1391: Punish or Praise the Budding Hacker You Raised? | Feedback Friday

Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the chocolate flakes on this foamy cortado of life advice, Gabriel Mizrahi.

Do they actually, do they put chocolate flakes on a cortado? I'm not even sure I know what a cortado is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Me either. They do at Starbucks, if you pay them enough, I'm sure. Ah, Starbucks, the true Italian experience.

That's right. Also, I don't think cortados are foamy. I think that, I think you're thinking of a cappuccino.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, but I wanted to say something more Italian sounding than cappuccino since we've written that here. Taddo, Chino. Taddo, Chino.

We have fancy coffee here on the show and you'd inflate, son.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Old cortatio and cappappuccino over here.

Jordan Harbinger: Your pseudo-Italian drive, drive time shock jocks. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. And 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. Neuroscientists, CEOs, rocket scientists, undercover former jihadi cult leaders. You get the idea.

This week we had Rob Reid, who's none of those things, on AI and synthetic biology and how AI could enable essentially amateurs to make super deadly, scary biological weapons. Super chill conversation as you can imagine. And Gabriel, were you telling me this morning that you read in the New York Times that Claude or Anthropic caught people doing this actually?

Like the day we recorded the episode?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Apparently today it broke out. Yeah. Apparently the story broke today, which is so crazy.

Your interview with Rob Reid could not be coming at a better time. Yeah, because I did it yesterday.

Jordan Harbinger: And we also had Jamison Firestone on his crazy tales running a law firm in Russia in the early aughts. Really good storyteller, crazy upbringing. Fun show for those who haven't heard it yet.

And we did a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on Family Court. On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, play obnoxious soundbites, and compare ourselves to various artisanal international beverages. Gabe, where are you right now?

Your background is even more insane than usual today. Looks like you're in some sort of cathedral.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm at my friend Yvonne's house in a tiny town in Italy called Val Taleggio. It's like this stunning valley in Lombardy, maybe an hour from Bergamo. So beautiful.

Jordan Harbinger: I need you to describe the room that you're in. I'm seeing huge windows and a lush garden and spiral wood staircase leading up to some kind of library and, of course, multicolored throw pillows and a low couch. I mean, it just appears there's also like a bust of what I can only assume is a Greek god or something like that.

Or maybe. Yes. What's going on there?

Gabriel Mizrahi: On which our friend Lucia hangs her go with the flow of nature baseball cap when she enters the house, which is my favorite touch.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's a weird mashup. The room is giving Agatha Christie murder mansion if Agatha Christie also wrote erotic novels during the 70s.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's hard to tell what's going to break out first, a homicide or a or a key party.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, really walk in that line between closed room mystery and open room orgy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And Victorian grandma. Exactly. Hopefully that one's in the mystery.

This place is bananas. I love it here so much. It's in the middle of I think they call it the pre Alps, you know, like Alps, Alps, but pre Alps.

And you have these stunning dolomite like rock formations like this steep cliff faces that are just amazing.

Jordan Harbinger: Those those limestone, huge limestone structures. Is that what I'm to imagine? Yes.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Right behind his house are these hiking trails that take you through them and past these lush Alpine meadows past old chapels that used to serve the town that used to exist here. So beautiful. And next door, the neighbor keeps goats and they have bells around their neck.

So while they graze all day, you just hear this distant chime of the bells like a chaotic wind chime symphony, which you might hear today that might end up on the recording today, folks.

Jordan Harbinger: Sorry about that. Sorry about the wind chime goats, the wind chime goats.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It sounds like when you used to walk by the ethnomusicology department in college. I don't know if you had one at Michigan, Jordan. Maybe you hear the students playing these obscure instruments.

It just sounds terrible. Although the goats might actually be better than the students that I used to listen to. And then every hour and half hour, the church nearby rings its bells, which is probably the most Italian thing I've ever heard.

And it's beautiful, I guess, but kind of alarming just because you feel time being marked and passing every day, which is kind of extraordinary.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, those old Italian church bells are next level. And I think most of them are probably automated now. Right.

I mean, you almost feel like you're back in the Middle Ages or something. And there's some guy in a frock running up some stairs because he's he's got to ring the bells on time, except you're also on your phone looking at Twitter.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yvonne did a bunch of work on the house when he bought it. He turned the wine cellar into a sauna and he added a couple of bedrooms, modern bedrooms, and he built a fountain and a meditation patio in the garden. But everything else he kept the same.

Jordan Harbinger: It's amazing. Glad he kept the windows. There's like jagged, rising four step vertical windows looking out into the front yard.

It's really cool. But so question, who are the people in the photo over your shoulder and by the library? Is that Ivan?

Yvonne?

Gabriel Mizrahi: No, those are the previous owners, actually.

Jordan Harbinger: So he just kept a photo of the previous owners up in his house?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I had the exact same question when he gave me the tour. It's so funny. So I asked him and he said, well, it was their house.

So I like to honor them by keeping their photo up. And then he goes, there's also something of hers, the wife's on the property. So I didn't want to take it down.

But actually, English is not his first language. So I couldn't tell if he said something of hers on the property or something of her.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, so like she's buried in the, what does that mean? That's what does that mean?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. So then he shows me around the garden, right? And he shows me this miniature sculpture that they have in the garden that the previous owners built in this enclosed area of two towers.

And it was a 9-11 memorial that the owner built because he was from New York City. Oh, a 9-11 memorial in Valtelleggio. How unusual.

I know it's so weird, right? And then Yvonne leads me to some bushes in the center of the driveway. And he's like, come look.

And he pulled back the bushes and I peeked inside and there was a gravestone there. Whoa, he buried his wife on the property? Apparently.

I don't know if Yvonne knows if it's. So that's what he meant.

Jordan Harbinger: There's something of her on the property. Yes. Like her corpse.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Like her corpse. Wow. He says he talks to her sometimes when he's walking around and he asks her for permission before he like hosts a yoga retreat at the house or stuff like that.

So he says it goes a lot better when he does.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, Gabe. I mean, look, I love these stories. You know, I do.

But you make it too easy to roast you for this ridiculous life you're living.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm just reporting the facts, Puppuccino. I take no stance on any of this. I'm just telling you what's happening.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Italian wind chime goats and New York pharmacist wife ghost in the same story.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I didn't even tell you about the jaguar and the hummingbird mural in the basement.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's a whole other subplot. And you can sleep at night in this house. Like a baby.

I don't even need my fancy earplugs here. Don't goats sort of start doing their thing at 6 a.m.? Not these goats. They're very polite.

They start around eight or nine, which is perfect for me. God's alarm clock right there.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, Agatha Christie goat adjacent murder orgy cemetery. Good as good a place as any to kick off the deuce cruise, I suppose. Let's deuce it.

Crossing my fingers, Gabe doesn't get poltergeisted halfway through this because he didn't ask the pharmacist's wife for permission to record a podcast. Oh, no, no, no. I did. I did it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I did it before we began.

Jordan Harbinger: Did you really?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah. When in Rome, dude. When in Valtelleggio.

Let's see what happens, Gabe. What's the first thing out of the mailbag? Dear Jordan and Gabe, I'm an analytics engineer.

I tell stories so other people can make better decisions.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, that's such a great way to describe that role. This guy's done six minute networking because we teach that in their sixminutenetworking.com.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Dude just gave us a masterclass in personal branding here in the opening.

Jordan Harbinger: You ever take an elevator so good the pitch ends before the doors close?

Gabriel Mizrahi: The doors open and you're already buying this dude stories for your better decisions. That's right. So he goes on.

I've been getting Google security numbers texted to my dumb phone over the past week. I use it as my primary phone and keep my Wi-Fi smartphone as a tablet. It's part of my digital hygiene.

I haven't seen any anomalous activity, so I figured it was just bad actors trying to hit my account and Google was doing its thing. But it was still bothering me. Is this just random or am I being targeted?

Fast forward to last night. My wife put the little kids to bed and left our 12 year old daughter in charge while we went to back to school night. I left her my phone in case she needed to reach us.

When we got home, my daughter was in the kitchen by the family computer and she called us over. Dad, I have something to tell you. I got into your Google accounts.

She'd use the family computer to request a password reset. What's more, her siblings had busted up the keyboard, so she did all of this with the mouse and onscreen keys. Then she swapped the SIM card from my dumb phone to my smartphone.

She'd memorized the pin by watching over my shoulder. Then she reset the passwords to all the accounts she knew about. I didn't notice the SIM swap until the next day because she'd switched it back before I got home.

Turns out all those security codes over the past few weeks were being generated by her.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, bravo. So your kid just kicked your ass at your own profession. Oh man, put that story in your pipe and smoke it, dad.

Wow. Yeah, wow. I mean, he's a data analyst, so not a cybersecurity professional necessarily, but he has good hygiene.

So I can only imagine what his response was. This is such a great moment. This kid reminds me a lot of me as a kid, right?

Like I did this thing that's really bad, but also you should be proud of me. And of course, like my parents didn't usually have that reaction, but maybe this guy understands it quite a bit more.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I was so proud. She totally red-teamed me and was reporting her findings. At the same time, I also knew she had to learn how not okay this was.

I told her that I appreciated the ethical disclosure. I also told her that this was violating in the extreme. That she was risking exposing herself to information totally inappropriate for her and that getting into other people's accounts like this could be relationship ending or worse.

