The Jordan Harbinger Show

Your emotions are a con artist's favorite weapon. Johnathan Walton lost nearly $100k to a fake friend, sent her to prison, and is here to explain how.
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1305
What We Discuss with Johnathan Walton:
Con artists don't outsmart you — they out-feel you. They bypass logic entirely by creating deep emotional bonds, exploiting love, sympathy, fear, and trust. Once you're making decisions with your heart instead of your head, you're already in the trap — and believing you're "too smart to be scammed" only makes you a bigger target.
The most dangerous scammers are already in your life. Professional con artists enter through offers to help, build trust over years, and use real details — like places they've actually lived — as kernels of truth to construct elaborate lies. They don't lurk in dark alleys; they sit at your dinner table and call your mom auntie.
Con artists deliberately make their scams complex and document-heavy so that when victims go to police, the case sounds like a civil dispute rather than a crime. They use contracts, wire transfers, and layered stories specifically designed to confuse law enforcement — and cops, already overwhelmed with violent crime, often take the path of least resistance.
Scammers mingle their victims together — not to risk exposure, but to weaponize social proof. By introducing targets to one another, each victim unknowingly validates the con artist's story, creating a web of false credibility where no one compares notes because everyone assumes someone else has already done the due diligence.
You can fight back — and win. Build your case like a courtroom presentation: write a clear one-page timeline, gather notarized witness statements, present hard evidence of the lie and the money lost, and call the police every single day until your case moves forward. Freeze your credit, run background checks on new people in your life, and remember: Shame is the con artist's greatest weapon, but sunlight is your revenge.
And much more...
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The US spent millions trying to create psychic spies, but this remote viewing pseudoscience never came into focus. Nick Pell explains on Skeptical Sunday!
Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell!
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1304
On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:
The U.S. government spent millions over two decades on Project Stargate — a real program aimed at training psychic spies to "see" enemy secrets through meditation — and the CIA ultimately concluded that no remote viewing report ever provided actionable intelligence.
Early ESP research by J.B. Rhine at Duke produced seemingly positive results, but none of his studies were ever reliably replicated — including a Princeton trial of over 25,000 attempts with 132 subjects that found zero evidence of extrasensory perception.
Project Stargate wasn't a fringe side project — it was a sprawling effort across multiple military and intelligence programs that ran from the Cold War era all the way until 1995, partly spurred by reports that the Soviets were spending $125 million annually on similar research.
After Stargate shut down, many of its former participants went commercial — selling remote viewing courses ranging from $79 to nearly $3,000 — proving that even debunked pseudoscience can become a profitable cottage industry.
The biggest takeaway here is a genuinely useful life skill: knowing even the most basic scientific principles — like demanding replication and questioning methodology — can help you cut through junk science and spot quackery before it costs you time, money, or good judgment.
Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [email protected] and let him know!
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A narcissistic friend ghosted you for years, then announced he's moving in — rent-free — while you and your fiancée plan a family. It's Feedback Friday!
And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [email protected]. Now let's dive in!
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1303
On This Week's Feedback Friday:
If you prefer to board the Dooze Cruise without following the latest globetrotting adventures of Jordan and Gabe, skip ahead to around 21 minutes and 20 seconds.
After two years of radio silence, your old friend from Germany has suddenly resurfaced — not to reconnect, but to announce he's moving into your apartment rent-free while you and your fiancée are trying to start a family. He didn't ask. He informed. How do you say "nein" without nuking the friendship?
Your husband's sister has spent eight years intimidating you, belittling your anxiety, and treating conflict like a competitive sport — all while the family shrugs it off as "just how she is." Now politics have entered the chat, your husband finally drew a line, and she technically respected it. But what happens when she inevitably crosses it again?
Your suburban neighbor "Chad" has turned the cul-de-sac into his personal fiefdom — following people to work, making veiled threats about firearms, and tormenting anyone who crosses his path. The HOA's useless, the cops seem indifferent, and you're stuck living next to a man with too much free time and zero chill. What's your move? [Thanks once again to attorney Corbin Payne for helping us with this one!]
Recommendation of the Week: The Garmin inReach Mini — a satellite communicator that keeps you connected (and findable) even when you're completely off the grid, with SOS capability and optional search-and-rescue insurance.
You and your partner are about to tie the knot, you're both carrying grief from losing parents, and you want to build the strongest possible foundation before saying "I do." You've heard all the usual advice — but what are the real, practical things couples should do before marriage that nobody talks about?
Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected]!
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Drug cartels have quietly infiltrated rural America. Trafficked host Mariana van Zeller walks us through the underworld hiding beneath our very feet.
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1302
What We Discuss with Mariana van Zeller:
Mexican drug cartels are deliberately setting up operations in small-town America — not big cities — because rural areas have minimal law enforcement, making it easier to hide distribution networks where a single sheriff can't compete with heavily armed cartel operatives.
Mariana van Zeller builds trust with dangerous sources — from cartel lieutenants to assassins — by ditching prepared question lists, sharing personal photos, and offering cigarettes, treating interviews as human conversations rather than interrogations to unlock genuine, unguarded responses.
Commercial airlines like Delta are among the biggest drug transportation networks in the US, with cartel distributors exploiting everyday travel infrastructure rather than the covert smuggling operations most people imagine — meaning the drug trade hides in plain sight.
The opioid-to-fentanyl-to-tranq-dope pipeline is a public health crisis, not a moral failing — most users started with a legitimate injury and a prescription, and the street drug xylazine now causes wounds resembling leprosy while hospitals stigmatize users instead of treating them.
Mariana's approach to journalism offers a powerful reminder that curiosity and empathy — not judgment — are what unlock the deepest understanding of people and problems, a mindset anyone can practice to have more meaningful conversations and see the world with clearer eyes.
And much more...
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Are electric vehicles a green revolution or just greenwashing on wheels? Nick Pell pops the hood and breaks it all down here on Skeptical Sunday!
Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell!
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1301
On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:
Electric vehicles carry zero tailpipe emissions, but the electricity powering them often comes from coal and natural gas plants — meaning your EV's true environmental footprint depends heavily on where you live and how your local grid generates power.
The cobalt fueling EV batteries comes overwhelmingly from the Democratic Republic of Congo — one of the poorest, most unstable nations on Earth — where child labor, armed militia control of mines, and toxic contamination of local communities remain deeply troubling realities.
EVs start with a larger carbon deficit than gas-powered cars due to battery manufacturing, but they erase that debt within 15,000 to 50,000 miles — and every mile driven after that threshold is cleaner than the equivalent gas-powered mile would be.
The average EV costs about $53,000 compared to $36,000 for a gas-powered car, with batteries alone accounting for 30 to 40 percent of the price — and federal tax credits that once softened the blow have been eliminated.
EV technology is rapidly evolving — with lighter, faster-charging batteries on the horizon and recycling infrastructure growing — so doing your homework on total cost of ownership, local grid sources, and available incentives can help you make a smarter, more informed decision.
Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [email protected] and let him know!
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