1043: Andrew Gold | Unveiling the Psychology of Secrets

1043: Andrew Gold | Unveiling the Psychology of Secrets

This transcript is yet untouched by human hands. Please proceed with caution as we sort through what the robots have given us. We appreciate your patience!

[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Special thanks to Heineken zero zero for sponsoring this episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:04] Andrew Gold: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. I had a French girlfriend for three years when I was 19 or 18 year early. Spoke in French. You know, sometimes we just speak as a French and we'd often said in French to one another, blah, blah, blah.

And then she'd whispered in my ear, I love you. And I felt sick. It was too soon. Yeah. If I was doing a, some sort of detector test in your own language, it's definitely different.

[00:00:32] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, four star general hacker or special operator.

And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today, we're talking with my friend Andrew Gold about the psychology of secrets. You've heard him on the show before, mostly on Skeptical Sunday. Now he's got his own book on secrets, which I have read and thoroughly enjoyed.

Today we'll explore why people tell secrets, what keeping secrets does to our body and brain. Why even religions, or I should say, especially religions, keep secrets, different types of secrets, how secrets are related to privacy, virtue, signaling, shame, guilt, and more. This is an interesting topic for me. By virtue of our feedback, Fridays, we get a lot of listener letters.

We deal a lot in secrets on this podcast. Many of them quite dark. This episode, by the way, was recorded live at the podcast show in London. So we had a crowd of people around us the whole time. Bit of a unique format for an interview like this. Like we're having this intimate conversation about secrets and there's hundreds slash even thousands of people walking by some stopping some taking photos and videos of us while we're doing this.

We're just like, I guess, ignoring them to focus on this sort of intimate conversation. It was really unique and interesting and fun. So here we go with Andrew Gold. So you wrote a book on the Psychology of Secrets, and I thought this was such an interesting topic. I was a little jealous when you told me what your book was about because you picked a damn good topic.

And I think that first of all, also, we don't think about the psychology of secrets. We don't think about the impact that keeping a secret has on on us. We don't think about the impact that keeping a bad secret for a long time. You like you think it's stressful, of course, but that's kind of where the research for me began and ended.

Where do we begin with something like this? Why do people tell secrets in the first place? Maybe is a good place to start.

[00:02:47] Andrew Gold: That's a great place to start. It's where we began. I'm obsessed with evolutionary psychology. Some of it is speculation because we weren't there at the time or whatever it might be, but if you look back to tribes, it makes sense that it would hurt us to keep secrets.

If you have a tribe of people who are all intent on keeping their own secrets, each individual has hidden some food over there. They've hidden the water. There's some refuge over there they can go to, and they're not telling anybody else about it. That tribe is not going to succeed. There's no social cohesion.

There's no good dynamics there. And so it makes sense that any tribe where it actually hurt to keep hold of something secret, it actually physically and emotionally. Makes us feel pain that tribe would've done well 'cause it would encourage us. It incentivizes us to tell one another our secrets. So I think that's where it goes back to.

That's the best explanation we've got of why it hurts. It does appear to be something that's called the fever model, which is a little bit like how a cold or a virus or any kind of fever takes hold of your body. Your body then makes it uninhabitable for the virus. Unfortunately, it's not very nice for you either.

Your head gets hot, you start sweating everywhere, it's no good. Well there's the same theory around secrets. The more secrets you keep and the more important those secrets are, the more related they are to your identity. Big secrets that could get you into trouble, it hurts. And it's your brain's way of telling you, Hey, don't keep too many of these secrets.

'cause you might get found out. Try to let other people in the tribe in on some of this stuff.

[00:04:13] Jordan Harbinger: Ah, that's interesting. And it, it says a lot about why people who carry like a dark secret for a long time. End up with chronic stress and anxiety because they're having a, a literal physical reaction to keeping a dark secret, like abuse or something like that in their family.

That is, well, it can be deeply sad, but it also makes sense why people feel good to unload secrets. I know you and I take a lot of emails from show fans and our respective podcasts. We do feedback Friday. People write in with stuff where I'm like, holy smoke. You trusted a stranger. And it's a deep honor, of course to be trusted with this.

But also we're safe if they tell that to somebody they know it could destroy their whole life. Some of these secrets that we talk about on the show, but if they email me, they know I'm gonna keep them anonymous because we have that level of trust. You talk about this in your book though, you say then the burden is then put on.

On the person who is told the secret. But I don't feel that way when I read say a letter. So why is it different in real life Or what's going on here

[00:05:10] Andrew Gold: when you read a letter? I think you're a good person to tell secrets too, because you don't know. Not because you're trustworthy, because I mean, ultimately what we found is that you shouldn't tell your secrets, really to anybody if you hope for them to remain secret.

Because everybody tells. And I think anyone listening to this will be nodding along like, oh God, wow. I tell hundreds of thousands of people your

[00:05:28] Jordan Harbinger: secrets. I just don't put your name on it.

[00:05:30] Andrew Gold: Yeah. Because it's of no interest to you that you don't know these people. They know you. They're your subscribers and they're mostly wonderful people and they trust you and you don't know their friends and their, you know, so it's very different.

They wanna tell someone and they know if they tell their friends, that's not gonna go down, well, that's not gonna end well. They have to tell someone. It's hurting to keep this secret in. And so they're telling you. They're telling me, and this is parasocial interaction.

[00:05:55] Jordan Harbinger: That's such a good word. Tell us about parasocial interaction.

That's this word probably didn't even exist. When we were growing up in the nineties and eighties, because it seems to be a uniquely internet ish phenomenon.

[00:06:07] Andrew Gold: Oh, absolutely. When it started a bit before the internet, but 1950s, 1960s, with talk show hosts, particularly in the States, but the uk, you know, the rest of the world had talk show hosts as well, I suppose.

But in the States, they think of the King of Comedy, which I think was in the eighties, a movie by Scorsese about exactly that. An obsessive fan where Parasocial interaction got too much. What Parasocial interaction is, is this relationship between the viewer and the talk show host. Essentially the good talk show hosts are people who are able to make that relationship feel very real, even though it's actually very one way nowadays with the internet, and especially in recent years, we've got something that doesn't really have a word, but I've been calling it Reciprocal Parasocial interaction, which we are able to speak back.

The talk show host wasn't able to talk back before. Now you are. I am. And we actually talk back and it makes this bond between us and the viewer and the listener even closer. Yeah. The problem is, it's. To an extent, very real and to an extent it's superficial because I've had fans or or subscribers email me and say, Hey, what's your address by the way?

I just wanna send you some chocolates. And I've had to say, oh, I'm really sorry. I can't give out my address. Now if we were really friends, there's not a friend I have to whom I wouldn't give my address. Right. So that's where it falls down. And these things are all very tricky and awkward. I should

[00:07:21] Jordan Harbinger: probably stop giving out my address.

Yes. And eating things that come to me in the mail.

[00:07:26] Andrew Gold: Definitely. Definitely. Well, you know what? I felt so bad because somebody emailed that and then on a podcast I said, oh, it's so sad that you can't do this, but you don't wanna give out your your address in case someone sends anthrax in the mail or something like that.

And that person then emailed next week, oh, sorry, I didn't realize you thought I would be sending you answers. And I was saying, no, no, I didn't mean you specifically. I was just joking. I didn't wanna, you know. And the parasocial interaction was broken,

[00:07:48] Jordan Harbinger: right? You destroyed it. Yeah. Destroyed the trust. I answered pretty much every DM or email that comes in.

And if somebody emails me something and I don't reply, it's probably because I didn't get it. It might take me like two months, but I will answer that. I never really could put my finger on why. I just kind of thought, eh, if somebody takes the time to write me, I should write 'em back. Maybe they'll stay a show fan for a longer period of time if I reinvest a little bit back in them and it scales okay, it takes a lot of time, but it's like, you know it's worth it.

You've just explained that perfectly, I think. Right? They'll invest hundreds of hours with us on our podcast or YouTube channels over the course of a period of years, or even sometimes in one year. If they really get into the show and they drive a lot, for example, and we invest like five minutes back with an email, it really does sort of cure the cement.

It really does solidify things. Yeah. They trust you. It solidifies the trust. It makes you just a 15% more real or whatever you want to call it. And I really think it does a lot. But you're right. People will do things like bake me cookies or something and I'm like, oh, this looks great. And my wife is like, I.

I don't know. The box that came in was kind of torn. Should we trust this? And it's like a weird, you would never, if you sent me cookies, I wouldn't. And the box was torn. I wouldn't be like, he may be poisoned these, but if it's a stranger, even if they emailed me to tell me they were sending me that, I have to wonder, is there a body part in this cookie?

Yeah. And which part is it?

[00:09:11] Andrew Gold: Yeah, there were strange people. That's just

[00:09:12] Jordan Harbinger: a

[00:09:12] Andrew Gold: fact. Yeah. 1% of society, 1% of men, I think, or maybe it's men and women are psychopaths. So that's a bigger percentage than I kind of

[00:09:19] Jordan Harbinger: wanted to

[00:09:20] Andrew Gold: know. Yeah.

[00:09:21] Jordan Harbinger: To hear. It's

[00:09:21] Andrew Gold: larger than a country's army, if you think about that. I mean, it is, I think 300,000 people in the military, in the States.

Yeah. And it's about the same number or a little higher of psychopaths. And so all it takes is one of them to send you something poisonous one time and you're dead. Great. I

[00:09:37] Jordan Harbinger: maybe I should start feeding these things to my kids. Write that down. Uh, which secrets even show up in the Bible? Right. And I know we're gonna get emails about this, so make sure you know what you're gonna say next.

God.

[00:09:48] Andrew Gold: Yes. Yes. Well, I wrote about this as the first ever secret. Now that depends if you're a believer or not. It so happens I'm an atheist. I think more and more religious people are okay with people declaring they're atheists, providing they don't judge or talk down to them in their beliefs. That's always the problem

[00:10:04] Jordan Harbinger: with atheists, though.

Many of them never shut up about being

[00:10:08] Clip: atheist.

[00:10:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, it's just like being

[00:10:09] Andrew Gold: vegan. I'm not one of those, just don't, I don't wanna do it. I don't, I get icky about animals in my mouth, but I can sit next to 20 people eating steaks. Fill your boots. Yeah. Enjoy your life. Do your thing as you're vegan.

See that you keep, you do keep it on the low. Yeah. Well it, you know, it's a bit of everything, isn't it? They, they always say the most boring people would be those. Well, you know, one of their political views and then you know all of them just from that one. Ah, I like that. Tell me about why religions keep secrets,

[00:10:32] Jordan Harbinger: though.

There, there's a function here.

[00:10:34] Andrew Gold: Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, religion's not so much anymore, but if you go back to Christianity and the way Christianity was, I. 500, 600 years ago. The fact is it kept secrets not just from people outside of Christianity, but from Christians themselves. And this is a common facet of cults.

It's a cultish way of being, and it's a way of keeping people in your group. That is what was gonna get the email. Yes, yes.

[00:10:56] Jordan Harbinger: Did you just compare Christianity to cults? No. Here's a 10 pager.

[00:10:59] Andrew Gold: Oh God. Well, it's not okay. Christianity's not a cult, but it did actually ways that were once quite cultish. And for example, you couldn't translate the Bible to English.

Ah, right. It was Greek or

[00:11:09] Jordan Harbinger: Latin. I don't even know. Ama aic. So that was like a gatekeeping thing, right? Like you need someone to read this for you. That's right. It can only be a priest who we control.

[00:11:18] Andrew Gold: Right? So what can you do? You can't go home and read the Bible. You've gotta go into church. So it keeps church attendance up every week.

What do you do when you're there? You give money, you donate to the church. You then hear the stories from the guy at the top. That guy can make it sound however he wants. There's a lot of talk about the way that the, the Bible has been very westernized. I mean, these were people walking around the Middle East by all accounts.

But the photos, not photos. The drawing. The photos. I have the AI photos, I have the drawings and the, the stained glass windows, art and all these kinds of things. They portray very white looking, modern looking people.

[00:11:51] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, we've all seen white Jesus. Yes.

[00:11:53] Andrew Gold: Right? Yeah. White Jesus. There you go. So anyway, it was, it's a way of controlling the narrative, a way of making sure people keep coming back and a way of hopefully getting a bit more money If you're the cult

[00:12:02] Jordan Harbinger: right out of people.

Scientology does this, right? You don't get to learn about the alien thing until you're up there at the Tom Cruise level. That's

[00:12:10] Andrew Gold: right. That's right. Well, Tom Cruise is way past that now. He's

[00:12:12] Jordan Harbinger: bastard. Okay.