I asked her why she had done it. She said she wanted to see if she could do it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me. That's as good a reason as any for a 12 year old.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, for engineer 12 year olds, definitely that mentality. Yes. It seems like she'd scared herself in the process, just seeing what she was capable of.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, well, you're catching up to the fact that your daughter's two clicks away from becoming Mr. Robot.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I told her that her computer privileges were revoked through the end of the week. I had to really struggle to sound upset and suppress my smile. I know I need to update my security settings.

The part I'm struggling with is how to respond in a way that both honors her ingenuity and firmly teaches the ethical boundaries. I've spent years encouraging her curiosity, her security mindset, and her interest in hacking culture. She listens to Darknet Diaries with me.

She reads security books. She thinks like a red teamer. And now she's demonstrating real skill, enough to compromise my accounts using only household tools.

Jordan Harbinger: You have created a monster. This is all on you. It's a huge compliment, actually.

Gabriel Mizrahi: These two are so cute. I love that they listen to Darknet Diaries together and talk about hacking together. This is the cutest father-daughter team I've heard of.

I'm proud of her, but I'm also shaken by how easily she crossed a line she didn't fully understand. How do I guide a precocious, technically gifted kid toward ethical hacking and responsible curiosity without normalizing boundary breaking or violating privacy? How do I show her she has a superpower while teaching her the gravity of misusing it?

Signed, hoping I can stoke my daughter's talent after she broke both the precious code and didn't do my phone.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah, good question. So this is one of those interesting moments as a parent where you absolutely cannot do this.

And I'm also impressed and weirdly proud of you. They both apply equally. And sometimes Jaden does something like, I'll just be like, all right, you can't call another kid a boring Muppet after biting him.

Or you can't ask the teacher, why do we have to do this assignment? It's totally pointless or whatever. But I'm also like fighting down a smile sometimes.

I mean, maybe less with the biting, but fighting down a smile as I parent him, because sometimes he's not wrong, you know? And I was also the same way as a kid. Like, I need to know why I have to do this or I'm not going to do it.

So it's like, I need to be a good parent, but I'm also a person. And if I heard someone my own age say the same thing, I would just laugh, of course.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Such a funny spot to be in as a parent.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it really is. If Junie hacked into my iCloud and then told me afterwards, it would be a similar thing. Like, okay, how do I encourage your talent while also keeping you out of prison?

Totally.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, it sounds like more of a Jaden thing to do, but I take your point.

Jordan Harbinger: Totally. He's the engineer in the family. Junie's more likely to dance Swan Lake or something at this point, or be one of those mermaids in the tank you see at Disney.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The equivalent would be of Junie Tanya Harding, the lead in Swan Lake, to get the part and then confess to you. And you would be like, okay, how do I nurture your ambition while also teaching you that assault and battery is wrong?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, super dark example. I would hope she wouldn't do anything like that. Geez.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That escalated quickly. That got out of hand. I'm sorry about that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the idea that I could create the Tanya Harding of the dance world.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's just, yeah. Junie turns into the husband and Rosemary's baby for some reason. God, I hope not.

But nice analogy, Dark Gabes.

Jordan Harbinger: But so, okay, I really appreciate that you get the two halves of this conversation. The multiple things you need to keep an eye on as a parent, your daughter's skills and virtues and her mistakes and potential flaws. I feel like a lot of parents struggle with this.

They jump straight to punishment mode and they focus on managing the risk or the offense, which I get. But then, yeah, they miss an opportunity to appreciate what this mistake, and I put mistake in radio air quotes here, what this mistake is actually revealing about your daughter's talent and her personality and her interest in the world, which is, of course, awesome if well cultivated, well directed. But you're not doing that.

And I love that. And I also think the fact that she's confessed to you is a really good sign. That tells me she has a conscience.

She knew when it was time to own up to it. She trusted you to hear that and not go totally crazy. All of that suggests that your daughter isn't some antisocial hacker with zero regard for privacy or other people's feelings or rights.

She's a talented, curious, resourceful kid with a playful relationship with the rules who still has a moral compass. That's an appropriate place to be at age 12.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Doesn't that kind of make her the dream hacker?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, 100 percent now that you mention it. So my advice is I think you start with one big conversation with your daughter about all this. In this conversation, I would say something like, so, as you know, hacking into my phone and email, that was wrong.

It was a violation of my privacy. It was a secret for a long time. It broke our trust.

And if you had done it to somebody else outside the family, it could have broken the law. By the way, it breaks the law even if you do it to your own family members. But you don't have to scare her that much just yet.

You cannot do this to someone's device or software again, both because it's morally wrong and because it's also illegal. There's a difference between being able to do something and having permission to do something. This kind of thing could get you into serious trouble with other people, with the police, especially as you get older.

So are we clear on this? You've got to give her the serious parent talk, some version of that, make sure it lands, that she gets it. I think she will.

Then you get to do the fun part, which is celebrate the other side of all this. I would probably be like, OK, all that said, I'm very happy you told me that was the right thing to do. When you do something wrong, it's important to own up to it, figure out why you did it, figure out how not to do it again.

And I've got to tell you, daughter, even though this was dodgy, I'm really impressed. This mistake is also showing me you're even smarter than I knew. You're curious.

You're super resourceful. I love it. You obviously love tech and hacking and playing with the rules.

You know, I'm an engineer, too. So all of this is really exciting to me. If you enjoy this stuff, we could have a lot of fun going further into this world without doing anything illegal or taking any big risks.

And if you want, I'd love to do that with you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Oh, I love that approach. And so how does he do that? Does he like give her homework assignments, like some fun side projects?

I feel like Chachi B.T. could help somehow with this.

Jordan Harbinger: That's what I was thinking. He could give her a lab, like create an environment, maybe with the help of A.I., where she has explicit authorization to attack things. Maybe you can create deliberately vulnerable applications, capture the flag competitions, cybersecurity education platforms, home lab exercises, all designed around exactly this distinction.

Here's an idea. You could do a father-daughter trip to DEFCON in Las Vegas. This is the big hacker conference.

I spoke there probably, I don't know, 15 years ago. It's really fun. They have a really cool kid or youth track, I should say, with kid curriculum in there.

It'll learn how to pick locks. They'll give her cybersecurity training. There's capture the flag stuff, which is like hacking into things that you have permission to hack into.

And some of those things are cool. The adults, I haven't seen the kid track recently, but I remember the adults, like an ATM company. Gabriel Diebold, they'll go and they'll just put ATMs in a room and they're like, all right, it's open so that you don't have to break it.

But you can try whatever you want, hook up your laptop to it. So they just let you hack the ATM. And then the idea is if you are successful in any way at all, they want to know exactly how it's done.

And I think they have like a $10,000, whatever, $100,000 grand prize, because it's cheap for them to get some of the world's best hacker talents in there to figure out how to mess with something without getting in trouble. And then they just plug massive, potentially multi-million dollar security holes before somebody else finds it. So it's really fun.

That's awesome. I love that. Yeah, it's cool.

It's all designed to encourage kids' technical skills and teach them about ethical hacking. They have, cell phone companies do it too. They'll just, they'll drop off.

I mean, I remember at the time Motorola had dropped off like the new, I think Razors or something like that. And you could just go in there and hook up alligator clips to stuff or plug in your USB. And guys were just writing software on the fly to find out what ports were open on the fly.

It was really, it's really cool. You're watching real life, Mr. Robot, and these are the world's best hackers. They're all in the room.

It's really a cool thing to see. And you can make your own family version of this. You can make a disposable account, a virtual machine or a sandbox where you define the scope beforehand of what's allowed.

You know, you give her actual rules. Here's your target. Here's what you're allowed to attack.

Here's what you're not allowed to touch. Here's when the exercise ends. If you discover something out of scope, you've got to stop and report it.

If you accidentally encounter private information, you don't continue exploring it. Afterwards, you write up what you found and how it should be fixed and just let her go crazy, man. I think she's going to love it.

I think there's, I would bet there's stuff like this already online. I know there are hacker challenges and bug bounties, but this is a great place to start with that. And I would also tell her from now on, if you want to test something else, ask me and we'll define what you're allowed to attack.

If you ever discover access accidentally, stop, don't look around, tell me. I want to help you get extremely good at this. But part of getting extremely good is becoming someone other people can trust with that ability.

This accomplishes a few things. You're not just telling her about ethics in some abstract sense. You're making the ethics part of the technical discipline.

You're not saying never break things, stay far away from this stuff. You're teaching her never test somebody else's things without permission. Let's do this thoughtfully.

And if your daughter continues to show interest and skill in this world, I would absolutely encourage this interest of hers as much as possible, as early as possible. Send her to summer coding camp, get her started on Clod, GitHub, open source projects. Send her to a school with a computer science program.

There's probably even high schools that have good programs like this now. This didn't exist in my day, obviously. You could encourage her to start a program like this or enroll her in some sort of afterschool program.

Encourage her to connect with other kids who are into hacking or grownups who might be interested in mentoring a promising young child. I wouldn't find those people on the Internet. Probably didn't need to tell you that, but just some of the hackers on the Internet can be shady.

