The Jordan Harbinger Show - 221: How to Meet the Parents Without a Meltdown | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

You and your significant other of six months planned on using your parents' vacation home for a romantic weekend getaway together, but now your parents have decided to join you. The problem: your parents and significant other haven't met yet. You're confident they'll get along great, but you want to make sure you set up the occasion for the best chance of success. Here's our take on how your significant other can meet the parents without a meltdown. And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Jason DeFillippo (@jpdef) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now let's dive in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/221. On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: What's the right way to introduce your significant other to the parents when you'll unexpectedly be vacationing together soon? After basically being raised by wolves, how can you build a healthy cleaning schedule or routine? Is it just about learning how to establish new habits? Your best friend's ex-girl didn't used to be yours, but you'd like it if she could be. What are the pros and cons of exploring the possibility? You have no interest in having kids, so when is the right time to bring it up in the dating cycle so you're not wasting anyone's time or being presumptuous? How might Jordan calculate the way he asks a guest questions during an interview to prompt answers that haven't been given on a dozen other podcasts? Matt Gallant from BiOptimizers gives us some straight talk about the way different probiotics affect (or in most cases, don't affect) gut health. While your grandmother has an undiagnosed mental disability and caring for her is taking its toll on your mother, she doesn't qualify for the local nursing home. What are your options? Life Pro Tip: When arguing, try restating the main points of the other person's argument back to them and have them do the same with you. Recommendation of the Week: They Come for Us at Night: Inside China's Hidden War on Uighurs by Isobel Yeung, Vice A quick shoutout to Mario Scian from Denmark! Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Jason on Twitter at @jpdef and Instagram at See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger, and I'm here with producer, Jason DePhilippo. Here on the Jordan Harbinger show, we love having conversations with our fascinating guests. And this week, we had Adam Savage of MythBusters fame and his news show, Savage Builds, talking about the process of hands-on creativity. It's an interesting show. I'm not much of a maker myself. My wife is. I know you kind of are, Jason.

And Adam Savage is a creative dude. I mean, he's just, he's got a really, his mind works in a way that I'm just not really, you don't see that very often. You just don't. And Gabriel Mizrahi and I did a deep dive on generosity and abundance. I know I hate that word and I'm not using it in a woo-woo BS way. But I mean that in a way that shows you can actually build your allies, your network, you can help others, you can generate social capital before you're rich and successful and at the top of the corporate ladder. A lot of people think, well, I can't help others get what they want. I need to work for myself right now. I got to focus on my own goals. If you're working on building relationships at work or in your business or

in your personal life, definitely don't miss that episode of the show that we did that deep dive with Gabriel and Mizrahi. Also, I write every so often on the blog. The latest post is about how to deliver bad news in a way that actually helps, not harms your relationship to the person that you're talking to. And this is clutch for those of us that have to occasionally or even regularly deliver bad news. And that's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash articles. So make sure you've had a look and a listen there to all of that. Of course, our primary mission is to pass along insights and experiences to you directly. So we want to have conversations directly with you wherever possible, and that's what we do today here on Feedback Friday. We do that every Friday, and you can reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.

I'm back from the East Coast. I give a talk at TravelCon. It was fun meeting all of you there. A lot of you, man, a lot of you came to TravelCon to see, well, to see a lot of things, but also to see me talk, which is flattering. And I had a fun talk on the art of interviewing. And I think I'm going to turn that into a product of some kind because a lot of people had a lot of questions about it, but how to interview and how to create a great show. And it just, it was fun to deliver that. So I'm going to be looking at creating something like that in the future. And who knows, maybe I'll have some downtime while I'm changing diapers because Jen is about three weeks away from D-Day here. Ready to pop. That's right. Ready to pop out a kid. I think it's B-Day, not D-Day. What's that B-day? It is B-day. It's B-day. Yeah.

Literally, quite literally. Literally the birthday. So, That should be interesting. We're doing a lot of shows in advance because I'm going to be knees deep and dirty diapers in about a month. Can't wait for that. That should be interesting. Yeah, yeah. That should be fun. Life-changing experience.

I'm gearing up for it. All right, Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hi, Jordan, Jen, and Jason. My boyfriend and I of about six months were planning to go on vacation together. My parents have a vacation home that they said they weren't going to be using for a weekend, so they said it was open for us to use. So we booked the trip. In a recent turn of events, my parents now say they'll be at the house while we're there.

In a recent turn of events, my parents don't want us to bang the whole time in their vacation house. Got it. Exactly. Exactly. We don't want to be disinfecting for a month, so we're going to show up. I'm working on preparing to integrate these two parts of my life. I talked to my mom about it, just setting expectations, and she made it clear that it would

be disrespectful to her and my dad if we slept in the same room. And I understand they're traditional. But we go on trips together all the time and stay at each other's apartment often. I want to make sure we're still ourselves while being respectful while in their house. My boyfriend is great and I don't have any problem introducing him to my parents, but I wish I had more of a grasp on the situation. Do you have any tips for preparing to meet the parents? Thanks, party of two, turn to party of four. That's so funny. It's so not an accident that they're going to be there. Not an accident at all. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I told Angela, whatever her name is, you know, she can go to the

to the cottage of their boyfriend and the dad was like, hell now! No, Don't reminds getting railed on the kitchen counter. We're going. Pack your crap. Yeah, oh my gosh. Yeah, well, this is funny because I remember when I stayed over at Jen's house the first time in a show of respect for her traditional time when he's parents, we slept in separate

beds, obviously in a different room. In fact, beds is kind of a loose term. I slept on an air mattress in the living room and the cat spent the entire night snuggling with me. I slept horribly because the cat just wouldn't stop nuzzling with me, which is funny because, you know, now it's my cat. But back then, it was just a strange cat that I thought was going to end up biting or scratching me. My tip is, though, don't come empty-handed. You can bring a special treat.

You can bring something small like a game. The family can play together, and that'll be a good chance to bond. Seriously, bring Uno. It's easy. Everyone likes it. Even if they don't really like it, they're going to play a few rounds. And then you have Uno for the next time, 10 years later, when it's raining. the whole time that you're at the summer house with your kids. So put a note inside the pack that

says so-and-so brought this deck of cards over on, you know, our first time staying at this house when meeting my parents for the first time. That'll be a cool thing to find in a few years. And if you unpack it in 10 years and you're not together, you can throw it out and you still have Uno. So bonus. Bonus. Total bonus. Jason, what do you think? I've been in the same position and you just bite the bullet. You sleep in separate rooms. It literally is a respect thing. And you can still sneak over for a quickie if you can't handle it or make time when the parents are out of the house. But it really is a small price to pay to keep the peace, in my opinion. And you should also try to have a meal with the family altogether before you go to the summer house.

