The man whose musings fuel Elon Musk’s nightmares
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Elon Musk’s bedtime routine is giving him nightmares. To hear him in public is to catalog a running list of his greatest fears: end-of-theworld type stuff, killer
AI threats and, in recent years, the scourge of what he calls the Woke Mind Virus.
“I listen to podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep,” Musk said this past week during an appearance at the Milken Institute conference. “So perhaps that might be part of the problem.”
One provocateur, in particular, has caught his attention of late: Gad Saad, a marketing professor at Concordia University in Montreal, and author of the book “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.”
To read the book, which was first published in 2020, is to see reflections of Musk’s most contentious comments during the past few years, as the billionaire has increasingly expressed concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and illegal immigration overtaking the U.S.
“I read your insightful book on the parasitic woke mind virus,” Musk tweeted praise to Saad earlier this year. “It gave me nightmares.”
Both men share a common embrace of social media. On X, Saad has almost 900,000 follearning lowers and on YouTube more than 300,000 subscribers. Both men have separately appeared on the popular Joe Rogan podcast several times.
Along the way, Musk and
Saad have developed something of a public bromance. This year alone, Musk has interacted with Saad’s X account more than 140 times.
All of the attention has apparently helped boost interest in the book. Since going on sale, it has sold more than 120,000 copies across all formats, according to Skyhorse Publishing, which acquired the book’s original publisher, Regnery Publishing. Paperback sales jumped 94% in the first four months of 2024 compared with a year earlier, while the digital version rose 254%.
“We just did an unexpected rush reprint of 10,000 copies and I anticipate another very soon,” Tony Lyons, president of Skyhorse Publishing, said in an email.
The book is an extension of Saad’s career exploring how human evolution informs modern consumer behavior—a controversial way of looking at the world that is sometimes called evolutionary psychology.
Over the years, his academic writings have covered a range of disciplines, including, for example, how menstrual cycles influence food and appearance-related consumption; and how the use of waist-to-hip ratios in online escort ads illustrate what Saad describes as “near-universal” preferences among men for certain female attributes.