[00:12:13] Andrew Gold: You, it's mad. I I could talk about Scientology all day. I know. I, you know, I, I love it. So they've got these things called operating theon levels or different operating thetans.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, I believe is the top one. There's been some talk of eight. There's been talk of 15 even. But they don't seem to exist. Tom Cruise is as far as you can go on that. I think Kirsty Alley was before she passed away. Presumably she's reincarnated into another Scientology member now. Sure. Who knows?

But the amazing thing here, people don't realize this about Scientology. They think, God, how can all these Scientologists, all these members, how can they believe this madness that they believe? Well, most of them don't even know about it. It's so

[00:12:50] Clip: weird.

[00:12:51] Andrew Gold: Yeah. They don't know until operating feet in level three.

By that point, you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. You've excommunicated all of your friends, you've done unspeakable things to other people In the cult, you've recruited people. So when you finally learn the big secrets at operating faith in level three, which is that evil, which Warlords, galactic, uh, nu yeah.

Had a, an overpopulation problem, put billions of people into a volcano on earth and then got their spirits

[00:13:21] Jordan Harbinger: out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's so bizarre. So you would think now someone goes to the Scientology Center, goes, oh, I wanna learn more about this. Googles it immediately finds that and never goes back for that.

And yet

[00:13:32] Andrew Gold: for that reason, they specifically target people who speak English as a second language. I have an old friend, Alex Barn Ross, who was a Scientologist. He worked a lot with Better Cruz, who's Tom Cruise's daughter, and Nicole Kidman's daughter who lived in London. She was at the Scientology, at headquarters of London.

I. And they used to go out to parts of London where they knew there were a lot of people who didn't speak very good English and they would hand out English. It's English very well, but yes, continue because they didn't speak good English. Yeah, you can. It's just not good English. They didn't speak English very well.

No, I think you can speak good, good English. Well, I'm

[00:14:02] Jordan and Andrew Crosstalk: not gonna

[00:14:02] Andrew Gold: argue with a Brit over English. Again, you gonna die on this? I wanna lose this one. Both are right. Well, you're right, you're right. But anyway, so these people often, I mean they have, they have these pamphlets translated to Arabic, for example.

They wanted a lot of the Arabic population around London because they might not have heard the bad stuff about

[00:14:17] Jordan Harbinger: Scientology. Yeah, I mean, they are just like one Arabic website away from not being able to do that. It seems like a losing information battle, but they just don't care. They're almost screening for people who can't use the

[00:14:28] Andrew Gold: internet as long as they keep getting donations.

They get a lot from Tom Cruise, a lot from John Travolta, or at least they did from John Travolta. He doesn't seem to be as engaged anymore. A lot of celebrity donors. It's the celebrity factor. So they stay in Scientology. The Scientology pretends that it has millions of members now. It actually is thought to have about 20 to 30,000 now.

So they're like podcasters. They lie about their numbers. Yeah. And podcasters in size because significant present company excluded. They have significantly

[00:14:54] Jordan Harbinger: smaller numbers than you or I have Uhhuh. That's kind of funny to think about. Huh? More people are listening to us bitch about Scientology than are actually in Scientology.

Many multiples, yeah. Of that. And in fact, millions more if my podcaster numbers are to be believed, which they should. They have. They have more money. That's true. They do have more money. Tell me about how this works in politics. I, when I traveled to North Korea, I was really surprised and shouldn't have been about how little people knew about Kim Jong-UN in the leaders of North Korea.

Where does he live? We don't know. Well, what is his house? You don't know anything about the main headquarters of your government? No. Oh, I know it's a regular apartment, just like a worker. And I'm thinking, come on man. You think Kim Jong-un lives in an apartment? The same one you have? Yeah, that's delusional.

But they don't know how many kids does he have? I don't know. Who is his mother? I don't know. And then these things are slowly drip fed to the population in like the newspaper and on television. And then when they show his daughter for the first time, it's like a big deal. Who is that? Is that his daughter?

Oh my God. He has a daughter. She's 10. That would be so weird if you didn't know that Barack Obama had kids and you found out in the fifth year of his term. Yeah, that would be bizarre. It's amazing you did that in North Korea. That's pretty cool. Yeah, and I would ask them these questions and they would say like, I don't know.

And they're not lying. They really don't know. I would say, I saw that he has a daughter, and they would go, really? Oh, that's interesting. How old is she? I don't know. But they know everything this guy has said his whole life, the fake quotes that are in the books and newspapers. So they're dying to know.

It's like they're like Taylor Swift fans. Mm-Hmm. You know, something that they don't and they don't think it's weird that, you know, and they don't. There's some aspects

[00:16:31] Andrew Gold: to this in the Royal family of course, as well. If you keep mystique going, that obviously just keeps people in a, in a state of confusion and in a state of curiosity and wanting to know more.

If the less, you know, the less you're able to criticize a government. Obviously the STARI is a good example as well as North Korea. Tell us about what the, A lot of people don't even know what

[00:16:48] Jordan Harbinger: the chais is.

[00:16:48] Andrew Gold: The STARI were as an authoritarian left wing government, but one of those where it's so left that it's right and it's so right that it's left, that took over in Germany, east Germany, east Germany, and, and apart from this weird bit in Berlin where that was cut in half, it's a weird one.

People don't realize Berlin is, it's like you cut the country in half, but then there's like an island that is Berlin, right. That has half of it as still as West Berlin during that time. Yeah. Bizarre thing that happened and you just see how a country torn in half. One of them went communist. That was the stari.

And it meant that you had this secret police going on. You had people reporting on one another. It's amazing how fast humans will begin to betray one another. Yeah. Report on one another. They produced more paperwork than it's thought. Any paper outside. I mean it's, there was some stat in the book, I can't remember exactly, but just an extraordinary amount of paper that was just paper about everybody and their lives.

They used to do things like get people who were working with the STARI to attend premieres for pornography showings, just so they could take pictures of them for collateral. I see. You know, you were, that's an

[00:17:48] Jordan Harbinger: interesting gig. Can you imagine you're the secret police porn guy. Yeah. You could what? Having to organize the premiere or, or do the filming?

I'm not sure which one is more awkward. I'm not sure. Perform in, in the pornography? Yeah. No, that one's definitely, that would be the most awkward. I, I lived in e former East Germany for a while. Me too. Um, you That's right. I forgot about that. What years were you there? I moved back two or three years ago and I was there for three years.

I see. So I was there in the nineties and I remember asking a lot of questions about azi and things like that, and I think it was like one third of the population was somehow involved in informing on somebody. So you used to be able to go and see your files at the building and they would open up your Stasi file and they had a counseling service right upstairs because you would go in there and be like, I'm curious about this.

And you'd find out that like your mom was ratting on you or your wife. Or even your kids and you would immediately, you know, lose your mind a little bit because you felt so betrayed. So they would, you couldn't just roll in there and look at your stuff and bounce. So you had to make an appointment and they wanted to kind of like make sure that you were okay afterwards.

That's which I think is admirable and also kind of an insane setup if you

[00:18:53] Andrew Gold: think about it. Well, many people don't want to go and find out because it would change their lives. Right. A lot of people say, I've heard people saying, I understand if people did rat on me, I understand what happened and it's human nature and it's, but I don't want to know specifically because that's gonna change our relationships.

I'd rather not know. But look, even now, you know, we talk about this communism stuff, like it's very bad, which I think it is. And I think you think it is. Yes. But a lot of people still in Germany, they've got this thing called algi, which is a port monto of Ost, meaning East and Nossal meaning nostalgia.

Right. They have nostalgia for it. It's, it's also known, this happens in many Soviet places or many formerly communist places. A lot of people have, you know, they think back to it and it was a time where everyone was employed because everyone had to have a job. Yeah. That, that was

[00:19:36] Jordan Harbinger: sort of, I was gonna mention, they're not nostalgic for the secret police.

They're nostalgic for being employed and being able to go to the dentist and having their whole family and neighborhood school go on a vacation together and feel like they weren't being bombarded by bullshit on TikTok. Sure. Which I

[00:19:53] Andrew Gold: understand. But they, they might have, they might have thought, okay, that's enough.

And I like this collective authoritarian thing that I don't mind the loss of individual liberty. And that's something I found with Hasidic Jews. For example, I spoke to a lot of Hasidic Jews over the years, people who have left Hasidic Judaism. I. And the ones who have left, they said, look, a lot of people back in the Jewish community, they love it.

The women there, a lot of them love it. They love it because there are things in those kinds of collective communities that we as individual freedom lovers or whatever, we do miss out on storytelling. They all gather around the fire and they hear a story from a rabbi or whatever it might be, and it's beautiful in that sense, that sense of tradition.

However, I wouldn't swap what we have with individual liberty and choice for anything. I absolutely love it. But people have different personalities and different choices, and they want different things.

[00:20:38] Jordan Harbinger: Are there different types of secrets? I don't just mean good and bad, that kind of goes without saying.

Right? Is surprise party not the same as keeping a secret about somebody being abused as a child? But are there different, are, are there other varieties of secrets that we, we can kind of differentiate based on your research?

[00:20:54] Andrew Gold: Yeah, we get, they don't necessarily make us, we don't feel them differently, but there are secrets, like relational secrets, and then there are aspirational secrets to do with work, for example.

Okay. So, and some people have to keep both kinds. So Oscar Wild's a good example. He had to keep a secret of being gay in a time when you weren't supposed to be gay from his friends, but also from for work reasons. His, his stuff wouldn't be published if he admitted he was gay. Same for Alan Turing. That kind of secret is really, really difficult and particularly so because it involves your identity.

So what type of secret is that? He had both aspirational as in, uh, work and relational as in personal. Oh, I see.

[00:21:29] Jordan Harbinger: So it's almost like it's just work versus personal secrets.

[00:21:32] Andrew Gold: Yeah. Interesting. That's one type. And then there, there are loads of different types of, there's something called the study of dramaturgy.

Which I'm not gonna be able to remember all the different secrets. I should have it to mind, but people will have to read the books. Know Exactly. But the theory is about, it's not a tease for the book. You literally just can't remember. There's no way I'm gonna remember about dramaturgical theory. I, I don't even know what that means.

I, I looked it up. I found out what it was, I wrote it down and everything left my head immediately after. Yeah. Not that it's not interesting and very useful for anyone who buys a book. Very compelling argument. Yes. Yes. But the idea is that we are all playing roles. Okay. Like, Shakespeare's idea of we are but players on a stage or whatever he says.

Mm-Hmm. If you put but in the middle of the sentence, it sounds right, doesn't it? We are. But this, but this idea that everybody play, you know, we're all playing different kinds of roles and we keep different kinds of secrets and play different roles in that dynamic. And that is really fascinating. It's just hard to remember the exact names

[00:22:22] Jordan Harbinger: and things.

I was joking earlier about podcasters lying about their numbers, but I, but I, you know, of course. Not really. I mean, everybody, all these social media folks, you, you ever get a pitch where it's like, the John Reson show has been downloaded 1,000 million Bill gillion times. And then you talk to that person and you're like.

So what's up with that? And they're like, well, I added up all my TikTok, all my YouTube, all of my Twitter impressions or something. And then I multiplied by the number of years that I did it, and then I wasn't counting like the first seven years, so I just extrapolated my current year all the way back to the beginning.

Even though definitely that wasn't how, and you're just like, so you just massively exaggerated all this, but they don't feel like that's a lie or a secret of some kind. It's just like there's like, they just try to justify it as marketing. Yeah. And it would stress me out to do something like that. Yeah.

And maybe that's more to do with lying than it is to do with secrets. But the secret is what are your real numbers and why are you ashamed of them? It is a secret.

[00:23:21] Andrew Gold: There's an interesting dynamic between, you know, what is a secret and what is a lie, what is a secret, and what is just a private matter? Yeah.

So there's this weird triad going on, and lies tend to be things you tell, you tell a lie to keep the secret. So lies very much. Involve secrecy. I see. I think in that case it's a difficult one because we don't feel so bad because we know that everyone's doing it. Unfortunately, we're in an age now where everyone lies on their cv, their resume, everyone lies on their, uh, podcasting.

So it all just means nothing. And now it's just, you're right. I get all these emails and extra bazillion, bazillion times. Right. Means nothing to me. I'll go and have a look at their Apple podcast on in the country they're in. Yeah. See how many reviews it's had. They got 24 reviews. Exactly. They have a hundred billion downloads.

That's what gives you the idea. And then YouTube as well, you can see, never look at the subscribers, means not everyone looks at the subscribers. This guy's got a million subscribers. Yeah. Nothing. 'cause how many views do their latest videos get? And that's all that matters.

[00:24:17] Jordan Harbinger: And we can, the reason we're bringing up all this media stuff is we are at the podcast show in London where there are.

Thousands of people walking around, we're doing a pretty good job staying focused on the fact that there are thousands of people walking around and we're not looking at them. At least I feel like I'm not, but maybe I am. I'm lost in your eyes, Jordan. Yeah, I, I appreciate that.

