points exactly like men who declare themselves openly feminists like male feminists like look I'm a humanist I I I believe that we are all just brothers and sisters on this planet all of us including people in other cultures and countries and I I'm not a nationalist that I think it's all nonsense I really do I mean I would love it if we could all understand each other I think it would make a lot more sense if we SP spoke one language so I could understand people in China but I don't feel about them any differently than I feel about a guy who lives down the street I I try very hard to work on that so when I get this this thing where people start identifying with one gender and one gender specifically and there's another thing that men are doing where they're not only proclaiming themselves as a male
feminist but they're also saying that if they are unjustly accused of something that you know they would happily be unjustly accused of something if it could somehow or another prevent women from being persecuted what Martyrs isn't that amazing they're so cool and strong like that well I think it's I don't know if you do you know the term identity politics does that I've heard the term so so basically you you you have sort of this bulcan isation of different identity groups and there is what's called a poker identity game you know which which identity group has larger victimology and greater Grievances and the the the top group that you really can't touch are are people of the mlim faith what about Islamic transgender male feminists that's that's that's the royal flush you're holding the Royal flesh right there you're a [ __ ] yeah you can't be beat man you got five Jokers at my University at my University right now in Montreal at one point I sat precisely because people had a sense of some of the positions I held they asked me to come in and sit on a religious accommodation committee we're a secular University and a secular society officially as the official law so what does it mean to say that we're going to now enact a religious accommodation policy I mean that's like saying I am a virgin but I'm pregnant I mean they they it's really the term can't make sense how right so my position was I am equally nonplant to anybody's religious beliefs if Jews come to my class and say we want to do yum kipur blah blah blah well I'm Jewish and I'm still going to come to the lecture but now if Muslims come and say we want to take Haj for 3 weeks at Mecca so we won't be showing up to your class for 3 weeks well I'm equally unreceptive to that idea well it seemed like most people were pretty happy with my general position as long as it didn't apply to this one particular group now that that's suicidal right that can't be because that's already institutionalizing the fact that people are not all equal right some people deserve more uh accommodations than others that's dangerous right that's so in the US freedom of religion also includes as you know I mean it's a cliche freedom from religion be
religious just don't put it in my face but I think in our desperate desire to constantly accommodate people with going down the wrong path not but not just constantly accommodate people but accommodate people that are perceived to have been persecuted only not accommodate people that have a contrary point of view not debate them or look at them all objectively and consider all the various possibilities have we been incorrect in our thinking is this a possib like the woman that you were talking about that from brandise I mean that's that's unbelievably shocking for someone who have gone through something so horrifying to be escaping running for their life really escaping to America and then to be called an islamophobe that's right and as you said who is spearheading that the professors and by the way brandise University as you may know was founded by a liberal uh well by brandise who was trying to kind of found an institution that would be open to all that would be pluralistic precisely because of some of the anti-Semitism that Jewish students would have faced at some of the sort of Northeastern schools and so the school is founded on these principles and then at first opportunity you violate everything that you stand for is there any movement to try to change this is there any discussion to try to illuminate this sort of real issue with Academia well if if I can be a modest I think you know it's guys like me who are who are really in the wilderness who try to come out of the Woodworks and have the courage and the big testicles to try to do that but I think most people have heard Instinct but even if you say that you have the testicles to do this how dare you you can't do this with ovaries is that what you're saying more patriarchy I I apologize for having said that I have testicles no it's it's an expression it's courage women have balls too I know a lot of chicks with balls you know if you look at it that way but it's unfortunate that a woman has to hear that and go oh well great It's associated with a male gender they well that's true but if a guy is a great guy oh that guy's the tits I mean that is something that people say too like my friend Steve he says every everything is good he calls titties like oh that is a titties movie man like you know I was I
was uh I I used to be a competitive soccer player and uh the kind of trash talking that would happen as as you would know I mean you're you're an athlete uh is is astounding the things I mean that would be said in terms for example of calling you some homophobic slur name right that's a go-to move right or or calling you I mean I remember at one point I played in in a league called the black League where there were only two not two two non-black guys okay I was one of them and so they you know I would if somebody would tackle me say you know stop whining get up white [ __ ] right okay now in today's now usually the way I fought that is I'd say I'm now going to get by this guy next time around and I'm going to score a goal I didn't kind of curl into a fetal position start crying well today they are I mean factiously there are commissar standing around the field making sure that nobody utters any of these slur words because then you could be taken to a hate speech code tribunal right I mean in Canada we have hate speech laws how could that be now of course I'm not suggesting that we should all be insulting one another and of course we should all be kind and gentle to each other but the idea that if you tell me uh white [ __ ] I could actually impose upon you to go to a hate speech tribunal is astounding I mean what's freedom of spe I mean freedom of speech is the right to also be an [ __ ] correct yeah uh and but unfortunately now everything is sanitized everything is you know just well freedom of speech is the right to be an [ __ ] but on in in other terms freedom of speech on the other hand in response to your being an [ __ ] is the right to ostracize you like the right to just get you out of social groups and that's how you recognize [ __ ] exactly but when you sanitize the world and remove half the language and put trigger warnings up for everything that everybody says it's very difficult to get to the heart of what someone's trying to communicate right when we're making mouth noise is trying to express our thoughts and we're Limited in such an amazing Way by so many different forms of expression well here's a he's a great example that's happening all over the west and certainly in Canada and the US try to give a lecture or invite
somebody either that has a pro-israel position or an anti-islam position and see what happens okay go to UC Irvine and see what happens uh the the the the former ambassador of Israel tried to come and give a a a lecture and I mean it wasn't an incendiary thing he wasn't going to you know be saying some horribly controversial things and yet they tried to shut him down Benjamin Netanyahu the current prime minister of Israel was shut down at my University wow at Concordia University in Montreal the prime minister of a democratically elected government our only supposed true Ally in the Middle East was unable to speak because there was great uh threat of of danger now that's a very astonishingly dangerous right I mean if if if if that guy can't speak uh probably you and I are not going to have much of a voice there was a university in Toronto um I forget which one but there was a a speech by a guy who was considered to be a men's rights Advocate with the the the insult as they call them masas and he had written a book and he was giving the speech and these feminists were protesting I think York University was it York I think it was York and violent opposition and what he had what they had said that he said and what he actually said so completely diametrically I mean it was so incorrect that it was almost like they had never read what he had said they had just decided that this guu was was a Target because he was he was an example he was a figurehead of the patriarchy and so they these people were showing up for these lectures like look I I like I said I read websites that I don't agree with I watch uh Republican de debates I watch u i i i watch these bizarre Republican Fox News talk shows where they have these insane views of the world I don't agree with them I watch it because I'm fascinated I watch it because I I want to know what this knucklehead thinks about you know God in climate change God has a great sense of humor you know look the world I have we we played a video the other day of a woman who's she's running for congress it's crazy [ __ ] she she was she said I can prove there's no global warming with a simple tool a thermometer and she pulls it out like I'm fascinated by that lady I will watch that lady talk it doesn't mean I I agree with her so these
these feminists these radical feminists as it were whenever you're a radical anyway anything you're usually an idiot right but these radical feminists were keeping people from attending this not just the people that were speaking you know they weren't protesting the people that were speaking they were screaming and yelling at the people that are trying to go in to listen to this person talk agree or disagree the idea that you are trying to oppose or trying to stop you're in opposition of a person listening to a contrary point of view that's amazing well I I very dangerous very dangerous I I wrote an an article on my psychology today blog maybe about two years ago where this wasn't my study I was simply summarizing somebody else's work what he had basically done or I think there were several researchers they had looked at the political leanings of professors at American universities uh whether they're Democrat or Republican and they actually then broke it down by departments so for example what would be the Democrat versus Republican ratio in sociology versus in uh physics what they found is that I think if I I'm going on memory I think that the ratio is about 5 to1 Democrat to um to Republican and in some departments most notably for example in the humanities and sociology and so on it was 44 to1 oh now I I I didn't present this as this is good or this is bad but I certainly was trying to make the point that on some issues that's not a good idea for example what should be fiscal policy uh you know what should be our position regarding immigration uh uh what what is the position regarding the death penalty these are not clear sort of scientifically you know right I mean it depends and to have a sanitized campus where only one group of people really dominate I thought was Danger you should have seen the blowback I got there sure what are now the only thing that protects me in such situations is that being Canadian I could say these things without appearing as though I have a dog in the fight hey I'm not Democrat I'm not Republican I'm Canadian so I must be unbiased and so in a sense they'll give me a bit of a get out of jail card because I it doesn't appear as though I'm fighting for one or the other but still the blowback was astonishing because how dare I point to
this as though it were a bad thing I mean everybody knows that every Democrat is perfect on everything and every Republican is an idiot you know toothless Evolution denying buffoon and that strikes me as astonishing from otherwise intelligent people the world is more nuanced right there are many issues on which I agree with Democrats as a Canadian there are a few issues on which I actually agree more with Republicans uh and so I kind of pick and choose my battles but that's not how it is in Academia well in in their defense though the the the points that are taken by the Republicans so often are they're really if you had to choose like one side that's paying attention to science and one side that's paying attention to religion it's pretty clear ex well listen and I'm an evolutionist so obviously when it's going to come on that issue I'm going to be a lot more with the Democrats than all the but for example my position you may disagree I hope you don't kick me out of here I will never kick you out of here you're very kind uh the death penalty uh I think that if you are having raped and killed 10 children and we've got the DNA of of you on the in the 10 it's it's incontrovertible that you are guilty uh I don't see it as a terrible moral uh issue that we could potentially discuss the possibility of executing you as a matter of fact I think that in some cases the amount of rights that we give to otherwise horrifying monsters that itself is barbaric so on that Dimension I'm likely to be much more quote Republican and I am as well I agree with you 100% so you know Nuance thinking is is a mark of somebody who kind of has a sense of what the world looks like yeah and I think that that's also a mark of someone who doesn't have a dog in the fight as you said before I think when you look at the world there's a lot of variables that must be taken into consideration as soon as you deny those variables because you have a specific stance it's a predetermined pattern of thinking that you've aligned yourself with I'm on the left and as a Democrat like I was having conversation with someone the other day and they were talking about um upcoming elections and they said if we lose the house if we lose like he's a [ __ ] comedian he's a comedian that I'm talking to and he's
