Nobody Should Believe Me - What Makes a Con Work with Jordan Harbinger Part 1

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

Longtime friend and fellow podcaster Jordan Harbinger joins Andrea for a conversation about deception, persuasion, and the rise of the online manosphere. From professional con artists to internet grifters, they explore why manipulation works, why anyone can become a target, and how these dynamics connect to the stories covered on Nobody Should Believe Me. Part two drops tomorrow. *** Listen to The Jordan Harbinger Show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jordan-harbinger-show/id1344999619 Try out Andrea’s Podcaster Coaching App: https://studio.com/apps/andrea/podcaster Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-mother-next-door-9781250284273/ View our sponsors: https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/sponsors/ Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show!   Subscribe on YouTube where we have bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@NobodyShouldBelieveMePod Follow Andrea on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreadunlop/ Buy Andrea's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Dunlop/author/B005VFWJPI For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit: https://www.munchausensupport.com/ The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines: https://apsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Munchausen-by-Proxy-Clinical-and-Case-Management-Guidance-.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media. Hello, we have a really fun episode today, which is my conversation with my friend, fellow podcaster Jordan Harbinger of The Jordan Harbinger Show. This ended up being quite a far-reaching chat about con artists, deception, gender politics, the manosphere, and more. Very excited to hear what you all think about this convo. And as always, if you want more, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to get our subscriber-exclusive show.

No, Nobody Should Believe Me After Hours. This month, we're featuring a conversation we had with Harvard psychologist Dr. Kathy Ayubh about some of the cases that we covered last season. She is always fascinating to speak to, and I always appreciate having her on. Thank you, as always, for being here and for listening. I know there is a lot going on in the world right now, and I hope that in and amidst all of that chaos, you are finding a way to relax and enjoy your summer wherever you are listening from. And if you are listening from the Southern Hemisphere, as I know some of you are, and enjoy your winter. We will be right back with my conversation with Jordan Harbinger.

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Hey, man. Well, I already screwed that up. Wow. We are talking about gender today. That is the topic of our time. No, that's why I was like, oh, not again. I mean, like, from my perspective, petition to make all phrases, hey girls, hey guys, hey man, gender neutral. You know, why not?

Switch it around. If somebody came up to a table and I was there and they said, hey girls, I would not be like offended by that. But I think isn't that what people say, like, you're. a white guy, so of course you're in the position of privilege, so you shouldn't be offended by things like, when people say, like, that's racism. I'm like, yeah, that wasn't very polite, but I don't know, it's not really going to affect my life. And they're like, aha, that's why you can't get too upset about it because somebody who, like, it's not going to affect your life, right? It's not like you can't get the job because that person's racist, that they just mildly inconvenienced

to you while you were waiting in line for a hot dog. It's like not the same thing. I'm a little bit sympathetic to that argument. I think people take it a little bit too far. This is not what we're supposed to be talking about. I like it. Jordan Arbender, ladies and gentlemen, coming in hot with, just starting off with racism that no one asked about. Right. It's like those memes where it's like nobody, colon, and it's me talking about racist. Here's some thoughts as a white guy on racism. Whenever I sit my drink is because I'm nervous and I want you to take over. Okay, good to know, good tell. Are you nervous? No, not really. I'm, I'm, I'm, actually kind of excited to talk about this documentary that you wanted to watch. I am as well. And so

we've been friends for a couple of years. You were so gracious to me when I was just starting out as a podcaster when I had no audience or no thing that I could sort of trade on, I guess, in the industry. And I've always just really remembered that and appreciated it. So, you know, you've been in podcasting more or less since the dawn of the medium. Is that right? Yeah, it's like 19. This is my 19th year. I think podcasting's 20th anniversary. It was like, I don't know, a few months ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So more or less since the beginning of podcasting. And so you've been super helpful as, yeah, just a source of advice on the industry. And it's been a really kind of a roller coaster with my show because it took off kind of early. And then it just went, you know, just it's an ambitious show to make. So we had all kinds of things on the business side to work out. And you're super helpful with all that. So I've been on your show twice.

and I've always wanted to have you on. And I was like, oh, I just have to sort of wait for the right thing to talk about. And I think we've really got it this this time. I thought your perspective would be so helpful because, you know, there is a lot of sort of crossover with. Now, you have, on your show, you talk to a really wide variety of people about a really wide variety of topics. But you've done a lot on con artists and manipulation and that kind of thing. One of the interviews that you did that I think is probably one of your most well known and one of the ones that I really love is your prison interview with Billy McFarland, famously of the Fire Festival. That's right. And as a result of him doing that interview, which of course he didn't ask permission, of course it wasn't allowed, of course it wasn't a proper media channel, which I didn't know until ABC was literally filming me on the phone with him on a set.

as a result of doing that interview, of course, the warden at the prison found out and put him in solitary confinement for like nine months, which he complained about. But the thing is, this was like his umpteenth time breaking the rules in prison because this is a guy and this goes for a lot of these con artists and manipulators. The rules don't apply to me. So like one thing he had done, I think I should say allegedly, even though it's probably well documented, but whatever. One thing he allegedly did was he was like, I'm going to write a memoir. And it's like, okay, sure, guy who conned a bunch of people. And it's like, okay, sure, guy who conned a bunch of people. And it's, and it's, is 26 years old or something, whatever, you're going to write a memoir. So rather than trying to write a memoir, he smuggled in a USB recording device pen into the prison somehow and was recording on that. Well, he gets caught. That's a massive violation because you're not allowed to have communication devices, even if they don't transfer. It's a whole thing.

