1110: Can True Love Last In Shadow of Dad's Dark Past? | Feedback Friday
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January 31, 2025

This week's episode of Feedback Friday delves into complex personal dilemmas, touching on themes of love, familial trauma, professional challenges, and the impact of technology. Hosted by Jordan Harbinger and Gabriel Mizrahi, the show offers valuable insights on navigating difficult situations. Below is a concise summary of the key topics discussed in this enlightening episode.
Finding Love Amid Dark Past
Key Challenge
- A listener shares that he recently found love in midlife, and his partner is pregnant. However, he struggles with whether to share a dark family secret about his father's history of abuse toward his sisters.
Discussion Highlights
- Sharing Difficult Truths: The hosts stress the importance of honesty in relationships. They assert that keeping such a significant secret may hinder emotional intimacy and trust.
- Self-Protection vs. Truth: The challenge lies in balancing the desire to protect his sisters’ stories with his partner’s right to know. They suggest that love requires vulnerability and that sharing his experiences can be a healing journey for both partners.
Workplace Dynamics and Generational Gaps
Scenario Overview
- Another listener, new to a utility company, seeks advice on coping with an age-diverse workplace where colleagues condescend by calling him a "little boy."
Insights Offered
- Building Bridges: The hosts emphasize showing respect and curiosity toward older colleagues. Engaging them in conversations and respecting their experience can help foster a cooperative environment.
- Assertive Communication: They suggest gently pushing back against inappropriate comments while maintaining a sense of humor to dissolve tension.
- Workplace Culture: Ultimately, they underline the importance of remaining focused on doing good work and cultivating valuable relationships, rather than getting bogged down by negativity.
The AI Debate: Environmental and Cognitive Concerns
Divergent Views
- Two passionate listeners provide contrasting opinions on the environmental impacts of AI. One raises concerns about energy use while the other highlights potential cognitive dependency.
Key Takeaways
- Impact Awareness: The hosts acknowledge the substantial energy demands associated with AI technologies and emphasize the need for responsible use.
- Cognitive Development: They discuss the implications of relying heavily on AI for problem-solving and learning, stressing the importance of maintaining human engagement in education and critical thinking.
Navigating Complex Relationships
Love and Age Gaps
- A listener shares his love story with a significantly younger partner, complicated by her mother's controlling behavior.
Practical Advice
- Understanding Dynamics: The hosts explore the complexities that arise when a partner's parent becomes controlling, urging the listener to find ways to support his girlfriend as they navigate these challenges together.
- Communication: They recommend addressing concerns together with her mother, potentially opening channels for dialogue about her daughter's happiness and autonomy.
Conclusion
This episode of Feedback Friday emphasizes the importance of communication, vulnerability, and understanding in various relationships, whether romantic, familial, or professional. The hosts advocate for taking risks in expressing difficult truths while also recognizing the pressures and challenges that shape our choices. With insightful discussions regarding workplace dynamics and the implications of emerging technologies, Jordan and Gabe provide listeners with practical tools to navigate their unique circumstances with courage and thoughtfulness.
In summary, the episode effectively combines heartfelt personal narratives with broader societal issues, offering listeners an engaging mix of advice and reflections on love, trust, and responsibility.
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Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Oh, I mean, Dr. Jordan Harbinger. I forgot I'm doing that this year. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday, producer. The candle you use to light all the other candles on the menorah. The light that just keeps on lighting. Gabriel Mizrahi. That's a nice one. That's a sweet one. It's a dated one. It somehow still feels like the holidays. I'm not sure why. Probably wishful thinking. Well, then I guess you're the Christmas tree. You leave up till February because it's just so pretty. Oh, yeah.
Handsome tree number one over here. It's a tree number one. Doctor Handsome tree number one. That's right. New Reddit flair just dropped.
King of the pretty trees on the Jordan Harbinger show we decode the stories secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turned their wisdom into practical advice That you can use to impact your own life and those around you our mission is to help you become a better informed more critical thinker by the way people have been putting that in their pitch now They're like the purpose of my book is to make you a better informed more critical thinker that it's like something about leadership in real estate and I'm like guys
You can't just anyway. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from mafia enforcers to investigative journalists, astronauts, hackers, tech luminaries. This week, we had none of the above. We had my friend Dr. Michael Isritel, leading fitness expert and perhaps most importantly, former lifting partner of yours truly back at the University of Michigan. It's sad because he's huge and fit and I'm just me.
We discussed fitness, strength, dieting, fat loss, muscle gain, and more. I normally don't really cover health at all on this show, but lately, as y'all know, I've been a little bit more of a meathead. And I just love the science behind this stuff. We tackle some nutrition and dieting myths that I think are especially important for anyone to know, even if you don't go to the gym at all, or whatever. Maybe you're an athlete. A lot of people don't know this stuff. I certainly didn't.
On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, play obnoxious sound bites, and compare ourselves to various holiday paraphernalia. Paraffernalia? Paraffernalia sounds right. Paraffernalia? Yeah, I suppose.
I'm not. That's such a weird word that I don't even know if you have to pronounce it correctly because no, I think you do. You're like, that one's just too long. We don't bother. I'm just like, I'm a little tired. I'm not finishing the word before we dive in. I've been getting a lot of emails over the last couple of months about how to evaluate online coaches or online teachers or courses or gurus, people like that.
A lot of these emails are asking me specifically about this guru or that course or this online academy, whether it's good, whether this person seems legit. I obviously cannot opine on every single course or every single expert out there, but what I can tell you is this. When an expert you see online is selling a course on, say, how to make money in real estate, remember,
They are making money by selling online courses. They might also be making money in real estate, but you don't actually know that. And you probably can't really prove that or vet that. When a conference teaches you how to build an online business, you have to remember that they're ultimately marketing an event. They are in the events business. They've already gotten your money by getting you to buy a ticket and probably upsell you to coaching. So the question becomes, why is that? What are these people truly selling?
It's actually not that hard to suss out what these coaches and gurus and schools are truly offering. The product is usually right there in front of you, and it's crazy how the product they offer is often very different from the experience or the feeling or the results that they're promising. And just to be clear,
I'm not saying that everyone offering a course or a coaching product or conference or whatever is full of crap. There are obviously solid coaches and teachers and events out there. And sometimes the person is in the events business, but all the guest speakers are actually doing really well and they're teaching you stuff that's probably somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. But as you size these people up, my advice is push past the marketing as much as possible. Don't just settle for what these people are promising you or even the testimonials on the website. That is just sales that is just marketing.
try to get a glimpse of the actual experience where the curriculum before you buy anything so that you know there's actual value there. And most importantly, learn from what people do as much as what they actually say. Now, in my experience, 80 plus percent of experts out there tried the actual thing they're selling and they realized it was just too risky or too hard.
too unstable, fickle, whatever, so they just decided to teach other people how to do it knowing that those people are willing to spend money on the product because it's so risky and so hard and fickle and unstable and all the other things. And that's often how these people pay the bills. So they're real estate investment or their courses or whatever. That's the bulk of their cash and they're using the rest of it to speculate on a market that they're telling you is foolproof and basically just like another savings account or whatever the marketing says about real estate.
Me personally, I like to work with coaches and learn from experts who are also actually doing the thing that I want to do and doing it successfully. Would you learn from a personal trainer who is 40 pounds overweight? Probably not, right? But you can't really tell if the slickster in front of you really owns a bunch of commercial real estate or if they're just showing you stocked drone footage of buildings, right? You just don't know. So you want to learn from somebody who is doing what you want to do successfully.
Or at least they've done it in the past with demonstrable results. So, for example, let's say that they're 65, they sold all of their commercial real estate portfolio because they don't have kids and now they're teaching you how to do it. Some of their info might be a little out of date, but they know what they're doing, they did it. Now they're teaching other people how to do it. Maybe this is a legacy thing for them. Fine. But otherwise, you just can't put stock in what they're offering.
You want to take the real estate course from the person who's managing a portfolio of buildings or just did that for 20 or 30 years. Not the guy who flamed out in commercial real estate after buying a strip mall and getting a foreclosed on during the pandemic. Right now, this guy's hawking some e-course on hotter and passive income by being a real estate mogul. Like I always say, with very few exceptions, beware the coach, the guru, the teacher, who has only ever been a coach, a guru, a teacher.
As always, we've got some fun letters, some doozies, and I can't wait to dive in. Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag? Dear Jordan and Gabe.
