1368: Predatory Faux Pro You Know Must Go | Feedback Friday

A massage therapist you vouched for turns out to be unlicensed and a predator. How can you make up for your lapse in judgment? It's Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger https://twitter.com/JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi https://twitter.com/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] mailto:[email protected]. Now let's dive in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1368 https://jordanharbinger.com/1368 On This Week's Feedback Friday: You're a massage therapist who vouched for a longtime colleague — then learned he'd never been licensed, was working under his wife's name, and had confessed to assaulting 15 women on the table. Despite this all being brought to light, he's still illegally working from an app. How do you protect your community from this creep and recover trust in your own judgment? You're a therapist who has spent years building boundaries against an abusive mother — the one who moved her deadbeat, family-abandoning father into the house and drafted your brothers as his unpaid nurses. There may be a fortune stashed in his home. You just hung up on your dad. Is it finally time to go no-contact? You're careful — only ever anonymous nudes, nothing identifiable. Then a cute stranger on Grindr coaxes out your number and Instagram, and by morning he's got your contact list, screenshots, and a 10-second ultimatum. You're blind with adrenaline, fumbling privacy settings. Do you cave, or call the bluff? Recommendation of the Week: Squirrel Boxes https://squirrelboxes.com/ — a subscription of squirrel-themed puzzle feeders that turns the rodents raiding your yard into the best low-stakes entertainment on your street; use code JORDAN for 15% off. You're 27, and the thing you want most in life is to be a husband and father — but you've never had a real relationship. Then Sara, your roommate's ex (whom you cleared it with, like a mensch), started talking to you every day, and it finally felt different. Two months in, hopes sky-high, she ended it. Do you fight for the friendship, or walk? Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger https://twitter.com/JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger https://www.instagram.com/jordanharbinger. Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi https://twitter.com/GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi https://www.instagram.com/gabrielmizrahi/. And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1344999619?mt=2&ls=1 — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking https://jordanharbinger.com/course — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course https://jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser https://www.jordanharbinger.com/news/ newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanHarbinger/! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors https://www.jordanharbinger.com/deals/: The Perfect Jean: 15% off first order: theperfectjean.nyc, code JORDAN15 https://theperfectjean.nyc/K12: Learn more at k12.com/jordan https://k12.com/jordanSimpliSafe: 50% off + 1st month free: simplisafe.com/jordan https://simplisafe.com/jordanWhatnot: Start selling today: whatnot.com/sell https://www.whatnot.com/sellSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the trusty conveyor belt moving these tasty existential morsels around this revolving sushi bar of life drama, Gabriel Mizrahi.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Nice. Omédi to gozaimasu for that nickname. Wow.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Only the veggie rolls, obviously. I don't even know what you can eat anymore. Oxygen?

• 1:25Speaker 02

  The OG vegan meal.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Which makes you what? The sushi chef who yells, "What do they say when you walk in the?"

• 1:31Speaker 01

  It's like, "I don't know." And like, everyone does it and you just think, "How tired are you by the end of your shift having to do that?"

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Without looking up from his knife when people walk in? That's you.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the first few times I heard that, I was like, "What are they yelling? Why are they yelling at me?" Since I didn't eat sushi until I was basically an adult. No, until I was an adult for sure. Jen or whoever I was with was like, "Oh yeah, they do that. That's like a thing. It means welcome or something." It was my previous girlfriend who moved to Japan and was the assistant to the US ambassador. She was head-explain all this stuff to me. But Japan's, you've been there. There's a lot of first times in Japan, right? Weird vending machines, really drunk people at 7 o'clock in the morning coming back from the night before that are sleeping in a bush because they had to drink with their boss till 1 o'clock in the morning. And then also, I think the most shocking was going to a restaurant and having them explain that they were closed when I could see behind the hostess that they were, they were just full. There was tons of people. There were people waiting. And

• 2:26Speaker 01

  then my girlfriend was like, "They don't want white people in here."

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a classic.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  And I was like, "Wait, you can do that?" And she's like, "In Japan? Yeah, that's a thing. That's a thing. No white people. No non-Japanese, basically."

• 2:38Speaker 02

  They love their reservations. We've talked about this on the show.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right. That's right. The reservations thing. All right, what are we talking about again? All right, 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. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks: money laundering experts, Russian spies, usually former cold case homicide investigators. This week, we had journalist Annie Jacobson on biological warfare. Wow, this one was, you heard her with her nuclear warfare, how everyone's gonna die, it's maybe gonna take 72 hours and then anybody left is gonna envy the dead. Biological warfare somehow even more scary, even more disgusting and more diabolical.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Very interesting conversation. And she delivers everything in this sort of very calm therapist voice. So the juxtaposition is chef's kiss. We also did a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on gut health. On Fridays, though, we take listener letters, play obnoxious soundbites, and walk a tightrope across the abyss of your most confounding dilemmas. I'm fully settled back into life back home, so by the time this airs, Gabe, you'll be in Spain somewhere and around and around she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Nobody knows. I'm in New York right now, so if you hear ambulance sirens in the background, that's why. But yeah, I'll be in Spain when this episode comes out. And by the way, if any of you are listening in Spain, I will be traveling around your country all month, so drop me an email, send me a DM. Saludeme, por favor. And I will be in Italy in early September, first the south and the north, and then from mid-September to the end of October, I'll be in Berlin. So anybody who's in any of these places, I would love to hear from you and I would love to see if we line up somewhere.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  So jealous. My old stomping grounds, not, not Spain. I've never been there at all. Not Italy. I've only been there for a brief time. But Berlin is awesome and Germany's awesome. Berlin's the New York of Germany, right? People go to New York and they're like, "America's amazing." And I'm like, "Yeah, this is a very unique place in the world, let alone the country."

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is not Germany. This is an island unto itself. But anyway, maybe we can do some listener meetups this summer. We did one in New York. It was so fun.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  That was fun.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  It would be really cool to meet more of our European show family.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, our European fans are awesome and I kind of appreciate that, you know, Americans listening to an American-hosted podcast, okay. You get a little kind of a halo effect when you're like, "Oh, Europeans like us too." It's like, we still think people with British accents are smarter. It's just a thing. It's not gonna go away in my lifetime, that whole like, "Oh, Europe's fancy."

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Now I know why you keep insisting on saying grandiose.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Is that not how you say grandiose?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  You're just cosplaying as a British person.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Grandiose.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Grandiose.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Do people say grandiose? That just sounds so Michigan to me.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  It's grandiose, bro.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  All right. I might have to meet you somewhere, Gabe. Scratch that travel itch and cross a few Stasi-related curiosities off my list over there in Berlin. All right, as usual, we got some fun ones and doozies and I can't wait to dive in. Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Dear Jordan and Namaste, Gabe. I'm a yoga instructor and it was, do you feel weird that they left you out of the namaste?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  A little, but I get it. I get it. It's kind of like,

• 5:47Speaker 02

  I'm glad you understand.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  If you spoke a language and I didn't, they would use that to greet you, but not me because I don't understand.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  They could have been like, "Guten tag" and "Normal hello, Gabe."

• 5:56Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  I'm a yoga instructor and a massage therapist in a city on the West Coast. I work at a spa and at another fitness club, and I also own my own small massage studio. Sometime back, a male therapist I'd worked with in the past was hired at the spa. The strange thing was, I knew him as John, but he was hired as Alex. I'd also worked with his wife, who is also a massage therapist, and her name is Alex. About a year later, I was asking a female therapist if she wanted to work part-time at the fitness club since I'm overbooked there. John slash Alex overheard and said he was interested, so I thought, "Why not?" And we got the hiring process started. The day before we were gonna onboard him at the club, this was a few months ago, the spa manager pulled me aside and told

• 6:40Speaker 02

  me that he had been fired from the spa because he was using his wife's massage license and he has never been licensed.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Well, this is like a plotline from Beef, season two. Ridiculous.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it. There's a whole thing about this.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, there's a fake physiotherapist, but it's, the idea that you could get away with this is, like, long-term is sort of laughable because it just doesn't, you're eventually gonna get caught. Come on.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  He had legally changed his name from John to Alex to work as a licensed massage therapist using his wife's license, and to pass the background check, he would say that he preferred to not identify as any gender. This was a shock, since I had known him and his wife for years and they always seemed so sweet. While I was reeling from this news, she dropped the bomb. The massage board had called and told her that there was a complaint against him for sexual assault at our spa. When the manager talked to him, he confessed to sexually abusing 15 women on the massage table at the spa by going down on them in the middle of the massage or rubbing himself up on them.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  What? Oh my God. That's brazen.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Apparently, some of the women were okay with this and were paying him, but many were not.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Wow. So some were just like, "Hey, what do you do?" Actually, uh, here's 100. See you next week. That's, wow, this is so insane. Not that you're gonna be able to answer this, Gabe, but how do you even start that? That's a hell of a hail mary pass, right? And how much do you make per hour doing that, asking for a friend? How much does Surprise Cunnilingus pay? That's, I mean, what is going on here?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Something tells me it didn't begin with a very fair offer.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  It wasn't like, "So this is on the menu if you would like. If you would not like, that is fine." Something tells me he did it and then, oh man, this is...

