Nick Pell
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Nein, ich denke das überhaupt nicht. Zuerst einmal, das ist dumm, weil ich in einem der größten konservativen kongressiven Städte in Amerika lebe. Die Chancen, dass mein Kind nach Hause kommen wird, kritische Rassentheorien zu sprechen, oder die Werte des kommunistischen Kubas zu sehen, sind nicht existent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Ich denke, die Frage, die Sie sehen, wenn Sie lesen, dass die Regierungsschulen meinen Kind als Non-Binary-Kommunist oder was auch immer, ich sehe das und denke, wie involviert sind Sie in Ihrem Kindesleben? Habten Sie die Regierungsschulen erwartet, um Ihr Babysitter und der einzige Unterrichtsführer Ihres Kindes zu sein? Wenn so, ja, große Schock.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Sie haben gewonnen, weil Sie den Kampf verabschiedet haben. I think the most dangerous thing my kid is going to learn at government schools is an unhealthy deference to authority, conformity and unquestioning obedience. I also worry about the socialization that he's going to learn there. Speaking of having a five-minute attention span, we'll be right back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Do these people remember school? School was awful. It was an awful place to learn to socialize. You had friends, but as an adult, no one is coming up to you at work and going, hey, meet me by the water tower after work so I can beat the snot out of you because you looked at my girlfriend the wrong way. Like this doesn't happen as an adult.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
For the most part, no. Grown-ups do not resolve their disputes through weird bullying rituals and physical violence. In my opinion, it's not a great place for socializing. Ich habe keine Ahnung, ob das wahr oder nicht ist. Es würde aussehen, als wäre es eine sehr schwierige Sache, das in irgendeinem Sinne zu quantifizieren.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Aber ich habe niemanden gesagt, dass sie mich nach der Arbeit als Adoption schlagen werden. Aber ich hatte das definitiv in meinen Augen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Ich würde sagen, die einzige Stelle, wo Menschen wirklich physische Gewalt als Ältere erleben, sind Bars.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, no you wouldn't. I don't think you would. Yeah. Das sagt, ich möchte hier wirklich klar sein, dass ich die Lehrer für das nicht verurteile.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Homeschooling really exploded post-COVID. In 2019, there were about 2.5 million kids getting homeschooled. And for the 21-22 school year, that climbed to 6 million. But of course, this was during COVID. Newer stats are hard to come by, but the Washington Post said some of these kids went back to government schools, but most of them didn't. Why do you think that is?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I think it boils down to people seeing what goes on in government schools when they're at home and not having... Ich glaube, das hat etwas mit den Werten, die in Regierungsschulen gelernt werden, zu tun. Most teachers are Democrats, most of them voted for Clinton, and some parents just aren't on board with that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Now, to be clear, I don't think Hillary Clinton is Fidel Castro, but I can imagine that in a lot of parts of the country, like where I live, or in a lot of homes, even a pretty tepid liberal bias in the classroom could be very poorly received by the parents.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I think parents should be in control of their kids' education and if they want to yank their kid out of government school because their kid's teacher voted for Clinton or Trump or RFK Jr. or dyed their hair blue or listens to too much Milli Vanilli.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
The point is, I just think parents should be able to do whatever they want with their kids with regard to school, provided the kid's actually receiving an education. And I'm just not going to sit here and Monday morning quarterback other parents' decisions about their kid's education.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Wow, there's no regulations? Which states are those? There's effectively no regulations. I'm sure there's some, but you can kind of do anything. Gonna be shocked to hear that Connecticut and New Jersey are states where you don't have to give any kind of notice. Get out of school. Whole bunch of these states are in the Midwest. There's Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, Idaho.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
But weirdly and also kind of surprisingly, the two nutso, you know, we don't have laws for anything states, Florida and Arizona, they both require notice. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the states with tons of regulations where you more or less just have to be doing government school at home. You have to follow a state mandated curriculum. Those states are about what you would expect.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania. Everywhere else is somewhere in between.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
My kid isn't state property. My kid's education is my choice. It's not the government.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Honestly, that sounds awesome. I'm way less of an advocate for homeschooling per se than I am a cheerleader for non-traditional education.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I'm totally not. No, again, I want to super stress this point. I have zero opinions on how other people should raise their kids other than love them, feed them and don't hit them. My kid goes to government school now. Not everyone is capable of homeschooling their kids. Some people aren't smart enough. Some people aren't patient enough. Some people just don't have the time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I think it probably is. It depends on specifically what you're talking about, because there's so many different kinds of private schools. But I think the beauty of private schools is that you could pick something that's a good fit for your kid. I think I would have really excelled at a Montessori school as a child, but a lot of kids wouldn't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Montessori Method is from Maria Montessori and it's all about child directed learning, collaborative play. It's meeting kids where they are and having them captain the ship, albeit with a lot of adult guidance. And guidance is a good word for it because the teachers are usually not called teachers, they're called guides. Anyone who's spent a lot of time around kids knows they're super curious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
It's always like kid asked me. How do I see things the other day? That's awesome. Adults don't ask questions like that. And people are laughing like, but do you know how I see things? I do now because I watched a YouTube video on it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, thank God for YouTube so that we can actually answer these questions. I think Holt was right, though. I think government school kind of just whips this out of kids by making learning really boring. I think I would have done really well at a Montessori school because I was a super self-directed kid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
But my kid, that wouldn't have been the ideal environment for him because he's not really much like what I was like as a kid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, a girlfriend of mine did that. They have some kind of unorthodox ideas about child development, like she didn't learn how to read until she was 8.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
It's a whole thing with them. I don't think it's bad necessarily. In her case it worked out. She could not spell to save her life, but she did read more than any other human being I've ever known in my life. And she's a really good artist and they're really very arts focused. So those are the two that I know the most about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Prenda Microschooling is another one which has taken off or must have because there's a ton of them around here and Wir sind die letzten Menschen auf der Erde, um etwas Neues zu bekommen. Aber sie haben vermischtes Alter und Klassenzahlen unter 12. Ich habe mich auf die, die hier vor mir sind, für mein Kind angeschaut.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Und ich weiß nicht, wie viel ich von ihnen kenne, ob es nur die lokalen oder wie sie alle runten. Aber wissend, was ich von Prenda kenne, kann ich mir vorstellen, dass es eine gute Variation gibt, wie eine Mikro-Schule funktioniert, als eine andere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, they're in age groups. It's not like you have 5-year-olds with 17-year-olds. You have 6-year-olds with 8-year-olds. And I think you're right. Yeah, that's the idea behind it. And the thing that was attractive to me is that an 8-year-old can help a 5-year-old with math and they both kind of benefit from that. And the flip side of it is, hey, if your 8-year-old's not really that great at math,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Was wir jetzt als Homeschooling nennen, ist im Grunde nur, wie viele Menschen ihre Kinder historisch gebildet haben, vor der Erklärung von compulsory education laws, die in den USA im 19.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
They can do math with six-year-olds and it's not like they have to go sit in a classroom that's two grades behind them to get a little help that they need. The great thing about private schools is there's a zillion different teaching styles. There's military schools, there's classical education, you name it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Generally speaking, not a big shock to you or anyone else who's paid attention to what I've been saying here, but I just think free markets create better solutions to problems in the state, and I don't think schools are an exception to that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
So this is one of those stats that varies widely from one state to another. Private religious schools tend to be a lot cheaper, I assume because they get subsidies from... Wow, that is a big difference.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, the local evangelical Christian school around here is about 5,000 a year. Wow. The average cost of homeschooling varies from state to state, but in Arizona, the range I got was between $500 and 2,500 bucks per kid. So another advantage of homeschooling is it's cheap. I did this as an unemployed single dad for a year. People in the 75 to $100,000 range
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
income bracket are the most likely to homeschool, with the very poor being a close second. That's people making below $25,000 a year. And I think there's just this sweet spot of affluence where it makes more sense to homeschool than to send your kids to a private school.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
And then there's just a whole bunch of families who take the hit on a second income, have moms stay home, and that's what accounts for the lower end of it. It's also probably a function of a fact that the biggest state for homeschooling is Alaska, which famously is not a very affluent state.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's good to bring up because I think it's worth talking about what we mean by educated and how much formal education people really need or needed. My maternal grandfather was a farmer. He was an 8th grade dropout and he had a gigantic library of everything from Plato to Mark Twain. And I would say he's a lot more educated than even
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I don't think there's much of this going on, but there's maybe other forms of abuse and neglect. In any event, it doesn't strike me as a compelling reason to have An invasive bureaucracy for policing homeschooling. I'm reminded of the Mark Twain quote about censorship is the philosophy that a grown man shouldn't be able to eat steak because a baby can't chew it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Are we just going to make all of our laws about the absolute worst people that exist? The rest of us responsible people have to like suck it up. I think no. We actually have statistics about the overlap of abuse, neglect and homeschooling. And there's a really disturbing study with a really disturbing title called Child Torture as a Form of Child Abuse that addresses this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it is awful. The things I'll do for money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
There are some things I won't do even for money. The people who wrote this study got some pretty solid statistics on abuse and homeschooling. And people taking their kids out of government schools because teachers notice abuse that happens. It's pretty rare, but it does happen. There's a super sad case that you can read about if you have a strong stomach.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
A kid named Teddy Fultz Tedesco in Struthers, Ohio. Absolutely demonic levels of abuse. You can google it. I just wanted to say his name because I think that kid's life matters and I think people should know his story. And it's just Wow, 1717. Das ist so traurig. Yeah, so I hate CPS agencies with the white hot passion of a thousand burning suns and stuff like this is a big reason why.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
17 complaints, by the way, from like mandated reporters.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, not the rando down the street teachers. Any competent agency would have taken this kid out of that home long before his mom's boyfriend beat him to death in front of his little brothers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Es ist. Ich habe das von der Koalition für verantwortliche Homeschooling. Sie tun wirklich gute Arbeit, in der Dokumentierung von Kindesabsturz in Homeschool-Häusern auf ihrer Webseite Homeschooling's Invisible Children. Sie studieren speziell diesen Phänomen. Oh mein Gott.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
So these parents are saying they're homeschooling their children, but it's what, a cover to abuse their kids away from mandated reporters like teachers and other authorities? Is that what's going on?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I also hate that, and it gets worse. The median age of death for those 211 kids? 10 years old. Oh my god, those poor kids. Yeah, it's completely and utterly disgusting, but... Das sind 400 Kinder aus 6 Millionen oder was auch immer es ist. Lass uns das Nummer in die Hälfte schneiden. Lass uns es 3 Millionen machen, weil wir nicht wirklich sicher sind, was die Zahlen sind. Post-Covid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Das ist ungefähr 0,01 Prozent aller Homeschool-Kinder. Das ist ein absoluter Outlier.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, absolut. The question is, is government oversight of homeschooling gonna save those kids? Again, Teddy Fultz Tedesco, that's his name, google it. 17, 17 CPS-Complaints while he was still in school. And he's dead.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
You have to balance the rights of the 99.99% of homeschooling parents who are not beating their kids and then taking them out of school when somebody notices with the safety of those 400 kids who, like again, like... 17 Berichte. Und sie haben nichts gemacht.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I don't see a compelling argument for erecting this invasive apparatus around homeschooling because a tiny minority of people are beating their kids up and then using homeschool.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I don't see a compelling reason for erecting this invasive apparatus around homeschooling because some tiny minority of people are gaming the system to take their kids out of school so they can beat them without the prying eyes of mandated reporters. Und wiederum, verabschieden Kinder ist gegen die Regeln. Wir haben bereits Regeln gegen das.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Es ist nicht so, als wäre es plötzlich legal, weil man sie heimschulen würde.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, as of 2016, which, yeah, is almost 10 years ago. I know. Ouch. Another reminder of how time flies and I'm just old now. Right in the feels. Right in the feels. 80% of homeschooled parents don't trust the safety of the school environment, which I think is a valid concern. 61% don't like the level of educational rigor. I also think that's a valid concern. 67% do it for moral reasons.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
51% for religious reasons. I'm not really sure what the difference is there, but whatever. 39% want a non-traditional approach to schooling. That's probably where I would fall in. The environmental concern that I talked about at the beginning, where they don't trust the safety of the schools, that's way up from a 2007 poll, where only 21% of homeschooled parents were worried about
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
At the end of the day, I think parents should be in charge of their kids' education and that if it gets bad results, that sucks, but I still don't want the government stepping in and forcing kids to go to government school against their parents' wishes. But it would be a lot harder to defend if there were bad outcomes. But the outcomes for the most part are positive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
We find that the homeschool kids do better on tests of academic skills. The research doesn't control for things like parental income and parental involvement. So, that could be doing some work there, because I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that on average, homeschoolers are from more engaged households.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
We talked earlier about how the most likely income bracket is $75,000 to $100,000, and it's a lot easier to be engaged in your kids' education when you're not worried about affording the last tin of beans at Walmart or digging change out of the couch. Yeah, you don't have three jobs. Yeah. Ja, genau.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, which is totally fair. We've encountered many people who don't believe in dinosaurs. The phenomenon of homeschooling as we know it kicked off in the 70s, and this was thanks to a guy named John Holt. Holts philosophy was pretty hippy-dippy, and mostly he was opposed to what he considered to be the oppressive environment of traditional government schools.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Also ist es schwer zu sagen, ob die Kinder besser machen, weil sie nach Hause geholt haben oder weil die nach Hause geholt haben Kinder mehr engagierte Eltern haben.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
They're taking on an additional parenting responsibility. They're not just doing what everybody else does. That doesn't require greater engagement as a parent, but it does suggest that many homeschooled families will likely be more engaged. The correlation between engaged parents and good educational outcomes, that makes sense to me,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Auf der anderen Seite sehen wir sozial ein bisschen eine gemischte Tasche. Einige Studien sagen, dass Homeschooler sozial besser tun. Einige Studien sagen, dass sie das Gleiche tun. Einige Studien sagen, dass sie es schlimmer tun. Es ist nicht wirklich ein großer Schock, zu sagen, dass die mehr sozial involvierten Homeschooler-Studenten tendieren, sozial besser eingestellt zu werden.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Diese sind wie, ob du dein Kind in den Jugendliga-Soccer investierst. Boy Scouts und Kirchengruppen und Plätze, wo sie mit ihren Kindern sozialisieren können. Ich würde mir vorstellen, dass das auch für öffentliche Kinder geht. Kinder, die mehr sozialisieren, werden wahrscheinlich bessere soziale Fähigkeiten haben. Das ist nicht eine große Überraschung für mich.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
They are about 23% less likely to go to college homeschool kids, which I don't necessarily think that's a problem, especially when I hear that 74% of them Ja, genau.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Skilled teachers have a hard time teaching kids calculus or history or biology for that matter, let alone parents without any kind of formal training and education. I'd be curious to know about basic math skills versus math for engineering. Honestly, most people don't use anything beyond pre-algebra in their daily lives.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
So, I think knowledge is good for its own sake, but I don't really see a kid trying to get a degree in history as being held back a lot by the fact that he got a C- in trig.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
A recent study from Harvard found some pretty strong and profound advantages to homeschooling in terms of the overall quality of life. You're more likely to volunteer, you tend to be way more forgiving, and you're way less likely to be a drug addict if you were homeschooled. Und Homeschool-Kinder verdienen ca.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I suspect a lot of them are entrepreneurs. That's what I think. I think a lot of them are starting like Jersey Mike's or whatever. I know Jersey Mike's was started by like some kid. And I think a lot of them are like just whatever. Maybe they start a car detailing business when they're 16. Und es ist nicht so, als ob sie einen Zillionen-Dollar-Detail in Karten machen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
