Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Jordan Harbinger: How Deep is Your Well? (#068)

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

  Well, well, well…now you’re thirsty? Podcast host Jordan Harbinger brings his unique and trenchant expertise to this episode of INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE. He shares invaluable advice from a 16 year career in podcasting. He had me on his podcast (https://www.youtube.com/c/THEJORDANHARBINGERSHOW) recently and I’m thrilled to have the chance to return the favor. His tips for how to get interview subjects off-script, when is too early to advertise, and why you should treat your audience like family are priceless to podcasters everywhere. Subscribe to my mailing list to receive show notes for this episode: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 00:10:19 Being a Wall Street lawyer prepared Jordan for podcasting. 00:18:08 The art of interviewing controversial people. 00:29:43 How to elicit good storytelling. 00:40:53 Earning the trust of your audience. 00:48:35 “What I truly love is having the conversations.” 00:56:20 Self-promotion isn’t inherently selfish. 01:08:52 What ethical will does Jordan Harbinger plan to leave behind? 01:12:44 What object or knowledge would Jordan put in or on his monolith? 01:15:15 What did Jordan think was impossible until he did it? Jordan Harbinger’s long career in podcasting has earned him the nickname “The Larry King of Podcasting.” His previous career path included being a lawyer in New York, a tour guide in North Korea, a life coach, and a radio talk show host. He interviews diverse and interesting guests on his popular podcast “The Jordan Harbinger Show.” Listen to Brian Keating on The Jordan Harbinger Show here: https://www.jordanharbinger.com/brian-keating-losing-the-nobel-prize/ Find Jordan Harbinger on the web: https://www.jordanharbinger.com and Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanharbinger Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Host Brian Keating: ‍♂️ Twitter at Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I can't tell you how much fun it is to interview someone who's been an inspiration to me, such as Jordan Harbinger. He's been podcasting for over a decade. It's hard to believe when you look at him. He's got such a baby face. But the things you're going to learn today really set you off on a path to either succeed as a podcaster, do so with authenticity, or perhaps seek out new paths in your career, in your relationships. And in any other endeavor, which requires some amount of creativity, some amount of introspection, some amount of reflection on what it really means to be a completely fully rounded individual. And Jordan is one of the best I know. He does such deep research from all of his guests. I was honored to be on a show a couple months ago. And I was actually

blown away. He did research that even some of my graduate students weren't capable of doing. And you'll hear a little bit about that in today's interview. He's really a rising star, a pun intended, but the fact that he's been rising for well over a decade tells you that he's on a path to go somewhere extremely special. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode recorded over this summer 2020 and making use of probably more time than he intended to give to me, but he's such a generous person, such an influence, and I want to thank Jordan for all he's done for me personally and all he does for the planet. How many people can you say that about? Enjoy this interview with none other than the eponymous Jordan Harbinger.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Welcome, everybody, to the Into the Impossible podcast. I am your fearful host, Brian Keating, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination, where we run the Into the Impossible podcast. The name Into the Impossible, of course, comes from one of Sir Arthur C. Clark's famous three laws of nature, one of them being any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And my guest today, distinguished himself via the impact he's made on podcasting,

not only taking a show basically from nothing, a self-made man, not in the robotic sense where he could assemble himself, although I'm sure he could do that, but actually making himself over from a lawyer to being a law student, at least, then going to forming one of the best top-ranked podcasts in the world, then losing that, as some of us have lost other things in our lives, and then rebuilding it better than ever, a new podcast called The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Jordan, first of all, welcome. How are you doing? How are you sheltering today? I'm sheltering well, thank you. I moved in with my brother-in-law, which is not exactly what they had in mind with sheltered in place, probably, but whatever. And I'm building a house next door, so I'm building new shelter.

Can you say that for yourself? No, you can't. Taking shelter in place to a new extreme. I am building a whole new shelter that didn't even exist before. So that's how serious I'm taking this. And I just had a kid who's now 11 months old. So he came into the world and destroyed our ability to go and do anything just in time for COVID to come and destroy everyone's ability to go and do anything. So it's actually prepping you.

It's honestly, I hate to make light of this, but we kind of have to or we're all going to go insane. Yeah. It's been quite convenient to have a new baby during this time because nobody can do squat anyway. So the feeling of FOMO is non-existent. That's the bright side for me, you know, on this is like, you know, before when he was really young, people were like, hey, I'm renting a beach house. Why don't you come down? And I'm like, I got a three-week-old baby, man. I'm not doing that, you know.

And it would be like, oh, why don't you bring the baby to Taiwan? And we're like, oh, he's too young. and then COVID hits and we're like, oh, okay, so even the Instagrammers are now like, here's my basement, you know? Exactly. Yeah. I have a rule. I have a rule that anytime you get two excuses for one reason, it's one of them is a lie.

Basically, you know, like, oh, my cat died and there was traffic on the freeway. You know, one of those is a lie because one of those would be sufficient, right? And so I kind of feel like, you know, Jaden was already the Trump card that superseded anything, your young son. And you didn't need the pandemic. But now you've got double the excuses. Right. No, no.

And it's not even just the excuse. It's that like we don't feel like other people are out doing all this amazing stuff and we're missing out because they're not. They're all at home. And I kind of feel bad for a lot of my friends who they're like, oh, we were going to have kids last year. But, you know, we decided to wait. And I'm like, ooh, now would have been a great time to have an infant and just sit at home and, you know, write that book. The doctor's appointments, right? Well, even then, I mean, yeah, you're probably right.

But now a lot of doctors are, I think, doing house calls. I could be, because they want to keep, at least in California, there's house calls going on with some doctors because they're like, we don't want you to come in if you're sick. Like the worst thing you can do is come in and see the receptionist and sit in the waiting room and then use the bathroom. Yeah. So around here, it's actually been quite nice. We also, and I'm in, because I'm in Silicon Valley, which is actually kind of the heart of we're like the West Coast, HQ of infections right now. So there's a lot of, hey, let's be extra careful. There are doctors appointments, but you'd be, I don't know why, but there haven't been that many. Maybe it's because I

have twins, and so that's like eight times. Oh, you have twice as many, so it seems like a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to first start with something that I always associate with you, which is a trait of gratitude. And I want to give a shout out to a mutual friend. Actually, I don't even know how you guys know each other, but Connor Beaton runs the Man Talks podcast. And about two or three years ago, and my book came out on losing the Nobel Prize, he somehow found me and invited me on his show.

And we did my first ever, like, big-time podcast. You know, I had done podcasts from my own. But it was the first, you know, kind of internet, our nationally known podcast. He's a well-known guy. And we recorded it and we use a software that I think you use, you know, or maybe it's a different one. And I was like so stoked after the podcast.

I just closed up the laptop. I was like, all right, we're done. That was, that was wonderful. And then, like, weeks went by. And I'm like, hey, Connor, any word when the podcast is going to run? You know, the book's out. I'd love to, you know, have some promo and it'd be great to see it live because I had such a great time. I didn't respond for a couple times that I emailed him.

Finally, I was like, God, did he not record it? There's something wrong. Did it not work out? And then I emailed him, like, did you not record it? Or was there a problem on my seat? He's like, yeah, unfortunately. I hate to have to do this, but we're going to have to do it again. And I said, oh, you know, it's okay.

I mean, he's so fun and nice to talk to that I took it, you know, kind of looked on the bright side, said, okay, it's another hour to spend with a super interesting guy. And, you know, I could have been like, you know, you're unprofessional. But, you know, he's such a great guy and it's such an interesting show. And then a couple days later, he's like sends a non-dubop in email, shall we say, to you and copies me on it. and tells you all the great things about me and all these lies and so forth. But then he, and then we took it from there, and it took two years.

Eventually, I got on your show. And then eventually you helped me get on James Altucher's show. And then James had me, came on my show and we recorded a three-hour-long interview. So, you know, I hope you've got another three hours to go to match up with James Altentcher. But then, you know, just kind of gone from leaps and amounts. but if it hadn't been, you know, if I had kind of not taken the bright side, which you have, you know, said many times that you pursue the path of like, let me see how this could be skewed towards the good. And I associate that trait with you. And by using this, this kind of tactic

that you helped me develop to see the gratitude in the situation of having to record the second episode, lo and behold, I've been connected to wonderful people in an industry and tried to become, you know, sort of a semi-professional, though don't tell our governor that that's what I do. I'm not professional at all. I don't make any money on this. But I want to thank you for that for kind of setting these things in motion for me and being a role model, not only to me, but to many people in the podcast world. And first thing is, you know, now that you had me on the show, are you depressed because all your, you know, dream guests can only let you down for me. I mean, where do we go from here? Yeah, it has been tough, but we have figured out ways to,

I mean, I had Ray Dalio on recently, so he came pretty close to Matt. matching your performance on the show. You know, but I always have, I can always look back on my Kobe Bryant episode if I want to see somebody who's just on par with what you deliver. That's right. That's right. As well. And, you know, so the one thing that I want to get into maybe later is, you know, how

you, how the podcast has been developed basically from scratch twice. And, but the main thing, the first thing I want to talk about is your unusual background. I mean, you were a law student. I don't think you ever practiced law, right? I did. And I passed the bar in New York, and I'm still a lawyer. but thanks for doing your homework, Brian. Well, you're not my lawyer.

