847: 5G | Skeptical Sunday

24:38It's like a religion for them. If somebody says, hey, Jordan, this thing you believe is not true, I'll go, huh, okay, well, how do you know? Can you send me evidence? But if I say, hey, chemtrails are not a thing, it's air condensation, people are like, you know what? Screw you. I hope your family dies. I better not ever see you. I'm unsubscribing. I'm leaving you one-star reviews where I'm going to curse out your wife. I'm just like, what? They're just taking it completely to a new level and it's so personal for them it's funny because you were sort of elevating the things they said each one and you started with i hope your family dies and then you got to i'm gonna leave you a one-star review it's like that's the worst one yeah i mean you can hope all you want but don't be negatively reviewing the show that's real world consequences for me yeah i'd rather put my family in danger but don't give me a one-star review how dare you yeah for the sake of my own reviews and stuff then i won't say anything more about chemtrails they're fine.

25:30Well, I believe what you want about that, everyone. When you have a go at someone's belief, you challenge someone's belief. We make our beliefs a part of our identity, and that's when you can't challenge them. So I think, Jordan, you probably hold many beliefs, probably quite disparate beliefs. And one of the core tenets of your personality, just from listening to your podcast and from knowing you, is your curiosity and your willingness to be proved wrong. So that is what your identity is about. Whereas if that wasn't your job and that wasn't your identity, and your identity was somebody who believes in chemtrails, if somebody then came and said, oh, that's all rubbish, then that is going to hurt and people are going to defend themselves however they can.

26:06You're right. There's a lot of community around conspiracy nonsense too. So if you look at flat earth, which is another topic we should probably address, there are a lot of people that go to conferences, they write books, they make money, they make fake globes that are flat and models of this and they do their live streams. So they're making money. It's part of their job. Their ego's caught up in it. So when you say, hey, by the way, an elementary school student can prove you wrong using very simple experiments, they don't go, oh, I'd like to see that. They go, you're part of this conspiracy. How dare you, Neil deGrasse Tyson?

26:37You're an enemy of the people. Yeah. Right. Because you're attacking their income stream, their friend circle, not just something that they kind of believe because they watched a YouTube video. They're too wrapped up in it. That's the thing. And I wonder sometimes, and again, I won't labor the point, but I wonder sometimes if it's when we don't have enough else going on in our lives. I think back to when I was 18 or 19, most of us who go to universities and things like that or your first house, your first apartment, whatever, you put posters of the kinds of movies you like around the room to express your identity.

27:03You don't have much more. And then if somebody says like, you like The Godfather? That's terrible, that film. Again, that's the closest thing to a core belief system you have is like, I like The Godfather. And as you get older, you start to develop other interests and other things and you're not too worried about what your identity is. I think that's when it becomes a problem if you don't have that. That's a really good point. If you make fun of someone's favorite band in high school, them's fighting words. Yeah. But if you tell me now that you don't like whatever DJ or EDM in general, I'm not going to be like, wow, we can't be friends anymore because you don't like the kind of, I just don't even care.

27:33It's a non-issue completely. I liked Coldplay before they were called. I thought the earth was flat before I started making live streams about it on YouTube. Yeah. I don't know. We shouldn't have a go too much at conspiracy theorists because we do need them. Without the conspiracy theorists, we'd never uncover the small percentage of them that are actually happening, the small percentage of conspiracies. So - I think they are wrong about chemtrails and 5G, but they're right about some stuff. There's no doubt that the whole point of being in government is to control the people. There's no doubt that while many want to do good, there are bad actors out there who would like to tell you how to live your life, who'd be willing to make you ill to suit their purposes.

28:10Just think of the tobacco industry. But the evidence linking 5G to coronavirus is just not there. So if dark secret people are controlling us and making us ill, it appears that 5G is not their weapon of choice. So why did this particular theory capture the public imagination so much? Was it just timing? It was during a time when the word coronavirus or COVID-19 was just so viral, you know. I see what you did there. Okay. Yes. And it puts social media platforms in a really difficult position. Because on the one hand, it's perhaps their duty to prevent this kind of misinformation from spreading, the kind that causes wild hysteria.

28:46On the other hand, in so doing, they've at times jumped the shark and banned tweets Twitter users and so on for reporting on what turned out to be potentially true with regards to coronavirus. In 2020, Twitter suspended a Chinese virologist who claims to have proof coronavirus was made in a lab. We still don't know for sure the origins of COVID, but only a year later, that possibility was being seriously considered by mainstream scientists. So what was initially an attempt by social media platforms to censor misinformation now looks, especially to conspiracy theorists, but also to the rest of us, like an attempt to shut down open dialogue and prevent people getting to the truth.