If you gently encourage her and try to get her into the right environments, your daughter could easily end up with a nice job out of college, maybe even before college or instead of college. She could be coding apps that take off. I mean, AI does a lot of that, but she'll learn how to use all that.

And she could be running a cybersecurity team at a big company. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

What a gift it would be to cultivate her passion young and give her good guidelines. Also, I would ask your daughter to document everything she did to hack into your stuff and propose security fixes for all of it, as if she were a professional penetration tester for you. I bet she'd love that assignment.

Then you basically have your very own personal security consultant as part of her penance. Such good ideas, Jordan. I love I love all of this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think she is going to love it, too.

Jordan Harbinger: What you want your daughter to understand is the difference between a security professional and a criminal is authorization. It's not technical ability.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think it would be a really nice question to ask yourself and maybe even your daughter. What's trying to make itself known in this hacking your phone secretly thing? Because, you know, besides her obvious technical skill, I think it is revealing that she's a bit of a rebel, which you already kind of knew.

But maybe you didn't realize how much of a rebel she really is. She likes to push the envelope. She likes to see how far she can go.

She might even like to do something, quote unquote, bad or wrong within certain constraints. Unchecked, that can obviously become a flaw or pretty big risk, but nurtured correctly and balanced with these principles we're talking about, it can become a virtue as well as highly lucrative talent. I don't know about you, Jordan, but I feel like this kid is like on a straight shot to becoming a Google engineer in a few years or working at Motorola and testing all of their devices.

It's just so cool. So this is a really special opportunity for both of you, for you to get to parent your child in the best sense of the term, not just to punish, but also to appreciate your child's gifts and qualities that are peeking out and for your daughter to feel that dad can make room for both parts of her, the good kid and the rebel, you know, the one who confesses and the one who secretly stole your SIM card, which will avoid the sadly common pitfall of inadvertently cutting off these parts of a child and kind of sending them underground when they only get punished, which you are not doing and which is wonderful. But I think when parents do that, and I can understand why they do it, they kind of miss the other half of this.

There's the potential for these skills or these interests to become scary or shameful or just underutilized. And then they might go underground and continue to make themselves known in more difficult ways, you know, as actually criminal behavior, for example, or as more symptoms like depression or anger, because parts of them are not able to come out rather than being explored in joyful, productive ways as work and as play. Where they can flourish and serve her in so many ways.

So I just have to say, I love your lens on this whole moment.

Jordan Harbinger: Well said, Gabe. Totally agree with that. I think a nice question would be, why did you confess?

Was it an inherent moral sense? Was it guilt? Was it fear?

Did you just want dad's approval? I would get clear on that slash invite her to reflect on that because A, that'll determine if she's going to do stuff like this again. And you might want to be prepared if you need to parent a little harder.

But more importantly, B, that could also be part of this process you guys are in to locate her inborn ethical compass and encourage that. So I hope that helps you walk this line with your daughter. I'm genuinely excited about all this because I think it might be the start of your daughter's talents calling, whatever you want to call it in life. I mean, plus when she goes on job interviews and she's on hacking panels and stuff, she'll have this killer story to tell. It's very charming to think about a 12 year old girl hacking into her dad's phone and Google accounts. I mean, mostly your own fault for having poor security. But either way, hiring managers and audiences are going to eat that up. And in the meantime, yeah, you've got to up your security game. Your daughter's unsolicited pen test gave you a rather excellent threat model and attacker with physical access who knows you personally. So she's already done you a huge solid in that way. Love that you're taking this stance with her. Love that you want to encourage her while also guiding her. She's a lucky kid and good luck. All right. Now we're going to peek over your shoulder and make sure you're using our discount codes for the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and AMD. Cybersecurity threats keep evolving, but is your business prepared for what comes next?

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Now back to Feedback Friday.

Gabriel Mizrahi: OK, next up. Hi Jordan and Gabe. Early last year I met a woman who seemed perfect for me in many ways.

She was calm, quirky, supportive and incredibly easy to be around. We encouraged each other, shared many of the same values and didn't need expensive dates or elaborate plans to be happy. I was also very physically attracted to her and we had a great sex life.

At the end of last year we got married. But around the time we became engaged, something started changing. We're an international couple and shortly before our wedding, we spent about a month in separate countries while preparing for me to move to hers.

During that month, her habits changed dramatically. She began eating pizza, fried chicken, oily stir fry, chips, candy and other calorie dense foods almost every day. She wasn't working and spent most of her days lying in bed.

On video calls, I noticed that she looked heavier, but initially thought it might be the camera angle. Eventually, I made some subtle suggestions. Didn't you just have a pizza a couple of days ago?

Oh, bro. Or suggested getting meat prepared differently instead of fried. She always had an explanation.

The oil was healthy. No. Protein was the most important nutrient.

We need fat anyway.

Jordan Harbinger: OK, in limited quantities. I mean, all right. OK, a little rationalization going on here. Fine.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Eventually, she told me there was nothing to worry about because she, quote, doesn't have the DNA to get fat, unquote. Not a thing. I tried to explain calories in versus calories out, but she insisted DNA was more important.

Nope. When I arrived in her country, we happened across a scale and discovered she'd gained five kilograms in that one month. The rapid gain concerned me, but there's another uncomfortable part of this.

Physical attraction is important to me. I'm attracted to healthy looking women using a healthy BMI as a rough reference. When we met, she was comfortably within that range and cycled about 45 minutes each way to work. And we regularly ate nutritious food together.

When I arrived in her country, she was now in the overweight BMI category. After we married and began living together, the pattern continued. She got a sedentary job, did virtually no exercise and continued gaining weight.

She insisted the additional weight was muscle because she ate so much protein despite doing no strength training. Meanwhile, our sex life started suffering. I sometimes couldn't stay aroused once clothes came off.

When she asked what was wrong, I initially blamed headaches or tiredness. Eventually, I realized that wasn't fair to either of us. So I told her directly that my physical attraction had declined because of the changes to her body and lifestyle.

I explained that I'm simply not sexually attracted to overweight women and that seeing someone take care of themselves, being active and eating reasonably well, is itself attractive to me. She became angry and said, I don't like it when you threaten me. That sounds like a threat.

I explained that I wasn't threatening her or demanding a particular weight. I was being honest about something already affecting our marriage. I suggested walks and healthier food choices together, but she usually said she was too tired, wanted to lie in bed and wanted to eat whatever she wanted.

Huh. This girl is really going through it. There's something else going on.

After about six months together, we decided to move to my country. I went ahead to find an apartment and get established, and we've now been apart for about a month while I work on her immigration paperwork. She's currently living with her parents, is not working, rarely leaves the house, and spends most of the day in bed playing mobile games or watching sitcoms.

She's gained more weight, and this is making me question something much bigger. I'm middle aged, but I want to remain active as I get older. I generally eat whole foods, walk 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day, and cycle roughly 60 kilometers a week.

I don't expect my wife to copy my lifestyle or have a perfect body. But I do want a partner who wants to participate in life with me and with whom I can share some degree of an active lifestyle. Her body belongs to her.

She gets to decide what she eats, whether she exercises, and what she weighs. But I also can't manufacture sexual attraction that I don't feel. I've stopped bringing up her weight because she already knows how I feel, and constantly commenting on her body seems both cruel and pointless.

I still love my wife deeply, but I'm starting to wonder what our marriage will look like if my physical attraction continues to decline, the sex life we once enjoyed disappears, and our lifestyles keep moving in opposite directions. Can someone actually encourage their spouse to change something like this, or does the desire have to come entirely from her? Is it fair for me to be honest about how this is affecting my attraction, or is this something I need to quietly accept?

Or is this not really a weight issue anymore, but a values and lifestyle incompatibility?

Jordan Harbinger: Bingo, focus on this, but there's also something else going on here in addition to that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Should I slow the immigration process down until we figure this out? I don't want to use immigration as leverage, but it seems foolish to make another enormous life decision while I'm questioning whether the lives we want are compatible. Can a marriage survive on emotional love and companionship alone when physical attraction and sexual compatibility are important to both partners?

Do we simply want very different lives? Signed, wondering if I should pump the brakes because my marriage seems to be changing shape.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh boy, this is a really interesting one. Also a really tough one. There are a few things going on here.

All right, so obviously, I'm very sorry you guys are going through this. I'm sorry for her. She's turning to unhealthy, high-calorie foods. She's giving up exercising.

She's lying in bed. She's living this sedentary life. It's got to feel crappy.

Not great for her, even if she's defending it and thinks that's what she wants to do. But I'm sorry for you as well. You're watching your spouse stop taking care of herself.

It's affecting your sex life. It's making you question your future together. This is really tough.

So to cut to the chase here, yeah, I feel it's fair for you to be honest about how this is affecting your attraction to your wife. Because, and hear me out, because I know I'm going to get angry emails from people accusing me of being shallow or fat-shaming. Every time we address this topic, those come in.

Which, I mean, come at me with those takes. They're misguided and frankly, usually just deliberately obtuse. Because what you're asking for from your wife in this case is not unhealthy or unrealistic.

You're saying that you're attracted to a normal, healthy body in a sort of medically agreed-upon, normal BMI. Now, BMI has its problems, but I think we can all get on board that there's a such thing as a healthy weight and people who pretend that there isn't are living in la-la land. You're not asking her to look like a Calvin Klein model from the 90s.