talking about the Democrats and he's on team we and I'm like wow I'm 100% for the death penalty in term in in like Ted Bundy type character some monster but my problem with it my number one problem with it is that I don't believe that the system is a good system I don't I don't believe it's in infallible I think there's a lot of issues when it comes to people who are prosecutors who deny evidence withhold evidence they they they know that they're wrong and they still arrest people they still prosecute people there's been so many instances of that I can't trust their judgment I can't trust there was a video the other day of a man uh who's a police officer pulling uh some woman she was trying to resist he threw her to the ground and he's beating her punching her in the face in in Los Angeles and as long as that is a part of our legal system that this this guy I mean she wasn't fighting back he wasn't he wasn't fighting for his life she was resisting I don't know what the circumstances were but whatever I know is if that is the only way you can handle that woman you shouldn't be a police officer me that's ridiculous as long as that exists that's part of our legal system that's a just a human flaw that exists on all levels that'll exist as far as a police officer who's on the street that'll exist as far as a prosecutor as a judge that a person running a prison there's going to be human flaws in in the entire system and that's the only reason why I hesitate as far as uh I hear you but in that sense yeah I'm way more Republican than I am Democrat I I I tell you a story about sort of police misconduct uh many years ago I had met a uh uh a guy who had served as a public uh def Defender yes in the LA County system and as we were chatting you know I was very interested in all the stuff that he had to say he said to me one advice I could give you is don't ever do anything in California that would have you end up in LA county jail I said oh why is that I said give me an example of why would somebody like me he goes let's suppose you a recidivist uh uh drink and drive kind of guy and the cops are pissed off at you they'll take you to the jail they'll throw you with all the gangbangers and they'll simply scream out Fresh Fish Out of Water that's exactly the term that he used which basically is the code word
for have Adam boys and we won't uh we won't he hear his screams and and I remember this is this was in the late 80s uh and and subsequently I actually met the son of this guy coincidentally and later found out that that was his father by by Quin he was an academic also but anyway so that's that's an example of misconduct where you know if you piss off these cops they could do all sorts of things to you that can have some profound consequences on your body yeah I just want to State for the record I'm a big supporter of law enforcement always have been one bad cop does not cops make bad make all cops bad um it's humans we're flawed you know not every uh not every doctor is a good person I mean I have a friend who used to work when he was younger he worked um at a resort and uh he said he would overhear these doctors we very specifically remembered overhearing these doctors bragging about talking this guy into a surgery and about how he's going to buy a car now you know like that's a you know that's a new whatever it was you know Porsche whatever for me you know you know this he was bragging about talking this guy to surgery incredible yeah I mean and that's real that does happen sure you know there there's bad people in all walks of life and I think that is my number one my only really resistance to something like the death penalty right but when you look at the recidivism rates for child rapists it's just through the roof it's crazy I I don't know if you've seen the stat uh I and I can't cite who who came up with it but uh apparently when you catch a pedophile he's on average committed 100 transgressions prior to you catching him for the first time right so so why does this guy benefit from all of our legals I mean you know if you've done this this stuff so many times uh why do we have to be so Humane I would actually argue it's inhumane to be so Humane to this guy and I wrote an article on on psychology today where I was talking about I don't know if you remember the case with um these two guys in Connecticut who did a home invasion and they raped the girls and the mother and set the house on fire beat the father but he survived and so on and so it was coming up to their death penalty and so I in sort of in as a tribute to that case I wrote a an article on my psychology day blog which
I think I titled is the death penalty barbaric and I was arguing that and for these kinds of guys no it's not well you should have seen my Progressive enlightened Cafe sipping academic colleagues scoff at my barbarism right I mean I what kind of hick must I be to actually even hold those sentiments well I got news for you man if it comes between putting me in jail for the rest of my life in some cage where I have to be constantly in fear of men raping me and stabbing me with toothbrushes they' sharped in knives I'll take death exactly I mean I think we should all if there's no no possible reasonable hope for parole the idea of keeping someone a in a jail to rot for the rest of their life is probably more suffering more cruel exactly yeah it's just bizarre the idea that that's that's somehow or another Humane is so crazy and a lot of them by the way solitary confinement which is probably one of the worst things that you could do to a person well especially social a social animal such as us right well a person we people are weird we need to be connected so much and one of the worst punishments you could do is just leave us alone while we're in prison surrounded by murderers rapists thieves thugs drug dealers the worst thing they can do is put you by yourself that's exactly right amazing there's a guy I I don't remember his name a Harvard um Professor who had studied uh you know what makes people healthy for for something like 60 years and I think the bottom line if I'm paraphrasing him is that people need social relationships to be healthy that's sort of the number one thing that maintains your health psychological and physiological and happy social relationships too I mean I everyone that I know that has these horrible relationships with either boyfriends and girlfriends or with their parents or with their job or like they seem to like carry those on like all the time it's like becomes almost a part of the norm of relationships but the people that I know that have healthy relationships with their boyfriends and girlfriends or wives and husbands healthy relationships with their children healthy relationships with their friends those are the happiest people I know right like you can't you can foster that and you can somehow or
another generate this sort of beautiful environment around the closest people to you you'll have a much better life it's just that simple and and by the way evolutionary psychologists study all these kinds of things uh you know why is it that we would jump into a river to save two brothers or better yet why would we jump into a river to save a stranger and and it it it it boils down to the fact that it's Tit for Tat right it's it's what's called reciprocal altruism uh are you familiar with this this this notion so so you hope that someone would do that for you someday exactly yes uh and so the idea that you know as you said that it's it's a real punishment to put people in uh in in confinement is is is bore out by evolutionary theory my friend Remy jumped into a river to save a woman she uh she was in a canoe the canoe flipped over her husband drowned the husband's body floated face first past him and the woman was screaming help me and he saw he saw her in the river and he just dove in and it's lucky he's in incredible shape and he's an Outdoorsman he's there all the he's he's very good athlete very good s he's got real good endurance so he got to death's door like literally was on death's door thought it was over thought it he's not GNA make it out of here like he just sacrificed his life to try to save this woman and then rescued her W they they figured out their way to shore but when he describes the the feeling and the experience it was almost Beyond his control like he saw this woman he it was only him there was no one else there there he had to do it and just jumped in well there's this thing uh speaking of guys who are in the business of doing heroic Acts there's a you've heard of the firemen fantasy I mean that the fact that women find guys well firemen to be very attractive and it actually turns out that there was a study that was done that actually shows this to be the case and I discussed this in one of my articles on psychology today uh if you have a guy approach women either wearing a fireman suit or not uh his chances of getting her phone number increases quite substantially if he is wearing a fireman so how do they know this did they do a study they actually got a guy wear out but do they have the same guy not wear the fireman's outfit with the same approach and the
same same word same script same everything one version It's called The Field experiment in one version you you approach women at a cafe wearing the stuff in another version you don't the guy who actually did that research is a French psychologist his name is Nicola gig and I've actually covered a few of his um studies on my website uh my most read article ever over 3 400,000 readers is is one of his studies where I was simply because we're going to talk about the blowback issue now here again it was a study where he looked at the likelihood of women being picked up as hitchhikers as a function of their breast size so he actually had the same woman and they you know artificially manipulated her breast size and on different days she would stand there and and of course it turned out that men were much more likely to pick up the woman if she had the same woman if she had bigger breast size so I just summarized that study put it up and then I remember i' gone on vacation uh came back from vacation found out that it had completely gone viral but I had a million hate mail not just from readers but from fellow Psychology today bloggers who were arguing that I was you know pedling pornography because I had a picture as the teaser image for that article I had a photo of a woman sitting in a passenger seat with big with large breast well it seemed appropriate for the topic given that that's what the topic of the study was but by putting that image I was objectifying women I was treating them as mere sex objects and so even though I had nothing to do with the study and I was simply summarizing somebody else's work I was a horrifying pornographic pedler isn't it funny that just a photograph of a woman with large breast is considered pornographic but now listen to this so then I've also written articles on psychology today where I talk about about all kinds of issues dealing with penis size you know so do women want a guy with a bigger penis are they more likely to have orgasm if he's got a bigger penis uh if you're in a gay relationship man man uh are you likely to be top or bottom as a function of your penis size that study has been done by science and so in for those articles I put sexy images of men so then I wrote to each of those people who had written
the hate man I said well for in all fair you now have to write an equally hateful thing because I am also sexually exploiting men's bodies of course they went away and never came back yeah well the idea being that women are more suppressed than men it's not equal but it is equal right yeah it's it's very tricky but the idea that a woman with big breast sitting there in a pastor seat of a car could somehow or another be pornographic it's ridiculous women have big breasts there some of them they exist some men have big penises it all it's all real stuff some some people have two eyes well people have noses interestingly some of the psych these are psychologists were saying why do you write about these issues of sexuality what does that have to do with psychology why are you so so that psychologist could actually argue that issues dealing with sexuality were outside the purview of psychology that's breathtaking well it's stupid it's really it's it's scary stupid because it's denying reality in order to fit with your ideology this ideology of politically correct thinking and I don't like the term politically correct I don't like it because it's it's been sort of overrun and overused it's kind of like it's a beaten term right you know but it's the appropriate one just to convey the idea right but it's just it's so prevalent it's so prevalent and the the fact that it's so prevalent amongst academics is really disturbing to me yeah I'm with you yeah how have you had have you had many other academics on the show yeah yeah quite a few and what's how are they like in terms of their General positions um well many many of them share your points of view oh really luckily now is it just that you happened to to gravitate towards guys that you would think that already would sort of not be these little wimpy guys or or I mean how come it turns out that they're all sharing because we're certainly in the minority in Academia so how those are the only ones I'm interested in talking to I guess I mean I'm I'm actually quite fascinating talking I would love to talk talk to some Ardent male feminist who shares these islamophobic hating ideas like hating islamophobia and I'll send I'll send you some names but the problem is you know