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I cannot relate to this, obviously. This is just, wow. I don't think I've ever heard anything like this. Holy smokes.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  There had been three complaints, but our manager believed John over the women, and two of the women had their memberships revoked for quote-unquote "lying."

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Oh, that's terrible. That is really bad.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  How did that happen in this day and age?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I wonder if the spa manager was a man or a woman. I mean, I have my suspicions, but I guess you can't really...

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Whole bad thought.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  I also wonder how much of an investigation there really was, or if they just immediately dismissed these women who came forward because they like this guy?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wondered the same. Was the manager like, "Ha, broads always fabricating tales?" Or was the manager like, "We looked into it. Everyone loves John. There's no evidence that he did any of this because obviously there's no camera in a massage room. I'm sorry, but it's best you don't come back."

• 9:20Speaker 02

  But even then, to revoke their memberships? I don't know. That seems harsh.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  It does. Isn't the better response, "Hey, look, we don't have any evidence that this happened, but obviously we're gonna keep an eye on it. We treat these things very seriously. You won't be booked with John anymore," yada, yada?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, "You're welcome to come if you want, but we under," I don't know. Also, three women. Three. And it was only when the massage board called that the manager decided to take this seriously and talk to him.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Now that I think about it, that's even more crazy, right? Like, "Hey, massage board, three women have said this man sexually assaulted him. What's the usual protocol? Well, let me look up his license." And then they're like, "He's not licensed. Well, now you're fired." It's like, wait, wait, wait. So the three sexual assaults, you were just gonna maybe be okay with? Or like, that was a, you weren't sure. Now it's, oh, you're not licensed? E-gads, we gotta let this guy go. I mean, that is just insane. So this manager screwed up big time. How does this kind of thing happen?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Thankfully, this came out just in time for me to stop the hiring process at the fitness club. When he wasn't hired, the mask came off and he went scorched earth on the spa manager, threatening her.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Ooh, so it is, the spa manager's a woman. Oh my, wow. Okay.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  I thought you'd enjoy that detail.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I shouldn't be surprised, but that, well, yeah, that was unexpected.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Oh, man. My mind is going to some weird places, dude. Was the manager his first client?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Oh, big if true. We're speculating wildly here, but I am very curious about why this woman took John slash Alex's side against multiple women accusing him, that she might even already know the women from the club. Like, this is, what is going on here?

• 10:53Speaker 02

  When he wasn't hired, the mask came off and he went scorched earth on the spa manager, threatening her through text, which was dumb, and messaging her husband and the spa owner, saying that the spa manager was doing meth and crack at work and sleeping with people in the massage rooms.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Also, big if true, if doing a ton of heavy lifting here. I mean, that's, he doesn't even come up with a believable character assault and he puts it in writing. This guy's a genius.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  This is so baffling. He confesses to assaulting 15 women right off the bat and then goes scorched earth on the manager? Is this guy just like, out of his tree?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  This is not just a predator sociopath type. This guy's mentally unwell in other ways. That's the vibe I'm getting.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Thankfully, these claims were too ridiculous for anyone to believe, but it was still stressful for her. I'm still shaking, thinking that I almost sent my yoga students to him at my club. I feel guilty for just coming so close to putting them in danger and for vouching for him on two occasions, actually. I assume that because the massage board was aware of this, his wife's license would be revoked and he wouldn't be able to use it anymore. But last week, I found out from a friend that he had done a couples massage with John through an app that connects massage therapists to clients who want massages in their homes. I'm so angry that this license is still active and that he's still out in the city posing as a licensed massage therapist.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  It is terrifying that he's going to women's homes. On the app, he's listed as non-binary, which he isn't. It's been reported to the app that he isn't licensed, but as long as this license is active, he will continue to hurt women, which is very upsetting. I'm sure his wife knew he was using her license since he legally changed his name to hers. That's pretty hard to miss as a spouse. I don't know if she knows about the sexual assaults, though. John should be in jail. I have other massage therapists who feel the same way and are willing to take action once we decide what that action should be. Complicating all of this, though, is that they have young children and he also recently got another woman pregnant. I don't want the children to suffer, but I also don't want other women to suffer.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  The whole thing is such a mess and I feel sick. I'm angry, shocked, sad and so shaken that I didn't pick up on any of this from him. I thought I had better intuition. Interestingly, the one time I got a massage from him before I knew any of this, my stomach started hurting a few minutes in and I had to get off the table and stop the massage. That has never happened to me before. 20 minutes later, my stomach was fine. I wonder if my body knew more than I did at the time.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Wow, fascinating. Yeah, it might've. I don't know how much stock to put in these things always, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. It's the Gavin DeBecker gift of fear thing.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  How can I stop this guy and make sure he doesn't work in the city again? Should I call the massage board and ask that his wife's license be suspended? Should I check every once in a while to see if anyone has hired him or anyone with that name? Is there anything else I can do? Or should I stay out of it? Also, should I tell his wife about the sexual assaults? And how can I trust my judgment going forward? Signed, looking for a rundown on how to take down this gross clown who gave the wrong kind of rub downs.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Wow, what a situation. Very worrisome, very dark. So first of all, I am so sorry you brushed up against this guy.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Oof, interesting.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, poor choice of words. I'm sorry that you interacted with this guy. He's the one doing the brushing.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  That's right. We're sorry that your career's frottaged. How's that?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  We're sorry your professional life and this guy's professional life dry humped for a period of time. All right.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  It's getting worse and worse.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Seriously, this is so unsettling. To find out somebody that you know has hurt people and you didn't clock it for maybe a long time, you might've even sent people to this creep or almost did and that you yourself were on his table. I get why all of this weighs so heavily on you. The good news is, you finally found out what was going on, you stopped the hiring process before he could join another company, and it sounds like more and more people are catching on to what this creep does. The fact that he reacted this way, going on the attack and becoming increasingly unhinged, that really just confirms that this guy's a disaster in a loose cannon and should not be anywhere near this industry. This guy's not safe on so many levels. Although, I gotta say, Gabe, and this does not excuse any of the abusive stuff this guy has done, of course,

• 15:14Speaker 01

  but I find it fascinating that some of the women were like, oh yeah, no, I'm down. Here's an extra Benjamin for your services. I mean, that is unexpected.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  You don't hear about that very often. It's the other way around usually.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, usually it's men paying women for this kind of thing if the spa down the street is any indication.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Did you gesture towards your living room?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I did, yeah. It's in my living room. No, so there's, across the street from my old place, there's a plaza that has like a bodega and some other stores, like a pet supply store or whatever, and there's a spa. And I'm like, oh, cool, there's a massage place over there. So I checked the reviews and there weren't that many. And I was like, all right, whatever, I'll just, I'll drive there one time and check it out. And I never really got a chance to do that because I missed a turn once. And I was like, oh, I'll go through, you know how strip malls have like a little road behind them for the dark, that's an alley. It's got the dumpsters and there's a wall with, before the houses start. I drove down the alley and outside of the spa, there were like six folding chairs and there were a bunch of

