1361: Creep’s Snaps Turn Tide on Body Positivity Ride | Feedback Friday

1361: Creep's Snaps Turn Tide on Body Positivity Ride | Feedback Friday

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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the dude helping me take on your problems while I'm in Taiwan, Gabriel Mizrahi. Um, It's early here. 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.

And our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long form conversations with neuroscientists and investigative journalists, astronauts, and cold case homicide investigators.

Speaker 2: This week, we had an out of the loop update on scam centers with Lindsay and Nathan over there in Cambodia.

Those scam centers are being hit by F-16s. There's a conflict going on. It's actually crazy, and a bunch of the people have been rescued, but not quite enough, so we did a whole update on that. Don't forget to check that out if you haven't done so yet.

Speaker: On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, and pack you in our [00:01:00] suitcases while we gallivant around this strange, incredible planet of ours.

Speaking of which, this is my last episode I'll be recording in China, because we fly home tomorrow.

Speaker 3: This month flew by, for me anyway. I don't know what it was like for you.

Speaker: Well, yes and no. I, I suppose it has been a bit of a blur between visiting a few different cities and putting the kids in summer camp here, and running around exploring.

Four weeks does go by really fast, but also at the same time, you're kind of like, "Okay, we're on week two. Does this not feel like we've been here a month already?" So every week you feel like you've been there for a month or more, and then by the end you're like, "Wait a minute. We didn't even get to do all these other things on the list," so...

Speaker 3: Any highlights since I last saw you?

Speaker: Nothing huge, just more weird observations really, I think, about China and Chinese culture.

Speaker 3: I love it. Let's hear them. What you got?

Speaker: So first of all, I don't know if it's a, like, "We don't care about the rules because we're rebels." I don't get it to be kind of from that angle.

I think it's just that there's a lot of rules that people decide are not important, and then there's invisible [00:02:00] rules that are. So you don't want to lose face and stuff like that, or all these little invisible rules you've heard about in China where like you don't want to get embarrassed and things like that.

And I'm, I'm not going to go deep into that, because it's very complicated. But a lot of visible rules like, "Hey, there's a painted double yellow line on the road." You're like, "Nah, I don't care. I'm going to drive on the other side." Or smoking next to a sign that says "No Smoking," even in places where it's wildly inappropriate.

Like, you'll go into the bathroom at a hospital and there will be people smoking in the bathroom- ... next to the no smoking sign in the hospital.

Speaker 3: Are you serious? Inside?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker 3: Not even outside.

Speaker: No, not like too close to the door. No, no, like inside the hospital or the clinic, or there'll be a school and a guy will flick his cigarette through the fence of the school into the playground-

where there's kids playing, and he's just like, "Whatever, I don't want this anymore." And it's like, uh, okay, you could have put that literally anywhere.

Speaker 3: Interesting.

Speaker: Yeah. There's a lot of that kind of thing. [00:03:00] It's very bizarre to me, and I don't think it's like, "Yeah, screw it, we don't care about them kids." It's just kind of like, "Eh, smoking, it's not that bad.

Everybody does it. Whatever. Who cares?" I think it's more like that. I really do, and- It's very strange to see somebody go to a park, eat a bunch of food that they bought at a food vendor, and just leave the trash all over the whole area of the park. Oh, that kills me. And that's, yeah. But, well, here's the thing.

I want to be very clear. China's a country of, they say 1.3 billion. I think real estimates are more like 800 million. It's not all 800 million people doing that, or the place would look way worse, okay? It's a few people, and when I ask other Chinese people, like, "Hey, what's up with these people just leaving their trash everywhere?"

Young kids especially, they're like, "Yeah, he's a gross guy from a, probably, like, a small town, and they just do stuff like that there." There's sort of this, like, oh, if you don't live in a city or... They call them peasants in Chinese, and, and they, it sort of just means farmer, but it also has a little connotation [00:04:00] like, "Yeah, of course you're spitting on the ground, because that's what you do over there."

So there's this rural-urban divide that I think especially young people are acutely aware of. I was talking to a buddy the other day who went to Macau, which is a former Portuguese colony, now part of China, uh, officially again, and they have a lot of casinos there. It's basically like Las Vegas, but even more crazy with the casinos and stuff like this.

They have the Wynn and stuff, and I said, "Oh, I heard Macau was gross," and he goes, "No, Macau is beautiful, but the people who go there to gamble are gross." So it's actually a lot like Las Vegas in that respect, now that I think about it. But he said he'd be at the Wynn in, like, a nice, large, carpeted hallway, and you're walking down the hallway just like you would be in Las Vegas, and you're getting ready to go see a Cirque du Soleil show or something like that, and there'll be a guy smoking, similar to Vegas, and he's going to gamble thousands of dollars per hand on baccarat or roulette, and he suddenly goes [00:05:00] And spits on the floor indoors in a carpeted hallway

Speaker 3: No.

No.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Inside.

Speaker: Inside, on the floor of a carpeted hallway. And this is a guy who's wasting tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling, and he's not drunk and doesn't know where he is. He's just like, "I'm going to spit on the floor because that's what I would do at home."

Speaker 3: Horrifying.

Speaker: Horrifying. I know that's like your actual nightmare. Your actual worst nightmare. Uh, for me, it's certainly something that I would not be able to handle. There's a lot of spitting here, I just never saw it indoors. And, and I wasn't visiting a lot of, uh, casinos or anything like that. You see a lot of people, like they'll be getting their bike out from the, a rack of scooters and they'll do it, and you're just like, "Wow, right in the road, huh?"

But, you know, you're outside, so you can kind of wrap your mind around it 'because you were going to spit, which you probably shouldn't do in public, you would do it outside. But they'll just do it right on the sidewalk. It's a little gross. It's a million times grosser inside, and then when you add the carpet factor it's just like, holy cow.

Speaker 3: I can't [00:06:00] imagine doing that within 50 yards of a Cirque de

Speaker: Soliela. No. And a bunch of people behind and around you too, right? Onto a carpeted floor. It's like no, okay, they're going to clean it later. I just... that I can't quite wrap my mind around. There's also an insane amount of abandoned properties that are just absolutely enormous, and I'm talking about stadium-sized luxury hotels or would-be apartment buildings just incomplete concrete husks, similar to what we saw in North Korea.

Remember that humongous hotel that turned out to be unsafe to occupy? Mm-hmm. And they ended up just covering it with... They, they had Egypt Telecom, I think, when they came in to create the mobile network, they just had them cover it in glass so it doesn't look terrible. And they, they would Photoshop it out of skylines when they took photos.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: So China has a ton of those. And I don't really know why. I tried to figure out why. I asked people and they'd be like, "Yeah, they were building a hotel here for Marriott and then they just stopped." And I'd be like, "Well, when was that?" And they're like, "Oh, seven years ago." And so you're like, "Okay, this is [00:07:00] probably not coming back So it's just in the middle of town.

And what's crazy is th- there'll be-- The reason I found some of these is I go, "Oh, we should have stayed here. They have a whatever, St. Regis. I wonder, it's probably reasonably priced because it's in China." And you're like, "Where's the St. Regis?" And you look behind the sign, which is in perfect condition, and there's a giant concrete husk of what would have been the St.

Regis or whatever. And it's just this massive city block sized property that's just completely empty, and there's no equipment. It's not like they took a pause. Like I said, I asked people and they were like, "Oh, that's been here for, you know, five years, seven years. They're not coming back." If they come back, they're on the edge of having to destroy that just because it's been exposed for so long.

Concrete husks, I looked this up, concrete building husks, they last maybe five years in good condition, like good enough, and then you have to clean it because of mold and stuff, and then after that it's like, okay, you have to inspect it, and chances are you have to just tear the whole thing down because the rebar starts to corrode and stuff.

So it's just going to end up being a total loss. And you'll see these. It's [00:08:00] not like, oh, this is a random place. It's close to town, or it'll be like at the top of a mountain and you go, "Oh my God, that place is going to be amazing. What's the ETA on that?" And they're like, "Oh no, that's been here as long as I've worked here, and I've worked here for four and a half years.

They're not working on that." And you're like, "Oh." So it's just somebody bought that and licensed it or whatever and just started building and then ran out of money or like didn't know the right people who came to power at that time, and they just didn't finish it or, you know, I don't know. It's very hard to see what they're going to end up doing with that, and it's a shame because sometimes the massive center of an area will just be a bunch of those, and you're like, "Oh."

Like the waterfront will have three. Just it's a shame. I also, uh, I was reading, uh, at a cafe when I was in Dali, China, which is again a tier four, tier five city. I was reading The Atlantic. There was a piece on Iran, the Iran deal, by a friend, Graham Wood, who's been on the show before, and I sent him a text because I really liked the piece.

He said, "Hey, where are you these days?" And I said, "Oh, I'm traveling." He said, "Oh, I'm in Yunnan, China." And I was like, "Wait. Did you just... Are you [00:09:00] trolling me? Because it seems strange to me that like, well, did you just see my fa- Instagram post or something?" And he, he's like, "No, I don't use social media." And I said, "I'm also in Yunnan."

And he goes, "Oh, I'm at this cafe in Dali, China." And I was like, I looked at the map and I said, "I could walk there from where I am right now." "I'll see you in 15 minutes." Whoa. Yeah, so this is a guy I haven't seen or talked to in four-plus years, and I decided to text him. What are the

Speaker 3: odds?

Speaker: I can't believe this small world style coincidence.

It's not like, "Oh, I'm also in New York right now." Okay, you know, uh, uh, okay, that, that happens. That's a cool coincidence. To be in this random city in China, and I said, "Oh, how long are you going to be here?" He's like, "Oh, we're going to be here for a couple of months." So he also brings his kids there. We ended up having dinner with the whole family, and his kids were also in Mandarin school, going to camps and stuff here in China.

It's crazy. They come every year. So the reason I'm telling this story not only is because it's an insane coincidence, but also [00:10:00] because it's the Six Minute Networking stuff at work. Because I, again, I've t- and I talk about this in the Six Minute Networking course, which you can find for free at sixminutenetworking.com.