No wonder you didn't get that Nobel Prize. There's a lot of loose ends on this prep here. Well, the first thing I want to ask you is, you know, is the reason that you left law, because you're no longer a practicing lawyer, at least you tell me that you're not my lawyer on every show I listen. That's right. I assume you're talking to me.

But, you know, was that worse than living in North Korea? Because I understand you did live in North Korea. I went to North Korea four times. I never lived there. I don't think that would have been a, that would have been quite a. feet and would have probably also been really there's a i can imagine there's limited options for dining and other things like that that you quickly exhaust your resources living in a place like

that um which is worse the law profession or north korea yeah i mean the work hour it depends where you work right uh firm you're at but i i didn't mind being a lawyer it was long hours but I also worked for a cool firm that later went under because, you know, just we were over leveraged in 2007, big time. So I didn't mind being a lawyer. You know, I worked with cool people. I learned a lot at the firm. I just wasn't interested in it, which wasn't their fault. It wasn't like, oh, these people are all jerks.

I can't stand them. There was nothing like that, really. It was just a matter of I never wanted to be a lawyer. I went to law school because I had a hard time. getting a job after college, even though I had a four-year degree from the University of Michigan, spoke different languages. It's just, you know, they didn't teach us how to get jobs. And I'm not blaming them, but also when you're 21 and you went to college and you think you're supposed to get a job after that and nobody even shows you step one of like how to find jobs, it gets a little crazy.

Yeah. It gets crazy. And I went to law school because I thought, well, at least then I'll have a better education. And then, of course, once you graduate from a trade school, which is what law school is, it's just a really expensive, in fact, quite overpriced trade school, then they recruit you, especially in a hot market. So we had this kind of really easy going for me, because I didn't worry about it, because I didn't care where I worked, this recruiting thing where they took over a motel, you know, somewhere in North Campus and all these firms came in and said, okay, who wants to work here, hand us your resume and if you're not a complete a hole you get a second interview in new york city you know that was like if you have a pulse and you're not picking your nose and wiping it on your sock during the

interview you're hired yeah and do you feel like uh that training you know as as is kind of commoditized as it is it does teach you at least you know from what i see on tv which is you know of course of representation of reality uh perhaps not but uh but you know did that teach you because you have this um especially acute auditory and verbal communication ability, which you know, you don't rely on video as much as other people do, although perhaps you're going to get more into that. I want to talk to you about that later because, you know, there's a notion that in psychology that the voice is actually deeper than the eye and that you're not supposed to rely on eyewitness testimony and things like that. But I'm wondering sometimes, I mean, you're like a super friendly cross-examiner. Like you really dig deep. You do research harder than anybody that I know.

I mean, you found an article about Maria Mayer, who is behind me, behind me over here. There she is on the wall. She's the second woman to ever win a Nobel Prize in physics. And I had been told by her son at an event in person in 2011 when they had a stamp dedicated to her after she passed away. And her son has since passed away. And he told me when she won the Nobel Prize, the headline in the newspaper was San Diego mother, housewife, wins Nobel Prize.

And I was like, I got to find that headline. I couldn't find it. and I didn't find it until the show notes from our episode came out, and somehow you found it. So I guess it's a long way of saying, like, do these skills from law school translate evidence, searching, you know, research, and then also cross-examination? Did they not prove helpful to you in this career that you have now? 2020 hindsight, they did, but if you'd ask me right when I came out of law school and into interviewing for the Jordan Harbinger show, if I'm using the rules of, not really the rules of evidence,

but to some degree like rules of evidence, legal research principles, I would be like, no, I'm not using any of that crap. But truthfully, there is a notion in me now a sensibility that you need to go beyond the headline or that certain arguments are deliberately misleading, or just misleading, maybe not even deliberately misleading. So I typically, when I do research for the Jordan Harbinger show, I'll look at it. look up an article with a perspective, and that perspective might say something along the lines of, oh, well, you know, these numbers say this, therefore, that. And I'll be like, well, it could mean

that. Let's find expert testimony. I don't call it expert testimony. I call it another perspective. But that's what expert testimony really is, is like, who is writing about this that is not writing for right wing crazy.org, you know, blog? Let's have this. them interpret these numbers. And then you'll find someone who go, huh, okay, well, these numbers are true, but that's not what this means when this isn't the conclusion you draw from these. And then there's this other statistic that is just complete bullcrap that they made up. And you're like, oh, okay, well, that's good to know. And then you'll look at another blog and another perspective or another article. And it's like, well, these numbers are right, and this is the

conclusion you draw from it. But the conclusion and what the author of this piece is now saying are actually like he's deliberately mischaracterizing that conclusion or the context of that conclusion or something along those lines. And that comes from what I learned in law school, but also it turns out to be just what everyone now has to do because we can't count on people to give us the truth. Now we're looking at me. I now look at media like they're advocating for a perspective, which is exactly how you argue in a courtroom. You go, well, this and this and this. and if you take it at face value, you're in trouble because that's what this person's lawyer is saying and they're arguing for their client. Whereas now I'm going, okay, well, what's the other side of this?

Because we really can't hear any argument until we have the other side because you only have one version of events. So what's really going on? So I take all my research and show prep for the Jordan Harbinger show, and I go, okay, what is it exactly that we're looking at that is going to deliver a conclusion here? And is that conclusion what this person wants us to see? Is this what essentially is, what is the truth? How do you balance that with, you know, you don't want to entrap your witness host, your guest or other. You know, I find like yesterday I had a Noam Chomsky, who's, you know, the world's most

sighted. No big deal. Yeah, he's just the world's most sighted intellectual and human history. And I disagree with a lot of his politics and some of his opinions. You're not an anarchist or whatever. Well, I mean, he's, you know, super far left. But now he's come so far left. It's like walking around the equator, you come back to where you were.

But here I am in New Guinea again. How did that happen? And I was thinking, you know, he just had this huge thing in Harper's magazine where he co-signed with J.K. Rowling. And I could have been like, well, how could you do this? And I know we get a lot of clicks. And I didn't do that. I mean, I mentioned J.K. Rowling. And it was actually a good opportunity for him to say, look, the people that are criticizing me for the people who signed after me on this letter of intellectuals demonstrate their fundamental irrational. First of all, the guy speaks in complete paragraphs, like structured 300-word paragraphs. And he does a ever say um or uh or because it's perfectly well formed it's about this volume and he's just so brilliant

but i knew i could say look you and elan musk have a beef you know he called you an idiot he said you're a moron and you know i could really blow that up but you know and that'll be good for clicks and clickbait and actually he would talk about it i mean i did mention the Elon Musk but how do you balance that you know because you want to be known as you know that's some hostile prosecutor and you're never like that but you must have had guests besides me where you're like this guy's full of you know what and like i just this is this total nonsense so how do you balance that you know kind of being a mensch as you are but also kind of just going for the truth and and and you know suppressing those lurly instincts uh well i mean i had roger stone on the show need i say more so i mean i what i do

bernie made off wasn't available bernie made off was not available and i would definitely interview him in a second but i'm pretty sure he's on some kind of media blackout what do i know um i this is the wrong phrase to use, but I'm going to see if I can make it work here. I try to give people like that. Let me just stick with a Roger Stone example. I try to give people like that enough rope to hang themselves, so to speak.

So I don't go, and then you did this. I'll be like, and then what happened? And then why did you do that? And then after a while, that person will get the idea that since I'm not an unfriendly or hostile interrogator or interrogator or interrogator, or counsel or a host, whatever you want to call it,

they'll start to go, oh, I'm doing my schick when people like me and they're entertained by what I'm doing, I'm doing that. So, you know, Ryderstone was like, yeah, Richard Nixon, this, that, the other thing, Stone's rule number seven, always deny, deny, deny, and he's going through this over and over and over. And at the end, he's like, thanks,

this was really a lot of good, this is great. And I know he's kind of like, cool, I was on a show where this guy totally agrees with everything I say. And it's like, then it's like, And I don't have to end the show with like, oh, do you hear all that crap? This guy's terrible. I don't have to do that.

I just air the show and people go, whoa, that guy just showed his true colors. Is that evil or is he just insane? I don't know. I don't know. And that's what you want. Because if I go, if I push back right away and he goes, yeah, Richard Nixon's, but this guy did this. And he disgraced the office of the president. Then what is he going to do?

