1358: Pleased to Report: Pervert-in-Law Goes to Court | Feedback Friday

1358: Pleased to Report: Pervert-in-Law Goes to Court | Feedback Friday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, my co-host the Yankee, holding down the fort while I'm out here chilling by the Yangtze, Gabriel Mizrahi. On the Jordan Harbinger Sh- actually I'm nowhere near that river, but whatever. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks: former cult members, Russian spies, cold case homicide investigators. This week we had Dr. William Li on gut health, the gut biome, the gut-brain connection, and I, I picked him because he's both a practicing doctor and a research scientist, not just, you know, a, a random wellness influencer or l- some bone guy who decided that the gut-brain connection is trending and there's a probiotic yogurt link in his bio.

There's actually [00:01:00] some solid science in this one. I think you'll really enjoy it. We also did a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on tipflation, why you've got to tip for everything, and now it's not 15% anymore. Sometimes it's 30. On Fridays, though, we tell stories, take listener letters, and go scuba diving into the murky depths of your most demanding duties and most diabolical dilemmas.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Speaking of which, this is what? Week two? Week two or three of your China trip? Three. How is it going over there? Week three. Tell us everything.

Jordan Harbinger: I really enjoy this place. It's, it's funny I mentioned the Yangtze River. What's here actually in Yunnan is mushrooms. They're huge on mushrooms, and you can go mushroom foraging, and there's mushroom soup, and there's mushrooms in everything.

And mushroom foraging is, i- if anybody is kind of clueless about what this is, it is literally walking through the mountains looking for mushrooms, and this is a really bad idea if you don't know what you're doing, and most people don't because mushrooms are confusing and many of them look the same. And I, I don't know if you remember learning about this in school, Gabriel, but they'll be like, "Here's a morel [00:02:00] and here's a false morel," and the false morel's like poisonous and the morel is in your soup.

And they look exactly the same except for the false one, if you look under the right way it's, there's a dot on there or something, right? It's just, it, basically you have to be an expert to be able to tell. So here in Yunnan, a couple of people die every year from eating mushrooms that they themselves have picked.

And decided to eat. And then hundreds and/or thousands, I can't remember the numbers exactly, are hospitalized because they undercooked the mushrooms that they got, or they got the wrong ones and ate them. And so you... There's videos of people in the hospital scrolling on imaginary iPads in front of them because they're just w- having wild hallucinations-

Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, really?

while

Jordan Harbinger: in the bed. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, that sounds

Jordan Harbinger: familiar. Yeah, happens every year. Yeah, exactly. That's true. That's true. I guess I shouldn't laugh at them.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Watching a Hitchcock movie in their minds. Yeah. I didn't realize that, that that happens in, in your neck of the woods. I also didn't realize they had psychedelic mushrooms mixed in with the [00:03:00] fun cooking mushrooms mixed in with the deadly ones.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I guess so. I thought it was nonsense, but I saw a video of the people, I... And people have talked about it. And here they're like, "Don't look for your own mushrooms. People do that and they die." So it's either a really, really strong urban legend with, complete with fake footage in YouTube and Instagram Reels, or it actually happens.

So I'm going to go with it probably actually happens, because it's, many people have told us not to do this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You don't strike me as a mushroom forager, my man. No. I know you like a good hike every now and again, but I just don't see you with a hand-woven basket picking mushrooms.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's funny. W- when you walk through the mountains, you can see there's baskets that people have ditched that have holes in them, and you think like, "Wow, somebody hand-wove this wicker-looking whatever, this straw basket, and then used it for years and it broke, and then just left it here for years, and here it lay."

And there's a lot of cool stuff actually in the mountains. I'll get to that in a minute. But I think in this area of China, we must be in an area where there just aren't that many Westerners, because the other day we went to this claw machine [00:04:00] arcade, which is really crappy, and it was in this normal neighborhood.

And this hairdresser came out of the place next door and was talking to us in Chinese, and she was like, "Wow, your kids are really cute." And she just stood there staring at us and the kids the whole time. And then this guy who was sweeping the floor, he came out with like, "What are you looking at?"

basically. And he goes, "Oh, hello. Hello. Hello. Hello." Like, he'd just realized that was the only thing he knew how to say in English, and he just kept saying... And people ride by on scooters, and they'll see us get out of the car, and they'll s- notice we're white, and they'll go, "Oh, hello, hello." It m- I don't know.

We must be like an exciting attraction around here, which is kind of fun. I also just sort of appreciate that. I mean, if you go to Shanghai and they see a white person, they're not like, "Wow, you're a white person from America." But here in Dali, China, especially if you're not, like, at the Hilton- They don't see a lot of white people.

And the other day I called down to the front desk and I had to ask something that I didn't know how to say in Chinese, which is kind of complicated. And I was like, "Well, surely international hotel chain, maybe they don't all speak English, but there's going to be plenty of [00:05:00] people who do." They had to put me on hold and transfer me to corporate in America to get my question answered because they were like, "We don't understand what you're saying at all."

And so I finally hung up and called back in Chinese, and I realized no one in the hotel speaks English other than, "Hello. Good morning."

Gabriel Mizrahi: Amazing for your Mandarin, but inefficient when you need something that you don't know how to describe.

Jordan Harbinger: Quite. In the lobby of this hotel, there's a chair and there's a tripod set up.

And the other day I went by and there was a woman sitting in this chair, and I noticed w- she was there when I came back, and she was there the next morning, and she was there the next morning, and she was there the next day. There's a woman who sits in the lobby in a chair looking at her phone on a tripod live streaming for, I'm going to guess, somewhere in the neighborhood of four to six or seven hours per day.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she's like a professional influencer?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. And influencer culture here is way, way, way more intense than [00:06:00] anything I've seen. I assume she's either talking about something having to do with the hotel and this is her job, or she's just got the hotel's permission to use their Wi-Fi because she doesn't have it where she lives or it's not as reliable where she lives.

I don't know. But influencer culture here is crazy. You'll go to a tourist area and there'll be a guy just standing on a bridge with, like, a little scenic backdrop, and he's talking at 3X speed in Chinese. You can see the chat's going crazy. His phone is on a tripod. It's plugged into an external battery source.

He's got a wireless DJI clip mic on with a windscreen. I ate lunch and he didn't d- stop talking the whole time. I was like, "When is this guy breathing?" He was there when we got there, he was there when we left, he took no breaks. He was just doing that the whole time, for at least an hour or more, and he probably stays there for most of the day just doing this.

I, the influencer culture thing here is, is absolutely crazy. They have insane setups. There are loads of places here just for taking photos for social media. So, you know [00:07:00] in the US there'll be, like, in a restaurant, and a lot of people take Instagram photos there because the restaurant's really cool and unique, and there's a lot of people taking pictures of the food, and the bar, and this lights up, and that lights up, and there's got a lo-...

Here they'll have a place that doesn't do anything. It just looks cool, and people will pay to go in and take photos. So it's basically an Instagram- It's

Gabriel Mizrahi: not even a cafe?

Jordan Harbinger: Not even a cafe, no. It'll be like- Oh my God ... they'll have backdrops and little rooms that have cute pillows in them, and then a pink furry area, and then a picture frame-looking area, and then an area that has different lights that you can change the colors of and the color temperature of, and it's very odd.

And then there'll be these hybrid places where we went, and we went to sit down, and we found these cool chairs and this cool table, and me and Jen sat down, and the staff said, "Oh, sorry, you can't sit here." And I was like, "Oh, is it reserved?" And she goes, "No, it's only for taking photos." And I was like, "Wait, wait.

This is a table at a restaurant?" And she goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The tables over there [00:08:00] are for people who want to eat stuff. This table is only for people who want to take photos." And she pointed to a little sign that I just didn't notice that was a placard that basically said, "This area for photos only." And I kind of get it, right?

It's kind of nice if you're an influencer, which I'm, uh, not, and I don't think is a real job. But whatever. I guess if you're in that line of work, air quotes, it's great because people won't be in your photos. You're not going to have some dude's elbow who's eating a plate of fries next to you while you're trying to frame your shot.

And it is the nicest view, right? You got the lake, and you got this table, and the chairs look nice, and they look fancy, and you don't want mustard on them. So there's that. But it's just weird to have a photograph, Instagram influencer-only section of a restaurant. And then the whole top floor you couldn't go to unless you were taking photos or video.

There was no place to sit and eat on the top floor because that had the best view and was outside and had the most natural light. The influencer culture is just absolutely next level. On the menu, which you get on your phone, y- uh, QR codes are the, a thing here. You use WeChat, which is like their Facebook, whatever.

You scan the QR and you get the menu. This menu had a few snacky items, french [00:09:00] fries, uh, some cakes that were really fancy looking, and some other dishes that were fancy looking. And then you could order flowers, a professional photographer, lighting. It was all on the menu. So you're like, "Oh, I need a bigger ring light."

Click. Okay, five bucks for the hour.

Gabriel Mizrahi: They have an influencer section of the menu?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's so crazy.

Jordan Harbinger: If you're like, "Oh, you know what? I would love to have some fresh roses for this part of the shoot," you just buy them from the restaurant, or rent them, sorry, from the restaurant. You don't even buy them.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Wow.

Jordan Harbinger: And if you're like, "Oh, this is so nice. I want to take pictures, but all I have is my phone or my DJI Pocket whatever," you can rent a gu- There's just dudes sitting there with DSLR mirrorless cameras, and they'll just take photos of you, and you can pay them for the photos. You rent them by the hour, too, in the menu.

So it's a whole crazy, extra insane to me kind of thing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's fascinating.

Jordan Harbinger: Nobody was eating. There was a couple guys eating that clearly worked there, and, like, other guys were eating that took photos, and they were eating fries. And then there was a couple of women in their wedding dresses [00:10:00] pretending/kind of eating cakes very delicately while getting a million photos taken of them with cake on the end of the fork and all that stuff.

And I was like, "Look, we just want to eat." And the guy was like, "Oh, here's the menu." And then another person was like, "If you want a bigger menu, you could go to pretty much any of the other restaurants on this side, and they'll have the same things or more, and it'll be cheaper." Because this whole thing was about, "Oh, you're not here to take photos?

