The Jordan Harbinger Show
1287: Conscience Frayed by Impossible Choice Made | Feedback Friday
20 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Jokainen on Y-tön, kunnes toisin todistetaan. Tila Dogmanin tukkukortti heittämällä halvimmat hinnat kaikille, joilla on Y-tunnus.
Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the straight razor helping me shave this bushy beard of life drama with as little irritation and ingrown hair as possible, Gabriel Mizrahi.
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. And 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,
Economic hitmen, gold smugglers, Russian spies, hostage negotiators. This week, we had my friend Derek Coburn about the financial aspect of retirement, which sounds boring, I know, but was actually quite an enlightening and super important practical conversation about how we can best take care of ourselves as we age so we don't end up working until we die.
And we also had a Skeptical Sunday last Sunday on Passport Bros. On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, play silly soundbites that probably won't land us in a copyright lawsuit, and compare Gabe to bespoke personal grooming tools. We do do that.
You, of course, are a manscaping clipper. I hope you know that.
Yes, that's right. Purchased using one of our sponsor codes, of course. I'm that one that you have lying around somewhere in a drawer, tidies up the nether regions, sometimes leaves a little brazen little nick, but always gets the job done. Gross, but accurate. As always, we've got some fun ones and some doozies. Let's dive in. Gabe, what is the first thing out of the mailbag?
Dear Jordan and Gabe, I'm 38 and I have a very fulfilling career and a very fulfilling marriage. We're both professionals and both educated. And as soon as we had our children, two of them, we set up savings account for each of them, a general trust fund and a college fund. So we are absolutely in a position to welcome more children. Meanwhile, all of my siblings have special needs children.
My brother has a special needs son whose needs are so great that he lives in a special home with round-the-clock staff to care for him. My sister has three special needs children, one with autism and two with cognitive delays. My cousin's children also have different disabilities.
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Chapter 2: How does guilt affect decisions about pregnancy and parenting?
It's that your siblings aren't up to the challenge. It's just objectively a lot to handle.
Any parent of a special needs child will tell you that.
yeah and if there's a higher incidence of disorders in your family then of course you would want to know that in advance of course both for your and your husband's sake and for the sake of any potential child born with a serious disability me personally i don't think there's anything wrong with that i mean there's a reason that they do genetic screening in the first place i recognize other people do have a problem with that some people forego these tests altogether because they would never terminate a pregnancy even if the child had a serious disability
That's up to them. I think that raises some very big moral questions, but it's fine, it's their choice. I just wanna be open about my biases here. Now, I hate that the results were delayed. I can't, how does that happen? How did that happen? I've never heard of that happening.
same I mean it's not something I'd normally pay attention to but it seems just obviously unconscionable to me like people's lives and futures hang in the balance and you're just gonna fumble the results lab corp or whatever come on Kaiser Permanente sorry we can't tell you if your child is gonna have to live in a special facility with round-the-clock care because well Phil got a gnarly cold last week and he's a little bit behind on processing those samples how is this okay at all and how does this happen
I like the idea that there's just one guy at LabCorp responsible for like all the amniocentesis tests in their state.
We'll totally get to the results that will determine the quality of the rest of you and your child's life. But yeah, it's got to be on Monday, man.
I came in a little bit late.
Next week is better for us. Yeah, just... you know, I just overslept, hit the alarm, I overslept a little bit, hit some traffic. I mean, it's just crazy to me that this can happen. And that's really what kicked off this chain of events. It's a big reason you're in this position now. And I'm angry about that. It sucks.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do gifted children face in traditional education?
What I mean is, you're the same person you were when you made that call. I understand that somebody can come to regret something they did, of course, but to make a call like that, precisely because you don't have the information, and then turn around and berate yourself and feel like you've mortally sinned or whatever when you do have the information now...
I'm not sure that's actually a fair thing to do.
Yeah, that's a really good point. She's holding herself to a standard now that she couldn't have held herself to back then.
So not only did making this decision, and again, I think it was an understandable decision, if not a totally legitimate one, not only did that mean agreeing to live with the consequences, including the feelings that might arise if she got the results and they turned out to be okay, it also meant not judging herself as if she had access to that information at both points in time.
Yeah, well put. It's basically moral time traveling.
Yes, moral time traveling. That's what it is.
She wasn't dealing with facts at the time. She was dealing with probabilities. Those are two very different equations.
An interesting thought experiment would be if the results had come back saying there was a problem, would you be beating yourself up for this? And I'm guessing not at all. It's only because they came back normal. So that should tell you that you can't be making this moral judgment based on the actual results.
but on the statistics and the larger principle of not wanting to bring a child with severe challenges into the world. Now, whether that is, in fact, the right choice, that's a separate matter. It's maybe a little bit of a crap analogy, Gabriel, but it reminds me of Annie Duke. There's an episode where Annie Duke, the poker player, talks about making decisions.
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Chapter 4: How can employees navigate a difficult company transition?
And then I remember saying, like, what about Africa? And you could see the animals, and she just went... And just like stared off into the distance. And this really like it just never occurred to her to think that you could leave North Korea to like do anything ever.
Look, our friend here is writing in to us and she is being very open about this. So clearly she is allowing herself to talk and process some of this, which I'm very happy about. Also, to be clear, I'm not saying that, you know, anything goes and there's no morality whatsoever and terminating the pregnancy didn't matter. It matters.
But if you can't talk to your own community about something really difficult, something very human, and also something your system is hopefully designed to help you make sense of, then what does that say about the system?
Yeah, it's a really fair question. And look, to be fair, we don't know if that's what her community actually feels or if that's what she assumes about them. She might be so scared and ashamed she's assuming they'd find it taboo. But I also get the sense that she belongs to a pretty orthodox community. And we all know orthodoxy doesn't always allow for truly open conversation.
