The Jordan Harbinger Show - 364: Can You Stop a Racist from Becoming a Doctor? | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

One of your fellow medical students is openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. Do you have a duty to report this terrible person in hopes it prevents him from ever becoming a doctor with marginalized patients whose lives may depend on him? We'll tackle this and more here on Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) 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/364. On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: If someone could only see your actions and not hear your words, what would they say are your priorities? One of your fellow medical students is openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. Do you have a duty to report this terrible person in hopes it prevents them from ever becoming a doctor? You're skeptical of mainstream viewpoints and want to explore every angle of an issue, but you find yourself getting sucked into conspiracy theory-level stuff. How can you maintain a healthy balance that errs toward accuracy, not nonsense? You're in school to be an airline pilot (your lifelong dream), but COVID-19 has decimated the industry and made your chance of being hired in the US uncertain. What options might you explore? You read so many books and consume such a vast amount of information that it becomes difficult to remember the important bits. How can you retain this data without becoming overwhelmed? VPN! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely lots, as ExpressVPN VP Harold Li explains here. Life Pro Tip: When you’re dealing with someone who is notoriously bad at responding to email and you need to ask them a yes/no question, frame your question so that their lack of reply is a response.  Recommendation of the Week: Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man 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 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. Today I'm here with my co-hosts here on Feedback Friday, Gabriel Mizrahi. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see the Matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave, and our mission here on the show is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker, so you can get a much deeper understanding of how the world works and make sense of what's really happening. If you're new to the show, on Fridays we give advice to you and answer listener questions.

The rest of the week, we have long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, to thinkers and performers. And this week, we had Mark Cuban from Shark Tank, investor in over 200 companies and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. We also had Mick West, who debunks conspiracy theories and bad thinking. This was an interesting episode. He debunks everything one-to-one on his website. So like, Gabriel, you know those, what are they called, chem trails where people are like, they're spraying us, man.

Stuff with the airplanes in the sky. Yeah, and like ghosts. So he'll be like, nope, recreated the exact same photo. I happen to find a credenza from 1854 that has lead lining. And look, when you put it in the sun, there's a ghost inside. So make sure you've had a look and listen to everything we created for you here this week. Of course, our primary mission here on the show is to help pass along our guests and our own experiences and insights along to you.

In other words, the real purpose of the show is to have comments. directly with you. That's what we do today and every Friday here on Feedback Friday. I just want to place one brick in the structure that makes up your life. That's what this podcast is about. You can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com. And these protests, this unrest has me thinking about everyone saying clever and trite BS on social media like, oh, do you post the blackout thing? Do you not post the blackout thing? Does that amplify voices? Doesn't it? What does it do? It's almost like if someone could only see my actions

and not hear my words, what would they say are my priorities? And I love this idea because on this show, we're focused on giving people tools and actionable advice, not just pontificating about why things need to change. So think about this. If someone could only see your actions but not hear your words, you're a silent film, what would they think are your priorities? And I think that's important,

especially in this age where people can post like, it's not enough to do this in your life. You have to post this on social media. You got to hashtag everything. It just seems like virtue signaling in a way that actually doesn't bring about any change. So that's where I'm on that with this. Well, I'm going to say more about that at another time.

This is Feedback Friday. Gabe, what's the first thing out of the mailback? Hey, y'all. I'm a medical student, and I'm in a difficult situation. I have a classmate who is racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. I understand that everyone is entitled to their views in this country, but when you're in the position to hold a person's life in your hands, you can't really hold hateful and discriminatory views, right?

This classmate walked out in protest when the school arranged for a transgender woman to come speak, posts hateful things on social media, and makes his views amply clear in person. Our school has a social media professionalism clause that's pretty vague, and he hasn't posted anything outright racist. He has posted about not intending to respect LGBT patients and implied that black people are more dangerous than other races. He has the school listed in his social media, if that makes a difference. I am a bisexual woman of color, and I know that I would not feel safe under his care.

My school does not allow anonymous reporting. My question is, do I have a duty to report this classmate? I feel like I do, but I know that I'm biased because of my demographics and my personal beliefs. I would love an objective perspective. If so, is it worth putting myself out there and possibly making my myself a target to this person. Thanks so much. Wow. Struggling with the hypocritical oath.

So that's tough. First of all, let's make sure that we know, nothing like two white guys answering a question about race and bigotry. Yeah. Perfect people to take on this question. That's right. That's right. I've never directly been through what you're describing, but obviously I care. I want to offer some perspective to help you make the best decisions.

And I feel like the choice you're facing really does matter, especially right now. And, you know, I can see this happening where this guy is, he sounds like a jackass, not going to stay in school when somebody comes to speak whose views he doesn't agree with. Intending to not respect LGBT patients, that's a little scary, obviously implying that black people are more, quote unquote, more dangerous than other races, not good. So he sounds like a, that's a technical term. Don't worry about it. But the idea that he's going to be a doctor is kind of terrifying.

Now, there's another part of me that says, well, I was also a dumbass in college, and I said stuff that was kind of unintentionally ignorant. I remember one time in particular, I was hanging out with these two guys. I didn't know any Indian people when I was growing up until I got to college. And there were these guys in my floor that were Indian. And they introduced me to some girls that they knew. And I said, wow, after the girls were gone, I said, wow, there really are some cute Indian women. And one of the guys was like, whatever. And the other guy turned to me and goes, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

And I was like, you know, like, I'm just surprised. And he goes, what are you talking about? And they were like, well, you know how rude that sounds? And I go, oh, you know, I never thought about it. But now that you explain this to me, yeah. And the other guy goes, I knew what you were talking about, Jordan. It's fine. It never occurred to me that that would sound rude.