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Asian women in cocktail dresses at 10:30 in the morning, sitting in the chairs, smoking. And I was like, oh, it's that kind of spa. They're wearing spa clothes, but they're wearing spa clothes from like, you know, Hanoi, if you know what I'm saying. And I was like, oh, and then I told Jen and she was like, oh, I'm gonna check the reviews. And I said, oh, I already did. There's nothing in there. And she checked the reviews and there was one, one star review from a woman. It was like, I walked in there and she asked me what I was doing there and if I was there picking up my husband. And I said, no, I want a massage. And she made me wait and wait and then told me to leave. And then I was like, yeah, she's trying to get rid of you. And then there was a, a five-star massage

• 16:51Speaker 01

  that said something like, their hand-y work is the best in town. Really love their special, like it was all gross innuendos written by some perv. And I was like, oh yeah, my wife was, Jen was laughing so hard because she's like, oh, it's that kind of place. And my dad keeps asking her, hey, what about that spa? What about that? We're like, dad, it's a rub and tug. And he's like, oh, sorry, I forgot, I forgot.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Plot twist, your dad left the review.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Sure you did, Don. Sure you forgot. Oh, man. Anyway, okay, so again, it's usually men paying women for this kind of thing. It's also interesting because if John were a woman, and there are untold thousands of women doing this work under the guise of being massage therapists, definitely a fringe job, a little risky, but I get, I think many people in 2026 would kind of shrug and go like, okay, it's sex work. It's not my thing, but it doesn't really affect me. I don't love it. But again, not my problem. This guy's a sex worker too, but he's also a predator at the same time.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Yes, but possibly not in that order.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Right. It almost sounds like his predatory stuff is a screen for who's gonna become a client. Like, I'm just gonna assault them and if they're down, then they're a client. That's what it sounds like to me. So is he a legit sex worker who's also predatory or is he a predator using sex work as some kind of cover?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Or is he like, well, I'm gonna do it either way. Might as well get paid for it.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good point, right? It's just so wildly fascinating to me. So, okay. I'm very sorry about all this for you, for the victims, for what this might mean for his family, but I am really glad you guys learned the truth. So, no, given what this guy did, I definitely would not stay out of it completely. I think you have some duty to hold this guy accountable and do right by the women that he's hurt, the women he might hurt in the future. But that doesn't have to fall entirely on you. I would absolutely call the massage board and make another report. Maybe together with your spa manager who has more information, maybe with a bunch of your colleagues. I would also report him to any app that you find him listed on and let them know what's going on. How many massage apps can there be?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Maybe there's five? Report him to all five. With these licensing bodies and agencies, the more reports, the better. They can often be overwhelmed or they're asleep at the wheel. Sometimes they need several reports to realize that they actually have to do something. You know, oh, it's just a bad boss retaliating. No, we got three calls, you know? And the more evidence you can provide them, police reports, termination notices, communications, et cetera, the better. And I'm guessing it's up to the massage board to decide whether to revoke his license, well, his wife's license, he doesn't have one. I'm not sure it's on you alone to make that call, but when you talk to them, I would absolutely tell them that you know he does not have a license, that he is using someone else's license.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  I think they'd be very interested to know about that. My hope is that they investigate, they talk to him, they talk to his wife, they see what's going on and they make the right call. They revoke her license and/or report this to the relevant authorities. Now about the wife.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. I have so many questions about her.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Same. So you said you're sure she knew he was using her license since he legally changed his name to hers. That is probably true. I suppose he could have given her some other. Their story about why he changed his name and she has no idea that he ever used her license. But how strange, you couldn't pick any other name, you have to pick mine?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's weird.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Surely she asked why that was the case.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Although if the massage board is aware of a complaint and is, I assume, looking into it, then presumably she would hear from them, right? So if she didn't know that he was using her license before, she must know now.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I assume so. It's also possible, like our friend said, that she might be fully in cahoots with her husband on the license, but maybe she doesn't know he's sexually assaulting people?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Yes, but then she has to have an inkling that something isn't right with her husband. I mean, he's having a child with another woman, right? So she at least knows her husband's having some side quests.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  True, yeah, she can't be totally in the dark. If you know about the other kid, his wife does too.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Also, maybe don't let someone else, even your spouse, use your license in the first place. She took a very big risk there. And for what? Because her husband didn't feel like putting in the work to go to massage school himself?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Literally. This guy is such a piece of work. Is this laziness? Is it entitlement? Is this just, well, I don't actually care about massage. I just, I need a cover to assault people and get some sex work clients as quickly as possible.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Whatever his reasons, his wife could have said, uh, no. This is, this is risky and unethical and illegal. Get your own license, dude.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. To be fair, though, they don't teach kind of linguists in massage school.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  That's true. This dude's self-taught.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro did an independent study.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Dude's an autodidact.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Oh, come on. All right. So about him changing his name, using Alex's license, that was good. I'm just jealous I didn't think of it. My understanding is that there are a number of crimes in there. That depends on the state you live in, but here in California, and this is not legal advice, obviously, the most direct charge would probably be false personation. That's when somebody impersonates another person and performs an act that benefits the impersonator or could expose the impersonated person to liability. Another crime here would be identity theft, using another person's identifying information for an unlawful purpose. An interesting side note here, if Alex gave John permission to use her license, that doesn't necessarily make the underlying unlawful impersonation legitimate in the eyes of the

• 22:08Speaker 01

  law. Another charge could be theft by false pretenses. That's when customers and employer and insurer, whatever, they paid someone money because they were led to believe they were properly credentialed. Like, if you hire Gabriel and you get legal advice from him, that is theft by false pretenses. Just because you gave him the money, thinking he was a lawyer, but you handed it over willingly, that doesn't mean it's not a crime. He stole from you, he just conned you out of it. There's also forgery, filing false documents. If he signed his wife's name, altered a certificate, or submitted fraudulent paperwork to an agency. There's also perjury. If materially false information was knowingly placed in his name change document, which, come on, they're gonna ask you why you changed your name. It's because you want to use your wife's massage license and you're what?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Just gonna say you really like your wife's name, so you're changing it? That's nonsense and they're probably gonna throw that one at him too. In California specifically, maybe there's other states on the West Coast too, I'm not sure, the Massage Therapy Act explicitly prohibits impersonating a certificate holder and allowing a non-certified person to use one's certificate. So Alex, the real one, could also face revocation or discipline if she knowingly cooperated with him on this whole license thing. She could potentially be treated as an aider and a better or conspirator, rather than merely as an innocent identity theft victim, which is what she's gonna try to say when all of this hits the fan.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Damn, yeah. This would be such an interesting case for a prosecutor. Like, they've broken so many different laws.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  No kidding. There's so many angles here. It's also salacious and would probably make the news, come on. So honestly, I don't know whether you should try to tell her what's going on. Part of me feels bad for this lady who might not know the full truth about her husband, whose family is about to fall apart when he gets sued or arrested or blacklisted or all of these. Another part of me strongly suspects she does know what's going on. And whether she does or not, she broke the law and made a huge mistake by letting him use her license. She helped make this possible whether she understood that or not. So I'm kinda like, sorry for what might be coming, but tough kishka. Beyond that, yeah, it would be a nice thing to do to periodically check to see if anybody else has hired this guy. And if they have, you notify these establishments or apps in the way that we just talked about.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Doesn't have to be a full-time job for you, but it might be a solid act of service to protect other people. You could also post what you know, sticking to the facts, of course, on any public pages he has. If he's got a Yelp page or these apps allow for ratings and reviews, that's another good way to warn people. Again, you gotta be sure what you post on there. You don't want to defame him or say, I think he did this. You have to stick to the facts, the ones that you can prove. I might also set a Google alert for both of their names. You might get a hit whenever they're, well, their names are the same, I guess now. But you might get a hit whenever they're listed on an app or they join a practice or they create a new website or they end up on another spa's website. Also, how many massage apps could there be? I said before, there's only gonna be like a handful, okay?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Send a form letter to all of the major ones, warning them about John. Include his license number in advance so they don't allow him on the platform.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  All sound advice, Jordan. I'm just still thinking about how she felt when she was on this guy's massage table. It's so interesting. I know you're beating yourself up a little bit for not picking up on any of this sooner. You thought you had better intuition. What I'm hearing is that you probably did have good intuition. And, you know, we have many different intelligences. Our cognition is just one of them. It sounds like what you felt was a more primitive intelligence, potentially picking up on something, which is very interesting.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Again, the gift of fear thing from Gavin DeBecker, not perfect, but very powerful.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  I actually think it's kinda great that she recognizes that she had that moment. That should tell her that her awareness was not completely offline. Some part of her was registering that something wasn't right. She just didn't understand what it was or know what to do about it.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  True, yeah, that's actually comforting on some level.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  The next time she gets that feeling, she might go, okay, I know what this is now. I gotta listen to it and at least be cautious. Now, obviously, you can't go to the police and say, hey, you need to look into this guy. Like, I got a stomach ache on his massage table. But if you ever get that feeling from someone again, maybe you ask around about the person. Maybe you keep a closer eye on them. Maybe you keep your distance and, for example, hold off on recommending them for a job until you have a clearer picture of their character. So I get why your self-confidence took a hit because of all of this, but your road back to trusting your judgment in the future is realizing that your judgment was working on some level and you just needed to make some more room for it. And it just took an experience like this to learn how to best work with your intuition.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  I think it's really hard to trust that voice until it's tested.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  I totally agree, Gabe. It's kind of mysterious, the whole intuition thing. It can easily misfire. It can be informed by earlier experiences. It needs to be backed up by evidence if you're gonna act on it or accuse somebody of something, which is where the other intelligences become super important. But now that you know the truth, because this dude, when they asked him what he did, he just seemingly crumbled and confessed to all of it. All that matters is what you do now. So sorry you have to deal with this. Sorry for the difficult feelings this whole thing brings up. And I'm sorry for the people that this guy hurt. I'm very sorry for the women who made complaints and were dismissed as liars. I'm actually still shocked to hear that. But I have a feeling this guy's not gonna be able to hurt people much longer. Rooting for you and your team, and good luck. You know what else is going down on ya?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  The sticker prices on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