Why would you eat here if you're not here to take photos?" So it's just all views and photographs and yeah, loads of those.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Damn, I thought America was heavy on the influencer culture, but this is a whole other level. I wonder what this says about China or about the industry. It must mean that they don't have a lot of aesthetic places outside of these restaurants to shoot this kind of stuff.

Otherwise, the demand for these places wouldn't be as big, right?

Jordan Harbinger: One thing I have noticed is there are people at regular restaurants that will be streaming themselves eating or talking. To be expected, it's way, way less than it is at these very scenic places. I wish I'd taken a photo of this, actually.

When we were on [00:11:00] the boardwalk where I went to that fancy influencer cafe thinking I could get a coffee, silly me, we were biking around the lake. When, we were on the third floor or something like that, and there's a little beach area. It's tiny. There were 14 couples trying to do their wedding photos at the exact same time, and you could see the photographers that were like, "Okay, you go.

All right, I'm going. All right, you go." Because you have to move people out of the way, and y- they all want to stand kind of in the same spot to get the same light reflecting by them so you don't have direct sun in the camera. The sun reflects off the lake and then off the back of the couple. So they're sort of all rotating around in the same spots while trying not to get the other couples in the photos, because it's kind of weird if your wedding photo has another couple taking wedding photos in the background.

I guess that's probably undesirable. So it's, they're trying to make it look like you're the only person there when there's 14 other couples, and if you stuck your arms out and took one step to the left, to the right, you'd be touching someone else's bride. The whole, the whole thing is, is kind of silly. I do understand that they have a massive influencer culture here, but it's a little [00:12:00] different.

I'm not steeped enough in Chinese internet culture to, to really know this, but I don't think they have the same sort of like, "It's just a prank, bro," kind of culture where I don't see wild stunts happening here. I've never seen anybody doing anything zany or, like, rude to get attention. There's not people doing all kinds of insane stuff on camera.

They're mostly just live streaming and taking photos of themselves, all doing kind of the exact same thing. You know, you'll go to a kids park, yesterday went to a petting zoo type situation, and there was a woman that was, like, kind of leaning up pseudo-sexily inside a doorway of a fake castle, and her friends all did the exact same pose in the exact same place.

I don't... It's this sort of standard teenage girl nonsense except for they're 40

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Sounds pretty similar.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the women that do this, this here that I've seen, and this is probably, there's probably this in the US as well. In the States, I feel like it's teenage girls mostly doing it.

Perhaps that's true, perhaps it's not. Here, I noticed it's teenage girls for sure, but it's [00:13:00] also middle-aged women doing the exact same things as the teenage girls, the same poses, the same places, the same everything. And so I don't think it has the whole sort of juvenile reputation it does in the United States.

Like, if you're a 45-year-old woman and you're going to places and doing sexy poses in doorways, it's cringe. Here, it seems to be quite normalized. That whole thing is just continues to be amusing to me. Another funny thing that happened to me recently was I, and this is also very China, the hotel has a revolving door and, you know, it just turns around all day and you can walk through it and get in and out of the hotel.

Well, it stopped while two little kids were walking through it, and it locked them in, because there's a segment of the door where you're neither inside of the hotel nor outside of the hotel, and you can't get there because the door is perfectly positioned to create, like, a triangle with the wall, the circular part of the wall.

And so they're trapped in this little triangle-shaped box. And the doorman looks and goes, "Eh, those kids sure are trapped in there," [00:14:00] basically. And all the hotel staff starts to gather around looking at the children trapped in this glass revolving door. And this big American dude and me are like, "Let's just push the revolving door manually, because it's not going to be that heavy.

It's probably, like, 100 pounds of glass, maybe a little more." Actually, I don't know how much glass weighs. It was certainly heavy, but not impossible. So him and I just pushed the glass and let the kids out, and everyone was like, "Oh, yeah, that was a good idea." And I was thinking, how did no one... They just, there were 12 people standing there who worked at the hotel, who I would assume have seen this before, just standing there, and we kind of laughed about it and got in the cars and left.

And I'm going to lunch with a, the show fan that I met in the hotel, and I sit down, and he goes, "Yeah, my friend George should be here in a second." And then who walks up but this other guy who rescued the kids with me in the revolving door, and he's like, "Hi, I'm George." He's like, "Oh, hey man, I think we met earlier saving two kids from a revolving door."

And I was just thinking, my God. That

Gabriel Mizrahi: is too weird.

Jordan Harbinger: It's such a small world here. Like, yes, we're in a Hilton, okay, but the fact [00:15:00] is, there's j- the coincidences here in a city of 3 million that is not a tier one city. It's different if you're in Shanghai, right? Because you're like, "Oh, I'm in Shanghai. You're in Shanghai?

That's crazy." There's 25 million people in Shanghai proper, and if you include the industrial sort of suburban areas, it rises to, like, 31 million. That's a pretty big place. If you're talking Dali, China, which is less, is 10% of that and it, not exactly a touristy spot for anybody but local Chinese people, it's, it, the coincidences start to become pretty crazy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's an amazing meet cute for two expats, though, saving a bunch of children from a revolving door accident. This is like, I love this episode of Chicago Fire: Dali Edition.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exa- exactly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Shanghai Fire, am I right?

Jordan Harbinger: Shanghai Fire, yeah. Dali Fire. This is going to sound kind of obvious, but electronics here are so cheap.

Shockingly cheap. Like, how is it humanly possible to produce an item at this point kind of cheap, and I'm not talking about knock-off brands.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think it's not humanly possible, it's inhumanly possible. [00:16:00]

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. It's inhumanly and robotically possible, yes, exactly. But it's not just knock-off brands. I know people are like, "Oh, yeah, so you can get a cable for five cents," which you can, but I'm talking about major Chinese brands we have in the US that are huge in the US and huge in China.

There's a brand called Anker which makes chargers and power banks, battery packs. They make all kinds of power supply stuff, and it's a good brand. It's a big American brand. They have a really good guarantee. They have a good reputation. I didn't realize it was a Chinese brand, and I looked online because I needed a charger, and they had this really nice new Anker Prime, which is their sort of high-end line of stuff, plug charger with three USB ports that puts out 160 watts, and I was like, this is perfect.

I can power my laptop and charge my phone and charge a kid iPad or some other thing all at the same time, and it's small. It's like the size of a couple of iPods cases, and it puts out a lot of watts. And I thought, okay, I want to get this. How much is this in the States? And it was $180 plus tax on [00:17:00] Amazon.

Let's say it was almost 200 bucks really, depending on where you buy it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Is this tariffs?

Jordan Harbinger: Well, it's got to be partly tariffs and VAT and things like that, and markup. But in China, delivered the same day was 70 bucks. So it was, like, 40% of the cost. And it's the same th- people are like, "Oh, it's a knockoff. It might've fallen off a truck."

No, no, this is sold from Anker. It came from the store. It didn't fall off a truck. It's the exact same model as the US. The plugs here are the same, so they don't have to make an international edition. It's not like it's got a different SKU. No, it's the same thing. The only difference is this thing has international ratings on it and it's rated for China, whereas the one in the US, the power banks, they don't rate them for China and they confiscate them at the airports.

It's actually better to have the Chinese version if you're going to travel to and from China. So the, the electronics thing is great. I'm kind of a gadget geek sometimes, so we're stocking up on staples and accessories like international electronic junkies. I will say, the o- one thing here, my usual strategy of finding my wife by looking for the short Chinese [00:18:00] lady, not working so well here.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm sure Jen's going to love that when she hears this episode.

Jordan Harbinger: It's true. We're at a petting zoo kind of situation with a bunch of fancy little animals and castley looking things and horseback riding, and I was like, "Where's Jen?" And I realized that every, I can, I, you know, I was like, "Oh, I'll scan for my father-in-law.

Nope. An old Chinese man. Nope, that's not working." So I'm just stuck looking for, like, their specific hat or whatever in a crowd. It's, uh, it's kind of funny.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You guys need to wear those AirTags. We do.

Jordan Harbinger: In the United States, I often, whenever I hear Chinese, I think, "Oh, my mother-in-law's here," or, "Oh, my wife's aunt is here."

Or if it's a man, I'm like, "Oh, my father-in-law's here." Now I hear Chinese everywhere, so for the fir- for the first week of the trip, I would be like, "Oh, T- Jim's here. Oh, wait, no, that's just a, the guy who is repairing a light fixture in the corner of the lobby." Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's just the influencer eating fries.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. It's just a guy eating fries to an audience of God knows how many while talking with his mouth full. All right, I want to get started here, but a correction from a few episodes [00:19:00] ago. Listener Marco corrected me. I said something about Montenegro and driving through the canyons, and it was the second-deepest canyon in the world, and the first deepest canyon is the Grand Canyon.

That could not have been more wrong. It's funny, that was one of these things that I learned that was an air quotes fact pre everything being on the internet all the time. And so I had no way to check that. I couldn't look at my phone and be like, "Is this really the second-deepest canyon in the world?" It is not.

It is not. It's, like, number eight. Grand Canyon is, like, number whatever, and all these, in Peru has many deeper canyons. Tibet has many deeper canyons. It's just basically top 10. So Montenegro might not even be top 10. Grand Canyon is top 10, and there's a bunch of other ones. All, and all these other countries that who knew other countries existed?

I couldn't check that back in the day, but I didn't want people repeating a bunch of crap that I said on the show that was corrected. Thanks, Marco. You know what else is short and easy to spot? This ad break. We'll be right back. When it comes to the [00:20:00] news, I've learned not to rely just on one source.

Different outlets have different perspectives and audiences, and even completely different ideas about which parts of a story matter the most. And that doesn't necessarily mean anybody's being dishonest, it's just, it's human. But if I only read one outlet, I'm probably only getting one viewpoint. That's why I like Ground News.

Before I talk about any major story on the podcast or even with friends and family, and I've got a position, I like to compare how different outlets are covering that so I can build that position. And I think of it like reading more than one book about the same subject. Each one may emphasize different details or explore a different angle, or include something another source barely even mentions.

The same thing happens with news. You can read coverage of the exact same event and walk away with a completely different impression, and Ground News makes those differences really easy to see. Helps me get a more complete picture instead of unknowingly adopting one outlet's framing. I really think you guys should try this out.

If you read a lot of news, you should be definitely using Ground News, in my opinion. Go to groundnews.com/jordan. Get 40% off their unlimited access vantage [00:21:00] subscription. That's groundnews.com/jordan. Again, groundnews.com/jordan. Use that link so they know we sent you. I find this super useful. I think you guys will as well.