I don't know why just an idiot. It was in college, but I would hate to have my entire life and career ruined because of something like that. It sounds like what this guy is doing is different. I mean, those guys in college back when I was there, they did me a favor. Having people explain things that you needed to learn. that you would not have learned.

You have to encounter that stuff in school. I had to anyway. I'm a late bloomer with a lot of things. I definitely was with this. Those people did me a favorite. Now, this guy, option one, he's an out-and-out racist. He holds these views. He's not going to change him.

This is who he is. And within this, we have to separate out whether these views will affect his patient care. And this is really crucial. Can he separate what he believes from how he's going to help people? And from what we're hearing, he sounds like he's basically saying

he won't. Yeah, like he doesn't even want to do that. Not like he can't, not like, oh, I'm going to compartmentalize it because I'm my private and personal beliefs and they're not going to affect my profession. It sounds like he just is straight up saying, I'm not going to respect people who come into my office that have a lifestyle I disapprove of, which is like the most ridiculous thing, and dangerous thing you would get from a doctor, right? outright dangerous. Yes. He's not the guy who voted Democrat for the last 20 years, but if he had to operate on a Republican president in emergency surgery, he would be able to put that aside because he's, He's just, this is a patient, this is a person.

I'm going to take care of them as best as I can. I think this sounds like a different case from that. Well, he outright says, I'm not going to respect LGBT patients. That's right. What does that even mean? That means you're not going to provide care or you're going to do a crap job. That's really dangerous. Or just treat them poorly when they come in any of those situations is bad news for a doctor.

So, yeah, I'm with you so far. Yes. Option two, he's ignorant. He's desperately in need of an education. In which case, you know, he might not deserve to be censured or kicked out, but he does need to be called out. He does need to be educated, which could be one of the most important experiences of his life.

It's hard for me to lean on option two, though, given that what he's stated about not respecting certain people, that to me is weird. Like, if it had just been a couple off-color Facebook comments, no pun intended, where he's like, people of color are dangerous, they do more crimes. Like, that is something where you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up, what's your data here?

Your Uncle Frank at Thanksgiving. Okay, here's why that's wrong. And then if he responds and he says, okay, tell me more. I'm curious. You know, like if he engages in a responsible way and you have a conversation, that's a different scenario. I'm getting a tiki torch vibe from this guy. You know what I'm saying. There's some real tiki torch vibes from this post yet. Exactly. So look, I think the options here are report him because we really should not be rewarding these people in society. That's one reason. We also can't have people like that in a job like that, in a medical profession. A true racist or

bigot should not, this people should not be doctors, just as they should also not be cops. They're in positions of service. They're role models in public. You don't want this type of person in a public servant position. Doctors are not public servants in the traditional sense, and that they get paid by the government. Well, it depends on where you work. But typically, we want those people to be largely, quote, unquote, colorblind, if you will,

and not be the type of person who's going to change the type of care based on the person they see in front of them. That should not be the case. If you feel safe talking to him, consider talking to him directly. Your agenda in this conversation is to find out just how seriously he takes. takes these views, why he holds them, and whether you think it would translate into bad or somewhat negligent care. This is really hard, maybe even impossible to do. How would you even know? That is really hard, because how do you glimpse inside this guy's head to figure out if he's

a guy who holds distasteful views but would be a good doctor or if this is a guy who has distasteful views which are going to make him a dangerous doctor? But the way this guy is presenting himself publicly and boldly suggest that they're not just opinions. They're like part of who he is, who he's decided to be anyway. That's definitely the vibe I'm getting from her lighter here. I see what you're saying. You're saying she should talk to him first to find out if that's the case before she moves ahead. One idea that you can do if you feel comfortable is talk to five or ten other students in your class,

see if they're seeing what you see, how they see it, if you have the same picture of this guy. And then if you do, consider reporting this guy as a group so that you're not the sole person sticking your neck out in a potentially dangerous situation. This will also make your claim stronger because then he can't say, we don't get along. we were dating before, or she had a crush on me and I rejected her, or, oh, you know, I stole a pencil and she's still mad at me. You know, if you have five or ten people going, hey, this guy posts all this stuff, we talk about it all the time, we've tolerated it for long enough, it's getting ridiculous and it's unprofessional, then you've got a real claim. And if you don't feel safe, like if this guy's mad dogging you in class, or he sends you creepy stuff,

or rolls with creepy people who could attack you when you're going home or something like that, then don't approach him directly first by any means. If you don't report him, and here's some reasons to maybe not do that. At a certain point soon, probably when you start doing rotations and stuff, again, medical school, the system's going to punish or flag this person and he will not get ahead. Can we count on that, though? Not necessarily. There are plenty of crappy people in positions of power. We already know that. It's also very unlikely that this person will be in a position to do real harm for a long time, by which point his views will hopefully have become a known problem. There's also a good chance this guy is going to get called out by the organizations

where he's working. But then the question is, do you want to be the person who passes the buck? And I normally wouldn't be comfortable with that myself. There's a huge risk that you report this guy. He doesn't change. And now getting kicked out of medical school, strengthens his views, convinces him that he was right because all these, what you want to call, it's reported him, and they were out to get him and blah, blah, blah, and it's a conspiracy. This happens all the time. You hear about people who have racist views and not always, but sometimes you can trace it back to this event that either was happenstance or they caused themselves and they're just like, it was racism. And it's like, no, you lit the restaurant on fire because you left the burner on and then you locked the door. Like, it's not racist.