it get it would get ugly somewhere along the line you know I'm sure one of us would resort to insults not I it wouldn't be me I mean I wouldn't but I am utterly fascinated by ideology in ideologies that I support or do not support you know all of them I mean I mean I I I'm fascinated by by the dolly Lama I'm fascinated by how many people take a guy who only wears orange robes seriously like come on do you really think God gives a [ __ ] what clothes you wear is he is he staying warm in that or is he he's no different than that [ __ ] Phil Robertson guy that's from uh Duck Dynasty who always wears camo he's wearing a goddamn outfit and by that outfit you recognize that he oh he's a man of peace and of of enlightened thinking no he's a silly man who wears Aura and she doesn't have sex okay and why does he not have sex because he has an ideology right this IDE ology tells him that he's a holy man from birth right and if you don't think that's [ __ ] ridiculous because he's friends with Sharon Stone you and I have nothing to talk about oh he's he's buddies with Richard Gear he must be holy get the [ __ ] out of here man I you know it's funny you you talk about these Hollywood types I I wrote an article which one of those really popular ones on psychology today where I was talking about the narcissism and grandiosity of celebrities where uh they they uh what's her name Madonna because of of her cabala juice uh says that uh the radiation problem in some Lake in Ukraine could be resolved by putting some cabala juice on it and she's really she's really astounded come on wait a minute wait a minute no it's there some cabala juice I don't know some cabala holy water I don't know I don't even want I don't even want to help her in any way by bringing this up anymore gwenth ptro had some other thing about beauty um the the play um the the the autism girl I've written about oh Jenny McCarthy McCarthy the autism was was shocked that the NIH the National Institute of Health was not taking her scientific research seriously demonstrating that that's what right I mean is she a scientist no she has research but she I think she must have played once at some point uh no but seriously and what I argue there is that uh you know if you're if you're walking
all day with Yes Men catering to each of your whims you actually live in a world where you truly start thinking that you're a deity I mean you really did save the world I'm Tom Cruz and I saved the world in Mission Impossible whatever and therefore it is perfectly reasonable that I have something profound to say about everything right therefore Tom Cruz says that there is no such thing as psych psychiatric instant uh illnesses you just have to do exercise and and vitamins and that we don't take that seriously is really in a front to him and so I had written an article where I was saying that it's it's really astounding ing the type of narcissism that these folks uh and I argued that it in part it comes from a form of guilt that deep in the recesses of their bedrooms when they turn off the lights many of them actually know that they are frauds that are not really deserving of all of the perks that they've received and so one of the ways that maybe I could fix that is by demonstrating that I'm much more than a mere actor I'm really helping in darur I'm really helping solve the radiation problem in the Ukraine and so on and so forth because then I seem as though maybe I am more worthy of all the accolades that are being bestowed upon me that's a very fascinating way of looking at it and I think you probably are on to something there I think uh the the knowledge and the the understanding that they are frauds the the the the deep-seated knowledge whether they avoid it and deny it or not there's a lot of people that are horrible people that are involved in charitable organizations right and one of the reasons being is to sort of show that they are good people there's a guy who's a a pretty blatant plagiarist Who's involved in some pretty uh interesting Charities good Charities very good Charities but I had a conversation with someone about it and they were talking about hey you know what he does so much good for this organization I don't I don't care I go do you understand that that's probably why he does that like the guy's a complete sociopath he's [ __ ] over his friends he's stolen their work and passed it off as his own yet supports firefighters do do you not understand that that's what's going on there I mean he's pretty obvious if you listen to him
talk for any long period of time there's something wrong there's like some some connections Inside the Mind that are not being made and he's had a strategy and the strategy to avoid criticism is to show charitable work like Lance Armstrong whenever he was confronted about his drug use it always talk about how much he's doing for cancer for cancer research right that was his whole thing despite the fact that he'd sued people that had claimed that they their lives had been affected by his drug use that they you know that people that they love had been uh drug tested and that they you know they lost their whole entire career and that they were aligned with Lance Armstrong did drugs with Lance Armstrong Lance Armstrong would sue these people you know you're Li and then finally came out and told the truth and you know passed off his organization to other people now he's a [ __ ] broken man rightly so cuz he's a goddamn sociopath but that this instance or this insistence rather of being a part of a charitable organization and being the figurehead not just silently like I don't I I'm a big fan of not talking about Charities that I contribute to I don't like to because I think there's something something sneaky about it's almost like it it like if you give a $1,000 to a charity but then you let everybody know hey I just give a $1,000 to a charity I talk about that in my books let me tell so there's something there you know who my Monas is an old philos Jewish philosopher from the 12th century he's very very important guy in Jewish moral philosophy uh he talked about eight levels of Sedaka Sedaka is Charity giving uh in terms of the purity of the act the most pure form of teda is where the altruist and the recipient of the altruism don't know of one another because and he said this a thousand years ago where he had no evolutionary training but I Then I then package it as as an evolutionary argument because there's great social signaling rewards that come from you writing The Joe Rogan cancer W right you right if you are in a why do the upper uppers don't drive Maseratis because everybody in their Circle can also buy a Maserati so they actually drive pretty often time pretty you know cheapish cars because that's not going to be a very honest signal of my True Value CU everybody in my social
group can imitate it but if I can give aund million to the so and so cancer or buy aund million painting that a 2-year-old could could have otherwise painted boy that's an honest signal of my quality right and so I actually talk about this exact idea of of not advertising your generosity yeah I call it happiness bombs when I leave a big tip at a restaurant and I get out of there before the waiter can see what the tip is I like to do that I like to leave big tips and then run get the [ __ ] out of there I don't want to see that person I I say thank you to them on the way out the door but I don't want them to see the tip and then thank me back because it almost like you know takes away from it it's like like I said if someone donates $ thousand doll but then tells the world they donate $ thousand dollar I think you owe another thousand you know you you owe a silent thousand do you know the you know you must know the show Kirby Your Enthusiasm yes so there is an episode on Kirby Your Enthusiasm where Larry David is at some function with Ted Danson they both gave Anonymous donations but everybody keeps walking up to Ted Danson telling you oh congratulations on this donation that was so generous of you so l Davis go David goes crazy because he goes that's [ __ ] man you're benefiting from this whole thing it's not Anonymous nobody knows like it's exactly what we're talking about right so that whole episode was a great episode because whoever wrote it actually understands our human nature yeah that's a fascinating fascinating aspect of human beings this this need to be considered altruistic this need to be considered benevolent you know that to to advertise it instead of just being you know that that you can't exist in the silence of the personal satisfaction of contributing and giving giving out love and and generosity that you have to be rewarded for it well I I have a section in my first book which I titled philanthropy as a costly signal a costly signaling in biology so the peacock's tail is a costly signal because it actually serves as a really honest signal of my worth for me to carry this burdensome tail and avoid Predators then you really should take me seriously all you female hands because here I am here and I've survived so that's called an
honest signal or a costly signal well philanthropy I argue in many cases is that honest signal precisely for the reasons that we're talking about so I am fascinated by peacocks I'm fascinated by black guys who go to clubs with $100,000 worth of jewelry on them you know I I it's amazing that that aspect of especially the RAP Community well you know the the the throwing the money in all the videos making I've got making I got an article on that man did you ever think that you would have a scientist on your show talking about the evolutionary roots of making it rain there no no I'm so happy to talk to you now I was happy to talk to you already but now more so um what what is that like the the the the diamonds and the gold chains and then why is it specifically connected to the African-American Community as opposed to you I mean the Italian-American Community was always gold chains a little bit but not as much diamonds and I mean black people took it to a totally new level right I I can't speak to why one culture decides to use one particular form of status symbol if you're the massai tribe in in Africa it might be the number of cattle heads that you have that is the peacocking right so what we do know is that different cultures will use different forms of peacocking but in all cultures it is going to be the males in that culture who engage in the ACT that's the universal the peacocking in the African-American Community is most fascinating because a lot of these rappers come from these very poor neighborhood so they're dealing with a lot of poverty and crime and they as they're growing up and then as they get older their identities once they become connected to success are also connected to firearms and and diamonds specifically diamonds yeah they're all they have blinged out everything blinged out teeth I mean how crazy is that you're walking around with a $100,000 worth of dental appliances I mean probably more I don't understand diamonds so I don't I don't own any diamonds so when say $100,000 I don't I might be way off there was a company called um I don't remember the name of the company but the the project was called American brand stand a play on American band stand dick what is what the guy's name CL Dick Clark uh so what
they did is they did they they looked they did a Content analysis of brand mentions in Billboard top 100 to see how often brands are mentioned you know hey girl I've got the Maserati and what they found not surprisingly is that it's almost exclusively in hip-hop videos it's almost exclusively male rappers who do this behavior and it wasn't diamonds actually what the number one product was cars so cars were overwhelmingly the most often cited form of peacocking in rap video in rap songs I was at a uh an event a kickboxing event in Los Angeles the other day with my friends Eddie and Tate and we uh we when we showed up this guy pulled up in this bright white orange Lamborghini this crazy you know car with the Gold Wing doors that pop up and uh I we were talking and I'm a fan of cars I love cars but I do not like Lamborghinis I think they're foolish I think the the doors are foolish I mean they break all the time I have a friend who reviews cars and he reviewed this Lamborghini Aventador and he said it broke down after like two days they had it for two days and the transmission exploded and I was laughing about it and I was like what the [ __ ] like why would you spend half a million dollars on that car like there's some brilliant pieces of I'm a big fan of cars I'm a big fan of Engineering in general I love well-engineered watches I love a well-engineered table I love laptop I'm a fascin I'm fascinated by human Innovation so when I see certain cars I am fascinated by them but when I see that one I just think that's just so goofy and my friends were like bro that car gets you [ __ ] and I was like really does it really like come on man there's a girl with a girl B so we had this debate would a girl have sex with you if she saw you in that car let me answer the question as opposed to please do as opposed to let's say a Corvette and like no man anybody can get a Corvette a Corvette is a like my friend Tay goes man a girl will hop in your car just to see where you live if she have that car they just want to see where your house is you got a $500,000 car what the [ __ ] does that dude's house look like so I'll tell you three scientific studies one of which is mine and then a personal story of my brother who lives in Southern California uh so Nikolai Gan the guy who
did the bre and french guy uh did a study uh very much similar in spirit where instead of manipulating the fireman suit he had the same guy approach different women as a function of and manipulated which car he was driving I can't remember the exact details but it's something like it's there's a three-time increase in the likelihood of a woman giving you her phone number if you are driving a high status car versus a low status car it's it's the exact same guy three times three times greater wow and the same guy by the way did another study where he he he was either he the guy who was approaching the women was either with a baby or not and in another version with a dog or not having a dog increases digits attention and having uh interacting with a baby also increases it so I joke that you should be driving a a Lamborghini while having a dog next to you and a baby while wearing a fireman suit you're going you're you're going to get all the ladies in Orange County and in Newport Beach newort beach so that's one another study and then I'm going to come to my study in a second and another study not by this guy they took the same man put him either in a Bentley or in a whatever Fort Fiesta and did the same thing with the same W with a woman and then it was opposite sex rating so the women would rate the two guys and the same guy when he is in the Bentley was viewed as astonishingly more handsome which of course objectively can't be I mean your your physi your physical traits don't change but there was a glow effect from the card that he's driving he's he's handsome he's he's a Brad Pit in this car he's a loser in this other car but the same manipulation on women men didn't care in other words their evaluations of how attractive the woman was did not depend on which car she was seated in so I would think that with men and with women that the women it would be more intimidating to the men if the women of a Bentley oh because they have high status yeah perhaps well especially if you have a Toyota some crappy car nice car Toyota you know not a bad car but just not a high status car but if you pulled up in a you know whatever you know name it Chevy Cobalt or something like that and the you know the girl you're going to go on a date with pulls
