September 7, 2022 • 57 mins
Have you ever spoken with a spy? How do you use critical thinking to cut past the noise of mass media and propaganda? In today's interview, Ben, Matt and Noel welcome special guest Jordan Harbinger to discuss his incredible adventures in North Korea, his deep-dive conversations with everyone from celebrities to spies and defectors, as well as his approach to critical thinking -- and much, much more. They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone. Quick disclaimer at the top. In this conversation
with Jordan's Harbinger, there may be strong language that is
not appropriate for all members of the audience. We immensely
enjoyed this conversation, and we hope that you do too.
(00:20):
Just wanted to give you a quick heads up. With
that in mind, let's dive in. From UFOs to psychic
powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
(00:51):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They called me Ben. We're joined as
always with our superproducer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Folks.
Opening question, what's the strangest place you've ever visited? How
(01:14):
did the reality jibe with your expectations? Here's another fun one,
have you ever spoken with a spy? If you have
ever considered any of these questions, fellow listeners, than oh boy,
oh boy, do we have something special for you today.
We are joined with the author lawyer, thought leader, world traveler,
(01:34):
the creator of the Jordan Harbinger Show, The One and
Only Jordan Harbinger. Jordan, thank you so much for joining
us today. Thanks for having me on. Although I technically
have not written anything that has ever been public, well
that's not true. I published some stuff on blogs. That
makes me an author, right, You ever written like a
note on the back of a cocktail napkin? You know,
(01:59):
mostly yes, phone numbers mostly, but that counts. I mean
somebody had to when somebody had to write it down,
I gotta ask you really quickly. Have people ever asked
you like, if your last name refers to being the
harbinger of like the apocalypse or doing something like this,
this is a harbinger of a good time? They're usually
there's a negative connotation to it, and I've always wondered,
(02:20):
I'm like, who came up with that. It's some metal
band came up with it, probably in the seventies, and
it was just like, you're never gonna have anybody think
that you're good when you walk in the room. That's now.
Now we have to thank you for the nominative determinism.
They're right, like, how someone with the last name toothman
maybe a bit more statistically likely to be a dentist.
One of the first questions we had to ask you,
(02:41):
Jordan's is it weird for you to be on the
other side of an interview conversation given that you have
interviewed so many people over the course of your career. Uh?
Like what, I think it's a little early to check
in and say, how are we doing? Man? But yeah,
you're just a good experience for you to be on
(03:02):
the other side. So far, so good. Yeah, except for
that author thing. I don't know what you guys are
thinking about that one. But beyond beyond that, this has
been great. Yeah. I actually enjoy interviews where I'm the
subject because I realized I didn't have to read a
book in preparation for this one. I just had to
show up, which is nice. That's how that's I've got
that going for me. Which is so if a toothman
(03:22):
is more likely statistically to become a dentist, I am
I more statistically likely to be like the anti Christ
or something of the times. Perhaps you know, well, guys,
because you know housekeeping note, English, especially the dialect we
speak here, is a living language, so it's really up
(03:44):
to us what that surname will mean, right, and this
is uh. We were working on so much research because
there's so many questions we want to get to in
today's interview. A lot of people may not be fully
aware of your background, Jordan's you started in law school.
(04:05):
We're talking. You are a fellow alum with our producer
codenamed Doc Holiday. And it was startling to me that
during your time in law school you launched your first podcast.
Is that correct? Yeah, that I launched my first show,
which shall remain nameless because they always try and assuming
when I mentioned them, even if I don't say anything bad. Um. Yeah,
(04:27):
Well that's what happens when you do a show for
eleven years and you're like, I want to change everything
about this business, and then your business partners are like no,
but but also you're fired because you want to leave.
Yeah you can, You're fired. It was literally the and
I was like, well, okay, and then I was sad,
but then I was like, wait a minute, this is
the best thing that ever happened to me. But yeah,
I launched. The first podcast was in two thousand and six,
(04:47):
the one that I did. The first podcast I did,
it was two thousand and six. It was like November December.
It's not far off from the first podcast kind of
era right there. Ever, Yeah, yeah, I I I do
looking back now, and I'm like, man, only it was
like me and Adam Curry and a couple of other
people that are probably still in business this Weekend Tech
or whatever, those guys, and that was it. I mean
(05:11):
it was it was kind of exclusively nerds only. Now
it's like only maybe nine nerds maybe, I think. So.
Really we're really just running the gamut to expanding here
in podcast. Yeah, and we're the we're the old House
Stuff works crew of like the Nerdy Nerdy website. Guys,
we've been like sixteen fifteen years doing that nerdy Nerds stuff.
(05:34):
I think it's really cool. No one tell our bosses
we get paid is as soon as accounting finds out,
it's over for us. Guys. Were we were just at
a podcast conference and someone made the joke of like
we were in podcasting back before it was cool, to
which someone replied, it's still not cool. Yeah, but it's
a living, that's for sure. But well, you can get
(05:56):
a lot of cool people to talk with you if
you were if you know, you're you're making a really
cool show and in your case, like it's what you're
using your time to do. You're you're making the world
a better place by getting insight from these people you
speak to. Man, some of the conversations you've had, Uh,
there's one in particular that was just teased at the
end of an episode where you're speaking about your time
(06:18):
in the DPRK and gosh, I can't even tell you
off the top of my head who it was, but
it was a spy, somebody who worked with the CIA
to develop tech. It was one of the coolest sounding conversations.
And I didn't have time to listen to it, but
I can't wait to listen to it. And was it
if it was it a woman that I was talking. Yeah,
so so I think that might have been. And I'm
(06:38):
I'm having a brain fart here, but she was John A. Mendez, right,
So she was the head of the CIA's I can't
remember exactly, but they have to do with costumes and technology,
and she was in Moscow in the eighties and so
this is like they're the only Americans with chief enemy
in the middle of Moscow, and so they were doing
things like making a car are that had a person, uh,
(07:02):
that dummy that would pop up and down so they
could trick the KGB into thinking that they had picked
someone up or dropped someone off when they hadn't. Has
to look super real and also has to be able
to like fold down and be completely invisible. When the
cops inevitably say who's in the car with you, they're like,
no one, And they're like, does damn Americans, they must
have left let someone out of the cards. So then
(07:23):
they they're on this crazy chase around back alleys of Moscow,
and they're doing it to just mess with these guys
so that when they do eventually need to x filtrate someone,
they're like, it's that stupid car dummy thing again. Meanwhile,
there's like someone sewn into the car seat driving out
of And we have to point out ex fil trade
for anyone listening at home unfamiliar with the term means
(07:43):
to safely get some get an asset or someone out
of the environment of operation. And I want to step
back here just for a second. Jordan's Uh, when we
we talked just briefly about your first few podcasts, Uh,
this has all kind of culminated in the evolution of
the show you do now where you interview, as Matt
(08:06):
just alluded to, not just celebrities, not just athletes, but
actual spies, actual defectors, And I think a lot the
reason I'm using the word culmination, the reason I'm using
the word evolution is because looking back, it seems to
me that this has built upon the skills you have
honed in your previous iterations to your previous explorations. So
(08:31):
one of the questions that people are gonna want to
hear on this show what they want to hear it
answered you as a modern renaissance man. You have expertise
and critical thinking, networking, social engineering as well. Uh where
I'm sure you get this all the time. But what
what leads you to find a person that you want
(08:54):
to speak to? How do you contact them? And have
you ever gotten in a hairy situation doing so? Oh? Yeah,
so just do you mean show booking basically? Like? Well, so,
when I was a kid, I actually got in trust.
This will surprise no one. I got in trouble all
the time because I was always interested in things that
were kind of esoteric slash forbidden. So when I was
(09:16):
really young, I figured out how to open those green
phone boxes on the side of the road, and I
made a phone that you could essentially clip in there
and eavesdrop on conversations, which didn't It didn't occur to
me that that was completely illegal and that I would
have gotten real trouble for that. But I started to
listen to a lot of my neighbor Yeah, my neighbor's
phone conversations for hours at a time. I was an
(09:37):
only child in TV. You know, it gets boring, especially
if your parents won't spring for cable, But listening to
a neighbor or talk about his divorce really was interesting.
So I started to get interested in a lot of
those like hacker. We called it freaking right, like the
phone hacking type stuff back in the nineties. pH of
course you hit't shot everything, that's right. Every everything started
(09:57):
the pH uh in that community, that's everything was a
f sound right because of the phone. And so that
was a really interesting niche for me to be in,
and I really enjoyed that. But I realized after a
while I enjoyed the social engineering aspects more than the
hacking aspects or the technical aspects and the engineering, and
so I focused on that, and then I also realized, Okay,
(10:21):
I'm not even as interested in the security elements of
the social engineering stuff. I'm more interested in the human element.
And then that led to networking, which was as a
corporate skill which I knew I was going to need
as an attorney, which I practiced for a little while,
went to law school, and then I realized it wasn't
even I wasn't even interested in the corporate stuff. I
was just interested in the conversations. And as I started
(10:42):
teaching this networking class at the University of Michigan to
law students, I started to realize I was interested in
body language, persuasion, nonverbal communication, things like that. So I
still had that interest in esoteric or forbidden stuff, but
as applied to social engineering or the human element. But
then also like what, I was like, what I what
am I gonna do? I'm not interested. I'm not even
interested in the law. I'm interested in people. And it
(11:03):
was like, should I just go back and get a
PhD in psychology? And as I started doing the podcast
to do for for the course, because I wanted to
record my quote unquote lectures and have them somewhere, I
turned it into a show and I was like, this
is so fun, maybe I should just do a radio
show about this stuff went to serious XM Satellite Radio
kept doing the podcast. But to your question, how do
(11:25):
I book people? Because I'm really good at staying on topic,
as you can sell. I just find people that are
interesting to me personally, and then I do this sort
of sanity check, like, Okay, what percentage of my audience
do I think will be into this? And if if
it's less than ten percent, I don't do it because
that usually means a lot. That usually means less than
thirty and I'm just being kind about something that I
(11:46):
really like. So like when when you mentioned before Matt
interviewing defectors from North Korea as the DPRK, as you mentioned,
I know that people are going to be interested in
that because it is objectively just something we don't hear
about that is interesting for a lot of people, even
if people don't think they're going to be interested in it,
and that that's kind of my rule. Is it interesting
to me? If yes, which percentage? What percentage of that
(12:08):
is going to be interesting to other people, whether they
know it at the moment or not. I don't want
to survey and go how many people want to hear
from a defector from North Korea because people go, I
don't care. I don't even know what it is. But
then when they hear the story, right, yeah, what is that?
I don't care? Are like my friends from Korea? I
think he's not that interesting, And it's like, no, no, no,
how about this guy who escaped twice, you know, worked
(12:29):
in under underground stuff. Now he helps smuggle refugees. You
tell the story and people go, Okay, that was fucking interesting,
like period. And so I think one of the things
that I've always been good at, even as a kid,
is finding stuff that people go that exists, Holy sh it,
I didn't even know that existed, and then getting into
that kind of stuff. But but keeping it true. You know,
(12:52):
there is a line at which, and especially true and podcasting,
where it's like aliens built the pyramids, man, and it's like,
can we just keep there's enough true that's interesting in
the world. We don't have to just make stuff up anymore.
Like that's not only that. If you find that, if
you find that gateway in with the big you know,
like um explosive kind of entry point, you're gonna have
people that are going to branch out and ask more
(13:14):
questions even after they leave the interview. And I think
that's sort of like a low key way of educating people,
you know, when they maybe don't even realize that's what's happening.
And I think that's why podcasting can be great. If
you can pull people in with something that's larger than life.
Then sometimes they leave knowing about the nuances of international
affairs or something that maybe they wouldn't have, you know,
dipped their toe in otherwise. Yeah, I agree. I think
(13:37):
I call it hiding the broccoli, you know, because I
have little kids. If I want to get them to
eat broccoli, they they'll do it now, But certainly in
the beginning, it's like, how about this cheesy cover, don't
worry about it, you know, like okay, and you're feeding
it to them and they're just eating it because they
think it's his like cheese whiz or whatever, because I'm
a terrible parent. But I do that with the audience too,
(13:57):
where it's like, oh that people need really do need
to learn about networking. It's good for your career. But
if you tell a bunch of twenty and thirty and
what even forty year olds Hey, we're gonna teach you networking.