Or even in American History X, didn't Ed Norton become a racist because his dad was killed by a drug dealer? He was dead as a fireman kicked in the door and he got shot by a drug dealer because the drug dealer thought it was the cops. And so he became this like neo-Nazi. And it's like, well, okay, this is a triggering event. You don't want to make this guy worse, but it's also not your responsibility to deal with his crap if he's going to be a racist in medical school.

I think debatably, this person does not have what it takes to be a doctor in the United States where you are expected to treat people of all types whether you want to or not. Whether he would let his views get in the way of this is not really for us to decide. Also, he sort of said that it would, but it's up to the board to decide if he's fit for license.

And the way to get this to the board is via the school who will also have policies about this type of behavior, who they want to train in the school. I want to be really clear here. This isn't blowing up someone who is secretly racist or just holds weird, distorted views that they don't realize are a bit prejudiced. Like, if I said something, well,

man, those transgender people sure are, head scratcher. I mean, can't you decide if you're a boy or girl? I don't understand. That would be awkward, and I should be called out for not knowing why that's not polite, sounds ignorant, but if this guy's posting things on his social media that are outright indicative that he strongly disagrees with the ideas that most of America wants in their health care

professionals, that's problematic. Again, I'm not saying destroy the guy's life, but I am saying someone needs to be tracking this, and that's not your job, it's the school's job. If all this does has caused him to be quieter about his shitty ignorant-ass beliefs, then so be it. You are listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show, and it is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back. And now back to more feedback Friday on the Jordan Harbinger show. All right, Gabe, next up. Hi, Jordan. Thanks for keeping up all your great work and sharing your life with us.

I'm a skeptical person when it comes to mainstream viewpoints. It seems that a lot of great people throughout history made their impact by going against the mainstream orthodoxy. I've also had to do that in a lot of situations when school administrators or employers were doing the wrong thing. But now I'm having trouble staying in balance. I always want to explore every viewpoint, even even crazy info wars type stuff sometimes.

Usually I keep a pretty good grasp on reality, but lately I've found myself getting sucked into plandemic-type conspiracies that are kind of a threat to humanity. Yeah. How can I keep exploring different viewpoints and do a better job of understanding when the mainstream is the right place to be, signed looking for the purple pill?

Yeah, you know, I love this because I'm a skeptic as well, in case you guys didn't notice. In fact, more and more episodes are going to be dedicated to skepticism and critical thinking because apparently that stuff is in short supply. Don't worry. I'm going to be balancing it out with science and spy stuff, so don't worry about any of that. I too like watching the occasional piece of propaganda bullshit. I watched Plandemic, debunked it, as you know from listening to the show.

If you didn't catch that video on YouTube or that episode of the show, then check it out. In fact, go ahead and look at the comments on the Plandemic debunk YouTube video. It is a shocking indictment of humanity, or at least of YouTube commenters, which should surprise no one. The thing is, skeptics will consume anything and then look for the truth and do research. Conspiracy theorists, they say things like, anyone who doesn't agree with what we're doing here is a paid shill, or you're a sheep, you've got to wake up and doesn't see the truth. This is a not balanced view. This is an imbalanced view and is actually the opposite of having an open mind, ironically. What I've found is all these people who say, your mind needs to be open to the fact that

aliens built the pyramids and I'm like, or there's a billion other explanations. Why is it this crazy science fiction one that you like? Or, you know, what if it is a plandemic? Okay, but the evidence shows that none of these things that this woman is saying are true. And they're like, oh, you're a sheep, you're a shill because you're not looking at the evidence. And it's like, no, you're saying that because I don't agree with you. Not because the evidence says otherwise. So yes, take in as many sources of information as you'd like, but just make sure you're trying to poke holes in what you read and what you see. I'm a member of skeptic subrediting. on Reddit, of course.

I'm on debunking fora online, such as Metabunk, which is where McWest comes from. And anytime I see something that I think might have a skew to it, I look for counterfactual information from a credible source. So if I see something in one news source or on a blog or on the internet, I will look at that up on Snopes. I'll look it up in a fact check website, something like that. Just because something is produced well doesn't mean that it's true. So you can't evaluate sources that way.

Plannedemic taught us that much. It was a well-produced in terms of the first. film, it looked like it was well done, the lighting was good, the audio was good, whatever you want, but it was full of just rubbish. It's clear you're a free thinker and you don't believe everything you see in here, which is great. Just remember that science doesn't try to persuade as much as it probably should, because it is in theory already persuasive. It's the crazies that lean into things and have to stretch and make up evidence and come to weird conclusions that the evidence doesn't fit in order to prove their case. And we did an entire show about this earlier in the week.

So if you haven't heard the Mick West episode yet, have a listen to that right after this. Gabe. I think that's exactly right. I mean, the thing is this person is self-aware enough to know that they're falling for some of this stuff, which already makes me think that you have your head on straight at the end of the day. Like a true unquestioning conspiracy theorist would not be saying, you know, I found myself getting sucked into conspiracies. I don't know. They're kind of a threat to humanity. Like they'd be saying stuff like, you know, start guzzling hydroxychloroquine.

Yeah, like it's mountain dude. The real threat to humanity, though, Gabe, is the deep state, bro. Exactly. It's the lizard people. Right. Or they'll be like, the government is putting chemicals on the water that are turning the frogs. So that's not you. Like, you're aware that you're falling for this stuff.

So as long as you maintain that awareness, I think you'll basically be fine. But all the sources you just mentioned Jordan are probably the best, I don't know, read up on pandemic. Skip Alex Jones. These aren't helping you become more educated. They're just exploiting the part of the brain that enjoys being entertained and manipulated. And if you can separate that from actual. you're basically fine, I think. Yeah.