You're not expecting her to copy your lifestyle or have a quote-unquote perfect body like you said. You're recognizing that she gets to decide how she cares for her body within reason. Also, this is not just about aesthetics or your personal attraction quirks.

This is about her health. She was active and responsible before. Now, she's not.

That's a medical issue for her. This is not like, I need you to look a certain way because that's what I'm into. That's not what this is about.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And you say you still love your wife deeply. You want her to age well with you. You want to help her take care of herself.

You're not going, uh, your body's changed. I'm out, you know, or I didn't realize that I was mostly just physically attracted to this person. Now, I'm not so sure.

That would be a different story.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. I'm also just remembering that this isn't just about how she looks, right? Seeing his wife take care of herself, being active, eating reasonably well, that itself is attractive to him.

And I get that. I think most people do or would.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also, this was clearly affecting their sex life no matter what, right? He literally couldn't do the act. Neither of them could pretend that it wasn't happening.

So his choice was lie to his wife or be honest about what's going on. That is not an easy conversation to have. I do not envy him for having to have it, but it does seem to me an essential one in a marriage that works this way.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree. Lying to her wouldn't be fair to either of you. You'd be keeping something important from your wife.

You'd be depriving her of information that could help her realize that this is something she needs to take seriously. Now, how you say all of this, of course, matters enormously. There's a right way and a wrong way to do this.

For all those reasons, I believe you're on very solid ground here. I mean, sure, you could quietly accept this, but the cost is going to be your sex life, your degree of honesty and emotional intimacy, and your personal integrity. And I'm guessing deep down you're never really going to fully accept it.

So from that perspective, I'm not sure that's really an option. Gabe, I'm trying to figure out what changed here. Like, what made her do such a 180? You know, that's the concerning, the most concerning part.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, that is very much the question. The only clue in his letter is that around the time they became engaged, something started changing. Her habits changed dramatically, but he didn't say what.

Jordan Harbinger: So, was she taking good care of herself? And then as soon as she locked down the husband, she's like, cool, I can stop trying and eat whatever I want now. And you know, here, now that I've said that out loud, that sounds unfair.

There's got to be more going on here. I mean, I've heard sentiments like that in some places, but this seems too dramatic of a change.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Something else has to be going on here. I'm almost sure there is. It's possible that something else happened during this period when she stayed in her country alone, and then later when she started living with her parents.

Whether it's related to her living situation or it's something else entirely, we cannot know. But let's also remember that this isn't just eating poorly and not exercising. She's not working.

She rarely leaves the house. She spends most of the day in bed, playing games on her phone or watching TV. This is pretty serious.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, this just sounds like depression to me. I mean, if you stop exercising because you get busy at work, that's different than I'm not getting out of bed, I quit my job. Also, I'm not biking and I just want to play Candy Crush and watch Netflix.

That's a lot of changes at once.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think there's a very strong likelihood that she's depressed at the very least. I think he's approaching this as a lifestyle problem. You need to eat better.

You need to work out. I want you to be with me in this kind of life. I think it's likelier that her habits and values around diet and exercise and the weight gain that's happened recently are all expressions of a deeper issue.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, like she's having some tough thoughts and feelings. Sadness, shame, depression, fear, God knows what else, and she's comforting herself with food. Maybe it's hard living with her parents.

Maybe she's not talking about that. I mean, maybe she's unsure about getting married also or emigrating. I don't know. I mean, there's a lot going on with y'all's lives that could be part of the culprit here.

Gabriel Mizrahi: A lot of change and a lot of uncertainty. And I think you are absolutely right to zero in on that because this predated her moving in with her parents. And this is a huge thing to get married and then move to another country.

Big changes. So yeah, and by the way, not just food, right? Games, TV, perhaps all forms of coping, comforting, numbing with the feelings that come with these transitions.

Jordan Harbinger: And look, I mean, I can relate. Eating crap is one of my biggest dopamine levers and it's caused me problems for the majority of my life. Not that I realized I had those as a problem until I was about 40, but it's a big thing.

I mean, I remember eating junk and being like, it's fine. And then when I made this shift, I was kind of like, oh, you can get dopamine from working out. I remember this. It's not as fun.

It's not as easy, but it's way better for you. And I was just like, you know, I'm going to do that instead. So yeah, on some level I can really relate to his wife, whatever she's going through.

Gabriel Mizrahi: In general, it sounds like she's withdrawing from life, perhaps maybe because she knows this is a problem. And then withdrawing from life, of course, is probably giving her permission to continue treating herself this way. But if he's going to make progress with her, I think he first needs to invite his wife to talk about that stuff.

He needs to get curious about that stuff himself and not just, you know, what are you eating and how much are you exercising? Because that's almost certainly where the root problem actually is.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree. And the best way to do that is what?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think he needs to say something like, I can see that you've been going through some big changes recently, some new feelings. There's a lot of change in our lives. We're contemplating making this really big move.

You're not working. You're not going out very much. You're spending a lot of time in bed, a lot of time on your phone.

I know life can get hard. We're not spending as much time together during this period and maybe that's also challenging. I am not here to make you feel bad about any of this.

I just love you and I'm getting concerned about you. And I want to ask if you want to talk about anything, tell me how you're feeling right now. I'm here for you and I would like to listen.

Nice. Simple. Just start there and see how she responds.

Jordan Harbinger: She might need some coaxing to open up. I don't get the sense that she's like bursting at the seams, waiting for him to take an interest. She seems very defensive about all this based on the whole, that sounds like a threat comment.

So he might have to be patient and draw her out a little bit.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The thing is that defensiveness is probably a shame response.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Well for sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: On some level she knows this is a problem, right? He's openly acknowledging it and because it's such a tender spot for her, which is understandable, she's putting it back on him like, oh what you're threatening me that you're going to leave if i'm not skinnier, that's what you're doing.

Jordan Harbinger: But that's not a fair move on her part. That's decidedly not what he's doing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: No, it's not. I'm just saying that's probably where it's coming from and maybe that helps him understand it better. And one way to respond to that kind of retort would be, I'm not threatening you with anything.

I'm not going anywhere. I'm here. I love you.

And because I love you, I'm sharing this information with you and I'm here to talk about all of it with you as much as you want so that we can find the answer together.

Jordan Harbinger: Nice, I like that. So yes, of course someone can encourage their spouse to make some changes and I think it's important that you try, but I think Gabe's right. Right now you need to be mostly curious and patient and ask good questions and listen. That's the best thing you can do.

Try to get to the root of this thing, not encourage her to lose weight. The weight's a secondary problem. And the desire to change does ultimately have to come from her. We all know this, but I think you're going to have a lot more luck in helping her tap into that desire by having a larger conversation first.

I also think the best support you can give her is to, A, encourage her to just go get a checkup, do some basic labs, see what the overall picture is, because if there's a hormonal imbalance or a deficiency of some kind, whatever it is, that would be great to know. And B, encourage her to consider going to therapy and talk about what she's going through these days because this might be more than you as her husband can really help her work through on your own.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally agree. Let's remember that we are talking about a woman who went from cycling 90 minutes a day to not getting out of bed. Like this is really worrisome. There's something going on.

I think even if she's making it difficult, I think she is probably desperate for somebody to listen to her and somebody to talk to about this.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, I'm far more concerned about that than I am about five kilos or whatever it was. The five kilos are only this one tiny manifestation of this larger issue that she's struggling with. And I also want to say, he needs to stop being the food police. That's not helpful.

It's not going to work. It's really only going to shame her and make her dig her heels in further. She does have some fundamental misconceptions about nutrition with the DNA thing and the oil and protein stuff, but you can figure that crap out later if she still believes it after all is said and done. You need to talk about your relationship.

He needs to talk about what he misses doing with her, all the things he wants them to do together for years to come. And I think that's the kind of stuff that's much more likely to draw her out of this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Completely agree. And so yes, I think you're right. This is not a weight issue fundamentally.

It's a values issue. It's also a relational issue between the two of you, but the values aren't just about, you know, self-care and lifestyle. I think the relevant values are how you guys take care of yourselves mentally, emotionally, how you guys meet these challenges, these conversations, whether it's with curiosity and openness and a willingness to hear some difficult things sometimes, or with anger and fear and a resistance to seeing where one or both of you needs to grow.

I think that's what you're hearing when your wife says things like, are you threatening me? I also think there are some interesting values at play here around whether a person should have to struggle at all, have to grow at all, and how to ask for help and how to stay connected to life when things get hard. But I also understand that these values, you know, we're calling them values, but I also understand that these values can be hard to stay connected to for some people or even for some people to appreciate if they've struggled in certain ways or if they have certain traumas or if they were raised in a certain way.

But so there are several dimensions on which you might be realizing that you guys are not completely aligned right now. And that doesn't mean your marriage is doomed. These are just the qualities that are going to play a big role in your conversations and probably the quality of your relationship for the rest of your lives.

And so it might be worth asking yourself whether these are values that you take seriously, too, if they are non-negotiable for you. And if so, how you can gently, respectfully invite her to take more of an interest in them. Take an interest in them again, because let's remember she did used to be this way, which does help.

And maybe you can show her how it's done.