I've been with my girlfriend for about six months now. We're in love, and it's going great. I know it's still new, but we're both very mature. This isn't puppy love. We're both about 41, 42 years old, are emotionally mature, and must say we're both very introspective and very self-aware. We're on the same page that we are each other's person. Then, recently, she became pregnant.
Before this, we had talked about whether we'd want to have a child together, and that's been inconclusive, although we're both open to it. We know that we're running short on time to decide whether to have a kid given the biological factor. Should we decide to go forward with the pregnancy, we are prepared for what it entails. We're financially in a good place, and committed to each other. By the way, before you think we're a couple of dumbasses, we were entirely aware that this might happen.
We tried a couple birth control options and they were really not good for her. We made a conscious decision to take the risk, understanding that while unlikely to get pregnant at her age, we would accept it if it happens, as we are doing now. It's a big decision to make, but pretty straightforward.
Except, about 35 years ago, my dad sexually abused my sisters. I now feel like I have to tell my girlfriend because of the child we might bring into the world. She deserves to know. I've leaned toward not telling her because it's not my story to tell. If my sisters chose to share it at some point, then that's up to them. One of my sisters strange to herself and my father nine years ago when she had her own kid.
Another sister is on friendly terms with him after a lot of processing. She has no kids of her own. My partner and I will have to decide together whether my father will have contact with our child. I'd like him to have a relationship with our child, but I would probably draw the line at leaving him alone with them. But whatever my partner feels most comfortable with would take precedence. For my part, I'm on friendly terms with my dad. He's done a lot of serious personal work on himself. We were both part of a community whose core was a meditation practice.
that has been life-changing. The deep inner work that I've experienced through it has been very profound. But I find it hard to explain how exactly I've seen my father change as a result. I also tend to be super forgiving toward people, to avoid harboring resentment. And in many ways, I think I'm naive in giving people the benefit of the doubt. My biggest fear is that if I tell my girlfriend about all this, she will not want to be with me.
That would be devastating. I don't know if I'm overreacting or I can trust that our connection can weather anything. I think it can, but I'm so scared that I'll be tainted in her eyes, even though I personally am not unsafe. But then I've never loved anyone like this, and I feel like this is my opportunity to live the loving relationship that I've longed for, and I hate to think that this thing I had no control over could doom my love life.
Is there any way I can convey this horrible past in a way that wouldn't cause her to see me as someone who's unsafe? Will this news make her see me in a different light, lumping me in with my dad, even though I have literally nothing to do with this? If we decide to terminate the pregnancy, would I still be obligated to tell her? Signed, keeping a lid on what my father did amid this bid to have our own kid.
Wow, this is quite a story. There's so many layers here. So let's get into it. First of all, congratulations on finding a partner you're so connected to getting to this level of commitment and intimacy and confidence in each other. It's just wonderful to hear. I also want to say congrats on the baby. If a child is something you both truly want, I'm a little unclear about that from your letter. It sounds like you guys were neutral slash open to it, but not necessarily a hell yes.
Which does give me some pause as a guy with two small kids that, you know, keep you up all the time and change your life in ways that not everybody is ready for. I don't mean to rain on the parade here. I'm definitely not trying to convince you of anything in this regard. If you guys are a great couple, you might be amazing parents and this is a total blessing, but...
Yeah, having a child, man, it's a huge commitment for years and years. A child needs parents who are fully invested, fully equipped. So if you guys are ready to take this on, if having a kid by accident is aligning with your true desire to have a kid together, then hey, I'm overjoyed for you in that case.
If not, then all I would say is just be very, very thoughtful about this decision. Again, not trying to push you one way or the other. I know I sound that way right now. I just want you to be mindful about the commitment you're making and what you feel you can offer to this potential child. Now, okay, all that out of the way, I'm very sorry to hear about what your father did to your sisters. That is awful. That is, some might say, unforgivable. That's something I want to get to here in a moment. What they went through is very painful.
deeply tragic. I can't even imagine what kind of trauma they've endured as a result of this abuse. And my heart goes out to them. It really does. I'm also sorry to hear that this has been such a source of pain for you, even though you clearly had no part of this. You didn't have a say in it. That's really tough. And this history with your dad, it's obviously a source of great shame. I can understand why. Of course, it's very dark. It's gross. It's heartbreaking.
It's weird. Who wants to open up about something like this? It's just, it's horrible. So I can appreciate why you kept this secret, perhaps under the guise of not wanting to tell your sister's story for them, although...
Look, I would argue that this is your story, too, to some degree. He's your dad, too. They're your sisters. But I get why you haven't wanted to let your partner in on this part of your life up until now. Abuse of any kind, but especially sexual abuse. It's just very difficult to talk about. So I understand the bind that you are in now. With a potential child coming, this now feels very urgent. Yeah, you haven't said anything for so long. Candidly, I see this whole decision a little bit differently.
I'm not sure you have to tell your girlfriend about this history of abuse because the potential kid you might bring into the world. I think you have to tell her because she's your partner, the partner that you're in love with, someone you say is your person, and she feels the same. My feeling is that she deserves to know about your father, even if you were not going to have a child. Because if your relationship is as deep and meaningful as you say, then I think it should be able to contain a revelation like this.
Actually, I think it demands it, both on the practical level of, should my dad have a relationship with our child, and on the level of, this is an important part of my story, I want you to know about it. And sharing it might be a powerful way of healing this wound to some degree. So, to answer your last question first,
Yes, I obviously feel you'd be obligated to tell your partner about this part of your life, even if you decide to terminate the pregnancy or give the child up for adoption or whatever, and even if there were no pregnancy at all.
And the fact that you're even wondering whether you would be able to skirt around this if you decided not to move forward with the pregnancy, I have to imagine that speaks to the part of you that really still desperately wants to avoid having to talk about this with anybody, but especially with your partner. For sure, because of the shame of being associated with it, et cetera. Because of that shame, and probably because of another layer of shame, which is having hidden the original shame for so long. And look, maybe there are some other thoughts in the mix. What does this abuse say about my family, about me?
Like he said, are you going to hold this against me? Are you going to resent me or judge me for having forgiven my father, perhaps? Which is something I definitely want to come back to here in a minute. And if you knew the truth about my dad, how would you respond? I don't know how you're going to respond. Are you going to let our child have a relationship with him? What's your reaction going to be? Am I going to have to negotiate between you and them? Am I going to have to choose this story? It's got to bring up so much for him.
But really, what I think this comes down to, the overriding feeling that I'm getting from his letter is a fear of losing control. Oh yeah, and like if he tells her, he can't control how she's going to respond. Totally. She might meet him with compassion and acceptance, which is what I hope she does, especially because this was not his fault. He had nothing to do with the abuse, and it's obviously been so painful for him to live with what happened. But she could also meet him with any number of reactions, anger, fear, disappointment. She might just be weirded out.
He can't predict that perfectly, and I'm sure that's terrifying. I understand that, of course, because the stakes are really high here. This is the love of his life. They might be having a baby together. So in his mind, he's going, oh, my God, I could lose her. I could lose all this. Maybe I'll just never tell her. I actually really feel for him here. But to your point, that's probably a form of control. He's trying to control her feelings and trying to control the direction of their relationship.
Yes, and actually he touched on this theme in a different way when he said, I hate to think that this thing I had no control over could doom my love. Yeah, which I'm just realizing that's such an interesting paradox. He knows he had no control over what his father did, but now he feels like it could be a liability for him and he's fiercely trying to protect it. Again, to your point, I think that speaks to just how powerful shame can be. For sure. So he's trying to quarantine this part of his life from her. It's fascinating, actually.
Yeah. There's no greater form of control than controlling how other people see us. No kidding. He said the guy with the website, JordanHarbinger.com. Yeah. He's putting a lot of distance between them, which might also be part of the urgency that he now feels, or at least I hope it is. You know, if having a child is suddenly making him realize that he doesn't want to hide this big thing from his partner, then I actually think that's a good thing. And I hope he follows that impulse and I hope he taps into the courage to trust her with this information because it is very important.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I thought it was very interesting when he said, I don't know if I can trust that our connection can weather anything. I think again, but I'm so scared that I'll be tainted in her eyes. Again, I totally understand that fear, man. If my father did this, I think I might have struggled to tell Jen about it too. But what strikes me about this part of his letter is, how can he know if he can trust their connection to weather anything if he doesn't stress test the relationship? He doesn't share something like this.