[00:24:33] Andrew Gold: Do you get recognized a lot?

Do around, I say things like this? Yeah.

[00:24:36] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. How do you feel about it? A mixed Mm-Hmm. Right? It's like, oh, that's so cool. But then I also feel like, oh, it's not that impressive. It's just me. And then you've gotta live up to something as well. Yeah. But there, there is that, so I'm jet lives. I was hangry yesterday and somebody was like, oh, hey, you look familiar.

And I was like, I better not be a dick right now or short with this person because this might be the only time I ever see them in my entire life. And if I do that, and someone's like, oh, I was really disappointed he wasn't that friendly. Yeah, that sucks. That makes me feel like crap. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I try to be a little bit more chipper than I would naturally be if I was like, I know that I don't know this person, but.

What's weird is it sounds like I'm being fake, but I'm actually quite happy to engage with that person. I'm just exhausted at the moment. It's a weird thing. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. Really weird

[00:25:24] Andrew Gold: thing. I've only started recently getting bits, things like that, and I was at like a service station on the highway motorway kind of thing.

That is one of those places. It's almost sacred. 'cause you go to this place, it's 11 at night or something. Yeah. You're tired, you've been driving. It's just you and truckers. And you just don't expect anyone to talk to you ever. So what? You relax 'cause you can't, no one could recognize you in this place.

Right? So I'm sitting there with like eating a burger, vegan burger and, uh, not that it matters and like stuff is dripping down my face uhhuh and I suddenly get this eerie feeling of a table near me. You know, when the sound stops suddenly there's no chatter. Right? Right, right. And I'm like, burger in my mouth.

I like look up and I can see like seven people on a table all looking at me. And I should have just said, oh, hi guy. But I thought there's still a 1% chance. They're just looking at me. They dunno who I am. And it

[00:26:09] Jordan Harbinger: would be really weird if you were like, hi, yes, it's me. And they're like, bro, there's a car crash behind you.

We're not looking at you.

[00:26:14] Andrew Gold: Yeah, there's weird guy at 11 at night with sauce down his face just like, hi guys. Yes, I know you may, you may remember me from such films as, or, or whatever. So I didn't say anything, but then it was too late. And then the rest I'm, I'm eating and I just know they're all looking at me and they go, I can hear them saying, what's his name again?

I think I, I dunno what his name is. It's like, you don't even know what my next. Like, it's like the excitement of someone's recognized me mixed with, oh, they don't even know who I'm, yeah.

[00:26:38] Jordan Harbinger: Isn't that, that's the guy from that thing. That's him. Yeah, that's it. That's all you know is the guy from that thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I still wanna get into the idea of secrets versus privacy because it's not weird to want to keep certain things private. I mean, I certainly, I'm not gonna, I don't even wanna give an example because it's no good one. Maybe not. Well, yeah, like I got this super close haircut, right? 'cause the gray grows in on the sides and I'm like, I'm gonna be on the stage in front of a lot of people.

But normally I wouldn't say that on this podcast. And I certainly wouldn't go in front of people and be like. They, they go, nice haircut. Why'd you get it cut so short? Do you normally do that? Oh, there's gray hair growing in on the size. Actually, I probably would say that you would. You would. But

[00:27:13] Andrew Gold: that's, tell them the thing about your jet genitals.

You were telling me

[00:27:20] Jordan Harbinger: which thing. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that exactly. There's a lot of things like that that I think most normal human beings would not disclose in front of a large group of people. I get a, a little bit of a kick out of it and I think it's relatable on this show, so it's fine. No one's gonna be like, Jordan has gray hair unfollow, but a lot of people are very private about things that I think are kind of funny.

Yeah. Like what from pushup brass to dying their mustache. And I don't really understand that.

[00:27:49] Andrew Gold: Yeah. Well this really interested me. I, I was fascinated by this whole delineation between. What is secret and what is private and dying a mustache or whatever. That's a really good example. 'cause I give the example in the book of my dad.

I walked in on him and that sounds like it's gonna be a really, really exciting salacious story. Right. I walked in on him dying his hair, but it's one of my earliest memories and it only stands out because I remember my dad went, no, no close the door because he didn't want me to know he was dying his hair.

It was not manly in the nineties. Right. Or or whatever. Good thing you never told anybody about that. I know. I've told everyone else. It's in the book and it's on this podcast. When the lawyers were going, the lawyers from were going through the book, give, give you all these notes. Have you checked this person is okay with this and that?

And they said, you have to talk to your dad to tell him that's gonna be in the book. Oh, how was that conversation? It was fine because it's just, I didn't tell him. The lawyers had asked me and that there was any opportunity it could be taken out. Right. I was just like, dad, you know that thing about using the book about your dying, the dying hair?

I told you that. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, okay, that's all right. And that was it. That was enough. He went back to the lawyers, like he tacitly acknowledged that this is gonna be fine. My dad's not gonna sue me. He's very proud of the book. But you know, he. Back in the day. I mean, nowadays no one cares.

That's the thing. 20 years ago, we were in a society where some men felt that they would have to hide a thing like that. Now they'd show it off Metrosexual, getting all the right hair dye. So what is private? And what a secret it turns out, depends a lot on the time and place. If you kept a slave now, that would be a pretty huge secret.

If you kept a slave 200 years ago, that might be a private matter for you. Mm-hmm. It's none of other people's business, how many slaves you've got. But now that would be a huge secret. The reason being it transgresses societal norms. It goes against what society expects. And the problem with that is if we start making this very instagrammy resume, LinkedIn kind of life that we have, where we do exaggerate, how many podcast listens we've had, we exaggerate how beautiful our faces are, and how many boyfriends and trips we have and all these things.

That's right. When you don't have that, you're gonna feel shame. You're gonna feel like you have to live out there. And so these things that would've just been private. I've got a girlfriend. I don't have a girlfriend. I don't, I've not had sex recently. Have to become secrets.

[00:29:54] Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of walking in on your dad in the bathroom.

How about a word from our sponsors? We'll be right back.

[00:29:59] Clip: Have you ever seen a grown man naked?

[00:30:04] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Heineken zero Zero. You know those moments when you're craving a cold beer, but alcohol is just not the right call. Maybe you're mowing the lawn and a scorching day, gotta stay sharp for something important afterwards. That's where Heineken zero Zero comes in. It's got that same crisp, refreshing taste you love from the original Heineken, but with zero alcohol.

True story. A few years back, we got a massive case of Heineken zero zero, and this is when we were staying at my brother-in-Law's place while our house was being built next door. It was summer. The heat was brutal, and I was like, all right, these roofers out there working in the blazing sun, these poor guys.

So we decided to crack open a case of Heineken zero, zero for them, and they were thrilled to say the least cold beers on a hot day without the worry of alcohol. It was pretty funny actually. I mean, they downed the entire case. I, each one had like four of these beers. Honestly, it's a game changer when you want all the flavor without the compromise.

A hundred percent taste, 0.0% alcohol.

[00:30:51] Jen Harbinger: Heineken zero zero 100% taste, 0.0% alcohol only, 69 calories. Now you can find the link on our deals page. Jordan harbinger.com/deals to buy now. Must be 21 and older to purchase. Please enjoy Heineken responsibly.

[00:31:05] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by Greenlight. The new school year is here.

I'm still adjusting to having a pre kindergartner man. Time flies like craziest parents. We're all thinking about how to make this year count by teaching our kids real life skills and independence. That's where Greenlight comes in. It's more than a debit card. It's a money app that helps kids learn how to save, learn to invest, spend wisely with parents, keeping an eye on their progress.

Of course, a standout feature is the chores tool. You can assign tasks and automate allowance, turning chores into a fun routine. It's a win-win. Kids build responsibility. You get some peace of mind if you wanna level up. Greenlight's Infinity Plan adds extra safety features to everything that makes Greenlight great.

So with the family location sharing, teens can check in without a call if they need help. There's SOS alerts that connect them to you to 9 1 1 or both. It even has crash detection that notifies emergency services, which is ideal for parents of new drivers. Obviously kids older than mine, whether you're teaching smart, unless you're letting your five-year-old drive, which I don't recommend.

Whether you're teaching smart money habits, encouraging responsibility with chores, adding safety for your teens, Greenlight has it all. It's been a great tool for our family.

[00:32:01] Jen Harbinger: Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com/jordan. That's greenlight.com/jordan to try Greenlight for free.

greenlight.com/jordan.

[00:32:11] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it is because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over@sixminutenetworking.com. This course is about improving your relationship building skills and inspiring others to wanna develop a relationship with you.

And the course does all of that in a super easy, non cringey, very down to earth way. There's no awkward strategies or cheesy tactics. It's just practical exercises that are gonna make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer. And six minutes a day is really all it takes, and many of the guests on our show by the way, subscribe and contribute to this course.

So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Andrew Gold. One of the best things. Is when you see someone and you're like, oh, I have so much fomo because this person's career and life are so on track. And then either that person or someone close to them is like, yeah, well there's this thing that's not going well for me, and I'll be like happy.

And I go, I am such a POS for finding the slightest amount of joy and the fact that you're having a hard time with this thing and it's not be, if I had the chance to undo that for that person, I would never make that person's life harder. But knowing that they are also struggling with something makes me feel better.

And it's such a vice. Yeah, it's not a good thing, but you're honest about it,

[00:33:34] Andrew Gold: right? You're honest and people aren't honest about it. That's one of the things we're not honest about, that we're human beings. There's been a move I've definitely noticed in the last 10, 20 years. Towards pretending we're perfect and that we'd never harbor.

Ill thought we never do anything wrong and it's just not human. We're very much involved in a status game. I believe that firmly. I'm a big fan of Will Store's book the Status Game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that he was on the

[00:33:54] Jordan Harbinger: show about that book. I don't know what the episode number is.

[00:33:56] Andrew Gold: Oh, right. Yeah. I had him on recently as well.

He's great on heretics and I'm a big believer we are all trying to do well. There was, do you remember that song, sunscreen? Like everybody's gotta wear one if I have one advice.

[00:34:07] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That was like the, you're graduating from high school and it's 2002. Yeah. Or something and it's like, always wear sunscreen and then Chris Rock did the parody version.

There's no sex in the champagne room. Have you ever heard that? No. I think it's Chris Rock. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Anyway, that was completely unrelated to what you were about to say. I

[00:34:24] Andrew Gold: was just gonna say, well, no, but that is interesting. I hope you got Chris Rock. Right. 'cause it, it, it would look bad if, if it's not him, the sunscreen song in it.

He, I, I listened to it again recently. Some of the advice is spectacular and one of the bits of advice said much more poetically was Remember, you're running this race only against yourself. This is only for you. You are the only one doing this. And don't try to compare with other people, but you know, yeah, it's

[00:34:45] Jordan Harbinger: impossible.

Nobody listened to that. That's episode 5 52. Will store Understanding social position and the status scheme. 5 52. Thanks, producer Jason Status, his arm that was in the shot. I'll put your phone slightly off camera. His thumbs, upping his thumbs up. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. And

[00:35:01] Andrew Gold: anyway, the, that is good advice.

The point being, you know, we should only focus on ourselves, but it's impossible. And if we all start lying on Instagram, if we all start pretending we're having more sex than we are, for example, that's no good. And that's another example is I came to realize that it's a secret. Okay? If, if you are a couple and you are having lots of sex.

That's a private matter. Yeah. It doesn't transgress societal norms at all. No one cares like you are having those sex well done to you. It's not secret. What is secret is if you're never having sex, if a couple doesn't have sex, that's true. That has to be a secret. And so that was this interesting dynamic between what's secret and what is present.

[00:35:32] Jordan Harbinger: Man, I had lots of sex growing up. I just wish somebody else was there for some of those occasions. Um, love that. Yeah, you're right. 'cause we're comparing ourselves against expectations, not against reality and those expectations. I actually, one of my friends is selling his company for like $200 million.

And I decided at that point, I was like, oh, I have so much fomo. I told, I was like, gonna just tell him I am so envious that you are gonna have that crazy amount of money. And he is like, yeah, it's not really gonna change my life that much, but I'm gonna do a lot of cool stuff. Um, you should join me for like, he's gonna buy a fricking yacht.

Obviously. I'm like. I would love to see. He's like, of course, anytime. Like, yes, please. He appreciated your honesty. Yeah, he did. He's like, you're one of the few people I can tell this to. And I thought that was really interesting because I told him, I view you in a slightly negative light for being extremely successful, and I feel bad about that.

And he is like, yeah, that's fine. I only wanna be around people who can be honest about, yeah, all of vicis. It's very difficult to do because there's an amount of shame when you disclose something like that. I'm your friend, I'm supposed to be unconditionally happy for you. What I'm not supposed to do is go, if I'd made better choices at some point, I would also be selling my company for $200 million.