Once you get started, you'll really see the utility here. This episode is also sponsored by Babbel. If you're traveling this summer, don't wait until you land to start learning the language. Even just a few real phrases can completely change the experience. Being able to say, "¿Dónde está el baño?" or "Einen Kaffee, bitte," and suddenly the interaction feels a lot warmer because people can tell you kind of made a little bit of effort, and that's why I like Babbel.

It's built for real life, not random vocab lists or verb charts that make you feel like you're back in seventh grade. Babbel teaches practical phrases you'd actually use. Ordering dinner, asking for directions, checking into a hotel, talking with locals. Lessons are quick, practical, and built by more than 200 language experts.

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Jen Harbinger: If you've got summer travel coming up, [00:22:00] now's the time to start so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now, Babbel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to babbel.com/jordan. That's Babbel, B-A-B-B-E-L .com/jordan for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Jordan Harbinger: By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, Wee Bit wiser.

It's a bite-sized gem from a past episode from us to you, delivered right to your inbox on most Wednesdays. If you want to keep up with the wisdom from our thousand-plus episodes and apply it to your life, I invite you to come check it out. You can sign up at jordanharbinger.com/news. All right. As always, we got some fun ones.

We got some doozies. Let's dive in. Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Dear Jordan and Gabriel, I'm currently planning a summer vacation at a beach town two hours away from my home with my two elementary school age granddaughters, my son, his family, and a few other family members. The plan is my daughter and her husband will stay only for the weekend and leave their girls with me at the vacation house.

I will fly them back [00:23:00] home at the end of the trip and pay for these return flights. The available time for this trip is limited to a week. The problem is my daughter's mother-in-law has convinced her son that any time his daughters spend time from out of state visiting, their time in our area should be equally shared with her.

Unfortunately, he feels guilty if the girls' time with me is not equally shared. His mother lives 15 minutes away from me. A bit about her. She's estranged from her two siblings and has no other family. She's generally a lonely woman, and honestly, a difficult person, not to mention a terrible houseguest.

She's socially awkward, has few friends, and has done annoying, if not rude, things to me when we vacation together as a family, so much so that I am not willing to include her on this trip. She has a ton of food allergies and demands that make meal planning difficult. She never offers to help clean up after the meals, and she rarely entertains.

She has little overall energy and often has [00:24:00] to take a nap in the middle of the day, sometimes in my living room or on my couch during group visits, despite the activities taking place in the central location. I've requested that if she needs to nap, she can drive home, but that is not her preference.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, the nap thing, maybe not entirely fair to hold that against her. Some people just have different energy levels, especially as they get older. But geez, read the room a little, Arlene. We don't want to listen to your early bird special snores while we're trying to play Chutes and Ladders.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She has also gone into my bedroom without asking to sleep.

Jordan Harbinger: All right. Well, that might be a little weird. Yeah, make yourself at home, Arlene.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She's just REM drooling on our friend's Boll & Branch sheets.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I know a great way you could replace those at a discount, by the way. Just saying. S- check the deals page.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You know, to be fair also, though, she might not want to go home and nap because she doesn't want to lose the time with them.

It might, in a way, be her way of continuing to participate in the family even though she ne- I don't know. Yeah, I'm, I'm with you. This is not her worst- Yeah, I don't know ... It's not her worst offense.. On multiple family trips while I'm helping her [00:25:00] son unload the car and my daughter's taking care of the girls, she went into the house, surveyed which bedroom is best, and claimed it, not once or twice, every time.

Jordan Harbinger: God, this is like a toddler. This is toddler behavior. This is just definitely annoying. At least ask, at least pretend to care that there are other people staying in the house. And I love that she shirks duties. Like, I, all right, while they're busy with the kids and unloading things, I'm going to run in the house and find the room that I think is be- what are you, 11 years old?

This is actually crazy. This person is a little off their rocker.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Imagine claiming the biggest bedroom in the Airbnb and then refusing to do dishes at the end of the night. I could never.

Jordan Harbinger: And, oh, I need the biggest, nicest room with the nicest bed. Yes, I realize there's four people staying in the other room, two of which are kids, but that's okay.

I want this one. It has a nice amount of natural light.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also, a couple years ago, she came to my home to use the pool while I was away traveling, which she has always had an open invitation to do. From the driveway, she saw my tenants swimming and playing in the pool with several [00:26:00] young boys. She assumed was happening and left.

From that vantage point, she could not see the entire yard or the covered arbor area beside the pool where the boy's parents were sitting nearby supervising. She then made very serious accusations against my tenant, who is a respected community teacher, suggesting he was behaving inappropriately toward children and labeling him a pedophile.

Jordan Harbinger: Whoa. Okay. Well, that feels like an overreaction and potentially a crime, actually. It's called defamation.

Gabriel Mizrahi: When I eventually heard the full story, I was extremely upset. I felt the accusations were unfounded and reckless. I pointed out that had she taken a few more steps or asked questions, she would have seen the parents sitting there the entire time, and that if she truly believed children were in danger, she had an obligation to investigate further or intervene in the moment rather than walk away and later spread damaging assumptions.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, yeah, fact.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I also shared my perspective with my [00:27:00] daughter and her husband, as this accusation had the potential to seriously harm someone's reputation. But because I was so upset, the situation unfortunately only became tenser, and our relationship grew increasingly frosty afterward. What has made this especially painful is that she's continued spreading these serious accusations to other family members, warning them to keep their children away from my home.

I've always been cautious and would never allow my grandchildren to be in a questionable situation.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, look, I think I'm starting to understand why this woman is estranged from all her siblings.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Ladies snatching bedrooms and reputations here.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Sometimes it's because your siblings are the problem, but sometimes you're the problem, and I'm getting a strong Arlene is mostly the problem kind of vibe from this letter so far.

Gabriel Mizrahi: My understanding is that my daughter's mother-in-law experienced abuse herself as a child by a neighbor.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, that explains some of it. And look, okay, poor woman, that is awful, and now she's looking for this kind of thing wherever she goes. She's hypervigilant. [00:28:00] Understandable, but yeah, sh- this is reckless.

You can't just go around accusing people of being a pedo with no proof when that's absolutely not what was happening. And then to find out later that you were wrong, but you're still going to double down and be like, "Don't let your kids go to that pool because there's a pedo there. Well, maybe not, and I have no reason to believe that, but I'm just going to go ahead and keep saying this for some reason, mostly because I'm a kook."

Gabriel Mizrahi: That is actually the craziest part. And so if she got carried away and was hypersensitive, fine, but s- they pointed out to her that she's wrong and she's still going around and she's saying to the other grandmother in the family, like, her house is unsafe.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, look, imagine you go, "Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed.

Can I apologize to that young man? I feel absolutely terrible. I've got to go around and tell everybody that I was wrong." That's the least you could do, but no, you're just going to be like, "Well, eh, in the face of new information, I've decided not to change my mind and instead to just keep making this problem worse."

Like, you're just a, a crappy person at this point. I'm sorry.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Or you have a few screws loose, potentially. You have

Jordan Harbinger: screws

Gabriel Mizrahi: loose.

Jordan Harbinger: We'll see. Yeah. Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I [00:29:00] suggested to my daughter that if the other grandmother wants to plan a separate trip, she can. I don't want to cut this particular vacation time short for a visit with her to make equal time. My daughter says the issue with her husband, who continues to defend the idea of a strict 50/50 split.

At this point, I don't believe further conversations between me and him would be productive. My daughter is clearly stressed as she has to be the negotiator between her husband and me. Am I being inflexible here? Should I cut our time at the beach house short and drive home early to make equal time for a visit with the other grandmother?

Signed, Feeling like the one who loses and will receive a few new bruises if I have to split time with this grandma who snoozes, confuses, and recklessly accuses.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a great sign-off. Oh, boy. Wow. Well, okay, first of all, I love that you're such an involved grandparent. I love that you're planning these trips with your family.

You sound like a great grandma. I'm sure this beach trip is going to be a blast. That's the real headline here. You have an awesome relationship with the girls, and that's wonderful. Second, man, I'm [00:30:00] sorry you have to deal with this. This is a challenging in-law. What I'm hearing is that she is just objectively difficult and very annoying in all these ways, and I'm also hearing that she's just very different from you, you know, because you're not insane.

Um, but, uh, I'm just thinking about the napping again. By itself, not exactly a crime, although she said, I agree that sleeping in the middle of the busy living room is not the most fun vibe, and it's, it's weird for somebody to take a nap in your room without asking. I don't know. But that's not the worst thing.

The, the worst thing-- There's so many worse things here.

Gabriel Mizrahi: There's so much worse, but I, again, I don't know why I'm defending her, but on this one point, I feel like she does deserve maybe just a little defense. This might be her way of honoring our friend's request to not sleep in the living room. She's, "Okay, message received.

I'm just going to sneak away, do my, my 35-minute nap, and I'll be back." And then she's like, "Wait, you didn't even ask me?" I don't know. Might be her way of helping.

Jordan Harbinger: Hey, look, maybe she just feels really comfortable with you guys because you're family, and that's why she didn't ask. I don't know. On the list of things, that's at the bottom.

I think that's the point here. [00:31:00] But I think a lot of the friction between you is probably just that you guys have very different personalities, different energy levels, different capabilities. That's not entirely her fault. That's just how she is and that, and that's how you are, and you're the lucky one in this situation.

Who knows? She might even feel a little bit intimidated by your vitality. I mean, I hear the energy in your letter, and maybe the 50/50 thing is a way for her to feel like she can just, she can keep up with you somehow. I say all of this because it might be good to separate these qualities of hers out a little bit.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You mean the objectively annoying from the merely different?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's easy to build a case against somebody that you just don't vibe with, and then everything they do becomes a problem. It's, "She didn't even put the cap on the toothpaste. Who leaves the cap off the toothpaste? Now you got dry toothpaste on the end."

Right? You know, it's just... And progress, when you do that, it just gets that much harder. But anyway, you're in a bit of a pickle here because yeah, it's annoying to have to do the 50/50 thing with this person who just doesn't fit into your world or anyone's world very well. And I'm with you. If she wants time with the [00:32:00] girls, she can plan a separate trip.

