Dr. Sohom Das (@dr_s_das) is a consultant forensic psychiatrist who works in prisons and criminal courts to assess and rehabilitate mentally ill offenders. He is the author of In Two Minds: Stories of Murder, Justice, and Recovery From a Forensic Psychiatrist.
What We Discuss with Dr. Sohom Das:
- How was fake heiress Anna Delvey (aka Anna Sorokin) able to convince even the savviest New York social elites that she was one of them and gain access to their checkbooks?
- The numerous non-violent ways psychopaths act out to exploit others for their own gratification.
- Is social influencer Andrew Tate mentally a 12-year-old playground bully in the body of a former professional kickboxer, or is he just playing a caricature of one for fun and profit?
- Why InfoWars honcho Alex Jones can’t resist peddling provably false conspiracy theories even though it’s bankrupting his media empire down to the rivets.
- Are narcissists psychopaths?
- And much more…
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Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist who encouraged his followers to harass the parents of school shooting victims, insisting the shootings were a “hoax.” Andrew Tate is an online influencer under investigation for sex trafficking, sexual assault, and abuse allegations. Anna Delvey is a remorseless con artist who defrauded high-society New Yorkers while pretending to be a wealthy heiress.
On this episode, we’re revisited by Dr. Sohom Das, a consultant forensic psychiatrist and the author of In Two Minds: Stories of Murder, Justice, and Recovery From a Forensic Psychiatrist. Here, Sohom helps us understand the factors that may have contributed to the behavior of these individuals and whether they are a permanent danger to the world or if they could potentially be treated and reintegrated into society. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
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Did you hear our conversation with Paul Holes, the former investigator known for his contributions to solving the Golden State Killer case using advanced methods of identification with DNA and genealogy technology? Catch up with episode 725: Paul Holes | Solving America’s Cold Cases here!
Thanks, Dr. Sohom Das!
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Resources from This Episode:
- In Two Minds: Stories of Murder, Justice, and Recovery From a Forensic Psychiatrist by Dr. Sohom Das | Amazon
- A Psych For Sore Minds | YouTube
- Dr. Sohom Das | Website
- Dr. Sohom Das | TikTok
- Dr. Sohom Das | Twitter
- Dr. Sohom Das | Facebook
- Dr. Sohom Das | Instagram
- Dr. Sohom Das | Rehabilitating the Criminally Insane | Jordan Harbinger
- Inventing Anna | Netflix
- The Amazing Audacity of Anna Delvey | Vogue
- Where Is Anna Delvey Now? | Town & Country
- A Formal Psychopath Test on Inventing Anna on Netflix | A Psych for Sore Minds
- Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCLR) | Addiction Research Center
- Billy McFarland | Quest for Fyre | Jordan Harbinger
- What’s the Difference between Narcissists and Psychopaths? | A Psych for Sore Minds
- Dr. Ramani | How to Protect Yourself from a Narcissist Part One | Jordan Harbinger
- Dr. Ramani | How to Protect Yourself from a Narcissist Part Two | Jordan Harbinger
- Psychopathic, Sociopathic, or Antisocial Personality? | Psychology Today
- Psychiatrist Analyses Controversial, Viral YouTuber Andrew Tate | A Psych for Sore Minds
- Inside the Violent, Misogynistic World of Tiktok’s New Star, Andrew Tate | The Guardian
- Andrew Tate Human Trafficking Allegations Explained as Dissent Continues to Intensify Online in Wake of Recent Ban | Sportskeeda
- How Andrew Tate Poses a Real Threat to Women | Marie Claire Australia
- Andrew Tate vs. Piers Morgan | Piers Morgan Uncensored
- Is Alex Jones a Conspiracy Theorist or a Performance Artist? | Psychology Today
- Gay Frogs (Alex Jones REMIX) | Placeboing
- Goblins (Alex Jones REMIX) | Placeboing
- Alex Jones Owes $1.5B and Declared Bankruptcy. So How is Infowars Still Running? | The Guardian
- Delusional Disorder | Psychology Today
- Alex Jones Blames Conspiracy Claims on ‘Psychosis’ | AP News
- Alex Jones Reprimanded By Judge After Heated Exchange During Second Defamation Trial | NBC News
- Ex-Wife of ‘InfoWars’ Host Alex Jones: ‘He’s A Really Unhappy, Disturbed Person’ | Inside Edition
- Lizard People Conspiracy Theory Explained | BuzzFeed Unsolved Network
- Text Bombshell Stuns Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones In Trial On ‘Sick’ Sandy Hook Lies | MSNBC
767: Dr. Sohom Das | Decoding Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, and Anna Delvey
[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Special thanks to Nissan for sponsoring this episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show.
[00:00:04] This episode is sponsored in part by Peloton. It's the time of year where we start thinking about what next year will bring. We make New Year's resolutions to exercise more, but let's face it, will you actually stick with it? It's been proven that you're more likely to stick to a routine if it's something you enjoy, which is why so many people stick with Peloton. The instructors are so fun. It's like working out with a friend. There's a very strong Peloton community. Also, I'm all about data, and Peloton tracks your metrics so you can keep tabs on your performance over time. And right now, Peloton's got a gift for you. Get up to 200 bucks off accessories like cycling shoes, heart rate monitors — both of which I have and use regularly — and more when you purchase a Peloton Bike, Bike+, or Tread, and up to a hundred dollars off accessories with the purchase of a Peloton Guide, which will turn your TV into an AI-powered personal trainer. Make this the first step toward achieving your fitness goals in the new year. Choose from Peloton's cycling to scenic runs, boot camps to power walks. A huge variety of classes that work for you, taught by world-class instructors who know exactly how to get the best out of you. So don't wait. Get this offer before it ends on December 25th. Visit onepeloton.com. All-access membership separate, offer ends December 25th, cannot be combined with other offers. See additional terms at onepeloton.com.
[00:01:10] Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.
[00:01:14] Dr. Sohom Das: Sociopaths tend to — they're a lot more reactive and they're a lot more impulsive, so they can't contain their emotions as well as a psychopath can. So if you piss off a psychopath, they won't react necessarily at that time. They will sort of harbor onto this resentment and they will wait for the best time to get their revenge. So their revenge is a dish that's definitely served cold, whereas a sociopath is a lot more likely to snap at that moment. They can't contain themselves and they can't sort of plot their revenge.
[00:01:44] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Russian chess grandmaster, arms dealer, extreme athlete, or gold smuggler. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker.
[00:02:09] If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs is a place to begin. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic to help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show — topics like disinformation and cyber warfare, abnormal psychology, technology and futurism, crime and cults, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.
[00:02:33] Today, back on the show for a little bit of a round two, Sohom Das, Dr. Sohom Das. He assesses mentally disordered criminal defendants for a living well, so we don't have to. In other words, are the people who commit horrible crimes, insane and in need of treatment or are they just horrible people who deserve to be imprisoned? You don't have to go through part one. It's not mandatory. If you want to hear that first, you will have more context about Dr. Das and who he is, what he does, how he knows what he knows about criminal minds if you do. But today, we're going to go over some famous criminal cases that have been in the news lately and see what Sohom thinks about the criminal mindset. Are they bad or are they mad, so to speak? And what disorders make people behave in these seemingly bizarre and unconscionable ways? We're going to cover Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who had his followers harassed, the parents of school shooting victims. Andrew Tate, one of the most hated men on the Internet, I guess you'd say that online influencer, I guess you'd call him. And Anna Delvey, the con artist of Inventing Anna fame, if you've seen that on Netflix, who ran around New York defrauding people and finally got thrown in prison and deported. So I want to know what is wrong with these people. What causes them to behave the way that they do? And let's hear it from a professional instead of just my armchair take. Now, here we go, round two with Dr. Sohom Das.
[00:03:53] I wanted to get some more time with you because, well, we've got a lot of, I'm going to say psychopaths, but really we don't know. That's what we're going to talk about today. We've got a lot of bad people, or possibly just mad people, so crazy, or I should say mentally disturbed people. I should be a little bit, probably more compassionate when talking about these folks. We picked some bastards so that we don't have to be as compassionate.
[00:04:15] Let's start with Anna or Anna Delvey. For people who don't know who she is, I followed this like crazy. I binged/hate-watched the Netflix series Inventing Anna, which is about her. How do we sum her up, man? She's a con artist that ripped through New York pretending to be a German princess, which in itself is hilarious because she did not have a German accent. And it was really obvious, even from anybody who started a stereotyped German accent that this was a Russian accent and not a German accent at all. And then she just ran through and conned investors out of money and didn't pay for hotels and conned her friends out of money. It wasn't very sophisticated and yet somehow she managed to scam people out of hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of dollars.
[00:04:59] Dr. Sohom Das: She certainly came across as very credible. I think that's the thing that stands out to me comparing her to most, your average kind of con artist, is that people believed her. You know, many, many people believed her over a long period of time. She had all these lies about how she had this massive trust fund. She was very rich, but she couldn't access the money because she was in the States. Yeah, so, you've got to give her props. There's got to be something about her personality and her presentation that she's just able to convince people.
[00:05:23] Jordan Harbinger: There does have to be something. And that's the thing. Of course, what I did as a guy or as a human, the first thing I did was look her up and I went, this very not special looking, not particularly friendly looking, not very bubbly looking, not fun looking. This is just a person that doesn't look interesting, doesn't look special at all in photos, somehow managed to in person be so charming and so disarming that she managed to con people out of all this money in New York. This isn't like she didn't go to some small town where people trust everybody at first glance and get people to drop off a couple of hundred bucks. She conned notable bankers and investors in Manhattan who you'd think would have enough street smarts to be like, "Nope, not this one." She just ran over them. It was unbelievable. What's going on here?