Jordan Harbinger: Well put. As for slowing the immigration process down until you've figured this out, ooh, that's an intense question because it sounds a lot like we need to take a break from each other, but I'm going to do that under the guise of my attorney being overwhelmed in the immigration process being kind of insane.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's a curious question because I'm not clear on how slowing down the immigration process would actually help them figure this out. If anything, things seem to get worse when they're apart.

Jordan Harbinger: Good point. But I feel like what he's really saying is I'm losing faith in this relationship and I don't know if I want to spend 30 grand and all this time getting a green card for my wife if we're going to separate in six months. So maybe it would be more helpful to ask if you did slow down the immigration process, what would you hope to accomplish?

Gabriel Mizrahi: And how exactly?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, because is this about your feelings changing? Is this about not having to spend more time together in person because it's too stressful or upsetting? Is this about sending her a message? Like, I tried to talk to you about this, you need to take it seriously because I'm not moving forward on the paperwork if you continue like this.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Great question. I guess all of these could be true for him, but I feel like he might be getting cold feet after the fact.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, maybe the most important thing about this is this is really giving him pause even though he still loves her. My feeling about all this is I would not casually continue a major legal slash immigration process while questioning whether your marriage is viable. But also you shouldn't use that as leverage with your wife.

Like, this cannot be lose weight or I'm stopping your visa process. That's messed up, man, and it's going to be deeply hurtful. You need to separate the immigration question from your wife's mental and physical health questions.

I'm actually not convinced that a marriage can survive successfully, you know, fulfillingly on emotional love and companionship alone when physical attraction and sexual compatibility are important to both partners. Yes, there are some couples that have figured out ways around that. If it's not important to both partners, great, that's not an issue.

But if you both want to be sexually compatible and one of you is treating her mind and body poorly and unwilling to take in some tough but important information and make some changes and nothing's changing over a long period of time, that to me is a very serious challenge. So yeah, it's possible you guys actually want different lives. But more to the point, it's possible that you guys want different realities.

If she goes, yeah, look, I'm 30 pounds overweight. I'm depressed. This is a problem. I could use some help. That's actually a really good response.

The other side of this coin is, let's say she loses 30 pounds, maybe to please you and resents you for it and sees every conflict and challenge you guys get into as a couple through a wildly different lens, that would actually be a bad response, which sort of proves to me it's not really about the weight, right?

Gabriel Mizrahi: But something that would be excellent to know now, this reality question, which one are you guys living in before you guys move forward with a huge move?

Jordan Harbinger: I strongly agree. So look, I hope you guys can talk. I hope she can open up and bear the feelings that come with that. I hope you can listen and validate her and help her get clear on where these changes are coming from and or she does that with a therapist.

Then you can tackle the lifestyle stuff or it starts to take care of itself on its own if she makes progress on these deeper themes, which would be my hope. Sending you both a big hug and wishing you all the best. By the way, you can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

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Gabriel Mizrahi: Okay, next up. Hi gang. Recently, I've been feeling more and more disconnected from my parents.

I'm a millennial and they're boomers and like the stereotypes suggest, we are divergent in many of our political views as well as our religious practices, or lack thereof in my case. This wasn't always the case. Growing up and even into adulthood, we've always been a relatively tight-knit family.

For the last few years, however, these differences have started having profound negative effects on the relationships my sister and I have with them. As they've aged, they've become more entrenched in their politics and more devout in their religion. Meanwhile, as I age, I become far less convicted or even interested in my political views and I am no longer religious.

On their end, I suspect this is happening because they're trying to fill the gaps in their identity left behind by retiring from their jobs, becoming empty nesters, etc, not to mention the large chunks of time they now have on their hands to become quote-unquote informed. For me, the older I get, the less black and white these issues seem. And being a busy adult with a job, a house, a family, etc, I don't have the bandwidth or the desire to stay informed anymore.

And even if I did, unfortunately, I've succumbed to somewhat of a nihilistic none-of-this-matters-anyway view on these matters. I know this phenomenon is common as people age and move through different phases of their lives, and we seem to have reached a point of agree to disagree, meaning that we know where the other stands and we just don't talk about it anymore because there's no point. But as they continue to allow politics and religion to take over more and more of their identity, I fear I will lose them completely, and what were once really meaningful and fulfilling relationships will be relegated to phone calls about the weather.

How do you move forward and continue to have deep meaningful relationships with those closest to you when the most important topics are off limits? Signed, a daughter who left the fold trying to get a hold of a way around my parents blindfolds when I don't fit into any mold because truth be told, I'm just not sold that there's one way to view the world when the answers to life are manifold.

Jordan Harbinger: Really good question. I'm sure so many people listening right now are shaking their heads in agreement. So many families experience this divide and it's really tough.

So I'm sorry that you and your sister don't have the relationship with your parents that you used to have. I can hear how sad and worrisome that is in your email. I get it. You guys were tight.

Now there's this ideological divide. You guys can't seem to really talk about it. Nobody's changing anybody's mind anytime soon.

This is a big shift and I'm sorry you're going through that. So one thing I find interesting about you and your parents is that they're very entrenched in their views. Surprise, surprise.

It sounds like they're quite rigid, identified with their politics, which are informed slash backed up by their religious convictions, which makes them even stronger. Meanwhile, the older you get, the less black and white these issues really seem. You're not nearly as attached to your views, whatever they are, and you have other things to worry about anyway.

In a way that makes this harder. That they're so militant and committed to their ideas. They're saying, this is how it is. God and our favorite cable news channel say that this is so.

And you're saying, okay, I can see your argument up to a point, but this is complicated. Maybe there's some nuance. Do you understand why the other side is saying blah blah blah? Can you hold your views and not be so wrapped up in them?

Those are two very different positions, not just ideologically. Those are two different psychologies, two different relationships with beliefs, two different relationships with the world and self. That divide can be even harder to bridge than the specific positions themselves.

In another way, though, this is very good news, because it means you have the intellectual flexibility, which is freedom really, to understand your parents, to get closer to them, even when you disagree. If you were just as identified with your politics as they are with theirs, this would be much, much harder.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, that is a really good point. I have to assume that religion is also playing a big role in this. That's hard to overcome intellectually when these debates.

I mean, how could it not, right? I'm sure their religion adds to the political conviction. Like you said, they have a community, they have a worldview, they have a whole system behind them, and she has, what, an appreciation for both sides? A low-key nihilism and feedback Friday? I mean, not bad, but different.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's right. The scripture according to two dude bro armchair psychologists.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So it's possible that this rift between them has actually been developing for some time, and what she's actually up against is not just their politics, but the psychic nutrition for the meaning that they're hungry for now that they're retired. And that meaning feeds the self-image that they're trying to uphold. So when she pushes back with them, she's not just debating, you know, immigration reform or whatever.

She's questioning kind of like the architecture of their sense of self. And I'm just appreciating that that can be very unsettling to a lot of people, especially people who build their identity on something as shaky as political ideology and who so quickly move to defend their views because they can't tolerate any disagreement or just are not very interested in it.

Jordan Harbinger: Bingo. And so the takeaway is what? Don't even try?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think the takeaway is just keep that in mind. And that might give you a little more compassion for your parents in these conversations to remember that they're not just being difficult. They're probably looking for security, for meaning, and for coherence.

And when you challenge them, whether they know it or not, it's probably a little distressing to them, maybe kind of scary for them. They might experience that fear as we know better and we're afraid for our daughter because she doesn't see the truth. But the fear might be more like it's uncomfortable for us to acknowledge complexity and live with the ambiguity that our daughter seems to live with rather easily.

The other takeaway is if you're going to make any progress with your parents, you're probably going to have to get into that stuff. Whether they want to is another question.

Jordan Harbinger: Just like with the wife from the previous question, what is this problem really about?

Gabriel Mizrahi: From what deeper wellspring do these ideological fights come from? But not everybody wants to ask what is this really about or what are these ideas doing for me? What's my relationship with them? You know, forget the ideas themselves.

Like what do they mean for me in my life?

Jordan Harbinger: Also, just like the wife from the previous question, this shared sense of reality is an interesting theme today.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, look, you could try. You could ask them stuff like what do you find meaningful about your faith now that you're getting older? How has retirement changed the way you think about your purpose or how you view the world or how you look at this debate? Or what scares you about the direction the country is going? Which is a dangerous question to ask retired parents in this generation.

They will probably go off, pop off on that question. But look, you might not love the answers. They might not give you very satisfying ones.

But questions like that, if you dig into them, could be potentially a portal into some more important things than just the debate, like values and feelings, including fear and needs and identity and meaning, without requiring that you guys agree on whom to vote for.

Jordan Harbinger: I like that, Gabe. That's the best version of their political conversations. I will say this, though.

I think it's important to remember that deep does not have to equal ideologically intimate.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's a really important thing to keep in mind. Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: There's a tendency to equate meaningful relationships, especially with family, with being able to discuss our deepest beliefs. But intimacy can also live in family history and memories and feelings and parenthood and fun activities and discussions about other topics that are not political, like, I don't know, love and mortality and stories about your childhood and what they're proud of and what they wish they'd done differently, just talking and laughing together.

I mean, that's a large part of adulting in families, I think. In fact, politics and religion can sometimes crowd out those more personal conversations. They're not the only meaningful subjects or conversations you can have.