Chapter 5: What are the implications of buying a business as employees?
Yeah, something else I would explore. Again, zero shade on your faith or your community, but here is one value that I would explicitly encourage you to embrace. Being able to acknowledge difficult, morally complex stuff without the fear of judgment. We deserve that.
Agreed. So here, too, there's an interesting tension, not just between her private beliefs and her religious beliefs, but between her needs and the values or perceived values of her community.
Yeah, navigating those tensions and trying to understand them and being open to a new relationship with all of it, that's what I think this letter is actually about.
And maybe the real question, dare I say the real opportunity, that this difficult experience might have brought into our life. But to be practical here, we can't tell you whether to try for a baby again, whether to do the testing and be okay with whatever happens or do the testing and consider terminating if there were any abnormalities. I think you could tell what I would do.
I believe testing exists for a very good reason. That's obviously up to you and your husband. It will shock no one to say that I'm not religious. I think everybody knows that. I just try to be fair to everyone on this. But again, you know, when people write it and they're like, well, you're biased. Yes, I'm biased. I'm not religious. I mean, yes, but I'm not prejudiced against y'all.
It's hard for us to deal with these, Gabe. I don't know. For me, these are always hard because I'm like, well, the answer is obviously this. Oh, but then you believe that you're doing something against God and going to hell if you do that thing that I just advised you to do. Maybe don't jump in with both feet. I don't know. It's always tough for me.
What I can say is, if you decide to do the testing, make sure you're getting good healthcare, you get the results in the timeframe you need them, and if you can't, maybe you go somewhere that you can or you do redundant testing and just don't put yourself in this situation again. Nobody deserves that. Honestly,
I'm more angry at the hospital or the doctor or whatever than anyone else in this story. If you do do the testing, get clear with yourself and with your husband about what your values are around terminating or keeping a child and have the conviction to stand by that decision either way. I think a lot of the pain you're in, it's born from these tensions we've been talking about.
And by some confusion around these principles and the process you're in to make sense of them. Resolve those things. I think you'll find the clarity and peace you're looking for. Again, I'm so sorry you went through this. My heart goes out to you. I don't think you're a monster. I don't think Jesus or your religion are turning their back on you.
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Chapter 6: How can family dynamics impact personal relationships?
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All right, next up. Dear Jordan and Gabe, I just listened to your recent interview with Scott Galloway and it really hit home for me. I'm a mom of boys who have struggled the last few years and it breaks my heart. From my own experience, I've observed that young men are often dismissed when they struggle socially or emotionally and are unfairly treated and left out.
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Chapter 7: What steps can be taken to address unresolved family conflicts?
So it's like, what's important here? I don't know. Make up your mind.
This is like the opening of a movie about some misunderstood genius before he finds his groove and then, you know, does his best work. Little Goodwill hunting. Yeah, exactly.
John Nash or something. Like everyone underestimated him and then he cured, I don't know, multiple sclerosis or whatever. Exactly. Either that or it's the prologue to a Marvel movie because this is kind of how you get the Green Goblin, folks. I'm something of a scientist myself. Quite the child to have. I'm rooting for him super hard right now.
I was also the guy who, well, forgot slash didn't bother to turn in my homework and then would do well on exams. And my teachers were like, what's wrong with you? And I was like, does it matter if I do it, if I understand it? And they're just like, yes. And then I got to, they're like, this is how the real world works. And then I got to college and they were like, homework?
No, we don't care if you do it.
That is not how the real world works. This is not the real world.
I look back and I'm like, oh, I see you teachers just didn't understand at all how the real world works. No, that was not. None of that was true. None of it.
Zero. Didn't understand me.
That too. But like none of the things my teachers said were going to happen in the real world happened at all.
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Chapter 8: How can one maintain personal boundaries in a toxic family environment?
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a place for him. that there aren't institutions and companies and communities that would benefit from his talent, that there aren't resources and opportunities for a mind like his.
Whether that's certain types of schools or programs for neurodivergent people without traditional degrees or communities that offer alternative educations, whatever it is, but it's going to take some extra work to find those programs, to help your son take advantage of those programs. It won't always be easy, especially if he struggles to connect with people, but it is possible.
We hear about it all the time. Second, I wonder if your son would benefit from being evaluated again. You said he was diagnosed with ADHD. He tested remarkably high on IQ. You said he struggles to connect socially. He's isolated. He's disengaged. There are probably a lot of explanations for that, including his baseline personality.
But while Gabe was reading the letter, I can't be the only one who was going... huh, okay, these do sound a little bit like the symptoms of autism, which, by the way, is very compatible with ADHD. In fact, I think that when they overlap, so-called ADHD, that can include things like executive dysfunction, social challenges, intense interests, all of which your son does seem to have.
I'm not in a place to diagnose anybody, of course, but I would strongly consider having him evaluated by a psychologist. The benefit of having him evaluated is not to find a label you can slap on his symptoms and call it a day.
It would be to have the best possible model for understanding your son, talk with an expert about what he needs, and then use that label, if it exists, to advocate for him, create opportunities for him, support him, motivate him, know how to respond to him when he struggles, all of that.
Totally agree, Jordan. The other person who might be helpful for your son—I guess I'm just going to fall on the sword all day today— is a therapist. So many of the things you shared with us from the science fair to the not getting into college to the ongoing social alienation, the loneliness, those are all traumas.
They would be traumas for anyone, but they're unique traumas for a neurodivergent child. And it would just be so great if he could talk to somebody, ideally somebody who specializes in neurodivergent patients, so he could work through that.
and have someone else in his corner who can help him learn to understand himself and meet adversity and hopefully work with his mind and the world in a new way.
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