29:25And that's a real problem for free speech. And then we can get really philosophical and say, do even those propagating misinformation have the right to free speech? And even when that speech is promoted and amplified on social media, and even when that information is absolutely wrong, all I can say is, I don't envy the people in charge of the social media platforms who are being tasked with adjudicating on this. Yeah, I agree. I'm no expert on this. And I'm obviously very strongly against misinformation and disinformation. It's one of the major missions of this show in the first place. That said, people, frankly, they should have the right to post idiotic stuff online.

30:04But I digress. You're right. And I think the only valid opinion to hold on this is that no one opinion is 100 % right. It's how we choose to live as a society together, I suppose. But whatever the reasons, and they are myriad, the coronavirus 5G fake link penetrated society and captures the imagination as much as any other conspiracy in recent years. Coronavirus was and still is really scary. One of the key parts of conspiracy theories is the fact that the only thing scarier than the idea that the government are controlling us and making us ill is the concept that the government doesn't actually know what it's doing, that nobody does and no one's in charge.

30:41And when everything shut down for almost two years, we were faced with that existential crisis in a very raw way. Suddenly, we were seeing that nobody knew what the virus was exactly, how to stop it spreading, how many of us would die, how long we should stay in our homes. The government, the people in charge of us all, were exposed as what they are, just humans like us who don't necessarily know what they're doing. And I'd wager that that is as scary as any conspiracy theory. So the conspiracy theorist linking 5G to coronavirus thought they were uncovering a scary apocalyptic vision, but maybe they were really just trying to console themselves.

31:20This has occurred to me, right? They want to make the world seem less scary to believe that somebody is in control of the ship, pulling the strings, even if it's secret to dark, nefarious, whatever, not just, hey, we don't have any idea what's going on here. You're right. It does make you feel better in a weird way to think there's a very well-organized enemy that's keeping things really secret and pulling the strings rather than we are just at the mercy of nature and it's completely unpredictable. Exactly. There could be a solar flare in a second and we'd all die so quickly that we wouldn't even have known about it.

31:52In fact, that's scientifically probably completely inaccurate. So I was going to say, is that what solar flares do? I thought they just knocked out electronics, but OK. Speaking of wild, unsantiated claims, Skeptical Sunday, where we just say whatever random crap comes into our head without checking. I haven't vetted this, but there could be a solar flare. There could be one that knocks stuff out and we don't have electricity, all right? That could happen at any moment. So we should be concerned about it. That's true. But yeah, this is a thing. You know, we can make wild claims and things, but by the end of the sentence that I'm saying it, I hope to rectify it and think, actually, that's probably not true.

32:25That's a sci-fi movie I saw. But as you say, you know, we all want or need to believe that someone is in charge. And the belief among many who subscribe to the COVID 5G conspiracy is that if we just take down the towers, get rid of 5G, go back to simpler times, We can cure everyone. It's a desperate belief. And I suppose we shouldn't mock these people because they just want answers and certainty in an incredibly uncertain time. Nothing scares them and the rest of us more than the reality that COVID is very complex and has left us facing some really tricky philosophical questions around risk, sacrifice, and certainty.

33:02Now, you mentioned before that a Belgian newspaper deleted the article that caused a lot of this or kicked a lot of this off. Have any mainstream broadcasters actually stuck with the conspiracy theory linking 5G to coronavirus? Maybe not mainstream publications as such, but the Kremlin-backed RT or Russia Today has pushed the 5G COVID links more than any other big broadcaster. In fact, RT's correspondent, Michelle Greenstein, said as far back as 2019 that 5G has just one catch. It might kill you. Yeah, that's a pretty big catch. But then again, look how fast my email downloads now. I can just share dick pics with absolutely blazing speed.

33:41From what I've heard, Jordan, that must use up a lot of bandwidth.

33:48Oh, great. But anyway, the journalist Michelle Greenstein has repeated 5G COVID claims, according to Wired, at least 10 times, while RT itself has linked 5G not only to coronavirus, but cancer, nosebleeds, and learning disabilities. Does anyone watch RT anymore? I know that used to be a thing, but is that still a thing? It is pretty popular. At least we think it is. There's been debate even at Harvard's Nieman Lab that was set up to ensure quality journalism about how many of RT's apparent viewers are real. Some call it a news channel. Some claim it is state propaganda. Maybe that's another potential skeptic Sunday unto itself.