When you read an article by somebody or you see an article that would... That works well for me, right? Because I know a bunch of these journalists and authors. But let's say you see an article and you see s- you know somebody who would be interested in it. They're not necessarily the author of it. You think, oh, they'll be interested in this.

You send this to them, and then you get the update on them. So I, that's part of the system, and it's the system at work. I texted him based on the article. He turned out to be in an area very cl- well, the same area I was, and I said, "What are you doing tomorrow for dinner?" And he said, "Nothing," and we ended up having dinner with him and his whole family.

And so that really has helped solidify and I guess you could say rekindle our friendship, which again, I checked my last text before th- and it was like pre-pandemic, I think, was the last time I had actually talked to him. So, so maybe Six Minute Networking needs a little spit polish on my end because it's been so long for him.

But, uh, but at least, you know, this actually brought him into a closer [00:11:00] circle, I would say, as opposed to former show guest and guy I text sometimes when I see his pieces, or email sometimes when I see his pieces. It turned into, you know, friend I can text at any time and probably will see next summer when we come back, which i- is another point.

Because now that the trip is wrapping up, I have to say It was really amazing to see my kids learn Chinese so quickly. I mean, granted, they hear Chinese all the time at home. They just refuse to speak it. But when they came here, it was almost immediate. They didn't want to speak it at all, but a day or maybe two after they got here, they're like, "Oh, we have to speak Chinese now."

And they would come back speaking Chinese to each other, and we got my son this... Ever- all kids here have these video, basically like a FaceTime watch where you can video chat your friends, and there's little chat groups, and you can voice text And send little images and stuff. So he was doing that in Chinese on day two, because all the, the kids had it.

So he's like, "Oh, I'm part of a group chat," and they'd be, like, making jokes and kicking it in Chinese. And my [00:12:00] daughter was speaking Chinese. She refused to speak Chinese for the most part at home. My Chinese got better, too. I had a couple Chinese lessons while I was here, and my teacher right away was like, "What happened?"

And I said, "Oh, it's 8:00 PM, so I'm a little bit more awake than I am at 7:00 AM when I usually take my Chinese lessons." And she's like, "Ah, I don't think so. Your accent's better. You know, your vocabulary is more quick, like, your rate of speech is faster." So my, my teacher noticed right away that my Chinese improved.

I think we're going to do this every year, uh, at least until World War III happens, so maybe only a couple more years. I don't know how that's going to work. Uh, well, uh, debatably, World War III's already started, right? Ask Ryan Macbeth. But a- anyway, I think we're going to do this every year. It was really cool to travel with the family and Jen's whole extended family, or part of her extended family, I should say.

I feel closer to everybody who came with us, of course. We spent so much time together. We got super close, and that, that's really special, you know? You don't get a chance to spend a lot of time with your in-laws, some people are okay with that, or your [00:13:00] wife's aunt or something like that or, like, y- cousins and stuff like that.

So here, that was not the case at all. It was like every day. I'm really bummed my own parents couldn't come. I, I think it was a little bit too much for them. You know, there's a lot of stairs. There's a lot of uneven ground. It was 90-plus degrees every day with 100% close to humidity, torrential downpours making things slippery, and my parents are in their mid-80s.

Like, that's just not, it's not fun at that point for them. But I did miss them. I'm looking forward to seeing them when we get back. And look, you don't have to take your whole family to Asia in order to create an experience. I know I'm speaking from a position of immense privilege, and there's probably people who are like, "Hey man, congrats on being a r- you know, wealthy jerk who can take his family across the world."

Uh, I don't care. I'm not saying any of this to brag, and I, I, I think a lot of people can create a similar type of experience. You could go camping an hour away. You might not learn Chinese doing it, but getting your family together for a special dinner, whatever it is, is really [00:14:00] special. It's just the sort of change of environment and everyone together thing that really made it special.

Every time we do stuff like this, I'm always like, "Man, this is what it's all about, and we've got to keep doing this," because life really is made up of these experiences. As much as I love the idea of getting back to regular work and my normal routine, I probably won't remember the months between this trip and the next thing that I do, the next trip that I do, or the next big thing that happens, because those things blur together.

I'm not going to remember making 20 episodes of the show in my office, right? It's just not going to be a thing that sticks out in my memory, but these trips, they really leave a mark, and they're j- they're just very precious. So I hope you get to do the same, whatever that looks like for you. Again, it could be camping.

You know, rent one of those little RVs. I guarantee you, if you rent an RV and you stuff your kids and parents and in-laws in there, you're going to have a time. And what, that time might just remind you how much you value sitting in your office [00:15:00] doing work alone. You're

Speaker 3: welcome. That time might inspire a Feedback Friday letter that we read on the show.

Speaker: It might, and you might say, "Jordan, that was the worst idea ever," and to that I say, "You're welcome."

Speaker 3: But you know what? You're welcome, and it was still an experience. Like-

Speaker: That's right ...

Speaker 3: it's going to be an experience either way.

Speaker: You will remember it for the rest of your life, possibly as a turning point for either to the left or to the right.

I don't know. We'll see. By the way, a lot of you wrote to me on social media or elsewhere asking, and in the subreddit I think, asking how I ended up doing voiceovers for Grand Theft Auto IV. I said III before, but somebody found it. It's actually IV. My bad. Uh, Grand Theft Auto IV all those years ago. What happened was I was working at Sirius XM doing my radio show.

I would basically w- we were the first podcast to be on the radio. So we would record the radio show. We had call-ins. It was similar to Feedback Friday, but more dude bro I think, and we would take callers and handle relationship and dating issues and stuff [00:16:00] like that. And the station manager, I c- I don't remember his exact title.

His name's Rob Cross, great guy actually. He had a GTA, a bunch of GTA II memorabilia on his desk, and I was like, "Oh, h- how'd you... You're a GTA II, Grand Theft Auto fan, huh?" And he's like, "Oh, well, my friend, he helps run Rockstar Games." And I was like, "Oh, that's cool." And he goes, "Yeah, I actually did a couple pedestrian voices And every week it became kind of like, "Hey, let me know when you're going to do pedestrian voices again."

And I'd follow it up every month or so with him because I'd go see him and chat. And one day he just goes, "Oh, you know what? Actually, I was just there doing pedestrian voices." And he goes, "I, I can't believe I forgot to intro you." And I was like, "I can't either because I've been annoying you about this for, I don't know, a couple months or maybe even a couple years by now."

And he's like, "Yeah, yeah. Let me send that email right now." So he sends an email and the email's something like, "Hey, my friend Jordan does really good voices. He's a chat show host [00:17:00] here on Sirius XM." And they email back right away and they're like, "Cool. Can you do a hot dog cart vendor, a regular pedestrian getting hit by a car, a guy shooting or getting shot," and some other sort of...

I can't remember the exact names of these things, but it's when you go like, "Oof, ugh." There's a term for those in voiceover where it's not words, it's just emotions. But I, I needed to do a bunch of those. And they needed retakes of some other characters where the actor was gone, but they're like, "Can you be Russian and get shot?"

I'm like, "Yeah, okay." So I show up and they go, "Okay, can you do this? Can you do that?" It was a couple pedestrians, a couple vendors. Really short, like one or two lines at most for each of these people. Grand Theft Auto, for people who don't know, you're driving a car a lot of the time, and so you're, you listen to the radio.

I did a bunch of radio stuff like, "You're listening to 95.5, The Rock." You know, I did a lot of that kind of stuff. And then they were like, "All right. Well, this is going pretty well. Um, actually we have some bonus stuff we could do for a, [00:18:00] a..." It's called a DLC. It's downloadable content, so it's like an extension of the regular game.

And I said, "Sure, I can do that." So they started giving me larger parts because I was... I, I don't know. I mean, I asked why and the guy said, "Well, you were easy to work with and you have a lot of range," which basically means you can do a lot of different things that you're not, you know, you're not just a Russian gangster that can get shot or you're not just an Indian hot dog cart vendor or a guy getting hit by a car.

You can do all these different voices. So I started doing all those extra characters and it was great because I remember at the end I had a, brought a bunch of friends with me who also did different voices and they were like, "Oh yeah, you get a T-shirt and a copy of the handheld video game." And I was like, "Great."

So I'm getting ready to leave And I'm like, "Hey, um, you can keep the handheld video game because I don't even have that game system, but maybe I could have two T-shirts and I'll give one to my friend." And they go, "No, man. You've been here for..." I can't remember how long. "We have to pay you. We have to pay you for this.

Like, we can't just not pay you for all that." And I went, "Oh, [00:19:00] okay. Great." And I remember thinking, "Wow, I bet I made, like, $100 an hour." And I remember that fat check showed up and I just fell in love with it because I was like, that didn't feel like work at all. It was super fun, and knowing that your voice is in this game forever is amazing.

And it was just, it was hilarious. I mean, we were... E- even the director was laughing so much during this session, and I just had a, a really great time doing this and I thought, "This doesn't feel like work at all. I mean, this is just as much fun as you can have." And then I came back and I think I had a check for, like I said before, I think I had a check for, like, 500 bucks and I worked...

I don't even remember. I can't even remember because it went by so fast. And I thought, "Oh, I could do this every day. That would be a dream come true." Now, I've done a bunch of other voiceover acting, voice acting since then. It's not all as fun as Grand Theft Auto. Some of it's really hard. Some of it is real acting that is far beyond my capability to do.

I mean, r- real acting is a skill that I just, most people don't have. And the, [00:20:00] as games become more advanced, they require better and better acting because the characters look more real and the cinematics look more real, and you're not playing a Star Wars droid anymore that can be corny and silly and fake.

You are playing a real person where if you act silly or unbelie- in a way that's not believable, it screws up the whole game. It's actually kind of an interesting industry phenomenon. Uh, I won't get too far into this because I know people want to actually hear the show, but there's a phenomenon where guys and gals who are really, really good at certain kinds of video game acting in the past can no longer cut it.