up in a Lamborghini like oh what the [ __ ] right I would think that for some men they find that some women men find women that are very successful intimidating and they were just asking them how good-looking do you think they are so it specific to physical attraction okay so the yeah I would say the physical attraction wouldn't change but I would say that the desire to approach that person or the willingness to approach that person I'm with you yeah I think a women with with like a really expensive car would be intimidating third study and then the personal story from my brother uh I did a study a few years ago where I brought this was the former graduate student of mine we brought people into the lab and then we rented a Porsche this wasn't imagine you're driving a Porsche we actually rented a Porsche and as I as I tell in one of my TED Talks try to get a uh granting agency to release money to do research where you're going where you're saying basically I'm going to rent a Porsche for the weekend as part of my research so uh we rented a Porsche and then we had some other beaten up car and we had the same men drive both cars either in Downtown Montreal on a Friday evening where everybody could see you driving the car or on a semi- deserted Highway where nobody could see you and at the end of each of the driving conditions we collected salivary assays to then measure their fluctuating levels of testosterone and the idea being that uh when you put them in the Porsche it's going to explode and that's exactly what we found you and now some one of the reviewers had written he said but how do you know that that's just not because they're driving fast and so that's causing a rise in testosterone and the way we could control for that is on downtown Montreal on a Friday evening it's bumper-to-bumper traffic it's I mean it's it's it's like being in a parking lot so it's certainly not because you were driving fast it's because everybody could see that I am sitting in a Porsche so your endocrinological system exploded simply because of this imbuing of social status to you and we know this from other animals where if you and I fight if we're twoes we fight if you win your testosterone goes up if I lose my
testosterone goes down and so here we were applying the this exact idea to the consumer setting so the person that was in the fast car that was on a deserted stretch of highway just going fast their testosterone didn't rise no it did we actually predicted that it would rise in both those conditions but it would rise more when there's a public audience to see you doing it right that makes sense right what we found is that irrespective of the environment you put a young male in a Porsche his endocrinological system explodes it so the environment didn't matter just the fact that you were imbuing me with this immediate social status resulted in the same increase in testosterone well isn't it also an engine thing too with young men I know that they've done uh studies where they had young men rev engines just like a V8 a powerful V8 just the sound of and that increases testost increases testost I I don't think I know that study you going to need to send me that Emil yeah I I will as soon as I find it um but the the the test that you give them how much of a variable or how much of a variance was there between not driving that car and driving that car well statistically significant so it was certainly strong enough to pick up a big difference from the Toyota to the other car right do you remember the percentage I don't I could send you the paper that would be big for athletes just drive around in a fast car and it' be good for your recovery right because your testosterone would increase well I always joke with my wife and I tell her that since men as they enter middle age their testosterone goes down if I now have to buy a luxury car that's just medically mandated well is that what's going on when men have this midlife crisis like that's what women I mean it's always the joke with women that they see a guy in a Ferrari and he's like 50 years old sorry about your penis you know yeah but is that well I did I have a study that's not yet published speaking of the car you drive and some morphological feature you're gonna like this one um so this is not published yet with one of my former doctoral students we actually had we created online dating profiles of a man where everything is the same except that in one version his prized favorite position is a fancy red
Porsche or some shitty Kia or whatever it is and then we asked men and women who were looking at this profile to evaluate the guy's height watch what happened men when they evaluate the guy in the Porsche denigrate his height he's shorter women increase his height this is exactly what you would expect from an evolutionary perspective right sure right status is a threatening cue for men therefore it serves as an intrasexual rivalry queue so if you are in a fancy car oh Joe must be some short wimpy guy women on the other hand will look at Joe the exact same Joe your your height didn't magically change I say wow Joe was a tall guy it's very that's fascinating that you should study haters you should study like haters of celebrities like someone who becomes like a Justin Bieber type character especially someone who's a a famous person who women just go like if Justin Bieber goes anywhere in public women will literally scream and faint and pass out like almost Elvis like in some certain ways you just study like what the reaction is to men I wonder if there's a way to study that that is that's fascinating to me studying haters that's a good one so let me tell you about my are we still okay on time yes we're great we have an hour oh great uh so I have a brother who's lived in California for 30 years uh who by the way I think I'd sent you this by email was a fighter was a judo Olympian Judo fighter who played in the 19 well played who competed in the 1976 Olympics so and he used to always say by the way before there was ever an MMA I would always ask him if you were in a fight at a bar against some boxer or some uh karate guy who would win which was kind of what started the whole m and he used to always tell me oh I will destroy them because they might get one hit on me but once I get them and once we go down on the ground they're they're done uh so anyways uh so he he he made a a lot a lot of money in the software industry in Southern California and so he used he was the classic kind of peacocking guy he owned three Ferraris and Aston Martin lagunda and so on uh and so we would we would play this game to to to Mya grin he liked to play this game we'd go to a nightclub this is before I was married in case my wife is listening uh no but this was before we
were married uh we would walk into a bar these fancy shman clubs and he'd say take your time and look around and find the most stunning unattainable woman in this place now take your time so I'd go around look around I'd pick the girl who's not only the most beautiful but the one who is clearly accompanied by a guy who looks like a brute and they seem to be very intensely in love so now it's I've really raised the bar of him not being able to get her now my brother is about 5' three so you would he's not tall and so on but boy is he carrying the the big testicles of owning all those Ferraris and so he he'd say okay that's the girl you you you you want me to approach okay so the she he'd wait like a shark and then the girl the guy would go to the bathroom he'd approach the girl he he'd come up to about here on her I mean it was just incredible to watch he'd come back to me and say she'll call me tomorrow I said absolutely zero chance David it's not going to happen next morning he'd say G come over here at the time we had the answering machines this is like maybe early '90s hi David it's candy I was we met you well what got him candy it was the fact that he own what would he say to them I don't know I have three Ferraris come with me I like that you're Arabic accent I know you have a man but he is stupid he's big but he does not have cars something like that well look the reality is that whenever we went anywhere in one of those cars I just noticed anecdotally that the women would be all over the place is that changing with time when people become more aware of how kind of peacocky and it becomes more of a a a cultural sort of uh caricature to right so I I think what happens is that the the product that we use for the peacocking might change so for example maybe in the cafe sipping uh parties in Hollywood it might be that I drive a Prius you I was so happy you just said that right so that now makes me the the the top dog there's actually a paper uh by a colleague of mine I think it's called Green to be seen right which is basically a form of conspicuous consumption based on being green rather than being in and the big Hummer or whatever so the the bottom line is that the signal itself will change but the need to Signal as a form
of a mating strategy is always there more Progressive brownie points more Progressive I keep track of the amount of Priuses that I catch throwing cigarettes out the window I'm up to eight eight Priuses in my life I have observed throwing cigarettes out the window I get [ __ ] furious cuz I know those [ __ ] I know what they're doing they drive a lot of them drive those things not for the consumption not not for gas low keeping gas prices down they're doing it because they want to appear green exactly and there there actually studies that look at how much are you willing to pay extra for a green product and often times what people say attitudinally and then what they do if it affects their dollar there's a big in congruity so you see the hypocrisy of people right again it's the posing right I mean I want to appear as though I'm enlightened Progressive I care about Mother Earth and so well most certainly I mean I'm a Hunter and I've experienced this weird thing where people who wear leather and eat meat get angry at you for hunting and one of the reasons why they're angry at you for hunting is somehow or another what you're doing is animal cruelty that you don't have to do it why not go to a supermarket this is like incredibly narrow-minded way of thinking and I'm like you have a leather couch do you understand that the animal that you sit on every day suffered unimaginable cruelty the animal that I shot didn't even know I was there until I put an arrow through its heart do you ever feel any Gump sh at at doing it or no yeah no definitely it's not an easy thing to do it's not I I eat meat I like meat I've always eaten meat um I work out a lot and I find that i' i' I've tried being a vegetarian once when I was competing um back when I was fighting and I didn't perform as well I didn't have as much energy I didn't feel as good and granted this in all fairness my knowledge of nutrition was far less then than it is now and I I didn't have the best diet in the world and I was also very young but um I I you know animals like humans live a finite life and I think that they eat each other their the world that they live in is UN un unbelievably cruel and if it wasn't for getting killed by a hunter it's not like they're going to
live forever and become magic okay they they get killed by coyotes and Mountain lines and I like going into that world and acquiring meat my goal is at the end of 2014 all the meat I eat at home to only be from my hunting no kidding yeah because I feel like that's the most ethical way to acquire me you do this I go to different places like uh I've been I've only been hunting four times I shot two deer I shot a uh a pig and and a a wild pig and uh I shot a bear recently only animals that I eat only animals that I want to eat and my my freezer's filled with bare meat and Venison and yeah I mean that's what I that's what I try to eat try to eat that first of all it's super healthy you know the uh the animal you you know hasn't been shot up with antibiotics and hormones it's just a natural animal and again it's living its life in a wild way until I dip into the food chain and remove it but it's not it doesn't it's it feels good to accomplish it like the first time I did it it was much more somber than it is now now it seems like I'm uh I'm I've sort of accepted what it is and I'm happier after it's over I don't I don't have this sort of somber feeling the first time I was it was happiness but also like wow I just uh I just took an animal's life big animal 180 lb deer like this is a lot of there's a lot involved in this this is this is real but what about what's your position like we're talking about conspicuous consumption and signaling how about trophy hunting I don't like that at all I have a real problem with that not only do I have a real problem with trophy hunting I have a real problem with um um what they they're doing in Africa these days this uh high fence hunting very but it's very strange and here's the the contradiction here's where it gets weird I had Lou tho do you know who he is the documentarian from uh England not sure great guy and really fascinating and beautiful documentarian he's just just really wonderful documentaries and uh he had uh this one where he went to this African hunting camp for several weeks and stayed there and tried to really understand what it was all about interviewed all these people and a lot of them are just despicable they're just these real hickey people like yeah I'm just going to I'm get I'm going to try to get the