34:25But in terms of popularity, it's parked a little outside of the mainstream publications, but still gets a few percent of viewers and readers particularly in France and Germany and particularly on social media where it has a relatively large impact. But on YouTube, Russia Today was getting over a million views in many of their videos. This episode is sponsored in part by The Gist Podcast. If you're looking for a news podcast that is smart, unfiltered, and doesn't just echo whatever side you already agree with, check out The Gist with my friend Mike Peska. Mike's been doing this longer than just about anyone.

34:57It's actually the longest running daily news podcast. It's earned that spot on Apple's top charts for a reason. Each episode's around 30 minutes, so it's perfect for your commute or while you're making breakfast. It's always packed with sharp, thought-provoking takes. What I love about the gist is that it's not stuck in a partisan box. Mike, he's a really smart dude. He digs into real questions, the kind that most shows avoid because they don't fit neatly into a political lane. He'll challenge the right. He keeps the left honest. He dives into stuff like the New York City mayoral race, that whole cluster, and the chaos of sports betting, or even whether talking to your plants actually does anything.

35:26He's an award-winning journalist. He's not some schmo like me who's totally unqualified. You've probably seen his work in the Atlantic, the Free Press, The Washington Post. He's got that rare mix of wit, skepticism, and depth that makes even heavy topics fun to listen to. And he's a great dinner guest, just saying. So if you want your daily news with more brains and less noise, check out The Gist with Mike Peska every weekday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. To clarify here, RT used to be called Russia Today. Now it's just RT. It is Kremlin-backed. It is Kremlin-funded. So what they do is quite clever here.

35:59They report a lot of real news, but then they also report tons and tons of nonsense. So it's probably 80, 20 real news, 20 % completely made up nonsense. At least that used to be kind of how it is. So it is a propaganda channel and it is or was one of the most watched news channels on YouTube, which is actually kind of scary. The reason they mix real news and fake stuff is so that you would watch something and go, well, I know this happened because it's being reported on mainstream news. And then you'd see some crazy nonsense that was fake and wasn't reported elsewhere, but you would go, well, I mean, they just reported on this flood I saw on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

36:32So this is probably true also. And the mainstream's just not covering it because it's unfavorable to the US or the West or whatever. So a lot of conspiracy wonks, they don't seem to realize this. They think it's a credible channel when much of it is really fabricated by design to make the West look bad and to create distrust in Western media. Well, as we were touching on before, I mean, that's the perfect recipe, a mixture of grains of truth with some of the sort of stuff that's quite attractive to a certain mind. And I know you and I have on our podcast done a lot on cults over the years. If you think about Scientology, a lot of the stuff they say is actually quite helpful and useful to a lot of people.

37:10A lot of it is like, you know, go basically to therapy. They hate psychiatry, but they basically do therapy all the time. They say you are responsible for your life. A little bit Jordan Peterson-y, you know, make your bed, you know, Just, you got to go and make your bet. There's a lot of that stuff in Scientology. It's a pretty good accent, I got to tell you. Well, you know, it's, listen up, buckle. Not bad. You've never seen him and Kermit the Frog and Bill Gates and Ray Romano in the same room. That's true. They've all got this kind of, you know, voice. But that's my Jordan Peterson anyway. But Scientology gives you a lot of this, like, really interesting stuff and, like, philosophy that works for a lot of people.

37:46And then they go, and have you heard about Lord Zeno, the alien overlord who comes over. Yeah, you know. Right. But it's, of course, all fallen apart for Russia Today, or RT now, because their American arm disbanded after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is also blocked on British TV, and YouTube has banned them. And as for Michelle Greenstein, she appears to have left journalism altogether, so she's no longer on our screens. You know, RT, I've told this story on the show before, they tried to recruit me as a correspondent a million years ago. Shut up. I think they go for people that are either total kooks.

38:19Michelle Greenstein is a complete kook. I've looked up her recent stuff, and she's just, she'll believe or spread anything. I'm not sure if she's a true believer or just going for the clicks. But they also try and get people who look like they have real journalism chops, not that that's me, or people with an existing audience that are willing to spread baloney or just be edgy. I can't remember what my original point was, but the point is the basically pay above market if you're willing to just sacrifice your credibility. Yeah, well, I mean, how much would you need to be paid? And it's a real question because I know everyone says, you know, oh, integrity and stuff, but everyone's got their price, even if it's like a billion.