He didn't even call it homeschooling, he called it unschooling, which is a term that still gets used a lot by the people who have a more What specifically did this guy John Holt teach to would-be homeschoolers of his day?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Es ist einfach so, dass sie lernen, wie sie ein Geschäft runtern.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Another big thing that I think drives all this is you're just not exposed to the nonsense drama, which I'm sure helps with academics. It helps with social adjustments, quality of life in general, when you're not dealing with the blackboard jungle of government schools and kind of everything that goes along with it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I just think it's a lot easier for these kids to focus on learning and social adjustment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I think you just do a lot of research and make the call. Nobody's going to be able to make this decision about your kids better than you. I know people who started homeschooling with teenagers and I know people whose kids have never seen a single day inside of a government school. So don't think, oh, it's too late because my kid's 13 or whatever. Nobody knows your kids better than you do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
If your gut says it's not the right fit, it's probably not. On the other hand, if you get a strong sense that this is really the type of environment that my kid will thrive in, you're probably also correct.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Hey man, I said no comment on the teachers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Thanks for having me on as always. I'm definitely not here to tell everyone that homeschooling is the one solution to all your educational needs. It's definitely not, but it's one option. And I think people dismiss it too quickly as either too hard to do or this thing for total freaks. And it's not impossibly difficult and it's not for freaks, not exclusively anyway.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Like I said, we met our fair share of kids who really wanted to tell my son that dinosaurs weren't real.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Holt thought that government schools just didn't do a very good job of educating kids. And he thought this because he thought that the government schools crushed kids' spirits and curiosity and forced them to learn in this really rigid way that ignored their interest and curiosity. And he was very critical of the one-size-fits-all method of education in government schools.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, I slept literally through most of my classes in high school and nobody cared. Holt war nicht unbedingt ein Proponent für das Homeschooling deiner Kinder für ihre gesamte Bildung. Er dachte, die Eltern seien bei etwa acht Jahren alt und dann ging der Kind zu einer normalen Schule.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Aber er war immer noch sehr viel ein Proponent für die radikale Reform der gouvernementlichen Bildung, weil der Gründe, die ich gerade erwähnt habe. Back in the early days of the modern homeschooling movement in the 60s and the 70s, it was very common for parents to work with the school boards. Six states required homeschooling parents to have a teaching license.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
80er-Jahre ist, als der evangelistische christliche Bewegung sehr interessiert wurde, in der Homeschooling. Vorher, wie ich gesagt habe, war es eine Art liberaler Hippie-Ding, wo die Leute über die Wohlfahrt ihres Kindes und wie sie von den Regierungsschulen und wie sie Kinder beitragen. Die Frage war immer, ist das in der besten Interesse meines Kindes?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Und sobald die Evangelikalen involviert wurden, wurde es viel mehr so, dass sie meine Kinder in satanische Kommunisten bewerben.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Nein, nicht überhaupt. Ich bin ein praktizierter Katholiker. I'm not trying to smear Christians of any kind here. I'm just trying to give a lay of the land in admittedly broad brush, slightly exaggerated terms. But it is very much a fact that when the evangelicals showed up to the homeschooling movement, it changed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
So the more hippie parents wanted to work with the school systems and the new evangelical leadership was much more oppositional towards Ich war auch ein Hochschulvater. Und obwohl ich religiöse Glauben und ein Mann der Glauben bin, glaube ich, dass man sagen könnte, dass ich definitiv viel mehr in das Hippie-Verein-Kampfen auf das falle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
I'm generally in favor of more local control and less centralization, but I do also want absolutely zero regulations on homeschooling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
For the record, I believe in evolution, but I think that you and a lot of parents would be very surprised at how well they would do with homeschooling. I did homeschool my son for his kindergarten year. My divorce would have stopped at that. And anecdotally, with regard to how well did it work, I didn't have
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Wenn du gesagt hast, dass du dein Kind nach Hause schulen würdest, war ich eigentlich ganz überrascht.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Ich werde auch meine Karten auf die Tafel legen und sagen, dass ich nicht ein Fan von Regierungsschulen bin, wie ich stöbern öffentliche Schulen bezeichne. Das gesagt, möchte ich zwei Dinge zu diesem Ausdruck hinzufügen, bevor wir dazu kommen. Ich habe keine Ahnung, was für jemanden am besten ist, aber ich und mein Kind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Wenn Sie Regierungsschulen oder was für Ihren Kind am besten ist, ist das Ihr Geschäft. Es ist nicht mein. Ich habe keine Meinung darüber, wie Sie Ihre Kinder erwerben, außer dass Sie sie in irgendeiner Art und Weise nicht verletzen. Zweitens, ich denke, dass verschiedene Kinder am besten in verschiedenen Umgebungen lernen. Nicht jedes Kind ist das gleiche.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Das ist der große Kritik von Regierungsschulen, dass es ein Ein-in-ein-Fitz-All ist. Und ich präsentiere hier kein alternatives Ein-in-ein-Fitz-All. Ich akzeptiere vollständig, dass es Kinder gibt, die wahrscheinlich am besten lernen in...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, gib uns die I hate public schools rant early on, because you are a pretty reasonable guy for an unhinged anarchist, gun nut, desert dwelling conspiracy theorist. There's a few things going on with government school that I think deserve highlighting. One is you just have a completely unreasonable amount of kids in the room. You said you couldn't deal with two. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
How are you going to deal with 25, 30 kids? That's how many kids there are on average in my kids' school. And I don't think that's
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, das Nächste ist, und das ist meistens für jüngere Kinder, aber du hast es angesprochen, ich denke, es ist eine völlig unverantwortliche Erwartung, dass ein siebenjähriger Junge, ich habe einen siebenjährigen, fünfjährigen Jungen, was auch immer, einen jungen Jungen, besonders einen Jungen. sit still and pay attention for seven hours a day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
When I homeschooled, we did Charlotte Mason method, and the Charlotte Mason method, one of its key features is that it expects total attention for age-appropriate times. So in his case, that was 10 to 15 minutes. And during that 10 to 15 minutes, he could fiddle around with Legos or fidget spinners or whatever, because if I'm making him sit still, all of his attention is going to go towards
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
sit still when he got sent home his first week of government school with a coloring project that was just about sitting still i was absolutely horrified
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I'm not a fan of what's called the German industrial style of education, which is what government schools in America for the most part are based on. Sit in chair, listen to teacher. It's not designed to create intelligent, curious, thoughtful people. It's designed to create factory workers and it runs on farm time. Und das war Holtz' Kritik, der Kern davon.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
Und es ist die Kritik vieler von den Eltern der Hochschulen, die ich kenne. Es ist nicht so, oh, meine Kinder werden über Dinosaurier lernen. Es ist so, dass mein 7-Jähriger nicht in einem Sitz für 7 Stunden am Tag sitzen wird.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
So there's also the way that No Child Left Behind has affected teaching. This is a Bush-era program where they tied educational funding to educational achievement, and the educational achievement was measured by standardized tests. So now they're just teaching to the standardized tests these kids have to take because that's where the funding comes from.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1119: Home Schooling | Skeptical Sunday
So as an example of how this plays out in the real world, I go to my first parent teacher meeting and they tell me that my son has trouble reading and that they're worried that he has dyslexia. And I'm like, Ja. Währenddessen habe ich ihn zu Hause mit den Narnia-Büchern und den letzten Kindern auf der Erde gelesen, das ist wie ein Zombie-Buch für Kinder, die 10 Jahre alt sind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
You know what you won't have to sexually extort a child in order to afford?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Ich meine, das klingt wie ein typischer Tag in 1995. Ja, du hast recht. Ja, es ist schrecklich. Also, das ist einer dieser Dinge, die Leute denken, dass ich verrückt bin, wenn ich sage, dass es niemals ein sicherer Zeitpunkt war, ein Kind zu sein. Vielleicht gibt es Leute da draußen, die sich erkennt, dass das wahr ist. Aber die meisten Leute...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Kids can't play outside anymore because it's too dangerous or whatever else. There's literally never been a safer time to be a child. Fact. This is not a matter of opinion. This is a stone cold fact. There is mountains of data. There has never been a safer time to be a kid. Johnny Gosch, Adam Walsh, these kids' disappearances and deaths
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
completely changed the culture around child abduction in this country.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Seine ganze Karriere basiert auf dem Fakt, dass sein Sohn getötet wurde. Er war jung. Er war in meiner Kindheit. Ja, aber Adam Walsh und Johnny Gosch, und es gibt einen dritten, den ich nicht erinnere. Es gibt drei, die sich immer zusammengebracht haben. Sie haben komplett alles verändert, wie wir als Gesellschaft, zumindest in Amerika, respond to child abduction. The stats on this are wild.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Kids literally used to just get snatched out of the mall, out of the park. Hey, little girl, help me find my dog, that kind of stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and in the older child abduction cases from the battle days, most of those kids were murdered. I'm not trying to be gross or grim, but You can sell a baby, somebody will buy it, but a kid is a witness. A kid is not a commodity, it's a witness.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
And if you're abducting a kid, it's also so weird, because I just watched this thing last night about, there was always like, oh, I'm eight years old and apparently I was kidnapped. And I don't remember it. No one's kidnapping eight-year-olds for illegal trafficking. Not in the West, not in the first world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
So if you're abducting a kid off the street from a playground, wherever, like you're abducting some strange kid, you're not doing that for wholesome purposes. You are absolutely getting rid of the only witness when you're done doing whatever it is that you're doing to them. It's why Adam Wohlstein, almost certainly. I don't know that they ever figured out who got him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
That's what you do with a kid when you're done with some kid that you grab. Yeah, it's gross, but like, that's it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and so the thing is too, this is so absurdly rare these days. Like almost all child abductions now are non-custodial parents. Almost all of them. Kids do not just get grabbed off playgrounds anymore. It is a man bites dog story when they do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
And I don't even think most, well, good luck as somebody who is divorced and has a kid. Yeah, good luck being a single man taking a kid out of the country without a notarized paper saying that you're allowed to do it. And also there's things like the hate convention on child abduction. You just, you can't do that. You're not gonna grab a kid and take it to France and get away with it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Interpol's gonna grab you, they're gonna send the kid back. Zero evidence here, just a hunch. I think that in almost all of these dad took the kid across state lines or whatever, dad kidnapped the kid or mom kidnapped the kid or whatever it is, I think that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Wahrscheinlich ist die überwältigende Mehrheit von diesen Mischungskommunikationen oder die Eltern hatten einen informellen Vertrag und eine Partei hat sich an die andere Partei gefreut und sie haben sich entschieden, die Polizisten gegen die andere Eltern zu weppen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, so coming back to the topic at hand. So it's never been safer to be a kid. What's with the child sextortion thing? So the giant screaming asterisk next to the statement, there's never been a safer time to be a child, is the caveat that you have to be extremely careful about what your kids are doing online. The data on this is also very one-sided and clear.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Children are safer than they have ever been, unless... You include the things that can happen to them on the Internet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
But on the Internet, it's a whole other ballgame. And I'm aware that one factor in making the world safer is the helicopter parenting. If you're always hovering over your kid, no one's going to take them. There used to be ads on television at 10 o'clock reminding parents that they had children. Ha! Es ist 10 Uhr.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Das ist lustig. Between the hours of 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Any given day. That's true. No idea where I was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. No, me and my friends walked three towns away sharing a single pack of cigarettes like we were passing around a joint like, you know, walking train tracks and dodging trains and whatever else. It was a magical time to be alive. A miracle that we're still here. It really is. We've been 30 since we were 12 years old. That's right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
The cliche is that you had to be home when the streetlights were on or whatever. I just basically came and went as I pleased. I got into a lot of trouble and a lot of extremely inappropriate sex and drug shenanigans at a very young age. And like, why do kids not do that anymore? Because when younger boomers and Gen Xers had kids, they were like, my kid's not just going to roam the streets.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
wie ein Test-Guinny-Pig für ein neues Weid für ein Highschool-Kind. Ich werde wissen, wo sie sind. Also denke ich, dass wir vielleicht ein bisschen zu weit in die andere Richtung gegangen sind mit dem Helikopter-Parenting. Und ich bin wahrscheinlich schuldig dafür. Aber das Helikopter-Parenting ist einer der vielen Faktoren, warum Kinder sicherer sind. Du siehst sie, je sicherer sie sind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
One of the biggest is just awareness, lack of tolerance for child danger. I always make the joke that the phrase, you know, a kid might get hurt, is like basically how you get any law passed in this country. We have completely bubble-wrapped the world, for better or for worse. I think probably both, upside and downside to both of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
More than that, though, it's just the awareness that I talked about. Kids get told to avoid strangers, which is kind of stupid, because they're more likely to get abused by a teacher, a parent, a family friend, a priest, trust an adult, like my church had a whole thing about don't get molested by a priest and I wanted my kid to go to that because I wanted him to get it from like
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Die Kirche, nicht für moralische Gründe, weil ich es im Kontext des Priesterabsturzes wollte.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Ich glaube, ich sollte nicht sein. Ja, es ist ein Gerichtsmandat. Sie machen es nicht, weil sie gute Leute sind. Sie machen es, weil die Gerichtsmannschaft sie gemacht hat. Das ist Teil ihres riesigen Verhältnisses. Aber deine Kinder sind mehr möglich, von einem öffentlichen Lehrern verletzt zu werden, was ich sage, dass niemand glaubt, aber absolut wahr ist.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Dann gibt es andere Dinge wie Code Adam, ein Programm von Walmart und Old Navy, wo wenn ein Kind verloren ist, haben sie den ganzen Laden auf Lockdown gelegt, bis sie ihn finden.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Everybody knows it. And they're just like, stay away from him. No one calls the cops, nothing. They're just like, yeah, Mr. Johnson, he likes the Dutch kids. Stay away from him. Now he's on the registry, but back then, the registry was like, your parents told you, don't talk to this guy. Yeah, kids are usually safe at school or church in a way that they just weren't in the 1980s.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I think it's difficult to say, honestly. Do I think that there were 80,000 attempts to entice a child that stalled out because they picked the wrong kid? Yeah, I believe that. That sounds credible to me. Do I think that the people... Ja, genau.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Ja, und auch, Alter, so viele Mädchen, mit denen ich Freunde habe und Mädchen, mit denen ich verabredet habe, waren so, oh Mann, als ich 13 war auf AOL, hatte ich einen 50-jährigen Mann auf mich, und ich habe ihn einfach mitgebracht, weil ich dachte, es wäre lustig, aber es war wirklich schrecklich und verdammt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Also ja, das passt für mich, aber das ist das Ding, 80.000, die einzige Grund, warum diese 80.000 sind, wer kümmert sich, ob die Kinder es aus der Proportion ausgelöst haben, ist, weil nichts passiert ist. Der Kind war satt genug, um zu wissen, ja, okay, I'm gonna mess around with Grandpa here for like 20 minutes and then I'm gonna get bored and I'm gonna go watch something on YouTube.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
But eventually they're gonna find a kid. Yeah, that's scary. One survey showed 40% of kids surveyed said that they thought someone had attempted to groom them online at some point. That's one where I feel like, yeah, we're maybe, kids maybe being a little dramatic there, but...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
The only reason I'm able to say that is because the kid's smart enough to not get sucked in by their clumsy attempt at grooming them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, but the thing is, from a parent's point of view, there's no downside to treating these kids' perceptions as real. Your kids do not need to be talking to or interacting with adults online.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Es gibt einen Fall, in dem Stranger Danger mit negativen Auswirkungen kommt. Aber in Bezug auf das Internet und Online, denke ich einfach nicht, dass es irgendein Szenario gibt, in dem deine Kinder zu vorsichtig sind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
There was this lost 11-year-old boy scout who evaded his rescuers because he thought they were trying to kidnap him. Okay. It's an extreme example, but it's there. The bigger issue is safety in general, where parents are arrested because their 8-year-olds are at the park without supervision.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, I've gotten those. They're freaky.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
We can link to it in the show notes. And in fact, I texted you that story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Parents have been arrested for letting their children play outside. Other parents have been investigated by Child Protective Services. I'm giving my finger to the microphone right now. Noted, okay. If we're letting children play in their yard, you know, again, like, read the show notes, if you don't believe me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