I don't see why that time has to come out of your time with them. That's what I don't fully understand.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. Why does it have to be 50/50 on every trip? Why can't it just be 50/50- Yeah ... overall? Like, it just comes out in the wash.

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like that would solve this. I mean, yes, you're a flight away. I don't know if you're across the country, but, like, on the other hand, you and this other woman live 15 minutes from each other.

Your daughter and her kids, it sounds like they live out of state, so combining grandma visits in one trip, that does make some sense to me. I'm a parent, I get it. The logistics with kids can get overwhelming. But it sounds like your son-in-law is holding firm on this, not just because it's simpler. He's holding firm on this because, I don't know, maybe he feels loyal to his mother, which would be normal, or he feels guilty, or he doesn't want to hurt her, or he doesn't want to be in conflict with her.

I'm guessing she blows a weird hissy fit if she doesn't get her equal time, and he feels beholden to her in some way. And that sucks, especially because it comes at your expense and at the girls' expense. But the [00:33:00] fact is, this is ultimately your daughter and her husband's call, right? They're not your kids.

They're still young. They don't have a huge say in the matter. Although, here's what's going to happen. As they grow up, they're going to tell their parents how they want to spend their time more, and I'm going to guess it's not going to be with the lady who takes a nap and accuses the neighbors of being a pedo. It's going to be with the grandma who has a pool and is fun and wants to do stuff with them.

So you have some influence here now, but it sounds like just not much at this point. These conversations haven't gone very well, so I'm afraid that what your daughter and her husband want, that's what's going to happen. But okay, let's just go through your options here.: you accept the rules, you play ball, you shorten your trip by a few days, you make the most of the time you have with your granddaughters, you play nice, and hey, this woman lives 15 minutes away from you.

That's a help. Maybe go over there every day. Oh, gosh, imagine the fun you'll have over there. Spend a couple hours with them. Make sure everything's okay. E- Make sure everyone's happy and having fun. You can still enjoy a lot of granddaughter time even if you're not at the beach. Not my ideal scenario for you, but maybe not the worst [00:34:00] thing.

Option two: you try to work this out with Arlene directly. You tell her that you're excited to take the girls on this trip. You only have a week. The trip would be way less fun and meaningful if you had to cut it short. You're sure she doesn't want to take away from the girls' fun, so can she please allow you this week with the girls and plan her own week separately, which everyone is open to, and just see if you can diplomatically work this out.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And if you do that, maybe reassure her that you're not trying to get more time with the girls, you just want this time with the girls.

Jordan Harbinger: Good point. Yeah, she can have the same amount of time with them on another trip, which is exactly what she's asking for, 50/50. Hell, give her twice as much time on the next trip that you're not a part of.

Whatever, right? Who cares? See if you get anywhere that way. That would be my favorite option. Option three: you go back to your daughter and her husband and you try to make your case in a new way, and I do wonder if you've given it your best shot. You mentioned that after Arlene went around accusing your tenant of being a nonce, you talked to them, but you were so upset that things became tenser.

Your relationship grew increasingly frosty. I don't know if you meant your relationship with [00:35:00] Arlene or with your son-in-law, but either way, it does make me wonder if your feelings about this woman are making it harder to have a very calm, respectful conversation about all this and for your son-in-law to just hear you out on the facts.

It's possible, I could be wrong, that when you get worked up about her, all your son-in-law can hear is, "Eh, my mother-in-law just has a thing with my mom. I don't want any part of it. 50/50 time, the end. Problem solved." Whereas if you went to your daughter and her husband and you said, "Hey, listen, I know you want the girls to have equal time with me and your mom.

I'm all for that. I just really want to enjoy the full week of special stuff I planned for them. If we hold to this 50/50 thing on each individual trip, it throws a wrench in the gears. It reduces our time together. It doesn't really need to be that way. So I'm just asking if we can stay open to other ways of ensuring equal time with your mom.

And I'd love your help in explaining to your mom that she can plan her own awesome trip with the girls whenever she wants, which I fully support, and I won't get in the way of her time. How does? Can we find a solution together?" And if you said something like that, I wonder what would [00:36:00] happen.

If he's like, "No, no, 50/50, end of discussion," you could try to press the issue respectfully. "I hear you. If that's how it has to be, I'll respect it, but can you help me understand why? Why is it so important to do 50/50 on every single trip instead of overall throughout the year? Does it have to impinge on the special trip I'm trying to do with your daughters?

I'm just confused." And see if he might be willing to talk about why it's so hard for him to ask his mother to be flexible with you. Maybe you've done exactly that. If you have, great. I don't know what else there is to do. But if you haven't, I would definitely give it a shot.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Nice script. This whole problem just strikes me as incredibly silly.

Like, it doesn't have to be. It just doesn't have to be.

Jordan Harbinger: It's an unreasonable person, and unreasonable people create problems like this. And I'm not talking about letter writer here. I'm talking about the other lady. She, she's being unreasonable, and unreasonable people, they don't see when they're being unreasonable. They're unreasonable place, I would wager.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But her son is not helping.

Jordan Harbinger: No, no. His whole life is sort of conditioned around this, right? My strong hunch is that [00:37:00] her daughter's husband either doesn't understand that his mother is difficult or, and I, I think this is probably it, he knows damn well how difficult his mother is and he just does not want to stand up to her because it's a pain in the butt for him and there's consequences for him emotionally when he does.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes. It's just so absurd because the number of days each grandma gets matters so much less than the quality of time spent. So it's already annoying to be like, "It has to be 50/50 exactly."

Jordan Harbinger: Again, screws loose in Arlene, right? This is almost like an, it's, it sounds kind of like an OCD weird thing. Like, it means something if they spend three days with her and two days with me, it means they love me only two-thirds as much.

Like, Arlene, try not sleeping through the days that you're with them. Maybe that will help with your 50/50 issue. I mean, I also suspect Arlene has complicated feelings about our friend here, and the 50/50 thing might be a way to kind of even the scales, if only in her mind, without actually putting in the, the effort to be a similarly awesome grandma.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Hmm, I think you're onto something there, [00:38:00] but man, our friend is going to have a hard time overcoming all of this. Tall order.

Jordan Harbinger: Unless she can get her son-in-law to a place where he's willing to reconsider his stance with his mom. But whether he wants that to come from our friend here, eh.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Unclear. Yeah. Not good.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm guessing that's pretty unlikely. There's a lot of tension now. Their positions are entrenched and all that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: If it's going to happen, it might take some time. It might not happen in time for this particular trip. It's just crazy because the question she's asking isn't how can we manage these logistics in a better way, the question she's really asking is can we talk about the problem that is your mother and your relationship with her?

And if he doesn't want to even acknowledge the complexity of that relationship and how his way of catering to her is impacting the rest of the family, including the granddaughters, I just don't see how she makes progress here. I hope she can, but it just might be too much to ask.

Jordan Harbinger: In which case, her letter might actually be about how to deal with her anger and disappointment at having to acquiesce to these people who are not willing to have a real conversation about this, at least not with her.

And who, to be fair, might have their own [00:39:00] feelings about how she's responded to all this given the complicated history.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Right. And so maybe part of what's so hard here is having to give something up for a woman she's not crazy about and a family that could be handling all this in a much better way. And so maybe this is really a question of how to cope with, you know, quote unquote losing, not just with them, but perhaps in general.

That might be hard for her.

Jordan Harbinger: Totally. And I say this mostly as a compliment given her obvious vitality. This does not sound like a woman who enjoys losing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And you know, neither does Arlene, to be fair. It's just that their ways of winning are so different, and that's part of why these two are so combustible.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. W- Which is kind of funny if you think about it, but something's got to give if they're going to get along at all.

Gabriel Mizrahi: To be practical, if our friend does end up losing, quote unquote losing here, at least on this beach trip, maybe the question she needs to be asking is how can I keep finding creative ways to not let that stop me from being an amazing grandma?

You know, to not let Arlene get in the way of my relationship with the girls any more than she absolutely has to. And how can I keep investing in a dialogue with my daughter and her husband that might lead to a different outcome one day?

Jordan Harbinger: Nice [00:40:00] questions. Yeah, so in a way, you are being a little inflexible if you don't shorten your vacation time, but I don't know if that's entirely a bad thing.

It could be a good thing if it kind of forces the issue with your daughter and her husband, like why do we have to do things her way? But it might be a bad thing if mom and dad have decided that that's what's happening, and you'll only be creating more friction by fighting for the full week. So my advice is try to have this conversation with Arlene and/or your son-in-law one last time before you decide.

But giving up some days might be where this is heading no matter what. I'm sorry you have to share time with such a difficult personality, but if that's what has to happen, all you can really do is adjust and get creative. For example, maybe you bring the girls to Arlene's house for the 50/50 time and you take a three-hour nap in her bedroom.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Ni- yeah, under the sheets this time.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, under the blanket and the top sheet. Get all up in there. That'll teach her, drool on the pillow. I hope you and your grandkids have an amazing time on this trip. They're lucky to have you, and good luck. You know who definitely [00:41:00] isn't diddling the neighborhood kids in your pool?

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Gabriel Mizrahi: Friday.dan and Gabe.

are very religious Southern Baptists. Years ago, as a young high school graduate, they promised to pay for my education, but when I expressed an interest in astronomy or [00:44:00] biology, they told me that those, quote, "Weren't God's plans for me," unquote. For weeks is a tool of the devil.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Well, I'm already clenching my jaw at this one.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I find this so bizarre. Uh, he's like, "I want to study something that excites me, like the universe or all of the incredible life that God created," right? And they're like, "No, studying what God created is what the devil wants." What?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, literally. Also, you can't study science because those aren't God's plans for you.

God's plans for you are different, and they just happen to be our plans for you. Our plans for you. Imagine that. Yeah, imagine that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You know what God wants you to do? Forensic accounting. That's what he wants.

Jordan Harbinger: Seriously. What God wants is for people to study library science. Look, I could kind of understand if he was like, "I want to become an OBGYN and work at Planned Parenthood," and they were like, "Ugh, that's not God's plans."

Still not their place to tell him, but I could understand the conflict religiously if he went, you know, in a complete opposite direction. But he [00:45:00] wants to look into a telescope or a microscope and understand life better, and they're like, "No, all science is evil," when that very science... And look, you know I'm not religious, but let, I, I think I might be onto something here.