38:55You know, so what price would it be that you would then be willing to be their journalist and have to sometimes say stuff where you're like, I'm not sure this is true? I'm going to be completely honest. You know, my whole thing is integrity, but it depends on what it is. If I'm starting to spread stuff that's like Jews, that's pretty bad. You know, I don't know if I could be paid to do that. I don't think I could sleep at night. if I was promoting genocidal stuff. I don't think I could do that. But if it was like, I'm just saying, is 5G bad for you? Just asking questions. Pull the old Tucker Carlson.

39:23I mean, I don't know. $50 million goes a long way these days. And, you know, who am I really hurting? You know, I'd start to rationalize like, so what, people have slower data on their cell phones. I'm just asking questions. I think once I start hurting people, I don't know, man, the money goes way, way, way, way, way up. Not that I wouldn't have some price, but you're right. I'd have to be like hundreds of millions of dollars because really it's not going to increase my quality of life to have 5 million more dollars. It's just not worth it. And that's frankly not what RT was offering. Yeah, well, this is the thing.

39:52I think I never want to moralize and I never want to look at those people who do do those things and think, oh, they're bad people and they're worse than us because I think we're all bad in some ways. We're all selfish and that's what makes humans so great. Like we're really interesting and unpredictable. And I think what has to happen is you have to be approached when you're not already wealthy in any way. And suddenly you get a bit of a claim. There are people watching your show and you're like, oh my God. And then it starts slowly. So it starts with like the vitamin juices and things and ones that don't work or do.

40:21And, you know, it starts with that. And then someone says, look, you know, your numbers are starting to go down. You panic. You need to do something about 5G and coronavirus. And then you're going, oh, well, I guess it won't hurt. And like you say, and I think gradually you get to that point and you're holding on to your channel or your news status or whatever, your career. And people would do a lot to hold on to their careers. And I think that's how they get really fun. And you get to a Tucker Carlson point or sometimes Piers Morgan or one of these people. I think they've just done it for so long now.

40:46You just stop caring. It's just work for them. You know, I would agree. And I think I'm not even saying that all those guys are always acting in bad faith. I think if you have beliefs on the left or the right and they're good faith beliefs, then fine. But I think a lot of times when you get on television or you're doing something for ratings or clicks, you start to move the line of what you believe, frankly. That's part of the game and media, unfortunately. And I think it's positive that RT can no longer spread misinformation. I'm not a censorship guy, of course, but I think the fact that they're no longer on air plays into the hands of the conspiracy theorists who say they were gagged.

41:20Well, exactly. And they're right that if this was the case, that the deep state were trying to control us with COVID, as they believe, then a channel that was shedding light on that would be taken off the air just like they were. So they have a point in that sense, and they're going to become even more conspiratorial because of it. But let's play the conspiracy game ourselves. because there are plenty of reasons why the Russian state might have wanted to spread 5G misinformation, and the New York Times believes it was as a way to hinder the global rollout of 5G while Russia caught up with the technology.

41:51Historically, Russia, from the Bolsheviks to the Cold War, has placed huge importance on being seen to be technological equals with the West. And a European Union report has highlighted 150 instances of pro-Kremlin disinformation about the pandemic. Russia, of course, denies this. But look, the 5G conspiracy is way beyond Russia now. It's all over the internet. And as you can imagine, Alex Jones and Infowars jumped at this. Of course. They ran with a title, 5G launches in Wuhan weeks before coronavirus outbreak. And they made those leaps, you know. Essentially, we find it hard to deal with coincidence and the idea that things just happen sometimes.

42:31We add 2 plus 2 and we make 5. Just look at Bolivia. People there read about the 5G coronavirus conspiracy and started pulling down and setting fire to the towers. But the country didn't even have 5G or 5G towers, so it was just their old cellular antennae they were destroying. And it gets really murky as you delve deeper into the darker corners of the web. There's a lot of blame on Bill Gates, for example, and it tangles up with QAnon. Infamous conspiracy theorist David Icke, who believes in reptilians and has a huge support base, linked 5G and coronavirus to Jewish cults, which is not surprising, although it implicates me as I am Jewish.

