Episode 986: Gad Saad on “Suicidal Empathy”

Newt's World

Gingrich 360

News, Politics

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Newt talks with Dr. Gad Saad, a scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi and professor of marketing at Concordia University. His new book, “Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind,” is a number one New York Times nonfiction bestseller. Dr. Saad argues that empathy is vital but must be properly calibrated; too little empathy risks psychopathy, while “hyperactive empathy” misdirected toward the wrong targets becomes “suicidal empathy,” which he believes underlies many domestic and foreign policy failures. Dr. Saad links “Suicidal Empathy” to his earlier book “The Parasitic Mind,” arguing that human decision-making is shaped by both cognitive and affective systems. He claims that just as minds can be infected by ideological brainworms, they can also be captured by dysregulated empathy, allowing activists and policymakers to hijack emotional responses and override critical thinking. Dr. Saad dates the roots of today’s academic and cultural crises to “parasitic ideas” incubated in universities 50–100 years ago, including cultural relativism and postmodernism.

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:08.1	Welcome to Neutte World Podcast on the IHeart Podcast Network.
0:13.2	A number of interesting things going on, some good, some bad.
0:16.4	It's been a very interesting competition between Elon Musk with SpaceX,
0:23.1	who was believed in the launch them quickly, let them blow up, learn from it, launch again,
0:28.7	keep going to break through, and the approach that Jeff Bezos has taken,
0:33.8	which is much slower, much calmer, et cetera.
0:43.3	And Beezus, unfortunately, just had a brutal introduction to reality. He's building a huge rocket, not as big as the starship that Musk is building,
0:47.3	but a very, very big rocket called the New Glen.
0:50.3	And it exploded during a test.
0:53.3	It wasn't taking off yet. They were testing all the parts of it.
0:56.7	And obviously they had a problem because it just blew up on the test pad. That's a real challenge
1:02.6	because this is an integral part of getting to the moon with people and that is also the key to
1:09.9	the future of Blue Origin, which is Bezos's company. Now,
1:14.1	it's not financially a problem, but business is enormously wealthy. And they're going to go back.
1:19.1	They think they'll launch again another version of the rocket in the very near future.
1:24.8	But they were hoping to launch 48 satellites into low Earth orbit
1:28.5	to help Amazon expand its broadband capabilities, sort of in competition with Elon Musk and the
1:36.4	work he's been doing. Earlier this month, NASA announced that it awarded Blue Origin a $188 million
1:43.8	contract to deliver lunar terrain vehicles,
1:47.2	that is, vehicles that can run around on the surface of the moon.
	...

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