But instead, that's never going to happen and I'm always gonna have to compare myself with your success. And it's like, oh, I kind of feel better. Having said that, I don't really feel compelled to do that now.

[00:36:52] Andrew Gold: That's an awkward thing, isn't it? Yeah. This sort of competitive, the envy, the professional envy.

Yeah. We all have it and we are all podcasters as well. And you wanna lift everybody up, right? And we all speak a good game, but then when you see someone else doing really well and suddenly overtaking you. That hurts. And that's just 300,000 years of evolution.

[00:37:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. It's true. You give a really good example in the book of the, uh, and this is where the episode gets explicit masturbation stats between men and women.

That's right. I said masturbation at the podcast show in front of 1500 people. Guys will talk about that and make jokes about it and tell stories about it. On comedy podcasts or at a bar, you will pretty much never Unless it's like a female standup comedian. Yeah. Hear anybody broach that subject or break through that wall.

Someone like Bridget Fe Yeah. Or Ali Wong will like maybe mention something about that. I don't even know if she would. It's kind of like extra. It's extra.

[00:37:45] Andrew Gold: Yeah. And it, it's sad. And again, that's another example in society where. The fact that a woman does, it almost has to be a secret. There was a great book by Nim Co Ali, who is somebody who had a female genital mutilation when she was younger.

Oh, that's horrible. Horrible. And she wrote a book about it. I can't remember the name of the book right now, but it's the only book I think she's written. So Nim Co Ali, and she wrote about this like, why don't we talk about our vaginas? Even saying the word vagina seems weird to men and to women. And we feel like women must never do that.

They must never masturbate. But they do. They really do. I did a survey of, I was just wondering if anybody was going

[00:38:18] Jordan Harbinger: to, she got it. She picked that up. Oh my God. Making eye contact now. Yeah. Jordan's about to be, uh,

[00:38:24] Andrew Gold: expelled from the UK along with Harvey Wines. No. Yeah. Okay. It's not, hopefully not that bad.

No. But the survey I did showed that women are at it quite a lot. Again, I've got at it. They're at it. They're at it. They're at it, and they're addicts. The stats, again, they're in the book, but it's at, you know, most women do it and at least once a week really, including women who have boyfriends and husbands.

Which is pretty shocking to me. That is shocking. And I know a lot of women will be listening to two men talking about this and going, bloody idiots. You know? Yeah. You're you're supposed to keep it on the load. We came with receipts. Yeah. Or just like, how did they not know this? Or I don't know, but I, I didn't know.

Whereas men, I did not know. Men will just like, you know, sorry I was late. Um, had a bit of a moment. I would've said one third do it

[00:39:04] Jordan Harbinger: once a quarter. Yeah. I

[00:39:06] Andrew Gold: would've said that and I would've been way off. I would've said

[00:39:08] Jordan and Andrew Crosstalk: that. Yeah,

[00:39:09] Andrew Gold: I would've said that. Geez. In, apparently in India, I found this one stat that Nokia old mobile phones, cellular for cell phones went through the roof.

'cause women were buying them to use them as vibrators. Really? I get, if you can't find anything else,

[00:39:21] Jordan Harbinger: yeah. Maybe they're playing snake. See what I did there? Yes. Lovely. Shout out to my Nokia nine 90 or whatever that thing was. That little one. You could drop it off like the roof of a five story building and you just have to pop the case back on.

Yeah. What percentage of people lie regularly? Do you have any idea? I.

[00:39:37] Andrew Gold: Uh, I think it's 5%. That's it. Five. Well, this is it. Most of us are not liars. Again, we, we like to think that everyone is, we seem to remember that everyone's lying all the time. That's because when someone does lie in a big way, right, politician that makes the news, it's a big story.

Most of us are primed not to lie. Again, if we go back to evolutionary psychology or just evolution tribes, it made sense. It, again, it hurts you to keep secrets. It also hurt you to lie. 'cause that's your brain's way of saying, hang on man, you're getting a bit close to the bone here. You're flying too close to the sun.

If you keep lying, you're gonna get caught out. Our body amazingly has these mechanisms that curb that kind of behavior because your body doesn't want you getting in trouble. I mean, obviously I'm ascribing a will to evolution that it doesn't have. Yeah. But just for, for the sake of argument, your body doesn't want you lying much.

So most of us don't do it. We go red and we blush. We have all sorts of giveaways. Again, these are built-in mechanisms that are telling you, mate, don't do that again. You're gonna get caught and if you get caught lying. Right now, maybe it's not so bad, but evolutionarily you are out the tribe. No one trusts you again.

Right. You will die. Like you're not gonna pass on your genes. You're

[00:40:41] Jordan Harbinger: gonna be out in the Savannah, back to the secrets as opposed to lying. Or at least right on the line. Do you know, I'm gonna get this wrong. We're gonna get emails about this. I apologize. Have you heard about the idea that in Asian culture, let's say I'm an old Asian man, I might go to the doctor with my son, who's you and the doctor says, I just wanna talk to your son in private.

And then he goes, your dad has cancer. Yes. And you don't tell me. And the whole family knows except for me. And I'm just like, oh yeah, I just had a stomach thing. And the whole family's like, he's dying. And no one tells you, you know about this. Yeah. It's in the book. Oh, that's where I got it

[00:41:17] Andrew Gold: shot. Un un, un un.

Unless, unless it, it might have not made the last cut. I think it did though. So maybe it may not. Yeah, that was, that movie wasn't, there was a great movie. There was a movie

[00:41:24] Jordan Harbinger: about it and I can't remember the name. But the grandma was dying. Yes. And it, they had it like a party and everyone came from all over the world.

And she's still alive. That's the thing, is like she's still around. The heartwarming flick.

[00:41:34] Andrew Gold: It's be, it's a beautiful film. That's a really beautiful film that happened in the West until recently. It's incredible. Really? I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Any people of an older persuasion who's listening to this right now might remember that.

Maybe not in the States. Forgive me if I'm wrong. I know families in the UK where that happened, where the person was not told they had an illness. There were arguments on both sides to this. There's the nocebo placebo kind of thing. Yeah. If you tell someone they're dying, they just give up and they die. A lot of people believe that.

My stepmom, her mom died of cancer a couple of years ago. It was very quick, and she believes they shouldn't have told her, and I was, you know, you can't, she was so emotional about it. You can't really say, well, they have to. That's another example, by the way, of sort of individual liberty versus collectivism.

Sure. You know, does some individual have a right or is it more important that the community gets what they want? There's a Sam Harris small book called Lying. I love

[00:42:21] Jordan Harbinger: that. He's done the show on this subject, and it's essentially what, you can only lie if it's like a self-defense. Kind of thing.

[00:42:29] Andrew Gold: Yeah, he's a real like anti lying guy.

But he gives these examples of families he's known where they didn't tell the mother, the mother was ill, that no one told her. And it's so sad because nobody got to have that conversation before she got too ill and died and they weren't able to really have that moment. So that's the other side of, it's really unfair on the person and on their individual liberty.

Sam Harris is a, he says that he would lie under any circumstances. Sorry. Would not lie under any opposite.

[00:42:55] Jordan Harbinger: So you got this, I hate saying this in the book. It was slightly incorrect according to what you told me on the podcast. Okay. What did he say? He said, you can lie in situations in which you would use violence essentially.

So like if you are in your basement with your kids or your kids and family out the basement and some dude breaks into your house, you can lie and say that there is nobody in there and that you are home alone and your family's away on a vacation. Right. You don't have to go. I said, I wouldn't tell a lie.

They're in the basement. Go get 'em.

[00:43:25] Andrew Gold: Yeah, I, well, I do, I do say that I think in the book as well. Oh, do you? Just because he does give that example and says, you shouldn't lie to, well, it's the Nazi at the door. Yeah, the Nazi at the door. Yeah. Yeah. He says, you shouldn't lie. And he had this professor, he grew up that he loved, he loved the professor, and the professor always gave these great reasons why you shouldn't lie with the Nazi at the door.

But Sam lying in that book doesn't actually give any of those examples. And then he goes on to say at the end, of course, in reality, only a psychopath could endorse that behavior. Right. Could only a psychopath could tell the truth all the time. Ironically, sacrifice myself. Don't tell the truth. But that's, you know, to get their way.

So I, he doesn't actually live by that. I think it's, uh, some sort of mental training or something.

[00:44:07] Jordan Harbinger: Episode 6 98, Sam Harris. There's also another Sam Harris, which might actually be earlier, which I think is the one about lying. Thank you. pr. It's um, I should, having a producer write on hand like this, it's pretty wonderful.

Something be said for that.

[00:44:17] Andrew Gold: It's pretty wonderful. He was giving me a thumbs up before when I made a joke, which I like. Nice. Oh, that's good then. It's, I am being funny. Yeah. Yeah. I liked it, but he's doing it now. But um, yeah, I think it's a minted exercise, really. It's a philosophical exercise for Sam Harris.

He's not saying you actually should do this. He's saying he thinks you should tell the truth whenever you can, but of course, only a psychopath would do it in that circumstance. But who says you should do it in that circumstance is the German philosopher, Emmanuel Cunt. Emmanuel Cunt said he gave the same example.

Of course it wasn't a Nazi 'cause this was pre Nazi times, but of an assailant comes to your door and you are harboring somebody upstairs. The assailant wants to kill them, and he says, you shouldn't lie. You should say yes, he's upstairs. Now again, it feels like these philosophers sometimes just get lost in their own madness.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. And so his explanation is this, and this is mad. So wait for this. His explanation is, if you lie. And say that the guy he's chasing is not upstairs in your house. It might be that that guy in your house escapes through the window at the same time that the assailant then walks down the street and encounters him and then kills him.

And it would've been your fault because you lied and said he wasn't there and you got them then all killed. That is

[00:45:27] Jordan Harbinger: Olympic champion mental gymnastics. Yeah, he is an absolute cunt. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, yes, I was gonna make a punt on that, but I resisted Apparently though you could not. Anyway, uh, society really does treasure people who can spin a good yarn though, like the lying, it's almost like if you like well enough.

We treasure that shit. Right. Catch me if you can. You know, Frank Abignail is episode number one of the Jordan Harbinger show. Totally full of crap, not totally full of crap in that he got away with being a pilot and a lawyer totally full of crap in that. None of that stuff in the movie actually ever happened.

He went to prison for check fraud during that whole time. He made that whole thing up.

[00:46:04] Jordan and Andrew Crosstalk: But how did he pass the bar? He didn't. No, he didn't. I guess he didn't Correct. That was a lie too. What a beautiful film.

[00:46:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. That movie is awesome. Especially because the con was the entire story, not the story of the con man.

He

[00:46:17] Andrew Gold: got us that way. There's a beautiful moment at the end where Leonard DiCaprio's got long hair and he, he escapes off the plane and he goes to his old home, which must be running distance from the airport somehow, right? Yeah. I, I don't know. But he's just run to, just giants across the runway and goes out, just runs home from the runway and goes up to the window of his home and he sees a child.

So he must be a stepsister or whatever, or half sister or something like that. And he's sort of looking through the window and they're playing chestnut chairs. No, it's roasting. It's just one of my favorite moments ever in a film. And of all

[00:46:49] Jordan Harbinger: the things that never

[00:46:49] Andrew Gold: happened in that film. Exactly. That one never happened the most.

Well, they tricked us. Right. And that's the art of storytelling, as you know. Yeah. And I once interviewed a psychopath called ME Thomas, and she's interesting. And a lot of people say about her as well. Like, she's not really a psychopath, she's faking it. And I'm like, well, yeah, but if you're fake and being a psychopath, it's kind of a psychopath thing to do.

You've got something. Yeah, you've got something. But, uh, I said, how do you enjoy movies if you, if you don't have empathy, how are you enjoying movies? And she really made me think, 'cause she said, you think that you are enjoying a movie 'cause you're empathizing with a character. Think of a horror film.

When something scary happens, you're not scared 'cause you're empathizing. You are scared 'cause it jumped out and scared you. Okay. You are just scared. And she said that the way she enjoys movies is she enjoys that the director is manipulating us and telling us stories. And that's what we are enjoying as well.

We like being manipulated in that kind of way. And we like those movies that's, she likes that movie. And what's the movie from the 1960s Wave Vertigo. Ver, I think it's Vertigo. Like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a big, like you think someone's dead and they're not and she said Ruined dead.

Well, some no, but you dunno who might be dead. Ah, true. Yeah. The person who you think's dead. But anyway, we enjoy movies because they mess with us.

[00:47:58] Jordan Harbinger: What about White Lies? Your pants look great. Why am I, you know, I really like your hair.