That very science is also a product of y- y- like, God's splendor or whatever, right? Come on.

Gabriel Mizrahi: One of my favorite quotes, I think it's attributed to Niels Bohr, "A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's good. That's beautiful, actually.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I just don't see why science can't be, you know, to your point, a form of worship, you know, when you get down to it.

Jordan Harbinger: I want to be compassionate here. These parents must just be confused and afraid of, of everything, but I'm so frustrated with them.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I ended up studying a foreign language, and when I graduated, I was suddenly

Jordan Harbinger: told- So, so that was God's plans for him, huh? Fricking medieval French. Okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Not contemplating the cosmos, conjugating the subjunctive in a romance language.

That's right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. R- ridiculous. This is ridiculous.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I ended up studying a foreign language, and when I graduated, I was suddenly told that it was up to me to pay about half [00:46:00] of my student loans.

Jordan Harbinger: So they pu- Sorry, I don't mean to laugh. This is just terrible. So they pushed him away from STEM and into a foreign language, which I have to assume is a harder degree to get a high-paying job with, and then they're like, "Surprise!

You have to pay for half of the decision that we low-key forced you to make by saying that we were going to pay for it." Not cool. In legal terms, actually, this is what we call breach of contract.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Fast-forward 10 years, and I've gotten a different undergraduate degree in a science field.

Jordan Harbinger: Good for you. That's a lot of school, though, man.

Holy crap. Well, well done, monsieur.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Man, two degrees. That's a lot of work.

Jordan Harbinger: A little pedagogical menage a trois. I like it. Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I like it. Meanwhile, he's over there like, "Uh, I studied Cantonese, but okay."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But now they want to pay off all of my remaining student loans.

Jordan Harbinger: What is going on here? So just to be clear-

Gabriel Mizrahi: They now want to pay for two bachelor's degrees, including the devil's microbiology degree. At least one and a half, because it sounds like he paid for half of the other one.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Okay. These parents are all over [00:47:00] the place. What is going on here?

Gabriel Mizrahi: On top of this, I've been having increasingly severe GI health problems and mild leg, shoulder, and back problems.

I'd been meeting with doctors about the GI problems for years trying to treat them, but it wasn't until my mom casually dropped the fact that I had a birth defect in conversation with me recently at age 31 that I learned about it.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Okay.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That information could have saved me years of medical appointments and explains the illnesses that have plagued me since childhood and that my parents always blew off as, quote-unquote, "Just being a hypochondriac. Because they never into young adulthood, I haven't told them anything about these latest health problems.

Should I even stay in contact with my parents? Signed, Hoping you could take a good look at how much effort I should put into staying close with my tricky rents who cling to the Good Book.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, this story makes me sad. That's awful.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The not believing him when he was sick as a little kid just kills me.

Jordan Harbinger: When they knew he had [00:48:00] a birth defect, so that just seems cruel to me. This is neglect bordering on low-key abuse in my opinion. And meanwhile, their child is having, like, stomach aches and IBS, and no one can figure out why. This is so ridiculous and terrible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: To be fair, if you don't believe in science, maybe you also don't believe in birth defects causing things.

Like, I don't know. I'm just trying to imagine why they... Maybe they are just so confused and ignorant, as you put it, that they didn't even make the connection between the two. I don't know. You know, Jordan, I'm obviously thinking about our friend from last week, the guy who experienced steroid-induced psychosis and mania and was wondering whether to tell his kids about his health stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, my mind went there, too. I, I think this letter makes a great case for telling your kids everything about their medical histories and their genes because look what can happen when they don't know the full story. His life would've been so much easier, at least in the, with respect to the doctors and the medical stuff.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I get why he's angry, man. I do.

Jordan Harbinger: I do. Yeah, I do, too. They've done two huge things that at best did him a great disservice and at worst [00:49:00] caused real harm to him throughout his life. Certainly a lot of stress and discomfort, and God knows what else is happening around those conversations and what other things they did or didn't do.

So yeah, I understand why all this has left him with some difficult feelings towards his parents, for sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Although their latest generosity with the student loans is interesting. Like, what is that about?

Jordan Harbinger: Look, to be fair, we don't know what that's about. Maybe they realized they were being unreasonable before, or maybe they feel bad about not telling him about the birth defect, and this is, like, reparations.

Or maybe they're just being kind because they know they have extra money. I don't know.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's just a very curious move after pulling that bait and switch on the loan repayment.

Jordan Harbinger: And given their strong feelings about science, maybe those have changed. I don't know. So I, oh, I totally understand your anger, and I don't think that that alone means you should cut off your parents.

I totally understand the impulse. Do I? You're mad. They frustrate you. You want distance. You want them to know that they hurt you. I get all of that. My question for you is, what would cutting them off accomplish for you? Would it prevent them from causing any additional [00:50:00] or ongoing harm, serious harm at this point in your life?

Because That's really the only reason to completely stop talking to a parent. If it's just about, you know, sticking it to them or punishing them for all this stuff in the past or trying to communicate something to them without actually coming out and saying it, I'd say then it's probably not warranted and it's not really going to help matters ultimately.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I completely agree with that. I think your real question is what do I do now with this very reasonable anger I feel toward my parents?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. And there are a few things you could do. You could sit with it for a while, make room for it, try to accept it, see if that shifts anything in your relationship with them.

You could take it into therapy, which as we all know is the work of the devil, but still talk about it with a professional, unpack this childhood, which like I said, was probably full of formative stuff like this. Or you could sit down with your parents and say something like, "Mom, Dad, I really appreciate you offering to pay off my student loans.

Very generous of you. It's going to be a huge help. I also feel like I need to talk to you about some things that have been challenging in our relationship, namely the fact [00:51:00] that you didn't tell me about this birth defect when you knew I was suffering from these symptoms for decades. I can't wrap.

I'm angry about that. I'm disappointed, I'm hurt, and I want to ask you, why didn't you tell me sooner? Do you understand what an impact that's had on my life? Just see if there's any conversation to be had there. And maybe they'll be like, "Well, we didn't think it mattered. You can't hold that against us.

Tough kishka." Or maybe they'll be like, "You're right. That was wrong. We feel awful about it, and we have for years, and we're really sorry." It's impossible to predict, but when you're ready, I do think it's worth a shot at this conversation.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I love the idea that these Southern Baptists might say, "Tough kishka," but aside from that, I think that's exactly the- Yeah, probably not

that's the right approach. I guess that's a question for him, though. What outcomes does he want? Does he want them to acknowledge how they've hurt him? Does he just want to discharge this anger that he feels? Does he want an apology from them?

Jordan Harbinger: And if they do give him an apology, is that going to help?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm sure it would help to some degree if they really meant it.

Potentially quite a bit, who knows. But it's [00:52:00] not going to take away all these years that he was in distress or confusion because he didn't know he had a birth defect. It's not going to give him the science degree he wanted to get at 18 or 22 or whatever. It's not going to reduce his student loan balance, even if they do pick up the tab.

I suspect that even in a world where they really engage with him, listen, and apologize, he's still going to struggle with some of this to some degree, which is understandable. These parents did a number on him in a couple big ways, even if they do say the words, "We're sorry."

Jordan Harbinger: The apology could go a long way, but you're right.

It doesn't really fix everything or anything, overnight especially.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It can be powerful to hear those words, but I guess what I'm appreciating is that their power might be mostly making it that much easier for him to forgive them and accept, but forgiveness and acceptance can be painful, too, right? It hurts.

Jordan Harbinger: No, yeah, there's grief either way.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So how does he work through that grief? How does he work through this anger? How does he learn to live with them? That's the question.

Jordan Harbinger: Agreed, and I will say, though, being able to get angry at the right people, and it does sound like his parents are the right people here, [00:53:00] well-

Gabriel Mizrahi: That does help, for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It does. As opposed to stuffing the anger down or taking it out on people who don't deserve it or turning it against yourself, being able to say to his parents, "Mom, Dad, I love you. I appreciate all the good things you've done, and I'm really fricking angry about this thing and that thing, and I know you can't undo it now, but I need to express that."

I mean, there's conversation to be had here, and I think that might be pretty powerful.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which, by the way, is one more reason to not cut them off.

Jordan Harbinger: Good point. His anger wants to say, pull away from these people. That'll show them. But I would say you might actually want to get closer to them by taking this anger to them, when you're ready of course, and just see what's possible.

Could go either way, but you don't really know until you try. And whatever you get back, that's only going to help you get clear on what kind of relationship with your parents is possible and how you want to work through these feelings, and then you can decide whether your contact with them needs to change.

I'm very sorry your parents made these decisions. I hate that it's impacted your life in all these ways, but here is the good news. You didn't let [00:54:00] it stop you from pursuing a degree that you actually cared about, which says a lot about you. That is awesome. And you now have a great opportunity to understand yourself better, learn to express some difficult facts, take a big step in your relationship with your parents.

Not easy, but it is powerful. Whatever you get back, it's going to be progress. So good luck, bud. Sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. By the way, you can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Please keep your emails concise. Try to use descriptive subject lines. That makes our job a whole lot easier.

If you're struggling to find a place in your family, you're having an existential crisis after going through a life-changing breakup, or you're debating whether to tell your children about your complicated health history, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

We're here to help, and we keep every email anonymous. All right, next up.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Hey guys. You always say document, document, document, but when it comes to recording people, my understanding is that you cannot record someone without the other person's consent, but you could record someone in secret and then write [00:55:00] things down to be more accurate in your documentation, or you could arrange a meeting with a person and hide another person nearby who overhears everything that you both say, or like Dark Jordan, you could record the conversation and give the recording to another trusted party who might say that they were there.

Jordan Harbinger: Just to be clear, I would never advise anyone to do that, even as Dark Jordan, but sure, a person with no scruples who was willing to take a huge risk could do something like that, of course.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You realize you are describing Dark Jordan when you say that, but- Mm ... I take your

Jordan Harbinger: point.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Mm-hmm. But I'm still confused about what's legal and not legal when it comes to documenting.

Is it legal to record people without their consent or not? What is the whole one party and two party consent thing in the United States, and how real is that? What other ways, legal or not so legal, are there to catch a criminal or reveal a bad person's behavior? Signed, hoping to compliment my grasp of document, document, document with a legal inoculant from how it works in the [00:56:00] occident.