They're like and funk off and they don't care. They're
not interested. Click the channel change. But if I'm like,
this is a spy who's going to teach us about
how they develop assets, and then that person tells you
(14:19):
exactly what you would do if you were a lawyer
trying to develop new clients, except for it's in the
context of and there I was in Afghanistan with the
head of the Taliban local Taliban. It's the same stuff.
It's just told and taught in a much more interesting
way than someone is like and then put them in
your CRM system after you get their business card. It's
the same set of skills. Jordan's I'm gonna call this
(14:42):
interview Hyde the Broccoli because I think that's a I
think that's a great title for us. And there's full,
full disclosure all the cards on the table. One of
the things I know we're very excited to speak with
you about is your expertise in something that's often termed
dark tourism for lack of a better word. And you
(15:05):
know there are a lot of locals and state institutions
in those destinations who find that term objectionable. But one
of the things that really stood out to us, to
Matt Nolan myself is your experiences in the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea known as North Korea to westerners. And Uh,
(15:27):
there was a line you had and I think it's
episode uh four thirty five, first of a two parter.
You and your colleague Gabe Are you have this beautiful
line where you say, yeah, man, anytime someone has to
tell you how democratic their country is in the name,
it's a little bit of a signal. But let's talk
(15:48):
a little bit, maybe about what what people mean when
they say dark tourism in general, and what drives you
to explore those sorts of play. Yeah, dark tourism. I
don't have a formal definition, but it's essentially when people
when normal people say I'm going on vacation, usually they
mean They're going to hit up a resort in the
(16:12):
Maldives and go scuba diving. They're going to hit a
beach in Hawaii or eat go on a food tour
of New York City and see the Statute of Liberty.
Maybe some of your more adventurous friends are going to
a resort somewhere in Turkey, right there. But most people,
just given the statistics, are not going I'm going to
get a visa that I have to bribe someone at
(16:32):
a bar in China, and then I'm going to go
to North Korea and do a tour of all these
very that has minders and that you're not allowed to
talk to anyone on you know, who's not in your group,
and go on this very controlled ops tour optics tour
of North Korea where they had it's it's not even
the least visited country in the world. I think that's
gonna be some other smaller place like Tonga, but it's
(16:55):
going to be or yeah, the Sentinel Islands, although I
think that's technically part of India are and but yet
most people don't go there. And like if they do
go on a tour of another place in Africa or
in certain parts of Africa, They're not going to Chibouti, right,
They're going to They're not going to some of these
(17:17):
sort of really sketchy type places that have an active
or not superactive war zone. They're not going to Eritrea.
They're not going to try and walk across the border
of Eritrea into Ethiopia. And none of that stuff, and
yet I I used to before having two kids, really
enjoyed that stuff. I still have a little bit of
a I guess you'd call it like a dark tourism
(17:39):
booner for those places. But I also just I've come
closed a couple of times, and I've seen you you
see the news where people go, oh, it won't happen
to me, and then they end up it happens to them,
or just even worse now, people going to China and
getting arrested because they're Canadian and Canada is holding the
princess CEO of Huawei, and and so some guys spending
(18:00):
four years in in an absolute hell hole because he
has the wrong passport, and Chi Jin Pain wants to
send a message at the Chinese Communist Party wants to
send a message, and I'm like, I can't afford to
do that, because now it's not just like, yeah, it's
not worth it, you know, It's it's just not worth it.
When you're in your twenties and your quote unquote invincible.
Sure you can go someplace and you're probably not gonna
(18:20):
step out of landmine and who cares. But now I'm
sure I'm not trying to get blown up or kidnapped
or show up on CNN wearing a blindfold or any
of that stuff. Now we're gonna pause here for word
from our sponsors, hopefully not state sponsors, and we'll be back,
(18:41):
and we're back with Jordan's Well, let's talk about some
of the experiences you did have in the DPRK because
it is a two part episode. What did you say? Ben?
Four thirty five and I think four thirty nine are
two episodes of the Jordan Harmager Show that you can
listen to right now. It's part one. In part two,
really great conversation. I want to talk about some of
(19:01):
the common things that you noticed that exists. Items I
would say that exists in the average DPR case citizens
like home orforman wherever they live, specifically images, they the
images and the speaker. I really want to just tell
us about that. Sure. So what's funny is the DPR
North Korea is the opposite of your show title. It's
(19:23):
only stuff they want you to know, period, And if
you find out stuff they don't want you to know,
they're going to pretend like that ship is not even there.
And I'll tell you what I mean in a second.
So one thing that you do see that even your
guides will admit is in there is every home and
this is the most orwellian thing in the world. Uh,
every home that has electricity in North Korea has a
(19:43):
speaker in the wall and you cannot turn it off
and it broadcasts. I've asked about this the news in quotes,
air quotes, very strong bold air quotes. If you can't
see me right now, and what that news is, I've
asked because it sounds like an emergency, and all of
the news in North Korea sounds like an emergency, and
they're like, Oh, it's just the news. I'm thinking that
(20:05):
is an aggressive tone for the news. So I'll say,
what's what's in the news. Oh, it's about how we're
striving forward and really winning is a you know, communist
socialist paradise, and how the American imperialists are trying to
get us down by doing something that probably we haven't
done since the nineteen fifty whatever, the Korean War, and
(20:26):
we're going to strive and win under the great leadership
of Kim John Lue. And I'm like, that's every They
hear that every day, all that's on their speaker in
the morning. It wakes you up in the morning at
the time that you need to get up for work,
so there's no like sleeping in because that thing is blasting.
And again you cannot turn it off. You can turn
it down, but you cannot turn the volume off, so
(20:46):
you wake up to that. They play a little bit
of music in the morning. And I've heard it because
I've stayed at hotels that are in residential areas, which
by the way, have huge walls around them because you're
not allowed to go out and see other areas, but
you can hear it blast in the staff quarters. And
what's also very bizarre, and there's a lot of places
in North Korea that don't have electricity. No surprise, we've
(21:07):
all probably seen that graphic where it shows the South
Korea and then there's the d m Z and then
above it is just like there's a dot for where
Pyongyang is and the rest of the country is dark
from space. That is very real. There's a lot of
places with no electricity in North Korea, So how do
they how do their speakers work? There's vans that will
roll up to villages and there they have these o
(21:29):
g sort of bullhorn loudspeakers on top, and they play
the music and the patriotic stuff in the news at
a specific time every day and then drives to the
next place or recharges the batteries or whatever, so you
hear it no matter what, even if you don't have
electricity or running water or freaking toilet, you're still getting
a full dose of propaganda. And and in hotels where
(21:50):
I've stayed in North Korea that are for tourists, I
I'm a snooper. So I started looking around and I
noticed that on the floor there is a quarter inch
audio jack and I'll hold up what would go in there?
For people that are not audio dorks like us? Uh,
it's basically a giant headphone jack. So it's gonna look
(22:11):
like this, but it's the whole for this, not the
actual pluck. And I'm like, what is that? So I
finally asked the tour guide what is that? What is that?
Do you have that in your room? And she goes, no,
I don't have that. And I say, do you have
a speaker in your room? And she goes, yeah, for
the news, and I'm like, that's what that is. So
when tourists are in there, they unplug it. But when
(22:31):
tourists are not in there and a local is in there,
they plug in the propaganda speaker and there it is.
So I've always thought, if I go back, I'm bringing
this exact thing, and maybe like a pair of headphones,
and I am going to have them playing so that
I can kind of hear them if I'm in the room,
but not really and maybe even just or like recorded
on my iPhone or something and play it into that.
(22:53):
But now I can't go back because I do shows
like this and I'm gonna end up freaking getting arrested.
Was gonna ask, but sorry that what were you gonna say?
I'm just a really quick follow up to that, and
it just it's please feel free to shut me down completely, guys.
This is just my where my mind went when I
was listening to you talk about that on on the
podcast Jordan's Um. It got me thinking about the devices
(23:13):
we have perpetually attached to our hands, and I'm thinking
about what you're talking about with the human human intelligence,
human element of intelligence, and I was just wondering if
our tablets are you know, laptops, are all these things
are devices that we have always on constant access to
things like the news that were some things we would
(23:33):
consider the news and entertainment. Um, I'm wondering. I'm wondering
if we are on some strange level trained or I
don't know a better word for it, we're so accustomed
to using these devices and acclimated, yeah, to to feed
ourselves these things rather than it being fed to us,
and so on the nose of like what we're supposed
(23:55):
to believe in, what you know, we're what we're supposed
to think about, we like do it to ourselves, but
it's a little more under the radar of what the
actual messages. It's like that movie They Live where you know,
we're being advertised at all the time through all of
our news, whether it's news, entertainment or some combination of
the two. There's advertising, right, because everything's fed through advertising.
(24:19):
And I just wonder how much of that we're actually
doing to ourselves. With a more cultural message like don't think,
consume more work some more consume Yes, I don't know,
what do you think? I'm with you on that. I
was gonna interrupt you and do this episode sponsored by
Blue April Air like, but but you're right, so we
have consumers culture here. I think the main difference if
(24:39):
you're asking, because a lot of people go, yeah, man,
we're just like North Korea, but we don't even know.
But the thing is, we have a separate information spaces, right,
we can choose. You can choose, within a certain amount
of reason or a certain degree, what comes in on
that phone. You know, you can block your notifications. You
can say I'm not gonna read BuzzFeed, I'm sick of this,
I'm not gonna read MSNBC, or I'm not gonna read
Fox Nage. Whatever you want. You can listen to podcasts
(25:01):
like this. You don't no one's forcing you, thankfully to
listen to like Rachel Mattau or Ben sha Bireau. Right,
where we can choose, we can choose. They cannot choose
the information space in a country like North Korea or
even in its CCP controlled China. Frankly, they have a
different information space that is highly that is completely controlled
by the state period and you there aren't other personalities
(25:23):
that you can trust more than the state leadership that
that there's not different types of information that you can consume. So, yes,
we have our phones. The thing is you are free.
So in so much as you believe in free will
to turn that thing off and go, you know, I'll
turn it on in the afternoon or I'm not going
to be in my email. North Koreans literally don't have
that option, even from schooling. I've gone to schools in
(25:46):
North Korea just to check it out, like the nice
ones where the I guess you'd call them like kids
the leaders probably are attending, and we saw their little
like music thing and their dance thing, and we got
to ask them questions, which is through the translator and
the guide, and of course only select students could answer them.
That's how that whole thing is. But we would say,
what what is your favorite subject? Oh, my favorite subject
(26:08):
is poetry. And I'm like that's so random. I'm wondering,
like what are you writing? She goes, oh, no, we
don't really write them. We just read them and perform them.
And I was like, well, that's okay, very North Korean
to like not create something of your your own. What's
your favorite poem? And she would deliver this like crazy
passionate poem and I'm like, this girl's really talented and
loves that poem, and I go, what is that about?
To the guide and she and they they go, what
(26:28):
is that about? And she goes, it's about how our
great leader is going to deliver us from all of
the our enemies that are oppressing our country, and how
amazing our country is and how we're gonna have record
grain harvests. And I was like, she's fucking kidding, right, Nope,
that's what the poem was about. Obviously just written by
like some Stalinist propagandist, but years ago, but they were
(26:49):
paid to do so. It's full time. So so in
a degree, you could say for a Western analog, you
could say maybe when there's a single space, uh, single
information space, love that term, Jordan's when there's no real
Overton window right of what is where, what is able
to be discussed? Everything is sponsored content and there's only
(27:11):
one sponsor. I've got to say, like a thing that
surprised me. I've been to uh the border of r
o K Republic of Korea, South Korea and DPRK multiple times.
I haven't gone on the tour yet because uh, like
you with DPRK, I probably have some customs clearing issues
(27:33):
in PRC nowadays. Uh, But one thing that startled me,
and I think It's something a lot of people missing
these conversations. Is there there is also propaganda on the
r O K side, on the South Korean side, Could
you describe a little bit of what that experience is
like for people I'm familiar, so I don't know much
(27:53):
about South Korea because I've actually never been there, but
I would say that, which is funny because everyone's like, wait, what,
you went to the hard Korea, not the easy one.