So they're not meeting for the first time at the vacation spot because it's just going to break the ice ahead of time. So like when you show up that like everybody's not going to be nervous and like, oh my God, we're going to meet him. We're going to be stuck here for so long. but if you meet each other over dinner or drinks or just get to know each other a little bit before you go on this vacation, your life is going to be so much better. Yeah, I think that's wise.

There's something to be said for that. It's going to be easier on your boyfriend if he's not like, okay, first impression has to be really good because I'm going to be there for a week and I can't avoid them. You want to be able to have him work out a little bit of the nerves,

get a feel for your mom, especially your dad, and then he's saying, them the next time and he can say, hey, how you doing there? And he's not like Mr. I mean, Jim, I mean, Mr. You know, like get that out of the way first. Yeah. There's enough pressure for him having to behave himself and be cool during a whole week with your parents that he wasn't really expecting to have. You really got to give him a little bit of a warm up. And you've got to give your parents a warm up. So they're not eyeing him suspiciously the whole time because they've got to get a chance to get to know him and then your dad has to go through all the catastrophizing.

your dad and mom have to go through all the catastrophizing that they're going to do in their head before that sort of salts up the whole trip. So I think that's a pretty good call. But it should be fun. Yeah, you just want to give them a little bit of rapport building before they get a chance to go, get shoved in a, you know, a prison cell in the woods together for a while because you don't want it to turn into a horror movie. You want to turn it into a rom-com, you know?

That's right. You know, you could also do something really funny and play a trick on him. Like, maybe you give a heads up to your parents when you guys are arriving and your dad's, like, chopping wood and sharpening a hatchet in the front yard and it's like, hey there, hey there, Tom, nice to meet you. Ooh, this is a sharp axe. I feel like I would do that. And I've also had girlfriends play tricks on me like that back in the day, too, where, like,

you meet the dad and he's like, you ever go hunting? And I'm like, no, not really. And he's like, yeah, we got a lot of guns in this year house. And I was like, oh, so you like guns. And he's like, I'm just kidding, man, relax. You know, because he's, you got punked. Yeah, basically just get punked because somebody's got to call out the pressure of meeting the parents for the first time. And I remember her next girlfriend.

I went over to her house for dinner. In her mom, she made a big deal out of my elbows being on the table. And she just went off. And I was so embarrassed. And then everyone started laughing. And I was like, oh, I get it. being funny and i was being jerks yeah but they were they were they were they were you know they just kind of like the all the her brothers were in on it and stuff and they were like ooh you put

your elbows on the table oh man oh no oh man mom saw you do that huh just over and over it's a little hazing but it also breaks the ice in a good way because he's worried as hell right now that's it's not the sex thing right i think yeah he's a little bummed that you're not going to have a free-for-all during the whole week but I think he's more concerned about making a good impression on your parents. Every serious boyfriend always wants to do that. Every significant other always wants a good impression because if he's thinking about a long-term future with you, he's worried that this is going to be the story that gets told at the wedding

about how they used to not like him and then they grew into him. Like nobody wants that. Right. You know, they want to hit it off right away. So definitely an icebreaker meal beforehand, ideally a couple weeks beforehand so that it can all sort of get settled. And then, yeah, you'll have a great meal. time while you're there. I have no doubt, especially if your parents are not super paranoid, although I think they planned this specifically because they were a little worried about you.

That's what I think. It's unlikely to be a pure coincidence that they just needed to use the vacation home at the same time. Yeah, especially if they haven't met the boyfriend yet. The dad is just like, I'm clearing my calendar. Get in the car. We're on our way. Pack your crap. We're getting out there. They're going to get there the day before you too. I guarantee you that. All right, next up. Hello, Triple J. How can I build a healthy cleaning schedule or routine? My parents are both pack rats and extremely messy people.

When I was very little, they were better, but the older I've gotten, the worse they've gotten. Other than that, they have both been excellent parents, but I have no frame of reference for what realistic expectations are for cleanliness in the home. I've been living on my own for a while now, and it's been a struggle. Some of it's just down to laziness on my part, but I genuinely want to be better and be a functional adult. I've tried to research on my own, but everything I found online seems like toxic self-help, like you've talked about. It just makes me feel bad and overwhelmed and like I can never meet those standards.

I don't know how realistic I'm being, though. I just have no idea what's normal. I feel like this is such a weird, specialized problem. I don't know where to find resources to educate myself. Is it just about learning how to establish new habits? I'd appreciate any direction or help you can give me. Sincerely, how clean is normal clean? This is so interesting.

So what's happening here is you know something is wrong or unusual about the way you grew up, but you're not sure how to fix it because you don't have an example to follow. And the fact that you're aware of this problem and the cause of the problem is really interesting. Most people are absolutely not this self-aware. So congrats for being able to put a finger on this. Now, sure, some of it is laziness like any other human. You know you're supposed to wash dishes after you use them, but you know, you're going to throw them the sink and leave them there for a couple days. I get it. But what you don't need to do about this

is obsess over disinfecting surfaces or making sure things are all parallel and perpendicular in stacks or in drawers that are labeled, et cetera, et cetera. I got to say, though, unless you're cooking raw food in the kitchen, then you've got to disinfect the hell out of it. Right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, if you're throwing chicken around or something, yeah. Yeah, just a tub of those chlorox disinfecting wipes is just a godsend. It's cheap. It's easy. You wipe everything down. You don't even have to think about it because you really don't want that raw chicken juice just sitting there festering in the cracks, getting on yourself and your guests and getting a trip to the hospital. No, that's what is that, Listeria?

Yeah, yeah, we talked about that on, I think the last episode or two episodes ago. You don't want that. Yeah, yeah, that stuff's real dangerous, actually. It can kill unborn babies. That's how dangerous that stuff can be. So if you're doing that, yeah, disinfect the kitchen, you're good. But what I would do if I were you is simply ask yourself the following question. So one, in what level of clean am I comfortable personally?