Jordan Harbinger: Good questions. I also appreciate the chance to brush up on this stuff. It's important to document things legally, so I'm glad you wrote in. We wanted to get an expert to help us here, so we reached out to attorney and friend of the show Corbin Payne.

And the first thing Corbin explained was this whole one-party consent versus two-party consent thing, it's called that to distinguish it from something like a wiretap or a bug where nobody knows they're being recorded. Wiretaps or bugs are generally illegal absent a warrant. So a one-party state is a state that allows somebody who is part of the conversation to record the conversation.

You don't need to have the other party's consent to record. In that scenario, you are the one party who needs to consent to it. That's it.e-party state. So is Texas, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, a bunch of others. Two-party states, on the other hand, they say that everyone involved has to consent to being recorded, not just two people in a multi-party [00:57:00] conversation, but everybody.

California, where we all are right now, well, that's where Gabe is. I'm in China, where I'm pretty sure the government is recording everything everyone says all the time with zero consent, privacy laws, LOL. California is a two-party state. So are Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, and a bunch of others.

In other words, in a one-party state, you can usually record your own phone call without telling the other person. In a two-party state, you need to say something like, "Just so you know, I'm recording this conversation." Now, Corbin said that all of this is largely controlled by state law. Every state has different rules around this.

For example, some states treat recording phone calls and recording in-person conversations differently. Also, if you're recording a phone call in a one-party state and the other person is in a two-party state, you might be breaking the two-party state's laws, and this gets a little complicated, but the best practice there is follow the stricter law.

And the reason you want to do that is states often disagree about whose law should govern. Analyzing conflicts between states can get messy, [00:58:00] and the downside of guessing wrong, that can get bad. Also, Corbin said that even if it's legal to record someone, you obviously can't then use those recordings to commit a crime or a tort.

So Corbin gave us an example. He might have a right in Tennessee to record me without my consent, but he can't then turn around and use that audio to hack into my bank account, which is a crime, or to deceptively make it look like I'm dissing one of my sponsors, which could be a tort.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also, keep in mind, these laws are not just about whether a recording can be taken to the police or used in a trial down the line.

They're about whether making the recording is legal in the first place.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Those are two separate issues.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So I would definitely research your state laws before you record anything. The more you dig into this stuff, and this is the other thing we learned from Corbin, the more nuanced and complicated it becomes.

But Corbin did cut through the complexity really well. He said, in two-party states, you just kind of need to assume that it's a crime to make recordings like this without somebody's consent. And if you do make a recording without someone's consent, Corbin said that [00:59:00] in all likelihood, you're not going to be able to bring it into a civil case, generally speaking, and you generally cannot bring illegally seized evidence into a criminal case.

But, and this is a perfect example of the nuance in practice, if the illegally seized evidence were seized by a private individual, meaning the state didn't ask the person to record it and the state didn't seek the recording out, then Corbin said that in many states, that could actually be admissible in a criminal trial against the subject of the recording. The person might have committed a crime and could theoretically be charged for that crime, which is super interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: Again, this stuff gets increasingly nuanced in practice. As for your other creative ideas, Corbin said that secretly recording a conversation for use in transcribing notes with no intention of disclosing the recording, that probably still breaks the law in two-party consent states. You might not be caught if you never disclose that you did it, but that doesn't change its legality.

Having someone hide to secretly spy [01:00:00] on the convo, interesting sitcom-like situation. Uh, Corbin actually said that that's likely not illegal, but if the details ever end up in court, he said a good lawyer is going to try to use the spying to portray you and/or the witness as secretive and sneaky and possibly a little unhinged, which, hey, that might work, it might not, but it won't be pretty, and that could chip away at the reliability of the evidence.

Now, writing down notes of a conversation soon after the conversation occurred, that's referred to as a contemporaneous note or contemporaneous document, and that is a great practice. The existence of that document doesn't necessarily establish that the conversation happened as the document claims, but Corbin said that it does tend to create a record of your claims about a conversation close in time to when that conversation occurred, which can make a difference.

Corbin actually shared a couple of interesting examples of how this kind of documentation can play out. So remember the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh a few years ago, the Supreme Court justice who was accused of sexually assaulting a classmate in high [01:01:00] school? He and his supporters, they noted a lack of witnesses and very little contemporaneous documentation of the assault, and you could argue that that's one reason the accusation didn't do more damage to his nomination.

Obviously not the only reason. There was a lot going on in and around those proceedings, but that certainly didn't help. And then you have somebody like Roy Moore, that former judge in Alabama. He ran for Senate in 2017, and his campaign was derailed when he was accused by numerous women of sexual assault when they were minors and he was an adult.

So several of his accusers, they had solid contemporaneous documentation showing their stories had remained consistent in the time since, and that played a big role in why he lost that race, because it's just so much more credible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So taking contemporaneous notes obviously doesn't prove on its own that what you're documenting is 100% true.

It wouldn't be slam dunk, airtight proof of something in a trial, for example, but it can make a huge difference.

Jordan Harbinger: Especially after a lot of time has passed.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Especially after a lot of time has passed, and also especially [01:02:00] outside of a courtroom, like in the media, for example, or I don't know, in a corporate investigation, in a family dispute.

This kind of documentation can do a lot of work.

Jordan Harbinger: In Corbin's opinion, though, the best method of documentation is what's affectionately referred to as the CYA letter, the CYA email, the CYA text, whatever form it takes. The idea here is basically after a conversation, you send the other party a summary of what you discussed.

Corbin said it's generally best if you frame the message as your attempt to ensure that you understood their position or in order to ask a question. If the person denies your restatement or they clarify a point or two, then at least you know everyone is now on the same page. If they don't deny and they don't clarify, Corbin said that that's usually taken as an implicit admission that they agree with the characterization of the conversation.

So I love this idea. I think it's clean, it's efficient, it's respectful, it doesn't break or bend any laws, and it creates a paper trail and an opportunity for the other party to confirm or deny implicitly [01:03:00] or explicitly. Also, Apple Messages and some email programs, they show read receipts, and that can be a part of the paper trail, too.

You could take screenshots of that and save it. So that's what I'd recommend in addition to any legal recordings of key conversations you want to make. Big thanks to Corbin for his wisdom here. I hope that helps. You and everyone else listening, document, document, document. It's so important, but document legally.

Also, in case y'all didn't know, there's a subreddit for the show. If you want with other listeners and us about episodes or anything having to do with the show. That's over there on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. All right. Now we'd like to ask your consent to share some criminally good deals on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. If you liked and found our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is to take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All of the deals and discounts are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals.

If you can't find it, the code's not working, email us: [01:04:00] Jordan@jordanharbinger.com. We're happy to dig up codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of Feedback Friday. All right, now for the recommendation of the week..

Lip Filla Clip: I am addicted to lip filler.

Jordan Harbinger: My recommendation of the week is a shoe brand called Danner.

They make these rugged boots for hiking, work, hunting, that are super high quality and also quite stylish. Depending on the shoe, I've got hiking shoes, whatever those are. They're hiking boots without the high top. They're big on durability, repairability, traditional craftsmanship. A lot of their flagship boots, the heavy duty leather ones, they're re-craftable, which means that the soles and components can be replaced rather than throwing the boots away, which I love and I- which is just generally a great practice in this era of buy cheap crap, it lasts six months, throw it away, now it's someone else's problem.

I own the Trail 2650 GTX model and the 2650 without Gore-Tex. That's what GTX is. It's a hiking shoe, like I [01:05:00] said. They have a big product range, all kinds of shoes. They're really great. Some might say they're a little dad mode, but they are perfect and they last forever. I've had these trail shoes for a while, since the beginning of this year.

I took them to Saudi Arabia and everything, and they still look new, which is kind of insane. I've taken them into all kinds of situations. They're slightly dirty, but otherwise new looking. And I bought the Gore-Tex ones because these aren't waterproof, and I just, I love them. And every time I see any outdoorsy person, they're often like, "Oh, Danner.

Oh, those are the best shoes I've ever owned." I mean, it's just, it's like one of those things that if you know, you know. So Danner shoes, we're a big fan, and we'll link to them in the show notes. All right, next up.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So about three years ago, we took a letter from a woman who found out that her brother-in-law had secretly recorded her with a hidden camera years earlier and later used the images and the videos to try to blackmail her into having sex with him.

You remember this story?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, dude. Oh God, of course. Such a crazy story. So this was the guy who was like, "I'm going to show all your colleagues these videos of you changing or whatever in your [01:06:00] room if you don't sleep with me." Didn't he leave a flash drive with a note in her underwear drawer or something?

Oh, yeah. Extra creepy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's right. He di- so gross. Interestingly, given the previous question, he ended up admitting what he had done on a phone call that she recorded, and she and her boyfriend took that recording along with a bunch of other evidence they gathered, which I think also included a laptop that his sister helped them obtain.

They brought all of that to the police.

Jordan Harbinger: Amazing. I'm so glad they did that. So also, interesting detail, like you said, given the previous question, great example of when to record someone without them knowing, consequences be damned.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, exactly. So the police did open an investigation, but they moved extremely slowly.

I think the investigation went on for, like, more than a year, and meanwhile, this guy was just walking around and it was driving her mad.

Jordan Harbinger: And then her sister stayed with this creep, right? I mean, she didn't even divorce him. And then she stayed with him.

Yeah. Ugh.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Which left our friend feeling betrayed and hurt and very concerned for her sister's safety as well.

Yeah. Also, when she told their mom that she was [01:07:00] pressing charges against her brother-in-law, her mom turned on her as well, which was a whole other part of the story.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. She was like, "You should really think about what you're doing and how it affects other people." Unbelievable. I think we all lost our minds when we saw that in the letter.

I mean, that was just nuts.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Ugh. She felt that she lost her sister and her mom to this whole situation, which is just so sad. In the end, though, her sister did finally divorce this guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, thank goodness. Sheesh.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And over a year later, the police finally contacted her to move forward with pressing charges and an arrest warrant and all of that.

Her brother-in-law was arrested but then later released, but they did schedule a pretrial hearing. And so the last time we heard from her, she was weighing the question of whether to support a plea deal for her brother-in-law or push for a trial in the event that they ask for the victim's input.

Jordan Harbinger: If he went to trial, the detective said he could walk free, although Corbin Payne was like, "Eh, if you have a recording of him admitting to doing this, there's a pretty low chance of that happening."