Everything after that's going to be measured. It's going to be clamped up. It's going to be what he thinks people want to hear, which is going to be very, very, Manila because he's not, Roger Stone isn't good at telling people what they want to hear because he's himself, you know, like he's a different type of person, um, for better or for worse, you know, and, and so you have to let people, if I'm going to, I have to decide early, am I going to, like, argue with this person because the audience wants to hear my opinion on what they're doing and see them get pushed back on? Or does the audience just want to see this person's true personality

come out? And for me, I'll push back on certain ideas or certain things. and I'll get them to explain themselves, but I'm not going to go, don't you think you're just being a totally big bastard, bad guy doing this and this and this? It's like, well, where, what is that going to get me? A couple of applause is, applause from people sitting in there on the car

driving to work. Like, who cares? Save now at Whole Foods Market. It's the summer splash event, with great everyday prices on 365 brand ground beef for the grill and ice cream for dessert. They have yellow sales signs on ready to cook beef or chicken kebabs too.

Level up with savory marinate, spices and rubs, and complete your cookout with a crowd-pleasing cherry pie and their balsamic chicken salad. Available at the prepared foods counter. Get Summer Splash Savings now at Whole Foods Market. And it will ruin your biggest proponent of networking and it might deny you access to like Steve Cohen

or somebody like that. Yeah. Other people in the orbit of the... We'll see. I might look at home. But I want to be really clear here. idea isn't to get Roger Stone to be like, that Jordan guy's really nice. Call me anytime, Jordan, let's roll up a joint. You know, it's not my idea of what I want to do on the show.

They're allowed to not necessarily like me after that, but I'm not going to go out of my way to be like, see, you know, you hear these political shows like, who's this, who's the guy like, Dan Bonino, Bonino. Yeah, Bono, I can't even tell what he's that sound dirty, but they're not. Yeah, exactly. And he's the type of guy where he's like, and then he's freaking liberal retards. You know, they da-da-da-da. And I'm like, oh, I get it. You're just the angry guy who's like the uncle at Thanksgiving that everyone hates, except for this is your whole schick, so it's your whole show. And it's popular because there are a lot of people that are like, oh, look at him, make fun of people that I don't understand.

And owning the libs, man. And it's like, no, he's just talking to a bunch of dummies in their garage, you, and you're giggling because he's like, yeah, the retards. But the people he doesn't like are not listening to him because he's a clown. Right. So like, that kind of the, yeah, go ahead. What are you achieving when you do that? You're talking only to people that agree with you, so you're not making any meaningful change.

You're making things more divisive. You're literally just a clown. And that's one of the reasons why I stopped watching certain shows. Like, I think Bill Maher is funny, but I don't necessarily want to watch his show because all the panels. It's polemical. Yeah, and look, I have to Google that word. But like, unless one of my friends is, on those panels, I don't usually watch because it's just like, oh my God, and then Trump did this.

Can you believe that? Oh, my, well, he's an ass. What a moron that guy. Yeah, let's make fun of him more. And I'm like, am I getting anywhere? No, not really. It's just the echo chamber, right? Yeah, it's an echo chamber of comedians.

And then there's like an academic and then there's like another person and they're getting their opinion. Yeah. And then it's like Franny Liebelowitz is making fun of this person. And then, you know, Charlemagne and the gods making fun of this person. But Michael Moore will come in with a, yeah. Right. If Charlemagne's on there, I'm going to watch.

But like, you know, yeah, I don't want to be in that echo chamber. And again, I like Bill Maher. I think he can be really funny and he's like witty and insightful. But the other reason I stopped watching shows like that is, and here's how you can tell, right? Because you watch the show and they'll get like James Comey on there. And I'm like, great, he's going to interview James Comey. Seven minutes later, he's like, thanks for coming in. Let's go to our panel.

And I'm like, what are you doing? He flew to New Yorker, L.A. Sorry. If you go to LA to talk to you, you give him seven minutes. Screw the panel. Have them talk to you for the whole show. Like, let's dig into this. And I realize that like, oh, wait a minute.

Like people who just want to have their opinions reinforced, they don't care about long form dialogue. No. You know, that's why you don't see it. They want sound bites that they can go to their family. And then when their cousin comes in and goes, you know, we really need nationalized health care. They can go, oh, yeah, here's this sound bite I heard on this.

Dan Bonino's show that makes you sound dumb. Ha ha. That's all they want. They don't want dialogue. They don't want to get anywhere. Yeah, it's tiresome. It's tiresome. So I just don't do that on my show. I'm like, no, we're going to have a long format discussion. I'm going to push back where pushing is needed to open something up more, but I'm not going to push back just to be like, see audience. I disagree with this guy. Virtue signal, virtue signal, virtue signal. I disagree. A lot of what you do so effectively is research before the show. And, you know, I want to, well,

first of all, I was curious because it took, you know, it took a while for me to do it. Did Kobe have to go through the same, you know, like weeks and weeks of back and forth with the producer? Like, his question and answer is five topics, his takeaway, his takeaway, or whatever? Did Kobe Bryant fill out my show prep form that I made you fill out? Is that what you were trying to ask me? Absolutely not. He did not. Okay, fine.

I would be mad if he did. No, he's special. Yeah, he's special. Okay, fine. Okay. But only people like Kobe are in that exalted hierarchy. Correct. Yeah, no, I, you know, and the thing is, I also, I didn't mind. It actually helped a lot because I didn't know you, I didn't know what you would ask me. And I didn't know, you know, I mean, I have followed you for literally the better part of a decade. But I didn't know, like, what is my episode going to be like. So at least it gave me some structure as what to expect. So I do, even for Kobe, it probably would have been good. But, but anyway, go ahead.

Yeah. So I'm able to do, I do 10 to 20 hours of prep for every guest, as you know. But. For Kobe, it was easy enough for me to prep on my own because there's so much information there. I didn't really, but his publicist gave me a lot of stuff to work with as well, which is helpful. But, you know, I don't have to worry about that stuff with Kobe because there is such an obvious angle to take with somebody like that. With you or with an author that I'm exploring, I want to know what, I want to know what they're trying to, bring across because the last thing you want to do, the last thing you want to do is go and interview somebody. Well, I wouldn't say the last thing.

One of the last things you want to do is go in and try to interview somebody about something they don't want to talk about and then they're trying to skillfully or not drag the conversation in another direction. Yeah, like with Kobe, I knew that there was a lot of low-hanging fruit with basketball. Yeah. But I didn't want to talk about basketball.

So what I told his publicist was, I really want to focus on creativity, parenting, running a business. I don't really care about basketball so you can be relieved and know that. And they were like, and we want to focus on. And there was like other things that obviously had hit the news in recent years that they didn't want me to really dive into for obvious reasons. And I was like, don't worry. And a lot of people are like that. Like a lot of a lot of personalities are going. You got to sort of think for them.

Like, is General Petraeus going to come into this conversation thinking I'm going to attack him for this affair that he had that he's super sick of talking about? Right. Right. Because that is something that is a nightmare for a publicist, is tiring for him. And he doesn't have to subject himself to this crap anymore. And it's going to start you off on an adversarial relation, you know, almost from the get-go. Especially when they know that it could be out there, it's almost worse than if you just get out of the way and say, either we're going to talk about or we're not. give them the option. And I guess, you know, one thing I wonder about, you know, because you do so much

research, and I think it was you who told me this, or I'd say told me. I feel like the ear is so deep that you're literally in my earbuds, you know, like hours and hours a week. And with a lot of other pot, James is like that. Tim Ferriss is like that. You're listening and these people are like literally embedded in your head. And as Carl Sagan said about books, he said, you know, you have an author who wrote something little scribbles on dead paper on dead trees. And then their voice is in your head. And it's no wonder that books and audio format like podcasts are so are so influential, visceral and influential of the human mind. And I just wonder, you know, one thing you said a long time ago, as I said, was, I can't remember exactly, but it was like, you don't ask, you get all

the low-hanging fruit out of the way. Like, you're not going to talk about that. You just, you just blow past that because you want to get beyond the talking points. And I'm wondering, like, with books, it's hard for me. I have a lot of authors on. And they want to talk about their book, but there's a balance between like a lot of people want the audio book in the podcast. In other words, they don't even want to buy the audio book. They don't want to buy the written, you know, who has time to read a book? So it's like, tell me your whole book on the podcast. And then the host doesn't have to do research, you know, because the author's going to tell about it. I mean, how do you balance that? How do you, how do you get it so that you get to

the really interesting stuff, the stuff, the exclusive stuff? Because I think that's what, as a podcaster is so interesting. Stories that people have, like I asked Noam Shamski about alien intelligent. I thought he was going to say, you know, you're an idiot. You're a professor, Chancellor's Professor of Physics, you moron. Like, we talked for 30 minutes about it. It was fascinating. And he had never talked about it. Wait, sorry, that last part was a little confusing. He'd never talked about what? Alien linguistics. Like, how do you communicate with an ant? Because he's known as the father of modern linguistics. Right. And I said, but a lot of his thesis is that language is learned as you're knowing from Jaden. It's almost all nonverbal. Like, he's learning grammar. Like,

he might say something like Aminol or something, but he'll put it subject and the verb will agree. You know, he won't say like, daddy and mommy is going, you know, whatever. Maybe he will. I don't know how much he's talking, to be honest, but you'll see as he gets older. And kids learn that, but they don't learn it from the, you know, they don't sit down at a language course. So they're learning non-verbally. And I said, how could you communicate to an alien civilization that you can't see, you can't do the nonverbal communications cues with an alien?