How can he find out if he can trust her to meet him with understanding and compassion with love, basically, rather than judgment? If he doesn't take a chance and open up about this, it's kind of like, yeah, we can weather anything. What about this? I don't want to find the answer to that. I totally get it. Make it light of it here, but it's kind of funny. It's like, this is bulletproof. Cool. Wear it and I'll shoot it. Actually, let's not do that. So from where I'm sitting, he's now doing something wrong in air quotes by controlling things in that way. And it's coming at the cost of their connection.
By protecting this part of a story, he's depriving himself of the opportunity to find out if this history with his dad is in fact as shameful and as dangerous as he suspects it is.
He's also depriving her of the opportunity to appreciate a very significant part of his life. This trauma he's been through, and I'm sure it was a trauma for him, even if he wasn't the primary victim. And to accept this part of his story, which frankly, he deserves to. Right. And until he does that, it's hard to truly know whether they really are each other's people and also to know if they can successfully raise a child together.
That's a good point because this might reverberate in the way that they meet certain aspects of their child, right? We could only be as empathetic to other people, especially our children as we are to ourselves. So this matters in a few big ways. Actually, that's the one way that this conversation does tie to the pregnancy, in my view, because it will only make them stronger parents, although I still think it's important that he shares this with her regardless of any child that might have together. So here's how I do that. I would start by saying something like, listen,
I want to share something with you. It's something very painful, very old, something I honestly haven't wanted or even known how to talk about with you. But now that we're at this stage of our relationship, we're thinking about becoming parents. I don't feel it's right to keep this from you. I want you to know about it, even though it makes me deeply uncomfortable. It comes with a lot of shame, a lot of distress. And I wish I didn't have to talk about it at all, but I know that I do.
Maybe here you say, by the way, I'm so sorry that I didn't tell you about this sooner. If you're angry with me for that, I'm willing to hear that. And I hope you can understand why this has been so scary for me to talk about. So 35 years ago, my father did this awful thing to my sisters. And look, here you can go into as much detail or as little detail about that as you want at this stage. Maybe you keep a kind of high level at first. Just give her the essential facts.
And then if she has questions, you could answer them in more detail if you want. So my dad did these things and it had such and such effect on my sisters, on my mom, on me. And when we found out about the pregnancy, it suddenly made it very real for me that I have to let you in on this part of my life because you're my person and you deserve to know.
And maybe at that point, you can elaborate a little bit on what those reasons are, whether it's about the quality of your relationship or whether any child you guys have should see the grandfather or whatever this baby's brought up for you. And then I'd share with her where you've landed on all this, what process you've been through with your dad, why you're unfriendly terms with him, how that's played out with your sisters, how it shaped your family. I think all of that stuff is super meaningful.
Then i might say something like look to be totally honest part of the reason i haven't wanted to talk about this is that i have shame around it it's really hard for me to talk about this but really my biggest fear is that if i told you about all this maybe you wouldn't want to be with me anymore which would be devastating and i've asked myself of our connection can weather a revelation like this.
I think it can, but I'm also really scared that this history, which obviously wasn't my fault, but still that it'll somehow change how you see me, how you feel about me. And I'm also worried you might wonder if I'm not as safe as a parent, which is really painful thoughts. And I want you to know in my bones that I am not a dangerous guy. I'm not like my dad in this way. I would never ever hurt my children, but I just want you to know all that. So you understand where I am with all this and why it's taken me so long to open up to you about all this.
That's how i would approach this conversation i basically put all your fears and anxieties on the table because they're all relevant here. I really love that script and by doing that you're also giving your girlfriend all of the information she needs to know where you are with all of this what to make of it how she feels because look you cannot secure her empathy by trying to manage things in a way that you know.
makes her identify with you. I think that might be another subtle form of control. But by letting her in on why this part of your life has been so painful to talk about, by being vulnerable about everything that your dad brings up for you, I think you will be inviting the best parts of her to this conversation. And she gets to decide how to respond. But all that said, you have to go into this conversation understanding that you will never know 100%
what you're going to get back. You asked us whether this news will make her see you in a different light, whether she's going to lump you in with your dad. And my answer to that is, I don't know. There's no way to know. I really hope that she meets you with empathy, curiosity, understanding. And if your relationship is as strong as you say it is, I think it's extremely likely that she will. So try to go into this with hope with confidence.
Part of that confidence is knowing that there are good reasons to tell her about what your father did, even if you don't get the exact response that you're hoping for. It's her job to listen to your story with compassion.
It's also your job to welcome her response, whatever it is, with openness. It's a tough story to take in. It has some very big implications for your relationship, for how you guys are going to parent your child, for the family that she's entering, for the rules that you guys are going to establish, for the new family you're creating. There is a lot going on for your partner as well. So if her first response is different from what you want, take a deep breath, make room for that.
And just remind yourself that this conversation will continue. The next day, she might come back to you in a new way. Or a week later, she might go, look, I'm really angry at you for not telling me about this sooner, but I've thought about it and I do understand. So let's keep talking. Both of your abilities to make room for multiple feelings here, that's going to play a huge role in how you guys navigate this together.
totally agree, Gabe, although I'm honestly having a hard time imagining that she wouldn't ultimately be kind about this inside with our friend here because this truly was not his fault, but you're right. I guess you never know. I know we've gotten very deep on this question. It's such a fascinating and complicated one, but there is one more important thing we have to touch on, which is this thing that he said, how he's unfriendly terms with his dad because he's done a lot of serious personal work on himself. And he also said he tends to be super forgiving toward people in his words to avoid harboring resentment. We got to talk about that.
Yeah, I have a lot of questions about that myself. So, obviously, I'm very interested in the process your father went through in confronting what he did, addressing whatever pathology or whatever trauma led him to do something so terrible to his own children. Not much from the sound of it. I don't mean to be a jerk, but okay, he meditated. Great. Hey, I'm all for meditation. I know hardcore meditators say it's profound. It changes their lives. I'm not discounting that. Like, runners say the same thing? Yeah, he went jogging a lot. Dude, this guy molested his own daughters.
I'm sorry, but I don't think sitting in silence and observing your mind and reciting a mantra qualifies as serious personal work, especially not in the therapeutic domain, not when it comes to sexually abusing your own kids. I mean, look, we could be charitable and say that maybe this meditation practice was so deep that it forced him to confront all of the things that led him to abuse his children. And now he sees his mind more clearly and he's made progress somehow. But I'm with you. This is the kind of thing that typically requires therapy, deep therapy.
because it is so dark, it's so violent, it's so complex. I just don't know if I buy that meditation alone, however profound, could have transformed him. This guy could be in prison for what he did, and let me put it this way. If somebody else raped someone and then they told you that they meditated a bunch, would you be like, well, in that case, we're not sending you to jail? You would never do that. That's what we're doing here by letting him off the hook for having meditated a bunch.
after molesting his daughters. Did that rehabilitate him? Look, I have some basic compassion for people like this because there's obviously something wrong with them. I'm sure it's super painful and horrible to confront, but candidly, I am disturbed by this assessment that he's done serious personal work when he's just meditating, no matter what kind of spin you want to put on it.
Yeah. I mean, again, with respect for this meditation practice, which does sound like it's been very powerful for you. And I'm glad to hear that. It's just not something I would personally point to and say, I think we can be confident that dad is safe for our child. Now he's healed. We can bring our family around him. I just don't know. That's a hell no. And he knows that.
because he's literally saying, I find it hard to explain exactly how I've seen my father change as a result, and I would draw a line at leaving our child alone with him. So how serious can this personal work really have been? Sorry, I'm a little worked up here, especially as a dad. I'm just, I'm very worried about all this.
The other side of this coin is the process that you went through. You can't quite articulate how your data has changed, so I guess I just want to ask, is it possible that you might have let your father off the hook a little too easily for what he did, or at least jumped to forgiveness rather quickly? It just sounds a little bit like bypassing, doesn't it? It does. Or maybe he just fast-forwarded through some stuff, which I guess that's basically the same thing.
The piece of this that's most significant to me is that he tends to be super forgiving in order to avoid harboring resentment. That's the thing. In other words, to avoid something difficult in himself. Yeah. I mean, harboring resentment toward a parent, especially for something as awful as sexual abuse, is obviously very painful. It might also be appropriate. I'm not saying that he should walk around with a burning rage toward his father for the rest of his life. He can, and he should go through a process of
grief and acceptance and all the things. And maybe that leads into saying, Dad, in my own way, I forgive you.