That's like, why would you do that to yourself? Uh,
that's more of a dark tourist. I'm like, I can
go to South Korea when I'm sixty five, you know,
that's hand. It's gonna be like I can walk over
with my the entire family, the kids. Yeah, we're gonna
(28:14):
go to South Korea. North Korea is kind of like
you do that before you have any real responsibility to
come home in one piece. We definitely have propaganda over here,
and I don't think anybody's sort of well, maybe there
are some people that deny that, or they try and
do semantic arguments about how we don't have that. Of
course we have that. If we didn't, we would have
a lot more reasonable dialogue inside this country because we
(28:35):
wouldn't be like, but freedom. It's like terrorists don't hate
our freedom. I mean a little bit, yes, but not
that's not like the reason nine eleven happened, right, it's
not because they're like freedom sucks, um. That's that's a
very small part of it, and they're not. Their definition
of freedom is not the same one that we have
right when they're when they're complaining. South Korea definitely has.
I mean South Korea was and this is sort of
(28:57):
surprising for me to learn as well, that was kind
of a hard core military dictatorship all the way up
until I want to say to eighties or even the
mid eighties, and my wife's family there from Taiwan, and
I was like, yeah, Taiwan so free. Look at that
economy China up until like eighty nine. That place was
also like don't say anything of the secret police will
come to your house and throw you into prison, and
(29:17):
it's not fair, and there's a military tribunal and it's
under like a very iron hand of the KMT party
Chang Kai check type. These are not nice places to live.
And part of that is the result of what happens
after a war, when the war is still kind of
going on, at least in the minds of the leadership
and the propagandists. Right, it's very much Cold War, but
it's kind of like they're more six minutes to Bid
(29:39):
Night than the US and the Soviet Union probably ever were.
They're kind of in perpetual Cuban miss Cuban missile crisis
level of of of fighting or warfare. So are Okay,
had a lot of people that we're just taught that
the well, first of all, the United States was not
super beloved there because soldiers have go out in like
rape girls that were on their way to school. That
(30:02):
didn't make us look good. They and and that's what
North Korean propaganda will say all the time, you know,
the South Korean government, they're just puppets of the United States.
And I was like, oh, this is so nonsensical, And
then I would start reading history and I'm like, Okay,
it's actually not that nonsensical. It's just outdated. You know,
if this was from nineteen seventy nine, what's written in
here probably not that much of an exaggeration, except for
(30:23):
now it's two thousand and thirteen, and this hasn't been
going on like this for thirty years. But who No,
no one in North Korea is going to know that
because they are stuck in nineteen fifty five at the latest.
And even in terms of dress and the way that
they speak and the movies that they watched and things
like that. Um, they really don't have a lot of that,
and even a lot of the technology. I was there,
(30:44):
uh several times when I work first went there, nobody
had mobile phones. Literally no one uh. And and like
tour guides from the UK who live in China, they
had mobile phones that didn't do anything but call the
hotel to tell us, tell them we're on away, or
maybe call for some other thing. Now when you go there,
or at least as of a few years ago, quote unquote,
(31:06):
normal people have cell phones. But I will tell you
these are like those no keyas from two thousand and
one that have snake on them. They and they can't
dial out of the country. They can only dial in
the country, and they have sort of like there's no internet,
there's just intra net that's inside your Korean They're reliable
as hell. Jordans. Those phones, Yeah, you can put them underwater,
those ones where yeah, you can like use them to
(31:27):
bash your way out of the car. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I gotta ask you though, you know, with all this
conversation around propaganda and access and lack of access to
information without singling anybody out or anything like here in
this country, it does all this talk about you know,
the North Korean people not having the choice you know,
(31:49):
of of which propaganda they would like to to enjoy. Uh,
it really makes me even more grumpy at the folks
here in this country, you know, for lack of a
better word, not it too heated about it choosing the
propaganda that they choose. Yeah, it's just really so that's
the worst of you have no choice and it's being
shoved down your throat at the penalty of death. It's
(32:10):
like you willingly listen to this idiot, what's wrong with you?
Like you're actually tuning into info Wars because you want
to like, how how dare you? Shame? Shame on you?
Come on? And I listened to an episode that you
did about you know, fake news and the nature of
propaganda with another CIA analysts who was very very CI analysts. Yeah,
(32:31):
so I just wonder, how do you how do you
correlate that with that with that experience that we see
with fake news, and is fake news the same thing
as propaganda? Are they achieving the same end results? Or
is one a more high you know, high tech or
like more advanced version of the other. Yeah, I think
I think when I think propaganda, I think more state
(32:54):
sponsored propaganda. But really, what is marketing and advertising if
not propagation it for a specific company. I mean we
when we say you know that Casper Mattress was so soft,
I love it and you can get I mean, we
are basically propagandizing for the thing is it's very it's
transparent because the FTC in the United States is make essay.
(33:15):
By the way, they gave me money to say this.
That said, I did use it and I like it,
and you could do it as well, and it will
support the show. That's a little different than saying these
are the facts and there's no debate around it, and
this is what the science says about this. So I
am a little bit I I do. I do understand
what you mean, uh, and I do I also do
get a little bit. I guess triggered is probably the
best word when I'm like, why if you can choose
(33:38):
to watch or listen to anything, do you choose the
set of facts that's making you the most miserable and
is just objectively, verifiably not not true. And so it's frustrating.
That's an education issue. UH. And I think what you're
maybe it sounds like what you're saying is in a
place where you can choose to be educated about something else,
Why are you choosing to be ignorant deliberately in a
(33:58):
way and then funnel some thing into your head? Yeah,
it is frustrating. Look, I love that you put it
this way because I actually I singled out the episode
the Fake News Interview from Jordan Harbinger Show in our
notes because this is this is a commonality that our
shows have together, the application and importance of critical thought. Uh.
(34:21):
And this is this is something that I think we
quarrel with. First off, Jordan's I love that you absolutely
drew a very close Venn diagram between advertising and propaganda.
It's sort of like, what's the difference between lobbying and bribery.
That's a weird one to explain to your friends. Totally right,
(34:42):
So this this question, and I um I urge anybody
listening today, UH to check out your interview with Cindy Uh. Cineodas. Uh,
this question is something that can be really difficult to
answer for for you as UH, as a student of
(35:03):
media discourse in the modern day, What can our fellow
listeners do to try to suss out the miss and
disinformation from the objective communication? I'm thinking, Oh, I gotta
pull the rug real quick. For American listeners, the Smith
Munth Act, which for many years UH did not allow
(35:28):
Uncle Sam to push propaganda onto domestic audiences. It got
pulled in. So if you're if you're hearing this, it's
already happened. How do people how do you get to
um the truth amid all the noise? Yeah, well there's
this is a huge topic, of course, and I'm not
(35:49):
gonna be able to do it justice like Cindy did
on on the show on my show. She's a disinformation
expert ironically from the Central Intelligence Agency formally anyway, Uh,
somebody told this a long time ago, and they really
nailed it. If you think about something that you know
a lot about, let's say podcasting for for any one
of us, and then you read an article about it
in some the Wall Street Journal, but it's not written
(36:12):
by Ashley Carmen, who writes about podcasting, right, it's written
by some random journalists, and they get all these little
things wrong, and you think like, oh, that's not right,
that's not right, that's not right, and or this other
thing is this big thing is not right. That's how
media is with literally every other topic that you're consuming.
So to believe that they got everything wrong about underwater
basket weaving or whatever expert the thing that you're expert in,
(36:35):
but they definitely got it right when it comes to
whether or not one side of the aisle or the
other side of the aisle or this other country is
doing X y Z. It's like, well, that's interesting. They're
wrong about this thing you know a lot about, but
that you just thinking about percent right about everything else
that you consume from them. So when you start to
realize that they're probably equally if not more, wrong about
(36:55):
everything that you are not familiar enough with to criticize,
then you can start looking for better materials. So the
rule for me is, if I read something that's an
emotional headline or an emotional piece that gets me fired
up in some way, it's been written that way deliberately
to get that reaction out of me, So I always
try and take a deep breath before sharing it, before
(37:18):
taking action on it, because it's probably designed for the
social media algorithm for shares, clicks, likes, and whatever, versus
to inform me about something that is accurate. Right, Yeah,
always yeah, or owns so and so own as this
other person, right, and it's like got it, um, that's
(37:41):
just a YouTube hit or whatever. As a Reddit user,
I love to look at an article, go into the comments,
and you always has Reddit as it always isn't read it.
There's always somebody that's like, you'll read something that's like
semiconductor breakthrough da China, and then someone at the top
common is, yeah, I work in semi conductors and have
for thirty years. This is not actually a breakthrough. This
(38:02):
is them getting to where the United States was like
nineteen nine, except for I bet you just knowing what
I know about semiconductors, which is like everything compared to
everybody else who's reading this article, and even the person
who wrote it, he's like one in thirty of those
things works out of the box, except to test them
it would take longer than and so you're just getting
this massive explanation about how this this thing it's supposed
(38:24):
to scare Americans because China had some breakthrough and they're
shipping chips to Russian weapon manufacturers. It's just like, slow down.
This thing is probably garbage if it's even real, and
also probably doesn't ever work, and if it does, it's
gonna like get cold and not work anymore. And you're like, Okay,
that's I probably don't have to worry about this. You know,
if I'm reading more about this over and over and
(38:46):
over and it seems like it's written by people that
actually know what they're talking about, then I can start
to worry about it. But when it's just another Tuesday
on Reddit or just another Tuesday on the news, this
is almost dollars to donuts a bunch of nonsense. And
then if it's a big enough subject, you can go
to a place like Snopes, where people will dig and
dig and dig and research and research and research, and
they will debunk or at least clarify really large, large claims,
(39:13):
and you'll find out that maybe it's not true, or
half of it's not true, or it's completely misleading. And
I like to do that because and I do that
whenever I feel emotionally triggered by something because chances are
that that article or headline was written to get that
reaction from me and from other people, and that makes
it a lot easier. Also, people say, how do you
(39:33):
stay informed when you're reading the news aside from my
little reddit John's, I really don't engage in the news,
and they'll go, well, but what you know so much
about so many different things? I read books about them
because books take years to write. Articles take twenty minutes
from an a or nothing from an AI robot now
to write, and so most articles and so if I
read a book about something like semiconductors in China and
(39:56):
the United States, it's going to be well thought out, cited.
There's gonna be counter arguments from other people. The reviews
on Amazon are going to tell me if it's a
bunch of bullshit or not. If I'm reading an article
on the Daily Wire about some of my conductors in
China or an MSNBC in China, it's written with a
certain perspective and it's almost certainly designed to just get
me to click on stuff or share it because I'm
angry or scared. We're gonna take a quick moment here
(40:18):
our sponsors words and then come back with more words
with Jordan's and we're back with more from Jordan's. All right,
I want to stay on this topic. And yes, because
I heard you name drop somebody in one of the
episodes I listened to for this, um, are you friends
(40:40):
with Neil Strauss, author of Rules of the Game bunch others? Yeah,
him and I go way, way way back. Yeah, okay,
that's awesome. We we happened to know him through Tenderfoot
TV because of his show on the first trip that
I lead. Actually, I want to kind of bring this together.
That sounds right. That sounds right. So you and he
(41:01):
share this interest in the kinds of games that they're
not really game strategies, maybe that we can play on
each other as humans to kind of hack the way
our brains function and the way we perceive people, the
way we react to people, and those kinds of things.
I wonder if there's anything you could share with our
audience just about everyday interactions that we're having out in
(41:23):
the world where perhaps our minds are getting taken advantage
of by somebody. Good question. Look, usually, so this is
a tricky one because of course this happens all the time.
I mean it's not just you know, people say like, oh,
it's sales people are doing this. Okay, fine, The best
people are that do this are salespeople and con artists generally,
(41:47):
and your significant other. Now they're doing different things for
different reasons. But our children, children are also really good
at this. Master persuaders, master manipulators. Some do it for
their own agenda, Some do it because they think they're
being altruistic. They're not. Other people are doing it to
destroy you because they get a perverse pleasure out of it, etcetera.
(42:08):
So while there's always a different agenda or a different
reason that these people are doing things, sometimes I think
it's okay. And and I'm obviously not talking about con
artists and manipulators and things like that. I think it's
okay to not have your guard up all of the
time for these types of things humans were if persuasion
(42:29):
was negative, we would have those people who are able
to be persuaded would have been out of the gene
pool well before podcasting technology allowed us to have this conversation.