[00:48:05] Andrew Gold: What's wrong with that? I think pro-Social lies, white lies. I think these are generally okay.

And there's, there's a lot of discussion about whether they should be told or not. Santa Claus is the bigger one. Yeah. Should you tell your kids, uh, we're

[00:48:15] Jordan Harbinger: going through that. So, you know what Elf on the shelf is?

[00:48:18] Andrew Gold: No.

[00:48:18] Jordan Harbinger: So Elf on the Shelf is a, a little elf doll. You put 'em on like the microwave and the counter and the kids find him every morning, the 30 days or whatever before Christmas or the days up before then.

And sometimes he brings like a little bowl of m and ms and the kids get to eat 'em. And Jaden, my 4-year-old was like, why are his eyes open and not moving? Yeah. And then I'm like, he can see everything. And he goes, no, I'm in the other room. And I'm like, he can see through the walls.

[00:48:43] Andrew Gold: Oh, I can see a picture now.

Beautiful. Scary.

[00:48:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And and it's like, oh, well that doesn't make sense. So he's real. And I'm like, yeah. And then he is like, well, then how can he see through walls? I can't see through the walls. I'm like, no, he's magical. So he's magical, but his eyes don't move. And I'm like, he knows. And so eventually, like he kept asking more and more ques.

So he flies away at night and then flies back. Isn't that really far? When we flew to Taiwan, it took a long time. He's just back and forth and I'm like, alright, here's the thing. He's not real, but don't tell your little sister. And he is like, okay. That was the end of that. He told his little sister though, whether you know it or not.

Yeah. No, no. I, yeah, he might have. She probably didn't understand. You can't tell people. Well, there's that. How old is she? Two. Okay, well then, then fine. So if it's ruined, she can't tell me it's ruined. I just thought that was real. I was like, I can't keep lying to him because it's getting ridiculous.

[00:49:32] Andrew Gold: And I think that's fine.

I mean, kids grow out of it. It's another one of those things where we want, we want 'em to believe it for the first few years, but if they're like 11 or 12, you start to go, oh, they still really believe in the Santa Claus thing

[00:49:42] Jordan Harbinger: we got, we gonna take you to, to a professional.

[00:49:44] Andrew Gold: Yeah, we got a problem here. If they're 15, 16 and they're just loving Santa Claus, there's a problem.

So it's a lie that you are telling that you know is going to be exposed eventually, and I think it's fine. You don't seem to have the same ill effects from holding a what is a prosocial secret or telling a pro-social lie. Ones that are intended to make people feel better as you do now. What his thought with kids is.

There is some evidence to suggest that children who are lied to a lot as kids grow up to lie themselves. Interesting. That's not good. That's not good. However, it's also completely impossible to raise children without lying to them. Occasionally, it's just unrealistic. We can't stay here because the shop's closing.

Even if it's not closing, you cannot do it. So someone I quoted in the book was suggesting is try not to tell the kinds of lies that are like, Hey, if you do this, you'll get a reward. And then you don't give the reward. I see. You know? So as long as you're just lying about these little harmless things, personally, I, I think that's absolutely fine.

[00:50:35] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Before I had kids, I was like, I'm never gonna lie to my kids. And then after I had kids, I was like, uh, the Easter bunny just called and they're gonna cancel Christmas if you don't put your damn shoes on right now. Yeah. It's the one. And I try not to do that, but some days I'm just not a great dad. I think.

Technology making it harder to keep you. 'cause I found it fascinating. There's that story of the guy that like murdered his wife Apples and uh, said it was like Albanian gangsters or something. And then they looked at his, I can't remember his like apple watch or his aura ring or something like that. It was like, actually you were moving around during this time and now your story doesn't check out.

And it turns out that you were running around while you said you were taped up on the carpet. This was a

[00:51:15] Andrew Gold: big story at the time in the UK because the wife, he killed Caroline Crouch, I believe was her name, was English, and she was living in Greece with him and he was doing all the crocodile tear stuff, you know, outside the house.

When the press came, talking to them for half an hour each time, breaking down in tears, he said these Albanians came, they took all the money that he had hid in his monopoly sets. All of this stuff. And he was tied up and he even, he managed to call his neighbor with like a gag in his mouth or whatever and say, come and help me.

Call the police. They've come and got me. The dog was dead. It emerged that the wife and the dog had been killed by him. Ugh. Horrible. The dog got him an extra 10 years. Really? Yeah. Wow. And people are thinking, so it should have done, you know? Yeah. Bloody hell. But an extra 10 years on top of what? Life in prison.

Yeah. So, yeah. So the guy's gone, you know, for good. But yeah, remarkable. He remembered a lot of the stuff. He turned off his CCTV and there were a few other bits and pieces that he remembered, like, make sure to turn that stuff off, get rid of that stuff. But the, her wristwatch said that her heart had stopped beating at a different time to what he record.

Oh, wow. Yeah. His phone showed him walking around up and down to the basement when he said he'd been tied up. So that's what gave him away. And then they were able to look at the text messages and see they'd been arguing that night and it all started to fall into place. Interesting. But we can't get away.

Like it's almost the death of secrets in that respect. It's good. I want murderers to be called. Right,

[00:52:36] Jordan Harbinger: sure.

[00:52:37] Andrew Gold: But it's scary as

[00:52:38] Jordan Harbinger: well. Well, a lot of authoritarian regimes are using compromat, right. Compromising sort of shame to control people. And you mentioned earlier about status conspiracy Theorists are big on this, right?

Like their status in these conspiracy communities and among the general population is that they know something that other people don't. Which even if that thing's complete nonsense and, and malarkey. And so I find this all quite fascinating, especially with the tech trackers. There's a very funny example in the book about, was it a but plug that recorded audio?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's another word I said in front of 1,500 people, but

[00:53:11] Andrew Gold: plug, um, plug for plug for the podcast. Sorry, that's not what I said. But we're plugging the podcast. So even in the, this was Jenny Kleeman's work, she wrote books, sex Robots, and Vegan Meat, just about the future. Sure. She's seen as a cross between Margaret Atwood and Louis, or Louis Rowe in America.

Just a journalist kind of thing. And she wrote this whole book about it, about sex robots. And it's a scary thing. Privacy's not been around for very long. The concept of privacy a few hundred years ago, houses didn't have corridors in them. They didn't have halls. It was just room, potentially a second room, but usually just like room most people.

So parents would have sex in front of their children. Oh man. There was no privacy. I. And all of a sudden in the last a hundred years or so, we're all living in these places. We've gotten so used to it of like, okay, well I'll see you in, you know, hopefully this is the case. Of course, I'm in the corridor now and I will be outside of your room where you live and might even have a look and you have this privacy thing.

Yeah, we had it for like a hundred years and probably in 50 years it's gonna be gone again because we already have Alexa everywhere. We've got the Google thing, the Siri thing, and look, if you wanted to commit a murder now there's about 50 other things you have to think about turning off and sex. Things have been recording us.

They've been all sorts of lawsuits

[00:54:21] Jordan Harbinger: where it's been found that they've done rogue butt plugs, recording sound. That is so weird. Like privacy is gonna be gone. Like so you're gonna know what temperature my schlong was when I was in an elevator while I was using it. Maybe I shouldn't go into more detail on that.

Well,

[00:54:33] Andrew Gold: you already told me before we started 78, the

[00:54:35] Jordan Harbinger: idea, a lot of this stuff though was like, it's like who cares? But also I want the option. To do something without everybody knowing.

[00:54:43] Andrew Gold: We've talked about this before, I think. I think so. All the cookies and stuff, you know, it's according my usernames and all of these things.

What's the problem? I think the problem is it's that slippery slope, isn't it? I mean, these are a dream for authoritarian regimes or any aspiring authoritarians. The other thing is, as it gets better, the technology, we really could be in trouble. I mean, brain reading, I do a whole bit on brain reading.

[00:55:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Episode eight 10, Nita Farhan talked about literal brain reading on this show and the technology that's involved, and people were like, I don't wanna hear about sci-fi. And I was like, no, no. There's prototypes of this stuff working. It's just like low res. Yeah. And it's been going

[00:55:16] Andrew Gold: like 10, 15, 20 years now.

[00:55:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:55:19] Andrew Gold: Like that. They can actually look into your mind and put a picture of what you're thinking of on a screen.

[00:55:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. In the next 10 or 15, if you're wearing whatever gear. And it might just be like inconvenient and wired and not wireless and sort of bulky, but they'll be able to look and see what were you just looking at?

Nothing. Yeah, you were looking at that girl's booty or whatever, and there it is on the screen behind you as a demo and it's like, that's all fine until it's recording everything and then it's in the cloud. I don't need all that. In the cloud.

[00:55:45] Andrew Gold: There's one more technological breakthrough they have to make because at the moment they can only see your neurons to the nearest thousands and you need to be able to see each individual neurons have it so it won't be fuzzy anymore.

You'll really know what people are thinking

[00:55:56] Jordan Harbinger: only a matter of time and not that much of a time. There's a lot of people who will divulge things, maybe similar to what we talked about on the show, but it's like it's manufactured, right? It's fake. Like yes, I got a haircut because I felt I had too much drag run, but that, that's like a real thing.

But there's all these social media darlings that will overs, it's like the oversharing Olympics, but it's also just fake manufactured imperfection. There was an influencer named Rachel Hollis, and I'm not afraid to add her on this. She was married to a guy named Dave Hollis and they were like. You go, oh no, you go, okay fine.

You go, no, I'll go. That was nonsense. They were arguing, fighting. She, she was cheating on her and doing drugs and stuff. And then they finally got this very public divorce and she was this darling of like multi-level marketing and influencer stuff. And people were like, wait a minute. You sold me a $7,000.

How to have a happy relationship seminar two years ago, for five years this guy's been doing blow and hookers and being abusive towards you. And you sold me and her ish is gone done. And he passed away from drugs, but they were masters of this. And now I see now that I'm a parent, I get all this like family stuff and my Instagram feed and it's like family influencer.

Here's Tucker eating something. And it's like you're kind of using your kids for clout and it's like, oh my God, they made such a mess. Here's us doing crafts. And I'm like, this is all fake. It's very weird to see something like that. It's very odd. It's manufactured authenticity. As opposed to, and you can tell it's fake.

There's something in your gut that shows you it's fake. I have authenticity on the show, but it's usually something that's slightly embarrassed. The other day I said, boats are what, like 600 years old to somebody who studies the ocean. And then I started laughing at myself because that's really stupid.

And I told Jace not to edit it out 'cause I thought it was ridiculous and people commented on that. And, but my, I was thinking about editing now 'cause I didn't want people to think, oh, he made that joke and it's like a fake thing. And I thought about that only afterwards because of your book. Man, it's so hard to get that right, isn't it?

It's so hard to get it right. It's like, do I leave that in? I wanna leave it in. But then I don't want people to go, oh, you scripted that or something. That's stupid. I don't, that makes me feel even more dumb.

[00:58:09] Andrew Gold: I don't think most people would think you scripted it though. I think they might realize that you knew leaving it in would increase social cohesion between me for sure.

[00:58:17] Jordan Harbinger: That's why I left it in and I, I even said something like, don't edit that out. People need to know I'm an idiot. I thought that was like fun. I, yeah.

[00:58:23] Andrew Gold: I don't see any problem with that. The interesting thing is I, I think share renters who are sharers, who are parents. I find them fascinating. All these YouTubers, I started looking at the journey that one takes.

If we humanize these people, they are human beings. How does they get into that place? So I started looking through the whole thing and why they have to sort of reveal secrets and then eventually I. Make them up for Clouts. Yeah. And so they start. That's interesting. A lot of these people, again, having kids in, for many people, if they don't have a very successful whatever else kind of life, they're not the big soccer players or they're not good in their business or whatever.

Having children is very much a status game. And we've seen that. There's something called Mum's Net in the uk, which gets really toxic, where moms go crazy at each other. It's mad. It's a status game. So you put out a few pictures of your kids on Instagram, well, you find you get a lot of likes. You never had that before.

You never had that feeling. You're being love bombed by Instagram, by people on Instagram. So you put out a few more videos, suddenly you've got like 5,000, 10,000 followers and you're like, I've never had, this is finally my calling. I've got a thing now. Money is coming in from sponsors, from YouTube, from whatever else.

You've got this big YouTube channel now. Now you are paying three or four or five, sometimes 10 people who work for you to do this. So there's a big thing going on while the kids get to like 11, 12, 13 years old. People start to lose interest or a million other things might happen so that they lose interest.

Your kids aren't that cute anymore. Who knows? That's not gonna happen to me, but I can, I can understand how that would be upsetting. Absolute. Absolutely. Absolutely. But that's a panic, and I think it's something that maybe as an audio podcaster, you might not, I mean, you could empathize having not gone through it, but as a YouTuber, I'm more on YouTube than I am.