big five I'm going to get a rhino I'm going to get an elephant and all they want to do is like spend money and bring home tusks and horns and all this different [ __ ] it's pretty gross because it's just they're killing to acquire trophies and what what they're doing is they're killing inside these high fences where these animals it's not like you're out there yeah you're going to and it's not to say that I'm opposed to high fence hunting because I think if you're hunting like deer or an animal that you're just going to eat it's essentially uh like not that much different than going to a lake that's been stocked you know if you're going to a lake and they stock the lake with trout to ensure that there's fish to fish those fish are not going to get out of that Lake and fly to Nebraska right that's where they live they're stuck there and I don't think there's any difference between that like these high fence hunting operations in Texas which I don't have any problem with at all they have like these Thousand Acre and one of them I know of is 14,000 Acres and they they keep deer on it and why do they have the fences up well to keep poachers out to keep to and they also they make a living off of guiding people to hunt these animals and for them it's like the ethical um acquiring of of your own meat and it's venison it's very delicious it's it tastes good it's good for you it's very healthy meat I don't have a problem with that with the African thing is so confusing because there was a woman recently um that was on the news uh this this past week she was 19 years old she went to Africa and took all these photos with her that with a lion that she killed I might have shared that on my but that wasn't a week ago I did one you did recently but it was a different one I I went I've followed all your stuff I've been paying attention for a while um but um you had you you said is disgusting she was holding the mouth of the LI open exactly yeah that's dark there's something dark about that man I mean if you're not going to eat that animal I mean I don't I have a friend who's going lying hunting in the wild he's a bow hunter his name's Cameron hannes he's going to eat a lion though he's going to go over there he's going to hunt it in the in not in a high fence he's going to
Zimbabwe in the actual jungle he's going to hunt a lion and he's going to eat it you know he's [ __ ] crazy to to to to to collect salivary assets from these types of guys pre pre kill post kill well he's got PL of testosterone before and after but I I guarantee you that it jumps up when he uh he shoots he he's the one who took me bear hunting wow yeah he's uh he's probably one of the most famous bow hunters in America today probably in the world actually he's a legit bow hunter I mean he makes his living doing that and he's uh very famous because of it very ethical though he does not shoot anything he does not eat right everything he shoots he eats and I think that's where um that's where I have an issue with this this this Africa thing but where it gets weird is that those animals many of them were on the verge of Extinction but now they are they're in very high numbers the reason being is that they're in these high fence operations so it's such a catch 22 on one hand they were on the verge of EX and on another now they have these high populations and they're super healthy but they only exist as a commodity to be hunted down I mean and the way they're doing like there's a water hole and there's like a hundred animals in front of the water hole and these people just sit there and and they just shoot one they go look what I did on my hunt like is that even a hunt you're in a park I mean you're an offened in like you know it's someone's yard you're not tracking or anything they're like pets I mean it's you're not only not tracking those animals they're never going to leave and go 100 miles away to a different place and then you know go across a river to you know it's mu deer they they discover that mule deer in America this is a really recent discovery they had no idea how far they migrate but they migrate as much as 150 miles in a year 150 miles is a lot of walking man for a deer that's like here to [ __ ] San Diego for a deer you know and they're just starting to understand their migratory patterns wow and that's but that's a wild animal now if you that's what I consider Fair Chase right you go out hunting you find a mule deer that's walking 150 miles you figure out where they're going to be and you and then stalk them and get into a good position and and shoot them and eat them
it's about as fair and ethical a way as you can acquire your own meat if you're going all the way to Africa and you're not even going to eat that animal and you're just G to like stuff it and stick it on your wall to let everybody know how Billy badass you are that's weird man that's it's a weird aspect of human beings that we would even consider that to be a form of recreation you know and people go well hey it's totally legal and well hey there's nothing you know they the the money goes to conservation and I guess it does in a way I guess it does does go to keep these animals alive so they can keep killing them right it's weird it's very weird so are you a also a Paleo guy well you know what that whole paleo thing I don't like that term paleo because the term has been debunked by science when you talked about like what people did or did not eat um I think that natural foods are more easily digestible I try to stay away from bread as much as possible although I do I have uh started eating more sprouted bread recently like Ezekiel type bread I feel like my body digests that more easily I think it's a little healthier I I keep away from white flour and pastas and things along those lines and I try to a avoid processed foods as much as possible and sugar as much as possible so in that sense yeah I eat a lot of vegetables I eat a lot of protein animal protein fish and things along those lines but I I just think that I'm just real I noticed because I work out so much and because I I do um Athletics where you sort of measure your progress you know whether it's uh my workout routines like strength and conditioning routines or martial arts I can kind of see when I'm on and when I'm off and I can anecdotally or directly correlate that between my to my diet and I find that when I take supplements and I make sure that I have plenty of vitamins and plenty of green leafy vegetables that's one of the most important ones I think and healthy proteins so in that sense I I eat along the lines that a lot of those paleo guys eat right you know I I when I used to be a very competitive soccer player I was grossly underweight my whole life I mean 125 130 pounds 4% body fat just from running all the time running all the time training I even ran some Marathon the day that I stopped training was this
sort of pernicious and Insidious weight gain where it wasn't sort of you saw me one one year I was 125 and the next year I was 18 it was always four five 8 pounds a year and then one day 8 nine years later I get on the scale and I'm tipping 200 and the most I got up is 252 I'm 5' 6 252 whoa you're a heavyweight exactly uh and and now I've lost about 25 30 pounds but still even now I mean I'm over 200 lb and one of the things that I've that I've been doing is uh eating as you said a lot of vegetables and a lot of protein staying away from all the starchy stuff and I'm using uh you know myfitnesspal.com do you know this thing this Cali accounting program no it's part of this whole quantify yourself uh so basically my I have to give credit to my wife she she literally counts every single calor that goes into my body I have to basically have 1 1400 calories net a day uh including exercise and so on so as long as I hit 1400 calories net that day and I've lost so far 25 lbs in maybe 3 months that's amazing that's a great number 25 lbs in 3 months is really healthy it's not too fast too that's good yeah yeah I I've now it's getting a bit rough I I can't seem to break the next sort of Hump what do you do for exercise so I I'm I'm a cardio guy so maybe I don't know maybe you'll you'll you'll guide me in better ways uh so I just do tons of cardio so could be I run on the treadmill or I do stationary bike or I do elliptical I usually try to average between 45 minutes to an hour every is great no no doubt about it and you know there's nothing better than having a good gas tank and having a healthy heart right but um one of the things that burns calories the most is muscle yeah and the more muscle that you can put on your body the stronger you can make yourself on it's kind of strange but you get leaner yeah your metabolism goes up so yeah yeah and I just find I just feel better when I'm stronger you know my body works better I like the way it feels better and I think that I can eat more right you know I I I'm a pig I like eating but I'm pretty lean for someone who eats as much as I eat like if you ever seen me eat people freak out like especially like after comedy shows I'll do like two shows in a night and I'll have two Entre and a salad and an appetizer like to the point where
waitresses think I'm joking and I'm like nope I'm serious I'm I'm going to eat all that too wow I eat a lot of food but um and I love it so the way I make sure that I stay lean is I do a lot of exercise and a lot of weightlifting I think that weightlifting and by weightlifting I'm not doing like a lot of the traditional stuff like bench pressing most of the stuff I do is full body exercises kettle bells things along those lines but when I do that all that intense strain that's not available through cardio through cardio you can do sprinting and you could really get your heart rate up and really get exhausted you certainly burn off a lot of calories but that intense strain of [ __ ] you know that's what makes bone density that's what makes makes your your tendons and your tendons stronger muscle density strong more thick I think that also helps your calorie consumptions oh cool speaking of comedians I just because very organic what's going on I just hired a postto who claim to fame so far until he gets into my research program was he was studying The evolutionary roots of humor oh that's interesting and so what he basically looked at is humor as a sexually selected trait as a proxy for intellig and so with with his former doctoral supervisor who's a well-known Evolution psychologist they would go into comedy clubs and uh rate people's uh impressions of how funny the comedian is and then would administer IQ tests to them and it turns out that funnier people are actually smarter people and so when women say uh you know I love you know they always say I want a guy with a sense of humor I want a guy who makes me laugh what they're effectively saying as a as a proxy measure is I want a guy who's intelligent because intelligence is a heritable trait interesting but I bet that's wrong here's why I bet that's wrong I don't my my favorite comedian of all time is my friend Joey Diaz I think he's the funniest guy that's ever lived and uh he is a very smart guy as far as like Street smarts and wisdom and he knows a lot about life if you gave him a [ __ ] IQ test though he might barely beat the chimp right so I think what you're basically saying is that IQ might not be the way to measure intelligence but what but you are admitting that he is probably very intelligent oh he's
most certainly very intelligent so then that's that's supporting the general theory oh it's the general theories on I just think that IQ intelligence doesn't mes measure social intelligence Fair he's very socially intelligent like he spots like he's a predator in some ways like he spots like the weakness a person has and is like look at this [ __ ] with his goofy you know he'll find out the one thing about you oh yeah that's not what you're thinking you know he'll like he'll find the one thing that you know you're trying to pretend you're not but you truly are and it it'll like illuminate itself like glowing ding here this guy's actually uh this he's actually a that he's lying about this most certainly you know there's a study that was done with CEOs and the number one thing that they all had in common other than on average being taller than the norm CEOs are taller than nor yeah they're I they're I think 6'2 or some some I can't remember exactly the number uh is that they had very high social intelligence yeah it makes sense makes sense right if you're an operating officer you're you're trying to keep everybody in line there's a lot of social intelligence required to do that to manage a giant group of people and keep everybody happy and you know and Foster morale and yeah there's a lot involved in that here's an interesting one uh remember earlier we were talking about uh you know how these uh Hollywood types are lying to themselves in the privacy of their bedrooms yeah I'm glad we brought that back up again there's more to talk about there yeah so you're going to like this one so I've often wondered whether they believe the hype that they say in other words when somebody is posing in this way do you do they truly kind of internalize this or not there's a fantastic evolutionary theory that looks at The evolutionary roots of self-deception in other words why is it that we are so good at self deceiving ourselves this is by a guy name by name of Robert triers phenomenal Evolution biologist and he proposed the theory that I think is brilliant in its Simplicity and then what I usually do is to demonstrate the phenomenon I go to a television show like Seinfeld to to to find a manifestation of that phenomenon which I'll talk about in a sec so he