Because as graphics get better, the believability has to go up a little bit. If you were acting like an android in 2005, you had to be a little cartoon android, so you could be this little corny Star Wars-y cartoon android thing and it was fine. Now you have to be an android that looks like a human, and looks exactly like a human and behaves exactly like a human because if this is an android that can [00:21:00] do everything a human can do but is super smart and has superhuman strength because they're a robot, you can't also have a totally corny, not believable at all personality.

So it's actually, the industry's leaving a lot of, of voice actors behind who just don't have the ability to pull it off anymore. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And I'm for sure in that boat. Like, I can do very corny cliché mafia gangsters in Grand Theft Auto type stuff, tongue in cheek type of stuff.

Y- I can do, like, the Will Arnett type characters, but you wouldn't want me in a role that's any sort of serious. It just, it won't work. And now I'm going to quickly whore out my voice again to hype the amazing sponsors who support this show. Then we'll dive into

Speaker 3: this week's letters. We'll be right back.

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Speaker: By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. It's a bite-sized gem from a past episode from us to you delivered to your inbox on most Wednesdays.

So if you want to keep up with the wisdom from our thousand-plus episodes and apply it to your life, I invite you to come check it out. Jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. All right, Gabe, what is the first horror out of the nightmare sack?

Speaker 3: Hello, handsomest boys. Oh.

Speaker: 10 years ago- Hold, hold on.

No. Let's get something straight. Let's, let's get something straight. Okay. I am the handsomest boy. That's why they call me Handsome Boy number one- Mm ... according to the riverboat waitress in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam.

Speaker 3: I really should have seen this coming.

Speaker: Gabe is the second handsomest boy, Handsome Boy number two, which we decided to give you as a consolation prize so you don't feel bad.

Speaker 3: And to be clear, nobody gave it to me. I don't even ... I did not fight for this. I'm just defaulted to HB2, I guess. Gabe

Speaker: cried until we called him Handsome Boy number two. [00:25:00] That's what happened.

Speaker 3: Defamatory and false- ... but, um, I understand. You've got to, you've got to ... But I, I hope you feel better now that you've protected your title, your precious little title.

I

Speaker: worked hard to earn it. I won't have it buried in a general superlative from a listener who's just being nice to you.

Speaker 3: 10 years ago, I participated in a naked bike ride in Philadelphia. Then a few days ago, I was contacted through LinkedIn by a good Samaritan I didn't know telling me that there were nudes of me on an exposure porn site.

The site posted side-by-side clothed shots of me from my workplace's website and my Instagram and also shared my job field and first name. The website did indeed have these.

Speaker: Oh my God, can you imagine biking in Philadel- I assume this is in the spring or the summer. You wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to be in Philly-

naked on a bike in the wintertime. The

Speaker 6: weirdest

Speaker 3: point to harp on after what she just shared. You're like, "I don't know. She's talking about being exposed on this horrible website by some creep [00:26:00] that we're about to hear about," and you're like, "Man, but that bike seat must have really chafed in the summer.

Can you imagine?"

Speaker: Yeah, it must have been a woman because no guy would be caught dead on a bike in the winter naked. I mean, your, y- the shrinkage alone would be humiliating. Yeah, this is ... Actually I, I joke, but this is terrible. This is really awful, and I know people are going to be like, "Whatever, you were outside naked.

Of course someone took pictures." Something about this being on the website with your clothed images is so violating.

Speaker 3: This is horrifying, but now, now you've really got me wondering. I didn't even think about, like, do they put a towel down, or do you just ride a bike seat- It's not a cloth seat ... on one of the seats?

It's I, I don't know why I need to know about this, but I just wonder what people do. Anyway, what happens when you get out of the saddle? What happens when you have to go up a hill? Are you just do you just Pray that no one's behind you? Like, I don't, I don't understand

Speaker: Oh my gosh. Well, it's your own bike.

Not that that really makes it that much better, but I ... Well, just maybe you should continue with the [00:27:00] letter

Speaker 3: I don't think people are riding this on Lime, on Lime bicycles. That's a- No ... that's a private bike

Speaker: Citibikes? Can you imagine? Riding a Citibike naked is like riding the subway naked, actually. I'm sure some people have done it.

I would never do that. Oh, God. It's giving me the shivers thinking about something like that

Speaker 3: Apparently someone, I think we can safely assume a man, has been attending naked bike rides worldwide, stalking one girl per ride, and taking a plethora of photos of her, reverse image searching her face, and posting the nudes and professional and personal information about her.

He has provided enough personal information on all of us for any scary person to find and contact us if they please. He has done this to at least 12 women, including me, in both the US and the UK

Speaker: So to state the obvious here, this is so gross, super violating. It's also scary. And I'm so sorry this happened to you.

It's got to be the weirdest feeling. This person is flying around the [00:28:00] world to the US and the UK to take photos of people riding bikes naked and then exposing them on a website. This is so weird

Speaker 3: Thinking about this psycho keeping me on his mind for over a decade is beyond disturbing. It's so infuriating too, since the whole point of rides like that is de-stigmatizing naked bodies, participating in body positivity, and being silly.

I immediately flagged the photos through the website and contacted the website support team demanding that the photos be deleted. I also recruited a handful of my friends to do the same My photos were taken down within an hour.

Speaker: Great. That's something. Although how weird is that, that this is a revenge porn website essentially?

Speaker 3: But they're like honoring customer requests on a dime.

Speaker: They're like, "Oh, oh, okay, we got a takedown request." Oh, no problem. "No problem. Yeah, let us know if you have any questions." Like, yeah, I have a, I have so many questions. Anyway.

Speaker 3: However, the profile of the offending photographer has not been removed despite my requests, and I doubt any disciplinary action will occur.

Speaker: Yeah. So just [00:29:00] to be clear, the creep who posted these photos, he's not writing her saying, "Hey, I posted these photos of you. Pay me 10 grand in Bitcoin and I'll take them down."

Speaker 3: No. Yeah, he's just doing it because it gives him a weird thrill or something.

Speaker: That's worse somehow, though.

Speaker 3: Way worse. So much worse.

Speaker: It's so despicable. Money I think we can all wrap our heads around. Like, we're not scumbaggy enough to do it, but sextortion? Okay, I understand the concept. Some sick psychological pleasure from exposing women just to mess with them and make them feel violated, I don't get that.

Speaker 3: Very dark.

Speaker: Yeah. That is... I'm so sorry.

That is so extra creepy.

Speaker 3: I'm a librarian and a good friend of mine is in tech, which translates to us being very good at finding things. We've reverse doxxed all of the women that the original poster is trying to humiliate. None of the women live in the same city. We are all spread across the US and the UK, and I've reached out to them through their socials alerting them of the non-consensual photos, explaining how to request them to be deleted, encouraging them to demand that the website block this person's IP, [00:30:00] and if they're comfortable, report the incident to the police.

I've successfully made contact with about three of them so far.

Speaker: I love that you're helping other women and sharing tips and resources, and I'm sure these other women are grateful for that, as distressing as it is to find out something like this.

Speaker 3: At my friend's and my therapist's encouragement, I printed out screenshots of my own photos, censored them, and filed a police report.

I don't think this will be enough to achieve justice, though. The website doesn't say when these posts were made or provide any information about the person who posted the photos. I now live in the state of Connecticut Do you have any additional suggestions on how to bring this sicko to justice or how to shut down this website that clearly has no oversight or interest in protecting people?

Picture me with a dark Jordan bat signal as well. Signed, hoping to get tough because I've officially had enough after being snapped in the buff.

Speaker: Man, what a crazy story. Before we talk about all this, when I was in [00:31:00] undergrad at the University of Michigan, there was this thing called the Naked Mile. This is probably 2001 or so.

The university warned everyone, eight, uh, university-wide emails, a ton of times not to participate. But of course, a bunch of people did, including me. Before we went out, a friend of mine was like, "Hey, do you want a mask?" And I was like, "Uh, whatever." And he's like, "I have this extra mask." And I was like, "All right."

I hadn't even thought about it. I am so glad that I did because at some point, I think years later, a lot of us discovered that somebody had created a website, I think it was literally nakedmile.com or thenakedmile.com.

Speaker 3: Oh, no. Wait, this happened to you?

Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I believe whoever did it, they were posting some photos, and they were selling at the time CD-ROMs full of higher res photos if memory serves.

So- Oh,

Speaker 3: man.

Speaker: Yeah. So this was similar. Because, and what's weird is it's also the same thing. It's a bunch of like painted extra hairy, some people are overweight. Everybody's sort of just, you know- It's a

Speaker 3: laugh ...

Speaker: it's not like [00:32:00] sexy. It's a laugh, yeah. And people are taking photos. This is before camera phones, so like y- somebody with a camera would stick out.

And there'd be photos in The Michigan Daily, which is a newspaper, and it would have, you know, they'd be censored obviously. And it was like, "The Naked Mile happens again despite administration's protests." And it was just kind of like, "Ha ha, stick it to them. We ran across the quad naked." And people ran across the quad naked all the time.

It's college, right? So this just happened to be the most of them. And yeah, I ran it with a mask. It was a silly, fun time. But had I not grabbed a mask at the last minute, I might have ended up in exactly the same situation as our friend here because 25 years later you could probably use Google Image Search, which didn't of course exist at that time, throw a photo of everyone, uh, from the Naked Mile in there and find that, hey, one of those people is Jordan Harbinger.

Now I'm only identifiable by other characteristics that most of you can't, uh, that Google can't quite parse just yet So all that to say, I'm so sorry that you're going through [00:33:00] this. Revenge porn, sextortion, nude leaks, it's all super upsetting. It must feel very exposing, especially after assuming you're in a safe space and to just find out all these years later is so unsettling, and I hate that this guy did this to you.