I'm on audio as well, but it's YouTube. You do see things suddenly go up and they suddenly go down and you go from earning 40,000, $50,000 a month. The next month you're earning $1,000. That's dollars. That's how quickly it can go down. So it's

[01:00:15] Jordan Harbinger: not just an ego hit, it's actually like an existential threat.

Oh yeah. To your lifestyle. Also,

[01:00:20] Andrew Gold: you're right, the ego hit is huge, and the financial hit is huge, and that drop in status, as will store says it's one of the main causes of suicide or wanting or having suicidal thoughts. If you've suddenly drop in status in your tribe, it's the worst thing that can happen.

Your body makes it so because it doesn't want you to drop in status so much. So here you are with this existential financial and ego related drop like mad, and you can't pay the people working for you, blah, blah, blah. And I've seen this happen with one of the families. They go, okay, we are gonna really go for this.

And they start putting out videos of their kid. 13 years old. I had my first period. Oof. That is sacred for a child. Yeah. Oh,

[01:01:00] Jordan Harbinger: that's really gross. That they would share that. But I

[01:01:02] Andrew Gold: saw this particular family, I can't remember their name, but it's in the book. They also then put up childs, whatever her name is.

Wheres a pregnancy bump now? 13 years old. Wait, what the, oh, that's, it's a fetish that a lot of older men have. And they would've known that

[01:01:16] Jordan Harbinger: Yuck. Because I was gonna say, that's so weird. Why would they think that would be clicks? It got millions. Ew. So

[01:01:21] Andrew Gold: suddenly this channel that's going down, down, down is going up, up, up.

So what happens basically is these people start off by giving us intimate moments of their lives that are private. They give us a bit of the stuff that is pretending they didn't want to give away. As you were talking about before. Yeah. 'cause that's like, oh, he's really telling us the dirty stuff and then they get to a point when they're outta secrets.

So they have to either really just take advantage of their daughter or whatever it is, or give everything of themselves or start making up secrets or things that didn't even happen to them. That's the only way to survive. It's a horrible, horrible pathway for them.

[01:01:56] Jordan Harbinger: Yikes, man. It's an interesting one because we, you know, your show and my show, we deal a lot in Dark Secrets Feedback Friday.

Some of the things people write into you. For me, it's an honor to deal with those. But I think we're in a position of privilege. And that we, we take on the burden in, in a parasocial way that doesn't actually affect us. And certainly man, there are healthy ways and unhealthy ways to deal with this kinda stuff.

And it's really shocking that people would do that to their own kids. God, I'm just clawing at me that somebody would do that to their kids

[01:02:25] Andrew Gold: status. Will, will do. We will. And most of us, I mean we'll do anything. And that means Scientology, they, they don't treat their kids like their kids. Right? The things you hear in any cult or an extreme religion, what they do to their kids or any kind of extreme ideology is terrible.

And that's just what happens to human beings. And I think the first step, again, for us is to be humble enough to go. Could that happen to me? I don't think it could, but let me always stay centered.

[01:02:50] Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of secrets and lives, you can't go wrong with one of the fine products and services that support this show.

I'm definitely getting canceled. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Rosetta Stone. You ever thought about learning a new language? I know I have. I've done it many times. I'm doing it right now. Maybe you've got an international trip planned or pick up a new hobby. Whatever your reason, you should try out Rosetta Stone.

I really struggled with French lessons back in high school. The textbooks were so boring. I was just memorizing words without understanding how to use them. Who needs to memorize a table of. Irregular verbs like, come on man. That's why I think Rosetta Stone is a better way 'cause it immerses you in the language from the start.

There's no English translations. You start thinking and speaking in the new language naturally. You pick up words, then phrases, and soon enough full sentences all designed for long-term retention. Plus they're built in true accent feature gives you instant feedback on your pronunciation, like having a personal trainer for your accent, which is key.

Rosetta Stone has been the Go-to language learning program for over 30 years, trusted by millions, and it offers 25 languages from Spanish and French to Korean and Japanese.

[01:03:47] Jen Harbinger: Don't put off learning that language. There is no better time than right now to get started for a very limited time. Our listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off.

Visit rosetta stone.com/jordan. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off@rosettastone.com slash Jordan today.

[01:04:07] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by ramp. Looking for a way to simplify your business's finance operations across expenses. Vendor payments and accounting Ramp might be exactly what you need.

Ramp is a corporate card and spend management software that's designed to save you time, put money back in your pocket. You get total control and insight into your company spending. With ramp, you can issue cards to every employee. Set limits and restrictions, automate expense reporting. No more end of the month chaos.

People in the accounting department know what I mean. Ramp automatically collects receipts and categorizes expenses in real time. You're never gonna have to chase down a missing paper or email receipt again. And if we had RAMP back in our previous business, lemme tell you. We would've saved so much money from runaway expenses.

Employees going on fricking shopping sprees on the corporate card. Who gets two lattes at lunch? Who does that? This way? You close your books eight times faster, freeing up valuable time. Businesses that use ramp save an average of 5% in their first year. Not bad. It's easy to set up. Two, whether you have five employees or 5,000, you can get started in less than 15 minutes with a virtual and physical cards ready to go.

If you're ready to maximize productivity and cut wasteful spending ramp is definitely the way forward.

[01:05:05] Jen Harbinger: And now get $250 when you join ramp. Just go to ramp.com/jordan ramp.com/jordan. That's RA p.com/jordan. Cards issued by Sutton Bank and Celtic Bank members FDIC, terms and conditions apply.

[01:05:18] Jordan Harbinger: If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors.

All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are researchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. And look, if you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find a code. This part is a hundred percent true. You can email meJordan@jordanharbinger.com. I am happy to surface that code for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show.

By the way, a lot of people might not know this using our promo code. It doesn't just get you a discount. It really does help out the show too. I don't just say that for no reason. We don't earn a commission from sales, but when companies see that people are responding to the ads in the show, they're more likely to continue their partnership with us.

So if you decide to sign up, please use our code. It's usually Jordan, but check the deals page because it's often like Jordan Harbinger or Harbinger. We try to keep it Jordan, but it's not always the case. It's a double win. You get a great deal and you help keep the show thriving. Thank you so much for supporting those who support the show.

Now back to Andrew Gold. So tell me about how sharing secrets increases intimacy and relationships. That was kind of a cool little. Social science test or principle.

[01:06:28] Andrew Gold: There's ample evidence to show that when you share your secret with someone, we talked before about the burden you are giving them, but that's weighed up.

There's a sort of balance with the social bond that you're creating with them. I see. And it obviously increases, and we all know that feeling. Somebody says like, Hey man, I've got a secret. And you wanna know what that secret is. Firstly, you are curious, you're excited as well that this person considers you a trustworthy person.

So that's what that is. That's what's creating that kind of thing. The difficulty comes when you are telling a secret about a friend. That's always what it is as well. It's almost always that. It's like, Hey, our friends, blah, blah, blah. That's why we bitch about our friends. We gossip all the time. The main reason is to increase the bond between you and that person.

I see. But that's also gonna increase the burden afterwards. So there's this really complex dynamic going on where what you could do is try to talk about that friend in a way. If you're bitching about a friend that you're saying, Hey, I wanna help them and lift them up, you know? So you're saying to your friend about like person C.

Let's help them rather than I'm bitching about them, then there won't be so much burden, but the intimacy decreases as well. So the intimacy levels go up. The more bitchy and snarky you are being basically, that is too

[01:07:33] Jordan Harbinger: bad.

[01:07:34] Andrew Gold: Yeah,

[01:07:34] Jordan Harbinger: that is really too bad. I was gonna say, what's the best way to do this? And the best way to do this is to either pick intimacy and just be a little jerk about it, or to sugarcoat it and, and sort of hamper your intimacy effect, but not actually be such a terrible person.

[01:07:50] Andrew Gold: You can't have the best of everything. You know, bitching will only get you so far

[01:07:53] Jordan Harbinger: gossiping. But we love it as far as holding secrets, you note in the book that how often our mind wanders to the secret is, that's sort of one of the gauges of how unhealthy it is, and I can say the most stressed out I have ever been is when I keep thinking about something and I can't stop thinking about it because I'm worried that other people are gonna find out, or for whatever reason, maybe I'm just, maybe that's not even that clear.

Maybe I'm just so worried about what might happen. That I can't stop thinking about luckily, those days of being a teenager behind me, which is essentially when a lot of that was going on. Oh yeah. But I remember them so well.

[01:08:27] Andrew Gold: There's been really interesting studies just in the past 20 years. There's a secrets expert called Michael Sleepy who's done a lot of this kind of work.

And so that's the guy I should have had on this book. That's who you should have had on. He knows, oh well he's not as, um, exciting as me. That's true. Yeah. But I, I wonder if he's coming across my book 'cause he's quoted a lot in it and he might be like, Hey, this guy, uh, he wrote a book about sequels as well, but don't get his book.

It's probably not as fun. I dunno. Yeah, it's not the one linked in the show notes, I'll tell you that. Yeah. It's too bloody. Right. We thought it was thought, people thought that the reason that it was so stressful to keep these kinds of secrets is that you would be trying to think all the time, how can I get away with it?

I've cheated on my wife and if she asks this, what will I save? If she wonders where I am on this day, I have to tell my friend to tell that, that I was there with him. That apparently is not by. Any measure, it's not even close to being the most stressful part of keeping secrets. The most stressful part is actually simply mind wandering to that secret.

Just thinking about it, feeling that shame, the discrepancy between the person you are showing to the world and the naughty bad thing that you actually did.

[01:09:29] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, interesting. That's why, yeah, I would be lying if I said that I, one of the incentives for me to not do that kind of stuff is just knowing, not cheat on my wife.

I mean, just lying about things in general is knowing that I would never stop thinking about it and it would drive me insane. Yeah,

[01:09:47] Andrew Gold: yeah.

[01:09:47] Jordan Harbinger: You have to let it out. I have to let it, it's easier for me to be like, yeah, I gotta close haircut 'cause I have gray hair on the sides. Then to be like, oh no, it's just I'm trying new style, like I just can't do that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's stupid.

[01:09:57] Andrew Gold: You know that what I was gonna say about giving the, with the gray hair and stuff, I find myself doing the same thing. Why am I telling people. All of these sequels. That was part of why I wanted to write the book as well. Like what is it about this person in particular? And again, it is, it goes back to that parasocial interaction.

It goes back to particularly people I admire more than anyone else, but also everyone else. I just, I mean, I told Richard Dawkins when I interviewed him, oh, thank you so much for coming on. You know, I read your book in the bath. I was, I had bubble bath and everything and he was like, well yes, thank you.

Thank you. Very good. And I thought, why did I tell him that?

[01:10:25] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:10:26] Andrew Gold: It's part of wanting to impress him. And why didn't he react in a less weird way? He's one of the most difficult people I've ever interviewed. I've done twice. And for those who dunno, he is an evolutionary biologist and he's very to the point.

And you come out with like, okay, I've got my 20 questions here. Yeah. And every question I asked, he replied with like, well, I couldn't really say, that's not my specialty. And I'd be like, oh, okay. No,

[01:10:46] Jordan Harbinger: that was supposed to be 20 minutes long

[01:10:48] Andrew Gold: strike. Yeah. Ran out of questions. So we finished off like 40 minutes instead of Yikes.

An hour and a half. And I was like, well that's all good Richard. Thank you. Like sweating. But

[01:10:55] Jordan Harbinger: that's how it is. That's why I always over prepare. Right. I'm only halfway through these notes. We might not finish 'em. That's fine. Tell me about Virtue signaling you. You write a little bit about this in the book.

This is also sort of tangentially related to secrets. I guess. Let's not worry about how it's related to the book. It's an interesting topic.

[01:11:11] Andrew Gold: I find virtue signaling really, really interesting to go through will store's status game. Again, it seems that people try to be successful in a tribe. You invent the wheel, you invent fire.

People say, Hey, have some food. You're an impressive, successful person. Yeah, you should be in charge, whatever. Well, not everyone can be successful. That leaves you two very different paths. You can be dominant, so a bully who doesn't have much success, you just push people around and that's how you get your share of the food.

Or you could be virtuous. Now you don't actually have to be virtuous, you just have to act as though you are. You just have to make other people think that you are. And I think that is a huge problem going on in society today. Yeah, and I think if there was one thing we could be taught a little bit better at school, it would be that this virtue signaling thing, just because I think that things, something would make the world better doesn't mean that I'm right.

You know? Every bad person in the world thought they were good. Go back to the Nazis. I'm convinced Hitler thought what he was doing was righteous and good. I'm sure the STARI on the other side of the political spectrum, of course they thought what they were doing was good. And I think, I wish I had been taught, I wish we'd all been taught at school rather than just like, Hey, here are the Nazis, this is what they did.