We did a little bit of a dive on these sources and how to evaluate sources and things like that in the Mick West episode. I plan on doing more for critical thinkers. This person is unlikely to go down the rabbit hole because they realize that what they're reading is kind of garbage. The thing you have to realize about a lot of this, look, pandemic is disinformation. It's designed to make you think something that's not true and whether the filmmaker is just misinformed or what I think is they're just making money off of people who don't know

the difference, so it's a little bit of a grift. Alex Jones is, this is a generous interpretation, but he's a performance artist in a way. Like, again, I know that sounds ridiculous, but he is to news what wrestlers are to MMA, except, well, I won't go into the nuances, but he's making this stuff up. He doesn't have news sources. He doesn't say, oh, I've investigated this. It's just, it's made up, and it's designed to get people to watch stuff so that he gets views and he can sell mail enhancement pills or whatever the thing is that pays the bills over at InfoWorse.

It is made up. It's not a take on current events. It is made up crap, right? Just as wrestling is not, oh, we reenacted this real fight that happened. No, they scripted it, they rehearsed it, they invited the audience, they sold tickets. It's a performance. And anybody who thinks otherwise is an eight-year-old child generally, because that's when I stopped leaving in wrestling.

Now, that doesn't mean it's not athletic. I don't want to get emails about how wrestling is a real sport. I understand that. But Alex Jones is not real news, and therein lies the difference. So those sources are not helping you become more educated. They're just exploiting that part of the human brain, like you said, that enjoys being manipulated, that enjoys being entertained, that enjoys that sort of, I know something that no one else does element. We really do go into this in the Mick West episode, so please do check that out. It was released earlier here this week.

All right, Gabriel, next up. Hello, my whole life I have wanted nothing more than to be an airline pilot. I worked hard in high school to get my first pilot's license at 17 years old through a scholarship, and I was then accepted to one of the top college pilot training programs in the world. Good for you. I have worked hard, and I am on track to graduate with a bachelor's degree at 20 years old after only two and a half years of college. All right, all right. I see you. Now that coronavirus has hit, it's decimated the airline industry, essentially freezing hiring at airlines for the next two to five years. I still have a year left, and I'm hoping for a speedy recovery, but not counting on it.

While it's easy to say that I'm young and have time, airlines are all about seniority, and switching companies means you go to the bottom of the list regardless of your experience. For this reason, it's important that I get into an airline ASAP. In order to make myself more marketable to airlines and flight schools, I've started a free tutoring and study guide website for people studying to become pilots in order to show my dedication to aviation. But I recognize that this will not pay the bills, and I'm exploring my options, which come down to three choices. Number one, expatriate and find work as a pilot abroad, but risk missing out on the hiring phase at a U.S. airline and giving up seniority. Number two, go to law school. It's something that would interest me and would be a great fallback career in case I am not able to fly for medical or other reasons.

And option three, try to start my own business now and try to keep it as a side gig to supplement my income down the road. What would you recommend as an advisable course of action? Respectfully, all my eggs in one airplane. All right, well, let me begin. Let me just take this option off the table. Do not go to law school if your game plan is to become a pilot. You think aviation jobs are in short supply, but law jobs are not going to do much better in this economy. And your debt is going to be through the roof. I actually have a lot of people asking me about law school. If you're listening or watching for the first time, I was a lawyer. I went through law school at the University of Michigan. I think it's time I did a piece on this, because I do have a draft. I just keep sending my draft articles. to people to stop them from going to law school. Law might be interesting, but you shouldn't go to law school just because you have some passing casual interest in the law. It's an investment that will literally never pay for itself if you're going to go and be a pilot later. Yes, aside, hustle is always nice, but I think if you become a pilot full time, you might end up letting it go. I get the idea

that pilots are really busy. Now, look, if you flip stuff on eBay or you're doing some sort of online graphic design work. Maybe you can do some stuff while you're camped out at these hotels, but do you really want to? Do you really want to be in Barcelona? And you're like, ah, got five hours of graphic design work. I gotta turn in tomorrow. Can't go out to dinner and go out on the town.

I don't know. I don't see it. Side hustles are great, but if something comes to mind that you can monetize easily, fantastic, but that's not usually the case. It seems like the best thing to do would be to get a job abroad at some cheaper European or Asian airline, South America, whatever.

Get experience. That'll make yourself much. more marketable when the U.S. airlines start hiring again. And besides flying around the world, getting job experience, that to me sounds much more interesting than sitting in your mom's basement, grinding out a side hustle for an extra $1,500 a month. But that's just me. Gabe, what do you think? Basically, you're so young and ahead of the game that you can afford to either wait this out if that's what you want to do or to work at another airline that might not be exactly the place you want to stay for 45 years. It might be a huge bummer for you, and I feel it. I mean,

I'm really sorry that this is happening to you. But when you're 35 or 40 years old and you're flying like the best routes for Delta, you're not going to be complaining about that time. You had to wait a couple of years to get a job when you were 20 years old. Like you've worked so hard that you might want to put that time to good use by going and working somewhere and getting some experience. And then yeah, maybe you do have to take a step back in a sense to go get that job at American Airlines when you come back if that's what you want to do. I knew these guys when I lived in Ukraine. This is 20 years ago almost, and they were pilots for Ryanair. I want to say they were in their mid to late 20s. Ryanair is one of those budget European airlines where you can't bring any bags and yeah,

you got to like stand and I don't even know, going to the bathrooms like $1.50, I can't remember. So these guys worked for Ryanair and they had what I think is considered a not very desirable route, right, going to Kiev and back or Odessa, Ukraine and back from Germany. I don't think it was considered a great route. I think the great routes were like Paris, Barcelona, whatever. They were having the time of their lives because they would go out to clubs, drink, hang out, meet girls, they had money, they were airline pilots. I mean, these guys were like balling out of control. And they had these weekends where they, they told us they had like four days off in between flights sometimes. And they would be quote unquote stuck in Crimea, which is like a vacation

destination for people from Ukraine and Russia, and they would just party the whole time. And then they would sober up the night before and drink a couple pots of coffee and go back out and fly. It doesn't make you want to fly Ryanair. But it does make you want to be a pilot for Ryanair because these guys were killing it. And this is what you can do. You can go and get a job at an entry level. And yeah, you might get an undesirable route.