So I think a lot of people who avoid human
interaction or they they are paranoid about what everybody wants
from them, and things like that. It's helpful to realize
that the thing that allows you in many ways to
(42:52):
be taken advantage of, that element of trust that you
tend to give to people is actually an adaptive characteristic
that's good for you. And I can't remember who I
talked about this with a couple of people and it's
been a while now, but it's actually better to trust
other people. But it's Malcolm Gladwell. It's better to trust
(43:13):
other people just as you normally would in society, even
if you get taken advantage of sometimes, because the benefits
of being a person that can develop and maintain trust
in relationships is actually those actually far out way the downside. Now, look,
if you get murdered by a serial killer, I know
that's dark, but like you, we're talking about dark consequence.
(43:35):
That's bad, you know, So you do have to have
some common sense about you. I'm not saying hitchhike around
because you'll save on gas and probably nothing's gonna happen
to you. What I am saying is there's a lot
of folks out there that will be like, you can't
trust anyone. You've got to go into a relationship with
a default, you know, zero some kind of mindset, and
you really should not do that. You should actually be
(43:57):
more most people should be more trusting than they are,
even though you will get taken advantage of. That is
a fact of life. The social network that you build,
the friendships that you create and maintain, the opportunities that
you find will actually outweigh if you trust people and
maintain those relationships, will outweigh the damage you suffer as
a result of not doing so. And I think that
(44:18):
is while sort of meta and thirty thousand foot is,
really it's a really important point because Niel Strauss and
I we used to be like, oh, you got to
do this in that and body language in nonmorable communication
and this and that and you can tell if they're lying.
None of that really was that would all added up
to like five percent of human interactions or one percent
of human interactions. And the big hack was confidently creating
(44:42):
and maintaining large networks of friends and allies, because that
will take you much further than like knowing the right
thing to say, or like mastering hypnosis techniques. All that
stuff ends up really coming together to make you kind
of a weirdo. And I think we him and I
both came to that conclusion earlier. It's I know it
can be self limiting. What's that old proverb, If you
(45:03):
want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to
travel far, go with others. I'm paraphrasing. But the this
this leads us to something else that I think is
probably one of the speaking of meta Jordan's one of
the underlying missions of both of our endeavors here in
good old podcast Land, and that is the exercise of
(45:24):
critical thought, which, just like physical exercise, can be challenging
at times. Right like our our brains want us to
find stuff that already confirms what we agreed with earlier,
Sometimes you don't want to show up to that gym
of of discourse and thought. When you talk about critical thinking,
(45:48):
I think a lot of people throw the term around right,
sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Certainly subreddits love it right.
But by one of the questions that for you is
what is your philosophy regarding critical thought? And how would
you say, not to trick you into a crash course
(46:11):
for us, but how would you say people can start
applying critical thought? Two things, What's what's the challenge there?
What's the benefit? Sure? So critical thinking? Yeah, crash course
in just a few minutes is not possible, and it's
it's really hard to remember all these But I would
love to give a couple of things, I guess quick
tips if you will, that I use all the time,
(46:33):
aside from the when I read something and get triggered,
what is that tell me? That's sort of that's data
that I can use. The other thing is, whenever I
want to argue with somebody about something, I will try,
not necessarily verbally doing this, but I will try arguing
against myself. I will and I will argue their side
of the argument, and then I will try and figure
(46:54):
out why they are right. And I'm not trying to
figure out why they are right and then secretly figure
out why they're wrong. I'm actually trying to figure out
why they're right. Most people try and figure out why
somebody else is wrong. If you try and figure out
why somebody else is right, it's sort of it takes
down some of the guardrails in your mind about what
you're allowing in. As far as data, I wish I
could come up with an example here, but let's say
(47:15):
you were arguing that climate change isn't it isn't real
and someone else is telling you that it is. If
I'm just trying to find points that support my conclusion,
there's gonna that will be there, especially if I'm looking
on the Internet, which is not a source of truth
but more like a fun house mirror that just confirms
whatever I'm throwing at it. Right. Um, yes, it's a
(47:35):
lot wider than a fun house mirror. It's a it's
a fun house mirror so wide you don't know you're
looking into it because it's all you can see, right,
And it's a it's an information battleground so large you
don't know you're on it. As my friend says, So
arguing against yourself is great another thing, and this is
sort of the other side of the same coin as
the steel man. So the straw man is, oh, I'm
(47:57):
picking something where I can argue a semantic detail based
on the worst or weakest characterization of your argument. The
steel man is, let's assume one good intent on your
part and that all of your arguments that you say
are totally correct. Can I still poke holes in it
without poking holes in any of your assertions? And if
you can't, then you can start poking. Of course, then
(48:18):
you start looking at their evidence and evaluating it. But
a lot of times you'll find, especially if you're argument
against somebody who's just telling you something is complete nonsense,
you'll find that even if you assume all their premises
are correct, that's it's still you can't get there. It
can't be supported. And that's a stronger place to come
from if you say, if you say that, if that
person is a dick, so I don't believe anything they say,
straw that's not even a straw man. Let's add hominum fallacy.
(48:41):
But if we say, well he said this, but let's
admit it, that's probably not real. Come on that straw man,
or could be considered strong man. But if I say, hey,
this is let's assume these are all correct, well, but
then he didn't even address this other thing. You're just
gonna leave that out, And then that's your way into
this critical thinking that gets you away from well, I
just don't like him, or those people always say that,
(49:03):
or well whatever, he's an idiot, or oh yeah, isn't
that the guy who also said other dumb things through him?
You know, we do that a lot a lot when
we see arguments that we don't like and that's the
opposite of critical thinking. It's just we're trying to confirm
our own conclusions, our own bias, whatever you might see.
But unfortunately we don't even often see that because that's
(49:24):
how everyone's brain sort of naturally operates. So we are
not remember as humans, we are evolved to keep the
tribe together by thinking and acting and acting talking whatever,
the same way. We are not evolved to go to
be right. That is a secondary and not even a
close second kind of option. It's better for the whole
(49:44):
tribe to be just really really wrong but still stick together.
That it is for a couple of people in the
tribe to think one way and a couple of people
think another way, and everyone disagrees, but some of them
are right and some of them are wrong or somewhere
more right than others. That's how you die early in
the game as a tribe that needs to stick together.
So if you remember that you're actually evolved to be wrong,
but stick with the people that you like, where that
(50:05):
you know like and trust already, you can be more
right because you can start to fight those instincts by
using systems and techniques. Well, and it's also like I
mean the idea of basing every argument around why this
thought leader is the devil or why this person who
has this perspective or this group are the anti collective
anti Christ. It's not about facts, it's not about logic,
(50:28):
it's about mothering um. And I think that is where
we get this kind of mob mentality where you get
so caught up in like the the chase of it all,
that you don't even take a second to step back
and think if if any of the things that you're
saying or believing or make any sense. Yes, absolutely, because
again you're evolved not to even care if they make sense.
You know, if you're in if you're in a life
(50:50):
and death situation and there's five people around you, and
one person says, you know what, the guys on the
other side of the island, they're there. They stole something
from somebody that I know back in third grade, and
we gotta go over there and steal all their crap,
and we're gonna use it. We're gonna use that to survive.
You're like, that's a sound rationale. I'm gonna do that.
You know, you're not thinking, We'll wait a minute, Actually
that doesn't work, you know, it's really really hard to
(51:11):
do that because it is it's fundamentally against human nature
to do so. People who are maybe more rational balanced, uh,
like to evaluate evidence. Those people died tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands of years. Those pre hominids were
like their brain was too active, and then they got
crunched by other people who were like, just shut up
and accept the party line. And Uh, this is where
(51:34):
we have the moment together where you say, there's so
much stuff that we haven't gotten to yet. Uh, Jordan's
we are going to have to have you on in
the future in the interest again, would love that of
transparency and disclosure. My man. We have we have lists
of questions we have yet to touch. We might have
(51:55):
to save them for a future appearance in the meantime.
Spoiler alert, folks. Uh, you can tell we are fans
of Jordan's show, and we hope you enjoy it at
least some fraction of as much as we do. Jordan's
where can people learn more about you your work? And uh,
(52:17):
you know, if you if you are at liberty to disclose, sir,
what's next on the horizon? Sure? So it's a podcast
that Jordan's Harbinger Show or Harbinger Show. I would love
it if people came over there and gave it a shot. Otherwise,
I'm at Jordan Harbinger on all social media, you know, Instagram, Twitter.
I love to hear from people. I'm happy to help
you find episodes you think might be interesting if you
(52:37):
want to check out the show. Oh, I made a
start page Jordan Harbinger dot com slash start, and it
has playlists of disinformation, cyber warfare, North Korea stuff, China stuff,
just different topics because I know not everybody likes all
those same nerdy stuff that I do. So Jordan Harbinger
dot com, slash start and what's next on the horizon
for me? You know, I I have. I am always
trying to figure out what would be the most interesting
(53:02):
for my audience. But I think some of the ones
I'm excited, really excited about coming up. One is with
this human rights lawyer who's talking about the genocide and Shinjiang,
and he's really dystopian stuff. I mean, it's really really
like an inside look at how Chinese, the Chinese Communist Party,
the police, they put apps on your phone so they
(53:22):
can track your whereabouts. I mean it is absolutely it's
North Korea, but with technology in that province of China.
I also did a show with an author named Matthew
Campbell which is about how the high seas are just
completely lawless and there's insurance fraud and there's piracy and
nobody can do anything about it because who's gonna go
(53:44):
thousands of miles off the coast of Yemen and try
and be like that's insurance fraud. I mean, it's just
really a fascinating look and he's really on the inside, Yes, exactly. Yeah,
So I'm look, I got a lot of fun, fun
air quotes shows like that on the rise in and
I'm excited about it. You know that that stuff really
keeps me going. I think podcasting is just like you
(54:07):
said before, I can't believe I get paid for this,
but I'm glad that I do because we really enjoy it.
Thank you very much. I appreciate I'd love to come back.
You guys are super fun to talk to you and
I yeah, I would love to do it again. Absolutely,
what a ride behind the scenes. Fellow conspiracy realist Jordan's
Matt Noel and uh they called me been. We all
(54:29):
ran out of time and we actually spent some time
off air, uh, talking about all the stuff we didn't
get to yet today. Uh No, no spoilers, But I
don't say this every time, guys. Really, I enjoyed that one.
I've been following this guy's work um as we were
gearing up for this, and he's legit. I liked speaking
(54:51):
to him very much. Good guy, very educated. Uh, very much.
What is w parking in our same garage? Kind of
you know, conceptually speaking? Yeah, but what what Jordan does
is this really interesting marketing school thing that you can
take for free. I didn't know anything about until I
started listening to the show. It seems like a pretty
cool concept. I'm gonna look into it more. This is
(55:13):
not a plug for that, Like I'm not telling you
to do. I'm just letting you know I'm actually interested
in that. Yeah, and uh we I well, I don't
want to speak for you, guys. I checked out one
of those courses and that's part of that's part of
my calculus and saying, uh, Jordan's is legit uh and
has stories to tell. He is speaking with spies, he
(55:35):
is speaking with defectors. One person who defected not once,
but twice from the d p r K. So we're
not blowing smoke when we say check out his show.
We're also not blowing smoke. Well, we say we want
to hear from you. Where is a place you've always
dreamed of traveling? What are your strange experiences domestic or abroad.
(55:58):
We can't wait to add your voice to the show,
So help us out, folks. We try to be easy
to find online. Oh, the Internet, We're all over that place.
You can find this a conspiracy stuff to handle conspiracy
stuff on Twitter, um, YouTube, and Facebook, where we have
a Facebook group called Here's where it gets Crazy. Get
it on the fun over there, share memes, meet the
(56:19):
meet the people, meet the realists. They're all out there
and they're waiting for you. Yes, you, We are also
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(56:40):
like you know whatever. You I'm not even gonna give
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us what your name is and then you've got three
minutes say whatever you like. Please include whether or not
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to use your phone, we get it. Why not instead
(57:00):
to send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want
(57:25):
you to know. Is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows.