So I understand that you feel distant from your parents, and I totally get why, but this might actually be an opportunity to look harder for the dimensions on which you and your parents can be close, dimensions you might have lost sight of because your political differences were so glaring.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's such a good point, Jordan. And in that way, the whole agree to disagree thing might actually be healthy and it might be very helpful.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree. It's almost clarifying, like, okay, that's not the conversation we're having. We need to have a different one or not one at all.

She could literally say, I know politics and religion aren't great topics for us anymore, but I don't want us avoiding those things to mean we stop really knowing each other. I miss talking to you about things that matter. What else can we talk about?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, that's a nice way in. But listen, there's also a timeline, and you might be starting to live it, where you and your parents never bridge this divide, in which case you guys really are not as close-knit as you once were.

And so your whole question might in fact be a question about coming to terms with this transition, which is a loss, you know, and dealing with the feelings that come with quote-unquote losing your parents to some degree to these ideas, these influences, this psychology, and or to your own, to be fair.

Jordan Harbinger: Her nihilism might itself be a position that she's identified with to some degree. To be clear, I don't hear her being like militantly nihilistic, like none of this matters. That's my belief.

It's more of a default position born from her busyness, which I can also relate to, and also that appreciation for both sides that we talked about. But it's an interesting stance to keep an eye on because it is, whether she deliberately chooses it or not, a stance just like her parents.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, that's a really interesting point. But ultimately, we might just be talking about grief. You know, there's so much to say about this topic, but just hearing your story, my thoughts are, first of all, I'm not sure it's entirely bad for you and your parents to be separating.

Yes, it's sad. Yes, it's distressing and maybe legitimately concerning depending on the types of content that they're consuming and what they're doing with it in their minds, in their own little retired bubble. It's certainly different from what you guys had before, but also there might be some healthy separation here.

You said that you and your parents were always a relatively tight-knit family. We don't know what the nature of that closeness was, whether it was too close and what the terms were, but even if you guys were not, you know, enmeshed in some textbook way, which does tend to entail a kind of intellectual alignment with your family, it sounds to me like being close with your parents, and I assume largely aligned with them politically, felt important and comforting to you and maybe to your sister as well.

Now you don't have that and you have to contend with these new feelings. It sounds like anger, fear, confusion, sadness, all of which are hard, but might also be symptoms of a process you're in with your parents that is ultimately okay. And again, perhaps healthy, just this allowing them to be different from you and vice versa.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's painful, but it might also be necessary or at least helpful in some way.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Well, look, it's already teaching her how to tolerate the differences that her parents cannot, you know, and how to accept a situation that's probably not fixable, at least not by her on her own, and how to love and connect with their parents even when they don't share the same beliefs. That's true.

Jordan Harbinger: This is profound stuff.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I also think that adult children sometimes learn that the closeness they had with their parents was partly built on an assumption of sameness, and that sameness might not have really existed the way they thought or, you know, people just evolve. She and her parents have both evolved. Children individuate, parents get older and change their worldviews. Both of them have clearly evolved in a number of ways and that sameness changes and that's hard, but a mature version of this parental relationship, I would actually say any relationship, has to be built around the capacity to tolerate difference, not the hunger to recreate sameness.

Jordan Harbinger: Ooh, facts. And there's grief in that too, isn't there?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think so. Mourning one stage of their relationship and all of the expectations for it and yeah, stepping into a new one.

Jordan Harbinger: But I do think it's a better one. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone we were related to saw the world that we do, felt the way we did, wanted to have the same conversations we did in the same way, but it doesn't work that way, obviously. And what I'm appreciating today is it doesn't have to.

So I'm very sorry you're going through this shift with your parents. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about how they're coming to these positions, how they're sharing them with you. It's not easy.

And it's creating a good opportunity for you to create a close connection with them in a different way and to come to terms with some big stuff about life and family and relationships, which is ultimately great. So I hope you find that connection. I hope you and your sister manage to love them well, even as they change, and we're wishing you all a very peaceful, very non-cable-newsy Thanksgiving, I suppose, this year. And good luck.

Also, in case y'all don't know, there's a subreddit for the show. A lot of fun discussions in there about just about every episode of the show over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. You know what we can all agree on? The sponsors who make this show possible are worthy of your support. We'll be right back.

If you like this episode of Feedback Friday and find our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment, support our sponsors. To learn more and get links to all the deals you hear on the show, jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

If a code's not working for you, you need a little help, just email us, jordan at 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.

Now for the recommendation of the week. I am addicted to lip filler.

Gabriel Mizrahi: My recommendation of the week is these amazing socks called Darn Tough Tactical Boot Full Cushion Socks.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You know these?

Jordan Harbinger: These are great. I do know these. I have some in my drawer right now.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Obsessed with these things. Yet another Burning Man discovery for me. Burning Man, honestly, was probably the most valuable thing insofar as it introduced me to products that I still use to this day. I'm not like super keen to go back, but I love all the things I bought for it.

So I needed socks that would breathe well during the super hot days, but also keep my feet warm during the freezing nights. These socks do exactly that. They're also incredibly comfortable. I don't know how they do it.

I think it's the combination of merino wool and nylon. Somehow your feet don't sweat in them, but they also keep you warm. It's just magic. I think they call it like fast action wicking or whatever that pulls moisture away from your skin. I don't fully understand it.

But the merino wool is soft and breathable. They're also guaranteed for life. So if the socks wear, tear, develop holes, darn tough, we'll replace them. No questions asked.

Pretty amazing testament to their standards. And they're made in the U.S. Every pair of socks is knit in Northfield, Vermont, which is kind of cool. I love these socks.

I brought several pairs with me on my trip. I can wear them multiple times without having to wash them. They're just as great for hiking as they are for hanging out in bed. I'm a huge fan of this company.

Buy yourself a couple pairs. You won't regret it. And we'll link to them, as always, in the show notes.

Jordan Harbinger: I think the ones I have, I don't wear that much because they're warm. I brought them to the desert and stuff like that. But you're right. They're so cushiony.

I always think it's funny when companies will replace something no questions asked. Like, hey, what did you do to the- what are you gonna ask? Oh, hey, what did- how did you rip your socks? I wore them a lot. Oh, okay.

That's good enough for us. It's like, yeah, but it is- it's nice to have a company that will just replace things that don't work out. Well, another brand that I love, Kettle Mountain. Sorry to hijack your recommendation of the week, but I've- I've recommended them before.

They have a crew of seamstress ladies that are just like these older ladies all over the United States. So you can send in a jacket, like a raincoat or pants or something like that and go, yeah, I don't know. I fell off my mountain bike and I ripped these. And they'll just fix it for you and mail it back and it's free.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Wow, that's awesome. What a model.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and of course if it's a raincoat, I don't know if they can fix that. I guess they have ways to do it, but they've also done stuff like, hey, this is a huge pain in the butt to fix. Here's the new one that doesn't rip so easily.

Anyways, I've had that happen with the company. So you just got to love a company that stands behind their stuff. It's almost unheard of these days, especially because we just expect things to fall apart and it's like, yeah, clothes fall apart. Sometimes really quickly.

Why is this surprising for you? I'm all about repairing or having things replaced that just don't work out. I mean, the margin on socks is high enough that they can afford to send you another pair and then that's all you buy for the rest of your life. That's a really cheap way to earn customer loyalty.

All right, next up.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Dear Jordan and Gabe, I recently took a three-week trip to Portugal, Spain, and Greece, in part inspired by your travel stories and Gabe's nomading adventures. I'm a writer, editor for startups and VC firms that publish books and articles and I wanted some Euro time to disconnect from the grind and reconnect with my creativity. Also, you know, have a fling. If that happened to work out, it's been a while.

Jordan Harbinger: Hell yeah, sis. Get that Euro strange. Get that hostel D.

Gabriel Mizrahi: She ghost writes strategy books for VC firms. You think she's pulling a Gabe and staying at the youth hostel? I'm not sure.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, it's just kind of fun to imagine her locking eyes with some shirtless Dutch guy over those terrible hostile breakfast spreads and then... Oh, they're so bad. Jumping onto the top bunk with him while a Japanese girl pulls the curtain and pretends not to hear anything. I don't know.

I'm rooting for you. That's all I'm saying.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That felt oddly specific. This is a memory. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: One of my last youth hostel days, there was a girl from Switzerland, a girl from Sweden, and I remember not that we didn't get along, but they snored and like I had a problem in the dorm and they just did nothing to help and then on the last day when I was leaving, it was more like 11 a.m. and I'm leaving, okay? And there was a Japanese girl and she was just getting absolutely railed by this black dude from like New York or something in the the room with everyone with the lights on and the sun shining.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. And I was just packing my stuff up and you could just hear this girl just getting destroyed. The girls from Sweden and Switzerland gave me this look like, you're not just going to leave us with this, are you?

And I remember being like, bye!

Gabriel Mizrahi: Why is that on you? That's not on you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. First of all, what am I going to do? Hey, you two, knock it off. That's disgusting.

Uh, I'm not jealous at all. No, it was just like, whatever, not my problem. And because previously I had had a bunk fall on me and they just kind of looked at me like, oh, that sucks.

Are you trapped under a bunk that fell on you? And this dude from Peru helped lift it off me. Yeah. And I was like, thank you.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The South Americans to look out for you. And now these European girls want you to, what, save them from the auditory assault from these two people going at it like rabbits? I don't understand this logic.