It's like, oh, you're the guy that flies from Nampen, Cambodia to Bangkok, Thailand three times a week. That's amazing in your 20s. Not great when you're in your 30s and 40s and you got a family. But right now, you could afford to be stuck in a place that's totally random and that doesn't have all the comforts of home because you're going to be like 23 or less by the time you're doing this. I would jump at that chance and not just get into like the flipping furniture on eBay hustle. 100%. That's not wasting time. You're doing the job you want to do. You're just doing it at a place you didn't think you would be doing it. And you're getting to see the world along the way, which is like probably even more important than the job itself. So if your ambitions were. slightly different than I might understand how law school fit into that. It just sounds to me that this is more like, well, I don't know what else to do. So I might as well do that. Yeah, don't go if you don't know what else to do. That's the worst reason to go. I know because that was why I went. And if you're

already kicking butt in the aviation sector, stay in that sector. This is the Jordan Harbner show, and it is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back. Stay tuned after the show. We've got a trailer for our interview with Robert Green, one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Robert's insight into human nature is second to none, and there's a reason that his books are banned in prisons, yet widely read by both scholars and leaders alike. That's at the end of the show coming right up. Thank you for listening and supporting the show.

Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us going. To learn more and to get links to those great discounts you just heard so that you can check out all of those amazing sponsors for yourself, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. the link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right, Gabe. Next up.

Hey, Triple J crew. First of all, thank you for bringing such an amazing podcast to the world. I have been listening to it in various forms over the last few years, and in my view, it's one of the best podcasts out there. Well done and keep up the good work. I'll take full credit for that. I have a question about systematization and retention of information. About two years ago, I made a new.

New Year's resolution to read a book a week. I took on a speed reading course and fast forward two years I was able to keep up with and even exceed my goals. My challenge now is that I consume such a vast amount of information that it becomes difficult to remember all the books that I've read, all the lessons I took for myself, and most importantly, it's hard to remember to implement these lessons in my life. I used to summarize each book I've read in a couple of bullet points in a word doc, and then I would review a few books each week to keep them fresh in my mind, but that was a pretty manual and laborious process. I wonder if you have any useful tips for how to remember, retain, and put such learnings into practice. Signed, scaling stickiness. You know, there's no real need

to retain all this information. I know that sort of sounds like it defeats the point. I think it's easier to regain a capability like a language than to maintain it. Instead of saying, oh, I need to maintain my German. It's better to just go there and then try to relearn it in a crash course in the first couple of days. Now, I maintain Chinese. and German for fun, and I have lessons during the week and in the morning, and I enjoy that. So that said, if you enjoy reviewing your book notes, amazing.

I personally don't really see a ton of value in it. If I remember one to two things from a given book, great. I don't really feel the need to retain all that information. Your brain was evolved to store things that are useful that you are actually taking action and using. So given that 99% of things you read in books are useless factoid, stories, you won't store most of this. and that's fine, in my opinion.

Something that's worked for me in the past is reading a book and then maybe, let's say, having a conversation about it with maybe the author, recording that conversation, and then sending that conversation out to the world. And I think the last part is optional.

You may even be able to monetize something like this. Again, I don't think you have to do that, and it might be more trouble than it's worth, but this whole show was started because I was reading books and I had questions and I wanted to ask the authors and I needed a platform to do that, and dot, dot, here we are.

But Gabe, I know, I know you read a lot. You have a complex note system. My notes are all in Google Docs, so they're searchable, but that's about as far as I go with it. I know yours is a little bit, it's a little bit more involved. I think this comes down to taste and what you want to get out of it. Everybody's different. So you might have a different priority or agenda when you read. It's all good. I had this problem, the one you're describing, though, for years. I would read a ton, and then I kind of realized it was like going in one eye and out the other. And at that point, it's just basically entertainment, because you're just like entertaining yourself with the book, but it's not sticking and I wanted it to

stick. So for me, the system I use, it's very simple. It's not super sophisticated. There might be a better one. But I annotate and I write stuff down. And I find that with every single book I read, there's usually like three to five gems within it. It could be a passage. It could be like one sentence, whatever it is. And I write that down. I use Evernote. You can use Google Docs or Dropbox paper or whatever you use. But the best feature to use with it, I think, is the tags feature. So if you jot down whatever thing you love in a book, you just hit the tag and you type a couple words about what that is about. Later on, a few weeks or a few months or even years, you can just search that tag and see everything related to it. And it might be around a theme that you need

at that moment, like, I don't know, entrepreneurship or sadness or whatever happens to be on your agenda. These are the two top things that came to my mind. So it is a little bit laborious to write that stuff down. But I think that's actually kind of the point. Like, I find when I type something up after I've read it, it actually sticks a little bit better. It's like typing it makes me relearn it, and then I like to know that it's there for a future, so it's not just lost in whatever, wherever things go when they get lost in our head. As for putting them into practice, I do think make it a habit of reading a few of these notes every week. Again, the tags function will be a huge help there. And consider starting a little project to make use of them.

