49. Dr. Gad Saad — Doing Gad’s Work

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2019

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the Science Salon Podcast, Michael Shermer talks to the renowned evolutionary behavioral scientist and Concordia University professor Dr. Gad Saad. Starting with his escape to Canada from war-torn Lebanon, Dr. Saad recounts how he got interested in the study of human nature in general and consumer behavior in particular through the evolutionary lens, why people make the choices they do in the marketplace, why evolutionary psychology is an equal-opportunity offender to both the political left and right, what’s wrong with the Blank Slate model of human nature, what it means to hypothesize that something evolved “for” an adaptive reason, how evolutionary psychologists test their claims, the consilience of human knowledge, epistemological humility, postmodernism and how it has corrupted the academy, and the vital importance of free speech and free inquiry in science and society.

Dr. Gad Saad held the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption from 2008 to 2018. He is the author of The Consuming Instinct (2011, Prometheus Books) and The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (2007, Lawrence Erlbaum), editor of Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences (2011, Springer), and is finishing his next book on idea pathogens and how they have spread like a contagion in the academy, now spilling out into government and corporations. He is the host of the popular podcast The Saad Truth, which focuses on science, religion, political correctness, multiculturalism, postmodernism, third-wave feminism, Islam, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and many other topics.

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This Science Salon was recorded on December 26, 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Science Salon Podcast. I'm your host Michael Schurmer. We post these
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0:46.4	To that end, I want to thank everyone who donated to our annual fundraising drive this year,
0:51.4	which we depend upon to meet our annual budget in support of our many Socials. Drive this
0:55.0	science-alon-Per which we depend upon to meet our annual budget in support of our many science education projects.
0:57.0	This science salon podcast, for example,
1:00.0	grew out of our original Caltech Distinguished Science Lecture Series,
1:03.7	which then morphed into our science salon live events.
1:07.3	And now, thanks to technology, we can produce weekly dialogues
1:10.5	with leading scientists and scholars on a variety of topics.
1:15.4	My guest for this episode is the renowned evolutionary behavioral scientist and
1:19.7	Concordia University professor Dr. Gadd Sad,
1:23.2	Starting with his escape to Canada from war-torn Lebanon,
1:27.0	Dr. Sad recounts how he got interested in the study of human nature in general
1:31.5	and consumer behavior in particular through the
	...

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