If someone had done this to me in the timeline where my friend didn't do a last-minute run to Spirit Halloween or whatever and grab some cheap masks, I probably also would've had a proper freak-out and might even be sweating this decades later. Look, for me, it's a little bit like, "Ah, okay, LOL, so what?" But I'm in a different position.

I can't be fired from my job for something silly like this. I think ... And look, this is controversial, Gabe. I don't know what you think. It's different for guys, I think, sorta. There's something different about it. It's still violating, and maybe I should just speak for myself, but I don't know. There's something

Like, if someone's like, "I got a naked picture of you," I'd be like, "That's your problem. I don't care." But if someone's like, "I have a naked picture of this woman, and also here's where she works," that's just extra weird. If someone's like, "He [00:34:00] has a podcast," and a bunch of you saw me naked, I don't think most of you would care.

But yeah, if I worked at a law firm, I wouldn't want my boss and colleagues to see me naked. That's just different. So my heart really does go out to you here. That said, it sounds like you're doing quite a good job of working with the situation, getting creative, like with your friend, to find your way to more information to help warn other victims.

That's really impressive, and I commend you for it. As per ushe, to get a good handle on your legal options here, we reached out to attorney and friend of the show, Corbin Payne.

And the first thing Corbin said was, "The person who did this is a piece of crap, full stop." Goes without saying, we totally concur. What would possess a person to go to a naked bike ride, take photos, and then post them with, after doxing them? It's just, it's just for money and a creepy power trip? I mean, they're probably not earning anything from this.

This person is mentally unwell and deserves to be put in prison for this kind of activity. So let's talk about the law here for a second. [00:35:00] Corbin said that what this guy has done, it likely violates revenge porn laws and/or cyberstalking laws that are on the books in many jurisdictions. Now, the details of the law, that obviously varies jurisdiction to jurisdiction, depends on the state and the country, but Corbin said the general framework of these laws is it's a crime to take or create photos or videos of a person's unclothed intimate area, that's Tennessee's legal language where Corbin practices, which the victim would find embarrassing or offensive.

Two, disseminate such material without the effective consent of the victim, and/or three, use the material to harass, intimidate, or blackmail the victim. So I am very happy you filed a police report. I know it's not easy. I know a lot of people would rather not deal with the exposure and embarrassment involved, but that was absolutely the right thing to do.

And I don't know how long it's been since you filed the report, but I sincerely hope the police look into it and act if possible. Now, Corbin said there are a couple of tricky [00:36:00] facts in your letter that might pose some complications. The first thing is that there are numerous jurisdictions involved here.

There's Pennsylvania where the photos were taken. There's Connecticut where you live now. There's the UK where it sounds like the perp might live or at least where he took some of the photos for some of these and, and where he might have done some of the publishing of the photos. There's also whatever state or country where he actually lives, where he might have hosted and published the files.

That could also be in a separate place. Or where the servers storing the material are located. All that stuff could be in separate countries even. And then there's the U.S. federal government, which governs the use of the wires and the internet and interstate commerce. So it is complicated. It's sort of a Frankenstein's monster of competing jurisdictions.

On the flip side, that also means that there are multiple places you could contact about bringing charges. If one jurisdiction's like, "Eh, we're not going to pursue this," another one might. The bad news is that these jurisdictions have a ready-made excuse to push off the responsibility for acting onto another jurisdiction, and sadly, that happens [00:37:00] all the time But then another good thing, the FBI has jurisdiction over cyberstalking.

And that is not a small agency. Corbin said they've got the know-how and the resources to take on this sort of crime. The second tricky fact is the fact that you were part of a public event. Corbin explained to us that people have a right to not be photographed, let's say, when they're in a place or engaging in an activity where they might have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

So somebody running the Boston Marathon, they probably can't fight the fact that their photo crossing the finish line is getting uploaded to Instagram or published in the Boston Herald or whatever. But somebody who's using a private changing room in a clothing store, they obviously have a right to not be photographed or recorded while they're in there.

Speaker 3: So that makes a naked bike ride a very interesting setting, legally speaking.

Speaker: Very. And I know I- people listening, I was waiting for people listening to just be like, "Well, wait a minute. She was in public naked. That's got to be a thing." Yeah, Corbin said a naked bike ride might qualify as a public event where there is not much expectation of privacy, but [00:38:00] we assume these events have strict rules against photography.

They might not be fully open to the public. Maybe they are or maybe they take place in a park tucked away somewhere as opposed to cycling down Broadway in Manhattan for all the world to see. And if that's the case, Corbin said you might have participated in an event where you effectively consented to people seeing you nude, but you did not consent to being photographed, especially so extensively.

In other words, the context suggests that people could and would see you without clothes on, but that everybody's participation would be sufficiently private that no photos would be taken or shared.

Speaker 3: But even if it turns out that you had no reasonable expectation of privacy and this was a fully public event, then Corbin said that you still have a right to not be harassed with these photos So in Corbin's experience, this perp taking a photo and possessing it, there's a world where it might not have been illegal, but using it to harass you online and perhaps encourage other people to find you and contact you and all of that, all of that [00:39:00] probably is illegal.

Speaker: So what's the upshot of all this? The upshot is most states and the federal government make revenge porn and cyberstalking a crime. So Corbin said you could report all this to law enforcement. They can investigate, they can make arrests, they can charge the perpetrator with a crime, they can prosecute the perp, seek jail time or other punishments.

And most states and the federal government also give a victim the ability to privately sue anyone who's done this to them.

Speaker 3: Also, Corbin said that in order to get law enforcement interested, the fact that there are numerous victims here, that does help. And as he always advises, the more you can bring law enforcement, you know, a binder of evidence that basically ties a bow on the case for them, in other words, they don't have to expend a ton of resources investigating this, pursuing this, the more likely it is that they'll act.

This kind of assist with, you know, busy, jaded, overwhelmed investigators, that really does go a long way. It sounds like you and your friend have already taken some great steps in that direction. Corbin said that that's very helpful. And if you can gather any more evidence and organize it into an easily [00:40:00] digestible format like one huge binder and/or, you know, a Google folder that's easily searchable where they can read through the files very easily, he said definitely do that.

Speaker: Another interesting option Corbin shared, he said you could probably pursue something called a John Doe or a Jane Doe petition. A John Doe/Jane Doe petition is a lawsuit filed against an as-yet-unknown person. Corbin said that would give your attorney the ability to issue subpoenas and force some of the companies and other actors involved in all this to divulge even more information than you have now.

And then if you discover the identity of the perpetrator, you can name him and sue him for what he did to you, and you can also turn that information over to the police. It's kind of an amazing creative solution in a case like this.

Speaker 3: I wonder if that would also somehow compromise or take down this creepy website that is hosting all this material.

I don't know, maybe having to comply with a bunch of subpoenas or court orders or whatever will eventually make the owners of this website, assuming that these are not people living in a bungalow in the middle of the Philippines using bootleg satellite Wi-Fi off the map or [00:41:00] something. But, you know, if they operate in the US or the UK, it might eventually make them go, "This is way too much of a headache.

This is scary, stressful. It's expensive, so we're just going to shut this thing down."

Speaker: Same here. But it m- also might take multiple cases like this to make the website owners do that. I mean, obviously they're into whatever weird fetish this is as well probably. Corbin's preference, for your sake, is that law enforcement leads on this.

He said that's a lot cheaper. You won't have to pursue this creep out of pocket. But then law enforcement gets to decide which cases it takes and which cases it doesn't take. In a private lawsuit, that's often an investment of time and money of course. But if there are numerous victims here, Corbin said you could come together and pool your resources to pursue this guy.

Also, just so you know, in US courts, there are privacy protections afforded to victims of these kinds of crimes. So if your case ever ends up in one, some of these unredacted photos might need to be introduced into the trial in order to establish that these photos meet the standards for cyberstalking or revenge porn.

But Corbin said they will be protected from being [00:42:00] disseminated publicly and the victims and plaintiffs might even be able to keep their names private, at least as far as the general public is concerned. But the guy who did this, if he's ever exposed, Corbin said that he won't enjoy these same privacy rights.

Whatever's said about him in court can be published. His identity might be revealed. All of his friends, family, colleagues, they can learn exactly who this guy is in private. So in addition to literal justice, there might be some poetic justice on offer here as well.

Speaker 3: Just another idea here. If you wanted to, you could try to take this to a journalist and tell them your story, especially if law enforcement is not responsive.

They're not going to look into this Revenge porn and sextortion, I think we all know these are not exactly new topics in our society, sadly. So that alone might not be enough to grab a reporter's interest. But I have to say, hearing your story and the fact that this all happened at a naked bike ride, which is a fascinating cultural phenomenon, it's a grabby hook.

It's also an interesting wrinkle in all of this, like we were saying, legally speaking. I do wonder if that might get a [00:43:00] journalist's attention. Jordan, I'm just picturing the opening of an article about this terrible thing that went down like one sunny summer day. Well, we don't know if it was summer. In your mind it might have been winter.

I don't know why. Yeah, that's right. But I'm going to guess it was summer. But like one sunny summer day, you know, so-and-so stripped down in Fairmount Park and climbed on her-- Let's hope it wasn't a city bike. Maybe a beach cruiser. You know, she and over 1,000 other people pedaled around the city in the buff for over four hours.

You know, fun, body positivity, blah, blah, blah. Then 10 years later, she got a message from a stranger on LinkedIn. "Just thought you'd want to know," said the guy, "there are photos of you on a porn site." Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a grabby opening.

Speaker: I'm reading the rest of that article, and I can see that showing up in many publications, quality publications that a lot of people would see and be outraged by.

So this is a New York Times piece waiting, or at least a Philly Times piece waiting to happen.

Speaker 3: Whether you want your name attached to this, whether you want to tell your story publicly, totally up to you. I would understand if you [00:44:00] didn't. But I wonder if that would help put some pressure on law enforcement and/or just draw attention to this website that I hope they would mention in the piece that is hosting all of this stuff.

Perhaps that would bring them a ton of negative publicity or more scrutiny, so just something to consider.