Jordan Harbinger: And I was just kind of like, you enjoy the show folks. I'm out. And then that was probably my last night.

Gabriel Mizrahi: These two European girls could just leave the room, right? Like, why do they have to be there?

Jordan Harbinger: They probably just wanted to get their cameras ready or whatever for their day out on the town. But I don't know. The whole youth hostel thing, it's, uh, there are some adventures going on in those places and that's what makes it fun. Some people, if it's a classy adventure, other times, not so much.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's a nightmare. Yeah, you get the full range. In a big way, the trip was amazing. It's summer in Europe.

How could it not be? I sat in cafes in red, drank lots of wine, swam in the sea, ate stupidly good food, met a bunch of cool girls from different countries I might actually stay connected with, and remembered that life is much, much bigger than my Bay Area bubble. And yes, I did meet a guy from Estonia and we had a brief thing.

Not life-changing, but fun. It reminded me that I've still got it and that life can surprise you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, sounds like a very successful trip. Nicely done.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Nice job predicting the story and where it was heading, but he was Estonian, not Dutch. You were off by, what, one time zone, I think.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. Not bad.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But it wasn't all rainbows and Prosecco. There were days where I didn't know what to do with myself or where to go, which was frustrating. There were long stretches where I felt extremely lonely.

A kind of loneliness I've never felt before, which kind of freaked me out. And on the plane home, I was so happy I had gone and genuinely had a great time. But I was also a little unclear about what, if anything, I had accomplished.

Was this trip just a distraction from my life? Was it a false paradise? Were the people I met actually my friends?

I don't want to shit on this dope vacation I had, but it left me with some big questions. Well, what I really want to ask you guys is, have you ever experienced this kind of loneliness while traveling? What do you do about it?

How do you get out of it? Or how do you cope with it? What does it mean?

What should I do with it? Or is that loneliness normal for a solo traveler? And that's why we always have to come back home.

Signed, a gal laid low by this travel solo. Both by the ebbs and flows and a casual bow, but now caught between this afterglow, which might be faux, and this feeling of being hollow, which complicated the tableau.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, great questions. One of my favorite topics. Gabe's too, I'm sure.

So first of all, love that you went on this trip. I love that you did it solo and did it quite successfully from the sound of it. Not many people can or want to do that. I think it's awesome.

So well done there, my friend. Second, I love that you had so many different kinds of experiences on this trip. Friends, solo time, a little fling, touristy stuff, nature time, introspective time.

Sounds like you had all the notes and filled a proverbial cup. So yeah, of course I've experienced this kind of loneliness, of course.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, totally, a lot. Quite a bit, my friend.

Jordan Harbinger: It's part and parcel of solo travel, really.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It is solo travel. It's a huge part of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Even when you're traveling in a group, you can be lonely sometimes. The loneliness is sort of part of the experience of travel, I think.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, to be uprooted, to be disoriented without your familiar comforts and your distractions. Yeah, of course you're going to be lonely.

Jordan Harbinger: So she's asking, how do you get out of it? What do I do with it? Which is an interesting question.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, it is. It's kind of a beautiful question. I mean, she's already grappling with something that I think is so important and I love that about her.

First of all, I just want to tell you, in the first few months of my nomading period, when I was in Porto and Berlin especially, I can't remember how much I talked about it on the show back then. I might not have wanted to talk about it because frankly, I was pretty embarrassed about it. But I came face to face with this exact feeling that she had on this trip, which is more like an absence of a feeling sometimes and that can be alarming.

It's just like, it's loneliness, but it's more than loneliness. It's kind of like the void, you know? It's like, what the hell do I do with myself?

What am I doing here? What am I supposed to do today? It's intense.

Jordan Harbinger: The eternal question. My worst nightmare. That's why I don't want to go on this stupid meditation retreat thing that you're doing next week.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Me either, dude. Oh, man, I'm legitimately anxious about that. Oof.

Okay. Yeah, that's sounds like a next week problem.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a next week problem, man. That's a problem for future Gabriel and I don't envy that guy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's right. And you know what? The future doesn't exist.

We only have the now. So it's really not a problem at all. Meditation, mastered.

But so I had these long stretches, sometimes parts of a day, sometimes many days, kind of weeks on and off of just being like, okay, I have to prep the show. I have to go to yoga. I could read a book.

I can go see a friend once in a while. But aside from that, I truly don't know what to do. I'm like, I've never felt this lonely before. Weird.

Jordan Harbinger: I can relate. I think when you travel, you realize you've been robbed of your acquaintances. These little touch points, those places that you didn't even realize mattered.

Not just the people who are important to you, but the barista at your cafe, the security guard at your office, the traffic signs that are in your native language, being able to read a menu.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Totally. Your couch, your commute, your rhythm, all of it.

Jordan Harbinger: All those things. Even if you don't think about them, they ground you and they prop you up, so it can be really jarring when you travel and you just don't have them anymore.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That was another funny thing. My responsibilities and my day-to-day activities had not radically changed, but my context and my options had. And I was completely displaced, just like our friend was.

And because I didn't have, you know, these easy ways out of loneliness, like driving 15 minutes to visit my mom, for example, or grabbing dinner with my sister. You know, oh, it's 8 30. I can go hit a 9 pm class in my studio, which is five minutes away.

You know, it felt a lot more acute. So I think it's important to recognize, and this might actually freak you out a little bit more, but I think it might ultimately be somewhat comforting. This loneliness you felt on this trip, it exists back home, too.

It's just being covered up or mediated by your life. And that's not entirely in a bad way. It can be in a beautiful way.

Jordan Harbinger: And it's distracting you from this baseline terror that exists all the way in the background.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, which is kind of the condition of our species, right? The human condition. This has always been the issue for us, if you want to call it an issue.

Just like, f**k, I'm here and I'm not on a deadline for this venture capitalist who wants to put out an article about burn rates or whatever. So now what?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's like that feeling of being stuck. But the stuckness is just you in the world and now what? And that feeling can be pretty scary sometimes, even for a seasoned traveler or somebody who thinks maybe they got everything figured out.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think what our friend confronted was more than just loneliness. It was a kind of terror and a confrontation with meaninglessness. Like, oh god, who am I and what am I supposed to be doing and what is the point of all this, you know?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I think she called that frustrating, which is interesting. I can also relate to that. It's just sort of a very American question, isn't it?

Gabriel Mizrahi: It is. Western in general. But yeah, we in America, especially Type A folks, I'm guessing she's one of them, given her work and where she lives, we probably struggle to just enjoy a trip a lot more without trying to suss out what it means.

I have the same problem.

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe that's the one thing this feeling was showing her. That she could just have a vacation and it didn't need to be about accomplishing anything or other than learning how to just enjoy it. And I'm not trying to sound condescending.

I'm the same way. What did I get done on my vacation? Yeah, I relaxed a little bit. But what did I get done?

Oh, not much. It's like, no, no, no. That's why it's a vacation, dipshit.

Gabriel Mizrahi: If nothing else, it revealed how she makes meaning out of experiences of all kinds and how she responds to loneliness and confusion, which is really great information for her.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So this was one of the things I was seeking in my travels, although I didn't quite know what I was getting into, but this encounter with loneliness, you know, like not loneliness for its own sake, you know, that's where the loneliness can become like masochistic and mostly pointless, which is a different problem.

Jordan Harbinger: Different problem. Yeah, that's when it's time to book a Ryanair flight.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That's right. Flexi plus your ass to Dublin and get thee to a, what do they do up there? 24 hour James Joyce reading at a pub made of stone from the Celtic era, whatever.

I don't know. I've never been there.

Jordan Harbinger: I've never been. I love that you think the solution to loneliness is to listen to an all night reading of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, it would divert me for a few hours for sure. It's actually, that sounds pretty fun. Talk about a dude who is lonely.

But no, I mean, not loneliness for loneliness's sake, but loneliness as solitude, as a new experience of oneself and hopefully a portal to new experiences, which by the way, I think it was for you as well. You were lonely, but then you made friends. You were lonely, but then you met a guy.

You were lonely, but you also got this lovely solitude in the ocean when you went for a swim. But so for what it's worth, I think there are a couple ways to think about loneliness while traveling. One is whether it's actually meaningful or not, whether there's something useful to be done with loneliness or not.

It's the price of admission for certain experiences.

Jordan Harbinger: For sure. You have to be willing to be lonely in order to get to the moments where you don't feel lonely.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yes, where you meet the fun friends, where you do all these things we just talked about. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, if you work too hard to not be lonely, you might miss the real trip.

Gabriel Mizrahi: You might. And so yeah, part of your job as a traveler is to just learn to bear that loneliness. The other way to think about loneliness though is as an opportunity because this encounter with loneliness is not for the faint of heart.

Most of us would do anything to avoid it. And the confusion that comes with it. And this is, I gather, one of the points of meditation, which I guess is why I'm doing this silent retreat next week.

God help me. But here's the good news. I hope.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, cure this girl from San Francisco with a MacBook Pro's existential void. No pressure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: In that encounter with loneliness, I find that you have two options. One option is to come back to something important, but with a new appreciation, right? Like your career, your friends, your family, your apartment.

Wonderful. Nothing inherently wrong with that, especially if you're genuinely happy with your life. The other option is to sit with a sense of being lonely, of being confused, lost.