Okay. And privacy issues. So he gets caught for that. The warden's like, hey, man, this is not where you are from. This is prison. You have to obey the rules. and then he started doing some other thing, like putting money on other people, paying other prisoners somehow, which is also not allowed. And the warden was like, oh, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to send you from whatever cushy area you are now into, like, a gang prison. You don't get to enjoy the privilege of feeling safe all the time if you're going to make risk the safety of others and just not obey the rules. So he goes to this gang prison, starts teaching a course on music production. Wow, music production. He knows a lot about, no, he doesn't know anything. He just knew that a bunch of prisoners were interested in probably becoming rappers and artists and stuff after they get out of prison. And so he's going to somehow teach that and become valuable, kind of a smart strategy, but also complete BS because he literally knows nothing about music production, like zero, you know. And he starts teaching this course.

Famously, his one foray into trying to produce a music event has now become synonymous with like a debacle on. It's a cliche. So then he gets on with me and he's telling me all this stuff, like, we lost all the keys to the villas and like this company screwed us over. And I'm looking at the financials and he's like, see, you can see the money going out. And I'm like, I see the money going out. So I'll give you that. But what I don't see is how you would lose a bucket of keys to all of the private villas you supposedly rented payments for those villas, which are not in your bank transactions because they were somehow done outside of that whole. I mean, it was just so obviously nonsense.

and I gave him like every benefit of the doubt possible during the interview. Like everything, because I was like, look, he's already in prison. I don't need to force an L down this guy's throat. And then it turns out he didn't have permission to do that interview from prison. And then goes to solitary confinement. And then when he gets out, he's trying fire fest too, which doesn't happen. And then tries to now he's trying to sell the brand because the brand is valuable. And it's like, geez, no, it isn't.

It's valuable as a parody, which you can use without buying it, right? Because of fair use and critiques and all these. these other sort of exceptions to copyright law. So it's just totally ridiculous. The guy is ridiculous to me, but here's the thing. He has so much in common with all of these other hucksters that are out there that you really start to see patterns in con men when you start to deal with them. But once you're up close with them, you see how other people get taken in.

Like we only didn't get taken in by Billy because he was doing the interview from prison because Firefest was famous. But there are so many other con artists where you just go, something doesn't really add up, but I like the guy. So I'm going to give, I'm going to give them a pass. And that's how you end up losing money. Because if you're not a paranoid weirdo who can't function in society, you're probably going to be okay with them until you get burned. Yeah. No, and I think that's a really perfect parallel to so many of the people we talk about on the show, because I think that Munchausen by proxy perpetrators, which is what we've spent the bulk of the show talking about

up until this season where I think there's a pivot, but also a lot in common with those perpetrators, as it turns out, is that I think essentially they are con artists. And now there's some extremely dark and disturbing implications that are specific to that con of making your child sick, obviously. But it is the same pattern, right? And it is the same tactics. And my first time ever sitting down with a perpetrator was for my first season. And, you know, I met up with Hope Yubara and spoke to her. And she, you know, she'd been in a similar situation in that she'd been to prison for 10 years. I was not trying to get facts out of this person. I was not trying to get information out of this person.

We had the information. She was not a, you know, not a trustworthy source anyway. But I was, you know, interested in sort of what she would tell me about her experience. And similar to what you're talking about, you know, like when I was with her, she was really emotional and she was sort of saying all of this stuff about how much regret she had. But then she was still lying about things. And so, but you could see, it's like you see how they do it. Like you see the people who are really effective like that. You know, they're able to pull this on it at mass scale.

And I think, and I wonder what you would think having looked at many of these folks, I think people in general are overestimate their ability to see through it. I think people look at these con artists story. They look at a Billy McFarland. They look at a Hopiabar and they go, well, I wouldn't. I would know something was off. Right. Do you think people overestimate their ability to see through it?

Oh, yeah. We definitely know that, right? I mean, there's this show that was on in the UK a million years ago called The Real Hustle or something like that. I don't know. Some people may have seen this if they're in the UK or if they're like big fans of these types of shows because it kind of made its rounds here on the internet or whatever with like the magic crowd and the DefCon hacker crowd. Anyway, so they used to run scams, right? They would run these fake scams for a reality TV show. the UK. And their slogan at the end, I can't remember that, I think his name's R. Paul Wilson

or something like that. He used to say, hey, by the way, if you're the type of person who thinks you can't be conned, you're exactly the type of person that I want to meet. Because you are the prime victim, if you think that you cannot be conned, because what you have, and I'm not going to get this scientific term for it because it's at the tip of my tongue, but basically, you've already decided that you're smarter than the person who's targeting you. And that's a massive problem. Like when you do a war game or something like that for a military exercise or a security exercise, you want to think like the criminal. And what you do is you come in and you go, all right, what are our weak spots?