But anger, disappointment, embarrassment, sadness, I think all of these feelings deserve to be on the table, too. I would argue they need to be on the table, and actually they probably are one way or another. I'm just not sure that he's fully in touch with them, except for the shame piece, which is popping up again now. So where do those feelings go when you can't tolerate the distress of feeling them? They have to go somewhere, right? They go underground?
They become unconscious, they come out in other ways, including perhaps this fear he has about how his partner will respond to this revelation. And meanwhile, one of his sisters doesn't speak to the father, and part of the reason for that might be that she has her own child?
which is an interesting detail, and who knows what process that sister went through. It might have been very healthy and productive. She might also be struggling to work through this, but there's at least one example in this family. Of someone going, this is not okay. We can't be close. That's where I'd land with this. Both as a victim and as a parent of a potential victim. Maybe I'm not forgiving enough. That's also very possible. Maybe I need to meditate more. I don't know. Yeah, you just need to sit, bro. But it's interesting that the other sister feels differently. Apparently she's done a lot of processing.
He said around this trauma and they're friendly now. But she has no kids of her own. That's kind of an important detail. There's no victims that she's around. He can't do anything to her. She's an adult. Also, given everything we've talked about, I also have questions about what qualifies as a lot of processing in this family. So there are a range of responses in the aftermath of this abuse.
I don't presume to know which one is the right one for each person in this family that is entirely up to them individually to decide what I do know is that forgiveness, true forgiveness, as we've talked about on the show before, is a process. And it can be a very long and complicated process in a case like this. I think that process can contain periods where anger and sadness and shame
and disgust pop up again and again and where those feelings can exist alongside the forgiveness where they almost become part of the forgiveness in a weird way. And you might even have to forgive someone over and over again even as the memory of what happened continues to cause you pain. But jumping straight to, I forgive you because not forgiving you,
is just too uncomfortable for me to live with. That's a different thing. I offer this question to our friend here. What did it actually mean for you to forgive your dad? Was it true forgiveness or was it? I'm just going to put this to bed and ignore it because it's too painful for me. Yeah, that's the exact question he needs to be asking. But I also want to appreciate that forgiving is probably a lot simpler for a friend here. He wasn't the one who got abused. So his wound is very different from his sisters. Still there, but it's not the same thing.
I just want to acknowledge that because it's another thing that makes this story a little bit more complicated than it seems in first glance. And I have to imagine that that's created some tension among the siblings. I have to think that the sister who ties with dad has some feelings about that. And that's tough too. But look, the other reason that this whole forgiveness thing matters is if he did bypass some anger toward his dad, does that speak to a larger way of dealing with his feelings that might also be showing up in the way that he's kept the secret from his partner? Interesting. In other words, that might be one more thing that he's trying to control.
It's possible. I don't want to harbor resentment toward people, so I forgive you, dad. I don't want to feel shame about my past, so I'm not going to tell my girlfriend about what my dad did. It's just an interesting parallel there that he might want to notice. Bottom line, time to have this conversation sooner the better. You said it best. I feel like this is my opportunity to live the loving relationship that I've longed for. And by the way, that sounds like a Gabriel sign off. But this is such a beautiful way to put it.
That is what you're doing by having this conversation. You're honoring the connection you have with the love of your life. You're embodying the values you want to lead with in your relationship. Honestly, trust vulnerability and a willingness to grow to invite your partner's love and understanding. This is extremely profound stuff, man.
It's gonna be a tough conversation, but I have a hunch you might also find that it's not as hard as you fear. And beyond that, I hope you guys feel secure together and in your decision to have this child. It is a big step. I hope you meet this baby and each other with a lot of love and courage and commitment, which might begin by sharing this part of your life with your partner, sending you both a big hug and wishing you all the best.
And now, I'm gonna help you bypass the resentment you're gonna harbor by missing out on the deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.
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Thank you for listening and supporting the podcast. Your support of these sponsors here. That does keep the lights on. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are all searchable and clickable over at jordan harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now back to feedback Friday. Okay, what's next?
Hello, Jordan and Gabe. I'm in my late 30s, and I recently started a new job at a utility company. Positions at this company don't open up very often because they are one of the few companies that still offer a pension with no max out date, so people tend to stay until they're ready to retire. That's great for my personal long-term income and stability, but it also means that a lot of my coworkers and the leadership team are much older than me. We're talking 15 plus years, at least.
As a result, I'm facing some challenges. One is that the pace of work is much slower. Another is that it's been difficult to gain respect from these older colleagues and to be seen as an equal. For example, some of them call me the little boy. On a personal level, it's also hard to relate to one another, and they aren't willing to do social activities such as lunch or happy hours. The fun events that the company does organize tend to have low attendance.
I really don't want to quit since it would be nice to have a pension and most likely I won't have an opportunity to come back if I do leave due to the high retention rate of the company. Is there a way to make this work? What are some strategies you guys would use in this situation? How do you gain the respect of people who are much older than you? Signed, trying to make a study of becoming buddy buddy with these distant, funny duddies who treat me like a little guppy.
Oh, cool. I didn't know Mother Goose is writing the sign offs today. It's going straight. Nursery rhyme on your ass today. Interesting problem. Look, there's a sitcom somewhere in here. Gen Z Kids starts working at, I don't know, Pacific Gas and Electric PG&E that's our electric company around here with exclusively boomers and the new kids talking about how lit their product is, literally. And the other older folks at the office are like, send this fax from me on the devil. Little boy. Little boy. Yeah. That's, by the way, how patronizing is that? That would drive me nuts.
The Gen Z kid gets kicked out of the company, bowling party or whatever for making TikToks in the bathroom. Comedy ensues. Yeah. Oh, God. But seriously, I get why this is challenging. It's a tough one. First off, I just want to say I really appreciate your mindset here. You're not going, oh, screw these old folks. How do I create a lane for myself to rise up and screw everybody over? You want to make it work? You want to collaborate with them? You want to have a mutually respectful relationship with them? I think that's great.
It's interesting. There's this very subtle pervasive ageism here in the United States, especially in the tech world, kind of everywhere. And it really rubs me the wrong way because, yes, young people, they move more quickly. They grew up with a lot of this tech. They run a lot of our culture, but older people have so much to offer them experience, wisdom, perspective, institutional knowledge, a punching bag for the state of the world. No, I kid, but seriously,
I'm not a fan of this whole generational warfare thing that's happening these days, even in those dumb internet jokes like, okay Boomer, I get it, Boomers can sometimes be a little frustrating, like my parents, but you know what? There are Gen Z people who literally can't look someone in the eye, or do a handshake that's not a dead fish, and they can't deliver a mildly tough piece of news. So it's not like the kids have it all figured out either.
Alright, off the soapbox now, my point is, I appreciate that you want to build bridges with these folks, especially after they've apparently condescended to you, which they are definitely doing. On a related note, I also think it's worth remembering that it might not even be malicious on their part, they might just be having a laugh and commenting on the obvious age gap between you,
Or they view you as a threat, and this is their way to establish their assert dominance or superiority. It's impossible for me to know, but it is worth asking. But whatever the reason, the way I would make this work is to show up with a mix of humility, diplomacy, and appropriate assertiveness.
When you interact with these people, I'd meet them with kindness, curiosity, and respect. All the things you want them to meet you with and keep believing in the best version of them. So for example, if you're in a meeting talking about a project or a problem or whatever, maybe you go, hey, Arnie, you've been here for a lot longer than I have. How did it go last time this came up? What would you do? Think you can guide me a little bit? Or if you guys get into territory you're not as familiar with, maybe go, okay, I know I'm the new guy. You guys probably have seen this a few more times than I have. I'm curious to know how you'd handle it. My approach looks like this.
And of course, I'd resist the urge to assume you know more than you do, or dismiss their ideas because they're older, or they have a different way of doing things, although I don't get the sense that's who you are, but yeah, stuff like that. Don't shy away from advocating for your own ideas and talents, but deliver them with humility and respect. You might have to model what that looks like for these older colleagues first, and that's what will inspire them to start treating you the same.
And you might have to do this for a while longer than you really wish you had to in order to build up the trust in political capital for them to see you the way that you want to be seen. At the same time, it might be okay to gently push back when they talk to you in a way that you don't really like. For example, when something is not appropriate at all, like when they call you little boy, maybe you say, actually, I'm 32, not so little anymore. And I think you can fax this document yourself, Arnie, or you go another way.
You turn it into a joke. You rib them a little and you say, all right, pops, whatever you say. I know you need the Gen Z kid to push the buttons on the bleep-bloop machine. It's a dumb example, but just read the room when you do this. Don't do it in front of a ton of people you don't know, or maybe not in front of the higher-ups. And don't do it with people you know have absolutely no sense of humor and take themselves too seriously.