[00:06:13] Dr. Sohom Das: The thing that really stood out to me when I first heard about her and her personality traits was that she could potentially be a psychopath.
[00:06:20] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:20] Dr. Sohom Das: So, you've already mentioned psychopath in this call. I think it's often overused and overdiagnosed.
[00:06:25] Jordan Harbinger: It is, yeah.
[00:06:26] Dr. Sohom Das: So I'll tell you very briefly what psychopath is, and then I'll tell you why I think she fits into that profile perfectly. So, psychopaths — I think we did talk about this briefly, didn't we in part one?
[00:06:35] Jordan Harbinger: We did, and I've done a bunch of shows about psychopaths, but here's the thing, people might have listened to it a month ago or never. So we can go ahead and redefine psychopath just in case this is someone's first time hearing it, or they need a refresher. I could use it myself, frankly. And you're right, we do overuse this term. It's like nowadays, you see somebody put too much salt on their food or put, I don't know, too much hot sauce on a burrito, and it's like, "What a psychopath. This guy's weird as hell." It's this, we've completely lost all meaning of this particular word, diagnosis, definition, whatever.
[00:07:04] Dr. Sohom Das: So I think that people assume that it's anybody who's either a bit unhinged or anybody who's aggressive. And I think the term psycho is often kind of misconstrued with psychotic, which is completely different. That's a mental illness. A psychopath—
[00:07:18] Jordan Harbinger: Uh-huh.
[00:07:19] Dr. Sohom Das: —is an extreme personality disorder. So psychopaths are impulsive. They completely lack empathy. They kind of see everybody as an opportunity to take advantage of. So they might be close to people, they might be married, they might have kids, they might even have friends, but they see everybody as like a stepping stone to achieve something. And I think that perfectly sums up Anna Delvey because she even conned her own friends or people that she seemed to show affection towards. And she even ripped them off to the point that I think one of her friends helped in the sting operation that got her arrested.
[00:07:51] Jordan Harbinger: Ah-huh, interesting. So if I'm friends with a con artist and I've known him since middle school and he is just a son of a gun, he may not con me, or if he does, he'll feel really bad about doing it. But if we go to Walmart and he tricks them into giving him a, I don't know, a bunch of the money out of the till, he's just going to say, "Screw it. It's a big company. Who cares?"
[00:08:10] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:08:10] Jordan Harbinger: And that's good old con art's buddy from middle school, so I see. But a psychopath just says, "Screw it. If I'm able to con you, you deserve it and you shouldn't even — I can't even feel bad about it and neither should you or who cares how you feel."
[00:08:21] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. And everybody in their orbit is somebody that they will happily rip off or take advantage, not necessarily rip off, but take advantage of. And that's why psychopaths tend to, they usually have quite a lot of friends. But they change their circle of friends. It's always very fluid because once they've kind of squeezed everything out of you that they can, then they move on to something else. There's no reason for them to hang out with you or to be friends with you anymore if they can't get anything from you.
[00:08:45] Jordan Harbinger: Also, I would imagine if you join my circle of 10 close friends and you screw over one of them really bad by taking their car and selling it illegally, we're all going to find out and none of us are ever going to talk to you again. So then, you've got to go use your charm on another circle of friends until you do something stupid or psychopathic and ruin that as well.
[00:09:04] So it's funny because, of course, whenever I hear about these things, I start looking at people, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, you start looking at people in your life who did you dirty, or did someone in your circle dirty and you're like, "What happened to that person? Are they still going from person to person or circle to circle and just burning it?" I have people I've known like this, where now it's like, "Why is so-and-so living in Thailand now? Oh, let me guess, he's out there meeting new people to rip off and then he is going to buy a ticket to Hawaii and stay there for six months until he's run out of town. And then he is going to buy a ticket to China and get in with the expat community there until people find out he's a no good leach." And I just, I see these guys and it's been 15 years since I've known them, and I look at their Facebook profile and they're still doing, they still appear to be doing the same crap.
[00:09:51] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Jordan Harbinger: They just never settled.
[00:09:53] Dr. Sohom Das: And the irony, I think, is that because part of the characteristics of a psychopath is being superficially charming. They're actually very good at it.
[00:10:00] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:00] Dr. Sohom Das: So they're not, you know, shy reserve people. And Anna Delvey is exactly like this. She can insert herself into a new group of people and kind of just camouflage herself really well into social circles. So I think one thing I remember reading about Anna Delvey is that she would throw these big parties and she would invite some like socialites, and sometimes they were a bit confused about why they were being invited because they barely knew her. They'd like literally met her once and she was talking about them and treating them as if they were all like really close friends. And she did this constantly. So she had this massive social circle.
[00:10:32] Jordan Harbinger: And this is interesting, of course, because what this would do is if I invite a socialite and another socialite and they kind of know each other and maybe they don't know each other that well, they're in different circles. One's a banker and one's, I don't know, a fashion mogul. If I'm treating them both like close friends and they see me doing that, they just assume that I'm actually close friends with the other person. And even though, I'm doing the same thing to them at the same time, they're going, "Oh, well, this is unusual the way she's treating me, but look how close she is with all these other people." And then you just think, "Oh, well, I'm just being very welcomed into this particular high-value circle," which is hilarious and so naive. And I would totally fall for this as well, I think. It's funny because you can see it happening in front of your face and then happen to you and you just nod there, sit there and you nod and you smile like a dummy because this is what she does professionally, essentially is trick people like this.
[00:11:20] Dr. Sohom Das: Absolutely. So you might be interested to know, there's something called a psychopathy checklist, which is like a formal test, a psychopath test. Have you heard about this?
[00:11:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Is it the PCLR or something like that?
[00:11:30] Dr. Sohom Das: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:31] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:11:31] Dr. Sohom Das: PCLR, so that's Psychopathy Checklist Revised, so it's got 20 items. I won't go through them all, but I picked out a few that I think—
[00:11:37] Jordan Harbinger: Let's do the fun one.
[00:11:38] Dr. Sohom Das: —will really show. Okay. Okay. So I got a little note here. So just so your viewers know, what happens is that you score somebody from zero, one, or two on every single point. So you got score range from either zero or 40, and there's a cut off point. So in the UK, it's 25, in America, it's 30 to become a clinical psychopath. So that's the kind of test that forensic psychiatrists such as myself would use. Obviously, in real life, we'd get lots of different information from different sources. The patient would usually be an inpatient in a secure unit—
[00:12:06] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:07] Dr. Sohom Das: —and would have all of their medical notes, history, like hospital notes. We might even speak to their family members, speak to them, obviously, maybe even speak to their victims. So we get lots of information from lots of different sources to get as much coverage as we can. Obviously, I can't do that with Anna.
[00:12:22] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you can't do that with Anna. But this makes sense because I always wondered, and I've actually taken the PCLR on another show that comes out after this one that's specifically about psychopaths.
[00:12:31] Dr. Sohom Das: All right.
[00:12:31] Jordan Harbinger: I think it's the American version, although I'm not sure. I'll leave my results as a surprise or not very surprising reveal, but the idea that somebody would answer these honestly if they were actually being analyzed, that was what sort of bugged me. Because I'm thinking, who goes, "Yeah, I'm sexually promiscuous and I have behavioral problems and I ha always have as a child. And yes, I have a very parasitic lifestyle and I don't feel empathy"? I mean, you just never answer this. It seems like you do have to get this from their partner, mom, dad, childhood friends, people that they live and work with. Otherwise, you're never going to be able to assess this person because, of course, they're going to lie to you. Why would they tell you the truth? They're a psychopath, maybe.
[00:13:10] Dr. Sohom Das: I think you're right. In the vast majority of cases, Jordan. I think I can think of one or two cases where I felt that a psychopath has been truthful. And the reason I think is because they've been stuck in either the prison system or within psychiatric units for most of their adult lives, to the point that they actually want an answer.
[00:13:26] Jordan Harbinger: Interesting.
[00:13:26] Dr. Sohom Das: So they've probably been used to being slippery and a bit crafty and potentially lines of clinicians for years. And then, you know, 15 years down the line they're like, look, I'm, I'm still in and out of prison. Maybe there is something in this, maybe I am a psychopath and maybe it would be helpful to get that diagnosis so I get the right sort of treatment form. But it is very rare, only happens very occasionally.
[00:13:47] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Let's talk about some of these characteristics of a psychopath.
[00:13:50] Dr. Sohom Das: Cool. So the ones that stand out to me immediately are sort of being clipped, being grandiose, so that's thinking of yourself highly compared to others, like a need for stimulation, so like constantly being bored, pathological liar, being cunning and manipulative. So all of these absolute bandor Anna Delvey. And then, you mentioned one yourself actually, there's a parasitic lifestyle, so they—
[00:14:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:14:11] Dr. Sohom Das: They leech off other people. Yeah, it's usually financially, but it can be in other ways. It can be sexually, it can be in terms of status. Lack of remorse, a callous, lack of empathy.
[00:14:19] Jordan Harbinger: And they don't have to be violent, right? This is just somebody who sleeps at your house and doesn't leave and eats your food and never pays and then borrows something without telling you and maybe sells it. And then lies about all of the above. And then talks about how they have these giant plans. I mean, Anna Delvey's thing was, she was going to start some art center or whatever, and she wanted to buy a building and then she lied about actually buying the building to get the investment money from the other investors. And it's just a whole bunch of nonsense. They don't believe this stuff though, right? They don't believe this. They're just lying to get their way and they don't care about the consequences. Is that accurate?