You don't go, I don't have any weak spots. I'm a steel trap. There's nothing that gets around me. And it's like, okay, but surely you have a weak spot. Nope, my ego says I don't. Okay, great. Now your ego is making you completely blind to the part that I am going to specifically target. So a con artist who's going against somebody who says,

I can't be con, Michael, you know what I love about you? You are so, you could never, no one could ever pull one over on you. And they're like, damn right. Meanwhile, I'm picking your pocket, right? Because I'm just flattering your ego, of course. Of course, anybody who says that they can't be conned is a prime target for somebody to con. It's like that Dunning Kruger thing. Like, oh, nothing gets around me.

I'm so smart. Okay, well, if you were really that smart, you probably wouldn't be announcing that because it makes you an easier target. So we already know by virtue of the fact that you're even behaving or saying these things that you are not a hard target. You are the opposite of a hard target. So, yeah, I see this all the time. I don't think I can't be conned. And I think I do shows about con artists.

Okay. And every few years something happens where it hits this perfect confluence of factors where I'm like, damn, they con me and they got lucky. So here's an example. This is like four or five years ago now. I do speaking gigs quite a bit, as you might now too. and I got an email that was like, hey, we want to pay you for an appearance, and it's going to be this.

And I was like, great, send me details. They're like, great, let's do a Zoom call. I was like, cool. They're like, actually, our Zoom is not working right now. Here's an alternative thing. I was like, cool, I'm not going to install anything, but it's a web link. Who cares?

So I go on this thing, this call, and they're like, yeah, we want to record it and we want to white list your Facebook account so we can run ads for the event. And I was like, all right, I'm going to charge you extra for that. It's something I already sell. and they're like, great, we have this plugin that manages it, it manages it. You see what this is going, right?

And Facebook. I was like, well, if I don't do anything. So I was like, well, they want me to install something on my Facebook page. That's how long ago this was, I guess. And I was like, great. Well, if meta, Facebook allows the plugin to install, it's probably not shady. Well, that was my first mistake. So I installed this thing.

And then they basically hijacked my page. And they got screwed because I just called my agent. And they were like, okay. And they called Facebook. and Facebook was like, well, we're just going to lock the page down and reset it. So, like, you can see the ownership go from, like, me to this Pakistani guy who was on the Zoom call to, like, a Vietnamese person to another Vietnamese person to, like, 10 more randos. And then the next day it was shut down. And in the meantime, they had posted, like, some anti-vax conspiracy theory article in check.

And some check listener was like, hey, why would you post this? And I was like, oh, we got hacked. And they're like, oh, okay. So they basically didn't get anything from it. But if you don't have an agent that you can call your Facebook page, it gets hijacked and sold. Yeah, I mean, a friend of mine had who had a large, this was back when Twitter was still Twitter, instead of whatever it is now. And she had a really large Twitter account and it got hacked and they like cleaned everything out. They started posting crazy stuff.

And I mean, it took her months to get it resolved. And she had some decent connections to be able to try and get to her. But I mean, it's like famously, it's impossible to get a human being in one of those scenarios. Right. You basically have to be signed with UTA or WME or a major. agency and then your agent can call their person who deals with all of the, what they don't want is the rock posting, I don't know, a Bitcoin scam and he can't recover his page for a month, right? So there's like one person at all these agencies that does that.

Yeah. Basically, if it can hurt them, they suddenly care. And even though my page wouldn't really hurt them, it's the same contact point. So they're just like, whatever. But it's amazing to, you really can't get them to do much action. Like my wife's cousin works at Facebook security, the exact department where this stuff happens. And I called him and I was like, can you do something about this before I heard back from my agent? And he was like, literally all of those people got fired like a month ago.

So no, I have no idea how you even do that. There's no one in the desk where I would walk to to go and talk. Like that whole wing is just, there's no one there. So no, I'm sorry, I can't help you. This is a guy sitting across from formerly anyway, across from the person who's job. it was to handle this and he's just like, I don't even know. He's like, if I run into Zuckerberg in the elevator, I'll tell him. You know what I mean?

It's like that level of WTF. It's almost like these social media companies don't care about their users. I know that's a headline. It's weird. It's almost like we're the product instead of their software that they give to us. It's making me feel very good about my decision to be mostly off social media. Same. So the reason the scam worked on me, right?

Normally, people who don't have a media presence are like, if someone offers to pay me, I'm not going to fall for that. okay, you may be right, but I routinely do get paid to appear on a podcast or at an event. I routinely do get paid to whitelist my social media account so that somebody can run ads for a thing that I'm in at their cost, and I charge them for the privilege. So that company, or that scam organization got lucky because that hit like these two things that I just do all the time and had to install this plugin that meta, oops, allowed to be installed on their entire Facebook system that basically gives.

access, delegates access to somebody else who can then take it away from you. So they wrote it, meta approved it, and it turned out to be a massive security risk, and they just, like, didn't have enough staff to do anything about that, which tells you everything you need to know. But yeah, so if somebody gets scammed and they get scammed on, say, like, I don't know, they're a farmer and they buy a bunch of feed, and the feed never comes. This is probably a bad example, but I think people can follow it. Okay, I would, you and I can go, I would never get scammed. I would look up the feed company, and I would make sure I had a bill, and I wouldn't pay until it arrived in a farmer or somebody who knows is going, are you kidding me? We routinely

do deals where it's net 30 and we pay or like we pay ahead of time if it's a new deal and I looked up the company and it was a real company. It just wasn't based in my area and it turned out to be a fake version of that company and we're all like, I'm so smart. I would never fall for that. It's like, no, you're not. You just didn't get the right buttons pushed and they're calling or emailing whatever millions of people. They don't care if it's convincing. That's why you get Hi, I'm a Nigerian prince with 10 misspellings and I want to transfer $10 million to you. They don't need to make it convincing. They need to make it so that it hits the one person that day who's just like sad, lonely or has busy enough that they're not looking at it.