says that one of the biggest dangers that we face as as humans is to navigate all of these social threats in our envir right so I'm trying to manipulate you while you're trying to read me to see my manipulative intent that's called mellan intelligence or social intelligence so one of the ways that I could fool you without you picking up that I am fooling you is if any visual cue in my in my face that would signal that I am lying I would shut it off the way you because then you can't read that and the way you do that is by deceiving yourself in other words if you understand what I'm saying ah yes so I want to lie to you I want to deceive you I want to make you do a but you're going to be looking at me to see whether there is any visual signals that shows that I'm lying if I could suppress those by first lying to myself then you can't pick up that I'm lying so then so there's a show on Seinfeld I said you know how can I demonstrate this to make it sort of more sexy in my book so there's a show on Seinfeld where George castanza who is kind of a duplicitous devious guy uh is is trying to teach Jerry how to be a better liar and one day as he's about to leave his apartment he looks at him he says remember Jerry it's not a lie if you believe it and I said that's it that's exactly The evolutionary roots of self-deception right so you see evolutionary theory is everywhere man it explains everything I certainly think you're correct in that I think there's definitely something there but I can also offer some unique Insight uh as to the celebrity thing and what it what it is because I've I've been a part of it and I've also experienced it myself I've experience my own self-deception or my own ego swelling like in an unnatural way it's because of the environment that you're constantly in in the data that you're getting the the data that you're getting if you're a star like I've seen now I'm a nice person but I I've seen people get shows and become these [ __ ] ruthless dictators like people that have sit coms or shows that revolve entirely around them like a like a you know not Seinfeld he's supposedly a very nice guy but like uh there's this famous story of Brett Butler who's from that show Grace Under Fire about what a ruthless monster she became when she was on the show granted substance abuse was
in there as well which I think may also you know not just because uh of the fact that she probably had addictive Tendencies to begin with a lot of comedians tend to be impulsive and a lot of them tend to have addiction issues as well well I'm sure that played into it as well but also this the pressure of being the one the pressure of being this one person where when Brett Butler shows up on the set everyone has a coffee for there's a script can we get anything Brett they're all treading lightly you know they're all like worried constantly that she's going to be upset at them so their data the data that a person like Brett Butler or some star has is that they are special that's all the data they're getting the the data that someone who has you know someone who's not attractive they're they're the only data like a lot of data that comes from uh a person who is not physically attractive it's like well I found out that I can get people to like me if I make them laugh so I'm going to develop a good sense of humor cuz my nose isn't getting any smaller my ears aren't getting any little I'm not getting any taller I'm [ __ ] not losing any weight so let me just let me just become funny and then you know you see a lot of funny guys that are my friends that are not good-looking at all but have beautiful girlfriends like what is is that from well they figured out the one thing that they do have that they can find that's attractive the data that these actors and these people that get that are famous they're constantly getting love and they're getting love from people that don't know them they only know their work they only know this thing that they've pretended to be in a movie where they were a superhero or in this thing where they were a doctor or in that show where they were you know they always had the right answer and they were on top of things how many people that we've seen in movies that thought were like really smart intelligent people then you see him in an interview you go oh he's a [ __ ] idiot he's an idiot who's playing a role right they their data that they get is completely unnatural that environment where you for whatever reason they decide that you're going to be the guy they put you in this thing they project you on a screen that's 60 feet wide every time you talk
the words that come out of your mouth were carefully constructed by a team of writers and they that labored over those words for weeks and weeks there music playing I mean it's it's it's amazing so that environment is so completely unnatural the data that they get because of that is so unnatural When Brad Pit shows up at a some awards party or something like that and he goes down the red carpet and people [ __ ] go bananas and scream he handles it remarkably well for someone who's in that scenario cuz that is a completely unnatural scenario and must be insanely difficult to maintain objectivity and that's and that's that situation so that has to be taken into account just the data that those people get is so different from the data that a guy who is uh working at a camera shop gets a guy that's a normal person in a normal life that the data that they get is when they interact with people people judge them based on their appearance how they talk what their background is they start communicating they gather up data when you see Tom Cruz or Brad Pit like you automatically like them you automatically have all this attached to them and that's a totally unnatural world to live in there is actually some studies that have looked at why is it that people love celebrities so much and the argument is that it's because it's tricking our ancestral brain right you're coming into my television uh screen every day on on news radio I actually you now become part of my what's called my you know what dunar number is Right 15 very nice so you you know Joe Rogan I know this guy m i mean I me I remember when my kid was Bor Joe Rogan Jo I know Joe Rogan and so I think what ends up happening is that since we obviously didn't evolve in an environment where there were televisions but I now feel so intimately connected to you that barrier is removed yeah it gets even weirder when you do something like this like podcast because this is even more intimate because we're in people's ears we're in earbuds I'm inside your head I'm talking to you right now maybe you're on a treadmill maybe you're on a plane maybe you're sitting on the subway buy my books yeah buy God ODS books uh remember those subliminal things did those work those things like buy popcorn remember those things flash in the movie that famous
sort of popcorn and coke uh apparently the I I don't know the exact story but I think apparently the company that uh uh commissioned that study uh maybe did some massaging with the data yeah yeah I I had a group of undergraduate students do a similar project in one of my courses what they found is that if put let's say buy crush or buy Big Mac it's not specifically the desire to buy that product that increase but rather your hunger and your thirst increased right you understand what I mean so it didn't increase your likelihood of saying yes I'd like to buy a Big Mac but when they were asked post the subliminal thing are you hungry then the subliminal cue would affect their hunger and their thirst but not to the specific product Oh So this so this so the the evidence is equivocal so there's a little something in there like if you see somebody eating a piece of cake on TV and it looks awesome you do say oh I like that right and that's real exactly so that is kind of a subliminal message or is that not subal it's not subliminal because it's conscious it's it has to be below my my conscious awareness for it to be subliminal do you remember those things that they used to sell I don't think they have them anymore but they used to be um CDs or audio tapes and you would hear like the sound of the ocean or something like that but then behind it was supposed a message yeah for secession of smoking so yeah well I don't know if those work cuz I don't think they're on the market anymore are they no I think the market has spoken yeah they were they were quite popular for a while you hear like yeah yeah yeah yeah and somewhere in there apparently was like lose weight stop eating Cheetos right why isn't that doesn't Scientology have a similar thing with the getting the clear state or something yes yes I had a neighbor it was poor bastard there was a piece of property that he wanted to buy and I found out he was a Scientologist because this conversation he wanted to buy this piece of property and I said yeah this is right it was right next to his house I said it'd be uh would you build on it he was like well you know what I don't I can't even buy it right now because my wife is about to go clear and I go what does that mean you know I didn't know what it meant and he goes well you know
we're Scientologist so and then so you know I tried to just be as objective as possible and kind and start started asking him like what does that mean he was telling me that she will no longer be influenced by any outside stimuli any outside influence any outside suggestions and that she will be able to go through this world without being affected by negative anything and anybody yelling at her anybody insulting her they will no longer get in there but it cost $50,000 that's it that that's that's the ringer and then I remember I was going like what is what happens and he was explaining that she goes through the ceremony I'm like that cost 50 Grand why does it cost 50 Grand I don't know it's just uh you know it's it's worth it [ __ ] poor bastard now why is it that so many I since you're in that industry why is it that it is particularly accepted within the Hollywood cow crowd good question I've only met a few I've only met a few uh legit scientologists and one thing that they radiate is this weird sort of positive energy this alien artificial positive energy that's very difficult to put your finger on like hey Gad nice to meet you man that's amazing so you're doing um evolutionary psychology as it applies to marketing amazing stuff I like it a lot like there's something it's not like a genuine enthusiasm it's this weird extra level that's not but it's it's almost like you want to follow I want to see how long you can keep this up I want to follow you all day I want to know when the crash is coming you know I'm pretty sure that if I followed you around I'm just guessing but based on our 2hour and a half conversation that if I followed you around you're pretty much like this all the time this is you but when you're talking to a Scientologist you [ __ ] know that this is going to end you can't keep this up man it's like if a guy's putting on a fake English ACC I'm talking all day like this is a so important time we got to know that I can't do this forever you know and this is something that they're doing when they've got this amazing stuff dad I love it love what you're doing like like man you're going to hit the Rocks bro you're going to crash something's going to go wrong but their um their centers that they have in La one of the most
interesting ones is they have this antiy Psychiatry anti Psychiatry Center Psychiatry kills and they have this big billboard where a guy who's got like shock electric shock therapy [ __ ] on his head screaming in agony and what you don't realize when you go to that is that it's a Scientology front I mean you go in there and they they you know they get you hooked on Dianetics wow and the story of this guy is quite extraordinary right he's amazing he's amazing amazingly bad too amazingly bad writer and the fact he openly spoke about creating your own religion that if you want to have real power and real money you need to make your own religion and then made his own religion and his books are [ __ ] atrocious his movie Battlefield Earth have you ever seen the John trta movie no oh my God we're talking about it last week uh my friend Eliza slesinger and I were laughing about it um it's a insanely bad movie with John Travolta who's monster kind giant alien guy and it's him and um what's the [ __ ] dude's name with the lazy eye the black guy uh Forest Whitaker Forest Forest Whitaker's in it too he's also a Scientologist I don't think he's a Scientologist but he's he's an alien in this movie you'd be amazed at how many scientologists there are right of like highlevel people and you start like looking like weird ones like Beck the singer Beck is that Juliet Lewis is like as you go like down the the list of people that are actual scientologists it's it's pretty extensive I think what it provides them is a scaffolding um for I think Hollywood and the idea of being and most notably actors because acting itself is one of the most unstable professions right you have to be chosen you I mean what you do is based entirely on the merits of your work what you do is based on the the entirely on your education your qualifications your and the data that you've provided and the the writing that you've done based on that data it's all really Rock Solid stuff it's all right in front of you despite the fact that the ideologues you know attack you and the [ __ ] politically correct Knuckleheads will go after you what you're doing is you it's all based on the merits of your work what an actor is doing is trying so desperately to get other people to
accept them and choose them right and it's very weird eal it's it's it's fleeting it's not just fleeting it's a it's so weird that they don't have their own op it's very rare that you talk to actors and they have their own opinions right what they have is this sort of conglomeration of opinions that they've sort of subscribed to because they believe that this is going to Eng gratiate them with the overlords of Hollywood right so everyone is goddamn politically correct everyone's driving a [ __ ] Prius everyone's voting Democrat you know everyone is wearing pink ribbons when it's the appropriate time because it's breast cancer awareness uh hash bring our girls home you know hash yesall women you better [ __ ] have that [ __ ] you better have a good quote about it hash # go [ __ ] yourself so they all um they all get a they become a part of this sort of really instable and to be to be F fair to someone who wants to be an actor in the first place often times you're incredibly unstable at first at you know the original you before you get to Hollywood like why do you want to be an actor because you want to be super special not just regular special you want to be you want to be the guy I actually want to ask you about this because my theory is that very few actors want to be actors because of the love of The Craft I mean yes there's alpacino and Robert dairo who who really do this because you know they're just they're real artists but most people are really looking for the extrinsic perks right it's really cool for me to walk around and people throwing themselves off balconies when I when I make an appearance right and to make tons of so is would would you agree that that's true I mean is that yeah it's a sickness you know the there's a lot of people they see like a guy like a go back to Brad Pit for instance they see the love that Brad Pit gets they want to be like him and what's the best way to be like him to do what he does and so what does he do he de acts how hard is that it's just pretending I'm going to get into acting you know they just they want they have a hole in their soul they need to fill up with other people's attention and almost all of them that are like really extremely successful had some [ __ ] wacky childhood right me