43:08But you're involved too, Jordan, because one social media influencer, Amanda Volmer, an anti-vaxxer and mumpreneer, even managed to somehow link coronavirus and 5G to Kobe Bryant's death. I gather Kobe means a great deal to you and you got to interview him before he died, while Amanda believes that 5G and some kind of pollution caused his helicopter to go down. So the reptilians, because people are probably like, Wait, did he say reptilians? Yeah, David Icke, who is just a nonsense, kooky knucklehead, he thinks that people such as Margaret Thatcher, I think was one of them, Anderson Cooper, that they are actually aliens who travel through underground tunnels and are reptilian, like not human, and that powerful people are all these reptilians.

43:52I can't tell if he believes it or if he's just a sociopath that gets off on the fact that he has power in an audience just spouting the absolute maximum level of nonsense bullshit. I'm not sure. Well, about that, whenever I've spoken to fans of his, and there are a lot, there are a lot more than you would think. It's not that out there to be a David Icke follower. I'm sure some of the listeners here will be, and will be offended at the way I'm talking about him. That certainly happens if I ever speak about him on my show and I get comments all the time saying, hey, why don't you have David Icke on?

44:17And whenever you challenge them and you're like, well, he does believe in like lizard people dressed up as Margaret Thatcher or whatever. They always say, well, okay, I don't believe that bit, but I like the rest of what he says. And you're like, oh, fuck. Yeah. How can that, you know, I would just dismiss that out of hand. But of course, I don't even want to go down this rabbit hole. But if somebody believes something that is so completely insane, that like Joe Biden is an alien in a body double and the real Joe Biden never existed or died in the 60s or whatever it is, and then says, but something so da da da.

44:46And you go, well, you know, he believes that such and such are reptile people and aliens and da da da. But he also believes this other thing, which seems totally credible. It's like, how do you take the person whose brain contains this one totally ridiculous belief and say that that same brain, it's fine that he says these other things. Now, look, people hold weird, different, conflicting beliefs all the time, but they don't make those beliefs part of their identity. If your doctor said, you know what? The problem is you have alien DNA. Oh, but also you have influenza. I'm going to go ahead and get a second opinion before I take any medicine from this guy or undergo any surgery from this guy.

45:22And by second opinion, I mean immediately get a different doctor and report him to the medical board. All right. So this is actually a more subtle point. Kooks who want attention and internet clout, they're going to hijack something that's newsworthy, e.g. the death of a celebrity like Kobe Bryant, and they're going to make it about their agenda. Look at how many people took the queen's death, the football player who collapsed on the field recently, and they just made that about whatever cause du jour, whether it was the vaccine or whatever it is, even though there was zero evidence for any of that.

45:51They just wanted to be heard, so they made up a link. And of course, many of those people are Kooks, but even more are just grifters, right? They're selling you things to protect yourself from whatever it is. COVID, 5G radiation, your testosterone levels going down. I mean, Alex Jones himself sells all these stupid masculinity things, right? It's nonsense. Frogs. Did you say frogs? Yeah, something about frogs, wasn't it? Yeah, he goes, they're making the freaking frogs gay. You know what's ironic about this is they are putting chemicals in the water that are making amphibians change because they can change sexes depending on temperature and mating things.

46:27So they're not making the frogs gay, but there are things that are changing the way that these things breed. So it's like the soundbite that everybody says makes Alex Jones look crazy is like one of a few things that he actually is not totally, totally wrong and ridiculous about. That's amazing. It's so funny. I love that. Yeah. And so people go, he's kind of right about that. So maybe he is right that some school shooting was a false flag. And it's like, no, no, and no. Yeah. Horrible. So as I understand it, something that started with one article in a Belgian newspaper was propagated by the Russians and is now out of anyone's hands.

47:02It's just gone viral online and nobody can control it. Kind of just like the virus itself. That's right. It's across social media and anti-5G forums and it's part of the zeitgeist. It's a little bit like that Streisand effect when she didn't want her house to be shown, Barbra Streisand, and by complaining about it, more people saw the house. Well, the more we talk about 5G misinformation, as we're doing right now, it's possible that a small percentage of listeners forget the miss part of misinformation and in years to come have some vague memory of there being something inherently dubious about 5G.

47:32And if you think it's bad now, wait until 2030 when 6G is out. I don't know when that's coming out. That's a speculation, but I assume we're, you know, we're going to get G's. From what I've seen, it is around 2030, but it is all speculative right now, but it's supposed to be about then when 6G is coming. I think we can almost guarantee there'll be some variation of conspiracy and fear and the unknown when 6G does come out. I, for one, am a bit of a technophile. You're the same as that, aren't you, Jordan, I'd imagine? Of course, yeah. I mean, we rely on this to make a living as well. That's why we're biased and part of the deep state, because we're using our Gs to make money, just like David Icke.