Another scam I got hit with and I'll make this brief was somebody who texted me, this is the first. Now I get these all the time so I know better. But this is years and years and years ago. It was like, hey, your Michigan, your California, sorry, driver's license has a ticket for not paying at the fast track, like the tall. booth. And I was like, oh, no. So I went and logged into this system. And I was like, wait a minute, I have a Michigan driver's license. I just happened to be in California. Why would they say driver's license and not license plate? And so like before I input my credit card info, I saw this, but I was busy. I was on a call. I was like, I'll just do this right now. And then I realized the

URL was like, California DMV dot bunch of face hitting the keyboard keys combinations.net.com. UK or whatever, right? So it was like, if you're just doing something else, like changing a baby or holding a baby or watching Netflix, you're just going to put your credit card in this fake thing and get charged. And you're not even probably going to notice that they're charging you for the next 10 years.

That's like the whole scam. So it doesn't, you don't have to be dumb to fall for a scam. And I think if we remove the stigma of falling for a scam, it makes it easier to get held, to tell other people to realize that you might also fall for a scam. Because if I say, hey, I might fall for a scam, and it doesn't mean that I'm a stupid person, now I can actually look at something and go, this might be a scam, and it doesn't mean anything about me as a human.

If your mom gets scammed by a romance scammer, she needs to know, it's not because she's a dumb, lonely old lady who doesn't know any better and shouldn't be allowed to use the internet. It's because somebody who is a professional criminal targeted her and pushed all the right buttons. That is not a flaw in her humanity. That is a flaw in the other person's humanity. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think especially for these things that do.

really prey on, like, not necessarily people's desire to, like, make money or whatever, but, like, prey on their generosity, which is a lot of the ones we talk about, right? Like, the people who get hurt the worst are often people who are really kind and really inclined to help other people and whose heartstrings are being pulled by the story of a mother with a sick child, which is, like, such a fundamental thing and something most people would never expect anyone to exploit. And, you know, so it's like that doesn't, not only does it not say anything bad about you. I mean, I often like having talked to a lot of people that have been through, it's like a lot of the people that get pulled in the worst are just really kind and are activated by

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You can find all of that information in our show notes, and remember the shopping our sponsors is a great way to support the show. There are numerous times where I've been listening to your show, and I go, all right, shoe on the other foot, if somebody that I kind of met and liked, had a sick kid, and I'd like invite them to stay with me because they were evicted, and I bought their sob story and their baby lives with me, I've seen with my own eyes that child gets sick.

And it's nothing she's doing. And then it's like, well, she did go to the bathroom before with him. But she would never do that. She's a nice lady. And you came and you were like, I'm going to interview her because she has Munchausen and she's harming her child. I would throw you out of my house so fast, Andrea. You wouldn't even know what hit you. And then I'm like, oh, I could easily become part of the problem because it's just a matter of

like whose buttons get pushed and who gets there first, which is always the bad guy. Right. And like how convincing they are. and the people who are not convincing are not on your show because they get caught in five minutes and they go to jail or something, right? They don't almost ever go to jail.

Well, I guess that's true. But the smoothest operators, they operate for years and they become, they get in that fun, that nonprofit that you had on. Yeah, they become the director of Haitian advocacy at a billionaire's nonprofit.

Right. And they're hobnobbing with celebrities and billionaires and then it's like some podcaster is going to tear you down. Like, give me a break. This is Dunlop, lady. Get out of here.

And yeah. Yeah, so I think this is actually a great segue. Because, you know, as I was kind of joking about, you are, you know, our special correspondent on what's going on with men. Yeah. Because this is sort of, you know, in the past we've talked about, I think some of what, or a lot of what the criminals that we've been talking about in the past who have been female perpetrators of abuse, they get a lot out of how very much they don't appear to most

people as criminals, right? I think, like, we sort of expect. and not to say that there aren't a lot of people that fall for it. But we sort of expect if a guy comes in and he's slick and he's like, I'm going to help you make million dollars in the stock market. Like, I think for a lot of us, right? Like our hackles kind of, uh, right. But it's like a mom with a sick kid. Like that's kind of the last person you expect to be doing something horrific, to be fooling people, to be scamming people. In our seventh season, the first case that we're examining, we're talking about abusive head trauma, which is way overrepresented by male perpetrators in these cases. And this is a form of violence that, is much more contested than I expected when I got in, despite the very strong scientific consensus that this is an injury that can happen and one that can be accurately diagnosed by doctors. There's a lot of manufactured controversy about that I found. But it is at least, you know, I think most people understand that men can be violent, that they can be violent with their partners, that they can be violent with children and babies, right? That's at least

