Welcome to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine. Today we're joined by Dr. Gadsad,

scholar of the Declaration of Independence Center in the Study of American Freedom at the University of

Mississippi. He's author of the upcoming book, Suicidal Empathy. Gadsad, thank you so much for joining us on Podforce One.

It's a real honour to speak to you finally, having read you and listened to you for so long.

I wanted to ask you about your latest book, Suicidal Empathy, which seems to be really what

ails the West at the moment. And so can you tell us just from the

beginning how you came up with that concept? Thank you so much for having me on. Great to finally

e-meat you at least, hopefully in person soon. So I have to step back to one of my previous books to explain how I got to suicidal empathy.

So in the parasitic mind, I was arguing that in the same way that a wide range of animals can be parasitized by actual brainworms.

So for example, a wood cricket abhors water, but when it is parasitized by a

hairworm, the hairworm needs the wood cricket to jump into water, commit suicide, so that the

wood cricket could complete its reproductive cycle. And so that was my epiphany then. I said,

okay, well, I'm going to use that neuroparasetological framework to argue that

human beings can also be parasitized by ideological parasitic ideas.

But in order for me to completely hijack your capacity to think, I need to parasitize two systems,

your cognitive system, your thinking system,

which is the parasitic mind, but also your emotional system, which is suicidal empathy.

And so it's a one-two punch.

The parasitic mind dealt with my thought processes, suicidal empathy deals with my emotional

system.

That's brilliant. So it's heart and mind.

It's heart and mind, exactly.

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