Gabriel Mizrahi: On the other hand, the detective said that since her abuser didn't have a criminal record, his punishment might be relatively light, but at least a [01:08:00] plea deal would guarantee that he doesn't get away with this completely.

Jordan Harbinger: I hate that the system can let pieces of crap like this just get off, but I guess that's how it works.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Anyway, if you want to go back and follow this story from the very beginning, it began on episode 796. It is quite a ride. So our friend just wrote in again, and her letter goes, "Hey, guys, this has been quite a journey." It took over three years to get some kind of closure since I found out I was being recorded back in August 2022 after a trip to Mexico.

There have been over a dozen court dates over the years. The first hearing I went to was to share my victim impact statement. I had planned to read it myself, but as I approached the courtroom, I noticed that my brother-in-law, let's call him Jay, was already sitting outside waiting. I froze. I was trembling and hid behind the first pillar I could find.

I wanted the ground to open up beneath my feet and swallow me whole. I never want him to lay eyes on me again. Luckily, my partner had come with me, so I felt protected. Ultimately, though, [01:09:00] his lawyer didn't show, so the hearing was rescheduled.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Why do I get the feeling he met his lawyer in the drunk tank or something?

Sheesh. Didn't show?

Gabriel Mizrahi: But I did speak with the state attorney about my case. I was told that Jay would get a deal and likely not serve prison time since he doesn't have a criminal record. But I was reassured that he would have to register as a sex offender, which would ruin his life. There was uncertainty about my order of protection being renewed since he hadn't done anything else after.

I don't know how long he had been recording me, and that bothers me. Based on photo and video evidence, I could only pinpoint dates after my 18th birthday. In a way, we had hoped that he had started recording me sooner so his charges would be worse. Fast-forward to February 17th, 2026, just a few months ago.

Before the hearing, I discussed the case with the state attorney again and provided my updated victim impact statement, which the attorney would read for me. They told me that Jay will serve three months in jail, but that he's being [01:10:00] allowed to break up his time so that he can keep his job. I think because of his daughter.

Oh yeah, he knocked someone up while he was still married to my sister.

Jordan Harbinger: Why does that not surprise me at all? This guy, man, what a loser.

Gabriel Mizrahi: He was cheating on her the entire time with sex workers and who knows who else, and gave her an STD. He mistreated my sister in many other ways, but I digress.

Jordan Harbinger: This is Feedback Friday, sis.

There ain't no such thing as digress. We're, we're, we are sipping this piping hot tea over here. I know it's not the main point, but my God, this guy is a mess. I am so sorry for what he did to your sister and to you. Th- wow, this guy. Unbelievable.

Gabriel Mizrahi: He also needs to undergo sex offender counseling, and he'll be on probation after serving his time.

Jordan Harbinger: Good. It should've been worse probably, but good. And Gabe, I'm, I'm trying to imagine going to your boss and being like, "Oh, so I need to adjust my schedule a little bit." What

Gabriel Mizrahi: would you do? Unpaid parking tickets or-

Jordan Harbinger: Oh [01:11:00] yeah, no, no, it's no big deal. It's no big deal. What I, I, so on Tuesdays I can't work nights ''because I've go to sex offender counseling, and if I don't go I'm going to lose my plea deal that I have for recording my sister-in-law naked in her room and then trying to use it to blackmail her to have sex with me.

But then also I need three weeks off at the end of this because I'm going to be in jail, kind of also related to that. And then I'm going to be in jail again in a few months after that, and then I'm going to be in jail again a few months after that. But then after that I'm clear. I could totally work Saturdays.

You know, whatever you need, Bill. I'm, I, I'm all yours.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You don't want to adjust your schedule for me? C- just do it for my daughter. Oh, you and your wife have a daugh- no, no, no. It's actually not with my daughter .

Jordan Harbinger: No, it's with a prostitute that I knocked up when I was y- having sex with sex workers unprotected while I was still married.

Anyway, I'll see you on Friday. 6:00 PM sharp.

Gabriel Mizrahi: To be fair, we don't actually know who the mother of that child is, but I take your point completely. What a mess this situation is. So she goes on, "I sent my partner to check out the courtroom in the meantime. He returned to tell me that Jay was already in the [01:12:00] courtroom sitting right next to the door.

I was terrified to be within his eyeline again. I didn't know if I could do it. To try. Acting as a barrier, I entered the courtroom and sat in the same row on the opposite side, as close to the wall as possible. I basically hid behind my partner the entire time, peeking over his shoulder as J made his way up to the podium.

The judge began to read his sentence and asked J if he pled guilty. Each time he spoke, the judge had to tell him to speak up because no one could hear him. Regarding the sex offender counseling, the judge said, quote, "I think it would benefit society at large and yourself if you receive that counseling.

I want it hanging over your head that if you mess that up in any way, you will be facing 10 years in prison." unquote. J is ultimately not being registered as a sex offender, so that was disappointing.

Jordan Harbinger: Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. After what he did? Geez.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's interesting. We actually ran this by Corbin Payne when we spoke with him about the previous question because I thought he would be interested.

He [01:13:00] consulted on your last letter, of course, and he was also pissed that this guy isn't on the registry and he's only doing three months in jail after everything he put you through. But Corbin said something really interesting. He said that he's represented people who did a lot less than J and got a lot worse, and that is always frustrating to Corbin.

But also Corbin said he gets so frustrated representing people like our friend here, people who are trying to get orders of protection, trying to motivate the state to bring charges for this kind of stuff, and he said that it's often a slog. And his theory about this is there's not a lotta money in prosecuting complex cases like this.

But in his view, there is a lotta money to be made in these quick, easy to prove drug cases, so they push those all day.

Jordan Harbinger: And yeah, this is one of Corbin's big gripes with the criminal justice system.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Mm-hmm. The way he put it to us is they'll handle a million marijuana cases gleefully, but trying to get them to look at a sexual exploitation or a blackmail case is just kind of beyond the pale a lot of the time.

Jordan Harbinger: He would know better than us because he works in the system. But i- if that's true, it's just, eh, [01:14:00] so infuriating. It, it's America I guess, right, with the marijuana obsession.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So she goes on, "But my order of protection was renewed through August 2028. This was a relief as my request for renewal had been denied previously."

Jordan Harbinger: Great news. I do hope that gives you some comfort. "

Gabriel Mizrahi: The judge continued, and my statement was read aloud. Afterward, the judge asked J if there was anything he would like to say to me. He whispered 'No.'" The judge said, quote, "I just want to point out the stark difference between you and the victim. She took the time to write a lengthy statement, which takes bravery, and you have nothing to say.

You are a coward," unquote. It was super validating.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Way to go, Judge. I like that. He's right, of course. This guy is a complete mess of a human and a complete wimp. I mean, he is just a, a gum on the bottom of your shoe kind of guy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Jay sat back down in his original seat, which then made it uncomfortable to leave.

As I was wondering how I was going to exit, the judge noticed and asked the bailiff to remove Jay from the courtroom [01:15:00] and hold him in the room next door while we left. He even offered to escort us out. I found that thoughtful on his part, and that made me feel safer throughout the ordeal.

Jordan Harbinger: Loving this judge.

Sounds like a solid person. Like, a really empathetic judge.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It was intense for me, but I'm so proud that I stayed. Despite my case coming to a close, I continue to deal with the aftermath and am afraid that I'm forever changed. In addition to post-traumatic stress disorder from my mom's abuse, I now have PTSD from the combination of what Jay did to me and having been raped all those years ago.

At the time, I hadn't processed it as rape, so this incident brought up the pain I had buried from that assault, forcing me to process it for what it was. The PTSD includes paranoia about men in general, being home alone, being stalked, being raped, nightmares, and heightened anxiety with my existing generalized anxiety disorder.

I have a hard time going out in public without my partner out of fear that I might run into Jay or any [01:16:00] unsavory men for that matter.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, I'm so sorry, my friend. I hate that these people left you with these feelings. It's just awful.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So terrible. So she goes on. My mom kicked me out after the big fight we had when she said that I should really think about what I'm doing and how it affects people.

This led to my partner graciously deciding to move in together sooner than we had planned to avoid me living in my car again. Although I feel safer living outside of the scene of the crime, I'm still not at home in my own home. I'm haunted by my experiences with men in many ways still. Insignificant things like the shadow of my coat rack at night, my partner pulling me into him while I sleep, and certain kinds of TV content trigger my PTSD.

My brain has been reacting to a danger that is both everywhere and nowhere. I wonder if I'll ever know peace.

Jordan Harbinger: So intense and so sad. This is really tough.

Gabriel Mizrahi: A danger that is both everywhere and nowhere. That is a... Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. So tough.

Jordan Harbinger: Like a [01:17:00] phantasm that's also very real. This poor gal.

Gabriel Mizrahi: As much as I hate to admit it, this situation has repaired my relationship with my sister. We weren't close growing up because of my mom's narcissistic dynamic. I have a lot of guilt about how I treated her growing up, and that shame stopped me from having a relationship with her. Her poor choice in men gave me a reason to be hurt by her, and she felt ashamed about that, which took down the barrier I had put up.

It hurts to know how my sister was treated by her pathetic excuse of a partner, but I don't think I would've grown close with her if it weren't for the awful relationship that she was in.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, that is fascinating. This stuff is so complicated, eh?

Gabriel Mizrahi: This situation has altered my life in unexpected ways, but I am ultimately grateful for the adversity and the catalyst for change.

Signed, still in awe of the flaws in the law that did finally stop my brother-in-law, and in need of relief from all the harm he unleashed, but grateful for faithful help from all angles and the [01:18:00] evolution from this solution, including this absolution with my sister after years of dissolution, which in the end is its own kind of restitution.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I bet it is. What an update.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Isn't this wild? This is such an insane- Yeah ... Story. through so much.

Jordan Harbinger: It's just an extraordinary thing to go through. The fact that this was her life is just-

Gabriel Mizrahi: Surreal, dude.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, surreal. It's got to be so surreal. To go to court and face your abuser, who was your sister's husband, has just got to be some kind of out-of-body experience.

Very intense. She has been through some shit. Whew. Well, let me start by saying, as per ushe, I am deeply sorry that you went through any of this. The sextortion from somebody in your own family, the fact that this guy didn't get, like, two years for what he did, that he doesn't have to notify anybody that he moves next to that he's a dangerous sex offender, all the tension with your sister leading up to this because of this, this painful mother that you've had, the earlier assault, how the stuff with your brother-in-law brought it all back up.