• 27:37Speaker 01

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• 27:41Speaker 00

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• 28:09Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. It's your support of our advertisers that keeps us going. All of the deals, discounts, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  All right, next up.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Dear Jordan and Gabe, I'm a 30-year-old female working as a mental health therapist in a different state from the rest of my family. I've recently been doing a lot of work around setting boundaries with my parents due to their inability to take responsibility for past behaviors and their refusal to change moving forward. While I visit for holidays or big events, I make sure to always have an escape plan and never stay more than a few hours. My mom grew up in a home with severe trauma. Domestic violence, physical abuse, substance use, a sibling death, and parental abandonment, which plays into her inability to have healthy relationships.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. Wow, so she had it rough, I feel for her.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  We've been fighting since as far back as I can remember, as she was both physically and emotionally abusive toward me, but less toward my siblings. I'm the eldest daughter. I've always wanted a relationship with my mom, but she is emotionally unavailable, and I believe that she simply doesn't like me.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Oh, this is so sad. To not be able to love and connect with your own child. Let's come back to this thing about her not liking you, but I hear you. This is a very tough mom to have.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I started therapy in my early twenties because I wanted to know what was wrong with me that caused my mom to not like me and be so mean.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so sad.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  That is a heartbreaking sentence, man. Meanwhile, my parents don't believe in mental health. My mom even threatened to take me off of their insurance because she believed the therapist I was seeing was quote unquote, "brainwashing" me. I was 22 and had no job because it was in the middle of COVID.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  I've tried to have numerous conversations with her about how she makes me feel and even told her that she wouldn't be allowed at my wedding if she and I didn't go to family therapy together. That lasted four weeks because I discovered that she wasn't being truthful with the therapist. About five years ago, her father, who abused her mother and brother and then abandoned the family, had a stroke. None of us have a relationship with him. He called her before calling 911 and she left in the middle of the night to go be with him at the hospital two and a half hours away. This is when my family and I discovered that she was still communicating with him on a regular basis.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Ooh, that's quite a discovery.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  After he had the stroke, she asked us to visit him in the hospital, which I refused to do. As time went on, it became an issue that I was her only child who wanted no relationship with her dad. When he was eventually released from the hospital, she moved him into my family's home. Since I was the only one not living in the house, I became the sounding board for my two siblings, who my mother assigned as home health aides for her dad.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Wow. Okay. This woman, I'm gonna hold off, but that's ridiculous.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  My two brothers waited on him hand and foot and even wiped his ass several times a day. My mom simply said, "This is what family members do."