I wish we'd been told, Hey guys, like whenever you are really sure that something's right, that doesn't mean it is just be careful, pull back a bit and you don't exactly know. But anyway, virtual signal I think is a big thing right now, especially with status with Instagram X, Twitter, you know, people trying to improve their status.

And I find it concerning. I mean, what? What do you think?

[01:12:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, I hadn't thought much about it because I don't feel like I do a ton of that. I mean, maybe I'm just unaware, but when I catch myself doing it, I usually stop. It's not interesting to me, and I feel like it's primarily a social media rad, and so I don't do a whole lot of that either.

Well, you're successful as well. You don't need to get status in that way. I suppose that, you know what, that's probably largely the case. I don't think if I act really indignant about this thing on my podcast, more people will like me. I'm like, that's gonna piss off a bunch of people and it's gonna make impress a bunch of people.

It's a wash. Why bother?

[01:13:12] Clip: Yeah.

[01:13:12] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm not trying to capture an audience of people that agree with my fake views on something that would be, it's not even good business.

[01:13:19] Andrew Gold: The reason virtue signaling is relevant to secrecy is just because people keep secret, and again, I found this in my survey. They keep secret, their real political beliefs from Instagram or whatever, and they put out things they don't necessarily think.

Which is extraordinary. That is very

[01:13:33] Jordan Harbinger: odd, but it makes complete sense.

[01:13:35] Andrew Gold: There have been some great comedy. There's a guy like on YouTube, Ryan Long, uh, Canadian guy, and he does a lot of this stuff where he pretends to be a social media influencer. He's filming himself and he's looking at like Palestine, Israel, and he's going like, which one shall I pick?

This one's gonna get me lots of likes. That one's gonna get me fewer likes, but likes for the right kind of people. Hmm. Where do I go? What did the un say? Like after October 7th, the un, he is like typing the un trans lesbians are lesbians. He's like, Hmm, that doesn't really help me with Israel and Palestine red.

And that boils down to it. People are keeping secret. Well, they really, really think and they're putting out all this bananas on social media.

[01:14:11] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm actually gonna do a whole show about social media and real versus I think stated preferences. There's a term for it that I'm not quite getting, but essentially what this guy has shown is.

That people are not even just virtue signaling, but actually li like you said, lying about their political beliefs. It's like, all my friends are at this protest and I'm gonna go out there and scream and hold a sign. But when they survey, the person's like, yeah, no, I definitely don't believe that at all.

And it's like, how do you not feel the cognitive dissonance between standing in the rain holding a sign that says one thing and then when they survey you, you're like, well actually no, but you know, I wanted to hang out with my friends.

[01:14:47] Andrew Gold: Which, which river, which sea is what keeps getting asked to a lot of people, you know, from the river to the sea.

Which river is this? Which sea is it? They never know.

[01:14:54] Clip: Yeah.

[01:14:55] Andrew Gold: But they just know that Palestine will be free. I mean, it's a nice thought, you know, because maybe it should be free of Sure, fine. But find out which river and which, if that's your number one charms, just look it up for one second if you're actually interested in it.

[01:15:05] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:15:06] Andrew Gold: I don't think there's anything wrong with, with being political in, in whichever way, but look up a few bits and pieces, you

[01:15:10] Jordan Harbinger: know, this whole virtue signaling idea. I mean, look, I guess I shouldn't say I never do it. When the computer asks me if I'm in a coffee shop and the computer's like tip, I'm like.

Actually no tip. I'm gonna tip in cash. Did everybody hear that? Are you watching? I'm going to put money into the jar now. I drop them so loud. Oh, I want, like, I wanna wrap the bill and change and then be like, clink, oh, from three feet up.

[01:15:32] Andrew Gold: There's nothing worse than when you give the tip. Just at the point that the bartenders turned round and I'm like,

[01:15:36] Jordan Harbinger: dang, I gotta reach back in there and take it on and put it back in.

But now they're gonna think I'm stealing from you. This isn't gonna work. Now I, man, it's awful.

[01:15:42] Andrew Gold: But look, there's two types of virtue signaling. I think there's of course, the type where people are outwardly knowingly lying because they want to just get friends on social media and they wanna get likes and they're pretending they're interest in something when they're not.

Right. And there's a type where they convince themselves and they become very wrapped up in their own belief system and. Feel quite, you know, sure about themselves and I find both equally frustrating.

[01:16:05] Jordan Harbinger: What about victim signaling? You, you, this is the first time I'd ever even come across this charm in your book.

Victim signaling? Similar. Very similar.

[01:16:12] Andrew Gold: It's just instead of, look how virtuous I am, it's look how much of a victim I am. And that should get me points in some societies. I mean, we all have this in us. You, you must remember, I, I imagine everyone's the same as me when you were a kid and you had a broken leg or whatever and you got to wear the cast.

Oh yeah. And it was like, oh, I'm so badly hurt everyone, but please sign my thing. You get attention. Of course you do in any kind of tribe. Again, if you are injured or whatever, people give you attention. Look after you. That is extreme. You get munchhouse by proxy syndrome or munchhouse. Oh yeah.

[01:16:41] Jordan Harbinger: I've done a show about that too.

I feel like I should stop saying that. But i's you's done too

[01:16:44] Andrew Gold: many shows? That's true, but uh, you're Jordan Harger signaling. That's right.

[01:16:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. It's a combo of victim and virtue signaling. Yeah. But then you're in denial about both. It seems like People who are children do that. Your like's broken. Okay.

People sign your cast. There's a point at which. You should maybe outgrow this. I agree. Right? I say that cautiously because if you are dying of a terminal illness, cut in line, Yolo and your life is coming to a a premature end, whatever, don't wait in that airport line. Go on the disability thing. Screw everybody else.

Yeah. At that point. But, but

[01:17:19] Andrew Gold: you are competing for status. Yeah. Everyone around you is someone who's just sold their company for $200 million. They've all done really well. They're really dominant. They're successful. They're doing all these amazing things. And you've tried and tried and tried for years and you're not able to get any kind of success.

Nobody's noticing you. Right. It makes sense that you're incentivized to start. You don't just say it. You believe it. Yeah. You believe you are a victim. There's loads of studies now about how belief forms, and we think belief forms in the pursuit of knowledge. We'd love to think that in the pursuit of accuracy, let's say.

So I want to be right about this, so I'm gonna have a belief about it. That is right. That's what we think happens. That couldn't be further from the truth. What happens is we form beliefs based on what we are incentivized to believe, because we'll get applause from the people around us. That is true of every society, every group left, right, whatever.

That is what we do, unfortunately.

[01:18:08] Jordan Harbinger: Is there overlap between the people who victim signal and other undesirable traits? Yeah. They're more likely to have dark triad traits.

[01:18:15] Andrew Gold: People who victim signal. What are those again? These are Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. The people who victim signal and virtue signal are more likely to have those, so those would be, I suppose.

Oh, both those. Oh yeah. Oh, interesting. Both of those. There was really interesting study on that. They are more likely to have, and it makes sense to most people, you know? Okay. Victim signaling, every terrible dictatorship or whatever starts from victim signaling. That's true. I mean, Hitler fault, they were victims.

Germany was down on the floor at that time. In some respects, that's the West's fault for the way they treated Germany. I know Germany's part, part of the west, but after the first World War, they just brutalized Germany. Perhaps fairly, perhaps not, but the problem was that Germany went from being these like.

Uber mentioned these extra superhuman people who were at the forefront of everything, very much like how they are now, very confident, arrogant, in their brilliance and their success to being at the bottom of the pile in terms of status. So that kind of victimhood led to atrocities. That's why we have to be so careful whenever we indulge ourselves too much in, oh God, I feel like such a victim.

Yes, we have to look after those people. But also there has to be a bit of, come on, pull yourself together. Come on. Yeah.

[01:19:20] Jordan Harbinger: Interesting. On, on another note, why are we so as curious, the right word to uncover the secrets of others? I personally don't care about tabloid stuff at all. I didn't watch the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial.

Like I, that stuff doesn't interest me. But man, am I in the minority there?

[01:19:39] Andrew Gold: Yeah. I've noticed as well on my YouTube, if I ever talk about Meghan Markle, I wasn't previously interested in that stuff. Right at all. But the views are just huge. And every now and then somebody who's upset will comment, oh, you're obsessed with these guys.

Like, why are you so obsessed with Meghan and Harry? I'm like, I'm not like, but you guys are. Everyone else is apparently right. They really want to know. Again, it's an evolutionary trait. If you are curious, curiosity is a huge indicator of intelligence. Firstly, it's really good to be curious. If you were curious in the wild, again, you were the guy discovering berries.

You were the guys who were able to find a better kind of shelter. You were inventing things. So curiosity is one of the best traits that humans have, and it's a really good thing to have. But like a dog, think of a ducks and or D hunt that can't hunt and dig or whatever. They get stressed out. They want to be doing the things that they're evolutionarily made to do.

We also get that way, like I can't always be Christopher Columbus discovering new lands. So what do you do when you're sitting at home? There's that curiosity thing nagging at you. Well, we start looking at what other humans are doing. We're comparing ourselves to them, and we've become obsessed with tabloid famous people.

And that's gone on for years and years. They used to be, they were called papers or paragraphs 200 years ago, I guess in the 18 hundreds. It was, they had these paragraphs about Lady May Earth and Lord such and such, and it was all about who was dating, whom are these real people or is it just like fiction?

These are real people. And just like today with Instagram and retractions and the press and things like that. That used to happen as well. So basically the equivalent of an influencer 200, 300 years ago would approach one of these paragraph papers, which are like newspapers and like give them a bit of money or give them a heads up.

Like, Hey, come to this place and report I'm, I'm with this woman now because they don't want anyone else to approach the woman. Or please keep me out of the paper. I'll give you a bit of money to do that kinds of things that happen today with influences.

[01:21:28] Jordan Harbinger: That's so bizarre. It, there's something super interesting in the book about grooming and monkeys becoming gossip in humans can speak to that.

I thought that was so fascinating. Oh

[01:21:36] Andrew Gold: yeah. So that comes from Robin Dunbar's studies as well. So that's, we used to be small enough in tribes. I think it was 60 to 70 of us. That the main social glue, the cohesion that kept us together was grooming, not in the sort of Jimmy Savi way. If anyone I

[01:21:52] Jordan Harbinger: see knows who's, yeah, we're talking about picking lice.

[01:21:54] Andrew Gold: Yeah, picking lice and things out of each other's hair. Obviously monkeys still do it. They love it. It got to a point where our groups was so large that we got to like 140 in the wild, that it was no longer beneficial from a just for time. There wasn't time, and also it's something that only two people can do at any time.

So over time we stopped grooming one another and gossip became the social glue. So it serves a real purpose. Again, going back to when you were asking before about if you're bitching about a friend, if you are sharing a secret about someone else, that can really increase the bond between you and someone else.

That has its roots in our social evolution. It really made us come together as a group. We started to gossip about one another. We started to have more hierarchies. People are at the top, people are at the bottom. Everyone at the bottom wants to know what's going on with people at the top. Hey, that's Johnny Depp.

That's Amber Heard. That's what we're doing today.

[01:22:43] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it, so why do we not all universally care about, like, I just

[01:22:49] Andrew Gold: don't care. Well, you are already at the top. I don't think Johnny Depp cares about this stuff. I mean, at the same time, I, you're right. You probably didn't care when he was 17 either. No, I didn't care.

That's a good point. But we play different status games, so this is, I see the point World Store makes, we play very, very different games and we start to belittle the games of others. I've started to look at this my in, in my own behavior. For a long time I thought that fashion was stupid and I was incentivized to think that fashion was stupid because I wasn't fashionable and I didn't, that's

[01:23:17] Jordan Harbinger: like how I think social media is stupid because my social media is non-existent almost.

[01:23:21] Andrew Gold: You've got other status games, right? What you think is important probably is audio podcast figures.

[01:23:26] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[01:23:26] Andrew Gold: I remember saying to Chris Williamson, the podcaster, modern Wisdom, right at the beginning. We were both starting out. He started a couple years before me, but it was right near the beginning, probably about the time I met you a few years ago Now I remember saying after we finished doing an episode, he was like, Hey, do you do YouTube as well?

And I said, ah, I'm just interested in audio. Yeah. Something to me about audio felt like it had more integrity. Yeah. Or just a voice, you know, no tricks, no anything. Just your voice and interviewing. And he said, just do this course. He gave me a course to do on YouTube. I did the course. YouTube went from 3000 subscribers to 300,000 within a year.