Hey everyone. Quick disclaimer at the top. In this conversation
with Jordan's Harbinger, there may be strong language that is
not appropriate for all members of the audience. We immensely
enjoyed this conversation, and we hope that you do too.
(00:20):
Just wanted to give you a quick heads up. With
that in mind, let's dive in. From UFOs to psychic
powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
(00:51):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They called me Ben. We're joined as
always with our superproducer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Folks.
Opening question, what's the strangest place you've ever visited? How
(01:14):
did the reality jibe with your expectations? Here's another fun one,
have you ever spoken with a spy? If you have
ever considered any of these questions, fellow listeners, than oh boy,
oh boy, do we have something special for you today.
We are joined with the author lawyer, thought leader, world traveler,
(01:34):
the creator of the Jordan Harbinger Show, The One and
Only Jordan Harbinger. Jordan, thank you so much for joining
us today. Thanks for having me on. Although I technically
have not written anything that has ever been public, well
that's not true. I published some stuff on blogs. That
makes me an author, right, You ever written like a
note on the back of a cocktail napkin? You know,
(01:59):
mostly yes, phone numbers mostly, but that counts. I mean
somebody had to when somebody had to write it down,
I gotta ask you really quickly. Have people ever asked
you like, if your last name refers to being the
harbinger of like the apocalypse or doing something like this,
this is a harbinger of a good time? They're usually
there's a negative connotation to it, and I've always wondered,
(02:20):
I'm like, who came up with that. It's some metal
band came up with it, probably in the seventies, and
it was just like, you're never gonna have anybody think
that you're good when you walk in the room. That's now.
Now we have to thank you for the nominative determinism.
They're right, like, how someone with the last name toothman
maybe a bit more statistically likely to be a dentist.
One of the first questions we had to ask you,
(02:41):
Jordan's is it weird for you to be on the
other side of an interview conversation given that you have
interviewed so many people over the course of your career. Uh?
Like what, I think it's a little early to check
in and say, how are we doing? Man? But yeah,
you're just a good experience for you to be on
(03:02):
the other side. So far, so good. Yeah, except for
that author thing. I don't know what you guys are
thinking about that one. But beyond beyond that, this has
been great. Yeah. I actually enjoy interviews where I'm the
subject because I realized I didn't have to read a
book in preparation for this one. I just had to
show up, which is nice. That's how that's I've got
that going for me. Which is so if a toothman
(03:22):
is more likely statistically to become a dentist, I am
I more statistically likely to be like the anti Christ
or something of the times. Perhaps you know, well, guys,
because you know housekeeping note, English, especially the dialect we
speak here, is a living language, so it's really up
(03:44):
to us what that surname will mean, right, and this
is uh. We were working on so much research because
there's so many questions we want to get to in
today's interview. A lot of people may not be fully
aware of your background, Jordan's you started in law school.
(04:05):
We're talking. You are a fellow alum with our producer
codenamed Doc Holiday. And it was startling to me that
during your time in law school you launched your first podcast.
Is that correct? Yeah, that I launched my first show,
which shall remain nameless because they always try and assuming
when I mentioned them, even if I don't say anything bad. Um. Yeah,
(04:27):
Well that's what happens when you do a show for
eleven years and you're like, I want to change everything
about this business, and then your business partners are like no,
but but also you're fired because you want to leave.
Yeah you can, You're fired. It was literally the and
I was like, well, okay, and then I was sad,
but then I was like, wait a minute, this is
the best thing that ever happened to me. But yeah,
I launched. The first podcast was in two thousand and six,
(04:47):
the one that I did. The first podcast I did,
it was two thousand and six. It was like November December.
It's not far off from the first podcast kind of
era right there. Ever, Yeah, yeah, I I I do
looking back now, and I'm like, man, only it was
like me and Adam Curry and a couple of other
people that are probably still in business this Weekend Tech
or whatever, those guys, and that was it. I mean
(05:11):
it was it was kind of exclusively nerds only. Now
it's like only maybe nine nerds maybe, I think. So.
Really we're really just running the gamut to expanding here
in podcast. Yeah, and we're the we're the old House
Stuff works crew of like the Nerdy Nerdy website. Guys,
we've been like sixteen fifteen years doing that nerdy Nerds stuff.
(05:34):
I think it's really cool. No one tell our bosses
we get paid is as soon as accounting finds out,
it's over for us. Guys. Were we were just at
a podcast conference and someone made the joke of like
we were in podcasting back before it was cool, to
which someone replied, it's still not cool. Yeah, but it's
a living, that's for sure. But well, you can get
(05:56):
a lot of cool people to talk with you if
you were if you know, you're you're making a really
cool show and in your case, like it's what you're
using your time to do. You're you're making the world
a better place by getting insight from these people you
speak to. Man, some of the conversations you've had, Uh,
there's one in particular that was just teased at the
end of an episode where you're speaking about your time
(06:18):
in the DPRK and gosh, I can't even tell you
off the top of my head who it was, but
it was a spy, somebody who worked with the CIA
to develop tech. It was one of the coolest sounding conversations.
And I didn't have time to listen to it, but
I can't wait to listen to it. And was it
if it was it a woman that I was talking. Yeah,
so so I think that might have been. And I'm
(06:38):
I'm having a brain fart here, but she was John A. Mendez, right,
So she was the head of the CIA's I can't
remember exactly, but they have to do with costumes and technology,
and she was in Moscow in the eighties and so
this is like they're the only Americans with chief enemy
in the middle of Moscow, and so they were doing
things like making a car are that had a person, uh,
(07:02):
that dummy that would pop up and down so they
could trick the KGB into thinking that they had picked
someone up or dropped someone off when they hadn't. Has
to look super real and also has to be able
to like fold down and be completely invisible. When the
cops inevitably say who's in the car with you, they're like,
no one, And they're like, does damn Americans, they must
have left let someone out of the cards. So then
(07:23):
they they're on this crazy chase around back alleys of Moscow,
and they're doing it to just mess with these guys
so that when they do eventually need to x filtrate someone,
they're like, it's that stupid car dummy thing again. Meanwhile,
there's like someone sewn into the car seat driving out
of And we have to point out ex fil trade
for anyone listening at home unfamiliar with the term means
(07:43):
to safely get some get an asset or someone out
of the environment of operation. And I want to step
back here just for a second. Jordan's Uh, when we
we talked just briefly about your first few podcasts, Uh,
this has all kind of culminated in the evolution of
the show you do now where you interview, as Matt
(08:06):
just alluded to, not just celebrities, not just athletes, but
actual spies, actual defectors, And I think a lot the
reason I'm using the word culmination, the reason I'm using
the word evolution is because looking back, it seems to
me that this has built upon the skills you have
honed in your previous iterations to your previous explorations. So
(08:31):
one of the questions that people are gonna want to
hear on this show what they want to hear it
answered you as a modern renaissance man. You have expertise
and critical thinking, networking, social engineering as well. Uh where
I'm sure you get this all the time. But what
what leads you to find a person that you want
(08:54):
to speak to? How do you contact them? And have
you ever gotten in a hairy situation doing so? Oh? Yeah,
so just do you mean show booking basically? Like? Well, so,
when I was a kid, I actually got in trust.
This will surprise no one. I got in trouble all
the time because I was always interested in things that
were kind of esoteric slash forbidden. So when I was
(09:16):
really young, I figured out how to open those green
phone boxes on the side of the road, and I
made a phone that you could essentially clip in there
and eavesdrop on conversations, which didn't It didn't occur to
me that that was completely illegal and that I would
have gotten real trouble for that. But I started to
listen to a lot of my neighbor Yeah, my neighbor's
phone conversations for hours at a time. I was an
(09:37):
only child in TV. You know, it gets boring, especially
if your parents won't spring for cable, But listening to
a neighbor or talk about his divorce really was interesting.
So I started to get interested in a lot of
those like hacker. We called it freaking right, like the
phone hacking type stuff back in the nineties. pH of
course you hit't shot everything, that's right. Every everything started
(09:57):
the pH uh in that community, that's everything was a
f sound right because of the phone. And so that
was a really interesting niche for me to be in,
and I really enjoyed that. But I realized after a
while I enjoyed the social engineering aspects more than the
hacking aspects or the technical aspects and the engineering, and
so I focused on that, and then I also realized, Okay,
(10:21):
I'm not even as interested in the security elements of
the social engineering stuff. I'm more interested in the human element.
And then that led to networking, which was as a
corporate skill which I knew I was going to need
as an attorney, which I practiced for a little while,
went to law school, and then I realized it wasn't
even I wasn't even interested in the corporate stuff. I
was just interested in the conversations. And as I started
(10:42):
teaching this networking class at the University of Michigan to
law students, I started to realize I was interested in
body language, persuasion, nonverbal communication, things like that. So I
still had that interest in esoteric or forbidden stuff, but
as applied to social engineering or the human element. But
then also like what, I was like, what I what
am I gonna do? I'm not interested. I'm not even
interested in the law. I'm interested in people. And it
(11:03):
was like, should I just go back and get a
PhD in psychology? And as I started doing the podcast
to do for for the course, because I wanted to
record my quote unquote lectures and have them somewhere, I
turned it into a show and I was like, this
is so fun, maybe I should just do a radio
show about this stuff went to serious XM Satellite Radio
kept doing the podcast. But to your question, how do
(11:25):
I book people? Because I'm really good at staying on topic,
as you can sell. I just find people that are
interesting to me personally, and then I do this sort
of sanity check, like, Okay, what percentage of my audience
do I think will be into this? And if if
it's less than ten percent, I don't do it because
that usually means a lot. That usually means less than
thirty and I'm just being kind about something that I
(11:46):
really like. So like when when you mentioned before Matt
interviewing defectors from North Korea as the DPRK, as you mentioned,
I know that people are going to be interested in
that because it is objectively just something we don't hear
about that is interesting for a lot of people, even
if people don't think they're going to be interested in it,
and that that's kind of my rule. Is it interesting
to me? If yes, which percentage? What percentage of that
(12:08):
is going to be interesting to other people, whether they
know it at the moment or not. I don't want
to survey and go how many people want to hear
from a defector from North Korea because people go, I
don't care. I don't even know what it is. But
then when they hear the story, right, yeah, what is that?
I don't care? Are like my friends from Korea? I
think he's not that interesting, And it's like, no, no, no,
how about this guy who escaped twice, you know, worked
(12:29):
in under underground stuff. Now he helps smuggle refugees. You
tell the story and people go, Okay, that was fucking interesting,
like period. And so I think one of the things
that I've always been good at, even as a kid,
is finding stuff that people go that exists, Holy sh it,
I didn't even know that existed, and then getting into
that kind of stuff. But but keeping it true. You know,
(12:52):
there is a line at which, and especially true and podcasting,
where it's like aliens built the pyramids, man, and it's like,
can we just keep there's enough true that's interesting in
the world. We don't have to just make stuff up anymore.
Like that's not only that. If you find that, if
you find that gateway in with the big you know,
like um explosive kind of entry point, you're gonna have
people that are going to branch out and ask more
(13:14):
questions even after they leave the interview. And I think
that's sort of like a low key way of educating people,
you know, when they maybe don't even realize that's what's happening.
And I think that's why podcasting can be great. If
you can pull people in with something that's larger than life.
Then sometimes they leave knowing about the nuances of international
affairs or something that maybe they wouldn't have, you know,
dipped their toe in otherwise. Yeah, I agree. I think
(13:37):
I call it hiding the broccoli, you know, because I
have little kids. If I want to get them to
eat broccoli, they they'll do it now, But certainly in
the beginning, it's like, how about this cheesy cover, don't
worry about it, you know, like okay, and you're feeding
it to them and they're just eating it because they
think it's his like cheese whiz or whatever, because I'm
a terrible parent. But I do that with the audience too,
(13:57):
where it's like, oh that people need really do need
to learn about networking. It's good for your career. But
if you tell a bunch of twenty and thirty and
what even forty year olds Hey, we're gonna teach you networking.
They're like and funk off and they don't care. They're
not interested. Click the channel change. But if I'm like,
this is a spy who's going to teach us about
how they develop assets, and then that person tells you
(14:19):
exactly what you would do if you were a lawyer
trying to develop new clients, except for it's in the
context of and there I was in Afghanistan with the
head of the Taliban local Taliban. It's the same stuff.
It's just told and taught in a much more interesting
way than someone is like and then put them in
your CRM system after you get their business card. It's
the same set of skills. Jordan's I'm gonna call this
(14:42):
interview Hyde the Broccoli because I think that's a I
think that's a great title for us. And there's full,
full disclosure all the cards on the table. One of
the things I know we're very excited to speak with
you about is your expertise in something that's often termed
dark tourism for lack of a better word. And you
(15:05):
know there are a lot of locals and state institutions
in those destinations who find that term objectionable. But one
of the things that really stood out to us, to
Matt Nolan myself is your experiences in the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea known as North Korea to westerners. And Uh,
(15:27):
there was a line you had and I think it's
episode uh four thirty five, first of a two parter.
You and your colleague Gabe Are you have this beautiful
line where you say, yeah, man, anytime someone has to
tell you how democratic their country is in the name,
it's a little bit of a signal. But let's talk
(15:48):
a little bit, maybe about what what people mean when
they say dark tourism in general, and what drives you
to explore those sorts of play. Yeah, dark tourism. I
don't have a formal definition, but it's essentially when people
when normal people say I'm going on vacation, usually they
mean They're going to hit up a resort in the
(16:12):
Maldives and go scuba diving. They're going to hit a
beach in Hawaii or eat go on a food tour
of New York City and see the Statute of Liberty.
Maybe some of your more adventurous friends are going to
a resort somewhere in Turkey, right there. But most people,
just given the statistics, are not going I'm going to
get a visa that I have to bribe someone at
(16:32):
a bar in China, and then I'm going to go
to North Korea and do a tour of all these
very that has minders and that you're not allowed to
talk to anyone on you know, who's not in your group,
and go on this very controlled ops tour optics tour
of North Korea where they had it's it's not even
the least visited country in the world. I think that's
gonna be some other smaller place like Tonga, but it's
(16:55):
going to be or yeah, the Sentinel Islands, although I
think that's technically part of India are and but yet
most people don't go there. And like if they do
go on a tour of another place in Africa or
in certain parts of Africa, They're not going to Chibouti, right,
They're going to They're not going to some of these
(17:17):
sort of really sketchy type places that have an active
or not superactive war zone. They're not going to Eritrea.
They're not going to try and walk across the border
of Eritrea into Ethiopia. And none of that stuff, and
yet I I used to before having two kids, really
enjoyed that stuff. I still have a little bit of
a I guess you'd call it like a dark tourism
(17:39):
booner for those places. But I also just I've come
closed a couple of times, and I've seen you you
see the news where people go, oh, it won't happen
to me, and then they end up it happens to them,
or just even worse now, people going to China and
getting arrested because they're Canadian and Canada is holding the
princess CEO of Huawei, and and so some guys spending
(18:00):
four years in in an absolute hell hole because he
has the wrong passport, and Chi Jin Pain wants to
send a message at the Chinese Communist Party wants to
send a message, and I'm like, I can't afford to
do that, because now it's not just like, yeah, it's
not worth it, you know, It's it's just not worth it.
When you're in your twenties and your quote unquote invincible.
Sure you can go someplace and you're probably not gonna
(18:20):
step out of landmine and who cares. But now I'm
sure I'm not trying to get blown up or kidnapped
or show up on CNN wearing a blindfold or any
of that stuff. Now we're gonna pause here for word
from our sponsors, hopefully not state sponsors, and we'll be back,
(18:41):
and we're back with Jordan's Well, let's talk about some
of the experiences you did have in the DPRK because
it is a two part episode. What did you say? Ben?
Four thirty five and I think four thirty nine are
two episodes of the Jordan Harmager Show that you can
listen to right now. It's part one. In part two,
really great conversation. I want to talk about some of
(19:01):
the common things that you noticed that exists. Items I
would say that exists in the average DPR case citizens
like home orforman wherever they live, specifically images, they the
images and the speaker. I really want to just tell
us about that. Sure. So what's funny is the DPR
North Korea is the opposite of your show title. It's
(19:23):
only stuff they want you to know, period, And if
you find out stuff they don't want you to know,
they're going to pretend like that ship is not even there.
And I'll tell you what I mean in a second.
So one thing that you do see that even your
guides will admit is in there is every home and
this is the most orwellian thing in the world. Uh,
every home that has electricity in North Korea has a
(19:43):
speaker in the wall and you cannot turn it off
and it broadcasts. I've asked about this the news in quotes,
air quotes, very strong bold air quotes. If you can't
see me right now, and what that news is, I've
asked because it sounds like an emergency, and all of
the news in North Korea sounds like an emergency, and
they're like, Oh, it's just the news. I'm thinking that
(20:05):
is an aggressive tone for the news. So I'll say,
what's what's in the news. Oh, it's about how we're
striving forward and really winning is a you know, communist
socialist paradise, and how the American imperialists are trying to
get us down by doing something that probably we haven't
done since the nineteen fifty whatever, the Korean War, and
(20:26):
we're going to strive and win under the great leadership
of Kim John Lue. And I'm like, that's every They
hear that every day, all that's on their speaker in
the morning. It wakes you up in the morning at
the time that you need to get up for work,
so there's no like sleeping in because that thing is blasting.
And again you cannot turn it off. You can turn
it down, but you cannot turn the volume off, so
(20:46):
you wake up to that. They play a little bit
of music in the morning. And I've heard it because
I've stayed at hotels that are in residential areas, which
by the way, have huge walls around them because you're
not allowed to go out and see other areas, but
you can hear it blast in the staff quarters. And
what's also very bizarre, and there's a lot of places
in North Korea that don't have electricity. No surprise, we've
(21:07):
all probably seen that graphic where it shows the South
Korea and then there's the d m Z and then
above it is just like there's a dot for where
Pyongyang is and the rest of the country is dark
from space. That is very real. There's a lot of
places with no electricity in North Korea, So how do
they how do their speakers work? There's vans that will
roll up to villages and there they have these o
(21:29):
g sort of bullhorn loudspeakers on top, and they play
the music and the patriotic stuff in the news at
a specific time every day and then drives to the
next place or recharges the batteries or whatever, so you
hear it no matter what, even if you don't have
electricity or running water or freaking toilet, you're still getting
a full dose of propaganda. And and in hotels where
(21:50):
I've stayed in North Korea that are for tourists, I
I'm a snooper. So I started looking around and I
noticed that on the floor there is a quarter inch
audio jack and I'll hold up what would go in there?
For people that are not audio dorks like us? Uh,
it's basically a giant headphone jack. So it's gonna look
(22:11):
like this, but it's the whole for this, not the
actual pluck. And I'm like, what is that? So I
finally asked the tour guide what is that? What is that?
Do you have that in your room? And she goes, no,
I don't have that. And I say, do you have
a speaker in your room? And she goes, yeah, for
the news, and I'm like, that's what that is. So
when tourists are in there, they unplug it. But when
(22:31):
tourists are not in there and a local is in there,
they plug in the propaganda speaker and there it is.
So I've always thought, if I go back, I'm bringing
this exact thing, and maybe like a pair of headphones,
and I am going to have them playing so that
I can kind of hear them if I'm in the room,
but not really and maybe even just or like recorded
on my iPhone or something and play it into that.
(22:53):
But now I can't go back because I do shows
like this and I'm gonna end up freaking getting arrested.
Was gonna ask, but sorry that what were you gonna say?
I'm just a really quick follow up to that, and
it just it's please feel free to shut me down completely, guys.
This is just my where my mind went when I
was listening to you talk about that on on the
podcast Jordan's Um. It got me thinking about the devices
(23:13):
we have perpetually attached to our hands, and I'm thinking
about what you're talking about with the human human intelligence,
human element of intelligence, and I was just wondering if
our tablets are you know, laptops, are all these things
are devices that we have always on constant access to
things like the news that were some things we would
(23:33):
consider the news and entertainment. Um, I'm wondering. I'm wondering
if we are on some strange level trained or I
don't know a better word for it, we're so accustomed
to using these devices and acclimated, yeah, to to feed
ourselves these things rather than it being fed to us,
and so on the nose of like what we're supposed
(23:55):
to believe in, what you know, we're what we're supposed
to think about, we like do it to ourselves, but
it's a little more under the radar of what the
actual messages. It's like that movie They Live where you know,
we're being advertised at all the time through all of
our news, whether it's news, entertainment or some combination of
the two. There's advertising, right, because everything's fed through advertising.
(24:19):
And I just wonder how much of that we're actually
doing to ourselves. With a more cultural message like don't think,
consume more work some more consume Yes, I don't know,
what do you think? I'm with you on that. I
was gonna interrupt you and do this episode sponsored by
Blue April Air like, but but you're right, so we
have consumers culture here. I think the main difference if
(24:39):
you're asking, because a lot of people go, yeah, man,
we're just like North Korea, but we don't even know.
But the thing is, we have a separate information spaces, right,
we can choose. You can choose, within a certain amount
of reason or a certain degree, what comes in on
that phone. You know, you can block your notifications. You
can say I'm not gonna read BuzzFeed, I'm sick of this,
I'm not gonna read MSNBC, or I'm not gonna read
Fox Nage. Whatever you want. You can listen to podcasts
(25:01):
like this. You don't no one's forcing you, thankfully to
listen to like Rachel Mattau or Ben sha Bireau. Right,
where we can choose, we can choose. They cannot choose
the information space in a country like North Korea or
even in its CCP controlled China. Frankly, they have a
different information space that is highly that is completely controlled
by the state period and you there aren't other personalities
(25:23):
that you can trust more than the state leadership that
that there's not different types of information that you can consume. So, yes,
we have our phones. The thing is you are free.
So in so much as you believe in free will
to turn that thing off and go, you know, I'll
turn it on in the afternoon or I'm not going
to be in my email. North Koreans literally don't have
that option, even from schooling. I've gone to schools in
(25:46):
North Korea just to check it out, like the nice
ones where the I guess you'd call them like kids
the leaders probably are attending, and we saw their little
like music thing and their dance thing, and we got
to ask them questions, which is through the translator and
the guide, and of course only select students could answer them.
That's how that whole thing is. But we would say,
what what is your favorite subject? Oh, my favorite subject
(26:08):
is poetry. And I'm like that's so random. I'm wondering,
like what are you writing? She goes, oh, no, we
don't really write them. We just read them and perform them.
And I was like, well, that's okay, very North Korean
to like not create something of your your own. What's
your favorite poem? And she would deliver this like crazy
passionate poem and I'm like, this girl's really talented and
loves that poem, and I go, what is that about?
To the guide and she and they they go, what
(26:28):
is that about? And she goes, it's about how our
great leader is going to deliver us from all of
the our enemies that are oppressing our country, and how
amazing our country is and how we're gonna have record
grain harvests. And I was like, she's fucking kidding, right, Nope,
that's what the poem was about. Obviously just written by
like some Stalinist propagandist, but years ago, but they were
(26:49):
paid to do so. It's full time. So so in
a degree, you could say for a Western analog, you
could say maybe when there's a single space, uh, single
information space, love that term, Jordan's when there's no real
Overton window right of what is where, what is able
to be discussed? Everything is sponsored content and there's only
(27:11):
one sponsor. I've got to say, like a thing that
surprised me. I've been to uh the border of r
o K Republic of Korea, South Korea and DPRK multiple times.
I haven't gone on the tour yet because uh, like
you with DPRK, I probably have some customs clearing issues
(27:33):
in PRC nowadays. Uh, But one thing that startled me,
and I think It's something a lot of people missing
these conversations. Is there there is also propaganda on the
r O K side, on the South Korean side, Could
you describe a little bit of what that experience is
like for people I'm familiar, so I don't know much
(27:53):
about South Korea because I've actually never been there, but
I would say that, which is funny because everyone's like, wait, what,
you went to the hard Korea, not the easy one.