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Oh, right. But not you, just your sons. You don't have to wipe the butts. You just assign that to your kids who don't even know this guy.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  I refused to be a part of this. And anytime he was at the house, I would leave because I didn't want to interact with him.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Strong stance. I applaud that. But I, oh, your mom must have loved that.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Since he was such a shitbag and didn't pay any child support to my grandmother, he invested in stocks and other things. Long story short, he has hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed in his home. Knowing what I know about my mom, part of the reason she refused to put him in a nursing home or pay someone is so that she could keep the money.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  So I was wondering if this is where the story was going? Because I can think of a few reasons she'd take her POS father in all these years later. And this was at the top of the list. Obviously, we don't know your mom and her motivations, but I guess, well, we'll take your word for it. This is not hard to believe.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  My mom only has one brother who is five years older. The other was killed in a hunting accident when she was 17.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Wow. This woman is like a character out of Yellowstone or something. Just one crazy trauma after another.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  I know. How much can one person go through? My God, what a family. She no longer speaks to her brother as he is also cut off from her father as well. He was the primary target of the physical abuse in the home as a kid. He's had his own struggles with substance use and has been in therapy for years to address the trauma he experienced growing up. My mom can't seem to handle that I have a close relationship with her brother and his wife and not with her. During my last visit home at Christmas, my mom proceeded to get drunk and tell me how shitty I am because I refuse to talk to her dad and that I make her life really hard because she has to decide between inviting me to family events or inviting him.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Okay, I can appreciate that this woman feels very stressed by all this. She feels pulled in two directions. Who does she prioritize? That must be hard for her. But like, is her life hard because you refused to play along? Or is her life hard because she brought her abusive father into the family home and just expected everybody to play nice?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Also, what does she mean invite him to family? Doesn't he live in the house now?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I don't know whether to wheel him in from the room next door or invite my daughter over for Christmas. Bruh, come on.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  I told her I would make the decision easy for her and just not come.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Bravo.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  When I got home from that conversation, my dad called me. He told me that I should be grateful that my mother chooses me because it causes her a lot of stress. This progressed into an intense argument where my dad told me that I've been quote unquote, "brainwashed" by my mom's brother.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  There's that word again. It's clocking that.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  My dad and my uncle were best friends before my dad married my mom. They lived together, owned a business together, and owned multiple boats together. Now, they don't even speak. My dad refuses to give details as to what the falling out was about.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  I'm gonna guess that's because it was mostly his fault or your mom's.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  He now blames my uncle for me moving away from the family, for why I don't want a relationship with my mom's dad and for this strained relationship that I have with both of my parents. After hearing this, I hung up on him. I haven't spoken to anyone since. I'm not really sure that my family is ever gonna understand the level of dysfunction in this dynamic. This feels like the straw that broke the camel's back. How do I know when going no contact is the best option? Signed, feeling coerced to immerse myself in my family's dysfunctional universe and for reasons that seem perverse and probably have more to do with the purse, to converse and play nurse to the man who started this curse.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Wow, okay. So much going on here. Let me start by saying I am very sorry that you're in this position. Very sorry. This is obviously an extremely tricky family to be a part of. You know this better than anyone, and my heart goes out to you for everything you've had to deal with here. The legacy of these multiple traumas, the competing interests, what sounds like an inability to listen and empathize and communicate. I can understand why you felt the need to pull back. I gotta say, though, I'm also sorry for your mom. She's the obvious villain here. Well, it's between her and her dad. Hard to say who started this chain of events, but yeah, despite the many ways she's hurt you and let you down, I do have some compassion for her because my God, what a childhood to have. What a father to have, or not have, actually.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  She sounds like a very wounded person, and she would have to be. Only someone who's in a lot of pain would act this way. Physically and emotionally abuse her children, lash out, blame other people, withhold love. I suspect that a lot of the stuff that you deal with in your mom, you're dealing with the hurt child that's inside of her.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's always the case, isn't it? And that includes her capacity to be in a real loving relationship with our friend here.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yes. This is the thing I wanted to come back to. My heart broke when she said that her mom simply doesn't like her. It's possible that her mom doesn't like her a lot of the time. I think in her mind, our friend is a source of antagonism and stress, and that makes it hard for her to show her her best qualities. But given everything she's shared about her mom.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Can this woman really love anyone?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. I'm connecting some dots here. But when a parent simply isn't emotionally available, it's usually not because they're deciding to be emotionally unavailable. It's because they can't be available.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's especially true if that was the case since their child was very, very young. But this wasn't like a strategy.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Right. Her mom has some real issues because, well, look at her dad. And God knows what else she went through. However, she's now obviously an adult. She's a mother. She has access to resources like therapy, whether she believes in it or not. She absolutely has a responsibility to work on this stuff if she wants a more harmonious family and a better relationship with you.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Her resistance to therapy and this belief that therapy is brainwashing her daughter because it's leading her to disagree with her and the family and her not being truthful with the therapist that they went to go see together. I mean, I have to assume that all of that is a way to avoid really digging into some very painful stuff for her.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Of course. So compassion and accountability when it comes to your mom, I make room for both. Let's talk about her dad for a second. Your theory is that she took him in because she doesn't want to diminish the estate by paying for nursing care. I suppose there's an even more cynical explanation, which is she stayed close with her dad in order to get the inheritance in the first place. But those are, well, maybe those are basically the same thing.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  It's funny, I had a slightly less cynical explanation for all of this, which is that she's so desperate for a connection with her father after he abandoned her, and that's why she stayed close and went to the hospital and eventually invited him in.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Interesting. I mean, I suppose that's a more charitable read on things. But even if that's the case, she could still arrange for him to be in a nursing home with proper care, go visit him every day. I don't see why it has to be in her house.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  True. And her co-opting her other kids to become nurses for this guy that they probably have no connection to, that's not cool.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  No. I mean, that's crazy work. And it's downright weird. Look, you want to invite your ailing, abusive, deadbeat dad into your home so you can have that connection and you don't want him to die in a sad hospice center or whatever? Hey, fine. You put him in the guest room. You take the responsibility on for yourself. I'd still have a lot of questions about that decision, given what kind of guy he is, but fine. You don't deputize your children to feed him and wipe his butt under the guise of, oh, this is just what family does. I have a strong feeling that this is just what family does is code for, well, because I want the benefits, financial, emotional, whatever, and I don't want to do it. So now it's your job.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  I think when our friend here says, "I'm sorry, but I'm not playing along with this", that's very threatening to her mom.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Someone having their own opinion is this woman's worst nightmare.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, she wants everyone to go with the program because A, that's how she gets what she wants with regard to her father, whatever that is. I'm also still confused. And also, she probably gets very worked up and angry and embarrassed perhaps to have to pause and reflect on why she's doing all of this. For this very flawed man.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  I agreed. So her first move is, you don't want to help. You're a bad family member. You're a bad daughter.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  You're being brainwashed.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Brainwashed. Yeah. Mind you, by a professional clinician with an outside perspective. And the only other person in this family is going, yeah, this guy's a POS who abused me and I want nothing to do with him. What a coincidence that those are the two people that are supposedly brainwashing you. Come on.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Our friend is up against a kind of an impossible challenge here because in this family, there's only one right way to feel, one right way to be. It sounds like there's no room for healthy disagreement or, you know, respectful distance where everybody basically takes responsibility for their own choices and their own lives without trying to convince everyone that this is the right way and they all need to agree all the time.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Right. It's just our way or the highway. You're with us or you're against us.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  The thing is, her grandfather is almost the least of the problem here. She's looking at all of this and going, what's even left for me in this family? Like an abusive and unavailable mother who refuses to have a real dialogue with me, an avoidant and enabling father who backs her up and won't explain why he had a falling out with his brother-in-law, a childhood that was marked by abuse and neglect. Like, what is the point? If there's no benefit here and there's all this pain, then is there even a place for me in this family?

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Honestly, if I were her, I'd probably peace out. Just being honest. Screw this noise. Y'all wipe this abusive miserly old guy's ass for his money he withheld from the mother of his children. I'mma be over here living my best, sanest life.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. On the couch, talking about how to recover from all of this. Yeah. I mean, I can't say I'd blame her for doing that, but this question of how do I know when going no contact is the best option?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's always tricky, right? There's always hairs, wrinkles on this one.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Very tricky.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It's so hard to know when you actually need to cut someone off because often you can't even just cut off that person, right? It makes the whole family logistics hard.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  I think you and I, Jordan, usually land on the idea that if you need to protect yourself from harm, like serious, ongoing harm from a family member, whether it's hurtful words, or physical violence, or financial manipulation, or whatever it is, and there's no way to stay safe and have contact and no reasonable hope of progress, they just refuse to have a real conversation or consider evolving. And there are no mitigating circumstances, right? Like an illness, or a disorder, or an injury, or they're on their death, but I don't know, something like that. Then that could be a good reason to really cut someone off. Anything short of that can often be solved with strong boundaries. The question is, what are you hoping to accomplish with your family? What do you need to feel safe and at peace? If that means zero contact, that might be the answer, at least for a

• 41:46Speaker 02

  time. Although it might be worth considering if you need to actually communicate that to your family, like, hey, I'm not talking to you guys anymore. And don't invite me to the funeral because I'm not coming. You know, if that means you keep a door open if they need to get in touch, but you don't go over to the house anymore, you don't call all the time, you don't get roped into requests, that might be the answer. There might be a few strands to this desire to cut your parents off. You might want to spare yourself all of this conflict, which I understand. You might want to send them a strong message that there are consequences to what they've done. You might want to take back some power here. You might also want to just find out what it's like and what you are like when you're not talking to them, when you're not being dragged into this dysfunction over and over again. I think all of these are legitimate, but maybe just sit with that

• 42:30Speaker 02

  and ask yourself what you really want and what you actually need to accomplish it.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  The other thing you can do is experiment. Try not going over there or calling for a few weeks. See how you feel. See how they respond. Try keeping your conversations with your mom brief. Maybe practice saying things like, sorry, mom, I'm sure you have your reasons for caring for your father. The ones that I see don't make sense to me. This is your father, not mine. So I'm going to let you make that call. I don't want to be roped into it. Just see what happens. Point is, maybe you don't need to decide officially whether to cut off your parents. Maybe you can play with different approaches and see what gets you the furthest. I'm very sorry that your parents are like this. I'm so sorry they're all caught in these difficult cycles and they can't have a relatively fair and functional relationship with you. It sucks and it's totally unfair. But you don't need

• 43:19Speaker 01

  to necessarily fix this in order to be okay and to evolve. You just need to find the right relationship with all of it. Sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best. By the way, you can reach us, [email protected]. Please keep your emails concise. Try to use a descriptive subject line that makes our job a whole lot easier. If you're finding dead squirrels in your mailbox, your stepdad's got your nudes, your neighbors are eavesdropping on your therapy sessions through the wall, or your brother-in-law has been isolated by a pseudo-therapist girlfriend who's milking the family for money at every turn, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up, [email protected]. We're here to help and we keep every email anonymous. All right. Now we're going to brainwash you with some traumatizingly good deals on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. It is a bite-sized gem from a past episode from us to you, delivered to your inbox on many Wednesdays. If you want to keep up with the wisdom from our show, I invite you to come check it out. You can sign up at jordanharbinger.com/news. Now, back to Feedback Friday.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Okay, what's next?

