The Jordan Harbinger Show

The housing crisis is real, but the villain isn't the one you think. Nick Pell nails down the real culprits 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/1381
On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:
The villain behind the housing affordability crisis isn't BlackRock. The scare stat that private equity owns 20% of single-family homes? The Urban Institute — a left-leaning shop — clocks it under 4%. Even grandpa renting out a condo counts as an "investor." Aim your outrage at the right enemy.
Before a single plank of wood gets nailed, regulations bake about 24% into a new home's price — roughly $94,000 nationally, north of $150K in California. It's effectively illegal to build a genuinely cheap house, and almost nobody is protesting that.
Golden handcuffs froze the market: why trade a 3% mortgage for a 6% one? Owners now sit tight a record 11 years, the listings that exist cluster between $750K and $1 million, and the starter home you could actually afford never reaches the market.
The other culprit is your neighbor Greg, who treats vinyl siding as a war crime. Mandated gables, brick on all four sides, half-acre lots, mature trees — pure aesthetics, zero safety — heap tens of thousands onto every build and quietly outlaw the starter home.
The empowering truth is that scarcity is a policy choice, so it's reversible — and the decisive fights are local. Show up to the city-council meetings you've been skipping. And credit is more fixable than you'd guess — Nick raised his 120 points in a year just paying down debt.
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What if humanity is actually making progress after all? The What Could Go Right podcast is presented by the Progress Network and covers current affairs with a more balanced way of looking at what’s happening in the world. I hope you will enjoy it just like I have.

A drink with a stranger in Colombia cost you your savings, your safety, and your peace. As the victim, are you entirely blameless? 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 friday@jordanharbinger.com. Now let's dive in!
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1380
On This Week's Feedback Friday:
 If you want to take a high-speed delivery drone past the dystopian cityscape of Jordan's latest China stories, you can skip ahead to around 20 minutes and 50 seconds!
You'd clawed your way back — 115 pounds gone, the Pacific Crest Trail behind you — when a Colombia trip meant to start a new chapter became a scopolamine nightmare: drugged, assaulted, and drained of tens of thousands while the banks shrugged that biometrics don't lie. Where do you even begin to rebuild?
The affair that blew up your marriage never ended — you've quietly kept seeing her through the ugly divorce. Now she's done hiding and wants to meet your kids and family, who only know her as the scandal, and your ex is poised to weaponize it. How do you drag the secret into daylight without torching everything?
Recommendation of the Week: Slice Mini Ceramic Box Cutter — a purse-sized blade with a ceramic edge that feels dull to the touch yet slices clean through cardboard and plastic. It's kid-safe, TSA-friendly, and, per Jen, weirdly indispensable for life's most random little jobs.
You've watched a colleague you care about come apart at the seams — a hidden drinking problem you never saw coming, now impossible to unsee. You feel responsible for keeping her afloat, dreading the day something breaks. But is rescuing her really your job, or just the thing that quiets your own fear?
Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at friday@jordanharbinger.com!
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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Convinced you missed your shot at getting rich? Historian and former broke professor Joseph Moore is here to explain why it's never been easier.
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1379
What We Discuss with Joseph Moore:
The "American Dream is dead" cry is 300 years old. Colonists burned their own capital over it in 1676, long before the phrase existed. A despair industrial complex profits by telling you the game is rigged, because doom earns the clicks, votes, and tenure that good news won't.
Getting ahead has never been easier — not easy, not fair, just easier. Six in 10 born in the bottom fifth climb out, one in 10 reach the top, and both wages and purchasing power beat what they were at your birth. Your ancestors would have prayed for these odds.
Real wealth is built in slow time. Movies and headlines sell the dramatic version, so we chase crypto and sports betting for a fast-time win. That's not how fortunes are made.
Budgeting, index funds, and skipping avocado toast protect wealth but rarely build it — that's just solving your own problems. You get wealthy solving other people's, taking risks others avoid, and moving toward opportunity. And no "timeless" money advice is timeless; it keeps changing.
The best slow-time move you can make this week is to invest in yourself. A course, certificate, or skill that lifts your earning power can double or triple your income, outpacing any index fund. Believe you can, then take the risk. It's always been possible.
And much more...
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Female genital mutilation (FGM) is happening right now to girls worldwide. Jessica Wynn explains why — and what stops it — 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 Jessica Wynn!
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1378
On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:
Female Genital Mutilation isn't a fringe practice — an estimated 230 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM, and the number is climbing, up 15 percent in eight years. More than two million girls are cut each year, most before their fifth birthday, some within days of being born.
FGM isn't Islamic — it predates Islam and appears among Christian and non-religious communities alike; the common thread is culture, not theology. "God requires this" is used as control, which is also why trusted religious leaders are among the strongest voices for ending it.
The decision is overwhelmingly made by women — mothers, grandmothers, aunts — not fathers. But they act inside a system where marriage, status, and inheritance hinge on being cut, so it isn't simply men oppressing women. FGM and child marriage are two gears in one machine.
The fastest-growing myth is that cutting is safer in a clinic — about one in four recent cases were done by healthcare workers, up to 75 percent in Egypt. There is no safe version. Medicalizing FGM doesn't reduce harm; it lends the practice a veil of legitimacy that helps it survive.
Here's what actually works: change from the inside out. When communities talk their own way to abandoning FGM, as in Somaliland and Tostan's villages, it sticks. You can help: fund survivor-led groups, check whether your state bans FGM, back healthcare training, and keep the conversation alive.
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 jordan@jordanharbinger.com and let him know!
Connect with Jessica Wynn at Instagram (and Instagram!), and subscribe to her newsletters: Between the Lines and Where the Shadows Linger!
And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps!
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