That's like, why would you do that to yourself? Uh,
that's more of a dark tourist. I'm like, I can
go to South Korea when I'm sixty five, you know,
that's hand. It's gonna be like I can walk over
with my the entire family, the kids. Yeah, we're gonna
(28:14):
go to South Korea. North Korea is kind of like
you do that before you have any real responsibility to
come home in one piece. We definitely have propaganda over here,
and I don't think anybody's sort of well, maybe there
are some people that deny that, or they try and
do semantic arguments about how we don't have that. Of
course we have that. If we didn't, we would have
a lot more reasonable dialogue inside this country because we
(28:35):
wouldn't be like, but freedom. It's like terrorists don't hate
our freedom. I mean a little bit, yes, but not
that's not like the reason nine eleven happened, right, it's
not because they're like freedom sucks, um. That's that's a
very small part of it, and they're not. Their definition
of freedom is not the same one that we have
right when they're when they're complaining. South Korea definitely has.
I mean South Korea was and this is sort of
(28:57):
surprising for me to learn as well, that was kind
of a hard core military dictatorship all the way up
until I want to say to eighties or even the
mid eighties, and my wife's family there from Taiwan, and
I was like, yeah, Taiwan so free. Look at that
economy China up until like eighty nine. That place was
also like don't say anything of the secret police will
come to your house and throw you into prison, and
(29:17):
it's not fair, and there's a military tribunal and it's
under like a very iron hand of the KMT party
Chang Kai check type. These are not nice places to live.
And part of that is the result of what happens
after a war, when the war is still kind of
going on, at least in the minds of the leadership
and the propagandists. Right, it's very much Cold War, but
it's kind of like they're more six minutes to Bid
(29:39):
Night than the US and the Soviet Union probably ever were.
They're kind of in perpetual Cuban miss Cuban missile crisis
level of of of fighting or warfare. So are Okay,
had a lot of people that we're just taught that
the well, first of all, the United States was not
super beloved there because soldiers have go out in like
rape girls that were on their way to school. That
(30:02):
didn't make us look good. They and and that's what
North Korean propaganda will say all the time, you know,
the South Korean government, they're just puppets of the United States.
And I was like, oh, this is so nonsensical, And
then I would start reading history and I'm like, Okay,
it's actually not that nonsensical. It's just outdated. You know,
if this was from nineteen seventy nine, what's written in
here probably not that much of an exaggeration, except for
(30:23):
now it's two thousand and thirteen, and this hasn't been
going on like this for thirty years. But who No,
no one in North Korea is going to know that
because they are stuck in nineteen fifty five at the latest.
And even in terms of dress and the way that
they speak and the movies that they watched and things
like that. Um, they really don't have a lot of that,
and even a lot of the technology. I was there,
(30:44):
uh several times when I work first went there, nobody
had mobile phones. Literally no one uh. And and like
tour guides from the UK who live in China, they
had mobile phones that didn't do anything but call the
hotel to tell us, tell them we're on away, or
maybe call for some other thing. Now when you go there,
or at least as of a few years ago, quote unquote,
(31:06):
normal people have cell phones. But I will tell you
these are like those no keyas from two thousand and
one that have snake on them. They and they can't
dial out of the country. They can only dial in
the country, and they have sort of like there's no internet,
there's just intra net that's inside your Korean They're reliable
as hell. Jordans. Those phones, Yeah, you can put them underwater,
those ones where yeah, you can like use them to
(31:27):
bash your way out of the car. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I gotta ask you though, you know, with all this
conversation around propaganda and access and lack of access to
information without singling anybody out or anything like here in
this country, it does all this talk about you know,
the North Korean people not having the choice you know,
(31:49):
of of which propaganda they would like to to enjoy. Uh,
it really makes me even more grumpy at the folks
here in this country, you know, for lack of a
better word, not it too heated about it choosing the
propaganda that they choose. Yeah, it's just really so that's
the worst of you have no choice and it's being
shoved down your throat at the penalty of death. It's
(32:10):
like you willingly listen to this idiot, what's wrong with you?
Like you're actually tuning into info Wars because you want
to like, how how dare you? Shame? Shame on you?
Come on? And I listened to an episode that you
did about you know, fake news and the nature of
propaganda with another CIA analysts who was very very CI analysts. Yeah,
(32:31):
so I just wonder, how do you how do you
correlate that with that with that experience that we see
with fake news, and is fake news the same thing
as propaganda? Are they achieving the same end results? Or
is one a more high you know, high tech or
like more advanced version of the other. Yeah, I think
I think when I think propaganda, I think more state
(32:54):
sponsored propaganda. But really, what is marketing and advertising if
not propagation it for a specific company. I mean we
when we say you know that Casper Mattress was so soft,
I love it and you can get I mean, we
are basically propagandizing for the thing is it's very it's
transparent because the FTC in the United States is make essay.
(33:15):
By the way, they gave me money to say this.
That said, I did use it and I like it,
and you could do it as well, and it will
support the show. That's a little different than saying these
are the facts and there's no debate around it, and
this is what the science says about this. So I
am a little bit I I do. I do understand
what you mean, uh, and I do I also do
get a little bit. I guess triggered is probably the
best word when I'm like, why if you can choose
(33:38):
to watch or listen to anything, do you choose the
set of facts that's making you the most miserable and
is just objectively, verifiably not not true. And so it's frustrating.
That's an education issue. UH. And I think what you're
maybe it sounds like what you're saying is in a
place where you can choose to be educated about something else,
Why are you choosing to be ignorant deliberately in a
(33:58):
way and then funnel some thing into your head? Yeah,
it is frustrating. Look, I love that you put it
this way because I actually I singled out the episode
the Fake News Interview from Jordan Harbinger Show in our
notes because this is this is a commonality that our
shows have together, the application and importance of critical thought. Uh.
(34:21):
And this is this is something that I think we
quarrel with. First off, Jordan's I love that you absolutely
drew a very close Venn diagram between advertising and propaganda.
It's sort of like, what's the difference between lobbying and bribery.
That's a weird one to explain to your friends. Totally right,
(34:42):
So this this question, and I um I urge anybody
listening today, UH to check out your interview with Cindy Uh. Cineodas. Uh,
this question is something that can be really difficult to
answer for for you as UH, as a student of
(35:03):
media discourse in the modern day, What can our fellow
listeners do to try to suss out the miss and
disinformation from the objective communication? I'm thinking, Oh, I gotta
pull the rug real quick. For American listeners, the Smith
Munth Act, which for many years UH did not allow
(35:28):
Uncle Sam to push propaganda onto domestic audiences. It got
pulled in. So if you're if you're hearing this, it's
already happened. How do people how do you get to
um the truth amid all the noise? Yeah, well there's
this is a huge topic, of course, and I'm not
(35:49):
gonna be able to do it justice like Cindy did
on on the show on my show. She's a disinformation
expert ironically from the Central Intelligence Agency formally anyway, Uh,
somebody told this a long time ago, and they really
nailed it. If you think about something that you know
a lot about, let's say podcasting for for any one
of us, and then you read an article about it
in some the Wall Street Journal, but it's not written
(36:12):
by Ashley Carmen, who writes about podcasting, right, it's written
by some random journalists, and they get all these little
things wrong, and you think like, oh, that's not right,
that's not right, that's not right, and or this other
thing is this big thing is not right. That's how
media is with literally every other topic that you're consuming.
So to believe that they got everything wrong about underwater
basket weaving or whatever expert the thing that you're expert in,
(36:35):
but they definitely got it right when it comes to
whether or not one side of the aisle or the
other side of the aisle or this other country is
doing X y Z. It's like, well, that's interesting. They're
wrong about this thing you know a lot about, but
that you just thinking about percent right about everything else
that you consume from them. So when you start to
realize that they're probably equally if not more, wrong about
(36:55):
everything that you are not familiar enough with to criticize,
then you can start looking for better materials. So the
rule for me is, if I read something that's an
emotional headline or an emotional piece that gets me fired
up in some way, it's been written that way deliberately
to get that reaction out of me, So I always
try and take a deep breath before sharing it, before
(37:18):
taking action on it, because it's probably designed for the
social media algorithm for shares, clicks, likes, and whatever, versus
to inform me about something that is accurate. Right, Yeah,
always yeah, or owns so and so own as this
other person, right, and it's like got it, um, that's
(37:41):
just a YouTube hit or whatever. As a Reddit user,
I love to look at an article, go into the comments,
and you always has Reddit as it always isn't read it.
There's always somebody that's like, you'll read something that's like
semiconductor breakthrough da China, and then someone at the top
common is, yeah, I work in semi conductors and have
for thirty years. This is not actually a breakthrough. This
(38:02):
is them getting to where the United States was like
nineteen nine, except for I bet you just knowing what
I know about semiconductors, which is like everything compared to
everybody else who's reading this article, and even the person
who wrote it, he's like one in thirty of those
things works out of the box, except to test them
it would take longer than and so you're just getting
this massive explanation about how this this thing it's supposed
(38:24):
to scare Americans because China had some breakthrough and they're
shipping chips to Russian weapon manufacturers. It's just like, slow down.
This thing is probably garbage if it's even real, and
also probably doesn't ever work, and if it does, it's
gonna like get cold and not work anymore. And you're like, Okay,
that's I probably don't have to worry about this. You know,
if I'm reading more about this over and over and
(38:46):
over and it seems like it's written by people that
actually know what they're talking about, then I can start
to worry about it. But when it's just another Tuesday
on Reddit or just another Tuesday on the news, this
is almost dollars to donuts a bunch of nonsense. And
then if it's a big enough subject, you can go
to a place like Snopes, where people will dig and
dig and dig and research and research and research, and
they will debunk or at least clarify really large, large claims,
(39:13):
and you'll find out that maybe it's not true, or
half of it's not true, or it's completely misleading. And
I like to do that because and I do that
whenever I feel emotionally triggered by something because chances are
that that article or headline was written to get that
reaction from me and from other people, and that makes
it a lot easier. Also, people say, how do you
(39:33):
stay informed when you're reading the news aside from my
little reddit John's, I really don't engage in the news,
and they'll go, well, but what you know so much
about so many different things? I read books about them
because books take years to write. Articles take twenty minutes
from an a or nothing from an AI robot now
to write, and so most articles and so if I
read a book about something like semiconductors in China and
(39:56):
the United States, it's going to be well thought out, cited.
There's gonna be counter arguments from other people. The reviews
on Amazon are going to tell me if it's a
bunch of bullshit or not. If I'm reading an article
on the Daily Wire about some of my conductors in
China or an MSNBC in China, it's written with a
certain perspective and it's almost certainly designed to just get
me to click on stuff or share it because I'm
angry or scared. We're gonna take a quick moment here
(40:18):
our sponsors words and then come back with more words
with Jordan's and we're back with more from Jordan's. All right,
I want to stay on this topic. And yes, because
I heard you name drop somebody in one of the
episodes I listened to for this, um, are you friends
(40:40):
with Neil Strauss, author of Rules of the Game bunch others? Yeah,
him and I go way, way way back. Yeah, okay,
that's awesome. We we happened to know him through Tenderfoot
TV because of his show on the first trip that
I lead. Actually, I want to kind of bring this together.
That sounds right. That sounds right. So you and he
(41:01):
share this interest in the kinds of games that they're
not really game strategies, maybe that we can play on
each other as humans to kind of hack the way
our brains function and the way we perceive people, the
way we react to people, and those kinds of things.
I wonder if there's anything you could share with our
audience just about everyday interactions that we're having out in
(41:23):
the world where perhaps our minds are getting taken advantage
of by somebody. Good question. Look, usually, so this is
a tricky one because of course this happens all the time.
I mean it's not just you know, people say like, oh,
it's sales people are doing this. Okay, fine, The best
people are that do this are salespeople and con artists generally,
(41:47):
and your significant other. Now they're doing different things for
different reasons. But our children, children are also really good
at this. Master persuaders, master manipulators. Some do it for
their own agenda, Some do it because they think they're
being altruistic. They're not. Other people are doing it to
destroy you because they get a perverse pleasure out of it, etcetera.
(42:08):
So while there's always a different agenda or a different
reason that these people are doing things, sometimes I think
it's okay. And and I'm obviously not talking about con
artists and manipulators and things like that. I think it's
okay to not have your guard up all of the
time for these types of things humans were if persuasion
(42:29):
was negative, we would have those people who are able
to be persuaded would have been out of the gene
pool well before podcasting technology allowed us to have this conversation.