And that's going to be skewed, right? Because you grew up with kind of a messy situation. You're living by yourself. The second question is, in what level of clean am I comfortable having friends over? That's going to be a different bar most likely, and that's what you've got to pay attention to. The third question is, in what level of clean would I be comfortable having a date over to my place? That's going to be a different bar most likely. So if the gap between these first two things is enormous, you know, the personal cleanliness and the having friends over cleanliness, then you have a disparity between what you're used to and what you know consciously or subconsciously is socially acceptable. So if the gap between the second two things, the level of clean having friends over and the level of clean having a date over, then it might be more of an anxiety thing than an actual cleanliness problem. We're often able to shove aside cleanliness for ourselves, but we're not going to do it for our friends to the same degree. And we

really want to impress people that come over for dates. So of course, we're going to throw the, we're going to throw extra potpourri on or whatever when that happens. But that's an anxiety-inducing thing if you're always like that. That's a bit much. If the gap between the third one having a date over and the first one, how comfortable you are when you're alone, then if that's a huge gap, well, you're normal. Congratulations. I don't know anyone who doesn't clean up when they're having someone over that they want to impress. So don't worry about that gap. The real magic question here is how wide is the gap between your personal comfort and what you know to be socially acceptable. And there's no single answer here because everyone is different. But asking this of yourself

matters because otherwise you're either being your normal sloppy self all the time or you're in a constant state of anxiety about what other people might think when they set foot in your place. So you're trying to get the bar to what level you are comfortable having friends over. Don't exist in the whole, oh, I got to impress everyone like you're having a date over. And don't settle for what am I comfortable with personally because as you mentioned in your letter, you're comfortable with a really low bar of cleanliness because you grew up in a dirty place. When I was a kid, I had friends who would never let me come over because their house was such absolute chaos. And they knew it. And they lived with actually one of these guys in college.

The guy who wouldn't never let me go to his house where he lived with his mom. He was fine. Totally normal. It was his mother and him combined who were really messy. I'd been in his house as childhood home. It had a lot of boxes everywhere. She was kind of a hoarder. but it wasn't disgusting. He just felt anxiety about it. He had no problem adjusting to life with roommates. And you'll be similar. You have no good example that you've lived in in person to live up to,

but you know what other people live like, and you can work to get closer to that average. So when you end up living with a significant other or roommates or something in the future, explain your situation and ask for feedback. It's not hard to adjust to these things, because I think we all know that leaving a pile of clothing on the living room floor for a month next to seven half eaten bowls of Cheerios. That's just weird, right?

Beyond asking the questions I just discussed, don't overthink it. The last thing you want to do is become anxious about the state of your place. We've all got enough to worry about already. And I would recommend if he doesn't have any kind of baseline, get a cleaning lady to come over every two weeks. And while she's not there, keep the place as close to what it is like when she left. And that's going to give you just kind of a baseline that you don't even have to think about. It's like, okay, this is what it looks like when a professional cleans my house.

house, and this is what I want to keep it at. And that's really kind of just a hack for knowing what clean actually is, you know? That's good. And if you're kind of like 80% there, because of course, you're going to unstack the magazines and read one and put it down. And maybe it's on the top of the stack, but the stack's not straight anymore. Or like, she wipes down the table and takes away all the placemats and puts them in the drawer. And maybe you like the placemats at the dining table. So you're kind of 80% there, right? But then you're not thinking, who, I better disinfect the kitchen island again for the third time today because you don't have to do that. You can sort of let it deteriorate a little over time,

but you'll see what it looks like when it's clean in the eyes of somebody else. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't have to go OCD on it, but, you know, a clean house that is always ready for visitors is something that as you get older is just something that you tend to maintain. That's at least what I do in my house. You know, I'm almost, I'm closing in on 50, so whenever I'm done with the dishes, I clean them. You know, that's it.

I cook, I clean. Everything has kind of a sense. stasis set. And if things are out of place or like, you know, and there's also a difference I want to mention between cleanliness and tidiness. You know, you can leave the magazines laying around. That doesn't mean you're dirty. That just means things are need to be tidied up. You don't have to, like Jordan says, disinfect everything. You just stack it when people come over, but you don't want to have like, you know, three inches of grime on your living room table because you haven't dusted in six months. You know, there's a different level between that stuff. But if you can afford it,

just get a cleaning lady for the first time. You don't even. even have to have her every two weeks. But when she's done, that'll give you a baseline on what a really clean, nice house is supposed to look like. Since you don't have that baseline, that's really going to, like, put you in line with where most people actually are. Perfect. Great answer. This is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts from our amazing sponsors and help keep us on the air, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review in iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out and helps

build the show family. If you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Now let's hear some more of your questions here on Feedback Friday. All right. What's next? Dear Triple J, my niece is only four years old and was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at the age of three. My sister-in-law and her partner have been doing all they can to help her, but it's still a daily struggle. They're doing everything they can to help her condition through both Western and alternative medicine. After a recent conversation, we believe her condition could have been caused by the chemicals their HOA sprays on the grass in her area. Glyphosate has been linked to causing Crohn's, and we think this could be a possible reason why

my niece has it. Question one. How should she approach the HOA to get them to stop spraying the chemicals and raise her concerns? Question two. Is there any way for us to get proof that her condition was caused by these chemicals other than Internet research? Question three. And do they have a right to pursue legal action against the chemical company? I just want to be able to support them in the best way I can and figured I would reach out to you guys to get your feedback. Best wishes looking for justice. So I'll actually start with question two here,

which is, is there any way for us to get proof that her condition was caused by these chemicals other than internet research? I would get a note from a doctor or professor in toxicology. And you can go to the Children's Environmental Health Network and get some advice from them as well. I would note that studies have also shown issues with pregnant women exposed to the chemical, which is not good, obviously, but I've spoken with some Crohn's experts just offhand. I mean, not, sorry, not doctors, but people that have it that have done a ton of research and written books about this. So to be fair, they are not doctors.

They expressed a lot of disbelief that Crohn's would be caused by glyphosate. Now, it's possible that they're wrong, but I think the internet will tell you that every chemical causes every ailment if you look for. for it. And I think that's the problem. That's why you want to go to a doctor who's a toxicologist or a professor in toxicology and find out if there's actually anything to that. Because if you try to then sue a chemical company for this, you're going to end up with one of those plaintiffs lawyers. They could be a little bit shady. They might not have a real claim. And then you're actually just part of a scam for the attorney to make money. So you have to be a little bit careful there. Question three, there are several lawsuits against Bayer who makes Roundup and they

say it causes cancer. And I think Mother Jones, we'll link to the article here, Bayer lost another lawsuit claiming Roundup caused cancer. I'm not saying you can or even should do this, but it's something to track for sure. Crohn's is nasty. And if something caused it, then yes, the company should be held liable, but it's not really going to help make her condition better. So as for the first question, I would say the best bet is for them to go to these HOA meetings. You're the parents of your knees. Go to the HOA meetings, the homeowners association meetings. present what they find when researching this, especially with respect to what they learn from the children's environmental health network.

And when it comes to the HOA stuff, most neighbors are not evil here. They're going to be concerned, even if they're not convinced by what you say. Even if they say, look, this is just fruity ball, internet research. It's akin to anti-vax, you know, whatever. You might get somebody cranky doing that. You can still find other chemicals to spray on lawns. You can find healthier alternatives. You can find green and non-toxic alternatives if people are willing to pay for that.