You're just communicating with Morse code. Is it possible even in principle, linguistically, to teach? an alien civilization language. And that was something he had never thought about. And I was kind of scared to ask him that question. And you know, James Alter says, whenever you're scared to ask, you know, that's the question you have to ask. You know, it's like James Campbell,

the treasure you seek is in the cave you fear to enter. So I wonder, but getting back to like you specifically in the advice that you gave me and millions of others who listened to you, like how do you get to the, you know, someone who's introverted, someone who's not really used to the format that you're involved in, not to divulge the secret of his or her book, but to get at the exclusive. Like, how do you get to that point?

Is it the research beforehand? Is it just your own inherent curiosity and passion? Yeah, you know, that's a really good question. I do read the book. I do take a lot of notes. I do go over the book a lot, depending on the author. Like, if there's more to the author than the book, for Kobe, I didn't read the children's book and go,

like, let's talk about the magic tennis player or whatever the book was. You know, I wanted to talk about him. and with you, I wanted to talk about you, and there was plenty in the book that we probably touched on, but I didn't need to go and get, like, the book outline. On the other hand, if I'm talking to an undercover, a former undercover FBI agent who does art crime, I'm basically going through a lot of the stories in the book with fewer details, honing in on a couple that were, like, really incredible, having him tell them like he was there similar to how they were written, but in oral format.

that, you know, like there's more to, there's more to it. I don't really, this is an interesting question because I didn't really have to think about how do I get them to tell some of the time I will literally say, hey, can you tell the story about that time you were being chased by the French art thieves and you were running with this like Rembrandt that turned out and it got destroyed and it turned out to be a copy and you almost got fired and felt really bad, but then it was just junk anyway. Like, and then I'll cut that out of the show. And then he'll go, yeah, I mean, that was the that was the time I was in Geneva and I'm like, okay, start like one time I was in Geneva.

Then we just cut that out and he tells the story. You know, so I'll prompt it really directly, which is kind of like, that's really, there's no genius to that, you know. Other times I'll say something along the lines of, now what's this I hear about you running away in Geneva with a Rembrandt? Well, okay, it wasn't a Rembrandt. It turned out, well, let me tell you, let me start from the beginning. Then I'll leave it in and then they just tell a story on prompting. it. I already know the story. It's not like I just heard someone says, it's not like I make it sound like someone said, ask him about the time he was running around in Geneva with a Rembrandt,

you know, and then I make it sound like I was just at a bar with one of his buddies and he told me to do that. But I've read the whole story, right? I've read the whole thing. Right. So it's kind of like cross-examination when you're a lawyer where you don't ask, there's this old sort of YouTube with this great cross-examiner who's since I think passed and he taught at Yale in like the 70s and 60s. and he goes, never ask a question if you don't know the answer that you're going to get. That's what my brother always says. It's true for cross-examination.

It's not true for podcasts. I don't want people to, like, you should be asking questions you don't know the answer to in podcast, but if you're trying to elicit a story and you're pretty sure it's good, then you ask the question knowing you're going to get the answer. What you don't want to do is go, tell me about the time that da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then they go, oh, yeah, that was nothing. Yeah. Like, if that happens, cut it out.

You know, you have the luxury of doing that. You can't do that on cross-examination. But with other things, I will simply generate enough rapport with the guest where I go, so do you think that if you hadn't been convicted of this crime, you would have been doing ABCD? And they'll go, I don't know. Maybe not. You know, I don't know what they're going to say. You might be like, oh, yeah, I wanted to do that since I was a kid.

Me going to prison, that was just a roadblock on the way to my true calling. a painter. Speaker, right, yeah. Or they go, you know, I don't know. And you say, well, because it seems like this got thrown. Are you a type of person that believes everything happens for a reason? And they'll go, not really, you know. I think the reason that this happened was because I was like a hale.

Yeah, I was an asshole when I was 20, so I went to jail. You know, or my parents left me on a doorstep when I was a kid so I joined a gang. Like, if that's the reason, then yeah. Yeah, right. You know, so you try to get there. But that's because any answer is fine. Yeah. But the beauty of podcasting is you can cut out answers that are really lame.

And people go, oh, you edit, it's not fair. If you listen to podcasts that are like two hours long and they're not edited and you listen to enough of them, you start to go, why didn't you edit that? Yeah, I'm doing a video, so it's hard for me to edit, like the segue. And actually, that brings up something I wanted to ask you about for a while. Sure. In real time, do you have metrics in your head? Like, you actually gave me one of mine a few minutes ago, so I'm patting myself on the back.

But like when a guest says to me, that's an interesting question, or I've never been asked that before or wow, or just sits there like, you know, I let the silence do the work. And I'm just an amateur compared to you. I'm being serious, Jordan. But like you use, do you have any real time metrics that like I'm having good time, especially in COVID where we're not face to fate. Like we're together. We can hang out beforehand, slap the backs, whatever. And but in over, you know, the airwaves, so to speak. How do you know in real time you're doing a good job as an interviewer?

That's also a pretty good question because, you know, a lot of times you don't know in real time if you're doing a good job. I think for me, how do I know if I'm doing a good job as an interviewer in the moment? Probably because the other person seems engaged in the conversation. They seem excited to be talking about it. Like I don't right now because I'm thinking, but they seem excited to be talking about. put their phone down, stop checking Instagram. Yeah, there's some of that. There's some of that.

Yeah, they're engaged with what it is that they are talking about. But also, there's a friendliness and rapport and ease that goes into the conversation where they're not thinking seemingly about getting their agenda across. You know, they're not going, that's a. nice, Brian, but in my book, how to get paid to speak on stage, you know, you've broken them of their autopilot response. That's part of it. But you've broken them of that, not because you're like, shut up about your book, but because they're just going, this guy, they're like lost in the conversation, you know, which is what you want. They're engrossed in the conversation is probably

better. And the listener is also engrossed theoretically in the conversation at that point as well. If you're wrestling with the guest, like, you know, if you're going, how do you get that? Well, in my book, How to Speak from the Stage, Brian, thanks for asking. I discussed the three crucial points about this. And you're like, yeah, that's great. Tell me about when your travels to North Korea. Well, when I was in North Korea, before I'd written the three magical points of speaking from stage. Yeah, you know, if you're wrestling with them, then the listener's like, oh, this guy sucks.

And they're not going to probably blame the host if you have rapport with your audience. But you want the guest to just be kind of like, screw it. This is a fun conversation. yeah, let's talk about psychedelics, you know, or whatever you're talking about. I don't tend to go that route. But, like, you want somebody to come on in theory to talk about their children's book, and then you just go, so this is kind of a dark topic. But when I had Kobe Brian on, and he's fresh in my mind,

reason, because somebody just asked me about him before the show. So I don't mean to keep sort of name-dropping this. No, it's not a name-dropping. But it is a good opportunity to showcase this as an example. he was talking you know he wanted to talk about his children's book but he didn't really want to talk about basketball which is great because i didn't either and he didn't want to talk about certain other things and i said you know do you ever think about now that you're writing children's books it's clear that you're thinking about parenting i don't know about you but for me you know i had my

child just a few months ago this is in september my kid was born in july so i just had a kid and and that's we focused a lot on that and i said do you ever think about what happens when you're gone and he said, yeah, you know, that I do think about what happens when I'm gone. And I think some of this hit the cutting room floor because we weren't thinking how relevant it would be. And he said, yeah, you know, and after the show we were talking, and he goes, yeah, man, so I, you know, I got to tell you that mortality thing is something that I really do think about. And it's easy to think you're never going to die when you're on the basketball court and, you know, millions of people are looking at you, but when you have kids, you just realize how fragile your life is and how fragile their life is

and how fragile your time together is. And I remember being like, yeah, that's so true. Can you sign this book? Thanks, man. It was really like that. But look at 2020 hindsight, I'm like, man, that would have been good tape. You know, because it was so truthful. And it was such an interesting thread. And it was such a real part of the conversation that if you're really attached to your agenda,

you miss that. And you're doing a good job as an interviewer. if you realize that your agenda is to provide value for the audience, not to, like, get answers about what's going on. I'm not a journalist. I'm not sitting there on 60 minutes going. That's exactly. Yeah.