[00:14:56] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. So, I'm going to address a couple of things there. So first of all, about whether they have to be violent or not. So you're absolutely right, they don't have to be violent, but they do tend to be quite criminally versatile. So even if they've never, if they're not violent like Anna Delvey, they are good at having lots of different schemes. So, some of it might be like literally stealing, you know, credit card fraud. Some of it might be stealing cars. Some of it might be like sexual offenses. So they tend to have a history of not very serious offenses. I'm not talking, you know, attempted murder or murder generally. There are some exceptions obviously, but they have like a history of lots of repeated, small kind of offending.
[00:15:32] And then, your second question was whether they believe it or not, I think when they tell a direct lie, then they don't believe their lies. They know that they're lying. So they're in control of their actions. But I think they have this almost delusional self-confidence. So somebody like Anna Delvey, I imagine that even though she knew she was lying about being a German heiress and you know, having access to the trust fund, I think on balance, she probably had enough confidence in herself that at some point she would make all this money and at some point, she would become this kind of successful millionaire entrepreneur.
[00:16:03] So she doesn't believe the lies, but she probably believes in her own hype a bit too much.
[00:16:08] Jordan Harbinger: So what I wonder what percentage of entrepreneurs actually have a lot of these same characteristics, possibly are psychopaths, and have just been successful in what they do because they did think big and then they did create the killer app that changed the world of, I don't know, transportation in some way. And now, they feel, of course, like they are this genius that made it happen, right? Like what's the real difference between a psychopath who's delusional and a psychopath who's just a really bad leader is the level of success they've had in whatever endeavor that they've tried.
[00:16:39] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I suppose the other difference is that entrepreneur, who's just got massive motivation and won't be knocked down, won't necessarily take advantage of other people, whereas the psychopath has all of those traits—
[00:16:51] Jordan Harbinger: I see.
[00:16:52] Dr. Sohom Das: Plus would take advantage of people like, you know, would lie to people just to get the investment. So they would lie about how well their app has been doing so far in a very credible manner to get more investment.
[00:17:01] Jordan Harbinger: Well, we see that a lot. I mean, have you heard of this Fyre Fest debacle, Billy McFarland? Have you heard of this guy?
[00:17:06] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:07] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, he went to prison not because the event didn't work, he went to prison because he lied to the investors primary, right? He just said, "Sure, yeah, no, this is already set and this band is already confirmed," you know? Meanwhile, he just heard that that band had completely canceled and they were not going to come because the stage was not set up properly or whatever. And he just did a bunch of that. And then when he went to prison, he wasn't supposed to have certain like recording devices. I know you work in, you spend some time working in prisons. He wasn't supposed to have a recording device, but he had a hidden pen recording device and he was using that to record notes because he was going to write a memoir or is it flash drive or something like that. He was going to write a memoir. So I was like, that's a little grandiose. You're 27 or something like that. You've done one thing that failed spectacularly and you're writing a book about it. Okay. And so he got caught with that and then he got thrown into another prison/solitary, and then he comes and does an episode with yours truly, does an interview with me here for episode 422. And it turns out that he had told or pulled some scheme that said that he was calling his attorney and he was borrowing phone time from mother inmates and yada, yada, yada. And he did the interview with me in pieces on ABC News and on this show, again, episode 422. And they find out about that, obviously, and they throw him in solitary confinement for something like six months for just breaking the rules over and over and over again. And he gets out of prison.
[00:18:28] And now, he immediately starts another business called the Pyrt Crew. It's got something to do with scavenger hunts and there's events, of course, attached to it. And I'm just thinking, you know, this guy has so much motivation. The ABC did a follow-up interview with me after he got out of prison or was about to get out of prison. What do you think of him? He's going to start a business. He's right on the line, right? He's like a real go-getter. He is a real motivated guy. He's a real, got a lot of entrepreneurial ideas, but he just kind of can't help himself. He can't just do a job working for somebody who's on the straight and narrow and learn the ropes of all this stuff. He's got to just go far into left field. And say it's going to be the next big thing and always have the clicks. It sort of rubs me a little bit like this. I don't want to diagnose somebody who I interviewed once who has been nothing but you know, nice to me, but it strikes me as a little odd that a lot of these things seem to line up.
[00:19:22] Dr. Sohom Das: The other thing that um, stands out to me about Billy McFarland is that, if I've got this correct, whilst he was on bail for being investigated for the Fyre Festival, he had another con—
[00:19:31] Jordan Harbinger: Right. I forgot about that.
[00:19:32] Dr. Sohom Das: He started selling these fake ticket experiences.
[00:19:35] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:19:35] Dr. Sohom Das: And there was a famous pop star, I can't remember if it was maybe Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana, I can't remember who it was, but he had on his website, one of the prizes was like a one-to-one session or sitdown meal with this pop star. And she saw it and she kind of alerted the authority saying, "I know nothing about this." And then he got caught for that, which is, again, I can't really diagnose him because I don't know enough about him. But it is typical of a psychopath because one of the factors of the PCLR is revocation of conditional release, which basically means you don't learn from your lessons. So he's on bail, already in trouble, and he just goes straight back to committing another scam. And like you are saying, he's just done it serially. He's never learned his lesson, he doesn't have any fear of the law.
[00:20:13] Jordan Harbinger: There's a famous quote from him, "I'm not going to jail." And well, we know how that worked out. Although I think a lot of criminals probably do say that, especially when it's white-collar stuff. They probably think, "Of course, I'm not going to jail. I'm going to just weasel my way out of this. I've done it before and I haven't killed anyone."
[00:20:29] But, yeah, you're right. I forgot all about his bail scam where he's out on bail from the Fyre Fest event and he was selling tickets to something called the Met Ball, which is not something you can buy tickets for. You have to be a super relevant, famous cultural figure globally, usually, but also possibly in and around New York and you get invited to this and it's like Lady Gaga goes there. They probably invite somebody, like the First Lady, whoever the wife of the president is, a bunch of New York billionaire-type people, pop stars. You cannot buy a ticket to this, at least not out in the open market. I don't think invites are transferrable at all anyway. And yeah, and he is just got some dumb kid calling people up off the Internet and offering to sell them these tickets and getting deposits and taking the money and it's like, "What are you doing? People are watching you with scrutiny and this is the racket you choose."
[00:21:23] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Jordan Harbinger: This transparent con. And they filmed it. They filmed themselves doing it, which I don't know if that's like psychopathy in action, but it's certainly stupidity in action.
[00:21:32] Dr. Sohom Das: It is very stupid. I mean, I suppose it's a stretch, you could say that it plays into his narcissism. So psychopaths are by definition narcissistic as well. But I have to ask, what was he like when you interviewed him? What kind of vibe did you get off him? Like did you find him charming?
[00:21:44] Jordan Harbinger: There's some part of me that feels kind of like a prick talking negatively about a guest that I've had on the show that said he is guilty of the crimes that he has been, you know, he went to trial and was found guilty of these particular crimes. And I think my honest opinion here, and a lot of people have asked me about this, is, I said this even in the episode, "The first couple of calls because we had to do the interview over a series of calls because again, it wasn't even supposed to be allowed. It was just a series of calls that I think he said were with his attorney or something like that, or personal phone calls. The first call, all he did in the first few calls, all he did and you can hear it in the episode, was basically recite what sounds like a memorized or written script, that is an apology of sorts. It was very obvious.
[00:22:27] Then, when we got through that, I was able to ask real questions. He had some scripted answers to some of them, which I understand when you're are convicted of a crime, you maybe don't want to admit more crimes when you're already in prison, so there's that, but it came across as I would say, not super extra charming. I don't think he's a not charming or not nice guy or had a bad personality or anything like that, but it wasn't particularly like, "You know, Jordan, you're such a smart, interesting guy, blah, blah." He was kind of just normal. It wasn't what you would expect when you meet a psychopath and they're just trying to sweep you off their feet.
[00:23:02] I've met a couple of cult leaders in Los Angeles. They do this whole thing where they play to your ego and it's actually ridiculous. There's a guy that I met and I really don't want to identify him, but he was a leader of a self-help cult in Los Angeles, and we were at a party and a couple of my friends were in his little self-help cult and one of the women she had, she played the harp and the harp was in the room at the party and I said, "Can I try that?" Because who the hell gets to play a dang harp? I mean, the thing is taller than me. It was amazing. It probably cost like $30,000 I wanted to try it. So he's sitting there and he's like, "Look at the way Jordan's fingers strum the harp. He's naturally so gifted at this and this and this and this." And I thought, "I don't know this guy. I just met this guy. He knows that I have a popular show that he probably wants to be on because it'll increase his self-help cult recruitment stuff. He's already tried to get people at the party to tell me to have him on the show in a very transparent way that he tried to make look like wasn't him doing it, and now, he's complimenting me in this way that he thinks I'm not aware of. But having studied cult and manipulation, it was just really obvious.
[00:24:12] Billy was not like that, right? It wasn't this sort of ham-handed charm. It was actually just, he was very normal for a guy calling me from a prison phone. Anna Delvey strikes me as somebody who could really turn it on if they need to. Billy McFarland doesn't. I bet he is a great sales guy. I doubt he's got the type of charm where you would say, "I got to invite this guy to my son's wedding?" Does that make sense?
[00:24:35] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I suppose when I was — you know, I don't think either of us can confidently say that Billy McFarland is a psychopath, and there is a speculation here, but just to play devil's advocate, if he was, then it could be the reason that he wasn't laying on the charm with you during the podcast recording that you did could simply be because there's no reason. He's got nothing, he's already on your show, so there's nothing further to manipulate.