something we've sort of wrapped our heads around in a way that we sort of have it with female perpetrators. And so I think it's an interesting time to think about, like, the gendered nature of these crimes. And, you know, what we're talking about in season seven, is obviously a very extreme version of sort of like the worst things we associate with men, right? Yeah. And we've had a very strong, you know, most of my audience is female. They've had a very strong reaction to listening to my interviews with this perpetrator. They've had very strong reactions to me, to listening to my conversations with the alleged perpetrator of the crime, John Stewart. And my experience with him has been interesting. He sent me a lot of follow-up emails with a lot of,

like, really misogynist language and just sort of, I think once he realized I was going to look deeper than his narrative, became really angry and, you know, really spiraled. And it's been an interesting time to think about sort of how this expresses itself and this sort of like, the what's going on with men of it all, because this is also a person who had a traumatic background of his own, who is very isolated, who does not appear to have a job or have a community or have friends. And so I think it really plugs into a lot of things that there is a lot of conversation about. And so I want to level set just a little bit to what we're going to talk about because I think a lot of people kind of go, the minute you say male loneliness epidemic, right? And I think there's...

Yeah, oh, my cousin female, she's like, that doesn't even exist. And I'm like, wait a minute. There are lonely men. and she's like, well, they deserve it. I mean, she's not really, this is tongue and cheek, okay? She's not a bad person. But like, I see both sides of this. I think I can interpret that conversation in that reaction, right? And I think it is because part of what we're going to talk about today is this

Manosphere documentary. The reason women have such a strong reaction to conversations about this, about male isolation, about male loneliness, I think in general it's not because we don't care about men. Many of us have men in our lives that we love. Many of us have, you know, I have a son. Lots of reasons to care about men. Also, we have to live in the world with men. I think it behooves us all for them to be okay.

Men in particular can be very outwardly dangerous when they're not okay. But I think the reaction is because there's a lot of connections being made that I think are not accurate about male loneliness being a result of female empowerment, of female progress. Oh, yeah. And sort of like, men are lonely. And we're all like, yes. and they're like, it's feminism's fault. And you're like, no. Or like, or like, women need to start dating these men who are completely undidable and that

will fix it. How about no? I do think a lot of the men who talk about this in public spaces. And, you know, I was listening to your interview with Scott Galloway. And he's obviously someone that talks about this a lot. And to be fair, I think Scott Galloway is interesting. I think he has a lot of interesting things to say. I get value out of listening to him.

I think there are a lot of people that are maybe like not going a layer deeper where they need to, Right. Like I was texting you about this. I listened to two of your male guests who were talking about this sort of broader issue. One in sort of a more psychological context, the other in like a dating context. You know, and they pointed to this phenomenon of not having male spaces, right? And they both brought up the Boy Scouts and how the Boy Scouts is now the Scouts and it's no longer the Boy Scouts. I think it's a bad example, but I'm going to guess you agree with that. I do. And it was very interesting to me because I'm not just talking out of my book. No, it was interesting to me because I was like, and I was sort of waiting for them to say it. And then I was like, oh, they're not going to say it. The reason the Boy Scouts is not the Boy Scouts anymore is because they had a massive child sex abuse scandal. And I was like, yeah, the Boy Scouts became very understood to be an unsafe space for young men because of older men. It wasn't because the feminists came in and were like, we don't want boys to have their own thing.

we don't want you all to chop firewood together. You know, and so it's like not making that connection, it sort of puts the onus in the wrong place or puts the onus in no place. Yeah, look, I'm not up to the minute on Boy Scouts, but it was an Eagle Scout. I guess you say I am because it doesn't go away when you hit that rank.

It's like being a Marine. As John pointed out many times that no one is allowed to call him a Marine in the past tense. Right, right, yes. I don't think I would get that upset about the Eagle Scout thing in the past. Anyway, so our Scouts, Troop was amazing. Okay, like Scoutmaster was a federal marshal. My dad was involved. My friend's dads were almost all involved. There was one who, uh, Kato had a single mom. She was involved up to a

point. He decided she didn't want to need to be there for all the like dirty gross stuff we were doing. She tended to agree. You know, it was great because he didn't have a dad that was around. And we like, there were all these suddenly older guys that were like, hey, you're going to get punched in the face if you do that again. And they were like, I'm not going to. My mom this. And we were like, no, no, no, Mr. J. I'll handle that for you. Whack. Right. And the kid. like grew up to be a nice normal guy because he had that space. I don't think that goes away if you also do activities with women. The other thing that's a misunderstanding here is,

Boy Scouts, yeah, it was this guy thing. We had guy meetings. We had guy campouts. They still have those. It's just that when you have a talk or you do a badge or you're doing rabbit raising or maybe you go to the gun range, some of the girls come too. It's not a big deal. It's not ruining what the space does.