Did you kill her? Did you kill her, Roger? Did you? Believe it or not. In physics, there are controversial figures that are accused of self-promotion. I mean, you know, I could probably be accused of that. Like, they write books about how they didn't even win those guys. And then they have an agenda.

And so people will write it like, how come you didn't, and ask him about the time his employees quit in 1997. I'm like, I'm not like Leslie Stahl. You know, like I'll give you your money back. How about this? You know, but you know, in science, I think there's a credibility. I want to ask you a corollary to what you just said because you talk about these things. And actually, I've started to do just as you're saying, maybe in part inspired by similar ideas. But like I ask my guess, as I will with you in about 90 minutes from no, in a few minutes. I'll ask you these three questions that are really kind of these deep questions, thinking about the deep future of yourself personally, humanity as a whole,

and then advice to your former self. And I do it in a hopefully interesting way related to Sir Arthur C. Clark. But before we do that, I want to just turn to, you know, your life has been documented in podcast form since you were, what, 26 years old. And all the different changes that you've undergone, it's kind of the corollary to Kobe. Kobe had this one opportunity. He's on your show, basically the only podcast of real value and interest that I'm aware of that personally. I mean, maybe he went on other shows. But the point is you got to ask him certain questions. You got to interact with him.

And that was this brief snapshot of him. With you, we've seen you evolve since 26-year-old starting a huge podcast, breaking up with that. I don't want to get into the breakup, I'll just call them AOC folks, that has been well documented on your podcast and elsewhere. We don't have to talk about it. But then evolving to now being married, being a father, moving from LA, moving to the now building your house, this evolution, we get to see you. And I wonder, like, are there things, sometimes I get a kid, like, why did you have this person on like three years ago or like, why did you go on this person's show? Like, it's very harmful. Like, how do you deal with the fact that you've evolved?

We all make mistakes. Are there things that you regret? Are the things that you can do differently and learn from these mistakes? Because I feel like a lot of podcasting is kind of like failure porn. It's like, oh, well, it is. Yeah, I hate that stuff. Yeah, so what do you make of that? Is that a problem?

Are we reaching peak podcast or at least that branch of it? No, I don't think we're reaching peak podcast. I just think there's a lot of people that have really kind of like mediocre at best unoriginal ideas maybe. I'm trying not to be like an a-hole about this. Like, oh, my show's good and everyone else that sucks. Like that's not really what I think at all. I think there's just a lot of people that go, oh, I don't have an idea for a show, but I want to be an influencer. So I'm going to do shows with entrepreneurs.

Let's see if those are taken. Oh, crap, there's 8,000 of these, literally. Oh, I'm going to do unsuccessful entrepreneurs, because those people are easy to get versus, like, super successful people. Or I'll, like, only talk about failures, not talk about, like, how Tom's Shoes was built. I'll talk about like how Tom's Shoes almost failed and like all the bad ideas the guy had before that. And there's some value there. Like to not look at all entrepreneurs as like immediate lottery winners, even though many of them are. Awesome.

Yeah, I think a lot of them are the successful ones that we see. You know, they've won the business lottery in some way. But like, you know, there's nothing that interesting about it. In my perspective, I got lucky because when I started podcasting in 2006, there were no, not that many shows. So me being like, I'm going to do a show about dating and relationships that focuses on non-verbal communication and influence, you know, and then like turn it into like dating and pick up E type stuff because I'm in my 20s.

It was fine. And no one was like, this is misogynist because it wasn't. And also we didn't have cancel culture. So nobody was looking for problems with it. Like there were a few people that wrote in that were like, I don't like this because it has to do with dating and that's wrong because you should just be yourself. I'm like, okay, this is just some crazy low self-esteem person. The other X,000 people listening think it's great, so I don't care.

Those people didn't bother me. Like I said, we didn't have cancel culture, so it didn't really make a difference. And then it evolved into, I'm just going to talk about what I'm interested in. And, oh, I seem to have a skill for conversation that I've developed over literally 14 years almost of doing this. Right. So that got really easy for me. And now I can be arrogant enough to name my show the Jordan Harbinger show. and it's not like this ridiculous, like, oh, you wish people, like, no, there's a lot of

search queries from my name, especially in podcast directories, so it works great. But for a lot of folks, there are issues. I think you have to examine your motivations when you start a show. Are you just trying to be an influencer? If so, just like, I get it, but you need to find something that is a value. You have to be an advocate for your audience. You know, again, going back to the law thing, as a lawyer, I have a fiduciary duty to the client. an ethical duty to the client. I look at my listeners of the Jordan Harbinger show as clients in that I have an

ethical, I have an ethical duty to them. There's nothing for sale for the Jordan Harbinger show, but you are paying with your attention. So if I want to retain your attention and you want to retain me as the quote unquote as the host of a show that you listen to, I can't be like, here's this self-serving thing where I benefit. I have to be like, the deal is you listen to the show, you occasionally support the sponsors of the Jordan Harbinger show, which allows me to do this show and give you the services for free. And people are like, cool. And in return, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to tell you this mattress is great if it sucks. I'm only going to recommend things that I really like. I'm not going to hammer you with ads. I'm not going to be extra salesy. I'm not going to

hide the ball. I'm also not going to present people to you under cover of, oh, this person's great because they gave me 25 grand. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to bring in perspectives that I think are harmful, not because I'm your parent, but because I have your best interest in mind as not your lawyer, but as somebody who is going to act as an advocate for you. So I might bring in a guy like Roger Stone and say, make a decision for yourself, but look at what he said. And it's not pretty, but I wanted you to get an unvarnished look at this guy, you know, or I'll have in a scientist or somebody like you who's like, here's this thing that I learned. And I'm not like, tell him the thing they can buy where I get a kickback. We don't do that. We don't do any of that on the

show. And so people who are coming up with new show ideas or running a podcast, I find that they often have their ethics muddled. And I mean muddled as if they were an attorney, not like they're personally unethical. But I think there's a lot of shows that they're like, yeah, I just wanted to bring the best stories of entrepreneurs to my audience, something, something, something. That's like, there's like 9,000 shows like that. But if you really dig, it's like, no, they're trying to sell their book because they have an online course and it's part of the. funnel and then they're like they're like an entrepreneur yeah they're an entrepreneur coach where they're going to teach you how to do this this and this and it's like so this is lead gen for you you're not

trying to find you're not trying to get people to learn from these oh you're not trying to only get people to learn from these entrepreneurs that have failed you're trying to get people who are struggling in entrepreneurship so that they will pay you their money to fill their need you right to fill their need and and that's fine but you better put that crap out on the table and not be like I'm casual podcast host, hanging out, delivering knowledge. No, you're trying to get people in a sales funnel and you're filtering them in because they're struggling. And that's not deceptive or despicable unless it's deceptive or despicable. And then you should stop. Is there a danger, you know, before I want to make sure we have time to talk about networking and

academia and elsewhere. But before we get there, you know, is there, like, I kind of see you and I see other people, James or Tim Ferritt, like, and there's this, there's this growth phenomenon. And there's some name for it in Silicon Valley. You probably know what it is. But like you get so big, it becomes really hard to deliver extra value or to benefit more without spending a lot more money, to move the needle, to get more listeners as is the really most important metric. You know, like, do you get to a point where you're like a victim of your own success? Like I figure my kids yesterday were saying like, oh, daddy, you've got, you know, so many subscribers because they see my, you know, things. And I do ads, sometimes they come up on there.

I don't get ads, ad money, but they'll see an ad or something. and say like, oh, well, Joe Biden was on your podcast. I'm like, no, not exactly. But the point, you know, because it's some ad rolls before an interview that I do. But I was, they're like, oh, you should get more people. I'm like, you know, there's a story in 1984, George Orwell's story where the donkey, I forget, it's name, Benjamin, Benjamin's his name. And the pig comes up to him and says, oh, you've got this resplendent tail, you know,

so beautiful. And the donkey says, yeah, the tail keeps away the flies. And the pig says, oh, that's great. and the doggy says, no, I'd rather not have the flies and not need the tail. It's like, how big do you want to get? Like, what's your ultimate mission with JHS, as we call it? You know, like, do you ever find it like wearisome? Like, you like, I got to be on somebody else's show to get more listeners to my, like,

eventually it saturates, right? So what is the ultimate goal? And like, can you become a victim of your own success? Like the end game, if it's not the funnel, if it's not, you know, lead gen for your networking and you give away your networking course. So, you know, so like, what is the ultimate, what is your ultimate goal, I guess, is interesting to me? Is there a book? What are you going to do?