[00:24:57] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:57] Dr. Sohom Das: And it could help his self-image if he tried to be a little bit, come across a little bit humble because he's been arrested for these crimes and he is in prison.
[00:25:04] Jordan Harbinger: There was a lot of humility.
[00:25:06] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:25:06] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But it was, if there was a lot of, I should say, sort of scripted humility and I don't want to say false humility, but there was very much the, "I am guilty of lying to my investors and I am contrite about this and I have replayed what I would do over and over in the time that I have spent in prison where I have definitely learned my lesson." Like there was a, a lot of that. And you're right, I think it would look bad if he was too slick and too unbothered because it's like, "Well, wait a minute, you're in prison for fraud and you sound like you're on vacation in Cancun. Maybe you need to stay in prison a little bit longer."
[00:25:35] Dr. Sohom Das: Exactly. So it could be that he was just kind of assessing the situation and instead of manipulating you as a person, he's just manipulating the situation, which is, "I've got a bit of a platform, let me try and look contrite and let me try and look sort of humbled—"
[00:25:47] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:47] Dr. Sohom Das: "—and remorseful and that's the best thing that I can do at this point." Whereas in another sex circumstances, if he met you at a party, then he might have laid the charm on you. I guess. We'll never know.
[00:25:56] Jordan Harbinger: Well, we might know because there's a very good chance, unless he hears this particular episode, there's a very good chance that I would end up at a party with Billy McFarland because the way that I got that interview in the first place, those connections are still in place and in play. And I actually had a couple of opportunities to interview him after he got out. I just think there's no juice left to squeeze, speaking of people who are using others for their personal gain, there's no juice left for me to squeeze out of that particular interview guest. No, that's not necessarily true. I think for me, I just didn't want to platform the new business venture, whatever it is, because it's not really what I do on the show. And also, hey, maybe there's going to be a problem with that too. Do I need to be complicit in that? Not necessarily. So maybe I should take that psychopath test one more time.
[00:26:42] But Anna Delvey, going back to Inventing Anna, Anna Delvey here, she really did have, of course, the parasitic lifestyle. She really did use everyone. There's no notes on her being sexually promiscuous. Maybe we just don't know. We don't know about her early behavioral problems either because her parents in Germany, I guess are not talking about that to their credit. But she certainly was a pathological liar and she certainly got bored all the time, vacations, parties, big things all on someone else's dime all the time.
[00:27:10] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. So I can't say any better than that. There's a certain number of traits that she hasn't. I'm surprised that she didn't try to be sexually promiscuous. I mean, you know, I suppose there's a possibility that she could have done, but it's not in the public domain.
[00:27:21] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:21] Dr. Sohom Das: Psychopaths usually use all the tools at their disposal, but you're right, she wasn't particularly promiscuous. She didn't have like lots of short-term relationships as far as we know. And as you say, there was no problems that we know about in her early childhood. So those were elements to the psychopath test that she wouldn't score highly on or score on at all. But I think, I mean, this is a whole other conversation. I think some parts of the psychopath test itself is quite flawed because it gives equal weight into a lot of different things, some of which I don't think are that relevant.
[00:27:46] Jordan Harbinger: Interesting. Right. So you can score low or high on certain characteristics that maybe skew the results of the test.
[00:27:55] Dr. Sohom Das: Absolutely. So I'll give you a couple of specific examples. So sexually promiscuous and a number of short-term marriages are both items. But if you're not that, then you could lose a potential four points. So this impulsivity is one of the items, and poor behavioral control is another one.
[00:28:10] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.
[00:28:10] Dr. Sohom Das: So they're not exactly the same thing. So impulsivity is literally not being able to control yourself in that moment. So you make a rash decision, sometimes you might regret it afterwards, whereas poor behavioral control is more about long-term decisions, but they're still bad decisions if that makes sense. So it's not a decision that you've suddenly made on the spot, it's something that you choose to do repeatedly throughout your life, but it's still something that hurts other people or maybe even hurts you. But the point I'm trying to make is, again, I think they're too similar factors, too similar categories in the psychopath test. So, I think it could skew the results.
[00:28:43] Jordan Harbinger: You are listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Sohom Das. We'll be right back.
[00:28:48] This episode is sponsored in part by SimpliSafe. Winter is the time where property crimes like burglaries and package thefts, they really go through the roof. If you're traveling for the holidays, make sure to keep your home secure with SimpliSafe, even if you're not traveling, for that matter. We've been longstanding customers of SimpliSafe. Really easy to set up. Plug it in, connects to the Wi-Fi. It also has cellular. If the Internet goes kaput, or you know, you're one of those people who fantasizes that they're going to cut the power and the phone lines to break into your house. They also have battery backup. SimpliSafe has been awarded Best Home Security of 2022, third year in a row. Can't really beat that. We love SimpliSafe's variety of high-tech sensors, HD camera options so you can live stream the break in right from across the Internet. There's also hazard sensors to detect fires, floods, and other threats, plus 24/7 professional monitoring. Knock wood, we have put the monitoring to the test. Jen set off the alarm and terrified the kids. That was fun. That was a fun night. We instantly got a call from SimpliSafe's agents to make sure we were okay. In an actual emergency 24/7 professional monitoring uses Fast Protect technology exclusively from SimpliSafe to capture critical evidence and verify the threat is real. So you can get a priority police response because, of course, they always think these are false.
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[00:30:15] Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Squarespace. Have you ever thought, "I'm just an ordinary dude or dudette? Do I really need a website?" The answer is a resounding yes, especially if you run a business, you do freelance work, or even work as an employee. A website is indispensable. Having a website will make you easier to find and it'll make you more hireable because it builds your credibility as well as your personal brand. And whether you think those are annoying or cringe or not, they exist. You'll definitely stand out in the sea of resumes if you have your own website. It's never been easier or more affordable to create a website with Squarespace. You don't need to know how to code with Squarespace. Just pick a template, a design theme, then customize it. Squarespace has all the tools you need to get your personal site or online business off the ground. You can even generate revenue through gated members-only content, manage your members, send email communications, leverage audience insights, all in one, easy-to-use platform. I'm not even scratching the surface of what you can do on Squarespace. Give it a try for free at squarespace.com/jordan. That's squarespace.com/jordan. Use the code JORDAN to save 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain.
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[00:31:58] Now, back to Dr. Sohom Das.
[00:32:02] Why short-term marital relationships? What if I'm just a guy who goes around, otherwise psychopathic goes around, banging everything in sight to get what I want, but I never get married? I score a zero for many short-term marital relationships. That makes no sense at all.
[00:32:15] Dr. Sohom Das: It makes no sense to me as well. That's one of my criticisms of the psychopath test. I agree.
[00:32:19] Jordan Harbinger: I see. Yeah. It's almost like that was written in the '60s where everybody just got married.
[00:32:23] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:32:23] Jordan Harbinger: And it's like, well, wait a minute. What if I just decide to ruin other people's marriages? I score a zero. Like I'm some kind of angel for that one and it skewed my results on this test.
[00:32:31] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, no, I totally agree. Just to give a bit of closure about Anna Delvey. So I just read before our call that she's out and she's on house arrest and she's making money. So she is throwing a party in Miami and she's selling lots of paintings. This is only a few days ago. She's under house arrest, so she couldn't physically attend, but she attended via Zoom. And the point, I'm trying to make is that she's out there and she's being entrepreneurial still after everything that's happened.
[00:32:54] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, I'm going to note that because somebody like that probably can't say no to coming on The Jordan Harbinger Show and talking about what they're doing in life. I would love to talk to Anna Delvey. Let's go ahead and write that down. I bet she's reachable, even if her lawyer doesn't want her to be. I bet she's very, very reachable, especially somebody with a blue checkmark on Instagram.
[00:33:11] All right. It makes me feel weird admitting this because I'm like, I'm going to manipulate this person into coming on the show. But on the other hand, I'm also like, you know, what though? You are a predator. And I almost don't care. It's like, "Hey, I'll live in your world for a minute." Maybe I should take that psychopath test one more time. Did I say that already?
[00:33:25] Dr. Sohom Das: You did.
[00:33:26] Jordan Harbinger: Let's talk about — before we move on to Andrew Tate. Psychopath versus sociopath versus narcissist. There's definitely got to be a difference here, but I honestly have no idea what those differences are.
[00:33:39] Dr. Sohom Das: Okay. I can answer that question. So I'll start off with narcissist because it's probably the least complex of those three diagnoses.
[00:33:45] So a narcissist is somebody who's quite sort of grandiose. So they have an inflated sense of being important. They're very critical of other people and they're quite envious. They get angry themselves if they feel that anybody's kind of criticizing them. So they're quite, I wouldn't say paranoid, but they're very sensitive, so they're very easily slighted.
[00:34:04] So a psychopath is all of those things. So all psychopaths are narcissists, plus they are conning and charming and manipulative.
[00:34:12] Jordan Harbinger: Gotcha.
[00:34:12] Dr. Sohom Das: So narcissists are not necessarily those things, but if you put the narcissism plus the ability to con other people and the charm to do it, all of those things together is a psychopath.
[00:34:20] Jordan Harbinger: Gotcha. Okay. And we did a big double episode on narcissism with Dr. Ramani, episode 742, 743. Those were hugely popular. Once you listen to those, you will have a full primer on narcissism. But yeah, you're right. Psychopathy has that almost additional element of just extra horrible predatory behavior on top of the grandiose me, me, me behavior of a narcissist.