It's not that you can never, it's not. like everything's mixed now because feminism. No, they're still, I mean, it's America. They're not letting everybody slam together like they do. By the way, scouts in Europe, my buddy was like, oh yeah, scouts is great. I hook up a girl's there all the time. And I'm like, what? Wait, what are you talking about? And they're like, yeah, you go camping. And sometimes you share a tent with women. And I was like, Sweden's the place, man. God bless you guys. Everyone's in a sauna together. Yeah, I was like there wasn't a woman within a hundred miles of camp rotaria that wasn't, you know, like a lunch lady. And like, and also like women want very much.

want our own spaces as well. And I think like, you know, it's like, that's the other thing. Have you smelled a Boy Scout troop? Most of the women, if given the choice, they don't want to be there either. So it's not feminism that's ruining your thing. It's all of the child molesters. And the reaction that was to sweep it under the rug instead of doing something about it,

that caused a problem. There was a molester who lived next door to my friend as a child. But I've been to this guy's house, not alone. Thankfully, the kids acted weird when we were there. now as an adult and makes perfect sense. And then that guy who was a random 20-something-year-old guy with no connection to the community other than he lived with like his uncle and aunt because he probably had to leave the UK, he decided to volunteer at a Boy Scout camp and da-da, he went to prison for touching the kids.

And the response to that nationwide, not that incident, but just generally was, oh man, we don't want people to think this is an unsafe place, pay some settlements and try and keep it quiet. As I understand, that's how that happened. There was a big documentary about it, which was very heralded by Apsack, which is the organization I'm part of. And I think a lot of the frustration from women comes from, you guys are not kind of, like, not you guys, but like a lot of the people talking about it are sort of like just, yeah, not doing a sort of deeper. Brons muscle in their way in and everything guys want to do. It's like, I don't, it's like, it does have a distinct women ruin everything kind of vibe.

And it was interesting as you were talking about scouts, you know, I, like I was tennis player growing up and actually. most of, you know, I only competed against other girls, but almost all of my practice time was with boys and girls and usually actually mostly boys. And then when I was in college, you know, there was a men's team and a women's team. And like it, like those were some of actually the best experiences that I've had with boys and men in my life with sort of having that kind of neutral space to be in together. And so I think like both both are valuable, right? There's a logic flaw in what these guys are doing. And I'm not, I don't think they're doing it on purpose all the time. Some of them do, sure. But they're kind of saying, hey, now that this is both men and women together,

they're sort of implying, now you can't have a male only space. It's not allowed. And it's like, well, wait, that's a bit of a leap from, hey, maybe we should have women join this because membership is down. And also, it might be good for the kids. And some of you have sons and daughters and you want to spend time with both of them on the weekend, which is not on, you know, that's not, that's nice to do. I have to a boy and a girl. I'm stoked that they can both come on these canoe trips. And it's not just like, my boy's coming. You guys bake cookies at home now. See you later. You know what I mean? Like I want that to be a thing. And so the sort of implicit argument is since we're including women and girls, now the guy stuff is just ruined. And it's like no one's making it impossible

for you to do guy only stuff if you really want to. Nobody's saying you're not allowed to have a camping trip where the guys go and be gross for a weekend. Like that's not, no one, there's no rule against it. There's not a federal law that's being made against it. As long as you're not being gross in a way that is actually unsafe for the young people involved, right? Well, the Boy Scouts in the 80s and 90s, I don't know about that. I mean, there was a lot of stitches and fires and some of them, not all of them, the fires were outdoors. So, so, but you can do that with women around. They'll just probably run away when you do, which is what we all should have done. Sorry, Matt. Anyway, sorry, Matt with no eyebrows.

I'm genuinely curious. I think, you know, and I think this is not my idea that I had independently. There's a lot of people that are much more involved in the scholarship on all this than I am. But I do think that part of that anxiety about keeping gender binary and bifurcated is what causes the animus towards trans people, the animus towards anybody that's not going in a direct gender. performing gender in the way because obviously like young people you and I are the same age we're in our mid 40s gender and gender expressions and sexuality like that is very different I mean when I think about like things that have really changed like between like now and people you know 25 years younger than us like that has changed a lot and I think that causes people a lot of anxiety that they kind of don't want to

sit with you know it does it's hard for me so I luckily I went to law school and I worked at a law clinic. So it's where you help like indigent clients get off of they did something and they're getting evicted or somebody got like a drinking violation or something because they don't have a place to drink. They live outside. You know, stuff like that. We had some crazy stories. And my partner was Denise and she was like 50, 50, in her 50s, but she was a trans woman. This is like in 2002. So I'd never heard of this in my life. I don't think at that point. I was like, wait. So like she is a cross-dressing? They're like, no, no, no. She's actually a different. gender now and I was like wait a minute so as I got to know her 2002 yeah and she's in a

this wasn't like oh it's trending or like you're 17 and 20 whatever you're experimenting with something like no no no you already had a career as a naval officer and a whatever and had got married and had kids and now they're adults and were in law school together so very different place in life so this is a person who could speak with like some pretty good credibility on what it was like to be transgender and I was like wow she's really smart and cool and normal like normal except for this one thing that I've never that is crazy to me but she's not like mentally ill or going to shoot a place up or like you know has all this crazy stuff that made her into what she is and she's a dysfunctional member of society no she was like a brilliant lawyer so i had an early introduction to this so then when

all the trans hysteria stuff happened i was like i don't know man i don't know if i can get on board with this knowing someone well who's trans for 20 years it sort of inoculates you from being like they're all crazy people that are tic-tok tic-tok brain to death. It's like, well, I know at least one really clear exception. Yeah. And, you know, I think, like, I'm sure you approach things similarly, but if people are having hysteria about something, I'm like, okay, is there any data on this? Is there any peer-reviewed, you know, like studies that shore up any of this? Like, they're violent, they're scary. And sure enough, of course, they are not. So I want to talk about the Manosphere Dog and the Manosphere more broadly.