But an interesting thing about humor, especially this kind of playful ribbing, it has a way of rewriting dynamics like this and it can also increase people's respect for you because you're not just taking it lying down, you're giving it back. It becomes a fun game. If you do this though, just make sure you do it with a little smile on a twinkle in your eye so they know it's coming from a playful place, not a malicious one. And if they continue to condescend to you, maybe you consider
talking to a couple of these folks one on one, telling them what you're noticing, why it bothers you, asking them to stop. I wouldn't jump straight to that. I treat it like a game first. The irony here, Gabriel, is that if he says anything, he's soft, Gen Z snowflake, but the second he throws it back, he's a disrespectful little shit.
Yeah, that is a funny paradox, but I agree with everything you just said. Look, ultimately gaining respect from people at work, whether it's from older people or younger people or peers, your age. Ultimately, I think it's about demonstrating that you're valuable and you're effective, right? That you're productive, that you're a leader.
So more than anything, my advice for you is to just keep focusing on doing objectively good work, delivering real results, work on your listening skills, your collaboration skills, your communication, your technical knowledge, show initiative, show leadership, take the reins when it's appropriate and apply all of these values that we've been talking about to everything you do every single day. If you do that, I do think eventually these people are going to realize that you bring a lot of talent to this place and they're going to treat you accordingly.
And look, if a few of them keep looking for silly ways to cut you down, then you'll know they're probably not worth trying to win over and they probably don't matter anyway because you're the one who gets shit done and they're the ones who are spending time calling you little boy and trying to figure out how Microsoft Excel works on the cloud. So I love your mindset. I love that you want to work on it. Congrats on the new job. Don't let the age thing throw you too much. At the end of the day, age matters way less than ability, knowledge and character. So focus your attention there and the rest will hopefully work itself out.
Good luck, little boy.
Whatever's got you staying up at night, Lee, hit us up Friday at JordanHarbinger.com. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter. It's called We Bit Wiser. It's on Wednesdays. Basically, it's a bite-sized gem from a past episode from me to you delivered right to your inbox once a week. It's a two-minute read. If you want to keep up with a thousand plus episodes, the wisdom therein and apply it to your life, come on and check it out. It's a great companion to the show. You can sign up at JordanHarbinger.com slash news.
Alright, what's next?
I challenge you to look more carefully at this recommendation based on the vastly increased energy use of chat GBT. Chat GBT uses 10 times the energy of a Google search. This delightful convenience does not come free. The increased use of AI is driving a massive growth in the need for data centers and their concomitant energy demands. Where does that energy come from?
Will we be increasing our use of petroleum products? Because green energy can't keep up with a global demand for data center capacity, which is anticipated to rise at an annual rate of between 19 and 22 percent, from 2023 to 2030? Or will we continue to cover up land with massive solar farms, which are great, but after the panels end of useful life, then go to landfills, taking some toxic ingredients to be buried with them?
Recycling technology for solar panels also can't keep up with the growth our soaring demand for energy is creating. Each of our individual contributions to that demand is invisible and the convenience of AI services is so addictive. Folks won't want to give it up. It would be great if you would acknowledge this cost and could raise awareness of this very real problem. This whole our species is digging for itself. And by the way, she links to a couple really good sources on this topic and we're going to include all of them in the show notes if you want to check them out.
You and Gabriel do such a great job of drilling into and seeking to understand the issues and causes, driving the problems that your listeners present to you. But you are driving an increase in a problematic issue for our world. Instead, suggest your listeners use lower energy searches when possible, reserving chat GPT for where they really feel they need it. Signed, remember what's green before you turn to the machine.
There's always a hippie who wants to ruin everything for everyone. So I really appreciate this email. I'm happy to acknowledge the energy and environmental impact of using AI. I had read a little bit about this, but candidly, I'm not super educated on this stuff. So I am grateful for the chance to learn a little bit more about some of the downstream effects of hitting the GPT every day. Obviously we should all be thoughtful about how we use this stuff.
really any product or service in this modern world. I've talked about avoiding products made in China whenever possible, for example. So I appreciate your argument. I hear you, but I have a few thoughts about this. Not so much rebuttals to your argument, just things I'm holding alongside it. The first is that there are so many products and services that impact the environment. I wonder whether AI is really the worst offender or the first one that should go gas powered vehicles, hell, even electric vehicles with their batteries. They also clearly have an impact on the environment as well. Planes are massive, carbon emitters too, but we're still flying. We're still driving.
And maybe you'd say, we need to get around, but we don't need to save two minutes on a dumb internet search. And I totally hear that. But it's an interesting question where we choose to pull back. My other thought is, whatever the environmental impact is of AI, it is the future no matter what it costs. So I'm afraid we all need to learn how to use it, at least at a very basic level, no matter what, or we're going to get left behind in the personal and professional spheres. And my hope is that the energy costs associated with chat, GPT, and other platforms, similar platforms, that goes down.
because they always do. I'm sure Google searches were a lot more costly in the early days. I know Google works relentlessly to make their data centers and tech stack more efficient to deliver results faster at a lower cost because they keep that money. And I'm assuming chat GBT is working on doing some of the same stuff or they will be soon. So these alarming numbers that you shared and they are alarming. I have to think they're going to go down by a lot.
But of course, that doesn't mean it's not a concern now. So maybe it would be a good idea to still use Google for a lot of searches. And like we said, Google is still in many ways more helpful, more accurate than chat GPT. And maybe you only use AI when you absolutely need that functionality or you just limit the number of searches you do in a day, which by the way, I am now doing since we got this email.
So again, thank you. I'm no longer asking chat GPT to tell me what the capital is of Bahrain. I can use Google for that. But a lot of this also comes down to personal ethics and how you use this stuff. I can't presume to tell people where to draw the line, how they should contribute to the solution. Look, if there are people out there who never fly, I'm not sure I might if they ask chat GPT for help designing a menu for their dinner party or whatever.
But if there are people flying commercial 12 times a year and they live in a place where power is scarce, maybe be a little more thoughtful before you ask AI to create an hour-long video of Donald Trump reenacting the Nutcracker Suite ballot. But your larger point about being thoughtful citizens is totally on point. I take it in. I'm happy to share it. Also, we got another letter about AI after that segment, Gabe. You want to read that to us? Sure. So this listener goes, hi, Jordan. I've heard generative AI can be very helpful for communication, but
I've also encountered firsthand how incapable it is when it comes to the hard sciences. The reason is that large language models lack reasoning capabilities. They statistically generate responses based on what is most likely to be associated with the way words are used in training data, which is why it's often referred to as autocomplete.
Apple recently published a study on how AI fails to use reasoning. And again, this listener links to a bunch of articles on this point. And all the other ones that he's about to make, we're going to drop those in the show notes too. There's some really good background here. LLMs will regularly fail to answer a question correctly, highlighting the lack of reasoning involved in finding the answer. This has been very visible in engineering fields where Gen AI will confidently answer exactly the opposite of the technical answer.
There are also more and more studies showing how AI results in cognitive dependence, reduced reasoning capabilities, and increased laziness.
Okay, so on this point, I totally agree. This is one of the most worrisome aspects of AI to me, especially for young people who are learning how to learn. I understand that there's an aspect of AI that's just more convenient. When I was a kid, and my God, I can't believe I'm starting a sentence with those words, but here we are. When I was a kid, if you were doing research for school, you used to put up a library, look up the call numbers for the books you needed in the card catalog, because they were not always going to have a computer.
read them take notes and then the internet came along and then google and then smartphones and you didn't need to go in person which is amazing and we told the librarian that this would happen she didn't believe us but whatever and now you don't even have to read all these sources a i just goes and fetches them all for you and organizes them
And it's amazing. As long as it's not hallucinating and getting it completely wrong, of course. But I am with you on this point. There's something about this iteration of tech that is deeply worrisome because the internet just made it easier to access information that you still had to consume and analyze. But these AI platforms, they're doing the consuming and the analysis too, or at least they're pretending to do it. And I'm deeply worried about what that's going to do to this generation's brains. But people were worried that books were going to ruin the next generation's brains too. And I don't think that's what happened.
No, but I think this is a totally different beast. I think this is scary. A lot of people are already lazy and dumb. Now they have this tech. It's concerning. Yeah, although can people get more lazy and dumb? Or are they just going to be lazy and dumb, but actually have access to quality for? I don't know.