[00:34:42] What about a sociopath? Because I've had people write in and yell at me that, "We don't use the word psychopath anymore. One-star review. Your show sucks because you're not supposed to say psychopath, it's derogatory," and here we are.
[00:34:53] Dr. Sohom Das: No, I completely disagree with that. So psychopath is a clinical term that is used in like forensic psychiatry for example. Sociopath is more of a social term and psychopath is defined. So I've already told you about psychopath test. So if you asked 10 forensic psychiatrist what a psychopath is, all of them will say pretty much the same thing. Whereas sociopath, because it's a less formal phrase, if you ask 10 different people what sociopath is, you might get slightly different answers because it's not as well defined.
[00:35:18] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:19] Dr. Sohom Das: But the difference is that sociopaths tend to, they're a lot more reactive and they're a lot more impulsive, so they can't contain their emotions as well as a psychopath can. So if you piss off a psychopath, they won't react necessarily at that time. They will sort of harbor onto this resentment and they will wait for the best time to get their revenge. So their revenge is a dish that's definitely served cold, whereas a sociopath is a lot more likely to snap at that moment. They can't contain themselves and they can't sort of plot their revenge. Psychopath is really good at slipping into society.
[00:35:50] So again, going back to Anna Delvey, she's really good at being a chameleon and being, and presenting herself however she needs to be so that she can carry on kind of going up the hierarchy of these socialites.
[00:36:00] Jordan Harbinger: Right.
[00:36:00] Dr. Sohom Das: Whereas a sociopath is not very good at doing that. They tend to live on the fringes of society, so they tend to be like gangsters or thugs or people that don't fit in. So the sociopaths are easier to spot. Psychopaths are far slipperier.
[00:36:13] Jordan Harbinger: Gotcha. Okay. That's interesting. So when we think sociopath, we might think of the person who you step on their foot at a nightclub and they've had two beers or zero beers, and they start mercilessly pounding the person next to you because they assume that that was that person who did it and they must have done it for a reason, yada, yada. You see these people especially popping off in prisons and street violence and things like that because of the impulse control. Whereas, like you said, the psychopath might be in prison because they were a nurse in a surgery somewhere and they killed patients by overdosing them with medications slowly over periods of decades before getting caught. There's this different type of behavior.
[00:36:50] Dr. Sohom Das: Absolutely. So if you're using the prison analogy, your sociopath in prison would be exactly what you said. So there'd be like the head thug or the leader of a particular gang is clear that they're in charge. Whereas your psychopath might be somebody like Billy McFarland who's kind of playing the system and conning the other inmates to use their telephone time, but doing it really subtly so that nobody even really realizes what he's doing.
[00:37:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's funny. That was what was going on. I don't know exactly how he got this other guy's phone time, but he got this other guy's phone time and he got a lot of it. And he used it on my show and then he went to solitary confinement for like six months, which just every time I think about that, I feel bad that happened. But I'm also like, wait, he had to have known that was what was going to happen if he got caught and just made the calculation. So coming on this show is worth going to solitary confinement for six months. That's how good being interviewed on this show is apparently. I don't know if he'd make that choice again.
[00:37:39] All right, let's talk about Andrew Tate. This guy's been in the news a bunch lately. For people who don't know, he's the guy you see in these videos where he's like, "Women, they're just a bunch of dumb idiots and you know, whatever. Having sex with him sucks, it's a chore, but I have a different one every day, 10 times. And you know, I'm rich and I talk about being rich. And if you think that having nice cars is something you should talk about, it's because you really don't have enough nice cars. Because I look at my cars, I show I don't." Every video's the same. None of it really makes sense. It sounds like, in my opinion, what a 12-year-old, 13-year-old boy would sound like if they were pretending to be a rich, wealthy guy who's successful and they didn't really get how to do that.
[00:38:20] What am I missing here? He has a lot of these characteristics that are so over the top that they almost seem to me fake, and I've had to ask numerous friends who know him in real life, what he is like. But I'm going to save that for our discussion here because I want to hear what you think first.
[00:38:38] Dr. Sohom Das: Okay. So there's a few things that stand out to me about Andrew Tate. One thing is that he actually was quite a successful kickboxer, and he won a couple of championships. And that's not easy to do. You know, the amount of time and training, lack of fear, courage, physical fitness, you need to become like top of your game is actually quite impressive. So whatever, you say about him, and there's a lot of bad things to say about him, he's somebody that clearly has a lot of discipline and motivation.
[00:39:03] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:03] Dr. Sohom Das: I suppose if I had to sum him up, I would say toxic masculinity. He's a perfect textbook example of toxic masculinity. So that's just like hyper manliness, being the alpha male, all costs, putting other people down, refusing to accept any kind of weakness or showing emotion, always acting tough, putting on this front, all this type of aggression. He's literally, you know, the definition of toxic masculinity.
[00:39:26] As to whether he means everything he says, I'm not sure. I mean, he says it with a lot of conviction. And he said his sort of misogynistic comments repeatedly so many times that it's hard to not believe that he's not invested in it. But at the same time, it's made him famous, hasn't it? And it's also earned him a lot of money.
[00:39:43] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:43] Dr. Sohom Das: So I believe he has these different websites, his like manliness websites. And at some point he was like selling cryptocurrency and he had some sort of, I don't know, if I call it pyramid scheme, but at least a scheme of recruiting where he would get other people to recruit others to his website and he would charge for like the privilege of being on the website. And he made a lot of money from doing it. So I think it's really hard to know where to draw the line. How much is it, is his actual misogyny mystic belief, which I a hundred percent believe he has, and how much is it of him saying, "What is the most outrageous thing that I can say? Because it's obviously working for me. And if I can say something that tops the last thing I said, I'll get another TikTok video out and it'll get tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of views and it will drive traffic towards my website and it'll make me money."
[00:40:24] Jordan Harbinger: There is a part — by the way, videos of these people are readily available. Just Google the name Andrew Tate. If you're like, "Oh, I can't follow, who is this person?" Clearly, a narcissistic guy in the videos. And like I said, his personality, it seems fake and overblown, which strikes me initially as trolling to get people talking about him like we're doing right now. And I've had many chances to interview this guy, but I'm just not, I'm not interested in platforming nonsense — let me put it this way, if I have an actor on the show, I don't want that actor to come on the show in character. I want them to come as themselves. And if you can't get them to come as themselves, it's not going to be an interesting interview, right? I don't want to interview Superman. I want to interview the person who's playing Superman on the show.
[00:41:05] And so I think that's kind of why he hasn't been on here before, one of the reasons. And you're right, maybe he's joking in a way, back to the trolling thing, but I think he does believe a certain percentage of what he's saying. I know you mentioned toxic masculinity in that term, in my opinion, is quite overused because people will label any guy with any sort of equality they think is negative in that moment is toxically masculine. And I'm not sure that that is beneficial to the discussion around toxic masculinity. But certainly, a guy who says the things that he says about the opposite sex, about money, about life and how you should be a predator and you should always be going this way. And you're, "I only hang out with straight killers," that type of thing, of course, is way over the line and it's a negative influence on society.
[00:41:50] What I think we can definitely agree on is he is narcissistic.
[00:41:54] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:41:54] Jordan Harbinger: Right. It's always about how great he is. There's no sense of humility involved here to the point where it seems ridiculous. I mean, I looked at a video the other day and I thought, this guy's got to be a joke because it's him next to a swimming pool playing with nunchuck. And then, he does a flip into the pool and I thought, oh, this is a joke. He's kidding. Nobody would put that out there and think this looks cool. Unless they're so detached and so emotionally damaged that that doesn't occur to them that looks like a teenage boy pretending to be a ninja, right? It was so silly. I just thought, no, but he must not have known this was filmed and uploaded because nobody would want that out there if they're trying to act like a cool, tough guy. This is almost like the opposite of that. It's so dumb.
[00:42:35] Dr. Sohom Das: But then having said that, a lot of his videos are dumb in that he's topless and he has, you know, women with bikinis.
[00:42:43] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:42:43] Dr. Sohom Das: All around trying to have serious conversations. So he's absolutely narcissistic. That's clear as day. He's a bully. He seems to target people that are quite vulnerable or people that are less successful than him. He shows like a lack of empathy, in general, a lack of fear, I suppose, you can interpret that in different ways, can't you? But like a lack of fear, the consequence, he doesn't seem to care if he offends anybody at all. He's obviously misogynistic. He's very entitled. I mean, that's another thing that really comes out to me. He talks very openly about being entitled to sex. So I've heard him say in a video how he doesn't see the point of having any female friends, so you only need one female. And that's, you know, for sexual gratification or multiple females. In his mind, there's no purpose to have any female friends or for female to have male friends, which is extremely immature. I mean, that's literally the thought process of a child, of a prepubescent child, isn't it?
[00:43:33] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. That's what makes me think wrongly, of course, because I know better that his audience is entirely 12 and 13-year-old boys. It's actually not. I know a lot of adults that like this stuff and it's really disappointing and really shocking because when I ask them what's to like about this, those adults that I previously thought were pretty intelligent people will also exhibit very, very narrow, narrowly channeled, but still very immature behavior. Like somebody who's an engineer that should know better will say, "Yeah, but look at how many hot girls he hangs out with." And I'm thinking, "Okay, but he's in another country where he has a lot of money. Do you not — there's no assumption here that maybe he's paid them to hang around or that they are allowed to live there for free?" I mean, you just want to shake people and go, "What are you thinking right now? What are you even thinking right now? Taking that attitude and then saying, 'This is what must be working as far as getting women,' and it's just like you're 40 years old. How do you not know that this is not how to succeed in life?" It's absolutely mind blowing to me.
