Dying to be kind, but I wont be! | Gad Saad – Suicidal Empathy book review

Gad Saad, like Jordan Peterson, has transformed from an out-and-out academic to somewhat of a cultural icon. Like Peterson, Saad sits in a strange space between a university library and a podcast studio: a university professor who has broken into the consciousness of normal people. 

Saad’s more recent addition to his literary catalogue, Suicidal Empathy, follows a similar theme to his breakthrough smash-hit bestseller The Parasitic Mind. Saad’s wicked sense of humour, offbeat wisecracks, and satirical role-play make him one of the few authors who can make a civilizational existential crisis funny.

Buy the book here

So, to the rub – what is Suicidal Empathy about?

If you’re on X/Twitter, or have listened to Gad Saad before, the terminology will not seem unfamiliar. The book largely explores why people in the West are on a civilisational cliff edge, seemingly willingly throwing themselves over the edge.

The analogy used in both the Parasitic Mind and Suicidal Empathy is that of the wood cricket. 

A wood cricket, an insect, is usually hydrophobic and avoids water at all costs. For a wood cricket, plunging itself into water would be certain suicide. However, they find sustenance by eating aquatic mayflies, who find sustenance by eating the larvae of the waterbound horsehair worm. Over the period of about a month, a horsehair worm can consume the fat stores within the cricket before hijacking its nervous system, tricking it into plunging itself into water to die. The worm bursts out of the host to mate and restart the life cycle. How, though, could an insect that is scared of water be manipulated into killing itself?

We, Western people, are being wood crickets.

That is the argument in a nutshell; through a series of parasitic ideas, we have been manipulated into being so empathetic that we are causing ourselves great civilisational harm. We are being tricked and controlled into plunging ourselves into water so that another civilisation may rise from the ashes. 

Our book review

This has been one of the most anticipated books of 2026, and Saad’s most recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast put his ideas in front of millions. Saad’s concepts have been at the forefront of the debate surrounding our cultural direction, so I had high expectations.

As a standalone book, it would have been easy to review: a real page-turner packed with genuine gems of knowledge and insight. The book is funny, easy to follow for the most part, and doesn’t try to bamboozle you to make its point (though the constant use of the word “epistemological” gets a bit tiring, even if necessary).

However, the book does feel a bit like an extension of The Parasitic Mind—there are several repeated stories, anecdotes, data points, and examples. The content isn’t entirely new, and it follows a very similar vein to his previous work. There are also some passages where the points feel laboured; the endless examples and in-depth analysis felt a little unnecessary, though that might just be me reading it purely for entertainment.

If you plan to read it, I’d suggest picking up The Parasitic Mind first and supplementing what you learn with Suicidal Empathy.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I found myself frequently pausing to ponder its concepts—some I saw instantly, others took time to process, and a few I disagreed with entirely. If you’re the type of person who is a honey badger when defending your perception of the world, Saad is exactly the honey badger you need.

Conclusions

Ultimately, this book is a test. It’s offensive to some, and many think the ideas within it are dangerous. It is certainly provocative, but whether it is truly dangerous depends on which side of the partisan divide you stand on. The purpose of reading a book like this is to push past the library ribbon marked “Forbidden Knowledge,” trusting yourself to evaluate the ideas and use them to make the world better.

I, for one, am glad I’ve read both books and look forward to Gad Saad’s next one – unless it’s about football, in which case he can shove his opinions right back into his cave of forbidden knowledge. 

Buy the book here