The Jordan Harbinger Show

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.
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Your friend fled her wall-punching spouse and crashed at your place. Now she wants to go back, and your husband says to butt out. 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/1300
On This Week's Feedback Friday:
An eagle-eared listener spotted a mistake on episode 919 and wrote in to correct the record and clarify the facts!
Your close friend's spouse is punching walls, deflecting blame, and getting verbally aggressive — and now she wants to reconcile with him. You're a police officer who sees this stuff escalate for a living, and your own husband thinks you should just play nice to save the friendship. What do you do?
After seven years of trying, you finally got pregnant through IVF — only for your husband to end up on a ventilator at 20 weeks. You had to make the call to let him go, then immediately fight for your premature baby's life. Now your friend — who promised you a baby shower that never happened — just sent you an invitation to hers. How do you navigate that gut punch?
Your four-month-old daughter already has a digital footprint she never consented to, thanks to "Glamma" posting everything on Facebook and "Nan" uploading her photos into random AI apps that turned your baby into a purple fire-breathing monster. You're doing everything right with a private family photo app — but how do you get the grandparents on board without starting a war?
Recommendation of the Week: Hoopla and PressReader — two free library-card apps that give you instant access to e-books, courses, TV shows, and thousands of newspapers and magazines from around the world in their original print layout.
You've been dwelling on things you said (or never got to say) to people who are no longer in your life, and forgiveness feels like a destination you can't quite reach. Is self-forgiveness even possible — or is there a different path to peace that you haven't considered yet?
Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [email protected]!
Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger.
Connect with Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi and Instagram @gabrielmizrahi.
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The China Show's Laowhy86 reveals how millions of Chinese citizens disguise dissent as puns, memes, and mythical creatures to dodge censors.
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1299
What We Discuss with Laowhy86:
China's internet operates as a closed ecosystem where apps like WeChat handle everything from payments to communication — and the government monitors all of it. Citizens who default on debts, post the wrong opinion, or even discuss banned topics can lose access to trains, flights, and basic services overnight.
Chinese citizens have built an ever-evolving coded language to dodge censorship — from "grass mud horse" (a pun on a profanity) to calling lockdowns "square cabins" and using "talk egg prices" to vent about the economy. What started as playful wordplay has become a high-stakes survival tool as punishments have escalated to years in prison.
The government now deploys AI — through campaigns like "Clear and Bright" — to predict and pre-emptively ban future slang before it even catches on. Large language models scan for creative workarounds, making the cat-and-mouse game between citizens and censors increasingly lopsided.
China's unwritten social contract — surrender your freedoms and we'll make you prosperous — is fracturing. Factory workers haven't been paid in months or years, youth unemployment data has been suppressed, and movements like "lying flat" reflect a generation that's checked out of a system that stopped holding up its end of the deal.
Even under the most sophisticated censorship apparatus on the planet, human creativity keeps finding cracks — blank paper protests, "deep-fried" videos, emoji puzzles, and cross-strait livestream trolling all prove that when speech is compressed, it doesn't vanish — it adapts, and understanding how that works sharpens your ability to read between the lines anywhere.
And much more...
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The red light therapy market is full of junk science and real breakthroughs. Recharge Health CEO Bjorn Ekeberg is here to separate scams from the science.
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1298
What We Discuss with Bjorn Ekeberg:
Red light therapy has real, evidence-backed benefits — particularly for musculoskeletal pain, inflammation, and recovery — but the market is flooded with junk products like LED toothbrushes and shower heads that can't deliver a meaningful dose, threatening to discredit the legitimate science behind it.
The real power of light therapy lies in near-infrared wavelengths — not just visible red light. Red light works on the skin's surface, but near-infrared penetrates deeper into tissue, stimulating mitochondrial function and improving cellular efficiency — which is why the distinction matters more than most people realize.
NASA research in the early 2000s showed that without exposure to red and near-infrared light, astronauts' healing processes slowed dramatically — confirming that our bodies depend on these wavelengths the way plants depend on sunlight, a connection modern indoor life has severed.
The biohacking and wellness industry moves faster than the evidence, creating a cycle where legitimate therapies get buried under wild marketing claims — from hair regrowth caps to fat-melting irons — which trains consumers to dismiss everything as snake oil.
Consistency and correct dosing are the keys to real results with red light therapy — whether for pain, gut health, or even deep sleep improvement — so start with a targeted protocol, track your progress, and treat it like any other health habit that compounds over time.
And much more...
And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps!
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Protests, missiles, and a regime on the ropes — Iran is at a turning point. Ryan McBeth explains the forces driving one of the world's most complex crises.
Welcome to what we're calling our "Out of the Loop" episodes, where we dig a little deeper into fascinating current events that may only register as a blip on the media's news cycle and have conversations with the people who find themselves immersed in them.
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1297
On This Episode of Out of the Loop:
Iran is an ancient civilization stretching back 5,000 years — but most Americans only know the post-1979 version, which is like judging Rome entirely by the fall of its empire and missing the aqueducts, art, and architecture that came before.
The 1953 CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected government planted the seeds for the 1979 Islamic Revolution — a theocratic regime that crushed dissent, built a proxy empire through Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and turned the IRGC into its enforcer.
Iran's proxy strategy is devastatingly cheap and effective — rather than build a navy, they fund groups like the Houthis to launch missiles based on Iranian targeting intel, giving Tehran plausible deniability while disrupting global shipping and oil markets.
AI-generated war footage and disinformation are rapidly becoming a frontline weapon — fake videos of captured soldiers and fabricated attacks spread faster than fact-checkers can respond, and producing convincing deepfakes now costs as little as $12 per video.
Despite decades of repression, Iranian citizens continue to protest and push for change — and experts suggest that if the regime falls, Iran's strong collective national identity makes a Libya-style collapse unlikely, offering real hope for a democratic future.
And much more!
Connect with Jordan on Twitter, on Instagram, and on YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on an Out of the Loop episode, drop Jordan a line at [email protected] and let him know!
Connect with Ryan McBeth at his website, Twitter, Instagram, and on YouTube. If you’d like to stay on top of what’s happening in the world, subscribe to Ryan’s Substack!
And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps!
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