[00:44:33] I do have some inside info on this guy. It's very clear to me that he wants to control the way that he's perceived, which is why it was also surprising to me to see some of these really dumb videos come out since he's not an idiot and he does want to control the way that he's perceived, there's a lot of choices that go into some of this stuff that comes out where I just go, what is this stupid crap? Because I'm not the target audience that has to be the reason. It's not just off-the-cuff stuff. It's branding for controversy. It's branding for clicks, and it looks like he doesn't care what people think. But whenever I meet guys like this, they're always hyper concerned with what other people think about them. The whole, "I don't give a f*ck" people, those guys, "I don't give a f*ck." They give all the f*cks. These guys always give all the f*cks. That's all they have are f*cks to give about how everyone views them, which is probably the root of the problem in the first place. What do you think?
[00:45:25] Dr. Sohom Das: It's not, "What is the argument or what's the point that I'm trying to prove here? And what's the best way of making that point?" I don't think he gives a sh*t. I think it is, "What is the most outrageous thing that I can say just to get attention?" And it kind of makes sense, especially if your platform is social media if it is like TikTok.
[00:45:39] I mean, when you think about what are the most popular things on TikTok, it's not people giving sort of intelligent, balanced, thoughtful statements. It is, I don't know, prank videos. It is, you know, people who are showing off their Ferraris and their really expensive cars. So, it wouldn't surprise me if it is all very calculated with the calculation being, "What is the most controversial thing that I can say?" It wouldn't surprise me if it's all extremely kind of crafted and pre-planned. And also he puts out his content himself, doesn't he? Or him and his kind of crew. It's not like there's a random person that's seen him say these outrageous things and put it up. It's all very controlled.
[00:46:14] Jordan Harbinger: Right. No, these are all managed, they're all filmed mostly at his home in Romania, as I understand it. There's a crew of young guys, as they always are, young guys hanging out with their cameras and editing and all that stuff, and, you know, working with his brother.
[00:46:28] For me, it's a little bit of a sad scenario with him. Like, yes, he's a terrible influence. I don't know if somebody like this is physically dangerous, even though he is a champion kickboxer.
[00:46:38] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:46:38] Jordan Harbinger: He's a dangerously bad influence, but not necessarily going to physically hurt somebody. I wouldn't—
[00:46:43] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:46:44] Jordan Harbinger: Knowing what I know about him outside of the videos, I don't think he's a guy who goes around beating someone up because he's had too many beers. In fact, what I have heard with mutual close friends, I've heard that a very different version of him exists when he's among those friends, completely different. He's kind, charming. He's generous. Which actually makes this kind of worse because it's fake, right? It's branding or if it's not fake, it's just he's ignoring all of these other positive qualities about himself that he could be displaying and only displaying this stuff.
[00:47:15] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. So a couple of things jump out to me that I think another thing we've not really talked about that makes him dangerous. He's actually quite eloquent. So to my surprise, like I saw — I don't know if you've seen his interview with Piers Morgan. I've not seen the whole thing. I've seen clips of it. Piers as always was trying to kind of put words in his mouth and trying to make Andrew Tate look as bad as possible by making assumptions about him or kind of drawing inferences of things that he said. But to my surprise, Andrew Tate was actually very, very good at standing his ground and being very clear in what he said and what he meant and things that he didn't say and mean.
[00:47:44] Jordan Harbinger: There's irony of Piers Morgan doing that.
[00:47:46] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Jordan Harbinger: There's a lot irony that Piers Morgan is the guy that's trying to trip up Andrew Tate. Like I would be less surprised if they were hanging out together, slamming shots of whiskey and yelling at — well, anyway, continue.
[00:47:57] Dr. Sohom Das: No, no, you're exactly right. There is a—
[00:47:59] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.
[00:47:59] Dr. Sohom Das: It's quite hard to know who to root for when you're watching that interview, I guess, isn't it?
[00:48:02] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Piers has his own reputation, you all. He's got his own problems.
[00:48:05] Dr. Sohom Das: So if he was as dumb as he might come across in some of his comments if he was actually that dumb in real life when he's being pulled apart by cleverer people who are trying to make him look stupid during interviews, then it would be easy because he would come across as a bit of a fool. But because he's actually quite good at arguing his corner and separating out exactly what he says and what he means, I think that makes him even more dangerous, because it's harder to make him look like a fool to try and mock him. That's basically what happened. Piers Morgan tried to mock him repeatedly and he parried all of Piers' strategies.
[00:48:38] So another thing that I think makes him dangerous is that I think that some of his supporters don't know, see, or care about that nice charming side of him. They just—
[00:48:47] Jordan Harbinger: No.
[00:48:47] Dr. Sohom Das: —see the inflammatory stuff he says, and that makes him dangerous. So even though he might not physically go abuse people. Although having said that, I'll go on a quick tangent. In 2016, he was removed from Big Brother because apparently he did beat a woman and he was asked to leave. He beat her with a belt, although later on he and the woman apparently said it was consensual. It's all very weird.
[00:49:05] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That could have been a publicity stunt gone wrong. Like that could have been, "Hey, this is going to make a great clip, and then it went wrong. I don't know. I did see both of those. It's hard to tell what happened. Yeah.
[00:49:14] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. But what I fear, what I worry about is that his followers are just going to be sort of base level Neanderthals, who only hear the misogynistic bit and take it to the extreme—
[00:49:23] Jordan Harbinger: Of course.
[00:49:24] Dr. Sohom Das: —best case scenario kind of affects their sexist attitudes in life, and worst case scenario could actually encourage like, you know, violence, domestic violence.
[00:49:31] Jordan Harbinger: That's the thing that strikes me about him is he must know that because he is smart enough to know that, and yet he doesn't give a crap about that. He's willing to perpetuate that and go, "Oh, well, they're going to do what they're going to do, even if I encourage it, but also look how rich I am." That's the problem that I have. If you want to be a clown in videos, I don't think it's a great idea, but I understand it. But if you want to be a clown in videos that make people worse, and your justification is, "Oh, well, I'm making money. Screw you, I've got mine." That's bad because you are now a predator of other people, regardless of how you feel, especially if you're not really that guy in real life and you're just doing it for money, even that's worse, right? I know that his father and mother separated when he was young. His mother moved him to the UK from the United States. By the way, his dad passed away before this version of Andrew Tate sprang up. Coincidence. I don't know.
[00:50:24] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, that does make him really, really dangerous. There's one thing I wanted to bring up that he said that really interests me personally as a psychiatrist is that he said on a number of occasions that he doesn't think depression is real. And he was pushed about this, pushed on this matter by Piers Morgan, and he tried to backpedal a little bit and he basically said that he believes the feeling of depression is real, but the concept or the diagnosis of depression isn't real. And what I think he meant by that is that he doesn't like the position that he believes some people take, which is that depression is something that happens to me and they don't take responsibility and they don't try and turn their lives away in control, their own kind of destinies. And it's a shame because I think that somewhere in that is a reasonable point. And I think the point he's trying to make is that people should try their best to change their minds state, if possible. But the way he says it is so toxic and so sort of just horrible and hostile that I think is lost in the message.
[00:51:17] But also as a psychiatrist, you know, I've treated depression hundreds, if not thousands of times. And I think it's fair to say that there are one under the spectrum, there are people that have milder forms of depression that are related to their social situations and their lives, whether it's their relationships, whether it's drug and alcohol problems. And the only way to really solve that is by taking away the social factors that are causing them the stress in the first place. A hundred percent agree with that. But what he's not talking about and what he, I presume, has never seen clinically is the other end of the spectrum, where you have people that have like very severe depression, which is linked to like, you know, self-harm and suicidality.
[00:51:52] So I think it's really dangerous then to make those kind of comments, because if his followers, especially if they're not particularly intelligent, believe that, then they're not going to have any kind of sympathy or support for people that actually seriously do suffer a severe illness.
[00:52:09] Jordan Harbinger: This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Sohom Das. We'll be right back.
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[00:55:58] Now for the rest of my conversation with Sohom Das.
[00:56:04] Do you think it's possible for somebody like Andrew Tate to play a character or play himself as this character in videos and in interviews, and then have any sort of normal life? Is it possible to compartmentalize these things or are we going to have to see a redemption from him in five years where he goes, "You know what? All of that was wrong," and now he's sick of living that way? What do you think?
[00:56:25] Dr. Sohom Das: I think he gets off on everything that he says and does. I think he loves the attention. He loves being, um, a bit of a villain. I think he loves the controversy, he loves going on other platforms and kind of arguing his case, which as I said, to my surprise, I think he does actually quite well. So I don't see there being any kind of reason for him to want to have redemption or to change his image. I think he's quite happy. I think he's very calculated, as I was saying before, and I just don't think he cares. I think he cares more about being popular and being infamous and making money than he cares about sending the right messages.
[00:56:55] Jordan Harbinger: So the redemption would only come if this shtick stops working and becomes less popular and stops being lucrative. And then maybe he gets another bite at the publicity apple by saying, "You know what? I'm going to come out and say that those beliefs were wrong and do my last PR tour that way," and sell, I don't know, sell a book on why it was all wrong.
[00:57:15] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, I think that'd be a good, good move for him. You should suggest it.
[00:57:18] Jordan Harbinger: I'm open to that. Andrew Tate, if you want to come on this show, I know you want to come on this show. If you want to come on this show and then talk about that. I'm open to that. I just don't want to be part of the PR machine where we're talking about the same crap he talks about in all the other videos. That to me is boring for multiple reasons.