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Hey, guys. Last week, someone cute messaged me on Grindr. The private album of tasteful nudes gets sent pretty early on in most Grindr conversations, and I've always been careful never to share anything personally identifiable in my nudes. Face, tattoo, anything like that.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yep. Just straight to the D. Wouldn't want anybody to see something private, like your leprechaun tattoo. Just multiple well-lit close-ups of your shorn scrotum.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Shorn scrotum is such a

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Graphic.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Image. That's graphic. It's unusual for anyone to ask for a phone number or an Instagram handle, but he got both out of me. This person seemed interested in more than just sex, and I was distracted and enthusiastic about the profile, so I didn't think twice when he asked for them. The next day, he texts me, confirms the number is real, and then sent me a bunch of texts showing messages, ready to go, to all of my friends and family with my face pic, some dick pics, and a screenshot of our Grindr conversation. All of a sudden, the scammer was like, you have 10 seconds to follow all of my demands.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Ugh, so gross. These scammers really know how to put people in an awful position.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  My biggest difficulty was navigating Instagram's Byzantine privacy settings to make my profile private, and then looking up the FBI/IC3 contact form to report the crime, all while basically blind from adrenaline. The scammer sent another threatening message while I was in the process of reporting them and then went silent. After some time, the hilarity of the situation unfolded for me and I realized what a weak proposition it was. Like, all their leverage goes away the moment they send anything to my friends or family. Also, Instagram filters messages from unknown senders by default. I don't know half the people they were threatening to send my nudes to. My mom was on their list, but she barely uses Instagram. And if they somehow punch through to somebody who actually knew me,