personally I had a very bad childhood it was was not good you know and because of that bad child it wasn't the worst I have friends that have way worse childhoods but it was enough to create a deficit that I had this uh burning desire to fill in to show that I wasn't a loser you know that it wasn't it wasn't this this child who is ignored and you know and treated like [ __ ] that I wasn't that that I'll show you you know and that I'll show you is what sort of leads by getting Fame by becoming or being great at Athletics I mean that's what initially led me to fighting that's what initially led me to Comedy it wasn't as much I'll get Fame as I'll show you like I'm going to get great at something and then somewhere along the line I started acting it was but that was completely by accident they I never really yeah I never taken any acting like classes or anything like that I just got a development deal because of stand-up comedy and I I took a handful of private one-on-one acting classes with a crazy person oh this crazy lady who was constantly trying to get me to if I did get a show to cast her as my mother and like working her way in oh so gross she oh conversations that I had with this lady were so brutal and it sort of like that was one of the first interactions that I had ever had with someone who has is deep deep in the acting world in the business and I got to be around some of these people that were also taking her classes I'm like you people are [ __ ] gross there's something gross about the just the disingenuous Behavior yeah but I again as we said I think it all boils down to like what is that world so are many of your personal friends in the industry or are they more in fighting or most of them are comedians most of my good friends are standup Comics cuz stand-up comics is like and the other ones are martial artists those those two worlds are they're as solid as you can get like if you're not funny no one laughs if you don't know how to fight you're going to get your ass kicked if you you know what I mean even if you don't know if you don't know Jiu-Jitsu someone's going to strangle you if you you know these are all Rock Solid worlds there's no no getting around them where things get weird and Airy fairy is when you're pretending to be a superhero you know
you're pretending to be a just think it's it's an unnatural position to be in and for human beings as you you were saying we have this evolutionary trait where we look at successful behavior and we want to emulate it well if you find the guy who's the head of the tribe who's got the you know the scars and the wisdom that's the the guy that you want to pay attention to because you can learn from other people's mistakes and he he shows wisdom you can emulate his behavior and you can become successful well when someone is on TV and or in a movie theater and their head's 60 feet tall and they're everything they're saying is perfect you want to be them you know you want to follow them you want to worship them because they seem to be exhibiting this uh evolutionary thing and I also think that the media itself whether it's music or whether it's movies and television there there's an inescapable quality to being on film that is is is unavoidable in some very strange way right in that your body's not designed to absorb it your body is not designed to absorb movies your body is absorbed to designed to absorb the the wisdom of the natural world like the wisdom of you know that guy got bitten by a tiger stay out of the Tall Grass you know it's real [ __ ] simple you know like oh he went in the river and he drowned don't go in the river you know all these lessons we learn from the natural world all these things that we see that exist in the material you know world that's in front of us but when this world has all of a sudden been changed and now you're you're looking at dragons and you're looking at you know spaceships and [ __ ] lightning bolts and all these things that are taking place on the screen that aren't real the whole thing gets very squirly in our minds we don't know what to do with it cool so do you ever get blowback since we're talking about blowback about me do you get blowback from people in the industry for speaking so critically of the Hollywood types they're scared especially actors terrified to have an opinion on anything opinion on someone [ __ ] on actors because the problem is then it would be Expos people would start examing well let's examine your beh let's examine What actors really let's examine some of the things you said like they probably get mad [ __ ] him
but I'm not going to say it you know so you won't get actors on this show oh I've had actors on the show it's not all actors it's like saying I mean all a lot of comedians are [ __ ] up but it's not all comedians a lot of Fighters are [ __ ] up but not all of them I mean there's a lot of actors that are really nice I I've done some like uh I've done movies with people like Rosario Dawson who's beautiful and famous she's about as nice and normal as you're ever going to be she's like when you're you would never in a million she's famous she seems complely unaffected by whatever mechanism I don't know how she got not fake modesty no she's totally normal would I I wish I had a video of her playing with my daughter when my daughter was two it was hilarious she was grabbing her and like stuffing her a whole hand in her mouth my daughter would scream laughing and she kept doing it again it was so funny she's really funny my daughter was crying at the monster outside oh the werewolf yeah sorry man I should have warned you I didn't know you're going to bring kids werewolf a [ __ ] I think scary no there's a lot of nice people that are actors like there's a lot of nice people I'm sure that do all sorts of things I know a lot of dudes that are in special forces that are nice as hell right and they've killed folks you know it's like there's a lot of nice people out there I got uh last year when we came to California we come here every year to vacation I I don't know if you knew this is the wrong time why don't you come to Winter man you live in Montreal I we I was at you irine for a couple of years and then had headed back to Montreal and have been trying to get back to California yeah that Winner's a [ __ ] up there you been to Montreal oh yeah many times yeah well saner I guess yeah well I grew up in Boston and I used to do comedy at the Montreal Comedy Festival every year oh there you go yeah which is happening soon I guess yes every summer I used to go I started going up there in I think ' 92 so oh cool so you were saying about the Special Forces so we you know we always hang out at one of the beaches we meet people we chat you know we're very friendly and so I met a who's he's become now a very good friend a FBI
special agent whose job it is to tailgate all of these Muslim extremists around UC Irvine area whoa tailgate though well yeah I mean I hope he's not going to be upset that I said this well I haven't worries uh so yeah so uh so he's he's he's told me some unbelievable stories of and and he he too I mean he was an FBI agent who's been under a lot of pressure to do the political correct thing right as you probably know that you're not supposed to say Islamic extremists or Islam or this or that and so when he hears me in some of my discourse he finds it quite liberating because here's a guy who is sort of whose job it is to protect us from some of these dangers who faces some of the politically correct shackles that we've been talking about well our M our mutual friend Sam Harris yes has had an incredible amount of blowback in his honest and objective assessment of Muslim exre incred the Muslim extremist that he's uh documented that he has put on his blog like he had this thing where he was saying like um there's there's a there's a video of this guy um who's speaking um I forget what country he's in but he's speaking in English to this group of uh Islamic people and he's talking about the differences between what people think of him as radical Islam and what is just Islam right and he starts talking about he goes how many of you believe in the works of the Quran in the word of the Quran and and and how many of you follow it and they all like raise their hand how many of you believe that the word of God is the best way to deal with homosexuals and that what whatever the Quran says whether they it says they should be stoned to death that this is the word of God and this is and they all raise their hand and like he he goes into this thing about how many of you think that women should be silent and that they should you know should listen to their man because this is what God has said they all rais their hand and he's like see this is this is not radical Islam this is just Islam so all these people that say oh they're so radical they're radical Islam and like he doesn't even realize that he's demonstrating radical Islam exactly he's demonstrated and Sam Harris got so much [ __ ] hate just for putting this video
up I saw all these people oh I see what you're doing shielding your his islamophobic with one person and your islamophobia with and what's astonishing is that you know he he is a true liberal yes and yet he is painted to be some hate Monger well he also gets painted that way because it's perceived that he supports War because he wants to to suppress this aspect of of humanity and why is it well it's because it's not over here yet if it was over here it was invading and you were getting suicide bombs on a daily basis you would have a real issue with it too I'll tell you a great story uh along those lines a woman approached me if who was used to be a friend now she no longer is a friend you'll know by the end of the story why she said you know you know a lot about this issue God you grew up in the region uh what is the position on uh Islam regarding Jews okay well I mean we escape Lebanon because we're going to be executed okay by it wasn't by the Amish okay right uh so I said you know what rather than kind of go into a whole treaties here's what I'm going to do I'm going to share with you a montage of imams from around the world so this is not called specific there's an Indonesian Imam a Malaysian Kuwaiti yemeni so these are at their sermons this is at the mosque where they are preaching what should be done to the Jews and one of the particular um imams was showing images of the Nazis bulldozing uh skeletons into the ditches and he was lamenting to God why God would didn't you give us the pleasure of Exterminating those Jewish rats why do you hate us so much those Jewish rats some version of that right so I mean it was even by that standard was diabolical so I I share with her the link and I make I made absolutely no interpretations right I wasn't saying it's good it's bad I just shared the link now she's a Jewish woman whose grandparents I can't remember on which side had had suffered in the Holocaust her response back to me well in you sharing this video you're exhibiting the same extremism so so when your moral compass is so broken that the guy who shares a video in response to a question that you asked me is no different than the people who are generating the content in the video we
doomed we need a better term for political correctness because that's even more extreme than political correctness it's denial of reality based on your own ideology and that's what it is it's just this is crazy sickness that people who consider themselves intelligent intellectual aggressive open-minded these are the people that exhibit this ridiculous trait because I think they just have this Instinct that to criticize an other is go is wrong especially when that other is their religious views but is that true because they have no problem criticizing the heck Republican senator who believes in creationism and wants to teach it in school they'll [ __ ] hate to the end of time about that fool that's true but if it's some Imam who thinks that you know women should cover themselves up like they look like ja H or what is it was it Boba Fett whichever one whatever it is please direct your hate mail to Joe Rogan come it bring it on [ __ ] it's silliness it's and my silliness is not I almost have more disdain for the people that are progressive that have an issue with someone criticizing this than I do the people that were brainwashed and and ingrained with this religion because these the people that are supposedly intellectual ual are supposedly responsible for guiding the thought of the young people the people that are supposed to be the the folks that are the the the ones that are the curators of these ideas the ones that are the ones who are teaching children in school these These are the wise ones who are professionally intelligent you're supposed to be professionally objective professionally wise and you have this ridiculous notion because of the environment that we live in where this politically correct whatever want to call it ideology has has gotten so infected it's such a bizarre computer virus of the Mind well the king of these these guys although this has nothing to do with Islam is n chamski i don't know if you know much about him I mean I I I jokingly play a game called the six degrees of separation of n Chomsky so I give you a Calamity and in six causal links you have to link it back to why the US is evil so you know an a an Amazonian frog died in six causal links or less you have to tell me why it is the fault of the US military industrial