So we both watched this, and I have certainly less touch points with this world than you do. I don't know if this is how you would describe yourself. Wikipedia describes you as a— Oh, somebody rewrote it recently. Can you stop? So somebody rewrote my Wikipedia, which was normal. And I think that person hates me and wants me to get thrown into the shot into the sun. I'm not sure Wikipedia recognizes my existence yet.

So, you know, a six of one happens. But I— So, okay, you probably. would not, I guess, describe yourself as a former pickup artist. No, I think that's really dumb. I think what we were, I had a company that taught men dating stuff back in the day, but it was, and it was adjacent to the pickup artist thing, but our whole brand was, we are not that. So the person that wrote that is kind of like, aha, I'm going to needle Jordan.

I think it's somebody who probably knows me or knows my work. But yeah, you know what? I can't really care too much because something I did decades ago, you're going to, you know, lean into me for that. Okay, fine, whatever. But yeah, I was very adjacent. Like, I remember when Manosphere was a new term, and I remember meeting those guys and already knowing most of them, because many of them were also in, like, the pickup artist movement and whatnot. And I remember it was kind of like the worst of us.

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Both walk their own path, towards justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Can you give us for those who don't know? Because I remember, I mean, this was something that I think was like, if you were single in this time period, right, like 20 years ago, like you really We couldn't avoid it. There was guys doing magic tricks at the bar.

This is when people used to talk to each other in real life and there was no dating apps. And so it's like men had to have some kind of so like men would come to the bar with weird hats. And sometimes they would like try and nag you or whatever. And I don't know. That never worked with me. But like this stuff was so omnipresent in the culture that like you sort of couldn't avoid it. But can you give us kind of like when you think about the more classic like there was the book by Neil Strauss who is a Rolling Stone article who got or. Rolling Stone writer who profiled this guy mystery.

Yes. So I knew all of those guys. I'm still friends with Neil Strauss. Like I know a lot of the guys from the book, still friends with a lot of guys from the book. I took the opposite tack. That was wear bright colored clothing and you've got these like prefabricated, well, fabricated stories that you tell that are like, hey, you know, I got to get your opinion on something, ladies, my ex-girlfriend, she's a stripper at this club and she took my Lambo.

Do I report it's stolen? You know, it's like one of that stupid stuff. But like, you know, if you're in Hollywood and you're going to clubs, fine. But what I came at this was, I was a little bit older. I was 26. That shows you. Like, I was a little bit older than most of these guys. I was like, you know what?

Eventually this is going to crumble for you. Like, you're not going to be able to have a relationship with somebody you meet in this way. So since my goal is to have a relationship, not just a bunch of one-night stands, I need to re-engineer this. And so what we came up with at our old company was like, instead of working on like the women and working on your story and working on your, your light up belts and stuff. Why don't you work on, this is a revolutionary concept at the time, why don't you work on yourself, like go to the gym, learn a language, maybe you travel a little bit and you meet people there, but then you come back with stories, you work on your career so you're more stable, you work on your self-esteem. Yeah, you work on your body language and your vocal

tonality and your eye contact, maybe take an improv class or an acting class or something like that, but it's not so you can pretend to be somebody else, it's so that you can really start to feel your body. I mean, do yoga in the morning, you know. So we were recommending all that. And like, we carved out this sliver of what you would maybe say is like the dating industry or whatever. And we were kind of like the white hat good guys. Right. And some of the guys that were doing all the stories, they viewed us as a little bit like chumps because they were like, oh, you know, Jordan, when he goes to a club, he doesn't leave with a different girl every night.

And it's like, no, I have a girlfriend that I actually like, which to them was a completely foreign concept. Which I think was like a big critique, right? that that was like, I think the pickup artist people were very much seen. And I don't think wrongly as people who were using manipulative tactics to have one-night stands with people, which is like, that's fine if that's what the other, the consenting partner was into, like, no judgment there. But I think it was like, it was really like how to trick girls into bed. Which, you know, like, even for ladies that want to have short-term or one-night stands, like you still would like to be treated like a human being, I think. So I think that's where that felt quite misogynist.

degenizing. Very different than what you're talking about. Yeah, none of the stuff we did was that bad, but none of the takes you have about the pickup artist of being misogynists are wrong, I would say. I think there, in fact, here's an example of, and this is where it sort of dives into the manosphere, right? So there was a guy who worked for another company for a miss, I think, with that guy, mystery, the magician, that Neil profile, he worked for that guy. This is during the blog era, so you could basically read people's diaries. And if you were friends with them, you could ask them follow up questions and stuff like that, or you knew somebody that knew somebody you could get like a lunch going.

I remember there was one guy, and he was an instructor at that company, and he met a girl, and his thing was putting on a fake British accent. Now, that's funny if you're drunk and you're at a bachelor party and you cut the crap if you meet somebody

that you want to have a conversation with, five minutes in. This weirdo kept it going the whole night, kept it going the whole first date, kept it going the whole first week, kept it going the whole first month. Finally, for months, this guy's been putting on a fake,

longer, longer. He's been putting on a fake British accent when he sees her. He's had fake calls with his fake British accent. He's called her with his fake British accent. She's like, I want you to meet my parents. So this guy calls me and a couple other guys freaking out because he's like, dude,

I can't meet her parents with my fake British accent. I need to come clean, but I love her and I want her to not think that I'm some sort of weird psycho. And I was like, dude, I have bad news for you. this is not possible. There's no way out. Because the only kind of person who fakes a British accent for like three months is a freaking psychopath. Like, are you okay?