• 46:25Speaker 02

  aside from the fact that my nudes are not identifiable, anyone who knew me would just be irritated at the bad manners of someone who tried to blackmail me. Also, I've discovered I'm kind of proud of what I've got on offer. The real kicker was that one of the contacts they were threatening to send the photos to is like, the most obnoxious pick-me-energy person in my broader community. When I saw that, I was tempted to goad the scammer and be like, send it. A scammer sending my dick pics to this particular person trying to blackmail me would have been one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Man, I'm glad you have such a sense of humor about all this. Many people completely spiral.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  It took hours for that logic to settle in, though.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Well, I hear that. This is what the scammers want. They want people to panic and do what they say. Some people panic so much, they take their own lives. And we've talked about that on the show. It's really sad.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  In the end, nothing happened. No further messages or threats after my lack of response. Maybe IC3 will do something with the phone number. Maybe they won't. The Grindr profile immediately blocked me and the scammer never actually followed me on Instagram.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. They usually give up when they don't get what they want. They're looking for easy targets. They have no incentive to actually expose you. There's nothing in it for them.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  I'm not even mad. I assume the scammer is captive in a call center somewhere in Cambodia or something, getting beaten with a cattle prod if they don't make their quota.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Sadly, could very well be the case. Or they could just be a very desperate and destitute person living in a tough place. I have less sympathy for those people, but even those people are hurting somehow. I mean, why else would they scam? Unless they enjoy it because they're psychopaths or something.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  It's only thanks to your content that I was able to be like, I've seen this scam before and had some kind of protocol for how to handle it. I'm sharing this story with you in the hopes that someone else can hit the pause button when hit with a similar threat. Signed, a dude in the mood to help other people avoid being screwed after not being too shrewd about who viewed my nudes, which can turn into a feud, but only if you collude with these scammers who intrude, seclude, and try to subdue by making their victims feel like they're coming unglued.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Man, well, I'm very sorry you experienced this. Even if you're prepared for something like this, it's still very stressful, very exposing to get this message. As you know, of course, it sounds like the scammer was especially aggro with the texts, showing you screenshots of the message, all your contacts. That's the kind of thing that drives people to hand over tens of thousands of dollars or worse. It's incredibly sad. It's incredibly effective. That said, I'm very happy you were educated about these scams and you knew how to respond to one. The sad part is, these scammers are so easy to evade or beat. All they want is the most amount of money for the least amount of work. Every story I've heard ...that the moment you disengage, they just move on. They don't have time to convince a thinking person to do what they say.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  They are looking for people who will buy into the scam, freak out, play along. Those are the targets that they need, and there's plenty of them. They'll move on if anybody's giving them a hard time. So, good on you for remembering that and just pulling back. And apparently being so proud of your shorn scrote pics that you don't even care if a scammer sends your nudes around. I mean, that's a level of true confidence that I myself aspire to, even though I do not and would never have a private gallery of nudes, well lit or otherwise, as far as you all know. I do wonder if the one big takeaway is to not maybe share nudes with strangers from the jump on apps. That's an option. Look, I know that's probably a real straight guy take and far less fun than what you're doing now.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  But, I mean, it seems a little risky. You gotta suss people out at least a little more before you share that stuff. I'm sure you're already thinking about that. You said you were distracted and into the person you thought you were messaging. Maybe from here on out, it would be wise to focus a little more when you're sending something sensitive. And to keep an eye on how attraction can temporarily blind you to certain things. I mean, that's why they picked the profile photos that they had, right? It's up to every adult to decide for themselves, I suppose. I would also definitely notify Grindr about this so they can delete the profile. I'm sure they have some protocol or automated process for removing scammers from the platform. It's probably happening every day. I'm just thinking about that super sad story we took a while back, about the teenager who had sent nudes to a scammer, thinking it was a real girl or something.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  And he got sextorted by the person and then he committed suicide because he was too afraid to tell his parents. That stuff sadly happens all the time. It's very tragic. It's totally avoidable by not sending nudes in the first place, which I think is the wisest policy, but also just by not playing into the scammer's demands. So, I appreciate the PSA. It's a really important one, whether it's nudes or secrets or personal information. These scams are everywhere and we gotta be on the lookout for them. But yeah, the only thing you need to do is not play along, delete and report. Take care of yourself out there, bud. Hope you only meet real dudes from here on out and you don't let your guard down too much, even if them dick pics are just straight fire. So, good luck.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Also, in case you don't know, there's a subreddit for our show. If you want to jump into discussions with other listeners about specific episodes, something you liked, didn't like, you got your thoughts on it, share it with us on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Okay, it's time for the recommendation of the week.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  I am addicted to Lit Villa.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  My recommendation of the week is a product called Squirrel Box. So Jen sent me this. She was like, I want one of these. It's think birdhouse, but for squirrels. So you go to squirrelboxes.com and they have different kinds of houses that you can build, different kinds of boxes. And the coolest ones have a camera mount. So you can take, I don't know, like a Ring camera or whatever camera you use at home. You're Simply Safe maybe. And you can put it in the box and you can see the squirrels nesting and raising babies and resting and stuff. It's really, really cool. It's a fun product. It's really easy to build. You don't have to be some kind of DIY genius to do it. And I bought one of these and I've reached out to the guy who runs the website. And he was like, oh my gosh, it's Jordan Harbinger.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  I want to offer a discount for your fans because I listen to the show. So if you use code JORDAN over at squirrelboxes.com, they're not a sponsor. It's just a show fan's sort of side hustle. That'll get you 15% off your order and we'll link to that in the show notes. These are really fun. Jen built it with my son. They both are obsessed with checking the cameras. It's really just a fun product and you're supporting a show fan's business. Squirrelboxes.com, linked in the show notes. You know who else is freshly waxed and ready to party? The amazing sponsors who support this show. We'll be right back.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  If you liked this episode of Feedback Friday and find our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment, support our sponsors. All of the deals and discounts are on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. If they don't work, the code doesn't work, you can't find it. Email me, [email protected]. We'll dig up the code for you, especially if you include some well-lit tasteful nudes. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Feedback Friday.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  All right, next up.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Hey, Jordan and Gabe. I'm 27 and my biggest life goal is to be a father and have a family. The thing is, I've never been in an actual relationship with anyone. I've been on several dates with a handful of women, but nothing has ever made it out of the talking stage. Every girl that I've talked to ended things before anything really started. It seems to always end with their communication slowing down, followed by them deciding to end things. Looking back over the last couple of years, I can see that most of the girls really weren't right for me and I've done a lot of growth to understand that. I have this friend, let's call her Sarah, I've known for about three years. Sarah used to date my friend Mike, who is also my roommate, for about two years before they broke up last year.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  I've always had a good relationship with Sarah, but it was always respectful and I never crossed any boundaries, especially while they were dating. Since they broke up, I've kept my distance from Sarah out of respect for Mike. She goes to my church and I would see her every now and then, but we never really talked much. Then, a couple of months ago, she reached out asking about an event that we had going on in our church and that turned into us talking every day. We talked as just friends, but I could see that there was interest on her end and it allowed me to start having feelings for her. Our personalities, values and life goals lined up very well and I could see that we had a connection. I talked to Mike about Sarah out of respect for our friendship and he had a lot of grace and no issues with us pursuing something.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  I could tell that they had both moved on from each other. That opened the door for me to explore a relationship with Sarah. After that, she and I went on a couple of dates and met up a couple of times and talked for hours each time. Everything looked like it was going well. We were pretty open with each other and everything felt natural. From what I could see and also from intel I got from a mutual friend, the feelings were definitely reciprocal. Then, about a week or so after we went on the first date, Sarah decided to end things. She said she never allowed herself to have feelings and that she felt a lot of pressure. I asked her if it had anything to do with her and Mike and she said it didn't. She said she still wanted to be friends, but I told her I needed time to process everything.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  Ultimately, I came away from that conversation more confused than I had ever been. I genuinely believe things were going well. The whole thing only lasted about two months and never got physical, but it gave me the most hope I've ever had.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's really tough, man. Sorry, dashed hopes, more confusion, that can definitely hurt.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  I've been let down many times before, but this one hurt the most because it came from someone who was genuinely becoming one of my best friends and I genuinely thought things were going to be different. I know I always grow from a heartbreak, but it's so discouraging. I keep trying to put myself out there, but every time I seem to get close to someone, they end up pulling away, chipping away at my confidence and my hope. I'm a pretty self-aware person. I'm always trying to understand my weaknesses and see how I can work on them. So, it's hard for me not to think that I'm the problem, even though I try my best to be the best man I can be. After all of this, I realized that I need to connect with people. I started reaching out to family and friends more and I finally started going to therapy again.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Do you have any advice on how to keep putting myself out there without getting hurt over and over again? What are your thoughts on trying to maintain a platonic relationship with someone after the door to something more has already been opened? Signed, bruised, confused and somewhat bemused, but looking to improve and decide the right move after being refused by another prospect before we even found our groove.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Really interesting letter and really good question. So first off, I'm sorry that things didn't work out with Sarah and that this fits into a larger pattern. I know it sucks to struggle in the dating world. It's probably the most charged area in our lives and I think it's extra hard when you're very self-aware. You want to diagnose the issue, you want to work on it. It's also extra hard when what you want more than anything in life is to find a wife and be a father, which by the way, I love that you're clear about that. You have a goal, you have a strong intention in dating, but I imagine the stakes also feel very high, even at 27. I gotta say though, I'm really moved by a number of things in your letter. I'm moved by the fact that you're continuing to put yourself out there and pursue women after some tough setbacks. That is essential and it says a lot about your resilience.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  And I know, I mean, I see even in this latest experience, that's going to put you in touch with some great data. I'm moved by the fact that you handled the Sarah thing appropriately after she and Mike broke up and that when something started to develop, you went to him and you asked him directly if it was okay to explore things with her. Again, I think that says a lot about you, you're a mensch. And I'm moved by your self-awareness and your humility and your eagerness to appreciate where you need to develop, your hunger to be the best man you can be. So, look, it sounds like I'm gassing you up here, maybe I am a little bit, but I mean it. You're a solid guy. I know those qualities are going to play a huge role in your life. So, how do you keep putting yourself out there over and over again without getting hurt? You can't. I think we probably talked about this recently, one of my favorite themes from Feedback Friday.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  To be a person on this planet is to always risk being hurt. It's not fun, it's not easy. If we all had our druthers, we'd toggle off the hurt feature in our hearts, wouldn't that be nice? But we can't do that. Saying yes to life, inviting the possibility of getting hurt, those are two sides of the same coin. Joy and pain, the potential to experience both, that's the deal. We'll do a lot of clever things to avoid the hurt and only experience the joy, but that never works, not really. That just leads to cramping around our wounds, selective- Choosing the parts of life that are convenient for us, slipping into various defense mechanisms, which, let's be honest, we all do to some degree, but some more than others. Anything to ward off the ickiness of being wounded.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  And so the project isn't to avoid ever getting hurt again. The project is to learn to bear that hurt, to work with that hurt, to learn from it, to be a little humbled by it, to accept all of the feelings around it. Anger, sadness, shame, frustration, now that's super fun cocktail. And to work through the pain in a way that doesn't paralyze you or drown you or make you want to pull away from life, but rather allows you to grow in the ways that you need to grow and to show up that much better next time. But again, you're already leaning into these big questions. And so my advice there is to keep leaning into them and don't lean out or away. Don't self protect too much because there's a process unfolding here that is extremely important.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  As for trying to maintain a platonic relationship with Sarah after you guys explored something romantic. I have a few thoughts. One, if you need a little time, a few weeks, couple of months, whatever, to recover from the heartache, reset, come back to the relationship with a new mindset, that's absolutely fair. Take the time you need, that can be healthy. And during this time apart, you might want to reflect on the qualities that you liked in Sarah and ask yourself if this is somebody you would truly like to be friends with. It sounds like maybe there was a solid base of friendship there at the beginning. That can make it a lot easier to transition into a regular friendship. I also know that when you're romantically interested in someone, sometimes you overlook whether you'd actually be friends with them. The attraction kind of eclipses everything else.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Sometimes it even blinds you to certain things. And when things end, you're kind of left going, well, actually, there isn't a ton for me here. And you know what? That's also fair. So maybe take this time to see how you really feel about Sarah as a friend. Get a little more perspective. You might have to grab coffee when you're ready to know for sure. I think it's a promising sign that she wants to be friends with you. It sounds like you guys had a real connection, so I'm hopeful for that. But you get to decide if that's a relationship that you want to invest in.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  I think the hardest part of this is just taking the L, so to speak, and turning the corner on the relationship, right? Like you wanted it to be one thing, Sarah wants it to be another. You can't make her feel differently. So your options are respectfully part ways because your interests are different, which can be a legitimate choice. Or embrace this new version of your relationship slash it's going back to the friendship you had before and see what that friendship with her is like. Maybe it lasts, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it becomes a beautiful friendship or maybe it fizzles and you naturally drift apart. I mean, it's hard to predict, but as you probably know, Jordan and I are both big fans of men and women being friends. They have so much to offer each other. Having dated, especially if it was so brief like this in the past, should not necessarily be an obstacle to being friends.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  And it does sound like it's worth giving it a shot, but it's interesting, Jordan. I think what you're also getting at is his capacity for a friendship with Sarah, with any woman, is probably going to be proportional to his capacity to bear this hurt that he's trying to avoid. Do you know what I mean? Like he's in a mini grief process right now as he accepts her choice and makes sense of it. He's mourning their short-lived romantic relationship. He's also mourning all of the hopes that he had for that relationship, which actually might be the harder part.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  I think so. Like I said, he's got a lot riding on this, given his goals.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  So this is one interesting thing that's already coming out of this breakup. Maybe he's appreciating that he brings a lot to a new relationship. Whether he comes out and says it or not, maybe the other person just picks up on it. He's dating with the intention of getting married and having children. And I assume being happy forever after and all that. It's a wonderful goal, but that can also become a slightly freighted situation.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  I do think sometimes people can feel that and it can just be a lot.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  I just keep coming back to that detail where he said that Sarah felt pressured. And I wonder if this was the pressure that she felt. Maybe it was another form of pressure or maybe that's her stuff, not his. But I just wonder if maybe this was in the mix. But I want to be accurate here because we could speculate wildly. We don't know how Sarah experienced you, right? We don't know how she felt about your hopes for the relationship. They might not have registered for her at all, or they could have registered quite a bit or anything in between. But whether Sarah had a feeling about your hopes for the relationship or not, I do get the sense that they're playing a big role in how you feel after a relationship ends. And so just to broaden way out here, this might be another thing that Sarah is teaching you. How to not bring too many fantasies or too many expectations to a new relationship.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  And who knows, maybe this is the reason you had to explore this relationship with her, even though it didn't work out. And if it's not this insight, it's probably going to be something else. There's always something to learn, but more than that, you might want to start thinking about romantic partners, any person, any situation really, as data rather than hoped for outcomes.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yes, 100% yes.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  So by that, I mean, you could go into a relationship with someone and think to yourself, boy, I really hope she's my wife who I've been looking for since I was a kid. Like I want to be a father, time's a ticking. And if it works out that way, then I succeed. But if it doesn't work out that way, then I failed. That puts your personal goals front and center. And we just talked about how that can be a lot for some people. It's also a fairly narrow way of looking at success. There's another way to go into a relationship, which is thinking more like, man, I can't wait to find out what I learn about this person and myself in this relationship. And I still want to find my wife, I still want to start a family. But my main goal right now, especially at the beginning of a relationship, is just to be curious about this person, to be curious about myself,

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  see what comes up in our exchange, how I partner with people and get clearer on what I'm looking for out there and see how this person lines up, all of that.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Totally. By that definition, you, you can't lose.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  So I'm also aware that there's a question lurking in his letter that he hasn't explicitly asked, which is what is the issue really? Is there even an issue?