Jordan, they can always get lazier. You're right. The bottom is the bottom goes down for it. It's like that. What's that movie with Eddie Murphy with their standing on those wooden logs and he drops a quarter and he goes, there's no bottom. That's what we're dealing with here. The Golden Child? Basically a movie that I wasn't allowed to watch in the 80s. Exactly. That's probably worth rewatching. Just for the metaphor, right? Also, that's when Eddie Murphy was absolutely hysterical, although I was five, so that could have been part of it.
To being a teacher right now, it must be so frustrating, so bad. Not only having to make sure students aren't using chat GPT to write their papers and if they're reading any of the books at all, but probably wondering if they're learning anything. It's so bleak. Yeah, it's so dark. Yeah. So he goes on by suggesting people learn to incorporate AI, they may harm their own learning capabilities in fields where AI is no longer able to help.
such as face-to-face conversation or in a technical realm like engineering. There's a plethora of other concerns such as AI always interpolates data and interpolated data can never be valid when extrapolated. Okay, I have no idea what that means. So neither did I. I had to look it up.
I hope you use chat GPT for that. Yeah, of course. At the cost of 7,000 microwave dinners or whatever the electricity equivalent is. Of course. No, yeah, I use chat GPT and then the lights in my house flicker. No, I use Google. So interpolation, and I hope I'm saying that correctly, interpolation, I think, is when you estimate something within a range of known data points, and extrapolation is when you try to guess something that's beyond
the known data range. So what he's saying is, if the AI tries to predict something that's beyond its training experience, beyond what the LLM has consumed or whatever, it might not give reliable results because it's stepping into unknown territory. It doesn't have enough context. Got it. So that's why it hallucinates. That seems to be one of the reasons. Yeah. So he goes on.
AI is incredibly power demanding and will only get worse as scaled. So there's that point again, right? He thinks that it's not going to get more efficient. Although that's not necessarily what he's saying. I think what he's saying is as more people use it, it doesn't matter how efficient it gets because let's say it uses half the power. But if 10 times the amount of people are using it, well, okay, it's not using less power. So I get that. That's a huge bummer. He seems to know way more than we do on that. So maybe he's right. I don't know. I haven't done any of the math on that.
Then there's Moore's Law, the principle that semi-conductor sizes shrink by a factor of two every x years. That will soon be facing quantum limits and the sizes of atoms, which I'm just side note barely smart enough to understand that point, but I think I get it. There are limits to how efficient I guess this can be. AI uses data which will bake in societal biases of the training data from which it is sourced.
fascinating argument. Yeah, that's really interesting. By the way, the quantum thing, what they mean is, if you're going to make something really small, you can do that. But then eventually it's like, okay, how much smaller do you make something that is three atoms wide? You can only make it one atom wide, but there's going to be a whole host of other problems. You can't just keep shrinking something indefinitely. You can't just keep getting smaller and smaller. Yeah, it doesn't work.
Humans will naturally stop double checking AI results. The more confident it is leading to confident hallucinations being ignored. That is absolutely going to happen. Yep. Despite all this, your use cases do seem valid and interesting. Using AI to find sources seems interesting from engines like find.com. That focus on attribution. I've never heard of that. It does sound like a good wreck. Sorry to our previous listener for plugging it, but it does sound cool. If you want to continue singing the praises of AI, I would suggest learning a bit more about what's under the hood.
It is fascinating stuff. Essentially, it's very clever linear algebra and exploits how innately powerful language is. What are your thoughts on AI reliance? Are there any particular points from Iran that you'd like to push back on? From a curious, skeptic, techie listener, signed, concerned about the flaws of LLM's like Claude, which are essentially a facade, definitely not the word of God, and might in fact be leaving us mentally to Claude.
Honestly, I'm still learning so much about AI. I don't have as much to push back on here. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can. All of these points from your letter, the previous one, they're really insightful and I just wanted to share them with everyone. But long story short, I completely share your concerns about over-reliance on AI. I'm also very worried about where this is going, what the implications are for people who haven't been educated successfully to use this tech in the best way.
There's a big difference between an informed person who's curious and rigorous using chat GPT to move a little faster and assess what they find independently and somebody who's never gone to school or who isn't very savvy or who's naive or gullible believing every single thing that AI tells them.
And like I said, young people who are learning using AI services, and I put learning in quotes here, I don't know, man, they might not actually be learning anything at all, or maybe they're just learning in a different way, and we're all swiftly becoming dinosaurs, but I suspect not. Honestly, I am most worried about the point you made about AI using data that'll have certain biases baked in. That's always been a concern with any source, but it's especially concerning with AI because it tends to present its findings as objective truth.
It can't comment on its own biases, at least not yet. There's no human intervention or fact checking because that's the whole point of AI and that is worrisome. So I come back to the idea that I always seem to come back to you with AI. It's going to be amazing and it's going to be a nightmare. And it all comes down to the way we use it, our intentions, our education, previous education and our mindset. But it's not like this modern world is doing very well in that regard anyway. So I guess we better strap in.
I think news and public opinion and elections are all going to be hot messes for the next decade and change. That is my one big prediction. And yeah, I do wonder what AI is going to do to our brains over time. I also worry about what it's going to do to how we relate to one another. People are using AI to reach out to people to respond to emails, but it's not really them. So it's like our machines just going to be talking to machines on behalf of people now all the time or most of the time. That's fine when you're scheduling a meeting, but
When you're actually talking about something meaningful when you're trying to exchange emails about your life and trying to respond to somebody who shared something important, I don't know, that just makes me sad. Why would my AI girlfriend care about my life? Anyway, I'm sure she does. And also, please stop referring to me as your AI girlfriend. It's really awkward.
So look, I hear you. I'm also absolutely drowning in email right now. So don't judge me. I think it would be really cool to use AI to do some of that. Big thanks to both of these listeners for writing in really helping us fill in some gaps around AI this week. And we appreciate you. If you are real people after all, now I'm going to interpolate these magical words so that we can perfectly extrapolate the crazy good deals on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.
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This episode is also sponsored by Shopify. It's 2025, a new year, a fresh start, maybe the year you finally become your own boss. I mean, you've thought about it, right? Over the holidays, staring at your eggnog, like, what if I finally started that business? But then the doubts roll in. What would I sell? How do I set it up? Do I have to know? Coding, spoiler, you do not. Shopify makes it ridiculously easy to get started. No coding, no design skills. Just pick one of the thousands of customizable templates, drag, drop, and boom, you're open for business.
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This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. All right, let's talk about your 2025. What do you want your story to be? Whatever it is, life isn't about resolutions that fade by February. It's about picking up the pen and becoming the author of your own life. And that's where therapy comes in. Think of it as your editorial partner.
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Okay, what's next? Dear Jordan and Gabe, my girlfriend and I are both high functioning autistic and have been together for about six or seven months. We love each other and have discussed a future together, but we face significant obstacles. One challenge is the way that society often treats autistic individuals regardless of age or accomplishments, as if we're children incapable of making our own decisions about love and life.
saying thank you for sharing that I haven't really heard it put that way, certainly not from someone on the spectrum. Yeah, I can absolutely understand why that's frustrating. Another challenge is the 26-year gap between us. I'm 49 and she's 23. Nice. I mean, wow. That is quite a gap, man. Despite this, we share similar interests and are very happy together.
That's great. Look, I'm not one of those people who thinks that an age gap is automatically wrong or predatory or whatever, but it is an interesting fact. Vastly different phases of life y'all are in here, but I'm not judging. It's just interesting. I'm currently married. Okay, I might be judging a little bit. I'm currently married, but have been extremely unhappy in my relationship for years. My girlfriend brought me a sense of hope and happiness.
She sees me as someone worthy of love and affection. Wow, is this an affair? So is this guy cheating on his wife? He's going to explain a little bit more in a moment. OK, carry on. My girlfriend was the one who pursued me early on. Her mother read our conversations and seemed OK with our relationship until we discussed moving in together. Unfortunately, since then, she's become very controlling and has gone to extreme lengths to prevent us from communicating, including destroying my girlfriend's phones and blocking me on chat apps.
My girlfriend has told me that her mother behaves this way whenever she gets close to a man. Her mother seems to want to keep her trapped at home under strict rules, controlling her food, whereabouts, even requiring her to be in her room by 8 p.m. I worry that my girlfriend's anxiety may be exacerbated by her mother's controlling behavior.