Speaker: I like it. I also feel like a crime reporter or a culture reporter would really respond to a pitch like this. She could also ask to remain anonymous, use a fake name if she wanted to. They often do that with stories about topics like this.

Speaker 3: By the way, we also found a bunch of resources that might be really helpful to you right now. There's the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. There's an organization called Without My Consent. There's something called the Crash Override Network. There's the National Center for Victims of Crime. There's one called My Image My Choice.

There's so many. All of these organizations offer some mix of help guides, help lines, referrals to attorneys and counselors, guides for removing images from the internet, emotional support. So we're going to link to all of these organizations in the show notes for you. It's interesting, though. There don't seem to be many prominent [00:45:00] national public support groups for what you have been through specifically.

But now that you're in touch with all of these other victims, I do wonder if maybe you can start a little informal support group of your own. Maybe you invite these other women to a weekly or monthly, you know, Zoom call. You can offer to talk whenever they want. You guys can share stories, share resources.

I think you're already doing this, but you could formalize this a little more if you want. I have to assume that that would be a huge help to everybody affected by this guy, and it might be one more positive thing that comes out of this really terrible situation.

Speaker: I like that idea a lot. As for Dark Jordan ideas, I feel like hackers and dark web people I know very little about this, but I feel like they might be able to grab the server logs of the website that's hosting these images.

They might be able to find IP addresses of people who logged in and possibly link that to physical addresses. I'm quite sure that that's illegal, so please be super careful here. Another idea, a good hacker could also just take the website down. They could DDoS the website, which is, like, basically denying access to it by screwing with [00:46:00] it in certain ways that are technical that you don't care about.

They could also destroy all the files. They could make them very difficult to recover. Again, certainly illegal, but maybe some friendly vigilante hacker living in, I don't know, Belize or something would want to give you guys a hand. A lot of hackers help with doxing child predators. This is sort of adjacent to that.

As always, proceed cautiously. This is coming from me, not Corbin, obviously. These pitches from Dark Jordan are for entertainment purposes only and should never actually be done. But I'm very sorry this is happening to you, friend. It, it's a weird feeling. It sucks, but you do have some avenues to pursue here, and I hope you explore them.

I would love nothing more than to see this creep and this gross website get their comeuppance in some form. Sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. You know what won't follow you for years? The amazing but short-lived deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back.[00:47:00]

This episode is sponsored in part by Zazzle. It's fun to say. Jayden's seventh birthday is coming up. Jen has once again turned a kid's party into a fully branded experience. She went to Zazzle for custom goodie bag bags, goodie bag tags, and they came out so good she immediately started making things for everybody else.

Her brother got a new puppy, and he's impossible to shop for because he already has everything. So, so she put the puppy's face on custom towels. I thought that sounded insane. Whatever. Then they arrived. They actually looked really good. She also made a custom mug for Grandpa with our kids' pictures on them, which brought tears to his eyes, which is kind of funny because like, it's a mug, but it's got your grandkids on it.

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Speaker: Also, in case y'all don't know, there's a subreddit for the show if you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes. For example, the GTA stuff, the, that was in there, the voiceover stuff, a lot of travel story stuff and discussions going on over there in the Jordan Harbinger subreddit.

Now, back to Feedback Friday. Okay, what's next?

Speaker 3: Dear Jordan and Gabe, I'm a 31-year-old father of two, ages five and two, and my oldest will be starting kindergarten this fall. She's always been academically and emotionally way ahead of her peers, and we've decided to send her to a private school in our area because we believe it will provide a better education than our local public schools.

The complication is that it's a Christian school, and I identify as agnostic and probably lean atheist. I was raised in [00:50:00] a very Christian household and was deeply involved in my faith until college, when I began questioning things and eventually lost my belief. My wife also has a complicated relationship with Christianity.

She was forced into a Christian high school by her parents and had a negative experience because she fell into the wrong crowd, although she's become more open to faith again in recent years. We've recently started letting our daughter attend Sunday school with my parents to get some exposure to Christianity.

She really enjoys it, but she's also begun repeating things that she's learning there about God, heaven, and why we're here. When she says these things, I find myself feeling uncomfortable in a way that's difficult to explain. I remember finding comfort in those same ideas when I was young, and I still appreciate many of the moral teachings in Christianity.

What bothers me is the certainty with which some religious claims are presented, especially when they directly contradict ideas that I believe should be approached through evidence and science. My wife and I [00:51:00] want our children to be exposed to different belief systems and ultimately decide for themselves what they believe.

If they grow up Christian, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine too. More than anything, I want them to be curious, ask questions, think critically, and feel comfortable examining what they're taught rather than simply accepting it.

Speaker: Great. I love that. It sounds like a very balanced stance to me.

Speaker 3: My concern is that a Christian school may not always encourage that kind of questioning, particularly around matters of faith.

At the same time, I don't want to undermine their teachers or create confusion by telling them that some of what they're learning isn't true. How do you raise children to think critically about religion without pushing them toward or away from any particular belief? At what age do those conversations begin?

How can I create an environment where my kids respect what they're being taught at school while also feeling free to come home, ask questions, and explore different perspectives? Signed, Balancing the Gospel Without Getting [00:52:00] Hostile So I Can Give My Kids the Right Picture Without Undermining Scripture.

Speaker: Man, such great questions. Like I said, I really love your stance here. You're not saying, "How do I undermine the teachers at school and make sure my kids believe what I believe?" You're asking basically, "How do I help them become people who can appreciate multiple traditions and who can think for themselves?"

One of the healthiest things parents can do, I think, is separate what they want their children to think from how they want them to think. The first thing tends to produce conformity, orthodoxy, ideology. The second produces insight, individuation, wisdom, basically. It also produces tools for questioning, tools for learning.

That is just a, it's a huge asset in life.

Speaker 3: Plus the intellectual flexibility to engage with multiple ideas, make room for multiple truths. It's a great quality.

Speaker: Yes. All of that is awesome, and I respect that stance even more given your own history, your wife's history. It sounds very respectful to me. So this is interesting because your oldest is five.

That's still pretty young. [00:53:00] She isn't quite ready for deep, nuanced philosophical debates, and there's an argument to be made that a child should feel that they can basically trust their teachers. On the other hand, she's academically and emotionally way ahead of her peers, so maybe she has more capacity for these chats than most five-year-olds.

So I don't know if there's one right answer about what age to start having these conversations. I think it depends on the child, their ability to engage, their level of curiosity, the specific ideas they're bringing home, all that. So rather than worry about the right age, what I would do is I would make it a point to meet your kids with the same openness and curiosity that you want to cultivate in them and just ask them questions.

Like if your daughter comes home and says, "Today, Ms. Hofstetter taught us that the universe is 10,000 years old." That's a random example. I have no idea if her school is that kind of school. But you get my point. You could say, "Well, no, that's wrong. It's 14 billion years old, and Ms. Hofstetter's a nut. Don't listen to anything she says," which would be tempting.

Or you could say, "Interesting. How do you think she [00:54:00] knows that?" And see what your daughter says. Maybe she's like, "Oh, she read it in the Bible, and the Bible said it." Then maybe you say, "Okay, interesting. The Bible has a lot of ideas about the world. What do you think?" And see if she wants to reflect on that.

Maybe she doesn't. If she does, I would keep asking questions. I would keep inviting her subtly to keep interrogating. You could say stuff like, "A lot of people believe in the Bible. It's a powerful book. Other people believe in other books. Did you know that?" Or if your daughter shows an interest in this topic, you could say, "You know what's cool?

Some people believe the universe is 10,000 years old. That's pretty old. But other people, scientists, for example, they believe the universe is actually billions of years old. Isn't that crazy?" Or if your daughter's like, "Noah saved all the animals on a big boat, and there was a flood," instead of being like, "Well, actually," you could say, "Yeah, that's something that many Christians believe.

What do you like about that idea?" Or, "I wonder what people in other religions believe." You get the idea here. You're not correcting, not explicitly anyway. You're just asking. You're inviting reflection. You're [00:55:00] expanding conversation instead of shutting it down. Gabe, obviously, they sent their kids to a religious school because they love a lot of what religion provides, right?

So you don't want to start undermining every little thing because you're going to inadvertently undermine all the good stuff about religion, which is why you picked the school in the first place.

Speaker 3: Actually, the main reason they seem to have picked the school is that they want a more challenging, supportive environment for their kid, and this is the one in their neighborhood.

But you bring up a really good point, which is if the values and the curricula of the school are wildly misaligned with what he and his wife believe and want to cultivate in their children, then it's an interesting question. At what point do you consider maybe sending your child to another school so that you don't have this dissonance if this is really such an issue philosophically?

But I think your approach is basically exactly spot on. And also, he doesn't have to have all of the answers for her. I think that's also a really important quality to model for his children as well.

Speaker: Totally. If he's like, "Hmm, interesting. I actually don't know how trees evolved on Earth. That'd be a cool thing to look up," I think [00:56:00] that just says a lot.

Speaker 3: I know one of his concerns is that he might create some confusion for his kids, and I get that. That's thoughtful of him. But I also don't know if confusion is the worst thing in the world if he can model for them the best kind of confusion, you know, which is openness, curiosity, flexibility, the willingness to admit when he doesn't know something.

And actually, I'm not even sure that's really even confusion Confusion is maybe believing multiple things that just don't fit together or feeling like you need to land on one perfect explanation for how the world works in order to feel okay and not being able to find it. What he would be creating here ideally is just a wider frame of reference, you know, plasticity and appreciation for multiple points of view.

And I think that's actually, maybe for a five-year-old at times that could be confusing, and that's something to keep an eye on. But especially as his children get older, I don't think that's confusion. I think that's actually maybe just broader awareness.

Speaker: For sure, which by the way, that's also the beginning of true learning.

So in a way, he'd actually be reducing [00:57:00] confusion, especially as his kids get older.

Speaker 3: There's something more dangerous than confusion, and that's absolute certainty.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I-- y'all know my beliefs about religion and things like that, but I also think there's so many amazing benefits to religious education and belief and things like that.