[00:57:34] All right. I know we're running short on time. I want to talk about Alex Jones, the Infowars founder. If you don't know who he is, he's the guy that yells in frogs at the mouth and says that there's chemicals in the water that are turning the frogs gay. And what he got in trouble for the most, out of all the ridiculous conspiracy theories that he's promoted in the last few decades really, was that the Sandy Hook shooting in the United States, which was school shooting where a bunch of young kids died. It's absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking. He had said that it was a hoax and that all the parents were crisis actors and they didn't really lose their kids, which is horrible enough. But then, he kept saying it and kept saying who these people are and where they lived in their names and all this stuff.
[00:58:16] And his followers would harass these people to the point where their lives were ruined by this. They had people threatening them and death threats. And I mean, these are people whose, you know, five-year-old, six-year-old kids were murdered by somebody in a school shooting, and now he's taken it upon himself for the past few years to make their lives even more of a living hell. And he turned the trial into a spectacle — he was on trial for defamation. He lost horribly. He now owes them like a billion dollars, some of these parents, actually 1.5 billion dollars, and that's just one verdict in one of the cases. There's other 50-million-dollar verdicts that he's got to pay. So basically, he's going to be ruined. He turned the trial into a spectacle, yelling at the judge, telling her she doesn't have authority. And she had to remind him that this was a real court, not his show, and that he couldn't lie and he had to deal with this. And then, he declares bankruptcy and says, "Oh, I don't have any money to pay the verdict. All my money is held by another company," called — and it's his initials. And apparently, one company now owes that other company all of his money, so he can't give it away. And he gave a bunch to his, I think, his parents or something like that.
[00:59:19] I mean, it's just so clearly he's trying to avoid, and I wonder what is going on in someone's head like this where they are — I would just feel horrible if a school shooting happened. I wouldn't want to touch that subject, let alone make the parents' lives harder. And then when you get sued for it and then you lose, try and hide the assets. I mean, the whole thing is so crazy to me that I need a doctor's opinion on what is wrong with Alex Jones.
[00:59:43] Dr. Sohom Das: So from what I know about Alex Jones, obviously I've not had the advantage of ever assessing him in person. I strongly suspect that he has what we call the delusional disorder. So I'll just break that down, what that is. So it's a form of psychosis. So psychosis, different from being psychopath is when you step outside of reality and usually it comes in two different types of symptoms.
[01:00:03] So there's hallucinations, which is, you know, hearing or seeing things that don't exist, like hearing voices and delusions. So delusions are fixed thoughts that don't make sense, that don't come from an ununderstandable place. So for example, like an extremely right-wing religious idea isn't a delusion necessarily because it's in keeping with your culture and what other people around you think.
[01:00:22] So there's different types of psychosis. The most famous one will be schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is associated with like a cognitive decline and a lack of function. It's about affects about one percent of the population. Delusional disorder is really rare, so it's about 0.1 percent of the population. And you have these delusions that are kind of borderline bizarre. So they're not quite based in reality, but they're not absolutely completely crazy. They're not like talking about, you know, shapeshifting aliens for example.
[01:00:49] Jordan Harbinger: He does talk about things like that, like that certain people are lizard people and that they crawl around in tunnels underground. And it's famous people. It's like Hillary Clinton is a lizard secretly. I mean, this is not—
[01:00:59] Dr. Sohom Das: It's not reality is it?
[01:01:00] Jordan Harbinger: He is that delusional unless he's making it up. Yeah.
[01:01:03] Dr. Sohom Das: And a couple of other things that he said that stood out for me is, you mentioned like frogs turning the water gay, I think he said that juice boxes can make people gay and that Obama and Hillary smell of like sulfuric acid and he could smell evil off them. So these are not just like right-wing conspiracy theories, slightly bizarre ideas. These are actually delusions. And the other thing with delusional disorder is, unlike schizophrenia, you don't have negative symptoms. So you don't have cognitive decline. You can function quite highly, you can be quite intelligent and you can live like quite a high functioning level.
[01:01:33] And Alex Jones clearly has, because he's managed to make a media career, as you mentioned, make a lot of money out of it. And the very fact, I didn't know about the trial, but the very fact that he was kind of crafty and devious enough to create these kind of companies to not have to let go of his money shows a really high level of functioning. But I think he's got delusional disorder and I think he's a hundred percent believes his crazy ideas.
[01:01:54] Jordan Harbinger: That's interesting. I always wondered about that because of course the idea is how can somebody be this mean. And your explanation sheds a little bit of light on it. If you believe it to be true, then it's easier to be this horrible because you think you're just telling the truth. That was one of, I think, what was one of his arguments at the trial was, "I said this and at the time I believed it to be true." And then, the judge said, "What about all these mountains of evidence to the contrary? That you were wrong, that you ignored." And you know, he didn't really have much of a way around that. But if he actually does have a disorder, maybe that evidence just goes in one ear and out the other, so to speak.
[01:02:32] Dr. Sohom Das: Absolutely. But almost by definition, delusions can't be argued against with logic. So when you have somebody that has a true delusion, so I've met people who, you know, believe that I met somebody who punched me actually in the psychiatric ward, who believed that I was like a high school bully in disguise from years ago, even though we'd never met. I've seen people who believe that the next door is a pedophile. I've seen people who believe the FBI are following them and they're a hundred percent convinced. And if you try and tell them that otherwise, or if you bring evidence, they're not going to check the evidence. They're just going to assume that you are part of the conspiracy and that you are, you know?
[01:03:01] Jordan Harbinger: Right.
[01:03:01] Dr. Sohom Das: You tie into their delusional. One thing that I was thinking about when I was reading up on Alex Jones is, I don't know about in the States, but in the UK he would probably have been sectioned actually.
[01:03:11] Jordan Harbinger: So what does that mean?
[01:03:12] Dr. Sohom Das: For the mental health act to be committed, I think you'd say? Yeah. So detained against their will for psychiatric treatment. The definitions are that you've got to have a diagnosable disorder, which I think he has clear symptoms and you're either a risk to yourself, to others, risk to yourself, your others, or your own health. And I think you could argue that even though the vast majority of people that I would see are physically violent towards other people, I think you could make a strong argument that he is a danger to others, just by spreading all this like bullsh*t and this misinformation and having other people go over to the victim's house. I think after that's happened, you've got evidence that he is dangerous. So I think he could have been sectionable in the UK.
[01:03:51] Jordan Harbinger: Really? Okay. Yeah. In the United States, this falls firmly under free speech, even though it's absolute nonsense and craziness. And of course, the counterargument. That I think his lawyers have had in, in previous litigation is this is a performance. People know it's nonsense. No one reasonable believes this, but that's where he's got you, right? Because his audience is not made up of reasonable people. That's the whole point. It's made up of unreasonable people who believe unreasonable things. And the way that he makes money is by selling supplements that are supposed to raise your testosterone and protect you against bioweapons and stuff like, I mean, it's just stupid, right? Stupid prepper stuff that's low quality. And that's one of the primary vectors of him making all this money. He fell in between the cracks of our system here because it's free speech. He really can argue that no reasonable person believes this because the things he's saying are by definition completely unreasonable.
[01:04:43] Dr. Sohom Das: But I think that he actually believes it and I think that's what makes him slightly different from somebody like Andrew Tate, who I think on balance—
[01:04:49] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[01:04:50] Dr. Sohom Das: —is probably kind of overegging things because he knows that they'll be controversial. I don't think Alex Jones is doing that. The reason I say that is because, again, when I was reading up on him, I read that he had some conspiracies about 9/11.
[01:05:01] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[01:05:01] Dr. Sohom Das: And he lost a lot of his fan base. He was on a radio show at the time, and he lost like 70 percent of his supporters. And the radio producers actually came to him and said, "I think you should retract all of this, and if you do that, then you'll keep a lot of your viewers, a lot of your supporters, and we can kind of make another type of show around you and basically we can make you into a star." And he apparently said, "No, I'm not going to do that." So, in his mind, it was more important to spread what he, I think, probably believed to be true about these 9/11 conspiracies rather than have popularity as a media personality.
[01:05:33] Jordan Harbinger: That's interesting. Yeah. I found out about him probably 13 years ago because a cab driver in New York told me no Jews died on 9/11. This is probably 2009. And I said, "What are you talking about? That's completely not true." I mean, first of all, New York finance, a lot of Jews are in finance in New York, surprise, surprise. So, you know, sadly, a lot of people died on 9/11 and many of them were of all faith. But certainly, Jews died on 9/11. I know few who died personally and had people who were related to them that were Jewish that died on nine 11. And I said, "Who told you that?" And he's like, "Go to prisonplanet.net, man. It's real da, da, da." And I went to that website and I was like, "Holy cow, there's people that believe this crap." And sure enough, that was one of his sort of early attempts at monetizing kookiness.
[01:06:20] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. That's the dangerous thing is that anybody can make any content on the Internet nowadays.
[01:06:26] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:26] Dr. Sohom Das: And I suppose—
[01:06:27] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.
[01:06:27] Dr. Sohom Das: —maybe like a generation ago you probably had all these people that had these very bizarre thoughts, but they were kind of kept separated. Whereas now, it's very easy to find somebody that has your own paranoid beliefs and your conspiracy theories and is kind of an echo chamber. So he attracts—
[01:06:39] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:40] Dr. Sohom Das: [Rogans] as we'd say in the uk. Just people who are a bit sort of mentally unstable. They feed off each other and it grows and it's dangerous. You know, it's potentially very dangerous.