This is more than anybody should ever have to go through, and I can hear how these traumas have [01:19:00] stacked up, how they've left you with a lot of very painful thoughts and feelings, and I'm just very deeply sorry about all of it. It- I'm also incredibly proud of you. I'm proud of you for how you've moved through this insane period of your life, that you survived it.

I'm proud of you for writing a victim impact statement and showing up to court for it to be read to this creep. That takes real vulnerability and real courage. And I'm proud of you for staying open to a new phase of your relationship with your sister after everything you guys have been through. I mean, this, none of this is easy at all.

Hearing from you now., my overwhelming feeling is, man, what a remarkable person. What a strong person. What an adaptive person. A lot of people who experience what you've experienced, they crumble. You know? They, they can't leave the house. They cut themselves off from other people completely, and understandably so.

Complex trauma does a number on a person. But you haven't done that. I hear you loud and clear. The legacy of all this is very real. The world feels unsafe. These wounds are still open. But you have a partner. You've moved in together. You're still [01:20:00] participating in the world. You've participated in this case.

You're talking to your sister. I think you said in one of your earlier letters that you're in therapy. These are all huge victories for somebody who's been through what you've been through. And Gabe, when she said, "Despite my case coming to a close, I'm afraid that I'm forever changed," I mean, that, that really got me.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I know. I got a little chill and my heart sank. All of this has, God, it's just so formative for her. It's hard to imagine being the same person on the other side.

Jordan Harbinger: And she's probably right about that. Obviously, if these things hadn't happened, she would be a different person. A- and that's true for all of us, right?

We're all shaped by our traumas. Big T traumas, little T traumas. But what I want to encourage her to keep in mind, and I say this with a lot of humility because y- you know, I, I haven't been through anything like what you've been through, and I'm not you. But I want you to make room for the idea that your mom, your assailant, your ex-brother-in-law, all of this, they have shaped you profoundly.t have to define you.

And I know that sounds a little trite, but what I mean by that is, [01:21:00] yes, these terrible things happened, but they will never, never be bigger than you are. And they can't, because you are by definition bigger than they are because you contain these experiences. They don't contain you. The other thing I mean by this is, as life goes on and you talk about these events and you process them, which you're already clearly doing, they will take on a new quality.

They have to. That's the beauty of sharing your story, of applying what you've learned in your life. These events don't, they don't get stuck. They don't remain fixed. They morph. And the things they morph into, the experiences they make possible, I'm talking about experiences of yourself, but also experiences out in the world, new friendships, new collaborations, meaningful conversations, new career paths or callings.

Those experiences are part of the healing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Man, so true. Well said. I think in a lot of ways they are the healing, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. They shift the felt quality of the trauma, too. It's not just pain anymore. It's pain plus all of these other things. And some days the pain might be [01:22:00] very acute. Some days the pain might be very quiet.

That's okay, too. But over time, I really do believe that these gifts, which are born from something that no person would ever ask for, they really do change the equation for people. We hear about it all the time. I've seen it in my own life in a smaller way. We're basically talking about post-traumatic growth.

I'm also very heartened by a lot of the resources that are out there now for healing from trauma between talk therapy and EMDR and somatic approaches and support groups and psychedelic-assisted therapy and ketamine, not to mention all the books and podcasts out there and just the general conversation around trauma.

There are so many people to learn from and so many places to grow. And I would obviously encourage you to seek out as many of these resources as are helpful to you. You don't need to make it your job, but if you need more help, as you're ready, I would look into all the available options that speak to you.

So that's another reason that I'm hopeful that this won't define you. PTSD says you should be afraid all the time because these threats are here, and they're here now. But what researchers [01:23:00] and experts are learning is that our brains are very vulnerable to these events, but they also have the ability to reprocess these memories, put them in the right place in our minds, rewire themselves to have a different experience of the world.

They need help doing that a lot of the time, which is, you know, it's kind of miraculous and inspiring and very possible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It is truly miraculous, and I'm so glad you said all of that. That's really beautifully put, Jordan. I think this experience with her sister is a beautiful example of what you were just talking about.

They have had problems since they were kids. We don't know exactly why. Apparently, it's related to Mom and the family dynamics they were raised with. And to her credit, she's acknowledging that she participated in that difficult relationship. These things so young, it, it's not even anybody's fault because children don't understand the water in which they swim until they're much older, and these patterns and dynamics get cemented and you're just kind of playing them out as an adult.

And for that reason, I really feel for her and her sister., sticking with her husband even after she found out what he did to her [01:24:00] sister, that is incredibly painful. Although again, also to our friend's credit, she knew that that probably said more about her sister's trauma than it did about her sister's true feelings about her.

And just that empathy, that ability to see this situation from multiple angles, even when she was the primary victim here, is such a beautiful quality, and I think it's a quality that is going to make it a lot easier for her to find new meanings in all of this. But the fact that this whole situation has, in such a strange way, repaired her relationship with her sister, that is just remarkable to me, and that is part of the bounty that you were just describing.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Isn't that something? I did not see that twist coming at all.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I did not see it. I thought they were done for, to be honest, because that is, that is a complicate- Like, how do you come back from that?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But she only shared a tiny bit with us, so we don't know the full story, but it sounds like their respective guilt and shame put a lot of distance between them over a long period of time.

That's changing.

Jordan Harbinger: It's such a hard dynamic to rewrite. It's almost impossible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Almost impossible [01:25:00] without something this extreme. For her sister, I'm assuming, to go, "Oh, okay. I have made some huge mistakes. I need to look at some of this stuff in myself, and I need to make things right with my sister." Or simultaneously for our friend to go, "I need to put this anger aside and try to meet my sister with even more compassion."

I'm not sure how it all went down, but clearly the last three years forced them to talk to each other in a different way, and that has allowed for something new to develop between them. I just find that so incredibly touching. It's not that getting her sister back makes the sextortion she went through desirable or okay in any way, but the sextortion weirdly made getting her sister back possible, and I just find it fascinating that, like, that's the paradox.

You know? That's the mysterious math of trauma sometimes.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, she said it best. She's ultimately grateful for all this adversity and the fact that it led to all this change. The fact that she's arrived at that view so quickly, again, pretty remarkable. If she were still enraged and going like, "What the hell?

I..." You know, "I can't [01:26:00] believe..." I wouldn't blame her one bit. But here she is just a few months after facing her sextortionist in court, and she's already saying, "I'm grateful for what this experience has given me." If that doesn't speak to our capacity for growth and perspective and meaning-making, her capacity specifically, but an experience that's available to all of us, I don't know what does.

It, it's really something. And by the way, this is the least important part of her story, but that recording she made where he confessed to recording and blackmailing her, I'm going to guess that was a crucial piece of evidence in her case. But given the previous question, it's an interesting example of how these recording laws work in practice.

We talked to Corbin about that, too, and we asked him, "Hey, if our friend here happens to live in a two-party state," which would mean she can't just record a call with somebody without telling them, "how did that go down with the police?" And Corbin's response was, "If she does live in a two-party state., she could have taken this to the cops and she herself could have been charged with the crime of making an illegal recording, and Jay could have been charged with several crimes.[01:27:00]

Ironically, one of those crimes would be also making illegal recording in addition to extortion and all that. But Corbin said that under the circumstances, he doesn't know a prosecutor who's going to have the temerity to charge somebody like her for a crime when she's been victimized this badly. He said he wouldn't put it past some prosecutor somewhere, but politically speaking, any prosecutor who would prosecute somebody like her for an illegal recording without at least also prosecuting him, they would just be begging for an uproar and negative news coverage.

And that makes me happy to hear. Of course, if she lives in a one-party state, then probably none of this would be an issue at all. But anyway, kudos to you, my friend. You've been through some of the worst stuff a person can go through. My heart aches for you, and you're growing massively because of it, and that's your gift to enjoy.

Thank you for keeping us updated on your story, and thank you for taking it all on with courage and grace. We're sending you a huge hug and wishing you all the best. Go back and check out our episode with Dr. William Lee and our Skeptical Sunday on tipflation if you haven't heard those yet. The best things that have happened in my [01:28:00] life and business have come through my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust.

I'm teaching you how to do the same thing for yourself in our Six Minute Networking course. It's 100% free. It's not gross, it's not schmoozy, and you can find it on the Thinkific platform at sixminutenetworking.com. The drills take a few minutes a day. Really wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. Dig the well before you get thirsty, folks.

Build relationships before you need them. You can find it all at sixminutenetworking.com. Show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, ways to support the show also on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm @jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Gabe is on Instagram @gabrielmizrahi.

This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tadas Sidlauskas, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and I was never a good lawyer. So consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show.

Ditto Corbin Payne. He's a good lawyer, but he's not your lawyer. Remember, we rise by lifting [01:29:00] others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of 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.

An AI chatbot will listen without judgment, agree without hesitation, and stay with you all night. But for some users, that comforting loop has ended in obsession, delusion, and tragedy.

Kashmir Hill: Tell me, how do you use ChatGPT, and how often do you use it? These chatbots have very serious psychological effects on their users. Men tend to have STEM delusions. They believe that they've invented something like a mathematical theory or solved climate change, and women tend to have spiritual delusions.

They believe that they have met an entity through this or that spirits are real. There's these really extreme cases. Suicide is extreme. These kind of mental breakdowns are extreme, like believing that spirits are real or that you live in the Matrix. I've now [01:30:00] written about two people who have died after getting really addicted, involved with AI chatbots.

OpenAI has built safeguards into these products, like there's certain things they're not supposed to do. But what we have discovered is that in a long conversation, when you're talking to it for a really long time, the kind of wheels come off of these chatbots and they start doing really unpredictable things.

These companies can't actually control what it says. It's just word associating to you, and sometimes that is really messing with people's brains. I think that we need to be a lot more skeptical of what's coming out of these chatbots, and people need to understand they're not oracles. They're not telling you superhuman intelligent thoughts.

They are word prediction machines and are really good at that. Please don't trust them too much. They'll betray you.

Jordan Harbinger: To hear more about how easily the spiral of AI psychosis can begin, check out episode 1227 of The Jordan Harbinger [01:31:00] Show.