Huh, that's concerning. And the girlfriend's how old again? 23. So definitely not a child anymore. Not somebody you need to control and give a bedtime to and read all their text messages. Certainly not an 8 p.m. bedtime. That's weird. I'm actually concerned about the food thing, controlling her access to food. I just can't think of any good reason a parent should control their child's access to food unless they have some sort of medical condition or something, especially at age 23. That's odd.
Especially he said they're both high functioning autistic. So it's not like she needs to manage her daughter in some extraordinary way. It's interesting. I wonder if all of this says more about the mom or is this an example of what he was talking about how society often treats autistic people like their children who can't make their own decisions?
Right. I kind of wish we could talk to the mom and get her side of all this. Look, she might be totally nuts. But to be fair, if I heard my 23 year old daughter was dating a 49 year old married guy and she were on the spectrum and maybe there's some emotional maturity stuff there. Who knows?
Maybe that makes her more vulnerable to certain people out in the world? I don't know. Maybe there's even a history of this with her. I just, I'd have a few fair questions. What I would not do is stomp on her iPhone and tell her lights out at 8 p.m. because I said so. Maybe I'm a little more protective in general, but this seems way overboard in every column. My girlfriend was able to get on a waiting list for her own apartment due to her disability, but it won't be available until sometime later this year. We live in New York State and someone mentioned that she might be under a guardian until she's 26.
i could be wrong but i don't believe anybody's automatically under a guardianship without going through a legal process unless she does have a legal guardian already in that guardianship last until she's twenty six but it's not like new york stator frankly any state automatically puts people with special needs under a guardianship at least not as far as i know
In the meantime, my spouse and I have discussed our situation and agreed that divorce is the best option. Everything would be ideal if not for these external circumstances. I feel like I've met my soulmate, but we're being kept apart. Is my girlfriend's mother's behavior abusive? What is the best course of action? Signed, eager to make things neater when this mom is my girlfriend's keeper.
Okay, so Gabe, we still don't know if he was cheating on his wife by seeing this woman? No, not exactly. The timeline is fuzzy. It sounds to me like they met while he was still married, not separated, and only later they decided to get a divorce.
That's the sense I get to, yeah, so it was an affair, unless it was like they were kind of already separated, but who knows all the deets? He says he was unhappy for years before that, but I don't know if that changes the facts. So I get it, but we don't know how his wife felt, what they had discussed up to that point. I just want to be clear, we'll put this part of the story aside. I know it's not the main thing he's writing it about. It could be a little messy, or it could be way simpler than we think.
Like I said, it might be factoring into the mom's response to their relationship, the age gap, the circumstances of how they met. That might be a good thing for him to appreciate, but anyway, look, I'm sorry that your girlfriend's mother is controlling her in this way. I'm sorry that it's an obstacle to you guys becoming closer, that it fits with this larger pattern people treating autistic folks a certain way. I'm genuinely grateful to hear from you, not just to dig into this problem with you, but also to understand the autistic experience a little bit better.
It brings up some complicated questions for me. Like, where's the line between appropriately protecting your child with special needs if they have some potential blind spots, say, and out and out, just controlling them? I really can't get a good read on this mother.
Me neither, it's quite confusing. So the girlfriend is saying that her mom gets this way whenever she gets close to a man, which if that's true, that is objectively concerning. And I think that speaks to something weird and coercive in the mom. She doesn't want her daughter to separate and have her own life. Right, which would be super creepy. And like I said, she's controlling her in a lot of concerning ways. But to your point, does her mom have some reason to keep such close tabs on her? Is there something we don't know here that might explain some of this?
Well, exactly. If mom is worried about her daughter dating a 50-year-old married guy, maybe there's an aspect of this that's understandable. Although I think if your daughter's 23 and she wants to date someone, you just kind of have to let her do it. She's an adult. Even if she is autistic and you think that puts a bunch of asterisks by her decision-making. So is your girlfriend's mother's behavior actually abusive?
Hard to say. If you mean in some technical or legal sense, maybe not, probably not. The only thing that gives me pause really is the food thing. Yeah, that could be abusive, but I'm not sure what the exact deal is there. Also, if she's literally stopping her from leaving the house, if she's imprisoning her, kind of, that might be abusive.
But destroying the phones, kind of a different category, in a more colloquial sense, I guess maybe the mom is being abusive-ish, if that's a term we can coin here. But I think controlling and coercive are probably better words, enmeshed, overly involved, micromanage-y, super strict to the point of ridiculousness. Those are the other things here, concerning, sure, but not necessarily criminal.
As for what you can do about all this, I would encourage your girlfriend to talk to her mom about her autonomy, her independence, her interests. Yes, for sure. And then maybe ask your girlfriend to ask her mom if she would be willing to sit down with you so you can meet her. If you haven't met her yet, talk to her. Maybe you can answer whatever questions she might have about the relationship. You could try to understand her concerns better. This might just be a conversation you guys need to have.
I agree, but also you might have to be patient and wait for this apartment to come through. When your girlfriend lives on her own, that's going to be a game changer for both of you. It's really hard to individuate when you still live under your parents roof, especially with a mom like this. A lot's going to become possible when she's on her own and when you formally separate from your wife. Those two events are going to be important steps for you guys.
Yeah, I think that might solve 90% of this. My only other thought for you is try to make room for everybody's perspectives here, including this mom, who feels like the obvious villain here, and for all we know, she is the villain. But like we keep saying, she might also have some fair reasons to be a little suspicious of you and to want to protect your daughter, and who also might be confused sometimes about the best way to do that.
I know I'm being very charitable here, but I am giving her the benefit of the doubt because I have to imagine that her job has not always been easy. That's also important, by the way, if you ever do sit down and talk with her, which I think is coming one way or the other if you and your girlfriend are really going to move forward together openly. Whether you like this woman or not, I think you're going to have to try to understand her to some degree if you want to repair this relationship and truly be with your girlfriend.
I totally agree, Gabe. I hope these conversations are productive. I hope your girlfriend's mom finds the comfort she needs in order to let go of her daughter, or if she doesn't, that she learns to do it anyway because her daughter is an adult. I hope you continue in this relationship in a way that's thoughtful to everyone involved, including your soon-to-be ex-wife, your girlfriend's mom, your girlfriend, even yourself. Because even if you two are great for each other, there's a few tough transitions here for everyone to move through. And good luck. All right, right now, recommendation of the week.
I am addicted to lip filler.
That's really good ROI for the calories. Of course, I eat like four servings at a time because I'm just loving it, but it is tasty. Four drops of vanilla stevia in there and it tastes actually like a dessert. Four tablespoons of chia seeds and half a cup of milk let it sit overnight. There's no cooking. You basically stir that mix.
And it's done. I wish I'd known about this earlier. It's great bachelor food for guys out there who are like, I don't want to cook anything. And as a bonus, it has soluble fiber. So it's good for lowering your LDL cholesterol, the bad stuff. And it's good for your poops, too. So you got that going for you. So it's easy to make. And it's good for you. And it has protein. So chia seed pudding. Look into it, folks, I swear it's amazing.
Also, in case y'all don't know, there's a subreddit for our show. If you want to jump into discussions with our listeners about specific episodes, if there's an episode you like, an episode you didn't like, you want to share some thoughts. There's a lot of cool conversations happening over there and a meme thread. You can find it on Reddit in the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Okay, what's next?
Dear Jordan and Gabe, I'm 35 years old and for the last six months I've worked as a systems administrator for a very large corporation. I had been trying to move away from the help desk career I was stuck in for the past decade and I saw this as my way out. I'm paid well for the most part, the work itself is mostly easy. It's a short commute and I like a few people I work with. But aside from that, this is one of the worst jobs I have ever had.
The work itself is extremely dull. Everyone in my department seems miserable. My team lead is a burnt out weirdo, and my boss is one of the angriest people I have ever worked with. He seems like he's quite burnt out as well, but that didn't stop him from putting me on blast in front of my entire department because I hadn't yet replied to a couple of emails that were sent less than two days before.
The other cis admins and I are supposed to work as a team on various projects, but there's very little teamwork because the office is largely run by a click consisting of the team lead and a couple of his buddies.
while the rest of us have to figure things out on our own. Meanwhile, our boss works almost exclusively from home and seems like he couldn't care less about the day to day. Also, some of my company's internal processes seem very confusing and somewhat shady. I don't want to go on about it, but I'm seriously considering reporting them to the Better Business Bureau or anyone else that I can blow the whistle to.