I barely ever talk about that on the show, much to the chagrin of my religious listeners. So you guys got me on that one. Gabe, I was watching probably Instagram or Reddit the other day, as we all know, the pinnacle of high culture and education. But there was a, a clip of some guys from a, I want to say, Christian nationalist white supremacist movement called, I think, Patriot Front, and it's a bunch of dumbass children wearing masks harassing Jewish people and other people on a subway, basically.

And they were saying, like, truly ignorant stuff that any actual Christian would be like, "That's not how this works at all. That's not accurate at all. You guys are a bunch of kooks." I don't think religious people are generally like [00:58:00] this, of course, right? These are extremists. But one thing they had was this absolute certainty that whatever they were doing was right and correct, and that whatever conspiracy theory crap they had read on the internet that they had been talking about at their, I don't know, extremist basement church somewhere was the truth and everybody else was wrong.

And I thought to myself, like, man, this is the most toxic thing ever. You get people who are confused and don't understand something, they're far less dangerous than these people who are like, "We need to get all of the Jews out of the country and all the people of color out of the country because they're polluting our bloodline."

I mean, they believe this stuff, right? That's why they're taking those actions, and it's one of the grossest, most toxic things I've ever seen. So you're absolutely right. There's something way more dangerous than confusion, and th- that is the absolute certainty that you referred to So cultivating that quality in his kids, that's the crux of critical thinking.

So yeah, I'm with you. He needs to be thoughtful and basically respectful and keep his kids' capacity for this stuff in mind, but a little healthy confusion, it's just [00:59:00] not the worst thing in the world for a kid to feel.

Speaker 3: So when your daughter talks about certain ideas, maybe you could also say, "You know, huh, interesting.

I've wondered about that, too," or, "I don't know. I'm still figuring out what I believe about that. You know, here's an idea. There's another idea. I'm not quite sure where I land." Or you could say, "Different people have different answers. Maybe we should Google it and find out. You want to do that?" Stuff like that.

Speaker: I have a strong hunch that people who are comfortable saying, "I don't know," they must end up raising children who are more confident thinkers. If you know what you believe and you just make sure your kids believe that same stuff, too, how do they build that muscle? I would also proactively seek out different experiences, different cultures, different traditions, and encourage your kids to really engage with them.

Maybe that means seeking out friends who are different from them. Maybe that means reading books and watching movies from other countries. Maybe that means traveling as a family to places with different religions, different values, different cosmologies, whatever it is. Maybe it means saying to your kids, "Here are the questions religion's trying to answer, and here are the questions science is trying to answer.

There are different ways of trying to [01:00:00] understand these big questions. How cool is that?" And then you can talk about all this as a family and using those experiences and references to encourage your kids' curiosity about different schools of thought, different worldviews. I think all of that will create this environment that you want where your kids feel comfortable and even excited to come home and talk about ideas and ask you their questions Like I said, as they get older, these conversations can become more nuanced.

You can share some of your own history with religion. You can engage with them in a more specific way. You can tell them you feel one way, but they're allowed to feel a different way as long as you guys really listen and do your homework. But also, just to put you at ease a little bit, I don't know if it's the worst thing for a five-year-old to believe that Noah built an ark and saved all the animals 4,000 years ago.

10 years later, okay, maybe they should have some different ideas in mind, balance those things out. I say this to take a little pressure off. Your kids are still really young. Yes, these influences matter, and you want to make sure they're aligned with your values, but I don't know if you need to constantly be [01:01:00] fighting Ms.

Hofstetter's kindergarten indoctrination campaign that you are paying for to send them to the school. I just don't think-- I don't know if this should be priority numero uno for you guys right now.

Speaker 3: That's a good point, and maybe he also needs to separate being appropriately skeptical from being respectful to these teachers.

You know, maybe he privately encourages his daughter to ask good questions and think for herself, but he also tells her, "Listen, when your teacher teaches you something, don't be the kid who raises her hand first thing and says, 'Well, actually, I read on Google that...' or, 'My dad told me...' or..." She can still be a nice student to have in class and still keep her own counsel, and maybe that's yet another skill that he can pass down.

Speaker: I think it takes a lot of courage and a lot of humility to walk this line with your kids, and I love that you want to get this right. But so much of combating ideology is about what you don't do. In other words, how you avoid replacing one ideology with another, which even hardcore skeptics and atheists can do.

No one's immune. There are secular religions all around us, so keep an eye on that, too. [01:02:00] You sound like a great parent. I'm sure your kids are going to be solid thinkers. Keep up the great work, and good luck. By the way, you can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Please keep your emails concise. Try to use descriptive subject lines.

That makes our job a whole lot easier. If you're wondering how much to cater to an unstable, overly demanding parent, you just found out your spouse has been hiding tens of thousands of dollars in debt from you, or you're struggling to recover from being sextorted by someone in your own family, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

We're here to help, and we keep every email anonymous. All right. You know what else Ms. Hofstetter wants you to believe? The holy gospel of the deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

If you like this episode of Feedback Friday and find our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. That is take a moment, support our amazing sponsors. All of the deals and discounts are searchable and clickable on the website at [01:03:00] jordanharbinger.com/deals. And if they don't work or you can't find something, something's not going well for you, email us Jordan@jordanharbinger.com.

We're happy to troubleshoot and dig up codes for you because it's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday Okay, now for the recommendation of the week.

Speaker 7: I am addicted to lip filler.

Speaker 3: So I've been looking for some good phone accessories for a while now, especially a good phone mount for a car or bicycle because I'm constantly hopping on and off these shared bicycles or in and out of rental cars while I'm traveling.

But, you know, most phone mounts are really annoying and complicated. You have to like mount and tighten them and then untighten them, and they're bulky, and it's just kind of a headache. And then a friend of mine told me about this company called Peak Design. So I know I am very late to this party. This is a pretty big company, and they seem to have a very passionate following.

But Peak Design, if you're not familiar, it's a gear and accessories company that builds camera gear, tripods, backpacks, phone cases, all sorts of stuff to make your life [01:04:00] easier. But my favorite thing about this company is that they have this integrated ecosystem of phone cases and magnetic mounts. So basically you can get a magnetic case for your phone.

They make it for iPhone, Android, every model. They have a huge range. And then onto that magnetic case, you can attach a wallet, you can attach a universal bar mount for your bike or car, a tripod, a charging stand, all kinds of cool stuff. So the products work together seamlessly. And you can customize all of those products, colors and textures and additional features, all great.

I just started using the phone ecosystem products. They are already a game changer. They also offer luggage and packing cubes and camera gear and backpacks and all kinds of stuff. I have not tried any of those yet, but they look great. I also bought a few of these for my dad for his birthday, and he loved them, and they make for great gifts.

This company seems really awesome. They seem to be guided by really solid values. They're big on thoughtful engineering, durability, modularity. They seem to be pretty obsessed with making people's lives easier. The [01:05:00] products are simple. They look great. They use recycled materials extensively. They have a lifetime warranty on their products.

And they helped launch the Climate Neutral Certification Initiative, which encourages companies to measure and reduce their carbon emissions, which I always appreciate. Peak Design, I'm a big fan of these guys. We're going to link to them in the show notes.

Speaker: Yeah, I actually own a bunch of camera stuff from Peak Design.

It's- Oh, cool ... it's known as one of the best brands for camera mounts and backpacks and stuff like that. It's really, really solid. I've, uh, everything they make is just really, really nice from luggage to, you know, DSLR camera clip that holds onto the strap of your backpack. They have a big flagship showroom in San Francisco.

I think they might even be an SF brand. It's kind of one of those companies that seems sort of climate neutral, hippie, everything's made well, everything's really nice and like good customer support. It's one of those brands that I think associated with SF. And yeah, I highly recommend them. If, if you find anything there that I feel like they have guarantees on, on everything, lifetime warranties that are, that are easy, right?

They're not [01:06:00] like, "Oh, it looks like you misused this. We're going to try and wheeze a lot of it." They're just like, "All right, this didn't work well for you. Here's another one." They'll fix it for you So yeah, I can jump on the back of that recommendation as well. All right, next up.

Speaker 3: Hey Jordan and Gabe. I'm 50 years old and until recently I was dating a woman who is 57.

For four months the relationship was amazing. There was a lot of drinking, mostly fun, but I started seeing some patterns that I didn't like. A few drinks were fun, but she would get to a point where she couldn't stop and would get out of control. I let a lot slide, but that became harder as it happened more often and the problems got worse.

I tried to get her to chill, but it never worked and a few times I got frustrated and sucked into arguing and said some things too. One night we went out to a bar. There was some drama. She was getting into other people's business, another pattern of hers. Threw a fork at one guy to tell him to sit down, then started yelling at me saying I was flirting with a friend's girlfriend, which [01:07:00] is not true at all.

Speaker: I can just see this evening what a disaster.

Speaker 3: I heard that fork hit the floor. I don't know about you.

Speaker: Totally. Gasps and ooze from a bunch of people. It just sounds like a nightmare. I would be so embarrassed by that. I just, I feel my face turning red in solidarity.

Speaker 3: I tried to tell her that and asked her to stop, told her I only want to be with her, forget about anyone else here and just sit with me.

She yelled at me saying I couldn't tell her what to do and I shouldn't tell her to stop.

Speaker: Ugh.

Speaker 3: Instead of arguing, I got up and left to remove myself from the situation. She was mad about that.

Speaker: I bet. You weren't playing along anymore.

Speaker 3: There were some angry texts from both of us after that, but I offered to go to her house to smooth things over and she said okay.

I waited for two hours ready to leave, but she never got back to me because she stayed at the bar. That led to more angry texts, and we didn't talk for a week or so. We ended up getting back together, but this seemed to open the door to her feeling okay to yell at me. Couple months [01:08:00] later, I let her use my credit card for a purchase and found out she used it for other things without telling me.

It wasn't a lot of money, but it was more about the principle of being concerned that my card was misused.