You can send your notes and research to them by email. You can ask them to kindly vote to stop spraying the chemicals near the home. In the end, you helping them organize this for the next HOA meeting might be all it takes. I just don't see neighbors wanting to fight over a chemical that even has the slightest chance of making their neighbors children sick. That would be crazy to me. Nobody cares about their lawn more than they care about their neighbor's kids. This is not really a hill most people are willing to die on. And even the worst neighbors who might hate you are going to feel bad that the local toddler is sick and that might be their stinking weed killer that's doing it.

Also, keep an eye on the latest Crohn's research. There's a lot that goes into this terrible disease and there are a lot of treatments, many of which are frankly scams. So be on top of this. There's a lot of internet solutions to a lot of uncurable diseases. Unfortunately, this could be a lifelong problem. And if not treated properly, it can get worse and really affect quality of. life. So the best thing you can do is stay on top of the research, help be an advocate for them, as well as provide emotional support or just be a sounding board when they need to vent. But I would,

I'm always hesitant to immediately go, oh, there's some random chemical that they're spraying. That probably caused it. Some of this stuff is just genetic flukes. It could be caused by almost anything. It could even be random. And there's just not enough conclusive evidence here. But yeah, if you find out that they're spraying a toxic chemical on the lawn, even if it didn't cause Crohn's, stop spraying it on the lawn because it's bad for kids. It's bad for pets. I mean, there's, you don't want a toxic chemical. It's bad for everybody.

You don't want a toxic chemical on the lawn even if it's not the reason that she's sick because it can make you sick later. So, yeah, that should be one of the first steps. Go to the HOA meetings and say, hey, this stuff's bad for you. You know, let's get rid of it. Yeah, a friend of mine has Crohn's. He's had it as since he was like 22. His was triggered from food poisoning in Mexico.

It wasn't a chemical issue. So it can be triggered by all sorts of different things. And he's a molecular biologist. And he knows a little bit about this stuff. He's lived a very healthy life by treating it and staying on top of the research. So there is good stuff out there. So definitely, you know, don't listen to every charlatan on the internet. There are ways that you can live with this disease and still live a very happy and healthy life.

But just don't go down the rabbit hole too far because, you know, you don't want to listen to Alex Jones when it comes to picking your Crohn's treatment. Right. Right. You listen to him when you find out they're putting chemicals in the water that are turning the fucking frogs gay. Exactly. Isn't that what he said?

They're turning the freaking frogs. That guy's just a crazy person. All right. Next up. Hey, Jordan and the gang. We're like the Scooby gang. Like the cool and the gang? Yeah, yeah.

Or the Bloodhound gang. Oh, yeah. I'd prefer them. I'll keep this short and awkwardly sweet. I'm a single man in my early 20s and my best friend recently broke up with his girlfriend of two years. I know I should be helping him, but the only thing I can think about

is that I like his ex-girlfriend and want to be with her. What would be the best way to go about this situation? I can't stop thinking about it. Thanks for all your time and all that you do. Love the show and love yous. P.S. Get Jen on the show. Hey, never going to happen.

Never going to happen. Yeah. Kindest regards, the lost best friend. Whenever there's trouble, we're there on the double with the bloodhound gang. That's how that goes, right? That's right. You nailed it. That's right. That was on 3-2-1 contact.

If you've got the crime, we've got the time. We're the Bloodhound gang. That's, I believe, yeah. And then, but like every other episode of 3-2-1 contact, they're like, the Bloodhound gang will not be seen because they don't have the time. Drove me crazy. Drove me crazy when it wasn't on. I know.

I would wait for the whole episode to be over and I'm like, Bloodhound gang, two-minute clip. Let's do it three months in a row. No, none of it. Oh, anyway. What were we talking about again? Oh, yes. Yes, the lost best friend wants to get with his, his best friend's ex-girlfriend.

Yeah, here's the problem. This is always touchy. And I'm inclined to think, ooh, you like his girlfriend. Yeah, because you know her well. There's plenty of fish in the sea. The reason we say this, we tend to like, we tend to get an affinity or, of course, dislike also, people that were close to because we're familiar with them. This is just a common cognitive bias. So maybe you like her, but really, there's no reason to do this.

Going after this will absolutely affect your friendship. he will also always suspect you were into her and possibly had something to do with the breakup, depending on the circumstances of the breakup, if you try to go for his ex. So, and the other thing is he might give you permission because he feels like he has to be cool. He doesn't want to seem like he's hurt.

He doesn't want to seem like he's being unreasonable or emotional. And then he'll just get pissed after and be passive aggressive and or just stop being your friend. So you have to assume that you will lose your friend if you do this. And you also should assume that any relationship that you're in until you get married and have kids and, you know, sign on the dotted line, you should assume that any relationship with somebody is temporary. So the math doesn't usually work on these types of things. What's most likely to happen here, if we're going to do mathematical probability, you will date her for a few months and you will lose your friend forever. That's the most likely outcome.

And if you really like her and he's moved on and it's been a year or something like that and he's dated other words, or he's dating someone else, you could then say, hey, you know what, I really liked Angela. Would you, I mean, would you mind, like, if I saw what she was going up to, you know, you're my friend and everything? He might still be a little annoyed, but he'll probably be okay because he's dating someone else at that time. But again, do you really need to do this? There are so many people out there.

I don't think you really need to go for your buddy's ex. It's just, it can be really, really touchy, and it has a high probability of blowing up. It definitely has a high probability, but on my side, I have been through this. In my early 20s, the same as the lost best friend. And I asked my friend and I said, hey, you mind? And he's just like, no, no, I'm into this other girl already. So I'm moving on.

You know, you have to wait for him to move on. He can't still be emotionally scarred from it. And it also depends on the situation of the breakup. You know, if she dumped him, you don't want to do that right away. You want to get some time under your belt there. If he dumped her, well, then. You have a little narrower of a time window there. You can kind of jump in and go.

I did this with one of my best friends, who at the time was literally my best friend. He broke up with his girlfriend, and we'd all been, like, hanging out together, so it wasn't a weird thing. But I asked him first. I'm like, hey, can I ask Jill out? And he said, yeah, go for it, man. And we were, like, her and I were together for a year. We all remained friends. And my friend is still one of my best friends to this day.

You know, it didn't ruin everything. So it's not always going to ruin the friendship. There is a high probability that it might, but it's not always going to happen. So it depends. You know, it's kind of, it's a gray area. I think it's a gray area, but you got to feel it out. You definitely have to feel it out. And if your friend, like if you, you have to know your friend well enough to say, to, like, judge what his reaction is going to be?