For me, I'm not even necessarily sure. Like I said, it's something I'm dealing with right now where there's a lot of people that are like, write a book. But that's not really my core competency. Also, I think it might be a good thing to do and a game changer, but it's like, where do I put my time? What I'm looking at right now is build a larger audience. with which I can generate more advertising revenue from sponsors because I realize what I truly love is having the conversations. You know, like, is it a jewel thief that I'm talking to, a famous jewel thief,

who's now telling people like, hey, kids stay in school, basically, is like his motto? Or am I talking with somebody who is a Nobel Prize losing scientist? am I talking with somebody who's written a book on poker, but is really, you know, Maria Konnikova, like the human element of that. Am I talking to a professional athlete? I just love the conversations. I mean, there's a lot. It's a hell of a lot of fun to read a book and go, man, I wonder about that.

Oh, I guess I'll write that down and ask the author when I talk to them in a week and, you know, have a personal conversation with them and sit down with them. That's a really cool privilege. It's really fun to create. And I want to create more of that. And right now I make a healthy living doing it. But I'd be a fool to believe that the cost of advertising or the money that advertising generates is going to stay the same forever. Like, that could easily go down.

The economy could hit a dip. I don't want to have to be in a position where I go, oh, shoot, I can't make ends meet. Introducing the Jordan Harbinger, be a famous podcaster, e-course. You know, I don't want to have to do that crap. So the best thing I can do right now is scale the show. And also scaling the show gives you some really cool opportunities because then you get to talk to even. more hard-to-reach guests. You know, I'd Ray Dalio on the other day, and I'm like, oh, I could do with more guys like this.

Like, he's a really, really interesting guy. So I want to do that, and I want to be, the scaling up gives me the luxury of not having to do things that other people say I should do as I scale up, like have courses, do live events. I don't want to do any of that stuff. I've done coaching before. I've done training before. It doesn't mean it's a scam. Not all of it's a scam.

Not all of it is unethical, of course. but I don't like doing it. I don't like doing it. But I also understand why people have to do it because they're like, ooh, I can't make ad money. So I do need a product that's like sell your house. You know, if it's like, you know, take what we're doing now and then, you know, convert it to some course just about how to be a good podcast or whatever. You know, I'm doing that. But it's going to be like, it's going to be like 30 bucks. Yeah. It's not going to be like 3,000 bucks. No, that's right. Right. Tony Robbins and plunge pools and everything else. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm doing a podcasting class, and it's going to be focused on interviews, not on what microphone to buy and stuff.

And it's going to be conducting a good interview. And it's going to be so cheap slash affordable. That's how you're supposed to frame it. It's going to be so affordable that even if you're in college and you're like, I just kind of like podcasting and I want to get better at it, you can buy this. And it's not like you don't have to take out more federal loans to get it. I will be there and I will be grade grubbing as I always have been throughout my academic career. There you go. And actually, that segues nicely to some topics about academia and science in particular.

So, you know, I think of you as kind of Mr. Network and your catchphrase, you know, dig the well before you're thirsty. And I want to be a little bit of the 60 Minutes type with you. So when I hear that, I understand what you mean. But if I tell my scientist colleagues that, you know, like, we need to network or you need to get to know this person because this person could be useful to us someday, you know, when you're in a bind or you need something. and that your network is your net worth and the other cliches. But certainly it comes across to some people, especially those in academia, as transactional. It's like, oh, you're networking and you're reaching out to, you know,

Kobe Bryant's realtor because you eventually want to get Kobe on your show because you know that it'll get a lot of ads. And then you'll get ad revenue. So we don't listen to Einstein because he had a great speaking voice or, you know, in fact, it's awful. Yeah, it's funny. I don't think I've ever heard him in recording. It's very few recordings of it.

But when Nam Chomsky, I could barely hear what he was saying. But what he's saying is so much more important. He doesn't have a course or some multi-level marketing scheme, the pyramid scheme, guys, 92 years old. But the question I have for you is like, how do you walk that line between not wanting to be this greasy-haired transactional guy like I am? But how do you, is it truly authentic or you have this networking course and so forth, which I find very beneficial, even as a science.

scientists and these soft skills do distinguish some of the things that I do and I resonate very strongly with it. What do you say to people like colleagues of mine for it? Like it's it's kind of slimy. Like why are you doing this? You know, you should just let your merit your meritocracy. It's that's the way science should be. You should just be technically brilliant. Yeah. I mean, look, um, is that real? Is that is that real? Like, is there a such thing as I guess there are probably plenty of people where it's like they got here solely based on the value of their work and they never self-promoted. But I don't really know how true that is. I think it's meant to look that way and I think it does look that way for a lot of folks.

But that's kind of like saying, I mean, give me an example of somebody who supposedly has done something and has never. There are people that are horrible, horrible community. They used to say Paul Dirac, who won the Nobel Prize, you know, discovered anti-matter, essentially. And they used to say, Dirac never uses two words when none will do. You know, he was like so taciturny. Like they're basically scientists, the most, you know, the kind of, you know, the cliché is that we're, you know, we're extremely introverted. I think I use the joke and you know, they're extroverted if they look at your shoes when they talk to their own.

Yeah. And so like, so it's seen as a sign of inauthenticity, even though some of the most, you know, important best scientist and, you know, folks like Jim Simons, who I did have in my show, he's called the World Smartest Billionaire, he said, one of the most important skills of a scientist is to be a good salesman. It doesn't mean, I'm not selling it. I lose all the money that I get. Like, it all goes out to payroll. I don't make a single profit. I get papers.

I get citations for me and my students get PhDs. I'm in a money losing business. But the point is, like, you're perceived negatively. Like Carl Sagan never was in the National Academy of Sciences. And they said, because, you know, he was such a great communicative, it's a little doll, you know, of him, finger puppet. But they said, you know, he was really penalized almost. And like, I was talking to Jan 11, who you'd love to talk to her.

She was just on Tim Ferriss's show. And she was saying, like, when she was on my show, she was like, we won't penalize you if you write a book. But we're not going to give you any credit for doing it. It's seen as like almost outreach and the soft skills of a scientist are if they're not penalized, they're certainly not celebrated. And so in this kind of, you know, whereas a lawyer, you know you have to be a good communicator. I mean, it's most of what you do. And I actually agree that it is a huge thing. have a network. Yeah, I mean, you gave an example actually on your show a few months back with a student who reached out to, you know, one of her professors who did win a Nobel Prize or something like that. And they developed this thing and she eventually became an intern in his lab and so far. I think it was at Stanford. So I do think it's important. But what I guess the question is how do you avoid it? Because I, if it's genuine, I think it's fine to do it. But how do you avoid that kind of patina that's perceived as inauthentic? Well, digging the well for a purpose, like,

you to drink so like you're going to dig you know so that dollio comes at the show and whatever i'm not accusing you i'm just speaking you definitely need to dig the well before you get thirsty so build relationships before you need them i think the key is you really do need to help other people without the expectation of getting something in return at first i didn't think it was real i woke up to this blinding light and i was transported to another place pluto tv then i heard a voice come with me if you want to live there were thousands of of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is ours.

It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials, no credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. So if I'm only helping you to get something for me, yeah, of course you're going have a slimy and well-deserved slimy reputation. But if I'm helping people because I want to see them succeed because the more successful

people that I'm around, the higher the chance of me succeeding. There's nothing selfish really in that. Like, it's not completely altruistic because I'm hoping that if you're successful and she's successful and she's successful and he's successful, that I'm then going to have some of that rub off on me or they're going to pull me up. But that's good for everyone. So I don't see a problem with that. The problem is that a lot of, and I've noticed this was scientists. I actually have trained scientists with networking and skills like that before. And what's funny is a lot of these big PhD professors who are like famous scientists, they're like, man, it's so hard to find qualified amazing people to come into my lab and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, why? Well, it's just

looking for a needle in a haystack and, you know, it's hard to find people that are going to get along. And then meanwhile, these scientists are like, I don't want to come across as a self-promoting promotional person. I'm like, this guy's running a lab and he wants to meet the most qualified people and you're over here being like, better hide. What is that doing for you? And what good is that doing for the person who wants to find somebody to work with. You're not helping anyone. It's like this false or real modesty that represents or manifests itself as like, I want to actually harm my career because if I look like I'm trying to further my career,

other people might not like me. And it's like other people that don't have enough self-esteem or self-confidence to help their own career might not like you. Now you're just crabs in a bucket, right? Have you heard that where the crabs trying to crawl out and the other crabs, the last crabs and pulls him back in? Yeah. So that's what is going on in science from what I understand and from what I've seen.