48:07Exactly. Oh, man. So yeah, so we're looking forward to the next generations of speeds and things. But because of that Streisand effect, I do think it's important for us to end on this. I've searched long and far and found no evidence whatsoever, no real tangible theories even, which was a bit surprising for me, that link 5G to COVID. Dr. Simon Clark, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading, told the BBC that the notion that 5G either depletes our immune system or spreads corona are complete rubbish. He said your immune system can be dipped by all sorts of things, by being tired one day or not having a good diet, it's sleeping poorly for some reason.

48:47Those fluctuations aren't huge but can make you more susceptible to catching viruses. Radio waves can disrupt your physiology as they heat you up, meaning your immune system can't function, but the energy levels from 5G radio waves are tiny and they are nowhere near strong enough to affect the immune system. There have actually been lots of studies on this. And as for spreading the virus through 5G, that's just not how viruses work. They can't live long outside the human body and certainly can't hop for a ride on the back of a cell phone network. Well, it sounds pretty categorical. The links between coronavirus and 5G are hereby debunked, at least for now, and at least until further real science finds something that we should take note of.

49:28Andrew, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Again, thank you so much, everybody, for listening. A lot of positive feedback. Please do keep that coming. Keep the negative feedback to yourself. But suggestions for topics here on Skeptical Sunday, always welcome. Y 'all know how to reach me. We might not get everything right on any given one of these shows. If you hear something that's way off, definitely let us know. You can reach me at jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Give us your thoughts. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at jordanharbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes.

49:54I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, and you can, of course, find Andrew Gold on his podcast, On the Edge with Andrew Gold, anywhere you get your podcasts. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love.

50:25If you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who needs to hear it. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. you're about to hear a preview of the jordan harbinger show with airbnb's co-founder and ceo brian chesky one day i had this moment in my life where the metaphor is as if the road i'm going to travel looks exactly like the road i have traveled this is the rest of my life and i have this moment like i need to make a change i don't want to work for a company i want to be entrepreneur so one day i pack everything in the backseat of old honda civic and i drive to san Francisco.

51:01I get to San Francisco and Joe tells me the rent is$1 ,150. So I don't have enough money to pay rent. It turns out that weekend though, an international design conference was coming to San Francisco. And so that's when we had this idea. We said, well, what if we just turned our house into a bed and breakfast for design conference? Joe had three air beds. So we pulled the air beds out of the closet. We inflated the air beds and we called it airbed and breakfast.com. People said this idea will never work. Strangers will never stay with other They're strangers. But three people did that one weekend.

51:33The name Airbnb was purchased on GoDaddy for$7.99. This summer, we had about 4 million people every night staying in a home on Airbnb. And these people came from 220 countries and regions, staying in 100 ,000 cities. Imagine all the different cultures living together for the first time in human history. In a world on Zoom, in a world of more flexibility, there's a world where while you're working, you can travel. So suddenly the calendar is open 365 days a year for a number of people. But even more profound than that, people aren't just traveling Airbnb. They're now living on Airbnb. This is a profound shift.

52:11I actually think this is one of the biggest shifts in travel since the invention of the airplane, which is to say that the whole nature of travel is blurring with living. Now, people are just nomadic. Wait till borders open up. suddenly people aren't just going away to Colorado for the summer, they're going to another country for the summer. And so I think you're going to have this fundamental shift in where people live, where people work, where people travel. And this is probably the biggest change to our daily living at one time since World War II. For more on the idea that took Airbnb to a billion-dollar company, check out episode 566 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

52:53This episode is sponsored in part by Conspirituality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspirituality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

53:25An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspirituality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspirituality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored in part by Everything Everywhere Daily.

53:56You've heard the phrase learn something new every day. Sounds nice, but do you actively do it? That's where Everything Everywhere Daily comes in. This podcast makes it effortless. Just 10 minutes a day, you'll walk away with a fascinating fact, a slice of history, a science gem. It's no wonder the show has climbed up to the top as the number one history podcast. It covers history, science, technology, geography, and stories of remarkable people always in a way that keeps you hooked. Not sure where to jump in? Start with these favorites. The eruption of Krakatoa, nature's fury in one of the deadliest volcanic events ever recorded, or the spice trade, how a handful of spices changed the course of global history.

54:28If you want to make learning effortless and fun, check out Everything Everywhere Daily. It's quick, fascinating, and a perfect way to stay curious. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.