complex as to why that Frog died because he views the whole world through very very uh you know uh myopic lens M right uh Hamas is nice uh Israel is a evil apartheid racist State and you think this is a Jewish guy who's spewing this from his uh safety of his confines in MIT off now I grew up in that world I promise you they're not going to think too kindly to you uh when the lights are off and so it's just it really is amazing to kind of understand the schizophrenic position or for example queers for Palestine is another one right queers for Palestine yeah that that's that's a huge movement I need a t-shirt I need a quer for Palestine t-shirt we find they have a Cafe Press which area in the Middle East can you be open and assume your sexual orientation it's in Israel yes yet what's going to happen to you in some of those other areas is not going to be very pretty and yet these people are able to completely dissociate from that reality it's like Uncle Tom's right right it's kind of along those lines I suppose in a way that yeah the the idea that for whatever reason this one religion is the one that you're not supposed to criticize I don't understand how that happened I wonder if it's connected in some way to the suppression of the people that live in these places where their natural resources are being stolen in by the war machine which is undeniable undeniable what's going on in Iraq or in Afghanistan how much of it how much of the hustle has to do with the natural resources whether it be the poppy fields whether they be the minerals in Afghanistan whether it's the oil in Iraq undeniable that these people are being sure for for sure they're subject to the war machine that's coming in to steal the resources and that that that's that's something that people are aware of and you see these images of these people in these Islamic countries that are dying that are getting bombed on and and also the dehumanised to by a lot of people that are trying to justify this these wars that that is the only thing that makes sense to me and also the fact that this has happened over the course of since 2001 this is when this anti- U this islamophobia notion has been really pushed harder and harder well I think it's also because that's the way that I
demonstrate how tolerant and Progressive I am by showing that I am not going to lump everybody with those crazy 911 people and so again it's part of that Progressive posing uh no ideology no belief system is is free from mockery from criticism and the quicker we find that out and the quicker we kind of fix this problem the the better we'll be off do you think that that's possible I mean this is the internet and this is this is where it gets really weird is that the internet is supposedly where ideas come to Beed out you know I mean this is the the age of information this is where it's all on the table so you're saying is it is it is it going to be possible to suppress criticisms of Islam for much longer yeah is it going to be possible to keep up this ridiculous facade well I think I think one of the ways that you suppress It Is by creating an ethos of self-censorship so right so uh if I open up my laptop and I can write on my psychology today blog to 3 million people I have a real clear choice to make that day am I going to write something that can bring heat to my young children and then I have to decide whether I'm willing to do that or not now the fact that I've already engaged in that calculus in that calculation suggests that we are I mean the the the the canary is singing in the cold mine and so I think we have to be in an environment where we don't engage in this type of self censorship so so I think uh we're definitely down a wrong road I think many academics uh privately will speak about these issues very openly with me but will never even as so far as go as to like something on Facebook L they will be found out that's so crazy you got to worry about your standing you got to worry about your public standing you got to worry about your job you got to worry that's more people should be self efficient you have less to think about in that regard but when you're an educator how can you be in in one sense you have tenure that kind of helps a lot but tenure creates a lot of hubris there's a lot of guys who have tenure that all a sudden become Untouchable and they force feed their students their ideologies yeah absolutely and actually I wrote an article on uh on my psychology day blog where I was talking about the necessity for tenure but also its potential for
misuse right cuz you do get an incredible amount of Deadwood with tenure right do you foresee a time where universities won't be the main source of Education that will somehow another to be taken care of online that's a good question I mean right now there's a development of have you heard of you know what muks are no Muk are I know what Joey Diaz calls mukes there's [ __ ] moo over here you're dummy okay as a the the ratory term goofball right you're a Muk uh no uh mukes are a massive online I can't remember the rest of the these are courses that are often times offered under the opes of a university but they're free courses where people can massively register you have you know teaching a course 100,000 people MIT does that right MIT does that it's a whole bu and actually I try to to hook up with these guys called corsera that organizes a portal for this but they they don't have a contract with Concordia and it has to be between University and the organization for it to fly um so I do see a potential eventually for sort of a more democratization of knowledge but I don't suspect that we're going to lose the university anytime soon was this social aspect of it that's so interesting you know people go away and they party and they have fun they find themselves they not in Canada though yeah it's very interesting because I've studied both in the US and in Canada as part of my studying and so this Greek system going away to college not being close to your parents uh uh the drinking games that's very much much more so of aner American right of passage than it is a Canadian most Canadian students end up going to the school that is physically closest to them that's interesting is that because it's so paid for by the government that's it you got you got it so in Canada you don't have historically I mean now some programs are getting a bit more privatized but historically everything is big brother so there isn't this huge hierarchy of universities right the Harvard and then uh whatever uh all schools are public and so yes Migel University is more famous than some other Canadian University but on average all Canadian schools are quite good and you have about 40 universities and so there's
really no point in choosing between them and going across the country in the US you have 3,000 you know colleges and universities there's widely varying on everything in terms of price in terms of quality and so I think that's what makes it a bit more exciting to choose and pick but in Canada they're all good that's interesting in the United States they also have universities that cater specifically to religious ideas too like what was the one that that uh someone got in trouble for during one of the elections for taking support from and that they they they wouldn't allow interracial couples remember that was that bringham young was it bringham young it might have been bringham young I I don't remember which one it was but it was some Southern University and I forget who they were supporting but it became a big uh problem with them that they had they had become uh aligned with this University that didn't didn't allow interracial couples like whoa like you know and what time you know the real problem with that obviously it's racist but also the varying scales of race like like is it only pure blood you know would you a [ __ ] vampire like like what if someone is like 116th Native American is that you know is he interracial if he's dating a blonde woman from Norway you know what if the woman you know is like 1/8 Chinese like one quarter like when do we draw the line Half she's half Chinese like what the [ __ ] what if she lies about it and says she's Eskimo to think that if only I converted to Seventh Day Adventist I could be living in Southern California man dude you could have been rocking it and teaching [ __ ] teaching [ __ ] and lying about Jesus it would have been awesome maybe I still might accept them tanning yeah you've been tanning you can Tan in Montreal too for about 3 weeks Montreal you probably know this joke we have four seasons winter winter winter and July that's true well July is pretty awesome though and everybody's very festive yeah one of the things that I love about uh any place like Canada or uh like a lot of parts of Canada is that they really appreciate the summertime because of the fact the wi are so brutal we over that's exactly right it's the festival sort of city of the world because we're completely cocooned from
say end of November till say mid April and so we make up for it I think it also develops character too I've talked about Los Angeles and that a lot of people that are born and raised in Los Angeles are like spoiled rich kids that you know also won the lottery like they don't realize how easy they've got it like the worst the weather gets here you have to hit a button and turn the AC on it's the most brutal thing you have to do is use your finger to press a button well I remember when we lived here when I was at UC Irvine uh one time we were driving on the highway and there was a warning weather advisory because there was going to be 10 minutes of rain and when it rains the the roads apparently become a bit more slippery uh because of the oil State I don't I don't know exactly what it was and so I'm thinking you know we drive Inus 30° in snowstorms they have warning advisories when it rains for 10 minutes it's true you guys have character we have none we're done you know what I'll give up my character to move to Southern California well you've lived a bunch of years up there you realize that the winners are not worth it they get they are brutal they they especially if you have to go anywh if you could work out of your house all winter long and you had a good supply of wood and water and food ready for you and a bear once in a while to shoot then you're set there you go then you can stay warm and full but California there's pros and cons the the con is obviously that everybody knows about it so you've been here how you've been here since 94 oh okay so you've been here for 20 years yeah it's uh but I grew up in Boston and also delivered newspapers so I drove every day 365 days a year so snowstorms everything one thing is good I know how to drive in snow I know how to drive real good right like when the ass end of my car kicks out I don't sweat it at all I just counter steer it's like instinctive but you know it's more pleasurable to live here for but you don't have the I mean could you break out into the Bostonian accent if you wanted to yeah I kind of you know what I fought once in the Bay State games which was this uh big uh Olympic festivals when Taekwondo was going into the Olympics okay and uh I won it so I got interviewed on television I heard myself on TV I was like oh my God I
sound like a [ __ ] idiot it was my accent was so strong yeah we've been working hard training hard for this I was like oh I didn't realize I didn't realize how gross it sounded so I abandon you work hard too okay I just abandoned it I mean it comes out every now and then if I have a couple drinks in me you hear a little bit of it but uh it's a weird accent because I have a little bit of New Jersey too born New Jersey um man we're just about out of time is there anything else you wanted to talk about before just wanted to thank I can't believe all the 3 hours 3 hours feels like 3 minutes man you're the best interviewer ever Ah that's ridiculous you're the best guest ever well thank pretty easy to do look we could do this a 100 times man let me know when you're back in town again we'll do this again for sure you're on well um your books what could people buy where can they buy it what what do you suggest so probably if they want the sort of trade book The the book that's written for the masses the consuming Instinct uh consuming Instinct what Juicy Burgers Ferraris pornography and giftgiving reveal feel about human nature so that they could get on Amazon and they'll be listing of my other books there they could check out my psychology today blog homo consumer ricus where I write about everything religion politics when you say homo you better say something else real quick you know you can't have a kind of homo sapan boy what you kind of homo consumerist you got to be real careful so okay well listen thank you very much it a really fun conversation I really really appreciate you coming down here and spreading some knowledge and information is was really fun to talk to you too really appreciate it you could follow Gad on Twitter it's uh Gad sad I say it right yep GS a g a DSA a d on Twitter and uh the links there are also to his website and you can uh find his books on Amazon do you have any on books on tape is it on they're not I wish I need to do thatn son you need to audio tape your books man just read your books and with that sexy radio voice I mean that's what I'm talking about do it you got it you got it flaun it all right folks so we got another podcast coming up uh in a little bit tonight uh with uh David Seaman he'll be here in about uh
10 minutes so until then much love my friends much love please uh support our sponsors uh Blue Apron go to uh blueapron.com Rogan that's blue APR is that it why why am I having a hard time finding it here where's the uh the copy oh there's two copies here okay blueapron.com Rogan that was correct and you will get two free meals uh delicious healthy nutritious low in calories I just started using it and I really enjoy it I love the fact that I don't have to go to the supermarket when I'm busy it's all delivered to your house give it a shot and uh like I said you'll get two free meals blueapron.com Rogan we're also brought to you by Ting go to rogan.com for $25 off of any of their delicious cellular devices all right we'll see you soon bye big kiss mAh [Music]