And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I get it because you don't want to come across like you're the important product and not the science. There's obviously a balance in which you do that where you go, look, I've got some decent research. I would love to contribute to your research because you're amazing and this research is amazing. And we're going to do something that changes the field together. Make it about the field. Make it about the person you're trying to get in work under because you realize you have a long career. of yourself. There's nothing wrong in recognizing the work you've put in or that you're an upstart that could actually have some potential. There's nothing wrong with this. You have to get

over the idea that you speaking for your ideas is somehow completely selfish. Because imagine if doctors thought that way. You know, I think I figured out that you can put mold on infections, but who wants to hear from little old me? Come on. Right? Yeah. So, Right. There is this actual complete inversion of reality that takes place. So a friend of mine, Darren La Pomey, is a professor here at UCSD. He runs a very popular

channel of YouTube as well. And he has a, you know, it's basically called How to Win Friends and Influence People after Dale Carnegie's, but it's from nano engineers. So these aren't the most, you know, gregarious, effervescent personalities. And yet he's teaching them, like, what do you think is, and he does a poll, like, what do you think is

the breakdown of importance in your career the so-called technical ability, raw intellectual horsepower, time in the lab, time in front of the textbook and the computer programming, coding, whatever, versus learning how to speak, getting a speaking coach, doing presentations, going to Toastmasters versus, and it's like 80, 20 is basically what they think it is. And in reality, and then he shows it's a compliment. It's 2080. It's basically exactly the opposite.

You look at all the soft skills it takes to be a professor. I mean, there's a joke that, you know, Isidore rabbi used to say. you know, like professors are paid to do research to find new sources of money. And if you're a gentleman or a gentle lady, you put some energy into teaching. It's like the thing that we're least trained for, where you never get a course and here's how you teach. But we also never get a course and here's how you speak. And these are the things that we do most often. And I feel like it would be great to have a version of the networking, you know, six minute networking, but for scientists, for engineers. And, you know, I think it would be very valuable because there's a lot

of us and it's perceived to be one of the more important careers that there is, a STEM fields. So I want to segue, because I know you're going to run out of time soon. So I don't want to miss out on the questions that I wanted to ask. A couple of just like rapid fire questions. When should a podcaster decide when to monetize? Like I'll be quite frank. You know, I bought the manscaping. I bought the, I bought the bio optimizers for the other side of the body. You know, like, how do you, when is it too soon to, like, go after a podcast? I'm not planning to go after it. But for those of my audience who might be interested in podcasting, when, you know, is it a mistake

to try to get advertisers too soon? It doesn't really matter. It's just you do have to trade. There is a trade off. Like, if you've got 5,000 downloads per episode and you're going to end up getting, you know, a hundred bucks an episode, if you can do your advertising in a way that's not that annoying, you go ahead, do it. Why not? Or 500 bucks an episode. If this pays for the production, it makes it worth your time, do it, why not? Just be conscious of the fact that your audience

might be a little resistant to commercialism. I wouldn't go from having zero ads to having four in every show. Like, I would work my way up as the show length increases, the value increases. There's nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, if you are selling a course and you have ads and you know you're stuffing it in there and you're taking paid guests like i would be wary of that because again you have to be an advocate for your audience like what's good for them what is what is good for the person listening if you can only have sponsors that you really like and care about that's even better right so it's never it no there is a time that it's too early i won't say it's never too early um if you have enough of an audience to make your ads meaningful in terms of

revenue, you can do that. You just have to be very careful of how you commercialize. I am also very careful with sponsors. The people that offer me the most money are those people that are like, yeah, we have these hair growth pills or something. And I'm like, we'll give you a hundred dollars CPM four times what you get paid everywhere else. You're going to make 10 grand from these ad spots. And I'm like, I can't sit here and tell my audience about penis pills. Like, it's not going to happen. So you have to be very careful because you have to play the long game. Yeah. And It's easy to get sucked into taking ad money and treating it like the short game, but you just, you want to be as careful as humanly possible with your sponsorship and with your audience.

Yeah, and our friend James Altitcher, you know, he got a lot of flack for like being a Bitcoin promoter in the 2017 time frame. And he says that he regrets it, but not really, because there were so many kind of negative Bitcoin outfits out there that newsletters and just scams and he thought they were all going out of, I don't know, can you go out of business with a Bitcoin? forget how it works. I actually don't deal in it. But he, you know, he said it was actually a good thing that he did it because he was only really suggesting that they backed legitimate products or whatever. And so he's not, he regrets it, but not fully. Is the same thing true of advertising?

Like, look, if you don't advertise, they're going to go somewhere else. They're going to go on, I don't know, Joe Rogan or, you know, whoever your competition is. And I don't know if Joe even does an answer. But the point is, you know, someone's going to do it. Why not be you, so to speak? I guess the counter argument is you don't want to lose your credibility with your audience. And there are your customers. I guess that's a... I don't pay you directly, but yes, right. I mean, the thing is, it's like I'm not thinking of, oh, well, if I don't take the money,

someone else is going to take. Good. Let them take it. Let them abuse their audience. I'm not going to do it. It's kind of like saying, well, you know, some people beat up their kids. I might as well do that. What are you going to do that?

Like, you're abusing your audience. Like, I'm not even trying to make light of that. It's like not even a joke. It's like you're mistreating someone. Why would you do that just because some other people do? It's like, is that a good reason to do something? Because somebody else does it. If your friends were all jumping off a bridge, would you do it?

I mean, it's the same thing your grandma always said. There's no reason to do that. You see people mistreat others around them all the time. It's just because we can't see them and they're listening to a product that we record and we're abusing their trust. Does that mean we should do it just because the consequences are further removed? No, like you wouldn't mistreat. going back to my bad example earlier,

you wouldn't mistreat your own family. Why are you going to mistreat people? Go back to what I said with, you have to be an advocate for the audience. Would you mistreat your own clients? If you're an advocate for them, you can't. You're ethically bound to not do so.

So don't accept money for something that you think is crap because you want the money. That's why I do encourage people to monetize what they create so that they can keep doing it, but I also encourage them not to become dependent upon that monetization so that they then have to do things that are not quite yeah you don't want to have to optimize the ads that go into the show at the expense of it i've got ads in my show but i could

make a whole lot more if i had more ads i could do more shows with crappier guests you know and i see i see certain hosts do this they're hosts that have like any youtube or on that will also share the episode and i'm like your show sucks you know you're so sucks so you'll have anyone on there that's mental note don't ask jordan to share those too but but but like it's There are people that are like, oh, I had this guy who owns a clothing brand. And all I say after everything is says, whoa, it's so inspiring, man, cool, is great. And all that guy. Yeah, yeah, we know exactly.

Everyone knows who I'm talking about because that's the whole show. And it's like, oh, well, I'm making all this money from ads. Cool, but everyone thinks you're a clown and your churn is like crazy because the more people that find you, they listen to you for a week and they're like, okay, I've had enough for this clown. All right. One more quick rapid fire question. You do a lot on social media, Instagram.

Twitter, a little less on Twitter, Instagram, you have a huge following, LinkedIn. What appeals to you about those three different platforms? Are there others? And which of them has the least amount of trolls in your experience? Which what has the least amount of trolls? Which of the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter has the least amount of trolls, the fewest trolls. LinkedIn. That's what I say.

Yeah, for sure, right? It's like they're, they combine, you know, the kind of fun of connecting with friends, but a little bit of desperation if they want to get a job. Yeah, so they're not going to blow. Yeah, okay, great. There's a little bit of like, hey, are you hiring? I'm really good at, you know, do, do that. It's fine.

Right. But there's not like, I don't get like, hi, babe, how are you? Reply here to talk to, like, my Filipino scantily clad. Like, you report that in a second. I get, is it me or do a lot of people get, like, random women from Southeast Asia that are scantily clad in their inbox and every platform? I don't. I would never admit to that if I did.

get that all the time in my inbox. And maybe that's just my platform. Yeah, I get, I have an alternative solution for the origin of the universe. And if you help me publish it, you'll share the Nobel Prize that you lost. I guess you don't get those. I get different crazies. Yeah, we have our own niche craziness. Okay.

Last questions that I ask all of my guests come on the Into the Impossible podcast, speaking with Jordan Harbinger, the effervescent, the brilliant, the incomparable Jordan Harbinger. First question I ask, and they all answer it, is what is your solution to quantizing gravity in a four-dimensional space-time framework? 42. Okay, good, good. Okay, check. Seriously. So I'm going to ask questions that some of them are related to Sir Arthur C. Clark, the namesake of this podcast in the center that I co-direct here in San Diego.

