The Jordan Harbinger Show
1101: Church, Steeple, and the Trafficked People | Feedback Friday
Fri, 10 Jan 2025
That slick businessman who bought your local church? His "art gallery" promises are looking more like a front for something sinister. It's Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [email protected]. Now let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday: You live next to a historic church that was recently sold to a charismatic businessman with grand plans for an art gallery. But whispers of human trafficking and suspicious activities are swirling through your small town like autumn leaves. What's really happening behind those hallowed walls? You're locked out of your house, and the locksmith who finally shows up hits you with a bill that could buy a small yacht. But the real lock that needs picking? Your paralyzing fear of conflict. How do you build the backbone to stand up for yourself? Your neurodivergent 12-year-old son has been running a thriving business from your condo lobby, delighting residents with his entrepreneurial spirit. But now the building board is throwing bureaucratic thunderbolts his way. Can creativity trump red tape? You're crushing your career even on four hours of sleep with a six-month-old at home. But now you're caught in that classic new-parent paradox: how to keep climbing the corporate ladder while changing diapers? There's got to be a way to have it all, right? Recommendation of the Week: On Call A successful executive shares a story about dinner table epiphanies, early morning trains, and the cosmic calculus of how we spend our precious time. What he learned about the mathematics of moments will make you reconsider your own life's algorithm. Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1101 And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What is the story behind the church's new owner?
Yeah, maximum impact is not a proper noun, bro. Why are you capitalizing? This is not high German. You didn't trademark that. Anyway, I'm sorry that you're living next to this guy's new stand-up comedy theater slash brothel or whatever. And that he's causing so many waves in your town. You got to give him some credit for combining those two genres of business. Like, oh man, it's Tuesday.
Not a lot of customers for the brothel. That's fine. We have open mic night.
We have a killer lineup at the Chuckle Pit.
He definitely seems a little sus. He's clearly into some unsavory business practices, and I get why you're concerned. At the same time, as you pointed out, you do not have hard evidence that he's engaged in criminal activity. A lot of this is based on rumor or assumptions, which is a massive obstacle to proving anything. And it also it might be somewhat unfair to hold against him.
Yeah, I hear that. But at the same time, when you hear multiple rumors from multiple sources that all arrive at the same conclusion, it's like... It does carry some weight, especially in a small town where word gets around pretty easily, but that doesn't make it true.
And again, his website's not doing him any favors. He's pretty out there with the whole, like, hey, I pose with beautiful young women at networking events. That's his brand, and he's leaning into it. So I get why you're concerned. And all signs point to something shady going on here, but shady and unsavory are just... They are meaningfully different from criminal.
And even criminal is different from provable, prosecutable. We wanted to talk to an actual expert here. Again, I'm not your lawyer, according to this mug. So we reached out to defense attorney and friend of the show, Corbin Payne. And the first thing Corbin said was that human trafficking has a notoriously wide and ambiguous definition. This is probably by design.
It's hard to tell from your letter of what Bob is doing is truly human trafficking. Also, like you said, you don't have a ton of hard evidence, just a mix of rumors and observations, which, again, it's not irrelevant, but it's not like slam dunk proof that Bob is working with shipping containers full of people, so to speak.
But Corbin did say that the construction industry and contractors in general, they can just be a bit scummy about how they treat people. Look, I know there's tons of contractors listening that are like, hey, hey, hey, we don't mean you. We mean the other people that you know that you don't work with because they're scummy.
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