America has gone insane when it comes to child safety, because child abduction, true child abduction, is extremely rare. Most missing kids are runaways, which isn't like, oh, well, yeah, let them go. It's just like, they ran away.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Maybe because they're involved in drugs, maybe because they're involved in other crimes, maybe because they have abusive homes, maybe because they're just tempestuous little shits. They weren't snatched by the Oakland County Child Killer. Exactly. People focus on all of this stuff like, oh yeah, it's 1974 and my kid's gonna get grabbed out of the playground by a man in a trench coat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Und sie sind einfach verblüfft von den sehr echten Gefahren, dass sie ihren Kindern ein Gerät geben, das sie mit einem Algorithmus befindet, das sie wissenschaftlich ausgestattet hat, um ihre größten Geheimnisse und Angst zu verursachen. while simultaneously giving perverts access to their daily lives.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Correct. But the good news is that they're almost certainly not spying on you. And you can just absolutely ignore these emails and go on about your life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I was super shocked to find out that kids as young as nine report flirting with total strangers on the internet. And I was curious about the opposite sex at the age of nine, but I did not have Internet access.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
1 in 3 Minors sagen, dass sie einige ihrer fremdesten Freunde online kennengelernt haben und 1 in 7 sagen, dass sie etwas einem Online-Freund gesagt haben, das sie noch nie jemand anderes gesagt haben.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, absolutely. Which is a great way to start talking about the model of a predator and what they're going to do. So first they're going to set up a profile. It'll be a boy profile to target boys. Let's talk about... Ich weiß nicht, wie du das nennst, aber ich glaube dir. Ich habe das ständig in meinem Zuwanderer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Also, du hast dieses Profil auf TikTok oder was auch immer es ist, das ein Kind benutzt. Und du fischst einfach an. Und es ist sehr normal, dass Tötungen eine Art haben. Aber sie können auch nicht nur Tötungen sein, in denen sie suchen, dass ein Kind persönlich verabschiedet wird. Sie könnten Gründer sein, die versuchen, Kinder für finanzielle Gewinn zu verabschieden.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Es gibt mehr dazu, aber der Hauptpunkt ist, dass nein, diese Person hat keine Fotos von dir, wenn du Sex hast, dein Haar schlägst, Screencaps von was auch immer du auf Pornhub siehst, um 3 Uhr, nach einer Nacht am Bar. Absolut das Beste, was du tun kannst, ist, die E-Mail komplett zu ignorieren.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
You want to set up an account that's attractive to the kid. And you do a little social engineering and you look into what their interests are. And kids are so notoriously bad about blasting out where they go, things they like doing, interests. was für Mädchen sie lieben, was auch immer. Es gibt keinen Filter auf diese Kinder.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Sie haben all diese Details geblasen und das macht es sehr einfach für den Predator, nicht zu sagen, oh, Bobby kommt aus der Schule um 2 Uhr und er kommt hierher und ich werde ihn einfach holen. Oh, Bobby ist in The Legend of Zelda. Und wenn ich genug mit ihm über The Legend of Zelda spreche, werde ich seinen Vertrauen verdienen und ich werde relatable sein.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
How do you have a naked picture of a 14-year-old girl in this scenario? I don't maybe want to know the answer to that. So it could be a picture of a grown up. It could be some gross and illegal picture that they picked up somewhere else. B.A.I. could be a lot of different things. From there, it's basically the same old I'll show you mine if you show me yours kind of thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Teenagers and adolescent boys are pretty notoriously ruled by their hormones. And so getting them with a couple of nudie photos, probably not the hardest thing in the world to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I was fortunate in that I was like, I like girls, man, but I was just, I had zero confidence that any girl was ever going to be into me, which I look back and I like look at pictures of myself when I was 15. I was like, damn, kid, you were money. What were you thinking? But I was just like, eh, girls are never going to like me. I'm into like hardcore records and skateboards and being angry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. I don't know that I would have fallen for this because I would have just been like, eh, girls like boring.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's fishing a barrel with a boy. Everybody listening knows what we're talking about here. Boys are fishing a barrel with the new epics. And the girls is probably going to use foreign finesse, emotional attachment, manipulation. But with a boy, I can see, hey, here's some boobs. Now show me your wiener. Right. Okay. And then think about it from the kid's perspective.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Like a picture of you in your underwear could be mortifying to you as a teenager.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
The kid, he sends a picture of himself in his boxes or whatever. There's no turning back after that. Like everything is going to go back to what the predator wants. Maybe they want money. Maybe they want more incriminating pictures of the kid so that they can take the kid further down the road of sexual abuse and exploitation. Meet up with me and I'll delete these pictures or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Wenn du müde bist und so enttäuscht bist, hat die FBI einen Spot auf ihrem Website, wo du sie berichten kannst. Oh ja. Yeah, right. The FBI are about as useless as tits on a bull, unless you took an unsupervised tour of the Capitol Rotunda on January 6, 2021, or you're a 14-year-old being edgy in a Discord channel. They're not going to do anything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
He's not going to do that. The point is, once they have something that the kid doesn't want people seeing, it's over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I would wager that the chances are pretty small, though not entirely non-existent, but probably not too much more than non-existent. But perception is reality. If the kid thinks that the perp is going to send their shirtless or naked or... Whatever, picture out to the school.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
That's all the predator needs, because it's the fear of what might happen that's going to motivate the actions of the part of the victim. And that's true of adults as well as kids. The difference is that the adults are way more likely to be like, yo, go away, I'm not going to call the cops. The kids are terrified. They don't want to bring their parents into it. And that's the whole point.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
You are freaking out all the parents listening to this show right now. Gut, sie sollten überrascht werden. Ich würde lieber, dass jeder Vater, der zu diesem Episode gehört, überrascht wird, als dass ein einziger ihrer Kinder zu einem dieser Art von Schäden verurteilt wird. Vor allem, weil, wie du weißt, das ist nicht so etwas wie zerstöre deinen Internet-Router und bürge deinen MacBook.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Das ist nicht die Lösung zu diesem Problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I think the main thing is people need to be very clear with their kids about safety on the internet. And I'm sure that you're going to get a lot of eye rolls and, oh, God, Mom, whatever. I'm not going to get exploited online. I remember being a teenager very well. I have no idea. My kid is seven years old. I'm still in my...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, this is a rabbit hole that if you get down it deep enough, they'll be blackmailing the kids to cut themselves on video. They'll be blackmailing the kids to starve themselves. There was one where they were blackmailing the kids to take estradiol. It's just gross.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I have a friend who runs a soup kitchen in Connecticut, and he gets a lot of people who have to do court-mandated public service, and he gets...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
dass die konsistente Theme ist, dass das, was sie genossen hat, ein Kind schmerzt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Terrible. So yes, it's so gross, it's so dangerous. Which doesn't mean you have to burn every digital bridge in your house, but like, treat it like parents treated a public park in 1987 after Johnny Goshen and Walsh. You gotta be mindful, you gotta be careful, you gotta communicate with your kids, you gotta tell your kids to have some stranger danger on the internet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
What you need to communicate to them in the same conversation is that if they ever get into any kind of trouble online, that you are going to be there for them and that you are going to support them and that no, they're not going to be in trouble because some creepy weirdo coerced them or tricked them into sending dirty pictures of themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
You need to be very, very, very, very, very clear with them about that. If you think that this is happening to you, this is like you go to a party with your friends and the kid who drove you got drunk. Or you got drunk and you were driving. Call me. I'll come pick you up. That same type of conversation where it's like, think of it that way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Your 16 year old drives his friends to a party and gets drunk. Ja. Ja. That's the thing that you need to communicate to them. I would also communicate to them, the creepy weirdo could be another kid. Because kids sexually abuse other kids. Kids manipulate, blackmail, sexually abuse other kids. And that's a thing that doesn't quite get enough attention.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not really sure what you can do other than get out in front of it and communicate to them that the door is open, you don't blame them, you're there to help them, that sort of thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and kids have a very poor sense of life's very real dangers. I would maybe also mention, if you don't want to talk to me about it, talk to a teacher, counselor, all that kind of stuff. I don't mean it as an afterthought, but the kids think probably correctly that you're going to get roped into it, even if they tell their pastor or their teacher or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
But whatever, they need to talk to somebody about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I was pretty... report that the threats get worse with greater compliance. 82% are too scared to see Gelb. And that's, I think, where you can really make the difference, I think.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
said what is euphemistically called self-generated child sexual abuse material, but which, you know, is a 50 cent word for nude selfies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Don't worry, it'll be back down to 20 grand by the time this podcast comes out. Good, I'm gonna buy more. Jim Cramer said it's going to the moon, everybody, it's over. Ultimately, though, these scammers, they're just playing a numbers game.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's only 6%, but yeah, I agree, that's nuts. 25% of the respondents of the survey viewed it as normal behavior. That includes kids age 9 to 17, so who knows what the bell curve on that is. But as you say, it's normalized. And I'm not going to tell parents that, oh, just throw your hands up, the world's going to hell and you can't do anything about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
It's going to send their nudie pictures to half the school and it's just what the kids are doing these days. I think that's just untrue. I think parents have tons of influence over their kids, but Gute Kinder machen Fehler. Und sogar, Quote, Quote, schlechte Kinder müssen nicht getargetet und verletzt werden von Älteren, weil sie einen Fehler gemacht haben oder 100 oder 10.000.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
But yeah, I completely agree. And if you're a grown up, the weird Russian hacker does not have any pictures of whatever it is you do when you're alone.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
If you send out an email saying, hey man, I have a video of you beating your meat, send me $10,000, or I'm sending it to everyone you work with, to 10 million people, and .01% of them respond, that's 1,000 people, and you just made a cool 10 million bucks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I am a degenerate crypto gambler and if there's one thing that I know how to do, it's multiply by factors of 10.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Oh mein Gott, ich würde meine Kinder in die Slaverie für das Level der Konversion verkaufen. So, I really doubt these guys are converting even at .01% with their weird, malformed, broken English. But drop a couple zeros off the end of that 10 million, it's still a good paycheck for a day's work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Untertitelung des ZDF für funk, 2017 It's not terribly sophisticated or even much of a problem, except for the rare people who send them money. Weirdly, no one is really concerned with this type of sextortion. No one really seems to care.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I think there's a couple pretty obvious reasons why, and that's the people who fall for this scam, this type of sextortion scam, they're not real eager to go report the crime because... They maybe figured out that they got scammed and as a guy who has been scammed. Wait, did you pay us extortionist? No, I sent Russian dudes like 10 grand for cryptocurrency miners.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that must have stung a little bit. It does. And I think it's worth taking some time to talk a little bit about how I felt afterward. It is so not about the money. Losing the money sucks. Don't get me wrong. $10,000 is $10,000. But it's so humiliating. You feel like some idiot boomer. I was so mad at myself for being so stupid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
And I was honestly more mad at myself that I wasn't the scammers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I hate talking about this, so we can totally just move on now. But this was six months ago, and it still chaps my buns to think about it. Yeah, that makes sense. I get the idea of not bothering to report something because it seems so futile. What's the point? And the other thing is, if they get the victims once, there's a good chance they're going to get the victims again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
I guess they don't generally ask for a ton of money. It's probably something negligible, say 100 bucks, 500 bucks. But the thing with blackmail is, though, you can just keep going back to that as many times as you want. Why is someone who's blackmailing you going to be honest with you about stopping blackmailing you once they have your 500 or your 100 bucks or whatever it is?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
So how can people be safe when it comes to sextortion scam emails? Don't send them money. Don't click links. This is like basic Internet hygiene. At the end of the day, this is just a phishing attack. They're just phishing. I'd wager that most of the people who get got by this are the ones who click links saying like, hey, I put your nude pictures here, come check it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
The scammers are absolutely counting on there being a non-trivial number of people who just cannot resist clicking links. die sagen, hey Mann, deine Nudes sind hier. Sie wissen, dass es einen bestimmten Art von Person gibt, der diesen Link klicken muss, der sich nicht helfen kann.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
You should keep up to date on cyber security and scams in general because guess what? If you're in the age demographic for this show, you are growing into an old and out of touch person who has no idea how technology works and you are a prime target for a scam.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, Krebs is a good site. They tend to veer away from the total batshit insanity and paranoia, which that's not productive or helpful either.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
You have to be mindful. For example, there's a new addition to these phishing emails, extortion scams, where they send pictures of your house.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's the most generic low-res photo of the outside of your house that's on Zillow. Yes, exactly. How many times does the exterior of your house appear on the internet for anyone who has your address to find? Which is a really good segue into the question that I'm sure a lot of people who get these have, which is like, how do they know who I am? How do they know my name?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
A lot of times they might have your address in it or like your phone number, your email, something like that. So... Wie haben sie das? Yeah, they're just buying data files off of, you know, dark, shadowy corners of the internet where people traffic in personal data. Your name and email, probably your address, maybe your social security number, your credit card numbers, they may be in there too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
What's not in the file of data that they bought off the dark web about you? Yeah, anything remotely incriminating at all? Absolutely correct. This is not how blackmailers work. Blackmailers show you the proof they have something they're gonna blackmail you with.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
They don't say, hey man, I got naked pictures of you and here's the proof, it's your front door and the last four digits of your phone number.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I got the Google Maps car to take a picture of your front door driving by and I got the last four digits of your phone number and, you know, your first pet's name, dude, and that means I have pictures of your wang. You've seen spy movies. There's a scene where the KGB agent hands over the Manila envelope mit der Beweise.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1128: Sextortion | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, that's a good question. And I've got a really big reveal for you that you weren't aware of when you sent me out to research this for you. Lay it on us, Chief. People are freaking out about this because there's a variant of this extortion scheme that is not a glorified phishing scam. It's a means to sexually exploit children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Anecdotally, I've lived abroad and traveled a fair bit. And it's definitely a thing that you notice in the United States and beyond. America is factually and verifiably the 13th fattest country on Earth. That's it. We got to get those numbers up. I'm going to pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket. USA. Yes, exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
What you find with paleo is that people lower their bad cholesterol and raise their good cholesterol. That's good. They lower the levels of triglycerides in their body. That's good. They eat way less trans fats and seed oils. That's good. Trans fats and triglycerides are pretty conclusively bad for you. Seed oils, there's some controversy about this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I'm very firmly in the camp of people who think seed oils are bad for you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's not so much that, though I think that's like not a bad place to start thinking about it. A lot of the stuff is used in industrial processing originally, which again is so what? That doesn't make it bad for you. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of not a bad place to enter that. Vice President J.D. Vance will not eat seed oils and neither will I. My girlfriend is Jewish.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
She picked up a thing of vegetable oil to cook with. And I told her I was as opposed to this as she would be if I brought lard into our house. So what did she do? Did she respond well to that? She put it back and got coconut oil just to like explain to her, do not bring this home. There's a lot of stuff I think is gross, but like seed oils, like, no, do not bring seed oils into our home.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Look, that may be it, but I'm always skeptical when the basis for something is like, it's not natural. We haven't evolved to eat this. It's like, this is ridiculous. The problem with seed oils, as I understand it, is that there are endocrine disruptors, at least when they're heated, which means it messes up your hormonal system. And do I think that's like the thing that makes Americans so fat?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