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  I'm sitting here going, do we take a stab at that? Do we throw out some possibilities? But I'd need to know so much more about him.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  You know, this pressure thing seems to be the most meaningful data point. But yeah, it's really hard to diagnose exactly what that is. And I don't want to fill his head with theories that are completely unfounded.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  I coached people for what, a decade or so in dating? I mean, I'd spend a week, 10 days, many hours a day with some of these guys. Even then, it was hard to diagnose some of these roadblocks. These things can be very subtle and very nuanced. I also want to make room for the possibility that he simply hasn't found his person yet. I think it's totally possible that when he meets the right person, it'll just click. And it often does. And he won't be sitting there wondering, oh, what's wrong with me?

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  It's also possible that he's still learning what he wants in a partner or he thinks he can find what he wants in a wide array of people. So he's pursuing women who just are not the right fit.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, all of these are possible. But so this is why I think shifting your mindset is really valuable. Because if there is some significant issue that you need to address, and I'm still saying if, because we don't know if there is. But the best way of finding out is by continuing to date, inviting in all of this data that you get from people, trying to make sense of it. And yeah, being willing to be hurt along the way, that's the price of admission. And not judging the success or failure of the relationship by whether you found your forever person, which can almost work against you sometimes. So I have an interesting idea here. It's a little out there, but I think it could be great.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Ooh, exciting. All right, let's hear it.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  So when he's ready, what if he invites Sarah at a lunch, right? And he says something like, our relationship has been very special to me. I was excited to explore a romantic relationship with you. I hear you loud and clear that you don't feel that way. I was a little bummed at first about that, but I get it, I respect it. Thank you for telling me directly. Thank you for telling me early on. You know, I'm ready to be your friend and thank you for being open to staying friends and giving me some time. And then maybe he says, so we're friends now. I want to share something with you. I want to ask you for your honest thoughts. Please don't hold back, it's important to me that you speak openly. And then maybe you tell her the broad outlines of this pattern that you're noticing. And that what happened between the two of you seems to fall into that pattern. And then you could say, and this is important, now that we're stepping into this friendship for real,

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  I want to ask you if there was anything that came up between us that gave you pause or that didn't sit well with you or made you feel that something was missing? I know you mentioned that you felt pressured. I would really love to understand more about that. Is that something I made you feel? Is that something that you felt based on something I did? Unpack that with her. And you could even say, I know it's kind of weird and unconventional to ask somebody this straight up, but if you can be honest with me here, you would be giving me a great gift. You'd help me continue to grow into the best version of the person I want to be. And I promise to take it in and listen.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Damn, yeah, well, it's bold, that's for sure.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Again, I realize this might be overly literal, very on the nose. I also think there's something to be said for being overly literal sometimes, especially if there's some crucial piece of information that he senses is out there and he needs to hear it directly from someone. It might also be an interesting way to see if this friendship with Sarah really has legs. Like, is she going to be a true friend and give it to him straight or not?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  That's true, but that also depends on Sarah's willingness to really meet him in that vulnerability and that honesty.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Which is not guaranteed.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of people, like we were just talking about, would do anything to avoid saying the painful thing. And she's not going to want to hurt him.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  I hear that, but she already did give him some pretty honest feedback. So he would just be saying, can you help me understand that better? I really want to understand how that shows up in my relationships.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  I should also acknowledge that he has to really mean this too. He can't just say that it's okay for her to be honest. You know, he has to really be ready to take in whatever she says, which I hope he is.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of guys do this too, though, right? I'm not saying he's going to do it, but they're like, just tell me, give it to me straight. And if she's like, well, I actually don't like this. And then it's like, wah, I'm going to make your life miserable and be mean to you for the next three years. It's like the risk reward for a lot of women being honest with guys about this stuff. And vice versa, it's just not the equation. The math doesn't math. So what she says might wound him and he has to be ready for that and not take it out on her, hold it against her.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Yes, and it's okay if he is wounded. He can leave their conversation and attend to that hurt in a helpful way with his new therapist, for example. Right? This isn't about not having any difficult feelings in response.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like she could wriggle out of this and dodge the question and that might tell him, okay, there's something there. Maybe this isn't the most meaningful friendship. Or she could really engage and give him a gem or two from their time together and that might tell him, wow, okay, I'm getting some answers and this girl is a true homie.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, either way, he accomplishes something important. And look, maybe this information comes from Sarah, maybe it doesn't. Maybe he and Sarah simply were not a match and that's all this is and there is no problem other than they aren't compatible. Maybe Sarah needs another few months of friendship to really trust that he can hear this. There are so many ways this could go. But I'm hearing that our friend is ready to bear the pain of honest feedback in pursuit of this goal that matters very much to him. This is one way to do that and I do think he has a lot to gain, so worth a shot.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  I think that'll also help with this discouraging feeling he has. I think what's driving that is feeling like it's all loss and frustration with no growth or no insight. But the growth and insight, that transforms these setbacks into opportunities. It gives them meaning and that's what he craves the most. That's what we all need, right? So thank you for sharing all this with us, bud. Thank you for your vulnerability and openness. Follow them into all of your relationships, including with Sarah, and I know that they're going to lead you to the answers that you're seeking. It's all growth, brother. And one day you will find her and it'll all make sense, but it doesn't need to make sense now. All you need right now is the learning and good luck. Go back and check out Annie Jacobson and our Skeptical Sunday on Gut Health if you haven't done so yet. The best things that have happened in my life and business have come through my network,

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  the circle of people that I know, like and trust. I'm teaching you how to build that in our six-minute networking course. It's free, it is not schmoozy, it's on the Thinkific platform at sixminutenetworking.com. The drills take a few minutes a day. Dig that well before you're thirsty, folks. Build relationships before you need them. You can find it at sixminutenetworking.com. Show notes and transcripts on the website, advertisers, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Gabe's on Insta at Gabriel Mizrahi. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, Tatis Alaskis, and of course Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own and I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Consult a qualified professional before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here 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.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  The most powerful longevity tool may not be in a supplement bottle or high-tech clinic. It might be the simple movement most of us barely think about.

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  So I have plenty of patients that are in chronic pain. People's feet are weak, the footwear is compromising the function of their feet and this is what we get. One out of three people over the age of 45 have foot pain. People don't pay attention to their feet. We talk about, you know, meeting people where they are. Getting to 5,000 steps a day decreases the risk of depression. This is a very, very big thing that I think should be on every prescription pad. That sweet spot is about 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day. That's game changing. You gotta put the work in, you know? You have to put the work in for anything that's worth doing. Getting outside and having that repetitive motion, we're stimulating neurotransmitters in our brain. We're decreasing cortisol.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  You're increasing your parasympathetic state, which is the chill state. These are all very, very good things, but if you start paying attention to this stuff, it will save you so much in the long run because I see people every single day that cannot walk because something hurts because of foot pain, every single day. My goal is to keep people walking as much as they want to as they age and that's going to happen by making sure that their foot is strong. Please pay attention to your feet. Look at them. Can you move your toes? Can you splay your toes? And if not, start to work on things to improve the strength of your foot. Wear a shoe that's more functional, that respects the anatomy of your foot. If you do just those things, you'll probably stay out of my office.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Check out episode 1322 with Dr. Courtney Conley, which reveals how a few strategically timed steps can add healthier years to your life.

• 1:13:58Speaker 05

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