The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

Monday, May 9th at 5:00 PM

Policy@McCombs

Join us in person in the Crum Auditorium (in Rowling Hall 1.400) or via Zoom here

Address: 300 W Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Austin, TX 78705

Parking: You can find paid parking in the Brazos Garage, the AT&T Hotel Garage, or any other garage or street parking.

Dr. Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), and former holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption (2008-2018). He has held Visiting Associate Professorships at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and the University of California–Irvine. Dr. Saad received the Faculty of Commerce’s Distinguished Teaching Award in June 2000, and was listed as one of the ‘hot’ professors of Concordia University in both the 2001 and 2002 Maclean’s reports on Canadian universities. Saad was appointed Newsmaker of the Week of Concordia University in five consecutive years (2011-2015) and is the co-recipient of the 2015 President’s Media Outreach Award-Research Communicator of the Year (International), which goes to the professor at Concordia University whose research receives the greatest amount of global media coverage.

Professor Saad has pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. His works include The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature (translated into Korean and Turkish); The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption; Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences, along with 75+ scientific papers, many at the intersection of evolutionary psychology and a broad range of disciplines including consumer behavior, marketing, advertising, psychology, medicine, and economics. His Psychology Today blog (Homo Consumericus) and YouTube channel (THE SAAD TRUTH) have garnered 7+ million and 26+ million total views respectively.  In June 2020, he started a podcast titled The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad, which is available on all leading podcast platforms (4+ million downloads).

In addition to his scientific work, Dr. Saad is a leading public intellectual who often writes and speaks about idea pathogens that are destroying logic, science, reason, and common sense.  His fourth book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense was released in October 2020 with the paperback edition released in October 2021. It is an international bestseller with 16 signed translation rights thus far.  His fifth book tentatively titled A Recipe for the Good Life is under contract with Regnery Publishing.  

He received a B.Sc. (1988) and an M.B.A. (1990) both from McGill University, and his M.S. (1993) and Ph.D. (1994) from Cornell University.

Learn more here.