No, but I don't think it's helping at all. And I think it's probably got a lot of long-term health consequences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I'm not on any fad diets, but I am pretty mindful about what I eat, and seed oils are like a no. Absolutely not. I paid $13 for a jar of mayonnaise. I will not eat seed oils.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I'm a poor Arizona redneck who just is committed to like, I'm not eating cancer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
All right. So back to the paleo thing. Yeah, congratulations. Paleo is healthier than the standard American diet because it's eliminated all of the stuff that's bad about the American diet. You basically have eliminated all... refined sugar, all refined carbs, all processed meat, you cut out processed foods, added sugars, and the empty calories that come with them, you're going to lose weight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
You're going to lose fat. And losing fat is what most people actually want to do when they say they want to quote unquote lose weight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's better than low-fat diets for short-term weight loss, but so is basically everything. It reduced all-cause mortality, resulted in lower oxidative stress, it decreased mortality from heart disease and cancer, but so did the Mediterranean diet. And again, this is all in comparison to the standard American diet,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Anytime I say it lowers something or it improves something, the bar of comparison is the standard American diet, which sucks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, the bar is on the ground at this point.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
You're missing... Missing out on some nutrients that are pretty readily available in legumes and beans, which they don't eat. Fiber consumption tends to be low. I think the main issue, though, is that it's not a sustainable way to eat. You may know some guy who's been doing paleo for 30 years and he's ripped to shreds and he feels amazing, but he's the exception.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Most people are just not going to stick to these kinds of super restrictive diet. What about keto, which up until recently I thought was the same thing as paleo? I think keto is probably more sustainable because it's less restrictive. But yeah, it's really similar. Can we define keto? Because I realize now I'm using terms people might not have heard of. Keto is just down to macros.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
That's all keto really is. It's like a super low carb if it fits your macro diet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, macro is this kind of bodybuilder slang for macronutrients that's bubbled over into diet culture in general. But basically, it's the amount of protein, carbs, and fat. These are the macronutrients you're aiming to get every day. And it's opposed to micronutrients, which are things like vitamin C or riboflavin, which your cereal is always saying it's full of.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So in a lot of ways, keto is just this really extreme form of low carb if it fits your macro type of dieting. You run your macros, you're paying super close attention to your carbs and keeping them really low.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
One thing that's just totally missing from our society today is the concept of moderation. So people hear stuff like, too many carbs are bad for you. And they respond with, cool, I'll just never eat carbs again. And that's what keto is. You're supposed to stay under 50 grams of carbs a day. Ideally, you want to get it closer to 20. A frigging banana has 27 grams of carbs in it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Are you telling me that you think eating a banana is bad for you?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, right. America is not fat because we're eating too many bananas. And keto is one of these places where you start seeing some kind of semi-serious concerns about people's health.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Beyond the nutrient deficiency issue, if you're never eating carbs in any significant amount, you're not getting any fiber, you're not eating fruit, you're not eating vegetables, you're looking at liver problems from all the fat, kidney problems, again, because of the massive amounts of protein, can impair brain function because, big shock, your brain is going to work best when you eat carbs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, they lose weight. You lose weight on keto for two reasons. First is that, again, basically all these diets that we're talking about cut the crap from the standard American diet out. And by doing so, they dramatically reduce caloric intake by hundreds, maybe even a thousand calories a day. And yeah, eating fewer calories means you lose weight. This is not rocket science.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
And the other reason is we talked about earlier, like satiation, protein makes you feel full for longer. carbs do not make you feel full for very long. So if you're living on a diet that's super high in protein, you will always feel full. You eat even less because of that. And your options for snacking on keto are like nonexistent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Godspeed to your friend crossing Antarctica on foot is about my biggest nightmare this side of going into space. I think honestly, those types of snacks are probably great for him. But go back to the sustainability issue. Are you the semi average person listening to the show? Are you really going to eat like this for the rest of your life?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Like when you take the fat off that you were trying to lose, what do you plan on eating?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So the issue isn't eating carbs. I think most Americans and even the more enlightened Americans who listen to your show could probably stand to cut their carb intake or at least eat their carbs more purposefully and mindfully rather than housing an entire bag of Doritos in a single sitting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Doritos aren't vegan, but you're not far off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's such a difficult thing to talk about, but we could do a whole episode on veganism. In a sense, it's about ethical consumption and taking care of the environment, but also, Skittles aren't vegan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, celiac is definitely a real thing. I knew a girl in college who had celiac and she would just get destroyed by the smallest amount of gluten. There's something called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but it's a new area of study and I'm a little skeptical of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's this weirdly unfalsifiable thing where the only metric we have to measure it is, oh, I feel off when I eat gluten. And sure, I'm certain that out there somewhere there are people this is true of. And I'm equally certain that 90% of the people who are talking about how they're gluten sensitive are actually suffering from some kind of eating disorder like orthorexia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
or hypochondriacs, or have some other kind of undiagnosed OCD expression. What's orthorexia? I don't think I've heard that word before. Orthorexia is an eating disorder where you think certain foods are clean and others are not, and you order all your eating around these concepts. I believe it is a form of OCD. I suspect a lot of people on these fad diets have orthorexia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
at least the people who are doing them long term. So I'm always skeptical when some sort of vague, nonspecific, unfalsifiable new thing comes out like gluten sensitivity. Come on, man, you have a hard time digesting bread. It's like the main staple crop of the civilized world for the last several thousand years. Yeah, I'm skeptical of this claim.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about, oh, I feel bloated after I went ham on the free breadsticks at Olive Garden. Yeah, no kidding, dude. Of course you do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's another term that I just think, what the hell do we even mean by this? Is this a medical term or is this some kind of woo that people use that means I feel a little sick after I ate an entire can of cold refried beans at three in the morning?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, Americans in general are not real great at moderation. So we hear that eating McDonald's seven days a week is bad for you. And then we want to switch to a diet where it's only like drinking spinach shakes and eating cantaloupe or something. There are just so few voices in America saying, how about you eat sensibly? And those voices are very quiet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
No, I work in marketing and like... This like, whoa, the one weird trick, whatever. That is the essence of marketing. Whether you know it or not, you're being marketed to every time you hear, lose 30 pounds with this one weird trick.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Inflammation is one of those terms that it's misused. Inflammation means any kind of reaction that your body has to an infection. So when you puke or you get diarrhea when you're sick or you run a fever, that's all inflammation. It's your body trying to fight off infection.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
There's some connection to food because if you eat things you're allergic to or straight up poison, yeah, your body's going to react to them. But for the most part, for most people, and again, please note that I'm speaking in very broad terms and don't comment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
about how wrong I am because you have celiac or you're lactose intolerant or whatever, but most people do not have issues with inflammations to specific foods. Or at least there's no scientific evidence that they do. Maybe they do, but the evidence just isn't there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, not so much where I live, where people's idea of a salad is a potato salad, slathered in mayo. But I spent a lot of years in Portland and Los Angeles, and I exist in these kinds of extremely online circles where people are always into the next big thing. That's going to have you shedding 27 pounds in three weeks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I think, again, it's part of the inability to do moderation. The standard American diet is inflammatory, but that's like an entire lifestyle. It's not just a diet. You need to stop eating all these processed foods. You're not just going to cut out one or two things and stop the inflammation. And to be clear, the inflammation from the standard American diet does have actual effects.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
This is the genesis of all of these big health problems like heart disease, liver disease. But again, none of the diets we're talking about are these magic bullets for any of these bigger issues. It's just that replacing the standard American diet with any kind of mindful system of eating is going to be a massive improvement.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Congratulations, because if your liver made it back from Tbilisi or wherever you were, you're detoxing as we speak.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
not if you have a functioning liver and kidneys.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, that's a relief, I suppose. Yeah, this is one of those things that sounds so obvious and profound and true to people who don't really understand how human biology works. You're exposed to a lot of toxins on a daily basis. No, you don't need to go on a special diet or take some kind of special potion or supplement to get rid of them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, please do not write in about how you worked in a coal mine for 30 years and needed to detox. This is not what we're talking about. You have a functioning liver and kidneys. This is literally their job is to expel toxins from your body. And to the extent that they're unable to do their job because of, let's say, mercury in the drinking water, which I think is...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Not a very woo-woo thing to say that there's mercury in the drinking water. The extent to which they're unable to do their job of eliminating that, dumping a bag of Dr. Quack's special woo-ora detoxing powder into your lemon water three times a day is not going to make anything better. In a best-case scenario, it's not going to do anything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
In a worst-case scenario, it's going to create new problems all its own.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So a lot of these supplements tend to be unregulated, which I am not a fan of regulations at all. But with that said, one of the things about these being unregulated is that you may not even be getting what it says on the label, which if I were into...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
taking these detox supplements, I would definitely be doing due diligence to ensure that I'm even getting what the label says that I'm getting in the amount that it says that I am, that the purity is good, that it's not put together on the floor of a mercury manufacturing plant during their shift change, that kind of stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
The FDA doesn't regulate anything that calls itself a supplement. So in a word, no, they're not really regulated. And yes, I know we're going to get pushback from people here saying that's not true. The FDA regulates supplements for adulterants and to make sure that you're actually getting what you're supposedly paying for. They don't. frankly, do a really good job of the latter thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
The FDA is not here to litigate whether or not omega-3 pills are going to lower your cholesterol levels or if CLAs are going to remove adipose tissue fat from your waistline. Again, they're mostly just concerned with whether or not you're getting Chinese sawdust instead of protein powder.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's about right. Steak, eggs and organ meat. That's about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
And whatever you're getting, whether it's food, supplements, whatever, like you should always be doing due diligence about what you put in your body. You don't have to go down some crazy rabbit hole or become some nutrition autist to get like any kind of
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it was huge in the nascent early right wing bodybuilding community on Twitter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, there's some evidence that shows that intermittent fasting does improve heart health, cognitive function, physical performance, reduces your risk of type 2 diabetes. But the studies were done on animals, which doesn't mean they're worthless, but they're not perfect. They do offer some indication that you can improve your health.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not necessarily talking about weight loss, your health by eating during a feeding window and fasting the rest of the time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Some of the potential benefits of IF include lowering your risk of multiple sclerosis, stroke, arthritis, asthma, Alzheimer's disease. So there's a lot of seemingly good benefits of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's as accurate as any kind of nutrition science is. I'm pretty skeptical of nutrition science. in general, we all should be. But I don't disagree that it's great. It's flexible. But here's the thing. Do you think that there's something magical about fasting? Do you think there's some kind of biochemical process that happens when you fast?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Because that's the particular brand of woo that a lot of the IF people are pushing. They're saying that when you fast for 16 hours a day and you only eat for eight, that you're getting some kind of special benefit that you don't get from just restricting your calories.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, pooping more than once a week is one of those things that you don't really appreciate until it goes away. But I do love a very structured and rigid diet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's kind of BS. There was a clinical study that found that intermittent fasting was as effective for weight loss as counting calories. So this is just a gimmick to get people to eat less. And you know what? If it works for you and it helps you to cut fat, lose weight, like great, it's fine. I think it's fine of all the diets we discussed. There's a cliche in bodybuilding.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
that the best exercise is the one you'll actually do. So if you hate squats and you're always finding excuses not to do them, but you love to lay down and do the leg press, then I think it's pretty obvious that the leg press is the better exercise because that's the one you're actually going to do. And it's the same for dieting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
If you're not going to live off organ meat and cave nuts, then paleo is not going to work for you. On the other hand, if you're not a huge fan of breakfast and you just start skipping it altogether and you cut out after dinner snacks, go ahead, do that. Call it intermittent fasting, call it whatever you want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
But no, your body does not transform into some kind of magic fat burning machine because you skipped breakfast.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's super difficult to tease it out because all of these diets involve massive caloric restrictions. So it's hard to say because they're all already doing that. You cut all the carbs out of your diet In keto, you're probably not going to replace that by eating a bowl full of mayonnaise and butter. And you can't drink milk because milk's loaded with carbs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
That's another thing where you can easily get tons of calories from. You just cut hundreds or, in extreme cases, thousands of calories out of your diet simply because you decided that you're going to keep your carb intake somewhere absurdly low.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, more or less. But I think the so what is that most of the stuff just isn't sustainable. It's such an extreme reaction to the standard American diet. Rather than just eat sensibly, count your calories, count your macros, get a food scale, people want to go to these extreme diets. measures. And another reason is that when people say, I want to lose weight, that's not really what they mean.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I just did it as a 30 day experiment. I do lots of different stuff that way. I just pick some random thing and do it for 30 days.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
No, they don't want to lose weight. They want to be less fat. No one is trying to lose weight to be a skinny fat blob just to say that they quote unquote lost weight. To be less fat is You want to eat high protein, moderate sensible amounts of fat and carbs, all three of which, in proper amounts, are necessary for the maintenance of your muscle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
And if you lose as much muscle as you do fat, you are not going to be happy with how you look. Maybe you don't care. Maybe it's entirely for health reasons, but... You want to talk about skeptical? I'm skeptical that you only want to lose weight for health reasons.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I think that there are lots of people, even people who their come to Jesus moment on it's time to lose weight was you just got type two diabetes. You're going to have heart disease in three months if you don't change your diet super fast. I also think a ton of them love the idea of looking better. And that's maybe what's going to keep them going.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
The health stuff, sure, it's the kick in the ass they need to get going. But do they look in the mirror after they've dropped 100 pounds and like what they look? Yes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
No, what I'm saying is people should do whatever works for them to help them lose weight slash be less fat, whatever. Out there right now, I'm sure there's some guy who just, he doesn't have a sweet tooth. He's not a fan of carbs. And you tell him, buddy, I got a diet where you can lose all kinds of weight and you can eat as much steak and eggs as you want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
which is pretty much true of carnivore because how much steak and eggs are you going to eat? But you can eat as much steak and eggs as you want. And he's going to go, oh, great, but you can't eat candy or bread. I don't care. I get to go ham on steak and eggs every day. Cool, dude. Go talk to your doctor. Go talk to a dietician and do carnivore until you get the body of a Greek god.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I don't think most people are going to want to do that. The best diet is the one that you stick with. The key to losing weight is eating less and moving more. That's it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
No, not at all. For one thing, carbohydrates are energy, and I just felt like such a mess when I would go to the gym. All my lifts were backsliding, which I hated. The other thing you alluded to earlier, it's a little gross. I know where this is going. Yeah, so you alluded to it earlier. You poop like once every three days, Tobbs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Like all the big problems in America, it's complicated. There's no quick and easy answer for this. There's a lot of reasons. One is there's more heavily processed foods around. They're cheaper. They're more calorie dense. They're nutrient poor. They're not as good for you as whole foods, but they have a ton of calories. So there's not some magic to whole foods.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
It's just Hot Pockets have tons of sodium. way more calories, way less vitamins than a hamburger you make at home or a beef wellington, like a fancy Hot Pocket. People like the convenience of the processed food and they like that it's cheap at the point of sale, but that convenience and cheapness comes with a cost on your health. And people want that marketing solution.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
People want, here's the one crazy trick that 28 pounds in seven days, kind of like people want that. They don't want to sacrifice. They don't want to expend the effort. And it's like, it doesn't work that way. Losing weight sucks. It's hard. You have to not eat when you want to. You have to relearn your associations with food to figure out if you're hungry or you're bored or you're depressed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
There's all kinds of reasons people go to the kitchen, pick up a sleeve of Ritz crackers and stuff their face with them. It doesn't always have to do with hunger. And you have to learn how to recognize that. It's hard. It's hard to lose weight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Honest truth, sometimes I would just go nuts and eat a bunch of eggs just to get things moving. It's not like I was super backed up. It's just weird not pooping every day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Other than that, the carnivore diet, I did something called intermittent fasting. That's where you eat for eight hours and fast for 16 hours. I don't really have any complaints about that. Other than that, it didn't really work well with my bodybuilding schedule. People think that intermittent fasting is some kind of miracle way to lose weight, but spoiler alert for later on in the show, it's not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, so before we get any further down the fad diet road, I wanna make a couple really quick disclaimers. First of all, a bunch of these diets are super expensive. And I wanna say that you absolutely do not have to spend a ton of money to lose weight to eat healthy. I think this is one of those kind of myths
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
think it's this elitist thing that suggests that people should eat healthy and you don't need a lot of money to eat healthy. You don't have to live off grass-fed ribeye steaks, pasture-raised eggs. Beyond that, the main issue I have with fad diets is that they present this false image that you can't eat healthy if the only supermarket in town is Walmart or Family Dollar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I ate healthy when I was an unemployed single dad on EBT. take that for what it's worth. The other thing I want to say is that if you're concerned with the environmental impact of your diet, that's not a thing we're really going to cover. I don't really believe individual consumer choices have that much impact on these kind of big environmental issues, but
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
If you do, you need to do your own research because that's not really what we're talking about today. And it's absolutely my field. It's a whole other episode.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So I already explained carnivore, but there are a few variations on this theme. And it's basically just a super carbohydrate restricted diet designed to keep your body in a state of what's called ketosis. Ketosis means you don't have enough carbs to burn for your body's fuel, so you start burning off fat instead.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
South Beach Diet, Atkins, Caveman, these are all variations on the theme of making carbs into a bogeyman. In reality, it's just that if you eat a ton of carbs, you're constantly hungry because carbs aren't satiating, which is a fancy SAT word for they don't make you feel full. Eat a bag of chips, you want another one in 10 minutes, you don't feel full. Protein, Makes you feel full.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I feel like it's one of those things where everyone has research to support what they think, which is true about dietary science in general. And so much of this is like people know what results they're supposed to get when they start to study. But yes, it's bad for your kidneys. So how bad is it? It can cause kidney disease. It can make existing kidney disease worse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
And even if it doesn't cause or exacerbate kidney disease, it can cause or make worse kidney stones like you brought up. Oh, right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
I am so squirming in my seat even thinking about this. I heard my father pass a kidney stone in the middle of the night when I was like 12 years old, and it was horrific to listen to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's more painful even than watching the scene in Top Gun where Goose dies, to give you some kind of context about. Ooh, yeah, ouch, of course.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Caveman diet is also known as the paleo diet, and that's kind of where things get a little weird. How is that more weird than the guaranteed kidney stone diet? So they claim that they only eat things that cavemen ate. And that's just a weird claim to me to begin with.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So according to these people, cavemen basically only ate meat, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, some oils and vegetables that can be eaten raw like carrots, but not ones that have to be cooked like grains or beans. That's the theory.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So why would they not cook beans? It's hard to know exactly what people ate during the Paleolithic era because they didn't have writing. So they didn't leave written records there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Sure, yeah. Hunter-gatherer tribes still exist today, so we can go see what do they eat. Basically, they eat not differently from what we eat. They eat meat and they eat plants, and they studied 256 different communities in one study, and there was only one of those communities that did not eat animal flesh of some kind or another. Your ex-vegan is showing a little bit, I think.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I'm glad we don't have to talk about veganism during this. I bet you are. Mostly people eat what's around. They may have taboos against certain foods. There may be some animals that are considered gross to eat, like you and I are not going to eat a cockroach or a rat unless we're starving. Paleo, as a concept... is based on one book from the 1960s by an anthropologist named George Murdoch.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
So it's extremely limited in scope, and it's just not an accurate representation of what people ate back then. What about it is inaccurate? People on the paleo diet eat all kinds of stuff that just wasn't available to paleolithic man. Broccoli and cauliflower are two really good examples.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
cauliflower rice like how many paleo people eat cauliflower rice oh yeah that's like a staple of that thing you use it for everything yeah cavemen did not have cauliflower huh most of the domesticated plants we eat as modern human beings were created through agriculture which is post paleolithic era it's over the last 4 000 years and they bear no resemblance
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
to the base plant that we cultivated one. If you want to Google this, the quickest and easiest way to get a sense of it is looking at corn. Corn looks nothing like wild corn.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, I completely agree. But the answer is this, and frankly, for most of this stuff, we're going to explore, it's going to be the same answer. Yes, you're going to lose weight on paleo, but not for the reasons that the proponents say.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
And yes, it's healthier than the standard American diet, but that is not saying a hell of a lot because the standard American diet, which is ironically also called SAD, S-A-D, is awful. Look at what the people in line at the grocery store in front of you are buying. Unless you're doing all your shopping at Erewhon,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
You're going to see carts filled with nothing but frozen pizza, cheap high-fat beef patties, all this very highly processed food.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1139: Fad Diets | Skeptical Sunday
You can get bomb protein shakes for 15 bucks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
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The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Wow. First of all, I wouldn't have guessed that there were 500,000 plumbers in America at all in the first place, let alone having a shortfall of 500,000. That's a lot of pipes, I guess. Manufacturing jobs is also quite surprising because I'm thinking like auto assembly. I don't even know what we manufacture here. I guess I should go ahead and look that up because...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Being from Detroit, those jobs are gone. They're in Mexico or whatever now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Explain what right-to-work is. I feel like I've read about this maybe in law school or in the news, but it's one of those euphemisms where basically like right-to-work means it's not a good thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, as one does at the squat rack. But putting microchips together, you're right. That's not like a slouch job that you could learn on YouTube or something. No, not at all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So today, if your family was anything like mine, there was just no question about it. You were going to college after high school. Now, however, many people, myself included, are skeptical that college is really a good deal at the end of the day. You might have heard more and more people talking about the idea of skipping college and going straight to work or entering the trades.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
You know what's a great use of those student loan payments you're ignoring? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. By the way, if y'all aren't on the newsletter yet, it's called We Bit Wiser. It comes out every Wednesday.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
It's a sub-two-minute read that will help you change the way you think just a little bit for the better, change your psychology, just something practical, useful that you can apply right away. It is a great companion to the show, and you can find it over at jordanharbinger.com slash news. A lot of good engagement there. I'm really stoked at how many of you love the newsletter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
You can always hit reply and get me, by the way. So it's just been a fun way to interact with you guys. JordanHarbinger.com slash news. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Yeah, I remember a high school in our district, which I think was like an alternative school for kids who had trouble paying attention or who were like maybe not gonna go to college. I can't exactly remember what it was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
But they had an auto shop in a local community college near me in Detroit growing up. There were a lot of them, all about automotive, surprise, surprise, in Detroit. And the ads on TV were all like, hands-on experience. You're going to get hands-on experience, hands-on experience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
And I remember kids my age, when I was like 15, 16 years old, and they went to that other high school, they were like, yeah, we're building a car. We're restoring an engine. And I was like, I think I learned something trigonometry. Not sure where I'm going to use that. They actually graduated and had real skills. It's quite impressive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
I'm curious in general about the job outlook for people in trades, right? Because it's one thing to say, oh, there are all these unfilled apprenticeships. But then if everyone starts going into the trades, don't those get filled up pretty fast? Is there a bottleneck anywhere with this stuff or what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, got it. So can we break down the fastest growing fields and the most new jobs? Because that's going to be different.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
But once we hit our 30s, our natural supply starts to dip, and yeah, you might start feeling a little creaky. Notice your skin and hair just aren't what they used to be. Daily collagen supplementation can help with skin, joints, hair, nails. Vital Proteins is the number one collagen peptides brand in the US, so they know what they're doing. It's super easy to take.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
But is college really useless? Is it a bad investment? Or is this just another talking point without facts to back it up? Here to give us a little higher education on the topic is Anglo-Saxon poetry enthusiast, Nick Bell. Before we go any further, Nick, you went to college, correct? Not as much as you did. Well, your bank account certainly thanks you for that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
It's not a trade? I don't know. I feel like that's a trade. Is doctor a trade? Yeah, so this is an interesting question, because I think doctors and lawyers are tradesmen, but we just went to, like, really expensive trade schools? I don't know. That's an interesting question. I've kind of always thought, yes, I'm a tradesman because I'm a lawyer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, if that category exists, then that makes more sense to me too. Okay. So the distinction is less about the work they do than about the preparation it takes to get there. What else is on the fastest growing jobs list?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So you don't think the medical-oriented ones are trades at all?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
That's the sentiment that I feel is out there. That's like the micro dirty jobs definition of trade, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
I get the point. I don't think anybody can credibly leave this episode and be like, they just shat on the trades. I'm advocating for the trades. You're saying how tough they are and how good they are, but a college education earns you more money over time, which I know we'll circle back to in a minute here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
These law school student loans were absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure we'll talk about that. I bet they were, but hey, at least you're a lawyer now. Yes, but as you may have noticed, I don't practice or use my degree in any way whatsoever most of the time. What do you study, like bro science, kinesiology, or something like that?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
But you said those things were the next 12 fastest growing jobs, which leads me to believe that number 13 is actually more of a traditional trade. Is that right? Yeah, solar installed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But wind turbine guys and solar guys are newer jobs, period. So it would make sense that those are the ones that are growing the fastest. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So where are the new jobs? I'm curious about that because being self-employed, I'm completely insulated from a lot of this stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, that is really a massive amount. That's a crazy amount of jobs. Statistics about growth percentage can be misleading, right? The sheer numbers are just bananas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
One thing you and I talked about when we first discussed doing this episode was the phenomenon of people getting advanced degrees, right? A lot of people are going, okay, great, college, undergrad, but what if I get a master's or if I get a PhD? All we've talked about so far is a basic bachelor's versus high school versus trade schools.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Do we know much about people who are getting more advanced degrees like yours truly, professional degrees or otherwise?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, PhDs and professional degrees. I always thought that was kind of like trade school for nerds, basically, but I guess, as per our previous conversation here, not really the same thing. Also, I didn't know our moms had the same job. What a coincidence that is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, maybe in one of those awful Hollywood dive bars you used to drag me to, but those memories may be a little bit fuzzy. Oh.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Wow. So they go 65 grand into debt to make, what does that end up being, like a couple hundred extra bucks a week, basically?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's funny. I looked at that after law school because I was like, I'm really interested. And it was just like, no. And journalism jobs, in case y'all haven't noticed, are absolutely getting clobbered out there and they are not going to recover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Is that an exaggeration or is that accurate? Because 100 hours a week sounds like a lot, but it's not impossible. A lot of people work like that in finance. And 20 bucks an hour, is that realistic?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I remember that even when I was going to undergrad. It was like, vote for this because graduate student instructors need better healthcare and we need raises and we need like food. I was like, oh, this is a bunch of nonsense. This isn't a career.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
And I remember one of our graduate student instructors being like, I want to explain how poor I am and I'm teaching you here in this university that you pay for. And it was kind of like sad. You know, it was just like, holy smokes. These people are just like slaves almost at this institution. I shudder to think what people getting doctorates are paying for grad school.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Do you have those numbers handy? This is going to be... Oh, are you ready? Yeah, as ready as I'm going to be.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, my God. So they doubled their grad school debt. Not their undergrad debt, not their total debt, just their grad school debt. People are going to cry when they hear this, but how much more are they making?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, OK. That's actually quite cool. I'm not even sure I know what. psycho-sociolinguistics is. But like a lot of people, look, I almost never use my degree when I go to work. I studied law. I didn't study podcasting. I didn't study digital media or anything like that. Yes, I read my own contracts, but that's kind of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Right, between like French poetry and chemical engineering. That seems like a lot of money for a significant raise in income, but it's hard to say if it's worth it once you figure in how long it takes to, first of all, get that PhD, then pay off the loans and the interest on those loans. You could be talking about...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
10 years to get the PhD total, let's say five years after undergrad, and another decade before you break even with the income and the loans and all that stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
And again, is your advanced degree in materials engineering or absurdist theater? I don't know, man. I heard the absurdist theater job market do be popping off these days.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
You definitely are that, man. And Nick wants to do a Skeptical Sunday. What was it on how smoking is good for you? Nicotine. Yeah, yeah. It's nicotine, not smoking. Nicotine's good for you. You know what's better than a steaming turd in your lunch pail? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. which helps us create all this great stuff for y'all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Now, for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. I think this is a good way to start talking about the discrepancies between disciplines because aren't the people who are majoring in engineering and business, aren't they skewing this super high and making up for the fact that, again, the French poetry major is the shift supervisor at the local cafe? Why do you keep beating up on French poetry, man?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Who are you? I don't know, but I can't pronounce his name. I don't mean to use shift manager as a pejorative because that's a real job. It's real work. I'm thankful that those people are doing it, but it's not work that requires a degree in French poetry. And that's really the point I'm trying to make here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
People have said that before. I'm not really seeing what you're saying. I don't do a law podcast. I don't practice law. How does the law degree help me be a successful podcaster in your opinion?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Anyway, like I said, aren't the people with more practical, I'm going to say useful, even though it's going to be kind of offensive, useful majors just dragging the average up for the so-called useless ones? Actually, that's the term that's going to offend people, but whatever. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
I can barely believe that. What's all this noise about how we don't encourage people to get into STEM enough in schools if they're the two most popular majors in America?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
It almost sounds unrealistic to me because I've never not heard people complaining about how we don't have enough STEM folks. Forty six percent. So all these Nick Pels sitting around reading Moby Dick and smoking hash all day. They're the minority.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Wait, that's weird. I made that joke at the beginning of the show, but that's what you studied.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Literally no idea. I almost had no clue what they studied in the English department. That's a hilarious coincidence. I've known you for a while. Maybe it was just in the back of my brain, but I can't believe that's a thing, actually.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
I don't remember walking into or out of the bar at this point for various reasons. Okay, so I got another shock for you. You ready?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
How is that possible? You're not going to tell me that engineering students and pre-med students are the poorest people in America.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, no, as the son of a teacher, I concur slash totally understand and have seen that firsthand. So who is at the bottom of the pile?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, man. Teachers are really having a hard time out there. I caught up with somebody recently that I went to college with. Her and her husband are teachers. And she was just like, I love it. God's calling me to do it. But I'm broke. I'm like really poor. And it was sad. I'm guessing a lot of the other people at the bottom of the pile are in useless majors as well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
My goodness. So what is the average English major or to use my favorite whipping boy today, French poetry major, what do they earn these days?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Is there a geographical component to this? It seems people who work on the coasts make more money. Is that a real thing? That's a real thing, yeah?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Sure, okay, that definitely sounds like getting through law school, but I could have developed the same work ethic and stick-to-itiveness by learning, I don't know, to be an electrician, maybe, or something like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Back when I did my SiriusXM radio show, a lot of the guys that listened and called in were working in northern Canada, and they didn't have any other media other than satellite radio, and they were working in the tar sands. And I remember talking to these guys and being like, what's it like working up in northern Canada in the tar sands? And they're like, yeah, we got a little...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Set of trailers and a little camp and it's cold. Cold is an understatement. And we just like work for 14 straight days with almost no time off, really long days. And then we go back home and we get the heck out of here and go back down to the border where we live, like Vancouver, and we chill out or we work our other job. And they were young, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
We weren't allowed to work in the office in Vancouver. They were working the steam shovel, digging out the tar sand in Yellowknife or whatever. Back to the income conversation here. Living remotely, we're having to chase jobs, living in different areas. That's correlation, right? But that's not causation? Or am I phrasing this right? You're absolutely correct.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Obvious follow up question is within why go to college if you're already smart? Is it just about the piece of paper that supposedly proves it? That's what we're paying for.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
No, it's like I can see how this system is unfair. I can see how you might want to work to change the system, but the system exists and you just have to play by the rules if you want to get most types of jobs, period.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
It's just how it is. Yeah, you're not wrong. A bunch of office drone jobs and apologies to office drones don't need you to get a degree in psychology or anthropology to do them properly, but you need the degree to get your foot in the door. Otherwise, your resume goes out the window.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, I wanted to be a lawyer. No, I didn't, I had no idea. I didn't even know when I graduated college what I wanted to do. I only went to law school, and I think I've said this on the show before, I only went to law school because I didn't know what else to do with myself. The only job I could get was at Best Buy selling CDs next to a life-size cutout of Britney Spears.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
And I was like, I have debt and I have loans and I got the same job as my friend's 17-year-old brother who's a sophomore in high school. This is horrible. So I was like, the solution is more education. And hey, law school actually worked out really well for a very short period of time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, a good way to learn what you want to do for a career, man, you can figure that out by learning what you don't want to do. It's a good, decent sort of process of elimination. You can learn that by entering the workforce at 16, 17 years old. Like I knew I didn't want to work at a movie theater, but more specifically, I was like, I don't want to be on my feet all day. I want to think more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
I want to have more control over my environment or whatever. I mean, that was helpful. That was helpful knowledge at 15, 16, 17, whatever years old.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So the Jordan Harbinger Show is not sponsored and does not endorse AARP nor Denny's, even though the Grand Slam breakfast is quite legit sometimes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, we got to have him cut us a check. That's so funny because when I think AARP, I think of my 83-year-old parents who were like, I don't want to bust that thing out. That's for old people. Surely people give you side eye when a 40-year-old baby face whips out his AARP retired dude card. I'll take that $1.79 off my pancakes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, well that tracks. That is college in a nutshell. So how do you think that you ended up more or less working in your field writing and researching rather than asking for my order at a local coffee shop like many aspiring writers?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
That cuts the debt way down, man. Even a little bit of breathing room could make a huge difference there. That changes all the course.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, to serving to your coffee, smoothie, even water. It doesn't taste like anything, so it just blends right in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Can you explain, though, how, let's say, reading Hamlet makes you a better advertising executive or makes you a valuable asset for a broad range of industries?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Huh, yeah, I think you might be right. But like you said, if that's what it takes, does it matter? Only in the most abstract sense possible. Interesting, man. This definitely has been quite eye-opening. I think it's a good place to wrap it up. For me, I'm still encouraging people to go into trades if they want to. Maybe learn how to do a job that actually exists.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
It might be easier to find a career. But also, yeah, look, if college is where you want to go... and you're willing to also put in the legwork and realize you're not just buying a ticket to a better job, I think that's the right mindset to go in there with it. And yay, thanks to Nick for coming on and giving it the old college try. And thanks to you all for listening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday, to me, Jordan at jordanharbinger.com, show notes at jordanharbinger.com, advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support this show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast One.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So I am dying to get into this with you today because I just don't know if I agree. And I think a lot of people listening are like, is this guy crazy? Why should someone spend $50,000, $100,000? $200,000 for a degree in French poetry or sociology or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and I'm not even sure if I'm a tradesman. That's still up in the air. Basically, do your own research before implementing things you hear on the show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday. If you think we really dropped the ball or you think we're really onto something, let us know. Y'all know how to reach me, jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Join us as Adam Gamal, a Muslim Arab American and former Egyptian refugee, recounts his rise to become a key operative of one of the U.S. 's most secretive military units in this two-part podcast series. In part one, Adam delves into the high-stakes world of counterterrorism and covert operations, revealing the personal and ethical complexities of fighting terrorism from within the shadows.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
When we give people the proper education, we all live a better life. Tune in to uncover his unique journey and critical insights only he can provide on episode 978 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like podcast.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Have you ever wondered how it feels to watch your house burn down, be attacked by an alligator, or learn that your spouse hired someone to kill you? What Was That Like is the podcast for you, if you're that person. Not the person who got hired to be killed, but the person who wondered, more thankfully. Real people come on every episode to explain the unbelievable situations they've been through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
It just sounds like a gigantic waste of money when they could just go out and get a job or they could go to trade school and learn how to be a plumber or a carpenter and get a job that actually exists where there is a current demand for those services in every state.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
I think it's a funny concept for a show. I kind of wish I'd thought of it because I always get crazy stories from people. Not everything turns into a Jordan Harbinger episode. But What Was That Like? is hosted by my friend, Scott Johnson, who's naturally curious and gives his guests the opportunity to share how they've really felt during some of their most surreal experiences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
What they did in the morning before an earthquake, what song was playing as a gunman entered, was their stomach growling as they hid? Guests share everything they remember about their crazy, crazy experiences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So if you want to hear some disturbing slash inspiring firsthand stories about the thoughts that go through your head while surviving a kidnapping or winning the Price is Right, What Was That Like? is the podcast you've been looking for. Every story is thoroughly researched and fact-checked so you know even the most unreal stories are actually someone's reality. Listen to What Was That Like?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
wherever you get your podcasts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, so why would somebody want to go into the trades if they can potentially make more money with a college degree?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Sure, but it sounds like you think everyone else who doesn't want to be in a trade should go to college.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So we're comparing a college degree against a high school education, or a college education against a high school education. Yeah, okay. Thanks for joining us on Skeptical Sunday. We'll see you next week. Now, obviously, the elephant in the room here is the student loans, right? Unless they get forgiven by the president or whatever. I mean, $37,000, that's not nothing. Plus...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Look, it takes four years to earn a degree. I don't know if we should value that at zero dollars. Yes, you're basically a kid with a high school education while you're going through college. If you only have a high school education and you had a job, wouldn't you be making 47 grand a year or a little bit less? I don't know. That's not quite how it works. I get it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
But I hear all these horror stories. about people just getting absolutely buried by student loan payments. People aren't starting families, they're not buying houses and whatnot because they can't afford to. $37,000, like that might be average and it makes sense to work with averages, but my loans, which by the way, almost 20 years ago now, just to make myself feel super old,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
they were almost $200,000 if you include undergrad and law school. And they would have been way more if I didn't have scholarship funding from the state of Michigan. And that is insane. I'm going to do a quick inflation calculator here. That $200,000 was actually worth $310,000 in today's money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today, I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, and researcher, Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We'll see you next time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
That's just by all metrics, absolutely an insane amount of money for somebody who was, I think I was like 25 or something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Did you pay your loans off? I paid mine off early because it was like a freaking sword hanging over my head. Oh, you're going to hate me. I never made a single payment. Really? Were you on some kind of forgiveness program or something?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
And I wasn't wrong. Mike, I'm in awe, but I'm also completely unsurprised that you did this. So they just gave up on you paying and forgave your debt. You ran the clock. That's like a 20 year clock, right? That's some long game. The secret ingredient is crime. So did you take a hit to your credit? Don't they report like, hey, this guy doesn't pay his bills? Isn't that a thing? I guess so.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Got bad credit, but here's an envelope full of money and here's another one for next month. Are we good? There's going to be another one on the first.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Legal disclaimer, please do not ignore your student loan payments. Ignore them. They're fake. Don't do this. And if you don't do it because we told you to, because that's not what we are telling you to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Sure. Yeah. I know there was a whole controversy about the cost of some for-profit trade schools using these predatory loans, right? They were just crazy. The rates were insane.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
That was quite a racket. I remember them advertising for basically my entire childhood. And I mean the 80s and the 90s on TV. I'm sure they were around before I was born. There's decades of roping in, tens or even hundreds of thousands of students, maybe more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
They had a campus in my hometown back in Troy, Michigan, or Royal Oak, or wherever it was, and they clearly targeted minorities and low-income students with just insanely high tuition programs. And it's kind of depressing, but quite interesting to read about on Wikipedia. It's like, you read about it, and you're just like, how the hell did they get away with this for so long? It's absolutely crime.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
The secret ingredient is crime.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
They're just unbeatable. Yeah. Yeah. You hear about the stuff of legends in Michigan, the union benefits. I'm guessing not anyone can roll up and get an apprenticeship. I've seen the wire. Don't you need to be somebody that's a nephew or cousin or something like that? You got to have connections to get one of those. Or is that not accurate?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
and debunk common misconceptions about that topic. Topics like sovereign citizens, circumcision, e-commerce scams, diet supplements, the lottery, ear candling, self-help cults, and more. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
That might be a bad example because I honestly think you'd be better served by working at a law firm and practicing under the supervision of a couple of good lawyers. You would learn more about being a lawyer that way than you would ever learn going to, I'm going to say most, but not maybe not all law schools. You'd actually learn how to be a lawyer doing that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
So with respect to apprenticeships, it sounds like there are obstacles, but it's not impossible. That's pretty good news because I know nothing about this, obviously.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, I was not expecting that. I thought you were going to be like, oh, they draw a penis on your hard hat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
All right. In my trade, we would call this a hostile work environment. Isn't there also this huge shortage of tradesmen in America? I know one of the main arguments for immigration, legal and otherwise, is getting people who actually can slash will work that hard doing stuff like framing houses or out in the hot sun or roofing, whatever, into the country in as large a number as possible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
awareness of roman history through popular culture even if it's not super accurate at least we have some kind of frames references to share in common the greeks were very similar but the spartans the spartans those are the guys from the movie 300 with the amazing abs right for those of us who get our history exclusively from hollywood and now this podcast
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and that movie, surprisingly, is not the most inaccurate piece of comic book slop ever made. Frank Miller, who wrote the original comic book it's based on, was a really big fan of the Spartans. Spartans had slaves who did all their agricultural work for them. They were called helots, and they just treated them like garbage. And they were in almost constant revolt against the Spartans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So the dynamic there is quite different. The main point I want to make, which is why I'm repeating it for a third time, is that slavery is absolutely normal. And by that, I mean very common.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Look, I think a lot of things are normal. It's not a moral endorsement of them. Like I said before, like I don't think it's possible for a human being to own another human being. It's just it's not possible. You can beat someone to do what you want them to do. Like if you want to go sell yourself to somebody, I reject the idea that's even a thing that you can do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Because you can't sell your feelings. You can't sell your moods. You can't sell yourself to somebody else. You can't own another person. This is not like a moral condemnation of slavery as such. I just don't think that it's... Here's a 50 cent SAT word. I don't think it's like ontologically possible to own another human being.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
You can have a state apparatus and such that makes it so that people have to do what you tell them to where they're going to get beat or killed or whatever. But I don't think it's possible to metaphysically own a human being the same way that I own a car or own livestock for that matter. I just, I don't think it's possible. And I find the idea morally repugnant, but that said, uh,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
We are kind of lucky that we live in one of the few times and places in history where most people are not slaves, because that is the reality for most of human history.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Slavery gives way to serfdom by the end of the classical period, in Europe at least. Serfdom is different from slavery in ways so subtle that it's not really... in my opinion, worth calling something else. I think that it definitely fits our definition of slavery as forced labor, even if it's in some ways subtly different from chattel slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
But when I say slavery, like the first thing people think of is big cotton plantations in Alabama being worked by men and women kidnapped from Africa. And this is a completely different historical development.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
African slavery is different for a few reasons. The main one is that there's an entire race of people that are enslaved on the basis of being part of that race.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
They did not haul all the Gauls back as slaves. They haul some of the people back. Definitely. Absolutely. They wouldn't typically go raiding back into places they'd conquered and taking those people as slaves. And they also did not have an elaborate philosophical justification for why it was okay to enslave all Gauls on the basis of the fact that they were Gauls.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Actually, the Romans had a very deep respect, generally, for people they conquered. The Gauls are actually a really good example of it. There's all kinds of classical... art that depicts Gauls as these barbaric, but like physically strapping, brave, heroic people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
They were Celts that lived in what's now France. Okay. Like the ancestors of Of the French, though the French have a lot of German in them now. That's a whole other episode. But yeah, when I say Gaul equals Celts living in France. Okay. American slavery isn't even like America conquered some tribe and that tribe was enslaved. It was like blacks in Africa are fair game. Period. Yeah. Period.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
They tried doing this with Native Americans when first settlers and conquerors got here, but it didn't work because it was too easy for the natives to run away. They just run away and rejoin their tribes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Jim Goad, the author, does a really good explanation of the Irish thing in his book, The Redneck Manifesto. The short version is that... Irish slaves, their tenure of slavery was typically seven years rather than their entire life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
That's not as true as people think it is because that keeps infant mortality into it. It's like, if you got to the age of 12, you were probably going to make it to about 60. Oh, okay. Is my understanding of it, this is an off-the-cuff remark, Flood the commons and tell me I'm an idiot.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and they're euphemistically called indentures, and it's... Yeah, they're slaves with a limited term. And yes, there's differences, and the differences are significant. But there's some pretty compelling evidence that the Irish indentures were often treated worse than the African chattel slaves for the same reason you treat your own car better than a rental.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
If you were an Irish indenture, the guy that... owned your indenture contract, couldn't sell your kids, which I think is important.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
But when we're talking about kind of the day-to-day, like, yeah, they could be treated extra bad because what do I care? I only got the guy for seven years. For some reason, people really hate the idea that there were white slaves who were in some ways treated worse than their black counterparts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Like, I don't really know why that bothers some people, but there are people who are definitely like really invested in proving that Irish indentures weren't slaves. Yeah, I think we can say that they weren't slave slaves. And yes, there's obviously something to be said for not being able to have somebody sell your children, but their lives were terrible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, I completely agree. I just don't understand why people are offended by the idea that, yes, many Irish indentures were treated worse on a kind of day-to-day basis. It's a bit of a third rail, but whatever. People also hate hearing that all slave owners weren't just relentlessly sadistic for the sake of sadism.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So a lot of what we think we know about slavery, antebellum slavery in the United States, comes from one television show, Roots, which is fictional. For anybody who's not aware, Roots is fiction. Alex Haley settled a plagiarism case over it that included admission that he stole sections from a work of fiction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
A bunch of them were probably sadistic monsters who got off on treating people like garbage. I would say most of them had a very different idea of human decency than you or I did, which is maybe being unduly generous.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I think most of them are probably just businessmen, and businessmen want to protect their capital. And it's not my favorite way to talk about other human beings, but it's just the cold reality of the situation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, but you have to inhabit this headspace a little bit to be able to wrap your head around it. Yep. So a plantation owner saw his...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
slaves as a potential investment capital maybe in some cases he weirdly viewed them as part of the family which i don't want to lean too heavily into that but i think it's worth mentioning he saw the indentures as a rental you take the car that you own to get the oil changed religiously and when the little orange light goes on you take to the mechanic and rentals you go out there it's making a weird noise who cares drive it like i stole it and that was how a lot of the slave masters
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
treated their Irish indentures. It's how they treated a lot of their African slaves, too, I would imagine. There's some evidence to suggest that they really rode the Irish indentures hard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Part of it. And then also, I don't know to the degree to which this was related, but the Irish were not considered white. That's so weird, though. They're whiter than not accurate that they were considered black, but they were not considered white. You can read stuff by Benjamin Franklin talking about Germans. That's like the most racist thing you've ever heard in your life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
It's more like if they survived seven years, it was so common for these people to die when they were done. It was also very common for them to be like abducted at sea and forced back into indenture. Yeah, it was nasty. Just everything about it is horrible. Indenture and chattel slavery are horrific and morally repugnant and evil. But there are differences between them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I also think that when we're talking about like less bad forms of slavery, it's such a weird way to try and quantify the experience of being indentured servant in colonial America.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that, hey, there's this other group of people who were treated very horribly in a way that's like they were slaved.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Ah, see, the scale is it. The scale is the thing that's worth noting. The indenture, that kind of fades away. pretty quickly, whereas slavery persists until there's a gigantic war over it. I'm sure there were slaves who were treated better than indentures. I don't think the individual cases really matter that much because the point, I think,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
to put a button on all this is that the point is that the entire economic and political system of the united states particularly the south revolved around the chattel slavery of africans in a way that it did not indenture forced labor of irish you did not have big slaving expeditions into the interior of ireland to harvest slaves There's a lot of reasons for that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
One of them is you weren't allowed to enslave Christians, generally speaking, even heretics like the Irish Catholics. But Even the idea of everybody has this idea of like slaving expeditions into the African interior. And this is not really the most accurate picture of how slavery worked.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The reality of the transatlantic slave trade was more like you pulled up at a McSlavers along the coast and bought what you wanted. Most of the slaves purchased by Europeans were bought from other Africans. They were not captured during European raiding parties. Most of these cases, tribes would subjugate other neighboring tribes and then would sell to Europeans because it's lucrative.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, I don't think it's totally unknown, but it's not talked about that much. For the record, I don't think this makes it better or worse. It's not suddenly OK or less bad or worse or anything because dominant African tribes were enslaving. They're subjugated people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Right. It's time that somebody was fair to the slavers of history.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Is it better or worse to enslave your neighboring tribe because they have the same skin color of you than it is to enslave someone across an ocean? I don't think it really matters.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I know. Me neither. But it was just too easy. You're right, by the way, this topic definitely needs a more balanced, level-headed, and I think more to the point, historically accurate review of things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, and I completely agree. If there was no market for slaves, there'd be no reason to kidnap Africans and sell them. There's no market for it. It's not going to happen. I'm not trying to let anyone off the hook here. I'm just simply trying to highlight the difference between the myth and the reality of the situation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And I think that particularly when you're talking about culpability up the supply chain, it's yeah, like the guy coming home with a boat full of them is to me not like off the hook because he bought them from another African. Like Africans have some right to sell other Africans? Yeah, no, yeah. Like all of it. There's no justification for any of this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The other thing that's maybe worth mentioning at this point is that during the same time period, there was a bustling slave trade in European slaves on the Barbary Coast, which is basically what is now the northern coast of Algeria and Tunisia. Even at this point in history, the transatlantic slave trade is not the only kind of slavery that's going on in Africa.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, people do try and make some equivalency between these two. There's some pretty critical differences between the transatlantic slave trade and the Barbary slave trade. People have heard of the Barbary slave trade. It's like this American History X thing where it's like they were enslaving white people from the south of France and Sicily and bringing them to Tunisia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And it's like these are not equivalent things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The scale is a big one. I think atrocities are atrocities. I'm not really like big into saying this genocides. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
But the most generous numbers say that the Barbary slave trade had 1.25 million slaves. There were 10 times as many Africans that made it to the new world as slaves and And God knows how many of them died in the middle passage.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
There's some estimates that say half the ship would die, which I don't know, you know, wasn't the focus of the episode, but then they had to go through what was called seasoning. which was slave boot camp in the Caribbean.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I'm going to tell you anyway. They were worked like extra hard and punished extra hard. One alleged punishment was that they would whip pregnant women and then pour salt and pepper and wax into their wounds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
One of the things I really think we should discuss right off the bat is that slavery isn't a part of the past. Slavery is happening right now. And when somebody says slavery, you immediately think of the American South, the transatlantic slave trade, big plantations in Virginia and South Carolina, that kind of thing. But America didn't invent slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I think there is no rational point to it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So I think that the scale is definitely one difference. The Barbary slave trade did not have the same kind of middle passage that killed off a third, a half, a tenth, whatever it is, percentage of the ship.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, right. It's the Marine Corps song, like the shores of Tripoli.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, Sicily. Huh. And as many people may or may not know, France conquered most of Northern Africa that conquered Algeria and Tunisia anyway.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The Civil War was absolutely fought over slavery, but it was not fought over slavery for the reason that most people think.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. People did not care a bit about the slaves. The most weirdo Quakers and, you know, some people in Massachusetts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, like Henry David Thoreau and Harriet Beecher Stowe are like the only people who care about slaves in 1860. The Civil War was the culmination of a conflict between two economic systems, agricultural slavery and industrial free labor. Again, like there's very few people outside of some Quakers, some radicals in Massachusetts. for the most part, who really cared about the plight of the slaves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The Civil War was not a humanitarian crusade to free the slaves. It had nothing to do with freeing the slaves until the very end. And that was just by accident. It was so that the North could get a military advantage against the South. If you read Lincoln's papers and stuff from the later decades,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Part of the war, it becomes clear to him, like, we're not going to be able to go back to the way things were. Whereas at the beginning, he's just, I don't really care. We can have slaves. We can not have slaves. I don't care. We're preserving the union. And by the end of the war, we're not going to be able to keep having slavery because slavery is what caused the war.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
One of the big reasons the South had trouble attracting allies and getting recognition was from european powers was that they did not like slavery and this was particularly true of the british the transatlantic slave trade ends because the british blockade the continent
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yes. That was why the transatlantic slave trade ended, was because the British blockaded the continent. And so you had to be a blockade runner to get new slaves out of Africa.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. The Civil War as a crusade to end slavery is a myth. And I think that there's a somewhat more dangerous myth about the Civil War. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And in historical terms, antebellum slavery, the pre-Civil War period of slavery in North America is just the blink of an eye in historical terms. There's a much broader history of slavery. In fact, it's more or less the default means of organizing labor throughout human history.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
That the Civil War ended slavery in America.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, so if we go back to the beginning of this episode, we define slavery in two ways. The first is chattel slavery, and the Civil War and subsequent constitutional amendments definitely ended this, except for extreme outliers that do exist and are horrific. But, like, they're against the law. Previously, owning other human beings was enshrined in constitutional law, right? And it's not anymore.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
It's illegal. And it's considered one of the most transgressive acts that a human being can commit against human morality. But in the sense of forced labor, I think if we don't count forced labor as some kind of slavery, we can't really talk about modern day slavery much at all. And I think that the distinction is important, but that we can call both slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, it's not. It's enshrined in the United States Constitution. I'm going to read directly from the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, the amendment that most Americans erroneously think bans slavery. Quote begins, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. So prisoners are still allowed to be slaves. And that's big business in this country. There's 800,000 Americans in prison. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, I believe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, and I understand that distinction, and I do think it's an important one, but there's a special carve-out for this type of forced labor in the United States, and it's profitable. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. So there's some polling from these convict laborers. 64% feel unsafe at work, 70% receive no training, and 76% said they'd be punished if they didn't work. And to be fair, like, I have friends who've done... Pretty serious prison time. I went to jail for 90 days for DUI. Giant grain of salt any time inmates speak. They're not generally the most notoriously honest people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
But my point here is it's just not true that we don't have slavery in the sense of forced labor in the United States, that this was abolished. It's not. It's enshrined in the Constitution.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So there's some hunter gatherer societies that have slavery, but virtually every human society that invents agriculture also manages to invent slavery. This is probably also a good place to start talking about what we mean when we say slavery. So I think slavery for the purposes of this episode is actually referring to two overlapping phenomenon.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I want to turn that question on its head and ask, how is it not? This is cultural touchstone of baby boomers get their draft notice and they can run away to Canada or Sweden or something like or they can go fight in a war they don't want to fight in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I think that this kind of becomes a little clearer to our American-centric audience if I use other countries to illustrate this point. Okay. Russia has a draft. Most of the guys fighting in Ukraine right now are conscripts on both sides. I've seen so many videos of like guys who just walk around Ukraine, like grabbing dudes and throwing them into vans and making them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, is that OK with you? Now, that is a rhetorical you for the audience. I'm not trying to put you on the spot specifically, but like person listening to this. Are you OK with that? And if you say yes, because Ukraine has to fight the Russians. OK, but if the Russians do it, are you OK with it? And then does it become this thing that's conditional on who you think the good guys are?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
It's like the good guys are grabbing people off the streets and forcing them to go to war. And if your emergency is such a big deal and your war is so great, presumably you wouldn't have to be threatening people with prison or grabbing them out of bars and like forcing them to go to the front. And this is not meant to be a specific comment on the Russo-Ukraine war by any means.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