So I think a lot of people who avoid human
interaction or they they are paranoid about what everybody wants
from them, and things like that. It's helpful to realize
that the thing that allows you in many ways to
(42:52):
be taken advantage of, that element of trust that you
tend to give to people is actually an adaptive characteristic
that's good for you. And I can't remember who I
talked about this with a couple of people and it's
been a while now, but it's actually better to trust
other people. But it's Malcolm Gladwell. It's better to trust
(43:13):
other people just as you normally would in society, even
if you get taken advantage of sometimes, because the benefits
of being a person that can develop and maintain trust
in relationships is actually those actually far out way the downside. Now, look,
if you get murdered by a serial killer, I know
that's dark, but like you, we're talking about dark consequence.
(43:35):
That's bad, you know, So you do have to have
some common sense about you. I'm not saying hitchhike around
because you'll save on gas and probably nothing's gonna happen
to you. What I am saying is there's a lot
of folks out there that will be like, you can't
trust anyone. You've got to go into a relationship with
a default, you know, zero some kind of mindset, and
you really should not do that. You should actually be
(43:57):
more most people should be more trusting than they are,
even though you will get taken advantage of. That is
a fact of life. The social network that you build,
the friendships that you create and maintain, the opportunities that
you find will actually outweigh if you trust people and
maintain those relationships, will outweigh the damage you suffer as
a result of not doing so. And I think that
(44:18):
is while sort of meta and thirty thousand foot is,
really it's a really important point because Niel Strauss and
I we used to be like, oh, you got to
do this in that and body language in nonmorable communication
and this and that and you can tell if they're lying.
None of that really was that would all added up
to like five percent of human interactions or one percent
of human interactions. And the big hack was confidently creating
(44:42):
and maintaining large networks of friends and allies, because that
will take you much further than like knowing the right
thing to say, or like mastering hypnosis techniques. All that
stuff ends up really coming together to make you kind
of a weirdo. And I think we him and I
both came to that conclusion earlier. It's I know it
can be self limiting. What's that old proverb, If you
(45:03):
want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to
travel far, go with others. I'm paraphrasing. But the this
this leads us to something else that I think is
probably one of the speaking of meta Jordan's one of
the underlying missions of both of our endeavors here in
good old podcast Land, and that is the exercise of
(45:24):
critical thought, which, just like physical exercise, can be challenging
at times. Right like our our brains want us to
find stuff that already confirms what we agreed with earlier,
Sometimes you don't want to show up to that gym
of of discourse and thought. When you talk about critical thinking,
(45:48):
I think a lot of people throw the term around right,
sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Certainly subreddits love it right.
But by one of the questions that for you is
what is your philosophy regarding critical thought? And how would
you say, not to trick you into a crash course
(46:11):
for us, but how would you say people can start
applying critical thought? Two things, What's what's the challenge there?
What's the benefit? Sure? So critical thinking? Yeah, crash course
in just a few minutes is not possible, and it's
it's really hard to remember all these But I would
love to give a couple of things, I guess quick
tips if you will, that I use all the time,
(46:33):
aside from the when I read something and get triggered,
what is that tell me? That's sort of that's data
that I can use. The other thing is, whenever I
want to argue with somebody about something, I will try,
not necessarily verbally doing this, but I will try arguing
against myself. I will and I will argue their side
of the argument, and then I will try and figure
(46:54):
out why they are right. And I'm not trying to
figure out why they are right and then secretly figure
out why they're wrong. I'm actually trying to figure out
why they're right. Most people try and figure out why
somebody else is wrong. If you try and figure out
why somebody else is right, it's sort of it takes
down some of the guardrails in your mind about what
you're allowing in. As far as data, I wish I
could come up with an example here, but let's say
(47:15):
you were arguing that climate change isn't it isn't real
and someone else is telling you that it is. If
I'm just trying to find points that support my conclusion,
there's gonna that will be there, especially if I'm looking
on the Internet, which is not a source of truth
but more like a fun house mirror that just confirms
whatever I'm throwing at it. Right. Um, yes, it's a
(47:35):
lot wider than a fun house mirror. It's a it's
a fun house mirror so wide you don't know you're
looking into it because it's all you can see, right,
And it's a it's an information battleground so large you
don't know you're on it. As my friend says, So
arguing against yourself is great another thing, and this is
sort of the other side of the same coin as
the steel man. So the straw man is, oh, I'm
(47:57):
picking something where I can argue a semantic detail based
on the worst or weakest characterization of your argument. The
steel man is, let's assume one good intent on your
part and that all of your arguments that you say
are totally correct. Can I still poke holes in it
without poking holes in any of your assertions? And if
you can't, then you can start poking. Of course, then
(48:18):
you start looking at their evidence and evaluating it. But
a lot of times you'll find, especially if you're argument
against somebody who's just telling you something is complete nonsense,
you'll find that even if you assume all their premises
are correct, that's it's still you can't get there. It
can't be supported. And that's a stronger place to come
from if you say, if you say that, if that
person is a dick, so I don't believe anything they say,
straw that's not even a straw man. Let's add hominum fallacy.
(48:41):
But if we say, well he said this, but let's
admit it, that's probably not real. Come on that straw man,
or could be considered strong man. But if I say, hey,
this is let's assume these are all correct, well, but
then he didn't even address this other thing. You're just
gonna leave that out, And then that's your way into
this critical thinking that gets you away from well, I
just don't like him, or those people always say that,
(49:03):
or well whatever, he's an idiot, or oh yeah, isn't
that the guy who also said other dumb things through him?
You know, we do that a lot a lot when
we see arguments that we don't like and that's the
opposite of critical thinking. It's just we're trying to confirm
our own conclusions, our own bias, whatever you might see.
But unfortunately we don't even often see that because that's
(49:24):
how everyone's brain sort of naturally operates. So we are
not remember as humans, we are evolved to keep the
tribe together by thinking and acting and acting talking whatever,
the same way. We are not evolved to go to
be right. That is a secondary and not even a
close second kind of option. It's better for the whole
(49:44):
tribe to be just really really wrong but still stick together.
That it is for a couple of people in the
tribe to think one way and a couple of people
think another way, and everyone disagrees, but some of them
are right and some of them are wrong or somewhere
more right than others. That's how you die early in
the game as a tribe that needs to stick together.
So if you remember that you're actually evolved to be wrong,
but stick with the people that you like, where that
(50:05):
you know like and trust already, you can be more
right because you can start to fight those instincts by
using systems and techniques. Well, and it's also like I
mean the idea of basing every argument around why this
thought leader is the devil or why this person who
has this perspective or this group are the anti collective
anti Christ. It's not about facts, it's not about logic,
(50:28):
it's about mothering um. And I think that is where
we get this kind of mob mentality where you get
so caught up in like the the chase of it all,
that you don't even take a second to step back
and think if if any of the things that you're
saying or believing or make any sense. Yes, absolutely, because
again you're evolved not to even care if they make sense.
You know, if you're in if you're in a life
(50:50):
and death situation and there's five people around you, and
one person says, you know what, the guys on the
other side of the island, they're there. They stole something
from somebody that I know back in third grade, and
we gotta go over there and steal all their crap,
and we're gonna use it. We're gonna use that to survive.
You're like, that's a sound rationale. I'm gonna do that.
You know, you're not thinking, We'll wait a minute, Actually
that doesn't work, you know, it's really really hard to
(51:11):
do that because it is it's fundamentally against human nature
to do so. People who are maybe more rational balanced, uh,
like to evaluate evidence. Those people died tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands of years. Those pre hominids were
like their brain was too active, and then they got
crunched by other people who were like, just shut up
and accept the party line. And Uh, this is where
(51:34):
we have the moment together where you say, there's so
much stuff that we haven't gotten to yet. Uh, Jordan's
we are going to have to have you on in
the future in the interest again, would love that of
transparency and disclosure. My man. We have we have lists
of questions we have yet to touch. We might have
(51:55):
to save them for a future appearance in the meantime.
Spoiler alert, folks. Uh, you can tell we are fans
of Jordan's show, and we hope you enjoy it at
least some fraction of as much as we do. Jordan's
where can people learn more about you your work? And uh,
(52:17):
you know, if you if you are at liberty to disclose, sir,
what's next on the horizon? Sure? So it's a podcast
that Jordan's Harbinger Show or Harbinger Show. I would love
it if people came over there and gave it a shot. Otherwise,
I'm at Jordan Harbinger on all social media, you know, Instagram, Twitter.
I love to hear from people. I'm happy to help
you find episodes you think might be interesting if you
(52:37):
want to check out the show. Oh, I made a
start page Jordan Harbinger dot com slash start, and it
has playlists of disinformation, cyber warfare, North Korea stuff, China stuff,
just different topics because I know not everybody likes all
those same nerdy stuff that I do. So Jordan Harbinger
dot com, slash start and what's next on the horizon
for me? You know, I I have. I am always
trying to figure out what would be the most interesting
(53:02):
for my audience. But I think some of the ones
I'm excited, really excited about coming up. One is with
this human rights lawyer who's talking about the genocide and Shinjiang,
and he's really dystopian stuff. I mean, it's really really
like an inside look at how Chinese, the Chinese Communist Party,
the police, they put apps on your phone so they
(53:22):
can track your whereabouts. I mean it is absolutely it's
North Korea, but with technology in that province of China.
I also did a show with an author named Matthew
Campbell which is about how the high seas are just
completely lawless and there's insurance fraud and there's piracy and
nobody can do anything about it because who's gonna go
(53:44):
thousands of miles off the coast of Yemen and try
and be like that's insurance fraud. I mean, it's just
really a fascinating look and he's really on the inside, Yes, exactly. Yeah,
So I'm look, I got a lot of fun, fun
air quotes shows like that on the rise in and
I'm excited about it. You know that that stuff really
keeps me going. I think podcasting is just like you
(54:07):
said before, I can't believe I get paid for this,
but I'm glad that I do because we really enjoy it.
Thank you very much. I appreciate I'd love to come back.
You guys are super fun to talk to you and
I yeah, I would love to do it again. Absolutely,
what a ride behind the scenes. Fellow conspiracy realist Jordan's
Matt Noel and uh they called me been. We all
(54:29):
ran out of time and we actually spent some time
off air, uh, talking about all the stuff we didn't
get to yet today. Uh No, no spoilers, But I
don't say this every time, guys. Really, I enjoyed that one.
I've been following this guy's work um as we were
gearing up for this, and he's legit. I liked speaking
(54:51):
to him very much. Good guy, very educated. Uh, very much.
What is w parking in our same garage? Kind of
you know, conceptually speaking? Yeah, but what what Jordan does
is this really interesting marketing school thing that you can
take for free. I didn't know anything about until I
started listening to the show. It seems like a pretty
cool concept. I'm gonna look into it more. This is
(55:13):
not a plug for that, Like I'm not telling you
to do. I'm just letting you know I'm actually interested
in that. Yeah, and uh we I well, I don't
want to speak for you, guys. I checked out one
of those courses and that's part of that's part of
my calculus and saying, uh, Jordan's is legit uh and
has stories to tell. He is speaking with spies, he
(55:35):
is speaking with defectors. One person who defected not once,
but twice from the d p r K. So we're
not blowing smoke when we say check out his show.
We're also not blowing smoke. Well, we say we want
to hear from you. Where is a place you've always
dreamed of traveling? What are your strange experiences domestic or abroad.
(55:58):
We can't wait to add your voice to the show,
So help us out, folks. We try to be easy
to find online. Oh, the Internet, We're all over that place.
You can find this a conspiracy stuff to handle conspiracy
stuff on Twitter, um, YouTube, and Facebook, where we have
a Facebook group called Here's where it gets Crazy. Get
it on the fun over there, share memes, meet the
(56:19):
meet the people, meet the realists. They're all out there
and they're waiting for you. Yes, you, We are also
at Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. That's right. And if
you like to use your phone to make phone calls,
well why not call one eight three three st d
w y t K. That's our voicemail system and you
can leave a message. Please give yourself a cool nickname,
(56:40):
like you know whatever. You I'm not even gonna give
you a concept of an idea. You just come up
with something conjurant from from whole cloth, and uh, tell
us what your name is and then you've got three
minutes say whatever you like. Please include whether or not
you give us permission to use your name in voice
on one of our episodes. And if you don't want
to use your phone, we get it. Why not instead
(57:00):
to send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want
(57:25):
you to know. Is a production of I heart Radio.
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