[01:06:48] Jordan Harbinger: So I guess in conclusion here, your opinion is that Alex Jones probably sees himself as the victim in this whole thing. Just like he says, the man or whatever, "The government's trying to silence me with this trial and bankrupt me." So you're thinking he really believes all or most of what he says and it's not just a performance.
[01:07:06] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah, I do. The main sort of reason would be is, is he said too many things. So it's not just one sort of slightly weird idea. He's had so many different conspiracy theories repeatedly that it's hard to imagine that somebody's faking it for that long. And also if he was faking it, or if he was doing it for attentional clout, why didn't he stop? Like, what would've been the point of pushing and pushing and pushing to the point that, you know, victims of Sandy Hook where, you know, the families were getting harassed. How does that benefit him? You know, he's already popular, he's already making lots of money, and that is like the beginning of his downfall. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that the beliefs were just a bit too bizarre for me to think that they're intentionally fabricated. They sound delusional to me. They're the same things that my patients believe.
[01:07:49] Jordan Harbinger: That's so interesting. You know, you're right. It's a guy who made a media empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars, finds something that's too hot button that's getting him in trouble, keeps doing it, even though he could have picked or made up a billion other things that would not have gotten him to this point. And now, he's looking at losing everything and possibly prison time if he keeps trying to hide his assets and things like that. So, yeah, you're right. It's like, why would you do this unless you really believed in it at some point? It's not like him retracting this would've even cost him much. He's still going to have an army of kooks following him, even if he loses 10 or 15 percent of the diehard Sandy Hook shooter deniers. He still has hundreds of millions of dollars now, and now he's going to lose that. Yeah, that's an interesting point that I hadn't thought of. Maybe he really does believe all this stuff. Geez.
[01:08:37] Dr. Sohom Das: So let me ask you this, Jordan, because I haven't followed his trial. Did he retract anything that he said in any way? Like to try and become less culpable?
[01:08:44] Jordan Harbinger: I actually don't know. I'm not sure, but if he did, it would've come at the end or after, or right before the verdict. Which don't you do that before you end up in a court having to testify in with a jury in front of you? I mean, you would've done that months and months and months ago if it was just a ploy to get everybody off your back.
[01:09:02] Dr. Sohom Das: And his legal team would've said that, you know?
[01:09:04] Jordan Harbinger: Sure.
[01:09:04] Dr. Sohom Das: When we're talking about this level of money, he must have had like an extremely professional and experienced legal team and they would've said right from the beginning—
[01:09:10] Jordan Harbinger: Well—
[01:09:11] Dr. Sohom Das: "You need to deny this. You're digging yourself in a massive hole. Just say it's not true. Apologize.
[01:09:15] Jordan Harbinger: Funnily enough on that note, he actually had some of the dumbest and most incompetent lawyers that I have ever seen.
[01:09:21] Dr. Sohom Das: Really?
[01:09:22] Jordan Harbinger: Do anything in a trial, and I haven't filed this trial closely, but one of his lawyers accidentally sent all of his phone content and communication text messages and everything to opposing counsel by mistake. That's the worst thing you can do generally in litigation, one of the worst things you can do. It would be like if I'm in the mafia and I've got a bunch of crap on my phone and my lawyer has it and goes, "All right, this is under lock and key," and then just sends it to the police. "Whoops. I was headed to lunch and I forgot to select which file was—" That's what happened. And so now all of these text messages with politicians and other crazy kooks and all the people, they're all accessible.
[01:10:03] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[01:10:03] Jordan Harbinger: Which is just ridiculous. No lawyer with two brain cells to rub together would've made this mistake.
[01:10:09] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah. That is hilarious.
[01:10:10] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So no, he hasn't hired professional representation. He's hired absolute clown shoes, morons to do this, which also kind of proves your point.
[01:10:19] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[01:10:19] Jordan Harbinger: That he wanted to pick somebody who was also a true believer in all the crap that he was saying, not somebody who was actually a good attorney. So he picked somebody who was a complete dumbass and happened to agree with a lot of the crap that he has on his show, and he got what he paid for.
[01:10:34] Dr. Sohom Das: Yeah.
[01:10:34] Jordan Harbinger: I guess he got what he deserved at the end. Well, we're still waiting for justice. We're still waiting for that verdict to come through, I suppose, to be or to be enforced and for that money to change hands. But, nothing's going to bring those people back.
[01:10:44] Thank you very much, man. I really appreciate you coming on. I know a lot of doctors in the United States, they will not do this kind of thing. I'm not sure if it's because they're subject to litigation for saying, "Hey, this person's a narcissist or a psychopath," when they haven't been able to professionally do that. Do you have any insight on that?
[01:10:59] Dr. Sohom Das: Well, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I won't get a tap on the shoulder from my government buddy—
[01:11:04] Jordan Harbinger: You might.
[01:11:04] Dr. Sohom Das: And against trouble. I mean obviously, there's the Goldwater rule, which is created by the American Psychiatrist Association. It's not like a hard and fast rule that we follow here in the UK, although is generally supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I mean, I think what I'm doing is more of speculation and suggesting that these are typical character traits. I've never said at any point in this interview or any other interview that this is a definite diagnosis that I'd ever give somebody. And personally, I think, that psychiatry is, mental health is a topic that's kind of growing in popularity. And I want to use my expertise to explain concepts to people. So I'm hoping that I'm kind of educating viewers by picking out, and people don't just want to hear like the different categories of a diagnosis that's boring. They want to, they want to see it happen in real life. So the best way to do that, I think, is by picking characters like we have, who are interesting, who do have these personality traits. So I like to think that I'm educating rather than trying to label or judge Individuals.
[01:12:04] Jordan Harbinger: Sohom, thanks for coming back on the show, man. I really appreciate this. I think this is kind of a fun way. It's a little bit outside my usual format where I'm really prepared. I'm glad your opinions came through on these folks and I think it's interesting to attack pop culture, if we can call these trials and these characters pop culture. I guess we can, right? They're sort of in the zeitgeist right now. I think it's interesting to analyze them through the professional psychological angle that you can do, that you can take. So thank you very much for your time and your expertise.
[01:12:31] Dr. Sohom Das: It's an absolute pleasure, Jordan. Love being on your show. Thanks for having me.
[01:12:37] Jordan Harbinger: You are about to hear a preview of The Jordan Harbinger Show with the investigator who solved a serial killer case that had gone cold for decades.
[01:12:45] Paul Holes: There was a definite spike in serial predator crime in the 1970s. Part of it was the ready victim pools that don't exist today. Houses generally didn't have alarm systems. We don't see women hitchhiking much today.
[01:13:03] Joe D'Angelo was a full-time law enforcement officer. He's breaking into houses in the middle of the night, raping women or girls that are home alone, that he's binding up and sexually assaulting. He ended up committing 50 of these attacks in Northern California between 1976, 1979, and just disappeared.
[01:13:22] I started working that case in 1994. As a cold case investigator, even though the case is 30 years old, it's like, no, you know, this is still a public safety issue. We need to remove this offender from society. And in 2001, 10 people had been killed across six cases. I'm seeing this woman's body laying inside her house in the photos of her alive on the shelf above her body. She battled for her life that I could see this combat go throughout that entire room.
[01:13:54] Jordan Harbinger: After the Golden State Killer raped some of his victims, he would crouch in the corner and cry.
[01:13:59] Paul Holes: They said he was sobbing, you know, it was like genuine. In fact, one victim, he was sobbing while he was raping her.
[01:14:06] The last thing I did in my career before I retired was I drove up and parked in front of his house. I debated, should I just go knock on his door? I didn't know he was the Golden State Killer, but this was such a brazen, brutal predator. He absolutely had to be caught.
[01:14:25] Jordan Harbinger: To learn more about how Paul Holes puts himself inside the minds of serial killers, check out episode 725 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.
[01:14:36] Really interesting perspective. I'm glad to hear from a professional on this because we watched these people online and we think, "Are they crazy? Or am I crazy? because that guy looks crazy to me. What would make somebody behave?"
[01:14:46] Big thank you to Dr. Sohom Das. Links to all things Sohom will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes, videos on YouTube. Advertisers, deals, and discount codes, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who make the show possible. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
[01:15:07] I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using the same software systems and tiny habits that I use every single day. It's our Six-Minute Networking course. The course is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. I want to teach you how to dig the well before you get thirsty and build relationships before you need them. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us, you'll be in smart company.
[01:15:29] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when he finds something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in watching those cases on YouTube or interested in true crime, definitely share this episode with him. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.
[01:16:04] This episode is sponsored in part by the Mea Culpa podcast. Mea Culpa is hosted by Michael Cohen, who is Donald Trump's fixer, lawyer, right hand for over a decade. He, of course, went to prison because he defied his former boss. The Mea Culpa podcast is his redemption tour of sorts. Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen delivers political news, raw and unfiltered. Plus Michael, well, let's just say he's an opinionated guy. Twice weekly Mea Culpa features the most important people in politics, offering listeners rare insight into what's happening that they can get no place else. His guests are a who's who of politics, media, and beyond, especially on the left, as you might guess — James Carville. Joe Trippy, John Dean, Laurence Tribe. Ari Melber, Joy Reid, Kathy Griffin — oh, she's a fan favorite, isn't she? Congressman Steve Cohen, Elie Honig, Neal Katyal, Norm Eisen, Molly Jong-Fast, Sam Donaldson, Ben Stiller. That's probably a fun one. You never know who's going to show up and what they will say. And if you're on the right, you're probably going to hate this podcast. Don't shoot the messenger here. But hey, if you lean left, do yourself a favor, check out Mea Culpa wherever you get your podcasts. Find it in your favorite podcast app.
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