And his reaction was to tell her because we were like, you have to tell her, but she's going to leave you if she's not like totally lost. And that's exactly what happened. Now this guy said, and I thought this was almost comical, hey, you know, I'm starting to think that some of the stuff we do might be unhealthy. And I was like, you think? You're a ridiculous person. And so this is how it goes wrong. Now, there were reactions to this type of thing because it happened to a lot of guys, not the British accent thing, but a whole thing where a guy would meet a girl and he would

start to like her and then he'd be like, by the way, I don't really work at Universal Studios. Like, I'm a student. And she'd be like, why are you lying to me about this basic stuff? Like, I actually just thought you were fun. But now I can't trust you. And so all these guys had these crises where they would meet a girl that they actually did like. And then they would be like, everything I told you last week was totally bullshit. And the girl would nine times out of ten be like, I'm out.

There's many more fish in the sea that don't just lie to me for me to think they're cool. You have low self-esteem. You need to go to therapy. And they're totally right. Now, the problem was a lot of the guy's reactions were, you know what? You're right. I need to get myself together. But the majority of those guys' reactions was, you know what?

This is all bullshit. This is all just BS. Women only like guys who are really well-female. and really work at Universal Studios and really have a British accent and really do travel the world all the time on their yacht. So that's what they're really.

She's mad at me because I'm not that guy. Not because I like her. No, she's not at you because you lied to her. She's mad because I'm not a barren oligarch son from Russia. That's why. So that started the manosphere. Here's the irony.

Successfully talking women into bed in your 20s is also bad for you. Not because of some morality, religious stance. it's bad for you because what it does is you're filtering in women who are drinking at the time, going out at the time, willing to sleep with a guy as a one-night stand. Maybe that's the only time she's ever done that. You don't know, but it doesn't matter because those are the women you're dealing with. So of course, you come out going, women are all dumb and they're never going to be loyal to you

because a guy like me can just walk up to them any time in a bar and sleep with them. And it's like, no, that happened with you with that one girl one time after you essentially conned her and gave her drinks. That's not the same thing as all women will sleep with the next guy that talks to them because they're mindless automatons. And I think that's something that women have a really strong reaction to, and I'm having a strong reaction to you saying, even saying this, right? It's like, you can't try to sleep with women that you just met and then judge those women

for sleeping with you when you just met them. Like, that is, that's a great. And like, listen, we can clock when a guy's late. You know, women can clock when a guy has that attitude. Again, not a morality thing. People consenting adults should do with. each other what they want. But it's like, well, okay, you're the kind of guy that would sleep with someone you just met. So like... That's different. We're guys. We're something, something.

Biology. This is where this comes from. This is where this red pill stuff comes from. Yeah, we're wired to spread our seed around. So it's okay if I do it because I'm just following biology. Women who do that, there's a common, and by the way, this is not what I believe, right? Just to be clear. There's a common belief. And you can see this in clavicular's interview with Andrew Callaghan on Channel 5, if you want to go there. I did go down a weird click your raffle hole and then I was like, that's enough internet for you today. That's enough internet. Yeah. So a common red pill belief is that women who sleep with more than one man or sleep around, their pair bonding hormones are damaged. The system in their brain that pair bonds is broken because

they're pair bonding with too many men and therefore they can't be in a monogamous relationship where they're loyal because something, something female hypergamy. And hypergamy for people who don't know is basically the idea that women are always looking out for resources in a better situation in life. So they will leave you if you are a, I don't know, auto mechanic making $70,000 a year. If they meet a dental hygienist that's making $85,000 a year because it's an upgrade. Which is a wild view on the world given how many women, like I think especially women our age. Like dating down. Right.

And I don't think like dating down. I hate that term. But there are many women that I know that are dating. or married to people that make less money than they do. And it's not like, yeah, I mean, it's just there's no proof of concept to there. It's like, no, there's no science behind this. But these guys will die on the hill. There isn't even really strong anecdotal evidence, you know.

No, there's not. But the red pill guys will die on the hill that there's science that says this. But then when I look for the studies, because I always do, they are either not, don't exist at all, or it's animals do this. And, yeah, we don't know what humans do, but rats. have this thing where and they go, see, science. And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're, you can't say chimps do this when they also can't use the internet, can't use a phone, can't speak. Like, maybe there's differences between how chimps societies work and human

societies in the modern era. Go figure. But that is unacceptable to them because they view the entire world through their lens of insecurity. And this is what the whole Manosphere documentary is really about is it's a bunch of guys viewing the entire world through the lens of what is essentially kind of like a teenage boy lens, even if they're 40. That was the first half of my conversation with Jordan Carpenter. And guess what? When you get two professional yappers on the mic, it does go on pretty long. So we are going to be bringing you the second half of this conversation in an extra episode tomorrow where we will be digging into the Netflix documentary inside the Manosphere. Nobody should believe Meek is produced and hosted by

me, Andrea Dunlop. Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche.