The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 379: Jordan Harbinger—Psst… Wanna Buy a Stadium Buddy?

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

The former Wall Street lawyer and current OG podcaster drops by to discuss the latest in Podcastladia, how patternicity and our desire for certainty can lead us to create wild theories, the death of skepticism, honesty in advertising, and what he learned from being kidnapped the first time in Mexico. Yes, there was more than one kidnapping.

Hey guys, Mike Roe, the way I heard it, episode number 385, I believe. Nope, 379. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, we're doing Jordan Harbinger, right? Yeah, we can do Jordan Harbinger. Sure. How can I be off by five?

That's depressing. Distressing. I'm off and off by one. I think once I was off by two, but five, what's happening to me? It's actually six, but who's counting? Yeah. Well, you know, there's a lot happening, man. The whole world is a moving target.

We're down here at Mike Roe Works, World Headquarters, recording some podcasts face-to-face, which I do. enjoy. Jordan Harbinger is my guest, the OG, in many ways in the podcast world, one of the original gangsters anyway. I think he was the first to have a podcast on satellite radio, was it? Yes, on Sirius. His podcast was the first one broadcast on Sirius. Strap in for a super interesting and another one of those windy conversations. Some people are easier to talk to than others. Jordan is easy to talk to. Like butter. Because he does this for a living. Yeah. And I think it's fair to say it. It's what he's doing for a living.

now, but once upon a time he was working in a movie theater, just like you and me. That's right. That's how he started. And then he wound up in law school with a big, expensive degree, and then he wound up on Wall Street, front row seat there to the whole mortgage-backed securities disaster in 2007, 2008. And then they didn't exactly fire him. They just invited him to no longer come to the office. No need to show up anymore. Yeah. Because, well, are you still going to pay me? Well, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah.

TBD. So when the world gets weird, you change your course. And man, did this guy change his course? He now has one of the most popular podcasts in the world. I've been on his show twice. I think the first time I met him was 16 or 17, maybe over one union recording. Sick as a dog, raging fever. Yeah.

But I said I'd do it and I drove in. And from what I remember, I really enjoyed talking to him. He was just getting started. Right. And then two years later, we did it again because I felt much better. And this guy, man, he shows up with multiple cameras, his new wife. They set everything up. It's like a traveling circus.

And he's all in with his Jordan Harbinger show. He just decided he was going to crack this nut and figure this out. And look, I'm doing it, I suppose, but I still have one foot in the door. We do one of these a week and it's nearly killing us, right? You got a lot of thumbs in a lot of pies or feet in a lot of doors, if you prefer. Yeah. Well, he's doing three a day and he's turned. Three week.

Three week. Yeah. What a difference that is. That would be crazy. Yeah. Yeah. He's doing great. Millions of downloads.

He's got himself a thriving coaching business, a kind of advice business. But he's not one of those professional advisors that do all the typical stuff. He's really thoughtful and he's really engaged. And most of all, he's super curious. And most importantly, he owed me a favor. So he flew in to do this from wherever he was, San Jose, I guess. San Jose, yeah. He's kind of near where you live.

Yeah, which is ironic. Yeah. So anyway, it's a really fun conversation. If you don't listen to his podcast, you're probably going to want to. But I'm so glad to have him here because I learned some stuff. And I actually wrote it down somewhere, but I forgot where I put it. Anyway, I'm going to listen to the podcast again with you. you right now, just to fill my mind with useful information. Chuck, I suggest you join me.

I'm going to do that. This is episode 379. Want to buy a stadium, buddy? And that will be explained right after this. Do do do do do do do. Dumb. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay.

And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at netseweet.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a few.

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AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at netsuite.com slash mic. That's net suite.com. You can say action or begin or off we go. I said, give me a minute. And you were like, let's just go. Is this a good time to announce your new show? Pass the buck. That is not a new show. Hey, first of all, thank you for returning the favor. We first met 2017, 16, something like that?

You know, that's a good question. I should have looked this up. I came unprepared, as usual. The first time we met, I had like 102 fever. You came over to one union recording in San Francisco where I had to talk like this about crab fishermen for about three hours. And then you came in and we did our thing.

And driving home, I said, I've absolutely no idea how that went. I had already started to forget it. You know how you get in that fever state. Oh, yeah. And then a couple of years later, you came back. You know, you're skinnier, you're fitter. Yeah. I was skinnier.

I was fitter. I wasn't sick. And we had a great conversation. Yeah, that's right. And now here you sit at MicroWorks World Headquarters. They have so many questions for you. It's a, we've come full circle. Yeah, I should have come with a fever.

I'm sorry, guys. Once again, I'm unprepared. Don't worry, I have typhus, so you'll have one when you leave. Got the whooping cough. Yeah. How's the missus? Doing great. Sheila, of course, always keeps up with your stuff.

She's like, his dad's got a whiskey. You got to mention the whiskey. Yeah, I went in the office and sell the whiskey. The sign bottles of whiskey. Yeah. It's a good idea. I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, of course I do.

It's an honor to sign a bottle for somebody who wants to share a weed dram with me in memory, my granddad. But, yeah, man, it's a strange thing to write your name on glass or paper or anything glossy. And then hand it to people. I mean, are you dealing with that now? Have you signed autographs everywhere you go? Rarely.

Some people will want to take a selfie. And I love that. It happens just enough where it makes me feel important, but not so much where it's like I can't eat lunch somewhere. I'm not Shaquille O'Neal or Mike Rowe. Well, no. And I never will be here. You know, it's funny. I met Shaquille O'Neal in one union, that place where you came to interview me.

Have you ever seen him in real life? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's been on the show. He's been on your show? He was on podcast one, my network for a really long time. You'd just see him in the studio. And he'd see him all the time. And yeah, he's taking selfies all day.

It's foolish to say, boy, he's big because, right, people understand that. Right. But until you shake his hand, until you, like, have a meal with him or something. Right. You don't understand every single part of his body, his fingernails are like the size of my ears. His fingers themselves are like forearms. His forearms are like thighs. He loved dirty jobs.

And he came up to me the first time. It was so friendly. And he kind of hugged me, which is super awkward because my head goes into like his navel. And then I laughed and I must have said something funny because he bent down and he put his arm around me and he stood up. I say it that way deliberately because it didn't feel like he picked me up. Right. It just felt like he stooped and then stood again. And suddenly we were at eye level and he was holding me like.

two feet off the ground. It's like Darth Vader. Like, right. Oh, man. He had these shoes, I don't know if I can mention the brand, but they're a very specific kind of club. Tom's shoes, remember these cloth ones? Sure.

He bought a pair and a kid in Guatemala got a pair of shoes. Yeah, yeah. So he's wearing these and I go, how big are your feet? He's like, oh, size 27 or whatever, sort of like ungodly. And I'm surprised they make Tom's shoes in that size. And he goes, yeah, they don't. So I met the guy, Blake McCoskey, the founder, at a party. And I said, hey, I want those.

and he's like, we can't make those? He's like, can you make me a pair of those shoes? And he goes, the smallest run we can do is 1,000. They all have to be the same size in color. And he goes, great, I want red. So he has 1,000 pairs of Tom's shoes in size 27. So he's like, yeah, I just wear them. And then if they get dirty, I just donate them.

And I'm like, what are you donating them? Yeah, who's going to wear them? They turn it them into a planter? No, yeah, who's going to live in them? Yeah, exactly. You know the old woman in the shoe? Yeah, that's the shoe. I hear she's got a lot of kids.

That's her summer home. Chuck sent a bill. to Blake McCluskey over at Tom's Shoes. Just call it a, oh, how would we put this? Branded segment. Branded spontaneous mention the first 10 minutes

that went on for... Yeah. Yeah, done. Okay, good. Are you making a lot of money on your podcast? I do all right. I think that's the polite thing you're supposed to say, right? Is that what you're supposed to say? You're getting by. You're getting by. Yeah. What did I read?

monthly downloads? Yeah, I mean, now that... You're kicking my ass, I'll tell you that. Really? Oh, well, we'll have to get into that, Chuck. I'm confused on how that works. Yeah, you know how that stuff goes, though. It fluctuates, and then Apple makes a change, and you just cry yourself to sleep.

What happened? What was it? Like, but that's a plane. We don't care on this podcast, by the way. We don't care. What happened in October? Because Chuck started... It began with look...

It looked like a Twitch, just under the eye. And then some stammering. And then the Tourette's. came in. The numbers are now. Yeah. So like, what's going on with the numbers? Apple made a change in their app, which is the majority of podcast downloads, where instead of automatically downloading the next episode of shows you like,

you have to tell it, hey, for the way I heard it, for the Jordan Harbinger show, yes, automatically download new episodes. Otherwise, it just says play. And if you push play at streams, otherwise it's not downloading to the phone. And unfortunately for guys like you and I, and especially for, Chuck. There's no one like Chuck, by the way. The downloads, that was like 30% of most people had that thing on. Some people had 40 and 50% of their downloads go down the tubes. Younger Gen Z audiences that mostly listen on Spotify, their downloads were fine because that was already sort of

pushed it on demand, if you will. Push to stream. And so, yeah, but the number of people that are hearing us didn't go down. The number of people that were getting, let's say, something automatically delivered to their house, for example, that went down. So it's like if you had a monthly subscription to toothbrushes, it's not like less people are brushing their teeth. It's just that less people are getting, oh, man, here's another one of those toothbrushes I got to cancel. I forgot about these. And then they put it in the pile with 30 others. So the audience didn't decrease the amount we get paid, unfortunately did. And I'm like, oh, the CPM, the cost for the ads is going to go up because now our audience is, no, the advertisers didn't quite follow that argument

all the way there. No. Yeah. You know, this topic comes up from time to time. And I used to worry that it was a little too inside baseball for the average person, like who cares. But when you think about the number of entrepreneurs and small business people out in the world, trying to make a go of it in all these different vocations, the thing that is relevant to me is that there's a list of stuff in your control and there's a list of stuff that's not in your control. And the stuff that keeps you up at night, right? It shouldn't be the stuff you can't control because let go, let God, right? What are you going to do? The sun also rise. But that's true.

It seems like people spend a lot of time worrying about stuff they can't control. For sure. When the stuff that's right in front of you, like this is a great example too. I have yet to ask you a really pressing question. And I have so many. But I'm defaulting to what I prefer to do, which is just have a conversation. I can control how long this goes on or how. Can you?

Really? Or how good or bad it ultimately is. But why do people do that? Why do we focus? on the stuff that we just can't do anything about. Sure. So humans crave certainty, right? That's one thing that any psychology book will sort of tell you is almost the reason that people come up with these ridiculous conclusions.

We ruminate on things. We focus on what we can't control, in part because they're the things that we actually can't control. And often also, the things you can control are scary. So focusing on something you can't control is sometimes easier. But really, we crave certainty. and that's kind of the bottom line. It also, this thing that happened in Baltimore with the ship hitting the bridge, right?

Yeah. Terrible. But what was the first thing on Twitter? This can't be an accident. Ships have backup systems. Look at how he steered into the bridge and then the smoke came up at the last, and it's like, no, they reported the engine problem.

They tried to get, as far as I understand, stop traffic off. They should have got the workers off the bridge, but they didn't do that, unfortunately. But the ship didn't crash into the bridge on purpose. And also, oh, it's the infrastructure. No bridge. in America is going to withstand a 120,000 ton direct impact?

At eight knots. At eight knots. I mean, that's fast. Yeah. The odds of that ship hitting that support are no different than the odds of it hitting any other space in the open space of the same dimension. Right. It's like it had to hit somewhere. It had to hit something.

Yeah. And so our minds do have a way of immediately, you tell your brain what to look for. It'll find it. Exactly. patternicity. Humans, we're hardwired to look for this stuff. So there's a psychologist named Michael Shermer, and he came up this example. He's been on here. Oh, yes. Okay. So one of his examples is right, if you're the caveman and you hear the rustling in the bushes, you think lion or leopard or whatever danger, but if you're the caveman who hears the rustling and goes, huh, that's probably

nothing. You're done. You're not going to be a caveman for a long. The gene pool has eradicated you or you've eradicated yourself. So we look for patterns that aren't there. And if you look on Twitter, you'll find the best examples of this because there was one tweet I saw earlier today. And it was something along the lines of, hmm, this ship had a white lion as a flag from the country that it was flagged. And Barack Obama has a documentary where this ship is named White Lion. And also this women's volleyball team has someone on there whose last name is Baltimore. This can't be a coincidence. And it's like, actually, that's the definition of a coincidence. Sure, it can. Yeah. Okay. So we crave certainty.

I get that. We look for patterns. And maybe if we focus on the things we can't control, are we giving ourselves a built-in excuse? I think there's some of that, too. Although I don't know if it's consciously elevated to that level in most people's heads. Sure, if you're saying, you know, my business didn't work out because of the recession, okay, maybe that's true.

In fact, it is true for a lot of businesses. But it could also be an excuse. I don't know if most people are self-aware enough to go, well, I'm focusing on this thing that I can't control. And the reason I'm doing that is because if I fail, I don't want to feel bad about myself. Like, that usually comes with hindsight if it ever comes at all.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, then what about uncertainty? I mean, don't we crave that equally? I don't think so. I think humans are terrified of uncertainty. I think not knowing what is going to happen is super scary for most people,

which is why we tend to find conspiracy theories everywhere, patterns that don't exist, connect dots that aren't there. And it's scary for people to face uncertainty. The rewards for facing uncertainty are enormous, however. So entrepreneurs and people who aren't starting a business should probably look where there is uncertainty because there's a lot of reward there. Financial markets have uncertainty. Those guys, I used to work on Wall Street, get paid. I would say a disproportionate

amount for the level of effort that goes into what we do a lot of the time. You got a front row seat, right? Financial crisis. Yeah, I was a lawyer on Wall Street in the financial markets real estate in 2008. So I was like... Mortgage-backed securities. Yeah, I was doing mortgage-backed security. I was the first second year associate. I was part of the problem, but it was like... So it's not your fault entirely? Right, no. I didn't happen.

Just a tiny sliver of it was my fault. It was a cog in the machine. But I talk about a front row seat. I mean, I was the guy at the boxing match who could touch the ring if he really, you know, got too drunk and decided to do that. How accurate was the big short? I would imagine that was quite accurate. The movie itself, I don't remember all the details, but I do remember partners in my law firm going, so you guys probably heard about Bear Stearns.

the other banks, the investment banks that we're all going under. And I said, yeah, what percentage of our business is that? Well, let's just say it's a double-digit percentage of our business. Okay. Both banks put together or each bank? Each bank. And it's like, oh, so is there work for me? Not right now.

And then after a few weeks. Are you certain about that? That's the soft of certainty. I'm certain about it. Speaking of uncertainty. Then after that, I remember coming in for a few weeks. And one of the guys comes in and goes, knock, knock. And I'm like, oh, yeah, got some work.

And he goes, no, I'm just coming in to say, like, you don't. really need to show up anymore if you don't want to. Like, there's no work for you for the next several months. We'll just email you guys. And I'm like, but you're still going to pay me and all that stuff. Yeah, but you should maybe look at other career choices because we're not sure when this is coming back. And it never came back.

Okay. So when I talk about uncertainty, you immediately go there. Yeah. Right? Which makes sense because we're back to the category of things we can't control. But I think also. for a lot of people. Like, I think of uncertainty also as a kind of variety. And I think of uncertainty as unscripted. And my life is unscripted. This podcast is clearly unscripted. That's just what I wrote

you to say. Not script and sight. Right. And so that can be scary, especially if you're trying to pretend that you know what you're doing when you don't. I think we talked about this. We may have talked about this. Like the submissive posture and the importance of admitting when you're scared. I agree with that, yeah. Right? But what if uncertainty is also a variety? And what if, like, we need the certainty of knowing the sun is going to rise, or at least the earth is going to spin in a way that creates the illusion of a moving sun, right?

Not to say the sun isn't moving, expanding universe, we're all moving, but you get the idea. I get the idea. So we need the certainty to know that tomorrow is coming vis-a-vis sunrise and or sunset. But if the sunrise and the sunset always looked the same, if there was no variety, if there was no variety in the weather, if there was no variety in the night sky, if there was no variety in the clothes we choose to wear, then we would, I think, probably start to really get bored.

I agree. But also look at the perspective we're coming from, right? I think a lot of people, well, we know humans crave certainty, but entrepreneurs, and whether or not you sort of identify as that, I would put you in that category, and creators for that matter. Uncertainty is great. It's the spice of life.

And we sort of, like you just did, equate uncertainty with variety. And that's sort of maybe philosophical in nature. But I think we would feel different about uncertainty if we were like, gosh, I wonder if I'm getting paid next month. I don't know where I'm going to, how I'm going to feed my kid. If you got a job and it ends, you know, like you're working in Hollywood and the movie you're shooting ends. And you don't have anything. And you're thinking, oh, what if it takes me?

me like three or four months. Do I have enough in savings to sort of bridge that gap and your kids are going to college and you're thinking, uh-oh, uh, I wonder if I can second mortgage my house. That kind of uncertainty is not adding beneficial variety, I think, to people's mental landscape. Probably not, but because we're adaptable creatures, right? I mean, he and I used to have a shorthand years ago. Basically, the question was how many squares? You know, you're in November. How many squares did you fill? Or how many squares are filled? Because most months started with 30 blank squares. And that is terrifying if you have no safety net. It's terrifying if there's no other certainty in your life and you're just living in this completely kind of random universe. But it also builds

something like resilience and hope. I agree with that. Yeah. Right. So I mean, I'm super interested. I mean, I've listened to a lot of what you've said over the years. And to me, it just seems like the great balancing act that people are constantly trying to navigate is the certainty uncertainty principle. It's absolutely correct. Yeah. And the headlines today, you know, talk about our country for a minute. What are you worried about right now vis-a-vis the level of uncertainty?

And is that informing some of the headlines and the drama? Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mom. mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Row gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues, you'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $3499 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind. You can see why I love these guys.

If, on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time, then watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you, here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text, and data on a blazing fast network for just 3499 a month really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way,

as well as the MicroWorks Foundation and allows me to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just $3499 a month at puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, first of all, no surprise, and this is not going to, I don't think, jar any way. but media, big mainstream media, and I hate that term because it makes me sound like a kook on the internet, but they have to use fear-based headlines to grab attention. And, okay, that sort of worked in the 80s when you had a limited number of news outlets,

but now that we're bombarded by this stuff 24-7, it's not good for our brains to be constantly worried about something and then have multiple different takes from people who are just making it up, like the conspiracy theory about the boat hitting the bridge, for example. We don't have any sort of authority anymore or experts that are universally trusted because the media has done a good job of shooting themselves in the foot, reloading and shooting themselves in the other foot as far as credibility. And that's dangerous because now people choose what to believe and they don't know how they're making that choice. But really, the way they are making that choice is, what do I kind of already agree with or what do I already understand or think I understand? And that's a terrible way to make decisions. If you're making a decision based on what you think you already know, you're not learning anything else most of the time, which is really bad.

And if you are, let's say you're a middling IQ like myself, right? Solid 110, 105. High double digits. That's good, right? What if you're basing that based on what you can just understand? Well, that's not good either, because then I'm going, that's really complicated. That can't be right because I can't process it. This other explanation is really simple and simplistic.

That one kind of makes sense to me. I choose to believe that. That's terrible because that means anybody can basically feed you something that you can understand and you decide to believe it. And we see that in our elections now. We see that in our media consumption. And now people are catering to that, like TikTok or whatever, bite-sized stuff that has no nuance because people go, oh, well, I can understand that. And also, I just watched 13 of those in four minutes while waiting for the elevator or whatever. If people crave certainty, and of course they do, the media knows that.

So the media is very long uncertainty, and that's why you have a lot of certain sounding people who all kind of sound the same when they tell you the news, right? And they're all doing their thing. They're all in their trope. And they're all feeding that need to feel certain. But when you're certain, there's no need to be skeptical. And if you're not skeptical, right, then you'll buy anything. If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for everything.

And so I think that the country rights. now is really, really wrestling with this because, well, I'll just name some names. Sure. Because Anthony Fauci sounded really certain. Because every elected official during that time sounded certain. There was a lot of nodding and there was a lot of soothing tones. And it was a kind of infantilizing. Yeah, that's a great word for it.

That's how I felt. It was like suddenly I'm surrounded by people in charge of our most important institutions who are talking to me like I'm 10, what is happening with that? They understood correctly and unfortunately that humans crave certainty. So they couldn't come on. I assume the decision was,

hey, what we should do is say, we think it might be this, but we're not really sure. And we think masks might do this, but then we're also not really sure. But also, we really need those masks for people who are like working in hospital, so we should probably tell.

So what they did is say, don't buy masks. They don't do what we think they do. And then it was, oh, actually, now that we've ramped up production, you should really go buy those and everybody should wear them. In fact, if you don't, you can't come in. Right.

And then it was, you know, we know that this is how this transmit. Well, but you, okay, but you said a different thing before, so which one is true. And they knew that if they came in with all that nuance early, people would go, oh, my God, they don't know anything. What do we do? They don't know anything about this. We're all going to die. So I understand that tension, but I think they erred on the wrong side. Because when they had to switch horses midstream or in a different stream, my analogy is fall apart all the time.

time. When they had to switch horses, they realized, oh, now we're just telling them a different thing and kind of hoping people forget. So then when, of course, they had to say something really important, like, hey, we have a vaccine, and don't worry, it's been tested, people go, well, okay, but you said this thing about the mess, and you said that, but this is going inside my body, so I don't know if I, and that created all sorts of. It's a boy who cried wolf. As you may have noticed, conspiracy theory, this is the largest conspiracy theory of the last century aside from I don't know

JFK, almost said RFK JFK, it's not over. We all know one or two people who can't stop talking about the vaccine and it's like, I know I'm probably that guy for your audience, I swear I'm not. But you go, your whole identity is this now and that's because of the uncertainty. They just can't let it go.

It's like they've broken their brain on this thing. Yeah. It's also attached to every other thing. Everything becomes a talisman, right? It's not just a mask. If you're wearing one, you believe in these other things. It's all tangential, right? And if you're not, well, then somehow or another,

you're a climate denier. In fact, you can just put denier after everything. What used to be thought of, I think, as kind of a skeptical take. You know, Michael Shermer, well, I mean, he's a skeptic society, right? I mean, his whole worldview is rooted in. I doubt that, and I'm going to doubt it,

until I don't. And maybe you can persuade me and maybe you can't. Well, that attitude today is that just makes you a denier. Yeah. So again, if certainty and uncertainty get too far out of balance, then the inertia of all of it kicks in. And now suddenly nothing can be trusted over here. And maybe that's not so bad for knuckleheads like us who are podcasting and substacking.

Strong opinions weekly held is where I'm at. Like, okay, I believe this. But then when I get other credible conflicting information, I change my mind. And it doesn't mean that I'm some kind of moron for doing so. And I think that's the problem is we have ego attached to the conclusions that we've drawn based on these really arbitrary things. And I hate bringing this back, but it's a really sort of current example. Early on it was like, COVID didn't escape from a lab. That's ridiculous.

And it's racist if you say that. It's like, but there are actually a lot of lab leaks. I did a whole show on lab leaks. Had nothing to do with COVID. It was just about laboratory leaks. Journalists was like, hey, level four labs, they leak stuff all the time. and I started to see more and more and more of this, and then they did an investigation.

It's like, oh, it could have happened. We don't know either way. We'll probably never fully find out unless somebody straight up admits it or whatever. But that's fine. And I'd mention, hey, I'm, I kind of changed my mind. And I used to be, oh, if you think this, then you're not looking at the evidence. And now there's new evidence. And instead of people going, hey, you know, that's good that you change your mind based

on new information. What I got was, aha, look at, you're such a moron. I told you three years ago that this. And I said, you also said the moon landing was fake. Okay, so like, broken clock twice a day, something, something. Yeah. And so we don't want to do that to each other, first of all, but you shouldn't also do that to yourself.

Changing your mind based on newly available evidence is something that we should all actually be doing and that almost nobody does. Isn't that how science works? Yes. Right. And certainty is the enemy of that. That's the biggie.

It's like the minute you feel the comforting wash of certainty come over you, whether it's the climate, whether it's your elected official of choice, whether it's, it just doesn't matter what it is. But the minute you start to really feel sure, the genuinely interesting and curious person goes, what am I missing? Yes, thank you. If I'm 100% positive about something, there has been a problem in my thinking.

Yeah. Most of the time. So when's the last time that you really affirmatively changed your mind in a way that, like, you heard your mind go? Oh, I was very sure. And now I'm very wrong. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there's some things that the sort of lab leak theory stuff was one of the more obvious ones,

because I mentioned it on the show and so many people gave me feedback that was like, oh, yeah, that's cool that you change your mind. But so many more people were angry, which I found surprising, but I probably shouldn't have been that surprised. Other times I changed my mind of just smaller sort of things, like throughout the day. And it's really hard to say if there's another good example that anybody could possibly relate to. I don't know. I feel like I should have come prepared or found something that's a little more obvious.

Well, actually, like the reason I'm asking you is because I think you're really having a good time doing what you're doing. That's my impression of it. Yeah, sure. Right? And part of the reason I believe that is because you're still doing it. We were having this conversation the other day, the separating of the wheat from the chaff in Podcastlandia. It's happening, though, right? But five, six years ago, like when we met, it was so nascent and it was growing so fast

that you could really suck and still somehow find an audience. People were just coming to it and it wasn't so noisy and it wasn't so crowded. And today, it's a very different deal. And like, I have to figure out, I'm not going to put my big boy pants on in this space? We get our share. You know, people like the show, but I do it once a week. And I do it because I like it and I enjoy talking to people. But you're at a whole other level.

How many shows do you do a week? Three. That's a lot for a long form, right? Yeah. So the reason I'm asking you about this is you've interviewed how many people? Oh, gosh. It's probably close to a thousand over the last 17 years. And not just random Joe's, big thinkers.

Yeah, you're up to episode 969. On the current show, and I had another show before that that was 720-something episodes long. The show that we dare not speak its name. That's right. The show we dare not speak its name. Exactly. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, it didn't exist. It doesn't exist.

I don't know. Anyway, change the subject. It's existence free. I believe you brought it up. Sorry. Good point. I'm certain he did. Craving that certainty.

I don't know how I feel about that. Thinking about it, I do change my mind on a whole lot of things. I mean, the topics of the day are things that I'm always thinking about because I'm being bombarded with media. Immigration was one thing where a lot of people think they have a black and white sort of answer about what it should be. This is one of those onions where the more you investigate it, the more you're like, well, okay, but we also have like this thriving worker. Well, maybe we should make that legal for hard workers to come. But then also this.

And then people throw out these weird red herrings like, but the drugs. And it's like they're not, you know how many backpacks you need to run across the border to bring in all the fentanyl or whatever we got in this country? It's like, $62,000 per year. That's how many kilos they estimate of fentanyl or something. And it's like, that's a lot of backpacks. It's probably not that. The way they intercept this stuff is proving that it's not coming into a backpack, right? Yeah.

But I also understand both of these arguments on different sides. So I won't say flip-flop, but it's. so nuanced and people hate that stuff, man. My brain doesn't like it either, but I realize that's kind of reality. People's brains, we don't like nuance. We like to be able to compartmentalize something after having decided it and put zero brain power on it out of. Well, sure. This whole idea that two things can be true at the same time is vexing. You know, it's vexing. It's like for me, since you mentioned immigration, you know, I talk a lot about the skills gap in this country. There's not a single construction company that I know of. And I know a lot of them who aren't behind.

in every single project that they're working on. And they're behind because they can't staff up. Right. You know, for every five tradespeople who retire to replace them. Every year that's been going on for decades. Well, 15, 16 years. Wow. And if you took the immigrants, and I'll just,

if you took the illegal immigrants out of the equation, it would be much worse than it is. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And so what we're left with is this really uncomfortable kind of thing, right? And I'm, you'll find no bigger fan of the working man or skill traits. That's my jam. And I'm sincere about it.

But there's no getting around it. It's not just a skills gap. It's a will gap. Oh, yeah. It's funny you mention that. And we're just not willing to take advantage of the opportunities that so clearly exist. That's a real problem, you know. I think I've changed some people's minds.

Definitely. When I talk about, listen, this is not an ephemeral topic. This is your house. Right. This is supply chain. This is where our food comes from. This is where our energy comes from. Right. So riff on that, if you will, because I think it impacts everybody. Okay. So stop me if this is something that's been said on the show 8,000 times before. But, uh, okay. No, go. So everybody I know who owns a company, you know, you know more contractors than I do. One of their chief gripes is they'll hire somebody who graduated from college or just graduated from high school to do, let's say, roofing. and after half of the first day, if it's raining, they're done.

If it's sunny, they're done. Basically, if it's not 65 degrees with a nice breeze and partly cloudy, they're not doing it. And these guys will just say, okay, screw it, and they'll hire an undocumented group of immigrants who are just showing up,

just roasting in the sun, and getting drenched in the rain, and working, and then saying, call me on Sunday, if we want to finish this faster. And it's like, this work ethic gap, I don't even know if it's something we can close. Like, look, I don't think people should work 365 days a year just so they can feed their kids. That's extreme. But if they're

willing to do that and somebody else is not willing to complete half a day of work, we got a gap that we got to figure out what to do with that. That's not sustainable. And we have to figure out how to talk about it, right? I mean, Bernie Sanders put a 32-hour work week bill in front of Congress last week or maybe it's a week before with no drop in pay. So this is an extraordinary thing, right? And when we started MicroWorks 16 years ago, the first little umbrella under which we all tried to come around, the first thing we could agree on was work is not the enemy.

But it is, man. Work has become the proximate cause of people's misery. And I'm not saying that all jobs are pleasant. I'm agreeing violently with you, but it just seems like it's back. to the infantilizing. It's like, we need people to save us from work so we can retire sooner. Retire from what? What happens when you retire? I mean, not a single study indicates anything good. Talk about changing your mind about something. If you can get the masses to think differently

about the benefits of retiring, everything would change. But that's a neat trick. And that's going to be hard to do because we're certain that retirement equals happiness and we're certain that hard work leads to misery. Part of this is the lack of purpose that I think a lot of people have. And I understand that if you are roofing and you don't think that this is your calling, I get that. But why does that mean that you shouldn't do it at all for a few years or why does that mean that you can't figure out another thing? Like you say, you bring your passion with you. I worked at a movie theater when I was in my teens. I wasn't like, man, I have

made it. I'm making $5.25 an hour. Killing it. A couple times a week. I clean up barf. I scrape gummy bears off the screen that kids have thrown and stuck there. There's other things I won't even mention on this podcast because they're more suitable for an episode at Dirty Jobs. These kinds of

things that happen in movie theaters would shock you. So many fluids. And in so many surprising spaces. Surprising places. It's incredible where you can get your fluids, really. I mean, if you're focused on it. That's true. That's true.

It's amazing. But Jordan, it won't surprise us because we worked at a movie theater when we were kids. Teenagers. Yeah. We each did our time at United Artists. Oh, nice. Yeah. It was one of the first multiplexes in the country, Golden Ring Mall.

So, yeah. Concessions, tickets, ushers. Those are the glam jobs at a movie theater, man. If you only had to touch money, you had it made. Oh, yeah. It was on the days when there was other things that you had to touch. Sure. Those are the bad days.

You should, you know, you put a bunch of money. of people in the dark and throw some suggestive images up on the screen. Yeah. You know, you reap what you sew. Yeah. What was your first job? The movie theater. That was the first one.

That was the first job. And what did you learn doing that job that you still use today? Oh, man, so much. First of all, the bar is so low for what passes as good work. Not that anyone should aspire to just barely meet the bar. But I remember, you know, you show up on time and you clock in and you go downstairs and you get your shirt tucked in and you pick up the brew. room in the little, I forget what, like a dust pan with the extended handle. I guess it's probably

just called a dustpan. You're walking down and you sweep up the popcorn thing that's on the floor. And I remember my manager going, you know what? I like that. And I go, what? And he'd go, you're ready to work. You're clocked in and you're already doing something. You're not waiting for me to tell you. And I'm like, well, you told me weeks ago, I just have to, you know, I'm going to sweep the floor. And he's like, no, that's what I'm talking about. And my friends started working there. And they would clock in and they would dilly dally in the break room. And they would wander down. Their shirt would be untucked in the front. maybe completely untucked, and then they would be chatting with each other, kind of hiding in the back hallways,

and the manager would go, hey, did you got, is your shift started? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's 3.30. When did your shift start? Three? Okay, what have you guys? Nobody told us to do anything. And I'm thinking, like, come on, guys, this is some kid stuff. And we were young, but I think everybody who owns a company has dealt with one or two of these people, and grown adults are doing this. And I saw that at the movie theater as well, there'd be a guy in there who's 30. and I'd go, wow, he's doing the same job as me. That's maybe not a great sign. And they would get fired after two days because they would be sleeping in the theater

and trying to get away with it. Or they'd leave and come back. And the manager would go, where have you been? Oh, I was here. Where? And it's like, they have cameras, man. And this is in the 90s. They had cameras.

Now, of course they know where you are. And it was just like, you guys are not doing it. And I thought, huh. So when I get a real, real job, like an adult job, because I'm 16 at this time, if I show up on time and I sort of pretend that I'm the owner and what would I do if I was the owner of the manager I'm going to be at the top 1% of employees.

They're going to love you. That was it. You'd write your own ticket, man. And it was just like, I just remembered that going into every job that I had after that. And when I started my own company, when I was doing the Jordan Harbinger show, it's like, okay, I am the owner.

No one's going to pick up this slack. And also I have to set the example for everyone else. And I also only want to hire people who do the right thing when nobody's looking. And that's really hard to hire for. It's impossible. It's very much impossible to hire for. So I consider myself extremely lucky because my team, doing the Jordan Harbinger show, my team, they do the right thing when no one's looking.

I can, maybe in a couple of instances over a decade and change, have I been like, did you do this? Oh, no, you know what? I spaced on that. And that you can chuck up to a mistake at some point. Tell me what happened when you left the show that dare not speak its name. Right, right, my previous. And you hung out basically a new shingle, which means you're starting from zero. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah, so it was interesting, right? Because I don't expect people to work for free. That's not a thing anybody should expect. In fact, you know those jobs where they tell you that you're all one big family, but then they treat you like crap? Everything else they treat you like crap. I didn't want to do that. So it's like, we're going to treat you like family, but I'm also going to pay you. And that's how things are. So when I left my previous company, guys were like, well, I want to keep, can I go with you? Because I want to work with you on the new thing. I had to have a really somewhat humiliated. talk where I said, so yes, but also I can't afford to pay you for some months, and that sum, that number is completely unknown. And if we fail, I can never afford to pay you. So I don't want to ask you to leave.

So what they did was, since they were all part-time, they basically are full-time doing whatever you want to count the hours. They kept their previous gig, and then they worked for me sort of after hours because they're freelancers, most of them at the time. And then they would eventually leave, or if they had savings, they'd go, eh, I'll just work with you.

And I want to say like six or seven months in, my wife, Jen, I go, okay, we're doing okay. It looks like we might survive. We got to make everybody a whole. We got to just pay everybody what we would have paid them if we could afford to pay them back then and probably give them a nice Christmas bonus because, you know, they went out on a limb for us.

And we did that, and it was expensive. But you know what? it was the coolest thing ever because people basically worked for free because they believed in something that I was creating with them. And that's the highest compliment. I think anybody can probably pay you.

But then, of course, there's a part of me that's like, I wonder if I could have just gotten away with anybody. There'll be no money. But being a scumbag is not exactly something. It's a skill that I have yet to build, I suppose. But it felt great to make everybody whole, man. Those were like the coolest checks I ever signed.

here's $36,000 for six months of work that you did, that you didn't know. And I didn't say, you're going to get paid tomorrow. I was like, just pay everyone. Wow. And people were like, whoa, I just got a bunch of money for me. Like, is this a mistake? Or did Jordan pass away? Are you guys okay?

It was really fun. It was just a fun thing to do. It was kind of like, probably like it is when you go to, Ed McMahon used to go to the person's house and hold up the giant oversized check with $10 million on it. That's kind of how it felt. Well, I mean, that's awesome. I can't, it rhymes in a weird way with your departure from Wall Street with your boss being like, eh, you know, maybe you don't have to keep coming in.

Yeah. Maybe hoping that you still would, like the whole notion of the slow no is one of the great tortures in the universe, especially in an airport, right, when they push your flight 20 and then 20 and then another 20. That's what happened to me on the way here. Oh, man. It's just talk about uncertainty. Yeah. I'm sure the plane's going to take off.

I just don't know that's going to happen today. And I would really like to know. It's out there. And then they were like, all right, real talk, we're cleaning up the bathroom. I was like, say no more. I understand. Take your time. Get that right.

Do you need any more sanitizer? I got some of my backpack. But I wonder, too, if like your relationship to debt, like how do you feel when you owe someone, not just money, but something? Because there are lots of people who sleep like a baby. They've been at debt their whole life. so used to it and they don't think they're ever going to get out of it. So they just adjust. That makes me feel itchy. Does that make sense?

Totally. It's like an itch that you can't scratch. It's like knowing that you borrowed something from someone and they kind of want it back and it's sitting in your closet times a thousand. When I was first year on Wall Street, I was paying my student loans, which is always fun. You get a really nice reminder of how valuable your education was. Where'd you go? I went to the University of Michigan Law School. And it's a good school, but it's very expensive. And you get paid well on Wall Street, as you might imagine. But if you pay the minimum, your debt is going to last till you're like 50. And I said, all right, I'm just going to live on the minimum and put like $12,000 a month towards these loans. And then my mom was like, well,

I could help you pay off the high interest loans if you pay me back. And my thought was, I really don't want to do that because I'll feel gross about it. And then she ended up giving me a chunk. I put it towards the loans. And then I paid my mom back three times as fast as I would have paid those. I was eating ramen. And my mom, this is how low the bar is for kids these days. I'm 44 now. But back then I was 24. She told all her friends, you know, I lent him money and he paid me back. And her friends were like, oh my God. I can't believe it. So, so old school. And I'm like, well, why would you tell your friends that? That's so weird. And she's like, oh, well, Peg lent this money to her kid. And they never, she doesn't even come over for her.

Christmas anymore. And it's like, so my relationship to debt is I don't love it. I understand the function of it. I had to borrow money for law school. Educational debt, it was significant. I think I borrowed what you would normally pay for a home in the 80s to pay for that education. That was a very uncomfortable amount that nobody under the age of 30 should ever be allowed, well, be allowed, quote unquote, to borrow because you just don't understand how much money that actually is. Oh, my God. You'd better be. certain. Yeah.

You better be damn certain. You're on the right path. Exactly. I mean, it's a big deal. So this is an ROI calculation, right? I went to, and people don't think of it this way, but law school is a trade. We don't necessarily label it as such, just like medical school. Yeah.

Because people go, oh, well, if you're not banging a hammer on something in the beating sun or biting the testicles off a lamb, it's not really a trade. But, you know, law and medicine, that is. You pretty much know you're going to get paid back now. That's changed a little bit with law and possibly also with medicine. but you have a fighting chance in heck of paying that debt. If you're borrowing $170,000 for an English literature degree, and this is where you stopped me because you talked about it on the show a thousand times,

you might as well buy a lottery ticket because one of those two things, they have an equal chance of paying off their college loans. You might as well borrow $100,000 and buy $100,000. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. At that point. I mean, it's not just a bad idea.

There are plenty of bad ideas. And, you know, people make mistakes. but that bad idea is packaged as an investment in your future. Right. It's not even discussed as debt. I mean, the pressure we put on kids to borrow more money than they're ever going to be able to pay back when they are so profoundly uncertain of what they're – You're a podcaster by way of a law degree with a pit stop in Wall Street.

There's no major for that. No. As you know, studying creative stuff, You could just as easily have not done any of the stuff you've done with the educational background that you have. I got a communications degree. You could still be selling flex ladders on home shopping network or whatever it was. You could. Yeah.

Yeah, man. The health team infrared pain reliever. That's right. Hot damn. So how then do you think about debt forgiveness, student loan forgiveness? Oh, with the current sort of. Yeah. Well, look, is it good to figure out a way to make sure that people aren't crippled by debt?

Great. But the problem is, this does not solve the problem that we have. The problem is college has become a country club where they compete based on amenities and the prowess of the football team or the sports events that you have and how many pools they have on campus instead of, hey, this is going to equip you to get a better job. And that I made my decision based on, I was going to go to the cheapest law school. There was one that offered me a full ride and they were very generous with it. And I said, great, I'm going to take a free education. that sounds great. And my dad had me call another lawyer, and this friend of his was like, ooh, but if you get into Michigan, you can get a much better job. I didn't know that. I just thought

they were all kind of created equal. And I said, how much better? And she told me what people on Wall Street make. And I was like, all righty, this is how the investment pays for itself. So I understand the value of not going into your life when you're 24 with owing more money than you're going to make in the next decade, disposable income. However, the problem is college cost way too darn much. And then you get educated for a job, as you say, that doesn't exist. That's the problem. So if we're going to take a trillion dollars off the table and put it into something, how about making education sustainable in STEM and making it so that those people can get an education and that and incentivizing people to do that? What we've done instead is just gone,

oh, go ahead and study whatever useless crap you want, and we're just going to kind of bail you out later, maybe. What about the incentives for the universities? I mean, how is for giving a trillion dollars in debt going to encourage universities to lower their tuition. Exactly. Now all they're going is, man, we had free government money before, but now it's free for us and we can sort of sell it as, hey, it's going to be free for you too, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. So you might as well spend as much as possible.

We might as well charge as much as possible. And we can double our tuition. Oh, and by the way, Harvard, $52 billion endowment right now. Yeah. $52 billion. Yeah. But that's on paper, Mike. That's just on paper.

Yeah. As a Wall Streeter, I would say, paper? Sounds good to me. That works. We take paper around here. Pass the paper. What did you learn on Wall Street, if anything, that was as beneficial or more than those lessons learned scraping up the unmentioned fluids from the floor of dark in theaters? Can I pause right here and use the restroom?

Or is that just a photo? Yeah, you can. This gets edited out, right? It's not like small bled or Jordan Harvest. We're going to follow in with the mic. There's actually one right around. the corner here. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that. There is. Yeah, you want me to wear the lavalier in there?

No, that's no fun. If you're wearing a lavalier, I don't know where you got it. This is the honest podcast. You know, people, Chuck, they got to go from time to time. I go all the time. I'm going right now. Remember how many times did I get up in the middle and just go and pee when we're doing it on Riverside? All the time. And I noticed, too, when you're gone, the conversations, they really pick up. Do they? Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't know. Have you looked into the stadium, pal? You described it in a previous episode, and I... If we ever get David Sedaris on here, I'm going to read that story first and then bring him on to talk about it. I think it's one of the best things he's ever written.

Better than the floater. Oh, Big boy. Big boy, right. Big boy is the shortest thing I think he's ever written. Have you heard this one, Taylor, Big Boy? David Sedaris is at an Easter gathering, and people are like having a picnic outside. and he's in the house. He goes to use the restroom.

But it's not his house, right? So he goes into the bathroom and lifts up the toilet seat. And in there is the biggest turd he's ever seen in his life, right? And he's like, you know, it's just not fair. I'm just living my life. And now this, right? And right outside the window, which is open, are his friends. And some people he doesn't know at a picnic table having this Easter day.

And there's David looking at this giant mess and he flushes the toilet and it quivers, but it doesn't go down. And he's like, oh, God, this thing is enormous. And then, right, people want to, somebody's got to use, but just a minute, he says, right? And so now suddenly there's people waiting to come in and people outside. He's taking a weird amount of time. Is he the kind of person who would take a dump at somebody else's house? You can't walk out and just leave that thing there. No.

So like the other person did. So he finds like a flusher or some plunger and just breaks the turd in the little pieces and just flushes it. And now, of course, all he can think of is, you know, who is responsible? And that's how the story ends. He walks outside looking at his friends, examining their faces for signs of guilt. Who looks five pounds lighter? Sorry, while you were peeing. He's got extra pep in there, stuff.

We were talking about the state. Stadium pal? Oh, stadium buddy. Yeah. Pal buddy. Is it a pal or buddy? I don't know. The one I'm wearing now is Stadium pal.

You're familiar? I am familiar with it. Yes, it's funny you should mention that because I also do a long-form show, the Jordan Harbinger show, available wherever you get your podcast. Not to be confused with that other podcast. Brand X. So I thought, man, you know, sometimes I'm in these really interesting conversations, and I don't have a moment to waste.

I don't want to say, hey, let me pause you right there in the middle of your crying. telling a really deep story or, like, talking about some scientific concept, because I need to go to the bathroom three times in the middle of a show, because I, you know, would... You're very hydrated, yeah. I'm super-hydrated. I'm super-saturated. And so I've looked into the stadium, pal. You've looked into it or you use it? I gave it the good old college try, I guess I could say, yeah.

This is breaking news, Mike. It is. Jordan Harbinger is tied up to the... That's new. I mean, that's right. You've never talked about this before. That's true. I haven't.

No. Okay, good. There is something unsettling about having a warm, bag of urine strapped to your ankle. It's your ankle. It is. Well, it's also unsettling. Having a condom on your John Thomas. It's basically working as an external catheter. Yes, that's what it is. This is how it works, folks. If you're not familiar with the stadium pal, it's really for men only. You put on a condom, and at the end of the condom, there's a tube, and the tube runs down to a repository, which you can tuck into your sock or strap to your ankle, thereby allowing you

to watch the whole game. Thus, the stadium pal. Or conduct an entire interview. you. That's right. The podcaster pal. The podcaster pal. I feel like there's a white label opportunity here to brand this thing. I think there is too. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. I know what I'm saying? I think between the two of us, we're uniquely situated to sell. What are you doing now? Like 11 million downloads a month? I think we sell at least a half dozen of these things. I think we could too. Well, there are three million podcasts out there. So if only half of them bought one, I tell you, I don't know that I'd go on Rogan without a stadium. People be on Rogan all the time.

They get up and go. No, literally on him. That's just wrong. Have you been on Joe's? No, no, I haven't, no. It looks fun. It looks fun. I can't believe I haven't either.

You haven't been on there? I haven't been on Rogan show. I'm having that Mandela effect thing happened where I remember you on that. Right, right. And you're nearly the only one who doesn't because it didn't actually happen. I have not been on Joe Roden's podcast. It's bizarre. I'm surprised.

I am too. I may be a little sensitive. So if anybody out there has an end to Joe Rogan, please contact me at info at microworks.com. And Mike will show up with not one, but two stadium pals. Yes, he will. One for me, one for Joe. And we will make podcasting history.

Do you want to go back to that question? Or are we, is that train sailed? Yeah, you were right. It was a good one. He was like right before he went to the back. Yeah, yeah. And also just we're about an hour and five, including. Yeah, but it's going really well.

It's going really well. Well, that's fine. But I mean, I'm just letting you know. You want to think about land in the plane. And that's if this recording. And if it's even recording. See, back to Rogan, you know, three hours, three and a half hours. You know, I know the exception is not the rule.

But I'm having a good time. And I'd like to do this. Keep going. Yeah. Sure. But study show. Yeah. The audience is falling, you know.

Do that? I don't know. I actually don't know the answer. I don't know. Nobody knows. Yeah, but we know people who claim to know. Here's all that I know is that there are only 24 hours in a day. We all get the same amount.

That's right. And so if a podcast is 45 minutes long and you do three a week, let's say, that's right. What is that, how many, is that two and a quarter hours? Two and a half hours, okay, of a week that somebody's, if each one of those is three hours, then that's nine hours out of the week that somebody's got to devote to it. So the chances are, the shorter your podcast is, the more people can listen. If you're doing it for the audience.

That's right. But if you're doing it for yourself and inviting the audience. Why are we even recording it then? And inviting the audience to listen. Because you're inviting them, Chuck. You're not slobbering over them. You're not begging them. You know, right?

You don't want to be. It's very unattractive. One time. I begged one time. I do want you to answer your earlier point before your bladder exploded. But I also want to understand, let's go back to your earlier point and then help me understand your relationship with the audience. Are you currying favor with them or your advertisers or you merely trying to amuse yourself?

Yeah. So that's a really good. question. So back to what I took from my employer on Wall Street. It was really the power of relationships, and I know that sounds corny, but the truth is the partner that made the most money was never in the office, because

as it turned out, he brought in all the business to the firm. And so he was more valuable outside the office than inside the office. And that was the gig that I wanted. I was like, how do I, they call him rainmakers? It was like, how do I bring in business because this guy, I remember he was limping once. His name was Dave.

And I was like, hey, Dave, what's wrong with your leg? Stadium pal. Jitsu. I don't want to upset this giant bag of urine I have strep to my ankle. You understand how it is. Jordan, throw this away for me. It hasn't been there. That just blew my mind.

I was like, do you work from home? He's like, well, sometimes. But really, it's like he's playing what it was a squash, jiu-jitsu, golf. And I'm thinking, but where's the work taking place? And he's like, I don't worry about billing 2,000 hours a year. because if I bring in a client every quarter, I get a fraction of that money. And I was like, this is like, he's like a salesman.

And he's like, yeah, I'm kind of like a salesman for the firm. And that just absolutely blew my mind because I'd go in there on Sunday to show my office off to ladies I was dating and be like, yeah, I work in the skyscraper near World Trade number two. And there'd be people in there at 10 p.m. on Sunday, 10 p.m. on Saturday. And I'm like, oh, crap, what's he doing here? He's working. Dave wasn't even there on Tuesday at noon.

Yeah. He was never there. When we tanked, when that firm tanked in 2008, I remember I had a job at Sirius XM doing my show on satellite radio. I'd see him in the elevator and I'd go, oh, hey, you work. He's like, yeah, I'm a partner of it. It's called Sun and Shine as a different law firm. And I thought, wow, you brought your book of business.

You ended up maybe possibly with a raise or at least an equal level kind of place at this other firm. And all these guys that were there on Saturday night, trading time for money and bill and hours. And that was their thing. they retired early because they didn't have anything to fall back on. And I thought, okay, relationships and connections and having people know like and more importantly trust you to do the right thing and do a good job, your reputation was like, it's like an insurance policy that you can't buy with any amount of money. And that has lasted with me my whole life.

It's like integrity, again, doing the right thing when the- No one's looking. I almost said when the lights are out. That's a different podcast. Also important. It's very difficult to look. when the lights are out. That's right.

Unless you're in a dark in theater, scraping up fluids. Stop it, stop it, stop. You've got to get in between the cushions. That really stayed with me forever. Not the fluids, the power of relationship. That really stayed with me forever. And even now, somebody comes to me for help with something. I will introduce them to somebody that can help them with that particular problem,

give a little bit of my time, you know, and I know people always have, they take issue with this. They're like, but I can't just help other people all the time. I have to look out for myself. and it's hard to kind of explain this to somebody who's young because I didn't get it at that point either. You are looking out for yourself when you're building strong social capital,

you're investing in your network, you're investing in other people, you are looking out for yourself because if you give help and aid and advice and consult without the expectation, I should say the attachment to anything in return, it doesn't matter if 99 out of those hundred people never help you with anything again

because when you're really in it, the one person or the 10 people that come out of the woodwork, those could be life-changing opportunities. Do you worry, as we get into your relationship with your audience, do you worry, you're in the advice business, you're coaching, essentially, right? I mean, that's your real gig, right? Sometimes. I give advice on Fridays, Feedback Friday episodes.

Tuesday, Thursday, I'll do an interview with a brilliant personality such as yourself. And on Sundays, we do skeptical Sunday, which is where I say, like, hey, bottled water, what's the real deal with this? or this kind of particular program. Like we'd sort of debunk junk science or get into something like time shares. And it's like, look at how these work. So you've changed people's minds.

Yes. I'm assuming Shermer was a Sunday guest. Those are kind of like scripted with a collaborator who does a lot of research. Yeah. That's what, and I mentioned earlier, Patternicity and then had him explain, oh, God, what was it? was like a Chermer thing, I believe. So do you worry about, not that you would give cookie cutter advice, but you have a big audience. Yeah. And what's really true and really important for somebody

to hear at any given moment might be really antithetical to somebody else who's in the same room. It's true. So like advice is a, you know. It's quite specific. It is. It's very individualistic, but you're not podcasting to individuals. You're podcasting. You're broadcasting. I look at my relationship with the listeners as in many ways as a lawyer would look at a relationship to their clients. One, fiduciary duty to do the right thing. If you ask me, hey, do you use this product that you advertise? I have to be able to say yes. So I, unfortunately, for my bank account, turned down a lot of sponsors where I'm like,

this is hot garbage. I am not going to endorse this. And I'm sure you've done the same thing. And unfortunately, that costs a lot of money because, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's willing to pay out the nose, like, for some capsule that says they're going to regrow your hair, and I'm not putting that in my body. So I won't endorse that. Also, though, when somebody writes in and says, I think my sister is going to join this cult

or they're stuck in a multi-level marketing scam, I give that person direct, customized advice, and we put it on the show, you'd be surprised. Maybe you wouldn't be, but I was surprised at how many people have a roughly analogous situation in their life. When you have an audience of a certain size, there's a thing. thousand people that have a sister who's joining a multi-level marketing scam. And maybe that minutia are not quite the same in terms of the circumstances, but the general advice that you give, even though it's very specific advice for that person, applies in many ways to those same situations. And so I look at that as my relationship.

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I wrote about it in my book. But the business of being conned. The business of conning. Yeah, there it is. Look at that. You're drinking right out of my face there. That's amazing. Thank you.

You know, weird at all. You know, the whole made-off thing as a Wall Street guy, that must have really chapped your ass. Yes. And I've been in multi-level organizations. I've made some money. Multi-level marketing organizations? I have.

Really? Yeah. I sold, there's a company called NSA, and it's not the National Security Agency. It's the National Safety Associates. And they make water purifiers. And they make all different sizes. These little thermosized things. They make big ones for your house.

But I think they were out of Nashville somewhere in the South. And there's a huge organization, and it's all built on a pyramid. But I like the product. There was a lot of chlorine in the water in Baltimore. You know, and you could really smell it. It's like Michigan. Yep. Simple charcoal filter with a little silver stuff added to, you know, purify it and whatnot.

Anyway, it made my water taste good. So I just, I got into the organization just to retail the product because the wholesale difference was significant. Sure. And I made money doing that. And then some friends came in and they made some money. But, yeah, you peel back the layers. And there are a lot of people who really are just moving thousands of water purifiers from one garage to another. That's right. And if you do the math on an MLM, I've done a whole episode about multi-level

marketing. If you do the math, after like X number, like a single digit number of layers, you just run out of people on earth that you can sell this thing to. Quickly. Very quickly. The airplane game. Yeah. Yes. Oh, the airplane game. I've heard of this too. Yeah. And it's just you think, who's doing this? What kind of nonsense is this? And they're praying on desperate people in many ways. Well, in many cases, but not dumb people in a classic sense. Greedy people, for sure, impatient people. That's for sure. For sure. People who can tolerate huge levels of uncertainty. Yeah. For sure. I will say one thing that really disillusioned me for the multi-level marketing thing. There was the math, right? The math didn't work. What really caused me to

investigate it, though, was when guys would write in and go, hey, I love your show. I run this company, and I'd look at it and I go, oh, it's multi-level marketing. It's not for me. And they would go, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're actually going to put you at the top of this thing. Yeah, yeah. And I go, but isn't the whole thing, like, you have to recruit? And they're like, but you don't have to do that. And I go, all right, but all the people that were at the top before, they had to do all that work, right? And I'm just like above them because I have this large audience. And they're like, exactly.

And I thought to myself, if you can just do it like that and it's totally unfair to those people, that's not really honest in any way, shape, or form. I'm just getting paid for doing nothing. And they're like, oh, but you're not doing nothing. You're lending us your credibility. And I was like, ah, that's really gross. I definitely don't want to do that. Yeah.

That's the problem. Yeah, you said the quiet part out loud. Yeah, you're going to use me to scam other people. That's like the worst thing I could possibly do to my reputation, speaking of the power of relationships. It's the worst thing you can do for your reputation. Well, look, I mean, last thing I want to do is make unnecessary problems first, Chuck. But, well, geez. Well, look, I make my living in advertising.

Oh, well, same here. I mean, I sold out before I had anything to bargain with. QVC was the ultimate. I got my start in TV on a 24-hour commercial. I understand the transactional. reality of things. And I personally find it adorable when actors will refuse to associate themselves with a who is it, I think it was Bill Peterson. Who did what? Great actor years ago. And I admit like NCIS or one of those shows. He's in a shot and the Chevy pulls up. Oh, right, right, right.

And the camera actually tilts down just a little bit to hit the logo on the grill. And Bill was like, what the hell is going on here? And they were like, well, it's, It's nothing Bill Sari. He said, you know, Chevy's a sponsor. And he's like, well, I'm not going to have anything to do with this. And it was like, well, that's weird. Yeah, but, you know, the sponsors are paying the network and we're paying you. And look, if that's too much, you know, I mean, we can, we'll do the shot again.

But he's like, no, I'm not going to be anywhere in this shot. If that truck's in the shot, right. So integrity, right. But come on, man. You're in commercial television. Right. I don't understand his argument. Right.

Because the difference between commercial, being in commercial television, being in a commercial is no different. Sorry, it's not. And so it's interesting where you make your stand. Yeah. And in Podcast Landia, I've struggled a little bit because it seems like the entire ecosystem is fueled by a certain kind of call to action. Yeah, there's direct-to-consumer marketing.

In seconds, you'll hear an ad, and I'm going to invite you to go somewhere, and there'll be a promo code like Mike. Now, I don't mind it because people need to know how they're doing. But I'm curious for you, like, how did you navigate that world? And I know you only work with sponsors that you use. Yes. Same here. But how do you find them?

Do you approach them? My network does all that. The podcast one does all the sales. I mean, brands also approach me and say, well, you do this. And I would say it's 50-50. I have a nice little carve-out where I can do direct deals with certain sponsors at a certain volume. A lot of the ones that don't go through my network are also like, hey, if you do this, we'll pay you a commission on this.

And I'm not fully comfortable with that. One, because you lose sales if they don't use the code Jordan or whatever. But two, now they can't tell if I'm telling the truth about the thing because I have to sell the thing hard to get them to use it. If you pay me a flat fee and somebody doesn't go and buy that level of insurance, okay, I mean, sorry that didn't work for you, but I got another sponsor in the pipeline. Sure. No skin off my nose.

But if I only get paid, if I tell you that this pill is going to do something to your other regions. Because it did it for mine. Because it did it for mine. even though I didn't take it, but you're offering me a lot of money to say that I did. I draw the line on things like that. Good for you. I'm just asking this because when we launch the...

Mike Sponerpills.com. No, I was going to go with the Roe Harbinger Stadium Pau. Or Harbinger Row, if you like. I mean, look, our lawyers are going to sort. They're going to sort all that out. But how are we going to do it? It's going to be a promo code? Is it going to be a...

I mean, we can't do a free trial with this thing because we can't take returns. That's true. Obviously, barely used stadium pales is not going to work. If we're at barely used stadium pals.com, I think that has legs. That might, actually. Oh, I'm sorry, it's taken. Oh, dang it. Damn it.

Well, we can work on the phrasing. You know, if we're the only game in town, we'll know what the sales come from. I mean, it's got to be you or me. That's right. You got kidnapped a couple times. I did, yeah. That's always fun. Yeah.

Third time's the charm. It's only been twice so far. Knock knock. Chuck's hating. Then I'm opening this door this late in the show, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. Did you learn anything from getting kidnapped other than it's probably not great? Yeah, you avoid it. It's funny.

The first time, this is kind of right up your alley, I think. The first time it was in Mexico and I was 20 years old, I got to a taxi that turned out to, it was either a real taxi that was kidnapping me or a fake taxi that was kidnapping me. Didn't really sort that out at the end of the day. But the only reason that I ended up not probably getting either taken to a bunch of bank ATMs to withdraw money and or chopped up into little pieces in a basement in Mexico City was because there were no mobile phones at this time. This is a year 2000.

I mean, people had them, but I sure. sure didn't. I was 20 years old. Cabby didn't have it. So I didn't distract myself looking at social media. I remember looking out the window and going, am I being kidnapped right now? I can't open the door. The guy won't stop the car. I'm pretty sure I'm being kidnapped right now. And my mind goes, well, this has never happened to you before. Why would it be happening now? Well, that's not really a good argument. Petternity. Brain. And I thought, I should probably do something about this. Try to open the door. It doesn't work. Convince the guy to stop. It doesn't work. If I'd had my phone with me, I would have gone, I'm just going to look at Instagram for the next 20 minutes.

And then when they stop, I'll figure it out then because this is uncomfortable. And now, whenever I don't want to think about something because it's uncomfortable or I don't want to do this sort of internal math or the soul searching or whatever it is that is required, I find myself reaching for my phone or wanting to call someone or checking my email. And I go, oh, I'm doing that thing where I'm avoiding this uncomfortable feeling because I have to make a real call here, that's my signal to sit down, go for a walk, leave my phone at home and go for a walk

and go, okay, I need to work this thing out in my brain. I need my brain to have no choice but to do this. And you make some pretty difficult decisions doing that, whether it's letting someone go or signing a big deal or having a third kid or whatever it is. If you just distract yourself constantly, which our brains love to do, right, then we will never be able to make those decisions properly.

How'd you get out of the car? What happened was, like I said, he wouldn't stop. I couldn't open the door because he had trimmed the lock so that when you locked it, it fell below the window and you can't get your fingers there. I don't know if this car had a child lock or if he'd installed something where the handle was disconnected. So when he finally stopped and I knew we weren't where I was supposed to go,

because I wanted to go to the center of Mexico City. There's lights, there's a presidential palace and a statute. This was a neighborhood with center block houses with no roofs half the time. So when he stopped, I said, don't get out of the car. And I was 20, and all I was doing was eating Carnay Asada and working out at the gym twice a day. And this guy was probably 50-something, and all he was doing was sitting in his cab and eating junk food. I slid over behind him, and I put my arm between him and the door, and he didn't notice that.

I said, don't get out of the car, just drive somewhere else. Because I knew this was the place where no one can hear you scream. And I'm like, nothing good happens here. He's going to go out and get his friends or I'm going to get dragged out. Then he made a fast one for the door because, again, he didn't know my arm was there. and so I just leaned my chest up against the back of the seat and reached this arm around his nose with my forearm and this arm around his mouth with my forearm

and I just squeezed as hard as I could and he eventually passed out and then... I choked him out through a car seat which actually I've tried to sort of reenact this with friends like hey, just for fun. I'm never getting a car with you. Chuck, can I get a ride back to...

Yeah, quick ride. That's how this episode ends. But then I still couldn't get out of the car. So I have to figure out how to... to do that. So I opened the door and I try to squeeze between these two seats, the passenger seat and the driver's seat, and I have to push this guy out of the car. And then I try to drive the car, but it's a stick shift, and it was also an old car. So not only is it a stick shift, which I wasn't used to at the time, but every old car has a trick, right? Like, oh, you got to

wiggle the clutch this way. And if you do it up and down, instead of left and right, the thing won't shift. And when you're vibrating with adrenaline dump in a conflict situation. And you're in Mexico City. And you don't know where you're going. one anyways. So I took the keys out of the car and just chucked them so that when he wakes up in 30 seconds, he can't just drive after me and run me over. And I ran and ran and ran at least, I would say, a mile before hitting a major-ish road where, of course, nobody's going to stop. Because I'm this white dude with short hair in Mexico City. And at the time, I think I had like a blonde streak in my hair because it was 1999 or 2000. That was cool. So, and I'm wearing like

Banana Republic, Cheetah. Was it cool? Thanks. Chuck. Is that recording? Do we know? We'll find out later. And I'm wearing like Banana Republic Chino's and a blue button down shirt. And I'm sweating through this thing because of anxiety and the fact that I just ran a mile. So people are driving by and they're like, you can just almost hear him go, hell no, I'm not picking this guy.

Not out here. And then finally this guy stops and he's like, what are you doing? And I said, I got kidnapped by a taxi. And I was like, I'll ride in the trunk. Just get me out of here. And he didn't want to. And that's how you got kidnapped. that the second time.

This is not your day, Gringo. This is not your lucky day. That's funny. Man, that's good. Chuck, you're on fire, man. Oh, God, I wish this was recording. Yeah, if only we'd hit record on this podcast. The guy didn't make me ride in the trunk.

I got in the car. Turned out to be a doctor, and he's like, are you hurt? And I said, no. And I said, take me to the police because he's like, where do you want to go? I was like, the police. He was like, let me explain something. You don't want to go there. You just told me.

me that you possibly killed a cab driver and you're foreign and this guy tried to kidnap you, but you're not totally sure and you don't know if he got up or if he's still laying where you put him. I don't think you want to go to the cops and tell him that story. Additionally, this is Mexico. It's very possible that that guy either was a cop or that the cops know about this and that they're just going to drive you back here. Your best case scenario is getting arrested for whatever happened. Your worst case scenario is, so he goes, if I'm you, just get out of here. And I was like, all right, so he drove me to a metro station. I went back to where I was living, packed all my stuff, and I left.

I moved. I've never been back to Mexico City. This is 24 years hence. Through the podcast and doing the Jordan Harbinger show, I've met like the DEA liaison to something. And I'm like, can you check something for me? Is my name showing up in any kind of databases of things? So thankfully not, which hopefully means the guy just woke up and was like, wow,

that was the wrong guy to nab, and that's the end of the story. Wow. You dodge the bullet, obviously. Yeah, maybe literally, in fact, in this case. So do you think of it often? Does it inform conscious decisions today? Well, I would say with the phone thing, the distracting myself from difficult decisions,

that's the sort of daily takeaway. I would say when I get into an Uber, I'm not like, huh, does this doorm? Can I tuck and roll if I need to? Right. Because we're in a different place. The app knows where I am. their safety things. And usually the

lady driving, Consuela driving the Uber is not in a position to probably fight me off. Don't judge, man. You never know. Conceola can be up there, rocking two stadium pals. She could be back and more than the stadium pal. That's true. So I don't live in fear because of that.

I don't think anybody should. But I will tell you when I, I've been to Mexico since after I've made sure I wasn't going to end up getting arrested at the airport. And I do use like a driver that I hire. That that's a person who is trusted by somebody else. I don't just, like, jump in random cars like you do when you're 20

and hope that it's actually a taxi. Yeah, back when you thought you were truly bulletproof. And it'll never happen. It'll just never happen to me. That was one of those moments where I was like, oh, I'm not the main character in whatever movie I think this is. I could actually die. Yeah.

I remember this very thought where I go, you know, when you think you're going to rise to the level of your expectations, that's not really what's going to happen here. You're going to fall to the level of your training or your habit. And if your habit is reaching for the phone and going, I'm probably not getting kidnapped, that would be weird. No, who gets kidnapped in a car? That's what's really going to happen. So I had that moment where I was like, no skydiving,

probably should be really careful about walking around dangerous areas at night. I grew up in a sort of uncomfortable way, I think, that weekend. Well, this is how we land the plane. We end where we began with the incident that probably did more to inform your thoughts on uncertainty. than anything else. Because even in a foreign country, that patternicity that Shermer talks about, it's so rooted in us that even though we're surrounded by new things, it's still never going to happen to us.

That's right. It's never going to happen. And when it does, you're right. You're not the star of the show. Well, or maybe you're not the hero. It makes you think, huh, okay, so if that happened to me, maybe I should not smoke things or eat bad things all the time or drink too much because if that can happen to me, that means all these other negative outcomes that weren't ever going to happen to me

are on the table. Every single thing is always on the table. Yeah. You can be certain of that. Listen, I feel terrible not asking you about your second kidnapping experience, but when you come back on the show, what you're going to do. Yeah, absolutely. Can we start up there?

I would love that. That's what we call a tease, my friends. By the way, how many podcasts have you been. guest on at this point. Oh, I should figure this out. I actually have no idea. It's got to be in the hundreds. Obviously, this is the best one, but I don't know the number. Be serious. How are we doing? Good. I mean, my feeling is, because again, this is not the big rock in my world, but I'm, right, I still struggle with this. Like, you've got such sides. You've got sides on your podcast. You've got a purpose. And I think I kind of do, because I kind of tried to have a conversation about work ethic and

debt. Yeah. Try to slip that in there. Yeah, I like that. But fundamentally, it's either a conversation or it's an interview. This is a conversation, which I appreciate. I do conversational interviews, and I don't know, I haven't really gotten into the philosophy of like, is this more of a conversation or more of an interview? And people who write in have different opinions, right? Sure. Aside from that whole maybe not hitting the record thing, I think this went pretty well.

And the bowel movement you had. I didn't want to be too specific, but you were going to have to break that thing up with a plunger. Right. So it's big boy in there right now. Taylor, when you get that, could you, there's a plunger and just, we got a Harbinger and Isle 2. Look at the size of that

Harbinger. I would This episode sponsored by I probably shouldn't say what we're going to have for lunch. Fiber. It's Chipotle, folks. It's a short-term rental.

I would say your side hustle is my main stable of income, so that must be nice for you. I'm still waiting for my TV show on Discovery. You know what? I mean, anybody can get one.

That's what I, that looks like on the outside. When I'm telling you, it ain't that hard. It ain't that hard. Hey, you were terrific. Thank you for coming by.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Really good fun. Chuck, we're going to have to let you go. Thank you. Not this week, maybe next week,

folks. Tune in and see what happens. See you by. If you like what you heard, and even if you don't, won't you please? Won't you please, pretty, please,

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