It's just to illustrate the point that, okay, so insert country you don't like here has a draft. Is their draft okay?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
First, there's chattel slavery, which is people owning other people. Not only are you working for me for free, but I can sell your kids or basically do anything I want to or with you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, my personal view on this kind of thing is like, Things don't become okay when the state does them because the state's doing them. So if it's unethical for me to do something to you, it's unethical for the state to do the same thing to you or somebody else. So I can't go to your house and threaten to keep you in my basement if you don't go to a war of my choosing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And right, you laugh because it's ridiculous. But for some reason, the state does it. We just go, OK, it's OK now. And if that's your view of the world, I understand that my view of the world is not the same as many other people's. But that is my view of the world. Things don't become OK when the state does them versus when private entities do them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
It becomes really difficult to talk about modern slavery if we limit the definition to chattel slavery, because a lot of modern slavery isn't chattel slavery. It's what we call forced labor. So you're basically working what's usually a very dangerous and deeply unpleasant job in abusive working conditions and not being paid for it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, there's open air slave markets in Libya right now. Thanks, Hillary Clinton.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So as is often the case, you're going to get different numbers for total amount and per capita. And when we're talking about per capita, that is the highest proportion of people out of the total amount of people that are enslaved. The hall of shame is in order of most enslaved population to least North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Tajikistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And I would make an argument that North Korea is a slave state. I agree. I know that 10% of their population being enslaved, which is what the official numbers are, I think that the definition of slave is being a little too tightly applied and it should be closer to like 95%.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The peak in terms of percentage of the population being chattel slaves in the United States is 1790, and it's about 18% of the population. That's a big number. The last census prior to the abolition of slavery has about 4 million slaves in a country of 31 million. So that's not quite 13%. So yeah, America loses to all of these countries 150 years ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I think it's sticky when we start comparing it in this way. Like, it's not my argument that drafted American GIs on the beach at Normandy are the same as guys working a plantation in 1817. I think the real apples to apples here is what percentage of the population in what is now Saudi Arabia were chattel slaves in 1860. Uh-huh. Okay. And that's obviously not data that's- Exists, yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I can think of one guy that I know at the Mises Institute who I interviewed once who would probably be able to rattle this right off. But if you're a serious academic, you may have access to these numbers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And to be clear, there's all kinds of abuse that takes place in these forced labor environments, sexual assault, beatings, what have you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Honestly, the guy trying to scam your grandmother from the call center may well be a debt slave in India. He does make it a little sad when you hear it. It's like an additional layer of elderly people being scammed out of their life savings. Most of what goes on in India is child slavery. They have a lot of debt bondage.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
That's what the call center guys or the fake call center guys might become involved. Semi-property of the person that you owe the debt to. There's a lot of human trafficking. Forced begging, which to me is a very weird use of a slave. Seems like a very economically inefficient use of a slave. And then, yeah, there's a lot of sexual slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
China comes in second, 5.7 million. North Korea, 2.6 million. I know that a lot of the North Korean is prison labor. And military. And then China basically has concentration camps for the Uyghurs. And again, I think that it's worth noting that people who live under communist regimes were maybe defining slavery too narrowly and letting these countries off the hook.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And yeah, America comes in at number 10 with over a million slaves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I would suspect that most of it is given that, yes, the number I cited above for prison slaves was over 800,000. So if you think that's not slavery for some reason, like they're paying their debt to society, like you said, you can go ahead and count America much lower. But by the way, most of Eritrea's slaves are conscripted military.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So apparently I'm not the only one who thinks the draft is slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I don't know if they're exclusively using them as slaves there, but there is a weird thing where the term's been open-ended since 1998. In theory, it's supposed to be 18 months, but the average term in the Eritrean military is six years. And there are tons of guys who say that they were enslaved, I mean, conscripted. They say they were there for over 10 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
According to the International Labor Organization, it's 40 million worldwide. That's one of those numbers. 40 million is a relatively small amount of people around the world. It's a relatively small amount of labor force, but it's absolutely obscene that we have that many. It's definitely on the other side of an imaginary line that I can't hand wave and be like, this is not a big deal to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
This is a big deal to me. Another estimate puts it at 50 million. We've got to go back and come full circle with this about what is slavery. And I think that we may want to consider that these numbers are somewhat inflated, which is not to say that I think that the real numbers are anything I'm going to be comfortable with. But I think some of the things that are counted as slavery are just not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Well, I'm also worried about that. But you're correct that it's not being paid for your labor as a slave is the least of your worries when you're a slave.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
No, it's not. And like I said, it's impossible to talk about modern slavery without including forced labor, because like, I think the guys in a retreat are being paid, but who cares? This is not okay. Chattel slavery does still exist in pockets and isolation, but the main form is forced labor. So anti-slavery international gives some definitions of what constitutes modern slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Some of them are their slavery or close enough to that. We can call them that being owned as chattel. It still happens. Mm-hmm. I don't know if many parts of the world, but multiple parts of the world. Debt bondage. You know, you take on the debt that's so large you can't ever repay it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
You're bought and sold, more or less, and forced to work awful jobs, and your children inherit your debt, and thus the status after you die. There's the forced labor that we talked about in the Eritrean and North Korean military. She went trafficking where they take your passport.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I think inflated-ish, the thing about non-governmental organizations or NGOs is they have a sort of clear incentive to exaggerate problems. So like domestic servitude is generally defined in really nebulous ways. I know there's examples of people underpaying domestic servants who don't know anything about the law or treating them badly. And again, it's not okay. I'm not okay with that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
But I don't know that that's slavery. I think that underpaying people is a wage violation and not slavery. I just don't think it's the same thing as an army captain holding a gun to your head or the Cambodian loan sharks are going to kill me if I don't work in the call center. I just don't think it's the same. Another one is the laborers in Persian Gulf countries.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
They have to work construction for a single company. They get paid garbage. They live in terrible conditions. That gets counted as slavery a lot. Simon Legree isn't standing behind them with a whip selling their children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
He's the cruel overseer from Uncle Tom's Cabin, a famous abolitionist book from the 19th century.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So I think it's weird to start conflating unpleasant working conditions and scammy wages, no matter how egregious the unpleasant working conditions and scammy wages may be, to some kind of forced labor. And I think it enters you into this... Slippery slope of accepting Marxist argumentation about how guys who work in auto factories and make $80,000 a year are slaves because they have to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So some things never change, and one of them is that you can't get something for nothing. If you want to make things happen, you need one of two things. You need muscle or fire. You have to yoke a bunch of horses together or get a bunch of dudes to work together, or you need to light something on fire and use the energy from that to power a machine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I think we obviously haven't moved past it. Right. I don't really subscribe to the worldview that says that the world gets morally better over time. To me, it's like we're damn lucky to be
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Living in this infinitesimal period of human history where being a slave who gets worked to death in a salt mine and has your children taken from you to get worked to death somewhere else isn't just normal human existence. That is what happens to most or damn near most people. And I think in an apocalyptic situation where you
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
saw the breakdown of the rule of law and a lack of reliable energy sources to achieve certain labor tasks, I think he would see slavery come back pretty quickly. I mean, in Libya, which is a real world example, I'd imagine it would probably start with sexual slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
This is a plot point in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which is, yes, it's fiction, but I think he really nailed just how close we are to everyone having to worry about being a slave.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Old habits die hard. There's a lack of rule of law in many parts of the world. And I just don't think that the Western liberal view of human rights and human dignity as universal equality, as people think that it is, I don't accept it. This is the default view that everybody on earth has.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Like this is a very specific cultural view that all human beings are endowed with some kind of dignity and rights. This is a very specific cultural view that I just don't think most of the world share. Read about the Yugoslav Wars. Sexual slavery in particular was a widespread phenomenon. That's a really good example of what happens when a normal functioning country just completely falls apart.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I was obsessed with this as a kid, which I think I've mentioned on other episodes that we've done. I'm slightly obsessed with it now still. I think that the real question is, why don't we have more slaves? And the short answer is oil.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I do have a grim view of humanity. This is what helps me to explain why 40 to 50 million people are slaves. About a quarter of them are children. Oh, why? Why? To the screams to the heavens. Because you live in an imperfect world. The world tend towards chaos. Your shoes aren't going to tie themselves. You need to work to create order out of chaos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
And the absolute easiest, most time honored way of doing that is beating somebody until they do what you want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
The big change between ancient history and today is we've got way better stuff to light on fire. We've got oil. We've got coal. We've got magic rocks that boil water for us. There's less need for muscle. But the ancients didn't have any of that. They had wood. And so they had to lean a lot harder on muscle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
there's tons of organizations out there who work to do just that charity navigator is a good place to start your search check out their uh overhead is the other thing too that i would say like that's specific to slavery i've heard about this happening i don't know that it's actually true so i'll preface it with that but i have heard told that there are groups that like buy slaves to free them don't give them money because all you're doing is making a market right yeah
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I understand his perspective. You know what? I don't care. I just free child slave. I totally get that. But if you're looking to attack this in like a systematic way, if you see homeless people and you feel bad and you want to help homeless people in a systematic way, what do you not do? Give the homeless guy money. You go give money to the organization that supports homeless people. Yes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I would encourage people to think about if you want to do something about slavery, please do not go buy an eight-year-old Cambodian child. or give money to somebody who wins.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I'm so glad that my Jewish wife can't hear any of this to react to it. Actually, as everybody knows, the pyramids were built by aliens.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, you guys are not allowed to enjoy classical architecture anymore.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, these kinds of large-scale architecture and infrastructure projects are definitely one of the bigger uses of slavery in the ancient world, which isn't to say that every...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
hand that ever touched a stone that went in the Parthenon was slave labor because I don't have the info in front of me but like I would be shocked if that were the case because a lot of it's highly skilled and the artisans and stuff are going to people are going to be like hey there's documentation of artisans being paid to decorate this thing and it's okay but where did the raw where'd the frame come from well you know who dragged the marble there exactly yeah so the main uses of slavery in the ancient world are
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Agriculture and mining, which brings us back to the marble thing. The mining is almost unimaginably brutal in its type of labor. And everybody who's seen Ben-Hur knows about the galley slaves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
yeah and actually most galley oarsmen were free men working for pay probably a share of the plunder because that's typically how sailors were paid in those days it's typically how the military was paid in those days the exception was during times of war rome desperately needed every free hand it would get presumably they were taking a lot of these guys out of mining and agriculture to throw them on boats
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Rome is good to talk about when we talk about slavery for a couple reasons. One, the average person knows a fair bit about ancient Rome from movies and TV shows. And we also have a lot of data on ancient Rome that we just don't have about Samaria or Babylon or even ancient Egypt. In ancient Rome, mining was basically always slaves, especially salt mining.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Mercury mining was like almost always slaves. I don't know how you get somebody to do mercury mining unless you were... forcing them to do it because it's kind of a slow death sentence. Mining in general is a slow death sentence in the ancient world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
For anybody who remembers the trades versus college episode, my father has told me that the one job you could not pay him enough to do if his children were starving is going to mine, which, yeah, mining is unpleasant at best. Right. The best conditions mining is deeply unpleasant in the worst conditions. It's a living hell.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So a lot of these guys in ancient Rome, anyway, would have been convict labor. It's an incredibly gruesome death penalty. But given that the Romans crucify people, it's not really that surprising that they would work dudes to death in salt mines and mercury mines.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
and pool boys or something i don't know i guess i need to read up what did you watch spartacus this weekend i might have i might have watched something recently yeah it depends on what you mean by main use fields mines and mills were the biggest use of slaves and also kind of the worst i'm going to sound ridiculous when i say this there was no room for advancement
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, so a lot of these guys were only enslaved because they owed a debt to somebody. So you pay off your loan, you're free. Or you buy yourself from your master and you're free. Or he sees you working as a towel boy or whatever. This guy's smart. I can have him do this for me instead. It's cool. I'm not a pool attendant anymore. I'm a valet or something. Yeah. Maybe your master just...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
freeze everybody when he dies. That was reasonably common. Maybe he just likes you. That's another thing that was reasonably common. The master just likes the guy, so he frees him. Other than freedom, like I mentioned before, there's ways to work your way up the ladder, so to speak, by learning valuable skills.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So like I said, one day you're cleaning latrines and the next day you're the master's personal valet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, so moving on from that one, we do know more about Roman slavery than many others, but it's not like they had a Bureau of Labor Statistics. So it's hard to tell exactly who did what and in what proportions. What we do know is that the majority of Roman slaves were in mines or fields, and they kind of got just worked to death because every time you got tired, somebody would beat you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
City slaves and household slaves had better lives. These are the ones who could buy their freedom. And after they bought their freedom or were freed through manumission, which is the fancy SAT word for your master freeing you, you were kind of like part of the extended family. Like you didn't usually leave the manor or whatever. You kept living with them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
I love you throwing in your little Groucho Marx jokes while we talk about slavery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. So what we need to point out, there's no way that being owned by another human being can be considered, quote unquote, not that bad. Masters could do literally anything they wanted to their slaves, and they frequently did. With that said, at a certain point in Roman history, there are some improvements in the lives of slaves, period. Not, oh, I got lucky and this guy's a nice guy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
It's not as horrific as working in a mercury mine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
in general slaves could eventually sue their masters for poor treatment and the masters were punished by losing their property i probably should say that if i refer to somebody as somebody else's property in here i'm doing that for ease of communication i just don't accept that a human being could be another person's property so bear with me yeah i think we're on the same page here
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
you would lose your slave to another slave master. So it's not like you got freed. You just got transferred.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1149: Slavery | Skeptical Sunday
So the thing is, like I said before, slavery is the default method for human labor organizations throughout history. I use Rome as an example because you spent all weekend watching Spartacus, apparently. People have seen HBO's Rome. People have seen Gladiator. So there's a pretty decent...