I've already decided to look for a new job after I've worked here for at least a year, unless something massive changes. But this ordeal has made me reconsider my career path. When I think about some of the best jobs I've had, they've typically been for small businesses and universities, and I'm contemplating moving back in that direction. Problem is, those jobs don't usually pay the same as a Fortune 500 corporation does. Yeah, they're paying you a lot more in part because it sucks, and that's the going rate for being miserable all the time.
I have a wife and a young child now, so how much money I bring home is more important than ever. Plus, as I've gotten older, I've realized that I've allowed my ego to interfere in my career more than I should have, and I think I might be doing the same in this instance. As much as I detest this place, I think I stand a decent shot of moving up their ladder if I just focus on grinding away. I'm about to turn 36, so I don't think I have that much time left to keep making career pivots.
Do you think I should move away from this corporate IT hellhole? Should I just grow thicker skin and accept that I have to tolerate a little misery if it means providing for my family? Or are my expectations just completely out of line with reality, and I just need to look at employment differently? Signed, going out of my skull when the work is so dull, but it all might be null because it's too late to mull an entirely new call.
Really good question. So first of all, I'm sorry that you're so miserable right now. I totally get why. This really does sound like a frustrating, dysfunctional, annoying workplace. Most corporate workplaces are to some degree, but this one sounds uniquely challenging. Who you work with, that's 80% of what makes a job great. And it just sounds like you're surrounded by not great people. Second,
I really appreciate your sense of responsibility, your self-awareness, like the fact that you don't just want to jump ship, you want to stick it out for at least a year before interviewing. That might or might not be truly necessary, but it does say something about you. You also understand that you have to support your family, you're not just throwing caution to the wind and putting them at risk because you're unhappy right now. That's obviously crucial.
And then there's this thing you said, which I loved, that as you've gotten older, you've realized you've allowed your ego to interfere in your career. You might be doing the same now. And if that's true, and that's something only you can really know, but if that's true, that's a really meaningful insight on your part. It's absolutely something to keep an eye on and I commend you for being able to clock that.
Although I'd say it's a balance because you also have to listen to your true wants and your needs, your values, your ambition, and if your ego is appropriately screaming at you, get out of this place. Do work that matters to you. Be happy. I wouldn't necessarily advise you to completely ignore that. So look.
I can't tell you with 100% certainty whether you should run from this place or stay and rise up. As we talk about all the time, this really comes down to your needs, your goals, your values, what makes life worth living to you, what your priorities are at this stage in your life, what I can tell you for sure is a few things. One, you have some very important reasons to stay at this job for now. This place is doing one great thing for you, which is providing for you and your family.
and it's screwed up and dysfunctional and sad as it is, that's one huge thing to be grateful for, and you have to make some space for that gratitude alongside your frustration. 2. I know you feel like you're approaching middle age and you don't have much more time to make career pivots, but I would really interrogate that assumption. Because, yes, you obviously don't want to make wild career moves every two years in a way that makes your resume incomprehensible. I get that.
But you're also—you're not 58. You're 35. If there's something you'd rather be doing, whether it's a new function within the IT world or working at a different kind of institution or building a new career entirely, now is the time, man. I'm not advocating for being reckless. You know me. But I also think there's something to be said. There's a lot to be said.
for honoring the voice inside of you, telling you that something's not right and it's time to build a career that fulfills you, that gives you community, and that provides for you and your family. In fact, I'd argue that that's kind of a point here of life. Now, it might take you some time to connect those dots. It'll require a combination of hard work and creativity and patience, but that's part of the fun.
And 35, man, is still so young. You have a lot of life to live. So if this plays or any company like this that you might consider jumping ship two, if they're just going to make you miserable, now is the time to really take a step back and ask yourself if this is the path you really want to be on. You know, I had to start my business over at age. I think it was like 37. So worth it. And 2020 hindsight, not that bad. And I'm so glad to be where I am now. You're kind of in the same situation.
except you don't really have to start over, at least not like I did, unless you want to. Look, I'm not saying there's some perfect job out there that's gonna pay you 300K and surround you with amazing people all the time and never stress you out. That is a fantasy, but there are jobs where you can get most of what you want for all the things that matter the most to you, and then you can learn to accept or cope with the aspects of the job that you don't love, and that's a lot of life. So my advice to you from here on out is actually very simple, and it's nothing you haven't heard me talk about before,
Your job now is to get clear on what truly matters to you, what your priorities are, write down all the variables, money, responsibility, quality of work, colleagues, culture, flexibility, rank them for yourself,
And I would talk to your wife about this, ask her for her input. Get clear on your priorities together. I know this seems painfully obvious, but sometimes these things are jumbled in our heads until we say them out loud and write them down. You gotta start investing in your relationships if you're not already. You have six months at least until you're ready to jump ship. That's amazing. I would try to book one or two phone calls a week with people in your field.
Also, people outside your field, adjacent to your field, and just start widening your network. When you talk to these people, tell them where you are, what you're struggling with, what you're interested in, asking if they've struggled with something similar and how they handled it. You are not asking for an interview. You're not trying to get a job. You're just connecting with people and deepening a relationship. And of course, we have way more on this in our six minute networking course over at sixminutenetworking.com. If you're not there yet, highly recommend kicking that off. Starting with that.
Also, try to find as much ease and meaning and grace at work as you can in the meantime. That means focusing on parts of the job that do work well, creating new opportunities or projects that speak to you more, going to work with a positive attitude, a helpful spirit, staying connected to your gratitude, your patience, your perspective on all this, and letting a lot of dumb stuff roll off your back, not wrapping yourself around it too much. And at night and on the weekends, your second job is putting a new brick in the wall every week.
could be a person you reach out to on LinkedIn, could be a book you read, could be a skill you chip away at, could be a course or a certification that'll give you a leg up. You know best what would help you, but that is your job. If you do these things and they are not rocket science, they're just going to require a conscious effort and consistency.
I can almost promise you that a great path will unfold. I can't tell you exactly how or what it'll look like. You can't even know that, but it will. Because when you focus on your relationships, when you invest in yourself, when you show up to your life, the good parts and the bad parts in the right spirit, amazing things happen.
You have to be willing to let the path unfold on its own. And just trust that all these bricks you collect will add up to a really cool wall. And the more you do it, the faster the wall will appear and the sooner you'll be out of this place, or you'll be rising up in a way that changes the equation for you, or you'll be easing into a whole new career that lights you up even more. But whatever you do, do not settle for a life and career that you don't love. Certainly not at your age. You can be bold while you're also responsible and you can reinvent yourself without taking on too much risk
Or you can decide to show up to this job in a new way. Maybe with some new mindsets or approaches that transform some of these difficult dynamics and quirks, or at least make them survivable in the meantime. You got this, man. You have all my confidence and good luck. Go back and check out Dr. Michael Israel. If you haven't done so yet, great episode on fitness and health. Don't forget about six minute networking.com. It is free. I don't need your credit card. None of that. It'll help you move ahead in your career, your personal life. Show notes and transcripts at JordanHarbinger.com.
Advertisers, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Gabe is on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi or on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tada Sidlauskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.
Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please do share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.
Are you addicted to drama? Check out this preview of The Jordan Harbinger Show with psychologist Dr. Scott Lyons. Do you vent constantly? Do you find yourself changing the stories? Do you find that wherever you go, there's always something that's wrong or happening? Do you find yourself believing the other shoe will always drop? That no matter how good things are, something bad is gonna happen. Do you find yourself crisis hopping? If you're in it, you will have no idea that that's what you're doing.
and it takes a lot of time for those addicted to drama to recognize to even be aware of the pattern is happening. Our primal needs as a kid is to be seen and heard, to feel safe. And so you will go to whatever extremes and tensely shouting is needed to pierce through the chaos of a family household to be seen and heard, even if it's burning down the house. A wave of an emotion, it lasts 30 to 90 seconds.
Anything after that is the story we're feeding to maintain it. We're trying to keep that emotion active. We're feeding off the emotion as opposed to processing or metabolizing it. We're not letting it go because there's some belief system. If we let it go, we'll be victims. If we let it go, we won't be safe. Whatever it is, why we won't let go of the emotion. Even a small trauma can feel like death because we feel helpless.
And if we don't have the resilience capacity to know that someone will help us, there are tools out there to help us. If we don't inherently know that, it feels like we're going to drown. In that moment, it feels like death. Learn to recognize and heal from drama addiction on Episode 836 with Dr. Scott Lyons on the Jordan Harbinger Show.
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