Speaker: Yeah, that is not okay at all.

Speaker 3: I confronted her, and she got mad that I was accusing her of stealing from me.

Speaker: How dare you accuse me of doing what I obviously did, what any reasonable person would assume under the circumstances.

This is so weird.

Speaker 3: She said that it was a mistake, that she grabbed the wrong card by accident.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Don't you hate when you swipe the Visa you never signed up for six times at various CVSs over a three-day period? This makes no sense.

Speaker 3: We had gone out the night before and were still feeling the effects when I confronted her.

I should have waited to bring it up. My heart says that there's no way she would do that intentionally, but my head says, how could someone use the wrong card more than once when she only had it for a few days? Uh, yeah. Again, we didn't talk for a couple of weeks, but got back together. Then [01:09:00] last weekend we went to a local bar close to my house.

It was meant to be an early night, but when I tried to get her to go home, she kept saying, "One more beer," another pattern. At one point, a guy we know from the local bars walked in, and she started texting a girl he's seeing telling her that he was there. They have an on-again, off-again situation. My girlfriend knows that it's unstable, and she decided to get involved.

I asked her why she won't stay out of other people's business. She was not doing this from a good place. She said a lot of stuff behind this woman's back It just created drama, and it was like she enjoyed it.

Speaker: Oh, dude, huge red flag. I mean, apart from the uncontrollable drinking, of course, huge. This is so childish and extremely concerning.

Ugh, no thank you.

Speaker 3: At midnight, last call, instead of going home, she decided we were taking an Uber to the city 20 minutes away to go to a dance club. The people at the bar told her that she'd missed last call there too, but she wouldn't listen. I told her I didn't want [01:10:00] to go, and she said she would go without me.

I couldn't let that happen because she was very drunk, so I went.

Speaker: Oh, boy.

Speaker 3: It was a disaster.

Speaker: Surprise. Shockingly, it didn't go well. Oh my God. Dude.

Speaker 3: She started yelling at me about politics in the Uber, then she started yelling about money. She thinks I have way more money than I do and seems to be resentful about it.

Huh, but not too resentful to swipe your credit card at Duane Reade over and over again, but okay.

Speaker: No. Hey, it's like you don't spend all your money on alcohol. What the hell, man? That's not fair. She's terrible.

Speaker 3: When we got to the club, the bartender said we missed last call. She argued with him and ended up giving him $20 for two Michelob ULTRAs.

I said, "Let's just get some food or go home," but she insisted on going to another club, which of course would be the same situation. There was a line when we got there. She walked right past it and into the club, and a bouncer- Yep ... pulled her out.

Speaker: Yeah, of

Speaker 3: course. She started arguing with him and the doorman.

I tried to get her to leave [01:11:00] again, but she made us wait in line. The doors closed for the night before we got in, and she started arguing with the doorman again.

Speaker: My God, what a fun night out, picking fights with people in various locations, bouncers. You're going to get punched in the face because of her at some point as well, and this woman is...

I mean, I, we don't know what her story is, but she's obviously in a lot of pain. I guess I feel kind of bad for her. She obviously has a problem with alcohol, but she's creating so much unnecessary conflict.

Speaker 3: Dude, this is something I would expect from, like, a 19-year-old college student. A 19-year-old

Speaker: girl.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Yeah. She's, what did he say, 57?

Speaker: She's 57 years old.

Speaker 3: This is a 57-year-old woman who wants to go to various clubs and is picking fights with doormen. Like, this is bad. Yeah. This is a sad situation.

Speaker: Ridiculous.

Speaker 3: So he goes on. After finally leaving, I told her this was not cool, not fun, that she's more interested in running around drinking than spending time with me, and I don't know if I could do this anymore.

Speaker: Good.

Speaker 3: All right.

Speaker: Yeah, good for you.

Speaker 3: It turned into an argument.

Speaker: Hmm. Oh, you don't [01:12:00] say.

Speaker 3: She started saying some mean stuff to me, saying I'm insecure and controlling and brought up my ex, that I want a submissive girlfriend, nasty stuff that was not true at all. Again, I should have waited to address it when we were sober, but at this point I was just so tired and frustrated, and I ended up saying things I wish I could take back too.

We haven't spoken since. There were other issues along the way as well. One night she was at the restaurant bar for a while. I took my 16-year-old daughter for dinner there, and my girlfriend sat with us. This is the first person I've dated who I've let even meet my kids. It was nice at first, but then she started yelling at me about politics.

This was disturbing because my daughter saw arguments between me and my ex-wife, and our home has been peaceful for eight years since then. Another night, the bar was full and someone bumped into her. Kind of expected, nothing intentional. On our way out, she ran back in and kicked the guy, which is not cool.

I am too [01:13:00] old and not big enough to get into a bar fight. '

Speaker: Cause you know what I said, you're going to get punched in the face because of her. This almost happened right there. So she's just casually assaulting people now, huh? Cool. I am so done with this gal. I'm sorry. It's sad. She needs help, but she's just, she's a mess, dude.

Speaker 3: And recently, a close friend of hers got really sick and died. She started doubling down on the drinking to deal with it.

Speaker: Come on. Am I going to have to feel sorry for her again? Don't do that.

Speaker 3: You don't have to, but I think we're getting a picture of how this person-

Speaker: I like some clean black and white thinking.

Come on, man. I don't like nuance. It's hard.

Speaker 3: I told her that that will make things worse, that she should lean on me instead. When I was going through my divorce, I didn't drink for two years to keep a clear head, and that's what she needs to do. Her response was that it's her vice and how she copes.

Speaker: Yeah, nice reframe there.

It's not an addiction, it's just a vice, and it's my coping mechanism. Yeah, maybe your coping mechanism is going to get us killed or arrested. No, thank you.

Speaker 3: Ugh. Imagine being like, "I'm not addicted to cocaine. This is just, [01:14:00] you know, my support blow. You need to back off."

Speaker: Yeah. I'm sad and this helps. So she's- Yeah

massively in denial and, and needs to get worse before she gets better, I guess.

Speaker 3: Then she would get drunk at home alone, ignore my calls, and start texting and calling at all hours of the night on work days wanting me to go over. If I missed messages because I was sleeping, I would wake up to, quote, "you.

Nice boyfriend. You should be here when I need you." That type of thing.

Speaker: So literally insane. Okay, pass.

Speaker 3: Finally, after a long night of drinking, things ended between us. We were together for 10 months. This has been really hard because I really love her. Sober, she's the sweetest, kindest person I've ever been with.

There's nobody else I'd want to be with.

Speaker: Honestly, that doesn't excuse anything. I- that is super sad, and definitely what you should probably say at her intervention.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Let's come back to this, this part of the letter. Yeah. It's very, very interesting. My daughters love her, too. My 19-year-old said [01:15:00] it was like having a mom around again.

Oh, man. But she also said she's never in her life seen me drink the way I have since being with her. She said that all their lives I've been teaching them about health and fitness, diet and exercise, and suddenly I was at the bar and eating out three to four times a week. I did that because that's where my girlfriend was, and I wanted to spend time with her.

Speaker: Wow. I kind of love that your daughter said that to you. Kudos to her, man.

Speaker 3: But I can't blame my girlfriend for that. I need to own my part. I should have drawn clear boundaries. I ignored red flags, and I probably enabled her along the way.

Speaker: Yeah. I agree. I really appreciate that honesty.

Speaker 3: I am disappointed and angry at myself for not handling the situation better.

I could have ended the relationship in a more mature way rather than with a drunken argument. I could have done it without so much regret and without giving her ammunition to point the finger at me.

Speaker: Fair enough, but I'm getting the sense that she would always have pointed the finger at you no matter what.

Speaker 3: I'm also getting the sense that he's putting so [01:16:00] much thought into how he positions things with her and when he breaks up with her and how he communi- and she's just, like, letting it rip whenever she gets upset. This is part of the problem. So he goes on. I did try to talk to her at times. I said we need to cut down once.

We're drinking too much, and she overdoes it. She got defensive and said that I drink as much as her. That was true, but I was saying that it was too much and we need to stop. This whole thing has me considering cutting out alcohol completely. I sent her a message saying we should do that together, and she didn't respond.

I don't know if there's any chance of fixing the relationship or if I should even try, but I'd like her to get better with or without being together. I really care about her, and what she's doing is not healthy Should I keep trying to help her get sober? Should I work on this relationship, or do I let her go?

Signed, a man who might have coddled and started some unhelpful squabbles with a partner at the bottom of the bottle.

Speaker: Oh, boy. What a saga. I don't know about you, man, I'm [01:17:00] exhausted just hearing about this. I can't even imagine what 10 months of this nonsense must have been like. I think you already know my answer to your question, but goes without saying, I'm very sorry you had to deal with all this.

Everything you've described, the drinking and the fighting and the drama and the projection and the unreasonable demands, the probable credit card theft. I mean, this is all extremely bizarre, hurtful stuff, and yeah, you chose it. Yeah, you decided to stick around through all that. That's your part. I think you know that, but it's got to just be incredibly sad to watch somebody you know is awesome sober do this to herself, and it must be super hurtful to love somebody who treats you that way as well I'm also very sorry for her.

She obviously has an addiction. She's totally in denial about all of it, and she's numbing her pain with drinking. She's playing out some weird script with you and with friends and with bar bouncers, seemingly with anyone she comes across. Candidly, the alcohol aside, a lot of what you described, it does sound like some kind of [01:18:00] personality disorder, and y- you really only get that way if you've been traumatized.

So on that level, I feel for her. I really feel for her. Let me cut to the chase here. No, you should not work on this relationship. Your girlfriend is an addict. She creates a ton of pain. She creates dysfunction and chaos when she drinks. She spends her time in highly questionable ways. She drags you into her drama.

She apparently stole from you. I mean, this is bananas, dude. Do you hear yourself? This is all not okay.

Speaker 3: And it sounds like she's still very far away from realizing any of this. She has no idea how bad things are. Doesn't sound to me like she's ready to get help.