Because some people will be like, you're backstabbing me, dude. What are you doing? And other friends might be like, yeah, yeah, you guys might be happy together. We just weren't a fit. Yeah. But it worked out for me, and I had a great relationship with her until it, you know, just didn't work anymore. But we still remained friends for years. Yeah, I think that the key is he has to move on.

And it can't be like he had a first date with somebody else. He should just sort of more or less be in a relationship. Or like you said, if he broke up with her, he probably doesn't really care. But you need to make damn sure. Yeah. And let time go by. Because he might have broken up with her. And then you start dating her.

And then he changes his mind. And he goes, oh, no. and now I feel really, I mean, you just got to be careful, man. Anytime you do this, no matter how much permission you've got, no matter how much the other person's moved on, you are playing with your friends' emotions, whether or not he, and it's out of your control. He might be outright unreasonable.

How dare, why would you get mad about that? It's been three years, and he goes, I don't know, I just feel that way. He's still going to be mad. He might have no control over it. It's not about his level of reasonableness or maturity. It might, it's just how he feels. All right, next up. Hey, team.

I'm 30 and have no interest in kids at all, and I know I don't want them for myself. When dating, when is the best time to disclose something like this? If a girl dreams of having children, I don't feel it's right that I waste your time when I know that it's a non-starter for me. But I also feel like it's a bit too in depth for a first date conversation. When is the right time to dive into this topic? Thanks. No kids in the hall. For me, I just say, if you're in your 30s, look, if you're in your 20s, yeah, half the time you don't even need to talk about this because someone's like,

dude, I'm not getting married for like 15 more years and I don't care and I'm not even thinking about that. If you're in your 30s, do it on the first date or right after the first date. You don't have to pick her up and your car and go to dinner and be like, by the way, I don't want to have kids. So just get that through your head. You know, you have to do that? Before you put your seatbelt on, do you want to breed?

Okay. Yeah. Do you want to have kids? What religion are you? Do you think you want to have a big wedding? Okay. This isn't going to work. Nice meeting you.

Shake hands, kick her out of the car. No. That's not how this is going to go. But first date or right after the first date, don't hide the ball. You can call out any awkwardness of being too forward, so to speak, by saying something after the date, like, all right, at the risk of sounding presumptuous and being awkward, I had a great time on our date yesterday. I want to make sure that we're looking for the same thing potentially. For me, I'm down for a relationship, but I know that I don't want kids, and I'm pretty sure about that. And I know this is a deal breaker for a lot of women, so I wanted to throw it out there.

I'd be disappointed if this is the end of things for us, but I won't be offended by that, if that makes sense. So if you say something like that, it's pretty chill, and she might go, you know, yeah, I do want to have kids, but how sure are you that you don't? And then it's like, I can't believe we're talking about this. It's so crazy. Or she might say, you know, I'm really not sure either.

I just kind of want to play by ear. But then you double down and you go, okay, we can play by ear, but I know that I'm sure that I don't. I am 90% sure. So if you don't match that, I don't want to waste your time, even though I love hanging out with you. That's as honest as it gets. Everybody's got to respect that.

Yeah, it's heavy, but it shows maturity, shows emotional maturity, which is a good sign. It shows you don't play games. It shows you don't hide the ball about awkward conversations. You don't avoid conflict. And that you don't want to waste anyone else's time. You don't want to get your hopes up for nothing. Jen and I talked about whether we wanted to get married and have kids on our, maybe our first date, maybe it was a second date or something, literally. And it was kind of crazy.

And we started laughing. We were at the cheesecake factory. It was our second date. We were at the cheesecake factory. And we were talking about the wedding size that we would want and whether or not we wanted have kids, where we wanted to live. And we were like, this sounds nuts. I'm glad nobody's listening that we know.

But we said, we're both in flux in our lives. We don't want to jerk each other around. You know, you're moving. I was thinking about moving. And it was, do I want to move to San Francisco? Where do I want to go? So if this is going to be something, then we need to make sure that she wanted to make sure I wasn't going to go date a bunch of other girls for the next few years. And we had to talk about

religion. We had to talk about how close we were to our families. All of that stuff got knocked out. And we were also flirting and goofing around. And it was a funny conversation. We acknowledged openly that this was crazy. And then we sort of put a pin in it. And then we enjoyed the rest of the night. We just had to get it out of the way. Because in your early 20s, that might be awkward. But when you're in your 30s, it just seems more normal to be on the same page. It makes sense to do it. You are otherwise just wasting each other's time. And the older you get, the less time you have to screw around. We'll be right back with more Feedback Friday right after this.

Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right. Next up. Jordan, I notice that when you interview guests, You use a lot of leading and compound questions rather than the director open-ended questions.

For example, you ask, do you do X or do you do Y, rather than asking, what do you do? What is the advantage of approaching your questions this way? Curiously yours, new listener in training. Interesting question for me. I don't get a chance to think about this that often. I don't actually use compound questions very often. So unless I'm missing something, I'm not sure which episodes you've heard, but I deliberately avoid this most of the the time because it constrains the answer. But when I do leading questions, for example, do you do

X or do you do you do Y? It's because I don't want a seven-minute preamble or a soundbite that I've heard them give elsewhere or something I've read in their book. Bear in mind, the amount of content you're getting in an hour-long or 50-minute Jordan Harbinger show interview would take other interviewers two to three hours to elicit. And I'm not saying like, we're so good at this. Often we're editing things down from an hour and a half, hour and 15. I want the guest to get to the point because that's the most value for the listener. That's you guys. So the reason that guests you hear elsewhere on other podcasts seem like they're more focused

when they're on this show is because of a few factors. One, rapport. We have good rapport with the guests most of the time. We're in front of one another because our interviews are always in person, almost always in person. I've done some groundwork to develop the rapport before the show starts. Two, we out-prepared other interviewers. You all mostly know this already, but I spend between 10 to 20 hours prepping each guest. I found out recently that most journalists spend between 15 to 45 minutes prepping for interviews,

which is sort of horrifying, yet explains a lot about what we see on TV and what we see written elsewhere, honestly. And three, I already know what I want out of the guest most of the time. Sure, there's plenty of room for me to be surprised, but mostly I already have the answers to a lot of the questions I'm asking beforehand. Yeah, I'm curious how they'll deliver that story or that answer. Yeah, I'll dig deeper and go down the rabbit hole if it's interesting, yes. But usually, I'm trying to get the guest to teach you something as a listener,

and I don't want to leave it open-ended. I want them to give me the good stuff, to give you the good stuff. And some of the time, I'm asking them about something they wrote years ago, and I actually have to remind them of what they wrote and then edit that part out of the show so that their answer is concise. Because sometimes they don't even understand. what I'm referring to. And I'm going, chapter two, page 275, da-da-da-da, and then they're going, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that, okay. Because I'm reading a book they wrote 10 years ago or 12 years ago

or 20 years ago. So it's important for me to lead so that they know what's going on. And you see other hosts not leading, and you can really tell because they end up meandering. They end up joking around a little bit too much. They end up having a lot of small talk. And it's because they don't do this, in my opinion, properly. And so it's like a cross-examination, right? It's fun to think about this. I ask the leading questions like I'm cross-examining a witness in court. Not quite the same. I lead the witness regularly.

I lead the guest where I want them to go. The reason that this is allowed at trial in a courtroom is because that attorney is illustrating a specific point that they already want to get to. And they're trying to get to something specific, which is usually what I'm doing during the show. I rarely ask questions to which I don't already know the answer. And that is a key commandment of cross-examination. in court. You never want to ask a witness something if you don't know what they're going to say.

On this show, I will ask them to tell a story. Tell me how this happened. I probably already know the story, or I know the bones of the story, or I know the results of the story. I want to hear that. And the fact that this show then sounds like normal conversation is because of Jason's editing and because of the fact that we have literally thousands of hours of practice making things sound conversational. So I'm not rehearsing something I've already said before, and I don't want to get them to say something they've rehearsed before, but I also don't want to say, so how did you get to where you are now? And then they start rambling in the first half hours about their college education. I don't care. I want the Syria story. How did you get kidnapped in Syria? Did you do

this when you found out about that? I want a specific takeaway, and I don't want the fluff. And that is, that's what takes so many hours. I've got to find out not only what I'm going to ask, but what they're going to say, whether or not that's valuable for you as a listener, and then I've got to figure out how to get it out of them in a conversational format. That's a whole art. That's a whole science slash art. And you can't do that if you're just sort of winging it and trying to be, quote, unquote, conversational. You just won't end up with the same results.

A lot of people have asked us about probiotics and gut health, and that seems to be all the rage. So I wanted to get my friend Matt Gallant from bioptimizers. Matt, you own the company. I trust you, you're a knowledgeable person. Give us some straight truth on the probiotics thing. Because even in your own ad copy for bioptimizers, it says 99% of probiotics never make it to colonizing the gut through the digestive tract. So like if they're not doing that, then what does this stuff do for us?

Yeah, so there's two types of probiotics. First, there's colonizers. And then second, there's transient strains. So colonizers means the theory would be that they actually attached themselves to the intestinal lining and build a colony, right? Transient strains means it would go in, do whatever they're going to do, and then leave the body. So what the research is showing almost unilaterally is that nothing colonizes, that the strains

go in and they leave. That's what the data is showing, including, you know, there's a great test you can do called Viome. It's a great gut test that I recommend everybody does, gives you some good information as far as which foods you should eat and which food you shouldn't eat based on your personal gut biome. But I talked to Nevin who's the founder of that company and he said that almost nothing colonizes. So we've known that for a while. You know, we have a probiotic formula called P3OM, which is a transient strain.

So while they're in the gut and they go in the body, they can do different things. Depends on the strains. Certain strains, for an example, would produce neuroduralism. transmitters, which people that are depressed, they'd feel better taking those strains. Our strain, for an example, we know it kills bad bacteria, so it'll eliminate a lot of the destructive strains. We know that for a fact, because if you have food poisoning, you can take it and feel good within about 20 minutes. We've repeated that experiment unwillingly many times. Well, yeah, I would imagine you're just like, all right, so eat this raw shellfish

and come back when you can't see straight and you can't walk. Believe it or not, one of our vendors actually gave himself food poisoning to test it, and it worked really well. How do you do that on a consistent basis? What are you like eating? You're just like, I'm just going to go to Chipotle until I get food poisoning. What do you do? I actually don't know what he ate.

He just said, yeah, I gave myself food poisoning and it worked. So I'll have to ask him the next time I see him. Yeah. But yeah, that's the story. So again, different strains do different things. Our strains also proteolytic, which means it'll help break down proteins. So kind of like a similar to enzymes. So again, different strains do different things.

But, you know, you want to have a good strain. You know, one of the big things too or misconceptions is a lot of probiotic companies put a mishmash of maybes in a bottle. So it's like, hey, let's put 12 strains. No, let's put 15 strains. Let's put 20 strains. That's not necessarily better. What you're really looking for is a special strain that's going to do what you want it to do. So whether it's antiviral, anti-retroviral, different qualities, but more strains isn't necessarily better.

That's another one. And I think another big thing for people to be aware of is yogurt. So, you know, I'll thank the yogurt industry for making probiotics a lot more popular, thanks to their marketing budgets. However, almost every yogurt has no live probiotics in it. And there's a really simple way for you to know if they are alive is if they are alive is going to be really tart and acidic. So for an example, there is a company called Buy Okay. And they do make a legit yogurt. It's quite expensive.

It's tart. It's acidic because the probiotics will actually consume the sugar in whatever medium they're in to multiply. So they're eating sugar and multiplying. And at a certain point, there's no sugar left. And that's when it's really acidic and tart. So people that have fermented things know that. So that's one thing to look for as well is, you know, you really want acidic yogurt. It's like kombucha.

If it's really sweet, you're just like, okay, this is not, this isn't working right. Well, it hasn't been fermented long enough, right? Because if you, I used to make kombucha at home. and yeah like the first week or two it's still pretty sweet and then you you give it more sugar they multiply even more and then it gets really acidic and that's when you know it's ready so so basically what we're looking for is something that since we know it's not really going to colonize the gut we're looking for something that doesn't promise to do that necessarily we're looking for something that's just going to aid digestion so we we don't take this in the morning like a vitamin you take

it with food because since it's not colonizing the gut it only works if you've got something in there that needs metabolizing, right? Yeah, and if you take it on an empty stomach, it'll do more of a house cleaning type of action. So I'm going to share a personal and perhaps a little bit disgusting story. But the best colonic I ever had in my life, I fermented P3OM in coconut water, did about a gallon of it. I brought it to the colonic, and she mixed it in.

and that was by far like what came out the next day was the only time that ever happened. So I'll just leave it at that. But it was fantastic, you know, so I got the desired result. But that's another. That was graphic. Yeah, I was. Well, I kept it PG. But the point is that it'll go in clean house if you take it on an empty stomach, whether rectally or orally.

Just for the sake of our listeners here, we at the Jordan Harbinger show, strongly recommend only taking your bioptimizers orally until further research has been conducted. Yeah, some of us are a little more extreme than others. But, yeah, our friend Ben Greenfield is a big fan of that move. Oh, yeah. Ben Greenfield will, as I joke with him, often, will stick pretty much anything in any hole as long as it will achieve some sort of biohacking result. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you very much. This has been useful because a lot of people ask, about this and the answer I always have is I don't really know because of course with stuff like this all these supplement manufacturers they're kind of incentivized to just say whatever's going to sell what's on what's in the bottle yeah and that's not really what we're looking for like people have told me to take probiot out oh yeah just take them whatever you want and it's I took them for years not knowing that I was just not I was just digesting these things and they were completely

wasted because they're not cheap like the stuff is not cheap you don't want to take if it's not going to do anything at all. So, Matt, thank you very much for coming on the show. And, of course, you can find bioptimizers at P3OM.com slash Jordan is where you can get your discount on Matt. Thanks to Matt for coming on and clarifying all that for us. You're welcome. My pleasure. All right, last but not least. Dear Jordan, Jason, and Jen, I've run into a situation that I'm totally stumped on. I'm 29 years old and this question is about my mom. My mom is a new empty nester. All my siblings and I are in our 20s and starting our lives while occasionally visiting home. My mom's been

caring for my grandma for five years and my grandma lives in our childhood home. My mom is only 46 years old and my grandma is in her 70s and she's a lot different than most grandmas. My grandma has some sort of mental disability that's never been diagnosed. She's a compulsive liar and always seems to be in another world. This might seem crazy, but we're from a very small town on the east coast in health care and mental care is harder to come by. My grandma was also mentally and emotionally abusive to my mom as a child. My grandma is mostly healthy besides diabetes, and she has a colostomy bag from previously beating colon cancer. I only mention the bag because it's one of the problems. My grandma will mess with her bag and will smear feces in the bathroom or random spots in the house.

My mom's a full-time nurse and will have to come home and deal with cleaning this up. Besides that, my grandma has a hard time socially. In public, she'll walk up to strangers and talk to them until they've had enough and walk away. She calls people on the phone and talks for hours, which mostly consists of nonsensical rambling and even sometimes bashing my mom, who cares for her the most. These things embarrass my mom and my family. Things have gotten so bad that my mom is looking for other options. This situation is hindering her life, but it also makes her feel insanely guilty that she feels this way towards her own mother.

She confides in me about these issues, and I have no answer. I told her I would ask my favorite podcast, and she had encouraged me to reach out. My mom recently looked into a nursing home, but my grandma did not meet the criteria. Do you have any suggestions or options for my mom, or even different ways to approach this situation so that my mom will not have to feel this burden or guilt while trying to live her life? Thank you for any advice that you can suggest. Sincerely, help for mom. Jason, I know you had some thoughts on this.

Yeah, I've got some experience with this kind of thing. get her diagnosed immediately. I know you said you live in a small town. Go for a road trip. Go to your next biggest town. Get her diagnosed. You may be able to find some meds that can calm her down so she's not flinging poo around the house, which is just random and disgusting. But there's, I think there may be other issues with that. And if she's not mentally ill, there's a real possibility that she's just a jerk to your mom. And then your mom has the completely justifiable position of not helping her as much. She can pull back her care. see if your grandma learns to straighten up and fly right. Because it sounds like she's been abusive to your mom her whole life. And this is just a continuation of it. And in that case, your mom is under no obligation to keep taking this abuse. And when I was mentioning the poo on the wall situation, and there's a real good chance that your grandmother is contemptuous of her mom because maybe your mom came at the wrong time in her life. And she had to spend her life raising your mom instead of going off to do the things that she wanted to do. So over the course of, you know, your grandmother's

life, she became abusive to your mom because she sees her as a hindrance to actually going out and living her life. I have some experience with this and it does happen. But I think you definitely need to get her diagnosed as soon as possible to find out if this is actually a mental illness or if your grandma's just an a-hole. Yeah, I think there's something to that. There's definitely a value to getting her diagnosed simply so that you can understand the problem better. And I do think that the abuse might be because of whatever mental illness is going on here. I think, Jason, you're right that this might be a continuation of control and abuse. She's controlling your mother's behavior by doing this. Your mother has a right to get help for this, and the guilt that she feels is

actually a program that is running in her mind that she's had her whole life. So ask your mom how often she's felt guilty with respect to her mother in any form. And I bet the answer is, since always, forever. Yep. Because this is what abusers do. They make the other person feel guilty and like it's their own fault and thus they deserve to feel bad or put up with the abuser. I come to the table here with actual personal experience of this. That is exactly what they do. That is exactly what they do. They make you feel guilty. They make you feel like it's your fault and you should be feeling awful, even though you've gone out of your way to do everything to make their life better and help them. But still, you're the bad guy. And it's sound, that's why I get kind of chills.

reading this because it mirrors my situation with my mother exactly the same way. Yeah, I can see that. It completely makes sense to me. I don't know what nursing home she said doesn't fit the criteria. I'm not sure maybe she has to be like on Medicaid for that particular place. I guarantee you there's a home somewhere that fits the criteria. In fact, it might not be that nice of a place. And I'm not saying you should stuff your grandma in a horrible place to teach her a lesson,

but maybe she needs to visit and see how good she has it at home. especially if it's not just mental illness, because you got to get her diagnosed first, because if she has dementia or something, then punishment by banishing her to a place she hates isn't going to work. If she's just a jerk who's abusing your mom and always has done the exact same thing, then she can deal with those consequences.

And your mom doesn't have to spend her late career slash golden years putting up with somebody who wants to make her miserable. She doesn't deserve that. And she's under no obligation to endure that just because someone is related to her. I think there's something going on here just because of the odd social behavior. Something is wrong with her, possibly has always been wrong with her. And more importantly, your mother needs some self-care.

I wonder if she's in therapy at all. That would be a huge help. BetterHelp is what we've been recommending for therapy. Jason, is it betterhelp.com slash Jordan? That would be it, yep. Yeah, so your mom can get the therapy literally in the car on the commute to work, whatever. She needs to start taking care of herself, maybe do some yoga, maybe some running. Just go for a walk with your mom to get her into the habit.

of doing something for herself. Encourage those good habits. She needs an outlet as well, especially if she's just sort of going to work, cleaning up people's poop at the hospital, coming home, cleaning up your grandma's poop at home, rinse, repeat, seven days a week. That's not good for her.

I think therapy for your mom is a good bet. She needs to see the patterns of guilt and control that have resulted in this situation before she can break them. Because your mom might not even see that she's felt guilty for 46 straight years and been controlled by your grandma for that same amount of time.

She might just not even know. And a therapist can highlight that, point that out, find instances of it happening, and give some advice for what she can do in the moment. Because I don't think, I see this a lot. You're just not under an obligation to be locked in a prison with somebody that is making you miserable simply because they gave birth to you. They want you to feel that way, for sure, but you are under no obligation to help someone who won't help themselves. That's not how this has to work at all. No, it's not. and walking away is hard.

Trust me, I know how hard it is. I deal with it every day. And that's why I actually have therapists. It better help to get me through this stuff and deal with it. And they're helping me quite a bit. But it is hard because you are programmed from a young age your entire life, basically, that this is something that you have to do. You're the child.

You're there to take care of them because they, quote, unquote, can't take care of themselves, which is absolutely untrue, absolutely untrue. But like I said, if she has mental illness, then you can maybe find a medication that'll work to help, you know, bring her back to center. But you have to get her diagnosed and your mom definitely needs therapy. I can tell you that 100% that she needs therapy. Life pro tip of the week when arguing with somebody, try restating the main point of the other person's argument back to them and then have them do the same with you. So believe it or not, the vast majority of arguments are based on miscommunication. And with arguments, there are often a lot of things happening at the same time that result in miscommunication, conflict, etc.

You might feel the other person doesn't understand your argument. You might not understand their argument. There might be a bunch of other issues involved in this that are causing it. There might be, you might be talking at cross purposes, so you're having different arguments and you think you're talking about the same thing. Or if there's an unwavering belief that you are right, the other person is wrong, and so you don't need to hear what they have to say. So next time you're arguing with somebody, pause the argument and restate their argument back to them. Something like, hold on, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying. You're saying that XYZ is broken and the only way to fix XYZ is to get QRS to modify Y so that it'll fit better into Z.

Now, that has several benefits. First and foremost, it helps identify exactly what you are even arguing about in the first place. And this is huge because most arguments get so convoluted that the people arguing don't even know what they're arguing about. And this goes double for emotional and relationship type arguments when the people have a history together. Secondly, the technique demonstrates you are making an attempt to understand them and it will have a calming effect, which is great for heated arguments. Third, it forces you out of the frame of mind that you are automatically right and enables you to actually listen to what they have to say and actually hear them. Four, it helps you step outside the

argument. You can see both sides. You can be more objective and able to see more solutions here. And you can also do the reverse. Pause the argument and ask, can you tell me what you think my argument is? Can you explain the problem as you think I see it? And this forces them to pause, process what you are saying, and it helps break the momentum and out-of-control death spiral that arguments can often descend into. And again, it helps to actually define the exact problem. So if you see things getting heated, you can sort of pause and curiously ask, hey, what do you think I'm saying? And let me see if I know what you're saying.

It takes things out of the emotional brain and sort of puts him in the thinking brain, the logical brain, and you go, all right, let me dissect this. So it calms emotions down, and it makes sure that you guys are actually talking about the same thing. Because half the time, I feel like half the time arguments are about something different, and a lot of times people will tend to agree at the end. And you go, oh, it turns out we agree. Who knew? And the reason is because you never bothered to clarify the argument. Recommendation of the week, it's vice news. It's called They Come for Us at Night, Inside China.

hidden war on Uyghurs. And if you don't know what Uyghurs are, they are Muslim population in Western China. And there is, over the past two years, an estimated million Muslim Uyghurs have been rounded up and placed in re-education camps, which should sound freaking scary because it is. And they're taking parents from children, children from parents. There's these lock-up kindergartens, and it's extremely difficult to report from Xinjiang. It's impossible. Journalists are not allowed there.

tourists are highly regulated they have they've hired this year jason or last year they hired a hundred thousand new police officers what for this region not not the total number new police officers wow that's insane yes and there's surveillance everywhere my friend went there she works for vice news her name is isabel young she works for vice news she just did a report on this that's what we're recommending it will link to it in the show notes but if you have HBO or the app you can find it on Vice News and journalists are they're followed wherever they go they can't visit certain places they're not supposed to talk to locals so she posed as a tourist they snuck in wearing hidden cameras twice they got a lot of footage i don't know what's up with i got to ask her i meant to email her i don't

think she can ever go back to china oh yeah no definitely not now wow no and she was she i don't know she grew up or she spent a lot of years in Shanghai. So she's mixed. She's a British, Chinese. And she's, she really, I don't think she can ever go to China again now that I think about it. Wow. It's a very dangerous mission she went on.

I mean, they just were one Google search away from going to prison in China. Yeah. Or if they had found those hidden cameras. Oh, my God. Yeah, she's got guts, man. I'm telling you. Seriously. Interesting special report.

We'll link to the article in the show notes. But if you can watch it on HBO Go, look for. they come for us at night. It's Vice News. It was fascinating. I hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. A link to the show notes for this episode can always be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Quick shout out to Mario Cian, Cyan from Denmark. Love's Feedback Friday, has been listening since Episode 1. He's taken Improv to be quicker on his feet, which is helping in corporate negotiation. He's doing six-minute networking, which has helped a lot, got a lot of old contacts, re-engage, great results. And he's taking Skype language.

lessons because he lives in Denmark and he is not from there. And that's been super helpful, done 30-40 lessons. So this is a guy who takes my advice, our advice, Jason, takes our advice and actually does it. Yeah, there's at least one. We found at least one of them. Yeah, he said he did the trans-Siberian trans-Mongolian from Moscow to Beijing. Said he loved it. Highly recommended. Man, I can't wait to do that. Yeah, I know. I feel like we should do that. I would do that. Yeah, I think I need a raise. It's like $26,000 a ticket. Oh my God, it is. No. That's got to be the fancy one. Of course it's the fancy one.

If you're going to do it, man, do it in style. I'm down for style. Yeah. Maybe we got to figure out a way where the company's like, we give you the media rate of 50% off because you have a podcast. That's not going to happen. Not going to happen because I don't think. Now that I say it out loud, not likely.

Yeah, not very likely. No. Who knows? All right. Go back and check out the guest, Adam Savage. We did a deep dive on abundance if you haven't heard that yet. And if you want to know how we managed to book great people and how we've created such a bastard of a show. Well, we manage our relationships using systems and tiny habits,

and I'm teaching you how to do that for free in six-minute networking. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. There's a lot of updated drills and tech in there. If you were doing the old one, this replaces that. The problem with kicking the can down the road doing it later, I know you think you're going to do it later. You cannot make up for lost time when it comes to relationships and networking. So the number one mistake people make is postponing this, not digging the well before you get thirsty. Once you need relationships, you are just way, too late. And it takes six minutes a day, damn it. So stop fluffing around. Do it. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Again, it's free, so quit crying. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger.

Great way to engage with the show. Videos of our interviews are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. Jason? My personal website's over at jpd.m. Me, and you can check out my tech news podcast where we talk about what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame over at Grumpy Old Geeks at Gog.com or your podcast player of choice. This show is produced in a Association with Podcast One, and this episode was co-produced by Jen Harbinger, and show notes are always by Robert Fogarty. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those you love, and even those you don't. Lots more in the pipeline. Very excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you

hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way.

Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things

like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting.

So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.