In a sense, useless sometimes. Going out of yourself as you know it and then see in that loneliness what comes.

Jordan Harbinger: Like what she wants to do or what she cares about.

Gabriel Mizrahi: What she thinks about. What kinds of experiences she finds herself craving in those moments.

Jordan Harbinger: A romp in the sack with an Estonian stud.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Perhaps. Why not? Maybe that contact and that connection was all the more meaningful in her loneliness.

But it could also be a new openness to talk to people or to continue being alone that day and get friendlier with her thoughts and feelings and her boredom and find out what in that loneliness and boredom that are so distressing wants to make itself known. It might feel like nothing for long stretches, but it's never just nothing. And maybe you're just staring at the Mediterranean for a while and now you're a little drunk.

So here we are.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that would be my choice for sure.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Or like, you know, you said you spend time reading in cafes. Maybe in this loneliness you decide to read a book, but maybe with a different intention. You know, not so much to pass the time and distract yourself, but to really engage with what you're reading.

To follow a great author and sit in the questions or experiences they're writing about and enter into a relationship with that. And then the physical place you're in, like you're in Greece, you're in Spain or whatever, that just becomes for that time a new and stimulating backdrop to this fun project, to that relationship.

Jordan Harbinger: But isn't that covering up the loneliness again? Isn't it all just kind of coping?

Gabriel Mizrahi: I suppose in a way it is, and I don't think that's inherently bad. I guess what I'm getting at is in this loneliness you have the opportunity, right? And it is an opportunity.

It's a choice to decide how you want to spend your loneliness. And you can connect to the hotel Wi-Fi and watch a new girl until you get tired. Or you can watch something or read something with a question in mind or with real engagement or call a friend back home and catch up on the trip or go out and make a new one or just walk the streets and contemplate.

Or maybe you do stay in and you do watch New Girl because it is funny and it is comforting, but you really watch it. You laugh and you enjoy the laughter. But not just because it was the path of least resistance or an easy distraction slash numbing strategy, but because it was how you chose to spend your evening.

And that's great.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's a nice distinction. I guess the difference between distracting yourself or coping with a feeling and doing something deliberate with it is it's just to get the intention.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I think it's remarkable that this vacation you took for fun put you in touch with this other existential and sometimes difficult experience. But the vacation didn't do that to you. Grease didn't do that to you.

You did that to you, which is amazing. On some level you knew this was the experience you needed to have, which I find is always the case anyway. And you got to have it with all of these other notes in there.

Like Jordan said, the friends, the guy, the food. This by the way is what Aaron Margolis and I call the full tombola.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, what's the full tombola? Tombola?

Gabriel Mizrahi: Tombola. It's so weird. This is a My Dad Wrote a Porno reference.

There's some insane plot point about a tombola, which I believe, I think that's like a raffle. I think that's the British word for raffle. But now it's our word for the full catastrophe, which is kind of like a pop psychology concept now.

Just the total unfiltered reality of life. Like all the joys, all the terrible moments, everything in between. But for some reason we just swapped the word tombola and now that's what we call it, the full tombola.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, you got it all on this trip, girl. The whole mcgilla.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The whole mcgilla, that's right. If we were two Yiddish grandmothers, that's the word we would use. And so great, this trip delivered, man.

But like you said, sometimes the friends and the wine and the laughs fade, although how much that happens I guess is up to you. But this loneliness or the question posed to you by this loneliness, which is yours alone to answer, that's what's going to stick with you now that you're home, I suspect. So I realize this is a little bit abstract and it's a bit of a non-answer, but it's the only answer I feel I can offer, which is stick with that question, keep it alive, listen to it and follow it and see where it leads you.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm thinking season five of new girl.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Season five of new girl.

Jordan Harbinger: That's the answer.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The whole series really start to finish over and over again. So you never have to feel anything again in your entire life. Yeah, maybe or something else or the same as she was before, you know, the same work, the same apartment, the same friends, but with more awareness, more gratitude, she gets to decide.

It's super fun.

Jordan Harbinger: I really relate to her other questions. Were these friendships even real? Did the guy even matter?

I used to ask myself those same questions and the answer a lot of the time ended up being not really. But sometimes the answer was actually yeah, totally. And now these are real homies.

Travel friendships are not fake because they're temporary. Relationships, they can have intensity or concentration in short duration. Permanence is not the test of a real relationship or consistency or whatever.

I mean, I think about like my brother, my host brother from when I was an exchange student, Florian. I mean, we lived together in the 90s. He was 15.

I think I was 17. We didn't get along at first. Then we got along and we became, you know, more than just like friends because we were basically brothers and then we just stayed in touch for almost 30 years. I mean next year or something like that. It's going to be 30 years. Crazy.

I mean, I went to his wedding a couple of years ago.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Didn't he make a speech at your wedding as well?

Jordan Harbinger: He probably did. Yeah, he probably did make a speech at my wedding, which is pretty cool.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, that's a perfect example. It's amazing. You feed the friendship and the friendship flourishes and that's what makes it significant.

So yeah, I guess here we're back to what is your intention, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, but I find these things have a logic of their own. If you feel moved to stay connected to the gals you met on your trip, share voice notes, plan more experiences, great. If you don't, maybe that's a sign they weren't all that meaningful, but both are fine.

Doesn't mean they weren't an important part of your trip.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I mean, it's possible these gals she met getting shwaysted at the bar in Corfu or whatever were meaningful because they're actually friends or maybe they were only meaningful insofar as they raised this interesting question. How do I decide who matters to me? You know, what in a stranger moves me to want to stay close?

What inspires me about somebody? What makes me laugh, etc, etc? And how do I show up in those relationships that allows them to grow?

Jordan Harbinger: So there too, she can follow that question and just see where it leads.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That Estonian guy too. I mean, you might never see or talk to him again, but he gave you a good time. He reminded you that you still got it. Is he your husband? Probably not. Is he significant?

Is he part of your story now? I would say yeah, definitely. And I don't know, different people have different lenses on this.

I think even these seemingly casual ties you develop when you travel are meaningful and it's kind of hard to overstate how profound that can be if you engage with those people in the right way and those memories in the right way. This is just what I love about travel. It's so hard to explain.

It's often very confusing and the confusion I now see is sometimes the best part despite what I said on our end of year episode when I was like in the midst of grappling with the meaninglessness of a lot of my travels because I was so like you obsessed with trying to figure out what it all meant, which I've changed a little bit my view on that, but yeah, because confusion for me is now possibility and uh, it's often the necessary prelude to the best kind of clarity.

Jordan Harbinger: Damn, facts. So I'm not going to say I'm sorry you were lonely because I'm with Gabe. I think you touched something super important on the trip and it wasn't just that Estonian guy's package.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Yeah, she took his Kia package for a spin if you know what I mean.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Sorry. That was low-hanging fruit.

That was terrible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So was the Estonian guy's package, but okay.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. Exactly. No need to push the loneliness away is what we're saying. No need to do anything with it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Other than listen.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, other than listen and make sure your credit card on Hulu is up to date. And now you get to come back home and be distracted, but what's the quality of your distraction? I'm going to take that into my weekend too.

Celebrating the full tombola.

Gabriel Mizrahi: The full tombolissimo. Nailed it. That's right.

Jordan Harbinger: What a weird bit. I want in on it. That's going to come in handy.

Don't forget to check out Jamison Firestone on the craziness of Russia in the early aughts and Rob Reid on Synthetic Biology and our Skeptical Sunday on Family Court if you haven't done so yet. The best things that have happened in my 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 I talked about a little earlier.

It's free. It's not schmoozy. It's on the Thinkific platform at sixminutenetworking.com.

Show notes and transcripts are on the website. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show are at jordanharbinger.com deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram, still not calling it X by the way, or just hit me on LinkedIn.

You can find Gabe on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show was created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tadas Sidlauskas, and of course Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

What if everything modern society teaches us about trust, status, and connection is backward? Psychologist Guillaume Dulude ventured into some of the world's most remote communities with no shared language, no GPS, and no guarantee he'd be welcomed or even make it home.

Guillaume Dulude: I've always been attracted by nature, animals, expeditions, tribes. I'm gonna try to go around the world with no money. Just rely on communication to survive.

Talk to people, get accepted by people, go live with them, and see if I can survive like this. So that's how it started. Safety-wise, you need to know when people have problems with you, and you need to keep your distance, and you need to show them that they will lead.

If you're trying to do too much, even with good intention, you don't have no idea what they can do. There are no rules here. We're absolutely alone.

There is nobody that knows exactly where we are. So you need to always show that you understand their rules, and you play by their rules, and you're always listening to them. If they feel that you're always listening and responding in a way that they want, the anxiety will lower, vulnerability in a relationship will increase.

I do as much research as possible. I'm addicted to discovery, I think. I'm addicted to new cultures, new experience, and the whole psychology around a culture.

I want reality. I want proof. I want to know how do you live traditionally, where we come from as human beings?

And I think that's always been my quest. Who are we? Who am I?

Where do we come from? What's the future? If we know where we come from, can we make a better future?

I was hooked. So the rest, it's history.

Jordan Harbinger: Discover what uncontacted tribes revealed about earning trust, creating belonging, and reclaiming the human connection we may have lost on episode 1318 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.