Just went bam. All of a sudden I now value YouTube. I see. Yeah. My beliefs change based on the status

[01:24:03] Jordan Harbinger: game that I happen to be good at. That's interesting. And I like that. There's a lot of wisdom in there. You investigated Truth Serum for the book. I've never looked into this stuff. I'm so curious what it is and how it works, or if it works at all.

It's just

[01:24:14] Andrew Gold: barbiturates and it doesn't do anything, and so I can't remember the names of the people. There was a guy going around in the early 19 hundreds administering barbiturates to people and they were excited about it for a time, and some people were sentenced. To death for various things based on what they had said under the spelling.

Oh, geez. Barbiturate. It does loosen you up. And did you try it as part of your research? I, I was already very constantly familiar already here with this. Oh man.

[01:24:43] Jordan Harbinger: Well, we'll, we'll leave that vague.

[01:24:45] Andrew Gold: Yeah, no, no, no drugs. But, uh, yeah, they, they came to realize this was just barric. Sometimes it was getting people to reveal their truths or what actually happened, but often it was that, what it does is it puts you into a place where you're very malleable and you really wanna make the person with you happy.

So it just means that you are gonna tell a prosecutor what they want to hear. Doesn't mean you're gonna tell the truth.

[01:25:05] Jordan Harbinger: Yikes. Yeah, that's definitely not ideal when you're trying to get the truth outta somebody. One thing I've noticed that happens all the time in the YouTube comments is people try to read body language.

Like someone will watch this and go, Jordan's eyes are going up into the right, so he must have lied about that thing that they, meanwhile the video's mirrored or something, so it's the wrong direction and that I, accessing cues are also complete nonsense. But people who are really good at this, like Joe Navarro, who's been on my show a few times, yeah, I've talked about this in other shows.

But he even says like a coin flip. Unless he's been talking to you for 45 minutes in a controlled environment where he can ask you questions and you have to answer because he's like, you know, a cop is interrogating somebody. Yeah. And he'll catch somebody who has like a real obvious tell like they carry flowers in the Eastern European way.

I love that. You remember

[01:25:53] Jordan and Andrew Crosstalk: that one? Holding them upside down stool. Holding 'em upside

[01:25:55] Jordan Harbinger: down. Yeah. So he caught like a spy that way, but 99.99% of the time, there's no obvious tell like that. And so, but people love to latch onto these like really simple. Tells and people are gonna look at this video of us right now and be like, oh, well Jordan is less comfortable because he's slouching over on the table.

And that must mean that Andrew is intimidating him or something. It's gonna be some, there's always like, they read 17 steps into stuff that is just not there.

[01:26:21] Andrew Gold: Yeah. I mean it's that Dunning Kruger kind of thing that Right. As you said, Joe Navarro, who's uh, an expert in this, is much more humble about how much he knows, he knows how much he doesn't know and how difficult it is to actually read someone's body language.

It's almost impossible. It serves very little use because it's so difficult. And as you, you are more of an expert on this than I am really. So I'll bow to your greater knowledge on it. And I actually listened to some of your episodes to research some of this.

[01:26:47] Jordan Harbinger: I assume I'm in the thank you in the book and I just missed it when I was doing the reading.

You might have been in there. Yeah, I'll have to, I'll have to check. You should be in there. I dunno if you are, I agree that I should be in there.

[01:26:56] Andrew Gold: Yeah, well, as long as we can agree about that. Okay. Okay. Well that, that's fine. If not, you'll be in the next one. You might be in there, but don't look after. So, um, but you should be, the best way is to actually trick people into revealing stuff.

Sure. And that kind of thing. There was this, there was a woman who works in interrogating Guantanamo Bay, who used a Game Boy to get information out of people. So, oh yeah,

[01:27:16] Jordan Harbinger: I think I heard about this from your blood. Probably, but probably

[01:27:18] Andrew Gold: so she used this old game boy and she hooked it up to people, and when they were lying, it sort of flashed and they would reveal the truth then.

Now the reality was the Game Boy was nothing, it wasn't hooked up to anything. She made it flash herself. And she said that it's amazing how she would trick people into thinking, Hey look, she would suspect that they had lied and go like, game Boy is flashing up. Come on, tell me the truth now. And they felt that they had to, and there's a lot of psychological games as well into trying to reframe what telling the truth is to these people in Guantanamo Bay or wherever they are.

Like, Hey, you're a good guy. You tell the truth, don't you? That's something you aspire to, to being a truthful person so that they want to reveal things to you. And of course the other way, as with the flowers being upside down, you catch them doing things they shouldn't be doing or they're unexpected to do.

You say to them, oh, so you are at this place at two o'clock. There was a lot of traffic then, wasn't there outside? And then they're in a difficult position. 'cause is the interrogator being honest with me, was there traffic? I don't wanna nod and say yes if there's not. And that's when you can see that they're umming for too long.

They're

[01:28:20] Jordan Harbinger: hesitating. Yeah. David Lieberman talks about that. Yes. That's his one of his thing. He's like, that's how you catch teenagers wine. That's right. And uh, you can check out our episode with him where he details exactly how to catch a teenager, especially in, in a line. I found it interesting. You said English is a good language for keeping secrets.

Tell me about that. You never think about it being easier to keep a secret in another language.

[01:28:41] Andrew Gold: Yes, and I, I love, it's my favorite part of the book 'cause I'm a linguist, as you know. I go on about it all the time. Yeah. Speak five language. And you speak a few, don't you? Five. Five as well. There's 10 between

[01:28:49] Jordan Harbinger: us.

It's 10 between us. There's plenty of overlap. Unfortunately. There's

[01:28:52] Andrew Gold: some,

[01:28:53] Jordan Harbinger: but there's some German English. Spanish. Your Spanish is much better than mine. I don't use mine anymore. Okay. French. Oh no. What's Serber? Croatian and Mandarin Chinese. Oh,

[01:29:02] Andrew Gold: come on. Between us. We should be going out doing spy things.

That's true. Perhaps we are. And that's a double blast. This is a great cover. Being Lamo podcasters. This is a great cover. Yeah. No one would expect to suspect us. No. So, so language obviously. Really, really interesting. They told a story in the book about a friend of mine who said to his girlfriend, we were living in Argentina.

I'm going out with Andrew and his friends, and he said it in English to her. She's Argentinian. She took the his friend thing to think the friend must be a man because his friend, his was referring to me of course, but she got a little bit confused with the English there because in Spanish you wouldn't be able to do the same thing.

You'd have to say S or

[01:29:46] Jordan Harbinger: Ah. So you know if the friend is a male or female. Exactly. Based on the noun.

[01:29:50] Andrew Gold: You can't hide it. The same in French, it would be Ami or

[01:29:54] Jordan Harbinger: Unami would change it. Then you would just lie and make it plural. And then it, you wouldn't know, but then you're lying. But then you're plausible Deniability is really good.

I thought more than one person was gonna come and it turned out to just be a girl.

[01:30:04] Andrew Gold: Yeah. But you are already in a lie, whereas in English you don't. The point is, oh, I see what you're saying. You don't have to lie. You just go, I'm going out with a friend. They ended up breaking up and I think it was straw that broke camel's back.

They're having a lot of argument. I would hope

[01:30:13] Jordan Harbinger: so. That it's not just that

[01:30:15] Andrew Gold: she was a really difficult person. I mean, she used to, he'd say he was going out to a restaurant with us, like in Buenos Aires, wherever, and she would start calling and calling and messaging and saying, I can see you on the Find My Friends app.

And you're not at that restaurant. You're at the one next to it.

[01:30:28] Clip: Yeah. And

[01:30:29] Andrew Gold: he was like, well, that's just the signals being a problem. Right. And she's like, well, this sounds suspicious. I better come down and check it out. Oh my God. Psycho. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't good. But that's one example. And I, I, this sounds like it's a little bit silly, like it's not really done, but people really do this.

People who are bilingual. I spoke to Professor Lira Bosky, who's a fantastic linguist. And she said she has bilingual students who talk to her all the time about actually doing this. They will switch to a different language to their parents to say, I'm going out with a friend, so they don't have to specify what gender they are.

[01:30:59] Jordan Harbinger: That's hilarious. People do. They're actively doing this. Yeah, I think I heard that also, like a lot of Cuban double agents back in the day. They would pass the lie detector test in English because it didn't have the same psychological impact of speaking their native language, like a lie in your native languages.

And I could be getting this wrong, but if you lie in your native language, it's like, oh God, I'm, but if you lie in a foreign language, it's just somehow easier 'cause you're manually constructing it with say, you're thinking harder about how the words work. I don't really know. That's

[01:31:26] Andrew Gold: definitely anecdotally true from my perspective.

I had a French girlfriend for three years when I was about 19 or 18, we only spoke in French and she didn't speak solid Flex. Yeah, she, yeah, we, we, uh, only spoke in French, you know. Yeah. Sometimes we just speak French and she, one time, I dunno, she was a bit drunk. We'd been going out for a few months and we'd often said in French to one another, blah, blah, blah.

And then she whispered in my ear, I love you. I felt sick

[01:31:52] Jordan Harbinger: was too soon. Like, oh, this is a red flag. Yeah, it means more in English.

[01:31:56] Andrew Gold: I was like, oh my God. Yeah. And imagine, I mean that difference until I felt that viscerally or physically, I felt so tangibly. Yeah. If I was doing a, some sort of detector to test in your own language.

It's definitely different. I mean, so you turned to her and said it in German,

[01:32:08] Jordan Harbinger: you can leave. Exactly. And she is ah. Maybe, maybe, maybe switch back to, yeah. Horrible. Is there a positive thing we could leave off on? I feel this is like such an awkward place to set it down.

[01:32:19] Andrew Gold: I think a good thing is that it's good that we have secrets and we have this dynamic with secrets.

It's good that we're able to know what should be private. To me, what I don't really wanna tell people, but that my body wants me to tell other people what will be good for them. I'm a big believer in determinism. I believe that everything that's gonna happen to us or whatever we're gonna do, we are gonna do and we can't really control it.

Our brains are already set up that way.

[01:32:43] Jordan Harbinger: Really like no free will kind of situation. Oh, that's a different podcast.

[01:32:46] Andrew Gold: That's a whole different podcast. But what I would say is. Some people say, oh, but then why would you know? Why do we do good things for other people? And I think it's because our bodies have evolved in such a way that they incentivize us to do it.

It feels good to do a good thing for a person. It feels good for us to tell a seat to someone and let them in on our world. And I think that's a really positive way

[01:33:08] Jordan Harbinger: of looking at humanity. I agree with you and support our sponsors so I don't have to sell my children's dignity for money. Andrew Gold, thank you very much, man.

Ever wondered how to read minds and uncover the hidden truths and everyday interactions? Join us for an Eye-opening episode with Dr. David Lieberman, a leading expert in lie detection as he debunks common myths about body language and equips you with skills to discern underlying truths in personal and professional settings.

[01:33:34] Clip II: I think one of the biggest misconceptions with reading people in general and lie detection specifically, is the reliance on body language, which simply does not work. Now, there is an area where it is effective in terms of looking for congruency and certainly in unguarded situations, but the fact that someone's arms are folded, the fact that they're looking away, the fact they're scratching the nose doesn't mean anything in and of itself.

And if you're talking to someone who's even a mildly sophisticated liar, you're going to get false readings time and again. So language is a powerful weapon, and if we don't realize the impact it can have, you know, on how we feel about things. We are being unduly influenced to a great extent. But somebody who comes into our space after we've already drawn that boundary line doesn't respect it.

That's one of the, a hard giveaways of ways of emotional unwellness and a potential for danger. You know, somebody who doesn't respect boundaries of social norms, that's an immediate red flag. I encourage everyone, risk somebody feeling uncomfortable. If your gut tells you something is not right, the worst case is you will have offended somebody you know, unintentionally.

And if they are reasonably healthy, they will understand what's happened. And if they're not, then certainly you made the right choice anyway. But you know, we're not speaking in absolutes here. So language has a lot to do with how we frame not just our world, but how we we see things. These are tools, they're not, you know, undeniable, 100% absolute givens.

[01:35:02] Jordan Harbinger: What clandestine method shared by Dr. Lieberman is even employed by the FBI Discover this secret and more in episode 7 73 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. All things Andrew Gold will be in the show notes as always@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, wee bit wiser is waiting for you. The idea is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes every Wednesday. I invite you to come check it out.

It's a great companion to the show. A lot of feedback from you can always hit reply and reach me there. It's a lot of fun. Jordan harbinger.com/news. Is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute Networking over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. LinkedIn is a good way to connect as well.

This show is created in association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show as you share it with friends, when you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

So if you know somebody who'd be interested in a conversation like this about secrets or maybe they're carrying something, maybe they need a little perspective on it, definitely share this episode with 'em. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.