But the first one actually has to do with a piece of not immaterial wisdom. You remember from my book, because I know you read it cover to cover twice in an audio form. Minimum. That Alfred Nobel has the most famous will in history. He has a will that says, you know, where his money would go. He had no wife, no children. So he left all of his money pretty much to go to the Nobel Prize. But in the Nobel Prize, it was monetary will, like Noemore Wills, that you learned about

in estates and trust in law school. But it also had an ethical component in that the prizes were to go to somebody who created the best invention that had the greatest benefit to mankind. And so in doing so, it was an ethical will. It wasn't just a material will. And I want to ask you, in terms of your ethical will, when you reach the biblical age of 120 and you pass on, what sorts of wisdom or values would you like to articulate in words or in written form for not only your child, your children, hopefully, your wife, et cetera, but for humanity. What piece of wisdom or knowledge do you find as sort of most pertinent for people in the future? I really think that the networking relationship advice that I teach is probably, as of right now, the best takeaway, because it works for everyone. It helps everyone. The more people do it, the better off we all are. Dale Carnegie started that trend, but really didn't codify it at all the way that I have recently. And I'm not trying to, like, give myself props or anything. But, you know, he has like a mind, he broke the mindset down. He was an innovator in that area. And it's awesome. But,

not I don't really see that many people have a system for this and if everybody had even like one-tenth of the systems that we created that are really easy for this people would have people would find it much easier to find jobs in the niches that they like people would be able to make life decisions better they would have stronger friendships which means they're going to be healthier and live longer like that is a gift to anybody who decides to put in five minutes a day and do it it's like yeah you know I almost feel like I innovated on the friggin sit up or something like it's so fundamental and yet it works you know you really do it i have to say you know for those of you might listen to jordan does he actually do this so the reason that i actually

ended up eventually getting on the pot is that eventually you sent me a text or an email like responded to an email that i wrote a year ago or whatever like can you please get your crap together keating and and submit this you know i'd still like to have you on and i was like holy crap because i'd kind of given up because i didn't hear from you and i've got enough stuff going on but you go through your text messages as part of the networking course. The other thing that's like so innovative, Jordan, I just love, like use this tool that's used by, you know, I don't want to say the slimyest people, no, because some of my best friends and relatives are realtors, but use a tool that's really pioneered or invented for real estate agents. I'm like, what the hell is he talking about?

And it's a way to, you know, manage relationships, which sounds really like transactional in itself, but it's beautiful because it reminds me like, oh yeah, not like I'm going to forget to call my mom every, every night or whatever, but it reminds me, wow, I haven't talked to that person. at the funding agency who said that they loved, you know, my YouTube video. And maybe I can, you know, just, just saying, I'm thinking of you. And she'll be just pleased to hear it. And it'll give me a reminder because I'm not that smart. I can remember everything.

So I do want to thank you for that. And these innovative tactics, tricks, and techniques. So that's six-minute networking because five-minute networking was taken. It's taken, yeah. But it's a brilliant scheme. And I think it's useful for all disciplines, including scientists. Because, as I said, the reality is that it's 80% how you network and in your soft skills. Next question, Jordan, comes from the movie 2001, which is based on the book 2001,

by Sir Arthur C. Clark, who is the namesake of our center here in San Diego. And you remember, I assume you've seen the movie, or you know some of the- Is that? I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. Yes, exactly. So the opening scene and throughout the movie version that Kubrick did, there are these monoliths, there are these kind of like huge objects on the plains of Africa three million years ago that some primates find and then they, astronauts find them on the moon. And it's sort of meant to be like a time capsule or something placed by an ancient civilization, perhaps as a warning, perhaps as, as an aphorism or advice or whatever, to human beings that they will discover when they are technologically advanced enough to discover it, perhaps. In the case of going to the moon, you know, we couldn't see this

monolith on the moon until we went to the moon and we had technology to go to the moon, at least as this, as the book in the movie are portraying it. I want to ask you, if you had a billion-year time capsule that was going to encapsulate everything that human beings or everything that's important to you, that you want to be kind of the time capsule that represents Earth to last for a future version of Earth or an alien civilization to discover, what would you put in the monolith, on the monolith, you know, floppy disk?

What would you do with that monolith if you had that opportunity? Wow. geez this is for like a future civilization to discover are they're more technologically advanced than we are or they're just starting over and they happen to find this no well yeah they'll happen to find it you know you'll put it there you guarantee this thing is going to last for for a billion years actually i had and drurion on my show and she was the wife of the late great carl sagan again a picture of him and uh she actually put her brainwaves and music and sentences on a golden disc attached to the voyager spacecraft

which will go out into the deep reaches of interstellar space for five billion years, she says. So she had this time capsule, and that was what she put on in her brainwaves. So I guess I'm asking, yeah, somebody will find it someday you don't know who. What would you put on it as a token of the existence of you, of humankind, of your greatest messages that there are to ask? I don't have any kind of deep answer to that. Not even anything I say is going to be even beyond it's right. Like, oh, I put some advice on, like, who the hell wants to hear from me? I think at best we can be like, don't come to this planet.

We are busy ruining it, and we're probably just going to have people shoot you if you land here. I've had astrophysicists say basically that. Yeah, warning, do not enter. Yeah, like wait another couple hundred thousand years and either will all be dead or we'll have figured it out by now, or we'll have robot overlords that are like, we don't let the humans do anything. They're a bunch of idiots. Yeah, we took those powers away and gave them to Elon Musk. All right, the last one, hopefully it's a little bit easier. It also relates to Sir Arthur C. Clark, and it's actually the reason for the name behind this podcast into The Impossible is Arthur's third law.

His first law is the only way to – there's – sorry, the – oh, man, why am I blanking on this? I'm going to say a second law. Let me say a second law first. The second law is that for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. His third law is the only way to discover what is possible is to venture beyond the limits of the possible into the impossible. And I want to ask you of all the setbacks and failures and recoveries, et cetera, that you've gone through, what things seemed impossible to you as a younger person, maybe in your 20s, maybe in your 30s, that now seems possible because you went ahead and did it. Oh, I mean, I never thought I could start my own business. and I accidentally, almost, I should say, almost accidentally started my own business, you know, with the show here with the Jordan Harbinger show.

But I always thought business owners were either people that had like some sort of specialized education or had, or they started a restaurant or something like that. I never really understood how it always was like this other class of person that could own a business. You know, it wasn't me. It wasn't what our family did. It didn't make sense. I was just going to get a job. I would never actually own anything. I'd never actually be like the boss of anything or control something.

And then I started doing what I really enjoyed. And I was like, oh, you can carve your own path. I mean, talk about something that is just not taught to kids in the United States, surprisingly. Right? Like, we're this land of free thinkers and we're like, everybody do their own thing. And like, this is, you know, don't listen to the man. And then it's like, oh, but just kidding. Not you, though.

You should listen to the man and you should not do your own thing. You should be a good little worker bee. So I was a good student, and when you're a good student, you are taught to try not to think for yourself, just work really hard for someone else. And I'm like, that is such a suckers play, you know, like starting your own business all the time. It's weird because you get out of school and they're like, be a good employee during the whole time you're in school. Then you get out of school and then suddenly you look at what the government wants you to do. And it's like, oh, no, we want tax structures for business owners. We want people to start businesses.

We encourage small business ownership. we really want people to start and be productive members of the economy. And it's like, what was the last 12 years of bullshit you gave me about like be a good worker be show up at the bell, quit at the bell? You know, what was all that about? On time is late. Yeah. And it's kind of like, oh, well, you know, that works for some people.

So you just really want the most stubborn people who've failed for the last 12 years and whose parents have like all but given up on them. Those are the people you want to start businesses. You don't want all the smart people that are like, have tons of potential. You want to lock those people in a room and have them like doing financial accounting for a Fortune 500 company. What's going on here? What's wrong with you? Wow, Jordan. Well, I want to thank you so much. I'm sorry I kept you over. I know it's a busy time for you. I just want you to know how much gratitude I have for you and everything that you do. You've been

inside my ears for over a decade. I appreciate that. Wow. I deliver so much value, as they say, in the industry. But you're really a role model for people young and old. And I want you to keep doing what you're doing and have the greatest success with the other two Jays in your life. And I wish you a wonderful weekend. I thank you so much for being on the show, Jordan. Thanks for having me on, man. We'll talk soon. Awesome. Any sufficiently advanced technology is interstingial for magic. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, rate, and review. For a chance to win a free copy of our most recent guest's newest book, send a screenshot of your review to info at imagine.ucsd.edu.

We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. For more information, go to imagination. orgian.orgist.org. Find us on Twitter at imagine UCSD. Watch us on YouTube. Listen on iTunes. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in The Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Viri, Director, Brian Keating, co-director, Patrick Coleman, Associate Director, produced by Stuart Volko.