If that floats your boat, you could do a newsletter or a journal or a weekly email of your friends. Or if you're at work and you make presentations, sometimes like the quotes that you've read in books can come in handy and you can work them in there. It's incredible once you put it into a deck or into a report or into a conversation or something. It's hard to forget it. It becomes a lot more meaningful. So whether it's in your head or in Dropbox, I think it'll serve you a lot better that way. That's just my take. Everyone has a different system. Again, I would say reviewing things that you've learned. If it makes you happy, you feel like you're learning something, then great. But don't do this to yourself where you go, but I need to remember everything from everything that I do,

because then you start having this pressure where you feel like you have to memorize everything from every book, and you become, you're like in final exam mode constantly, and it's really not going to be pleasurable for you, and it's going to want to, you're going to want to stop learning things because you're just adding more to the crap that you feel like you have to memorize. If it's not serving you, just don't bother. Everything is available to be searched. Learning, is far more important than learning facts. So if you're going to focus on something, learn broad concepts, learn mental models,

learn structures, don't memorize tons of facts that you can look up instantly given the technology that you have in your hand or pocket, 99% of the day. I'd be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to bump one of our sponsors here. I recommend VPNs a lot here on the show and ExpressVPN as our sponsor.

And a lot of people have said, cool, what the hell is a VPN? So to that note, I wanted to bring in Harold Lee, Vice President of ExpressVPN. Harold, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Jordan. First of all, what is a VPN and how does it work? Without being too techy about it, because I think a lot of people have heard the term and

other people go, yeah, your sponsor, ExpressVPN, what do they deliver things? And I was just like, oh, we have a problem here. Well, there's definitely a lot of technical stuff happening behind the scenes, but for users, it's very straightforward. They download an app, they turn it on, and all of their traffic gets routed through our server network. So all that traffic is going through a secure and encrypted tunnel when it's being routed through that network. And it's also going through servers in different locations depending on the location that the user chooses in the app.

Okay. So essentially, I turn on ExpressVPN on my computer and it says I'm coming from Istanbul, Turkey, even though I'm in New York. Or I can just say, hey, I'm coming from Kentucky even though I'm in New York. Why would anybody care to do this? Well, there's two main reasons. One is what you just talked about, which is people want to be able to access the free and open internet without any restrictions based on where they are, based on an internet provider or something else. So whether you are traveling and you want to access some content back home, whether you're in a country that has internet restrictions of some sort of some sort of internet restrictions. And it's not just the big bad guys like Russia and China. There are tons of countries around the world that have some sort of internet restrictions. And the UK, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, all of these countries that some sort of.

of internet restrictions, and you might want to sidestep that. And then there's the other piece of it, which is you're routing your traffic through our servers through a secure and encrypted tunnel, and that helps protect your privacy and security as well. It helps make sure that anyone in that chain between you and the site or service you're communicating with can't spy on your traffic, can't see what websites you're visiting. So if you're worried about a hacker or your internet provider or your government spying on you, then you might want to use a VPN. I've heard of this before because people will say,

oh, your show is blocked in China, along with Google, Gmail, Instagram, Facebook. So people who travel to China like myself, we will have to use ExpressVPN or another VPN to get around internet restrictions. But I hear from people even in Dubai that say, hey, I can't get the Jordan Harbinger show or Kuwait, and I'm going, why?

And I guess it's because I said sex once in 2014, so the whole thing is banned forever, and the website's blocked. And it's just like, okay. So people have to use VPNs to, get that. But also, I've heard of friends doing this. They'll be traveling around the world. Some of my very fortunate, sir forward-thinking friends, they travel around the world with their kids, and they'll be kind of halfway through Frozen 2, you know, the 17th or 18th rewatch of Frozen 2 on Disney Plus, and then

they'll fly to South Africa and it's like, oh, sorry, this title's not available for another 90 days. And their kids are going, why can't we finish the movie? And the answer is because different digital restrictions on rights, copyright, etc., exist on Netflix, Disney Plus, whatever sort of streaming service you have depending on your location. So sometimes you just want the service to think that you are sitting back home in your hometown or in the United States, and you can use a VPN to do that too. So for me, this is a really helpful product because sometimes I need to watch a documentary that's for sale in the United States for 20 bucks, but I bought it when I was in Canada and now I can't freaking finish it, or I can't watch it, or I can't stream it.

And so I use a VPN to get around that. But mostly I use it to anonymize what I'm doing if I'm in a place where I don't necessarily want maybe such and such government to see what sites I'm looking at or to be able to read my email or things like that. Right, exactly. It's not just your government. It's if you're in a cafe, maybe it's the cafe owner. They own the Wi-Fi hotspot.

They could possibly see all of the traffic that's going through it, all the web, you're visiting someone else on that hotspot might be able to do the same as well. So if there's someone else sitting in a cafe connected to the same network as you, they might be able to do that. Any public Wi-Fi hotspot like those at airports, hotels, the security there is honestly not very strong because you're sharing this network with all these strangers. So you're saying that if I'm at a hotel or a coffee shop and I'm using the Wi-Fi, that institution could have had their network penetrated or the company itself could be looking at internet traffic and they can see everything that I'm doing on the internet

because their network is not secure. So is this kind of a chain is only as strong as its weakest link kind of situation? Yes, absolutely. If you think about your traffic going to, say, a website you're visiting or your email provider, it's going through a lot of different hands, actually. It's being handed from you to the Wi-Fi router,

from the Wi-Fi router to the internet provider, internet provider, and so on. And at any point of these chains, someone might be able to intercept that traffic. Now, if it's encrypted for whether it's a VPN encryption or a different type of encryption, like some messaging apps are encrypted, then you do have some protection. But if you don't use a VPN at minimum, they'll be able to see what websites you're visiting, what servers you're communicating with, what apps you're using.

And that might not scare too many people, like, who cares if I use Gmail from the airport if it's encrypted? But if you're looking at other things, maybe you're doing something on your company website. You don't necessarily need someone knowing that someone who works at Apple, corporate is staying in this particular room or in this particular hotel, especially if you're in a country where there are internet restrictions,

you might actually not be able to use certain websites. And you certainly don't want people installing things on your computer through back doors because you're on an insecure network itself. That whole thing is kind of scary. Exactly. And when people say, oh, I'm not really worried about people seeing what's websites I visit, I would just say to them,

okay, great, show me your browser history right now. And they're like, well, that's not going to have all my browser, right? The incognito stuff, that's gone, right? Like, all that stuff's gone, right? There's that joke that I'm sure you've seen that meme where it says something like, only guys get this, and it's a screenshot of a totally empty browser history. And I think a lot of people, it's funny because I showed that to my wife and she goes, I don't get it.

And I'm like, exactly. And I think they go a little bit further. I've seen something where there's guys that say, my best friends know that if I suddenly die to go to my house and delete my browser history and all the cookies immediately. Just because everybody's got something that they don't necessarily want other people to know. And sometimes we're doing that on our computer. And do you want the hotel you're staying at the government of the country where you are to know exactly what that is, what time you did it, and how long you were on that website?

And the answer, even for those of us that are not up to something, is usually no. Exactly. We talked before about how VPNs work, what they do what they're good for. But when I was in Asia, I was constantly, and again, I know you don't want to name countries because you don't want to encourage them to target you personally or your company specifically. But when I was in Asia, I was constantly finding that a VPN would work one day or one week and then later on it wouldn't, and then it would work again later. Y'all must be playing quite the game of cat and mouse with restrictive governments that don't

have free speech. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that sets good VPNs apart from bad VPN. we really need to invest lots of resources in this cat and mouse game to stay ahead of sensors, to stay ahead of geographic restrictions and blocks even on content services. And we've got a team of engineers that's dedicated to this monitoring, whether it's working, and making sure it does work day to day rather than you have this experience that you're traveling and suddenly you can't access your Gmail, you can't face time your friends back home or family back home.

You know, for us, that's so essential that you have that access, you have that freedom of association and expression online. We're constantly working to find new ways to defeat censorship and just stay ahead of those sensors. What about people who say, well, I don't really need this because I don't do anything sketchy on the internet? Well, I mean, for me, the question is, do you care about your right to privacy and do you care about your security?

You don't have to be doing something sketchy to not want to reveal your whole browser history, for example, to a stranger or to the government. And the other thing is you don't know what they're going to do. do with that information. So perhaps you're not doing something sketchy, but we know that businesses and internet providers are harvesting data or they can harvest this data to sell things to you, to find out things about you. Maybe you're doing healthcare-related browsing, and they're going to learn about a health care condition you have. Now, that's not something sketchy, that maybe you don't want your internet provider to know about your new diagnosis. So there are many, many reasons.

we might want to maintain our privacy. It's as simple as turning it on. We don't have to think about it, so you don't have to just turn it on when you're worried about protecting something specific. Just have it on all the time, and you're protected, you're private, you're secure, and you don't have to worry about your browser history

being out there for everyone to see. Yep, and it works on your phone and on your computer, so you can just leave it on, and it can work for you all the time. Yeah, and it works on a router as well, so you can protect every device in your home, so we know that Internet, connected devices at home like TVs are notoriously weak because they're not as well engineered

as computers or your mobile devices. In one funny case, there was a casino in Vegas that had incredibly secure computer systems, but they had a fish tank that was connected to the internet, and that was the way that hackers got in. So having protection on the router level, for example, make sure that every single internet-connected device in your home is protected with that encryption. Harold, thank you so much. Thank you, Jordan. This was originally not supposed to be a sponsored segment, but look, anything that improves conversion for them is going to be good for the show. ExpressVPN.com slash Harbinger.

ExpressVPN.com slash Harbinger. You get an extra three months free on a one-year package from them. And you can protect your privacy. Make sure people aren't looking at what you're doing online, whether you're traveling, whether you're at home or, you know, doing something normal or doing something shady. It's none of my business. And it's nobody else's business either. expressvpn.com slash harbinger. If you're watching us on YouTube

and you are not listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show podcast, you're missing some of the questions that we answer on Feedback Friday, which are an audio format only because of the guest that comes in and answers it, et cetera, et cetera. So that is at the podcast feed atjordanharbinger.com. Life Pro Tip of the Week. Today's Life Pro Tip, super informative, maybe a little too effective, so use it sparingly.

And only when you're confident you are making the right move. We got this from Reddit, which is a great place to get live pro tips. When you're dealing with someone who's notoriously bad at responding to email, and you need to ask them a yes or no question, frame your question so that their lack of reply is a response. So, for example, say you send your manager an email saying, hey, I'm going to submit this to the deck of the vice presidents. Are you good with that?

Then days go by, you don't hear back. Then you're late submitting the deck. You lose time waiting for feedback. You'll hold up the project. Instead, frame your email like this. Hey, I'm going to submit this deck on Friday. Please let me know beforehand if you have any thoughts or questions or feedback. Then if they don't reply, they've effectively answered your question by not responding.

So through omission, through inaction. If they get mad later, you can point to the email and say, look, I let you know I was submitting this on Friday. You were the one who didn't respond. So there's a little bit of nice CYA there as well. And this doesn't just work for the office. It can come in handy when you're planning a family gathering, booking hotels for a trip, buying a group gift. Anytime you're dealing with people who are not reliable communicators,

this technique can actually be gold. And that said, there are definitely some risks here. You can piss someone off. You can look like you're circumventing someone in a position of authority, especially if you're doing this in the office, so you have to be a little careful there. You can seem like you're too self-oriented or trigger-happy. Generally, I would say make sure that you use this technique only when necessary. Not just, if I don't hear from you within 12 hours, I'm hitting send on the whole thing. You got to make sure it's not going to compromise your relationships, your performance, your career. This is your call. This is great, though. I would say more often than not, it gives the other person a chance to chime in while also letting them off the hook if they do

not want to chime in. And I do this with my team. I'll send something to my team where I'll have them send something to me that says, if you're good with this, don't bother responding. It'll go up on Tuesday if you want changes. Make sure you get them to me by midnight, Monday night. If they do want to chime in, but they don't respond, it also teaches them a good lesson, which is read your damn emails and make sure you hit reply, and if you have something to say, then say it. Otherwise, the train keeps moving. I find that a lot of people in organizations at your level, even a level below you, a level right above you, there's some passive aggressive BS going on where they're like, well, I'm just not going to answer this person. Some of it's benign. Some of it, though, is I'm just going to not answer to the last

minute. I don't want to put my neck out, so I'm not going to say anything. And then your entire team is stuck because some yuts didn't want to opine because they might be wrong. So you just say, great, you just don't get input if you miss the deadline. And that's how things keep moving and don't get delayed because somebody else didn't check their email. It was disorganized, was busy, didn't check their spam folder. There's just kind of no excuse for that now. So I love this technique. Shout out to Reddit user Doviken, 1989 for that one. Recommendation of the week, Mr. Toilet, the world's number two man. This is weird. It's on Amazon Prime video. I love documentaries, for those of you who didn't notice. This guy's obsessed with toilets,

which is kind of weird. He's like this really wealthy guy from Singapore. He's an eccentric entrepreneur came from poverty and he's like, oh, India in all these developing countries, they have really bad sanitation. So he made it his mission in life to go and help people get toilets. It's just a really quirky, fascinating story. He's founded the WTO. Maybe you've heard of it. No, you have and it's not that it's the world toilet organization and it's like this non-profit dedicated to sanitation it the guy is it's hard to explain he's a very quirky very interesting guy and he's definitely the guy who would get obsessed with toilets and then try and solve a global problem through that weird obsession he's a 12 year old trapped in a 60 year old's body he's just full of corny jokes and everything

that will link in the show notes mr toilet the world's number two men hope you all enjoyed the show I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. This is the first time we've ever filmed Feedback Fridays. So if you have a comment about how we can do this a little bit better, although I always just hesitate to ask for comments on YouTube. But maybe email me if you don't have a ridiculous thing to say. Maybe some of the people who called you out for the pandemic. Yeah, those are some lovely, lovely people.

A link to the show notes can be found in the episode, of course, at Jordan Harbinger.com. Go back and check out the guests, Mick West and Mark Cuban, if you haven't already. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage relationships, I use systems, I use tiny habits. Check out our six-minute networking course, which is free over on the Thinkethic platform. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty.

Don't say you're going to do it later. Do it now. You need relationships in your life now before you need them. The drills take a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. Ignore it at your own peril, frankly. You can find it all for free, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger.

You can also add me on LinkedIn. It's a great way to engage with the show and with me. Videos of our interviews and soon, also videos of Feedback Fridays moving forward, unless we just give up on this whole thing. Those are going to be at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. This show is created in association with Podcast One. Thank you, Gabriel Mizrahi, for your sage advice and question curation. This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, edited by J. Sanderson. Show notes for the episode are by Robert Fogarty.

additional voiceover by Peter Oldring, music by Evan Viola. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own, and I'm not a psychologist, not a therapist, no clinical authority whatsoever. So I can't give specific treatment recommendations, but I can only share what I've learned on my own and with my team, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others.

Share the show with those you love. If you found this episode useful, please share the show with somebody who can use the advice we gave here today. Lots more in store for 2020. Very excited to bring a tea. 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. If we just sit in our inner tube with our hands behind our head and crack open a six pack of beer, the river of dark nature takes us towards that waterfall of the shadow. Yeah. So when we're children, if we weren't educated, if we didn't have teachers or parents telling us to study,

we'd be these monsters. We're all flawed. I believe we humans naturally feel envy. It's the chimpanzee in us. It's been shown that primates are very attuned to other animals in their clan and they're constantly comparing themselves. Your dislike of that fellow artist or that other podcaster,

99% sure that it comes from a place of envy. For sure. You are not a rational being. Rationality is something you earn. It's a struggle. It takes effort. It takes awareness. You have to go through steps.

You have to see your biases. When you think you're being rational, you're not being rational at all. You go around, everything is personal. Oh, why did he say that? Why is my mom telling me this? And I'm telling you it's not personal. That's the liberating fact. People are wrapped up in their own emotions, their own traumas.

So you need to be aware that people have their own inner reality. people are not nearly as happy and successful as you think they are. Acknowledging that you have a dark sight, that you have a shadow, that you're not such a great person as you think, can actually be a very liberating feeling. And there are ways to take that shadow and that darkness and kind of turn it into something else. If you want to learn more about how to read others and even yourself,

be sure to check out episode 117 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. 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. 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.