Speaker: No, and it's possible she'll never get there.

Obviously, a lot of people don't.

Speaker 3: Although, who knows, maybe losing you could be part of that journey for her, but that's, you know, that's up to her.

Speaker: Could be. Another reason I feel he shouldn't try to patch things up with her, she needs to realize that there's a cost to living this way. But yeah, that's up to her.

She needs to be ready to acknowledge the damage she's caused. She needs to be ready to try things in a very different way, and until that happens, there's no [01:19:00] meaningful repair to be had here.

Speaker 3: I also feel that you desperately need time away from this person. Oh my God. Desperately.

Speaker: 100% agree. Oof.

Speaker 3: You've lost yourself in her in a variety of ways, your time, your energy, your lifestyle, your sleep, your values.

I think that's what your daughter was pointing out. And taking a step back from the relationship is going to give you some much needed clarity and some much needed peace after 10 months of being lost in the haze of this woman and her addiction.

Speaker: Absolutely. Look, I obviously feel your ex is the central problem here, but like you said, you participated in this dance.

You enabled her in a few big ways. You walked on eggshells around her. You stuck around longer than you probably should've. I understand you had some reasons for that. When she's sober, she's great. There were aspects of this relationship that were sweet and meaningful. I get it. But the fact is, for 10 months, you stuck with somebody in an active addiction and put up with a ton of frankly insane crap.

So I think there's a more important question here The question I would encourage you to really [01:20:00] explore now that you have some distance from your ex, and that question is why did I end up in this relationship? Why did I stick with it? Why did I accommodate my ex in all these ways? Why did the benefits at that time seem greater than the costs?

Why did I abandon my needs and values so easily? What about this situation felt gratifying or compelling or just familiar? You said your ex pointed the finger at you a lot of the time. That's part of the addiction. I also suspect that it's a big part of her personality, uh, uh, that kind of projection that let me get these icky feelings like shame out of me and into someone else.

It would also be tempting for you to point the finger at her, and that's mostly appropriate, but your work is to keep looking inward and really try to understand how you showed up in this relationship.

Speaker 3: For sure. I do not think it's as simple as I stuck around because she's great when she's sober. There is a lot more going on.

Speaker: I agree with you. I'm sure he was going, "Oh, there's a wonderful person here. She just shouldn't drink." And I understand When you're in a relationship like this, you [01:21:00] live for the good times. But I'm with you. Even when she would go out and get hammered, he was still getting something out of that. He was still participating, either because he wanted to secure her affection or he was afraid of standing up to her and setting her off, or he enjoyed the drama on some level or whatever it was.

Speaker 3: It sounds like one of those reasons was also that he felt responsible for her, right? Which you're dating someone, especially as a man, that's also appropriate to some degree. You don't want a super drunk woman you care about going to some weird club and then maybe another weird club and getting into some dicey situation.

She might not even be able to find her way home. I mean, it's scary. But he also did not want to live with the guilt of saying, "Okay, look, this is not the kind of evening that I want to have. I've tried to help you. You don't want to listen. You want to have another evening, so I'm really sorry, but you're on your own now."

And even now it sounds like he still feels some guilt, at least a little bit of a, a tug about letting her go without trying to get her help.

Speaker: So where does that guilt come from? How far back does it go?

Speaker 3: The other quality that I think he needs to look at is the walking on [01:22:00] eggshells thing. That's a big one.

Speaker: Yeah. It, it's kind of a hallmark of a typical dynamic with an addict.

Speaker 3: Twice he mentioned wishing that he had brought things up at a more opportune moment, that he had handled things differently with her. He might be right. There might have been a better way or a better moment to talk to her, fine. But there's a difference between being thoughtful about how you talk to someone and managing them.

Speaker: For sure. How's she going to hear this? When do I bring this up in a way that she'll blow up the least? Maybe I won't say anything because speaking up is worse. I agree. That's another thing he needs to figure out. It's a crucial part of the puzzle pieces fitting together.

Speaker 3: All the more so because he apparently has a history of chaotic relationships, right?

Speaker: His ex-wife, yep.

Speaker 3: They argued. His daughter saw them arguing. Now his daughter is seeing him argue with this girlfriend. Just curious.

Speaker: Yeah. You know, that might be one of the most significant data points in his whole story. I almost forgot about it with this whole Amy Winehouse biopic you just described, but yeah, that's interesting.

He seems to be drawn to this type of personality.

Speaker 3: We don't know what their deal was. We don't know what kind of personality she had. We don't know if she drank. I'm hoping [01:23:00] he would've told us that if so. But it sounds like there was a lot of conflict in the house, and it sounds like he's put in a lot of work to move on and stay clear-headed and create a more harmonious home And now he's back in a dysfunctional situation with another person.

It's just interesting.

Speaker: So what do you think? Should he help his ex get sober?

Speaker 3: I don't know, man. I don't know. A big part of me wants him to just say goodbye and move on. I think given all the facts here, she needs to figure this out for herself.

Speaker: Yeah, same. But then a part of me is like, she desperately needs help, and he might be able to make her see her situation more clearly.

Speaker 3: He could try to get through to her one more time, maybe one morning in a few weeks when he knows that she's sober, or maybe in a letter, or maybe he gets a bunch of their friends and family together and stages an intervention. It could be a nice thing to do.

Speaker: Honestly, given how she's reacted in the past to him bringing up her drinking, I think it's going to take an intervention to get through to her.

A bunch of people in her life looking her dead in the eye and saying, "You have a problem. When you drink, you do this and that. You've hurt me in these ways. You [01:24:00] need help." But even that might not work. She might have to hit rock bottom before she's ready, if she's ready at all.

Speaker 3: I would not blame him whatsoever for letting her go and not trying to help her get sober.

At this point, I'm just saying it's a possibility.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, especially after berating him, and embarrassing him, and using his credit card, and then lying about it, and then shutting him down when he tries to help. At a certain point, it's like, all right, message received. I'm going to protect myself and my kids from this nonsense.

Speaker 3: It's really interesting. He's talking about her two sides like that's a point in her favor, right? Like she's so amazing when she's sober. That's the real her. But I wonder if that's entirely accurate. I think they're both her, right? The sweet, loving, sober stepmom figure and the chaotic, cruel, manipulative addict, and the alcohol brings out that second side of her.

I do wonder if part of his process here is acknowledging both sides of her and integrating them. Because, like, what does it mean really when you say about somebody, "That's the real them"? Do you mean that that is the personality that is present most of the time, or do you mean [01:25:00] that's the personality you prefer and that you want to believe in?

Speaker 2: Oof. Yeah, tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 3: In a way, that view of her might be part of the enabling, you know, and maybe part of the way that he partners with people in general to overlook or justify a ton of questionable, awful behavior, perhaps in order to sidestep the shame and the grief of having to acknowledge, oh, I am in touch with all of this stuff, and also maybe to maintain hope.

I get it, but it's something that he needs to look at. Because it is painful to look at somebody you love and say, "The good, the bad, it's all in there. It's all equally real. It's certainly equally relevant, and if we're going to be in a real relationship, then I need to be in a real relationship with all of this person."

Speaker: Yeah, I hear that. I think he needed to view her in that way in order to stay in this relationship, but then he might have stayed in this relationship because he viewed her in that way. So plenty going on on her side of the equation and plenty on yours, and right now I would focus on yours and I'd let her focus on hers.

This relationship has had some great moments, yeah, but it [01:26:00] can never be a truly healthy, high-functioning, fulfilling relationship as long as one person has an addiction that they're just not addressing. But in the language of Al-Anon, which by the way would be a great program to check out right now, your ex has an addiction, but you did too.

You had an addiction to her, an addiction to this splitting/idealization of her, an addiction to this kind of partnering. Even now you could argue an addiction to saving her. My advice, start there. Let this relationship serve you by taking stock of what it's revealed about you, and rack focus back to your career, your kids, your health, and your life.

If you're going to make the right call here, you need to be centered and stable yourself, then go from there. Take care, man, and good luck. Go back and check out our episode on scam centers, the update out of the loop on scam centers that we did an update on earlier in the week if you haven't heard that yet.

Show notes on the website, transcripts on the website. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm [01:27:00] @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Gabe's on Instagram @GabrielMizrahi. This show was created in association with PodcastOne.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tadas Sidlauskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on this show. Ditto Corbin Payne.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. 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.

Speaker 2: Benn Jordan reveals how 100,000 license plate readers are quietly tracking your movements, how vulnerable that data really is, and why "I've got nothing to hide" may be the most dangerous assumption of all.

Speaker 6: Right in the beginning, when we first found the security vulnerabilities and when I first realized how bad it was, I basically went to some senators and was like, "Hey, we have a national security [01:28:00] problem." Above all things, if we're banning TikTok because we're worried about China getting people's data from their phones, this is 10 times worse than that.

This is actually a major problem. There is Flock all over the place, but there's also Rekada and Axon, which is, uh, different companies more or less trying to do the same thing. I initially assumed that they were just monitoring traffic. It's a third-party company that leases the cameras and the technology to cities and police departments.

And every single time that you pass the camera, it logs your license plate using a mixture of AI and license plate readers, and they're putting it into a massive database. So your police, if they want to get a notification every single time that you pass a camera, they could find out everywhere that you've been over the last 30 days.

I ended up being able to just get these really advanced profiles on people that, if I wanted to rob them, I would now know when they were home. I would know the kind of stuff that they have in their house. Even to some extent, you could even zoom in on somebody's front door when they're putting the code in.

And so just because you don't have any secrets doesn't mean that you don't have [01:29:00] anything to hide. Like, a lot of people wonder if it's constitutional, and I don't see a way that it can be. When a company like Flock turns it into this organized system that law enforcement can access, open source intelligence, it's just really bad.

There's a lot more bad things that could happen than good things with that.

Speaker: To hear more on why you should rethink every "safe" camera you drive past, check out episode 1308 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.