Navigating Divorce with Wisdom: Conflict Resolution Insights from Rabbi Avi Kahan || Don’t Pick the Scab Podcast #085 || David M. Webb
DON'T PICK THE SCAB PODCASTMarch 02, 2025x
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29:5927.46 MB

Navigating Divorce with Wisdom: Conflict Resolution Insights from Rabbi Avi Kahan || Don’t Pick the Scab Podcast #085 || David M. Webb

In this episode of the Don’t Pick the Scab podcast, I interview Rabbi Avi Kahan, a seasoned mediator, judge, and expert in conflict resolution, who shares deep insights into divorce recovery for men over 40. Avi’s unique perspective stems from his 15 years of experience with matrimonial disputes and his background in both religious and civil mediation. He emphasizes that divorce is not merely an end but an opportunity for immense personal growth and healing.

Avi introduces the concept of transitioning from "needing" a divorce to "wanting" one, explaining that the latter comes from a place of self-awareness and healing. He discusses the importance of reframing divorce as a reset, especially for fathers, where co-parenting becomes the central relationship. Avi stresses the need for men to embrace their role as co-parents, respecting their ex-spouses as the mother of their children, and even providing continued support post-divorce.

Drawing on religious philosophy, Avi explains how conflict resolution is at the heart of religion and human growth. He shares powerful ideas about personal accountability, forgiveness, and creating boundaries for oneself rather than imposing them on others. Avi argues that men should learn to accept and even want the situation they’re in, as this is key to navigating conflict successfully and fostering healthier relationships post-divorce.

The conversation also touches on the destructive nature of child custody battles and the necessity of shielding children from parental conflict. Avi advocates for "romantic divorces," where civility and mutual respect replace litigation, saving both financial and emotional costs. Through storytelling and philosophical insights, Avi provides a thoughtful roadmap for men to heal, grow, and redefine themselves after divorce.

It was refreshing to interview Avi, for he does not conform to the traditional mediation and conflict resolution constructs. Wow! Interesting!


10 Most Important Points:

  1. Divorce should be seen as a healing opportunity, transitioning from "needing" to "wanting" it.

  2. Fathers and mothers cannot truly “divorce” if they share children; instead, they must restructure their relationship as co-parents.

  3. Men should embrace their role as co-parents and aim to support their ex-spouses, even post-divorce.

  4. Religious philosophy teaches that conflict resolution is essential for personal growth.

  5. Boundaries should be created for oneself, not imposed on others, as they are subjective.

  6. Conflict is necessary for growth and can lead to innovative solutions when handled constructively.

  7. Shielding children from parental conflict is critical; child custody battles cause deep harm and should be avoided.

  8. Litigating divorce and fighting through court systems often exacerbates pain and prevents healing.

  9. Forgiveness—of oneself and one’s ex-spouse—is key to moving forward and finding peace.

  10. Marriage should be approached with the understanding that it could fail, and one should only marry someone they could also divorce amicably.


Avi's connections:

Vaad HaDin V'Horaah Instagram

Avi's email: rabbikahan@hadin.org

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Don't Pick the Scab Podcast, the podcast for men over 40 and their journey of post-divorce. We try to provide tips, tricks, and methods that others have tried, failed, and or succeeded. Welcome Avi Kahan, a rabbi, judge, mediator, and case manager. He wears a lot of hats, a lot of hats, and can drop just one of the drops of knowledge for us for my men over 40 in their quest for healing and moving on with their lives, either during the divorce or even after.

[00:00:27] So, tell us a bit about yourself Avi and we'll go from there. Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during, or after a divorce.

[00:00:57] Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really excited. I've been involved in matrimonial disputes for close to 15 years and had many different perspectives throughout my journey. I'm watching people deal with conflict and it created some philosophy that I would love to share by paying attention to being a bystander and watching people deal with conflict in many different conflicts. It's definitely been interesting.

[00:01:21] Wow. What inspired you to pursue a career as a judge, mediator, case manager, especially in the field of divorce? I'll tell you the truth. What inspired me is when I was studying the laws and I wanted to see how these laws act out of practice. It means laws are very good when they're in theory, but it's very good to debate about law. And then when you want to see how does it actually look in practice, how does a family actually survive with these laws and to uphold it in experience?

[00:01:48] The theory of law and the practice of law are two different worlds. And I didn't feel that it's just to just study theories without addressing the practicalities and then going back and readdressing the theories. It's great to come up with solutions and how to settle divorces when you never have to actually go settle a divorce, right? All the solutions in the world are great. When you go to practice, it's, oh no, I got to rethink my theory.

[00:02:14] Wow. Can you say a defining moment rather or a case in your career that shaped your approach to helping men navigate divorce and post-divorce challenges? Yeah, I realized it took me a long time, I would say, but after dealing with over a hundred cases, I realized that most men get divorced because they feel they need to get divorced instead of they want to get divorced. And I realized... Explain that one. That's a good one.

[00:02:41] Put it this way, most of us, we breathe because we need to breathe. We don't really want to breathe. We never even really pay attention, do I want to breathe, because it's not really an option for us. Right? Some people go, there's a big movement now, like breath work on these different retreats. So those individuals go and they go practice what I call wanting to breathe. And that's where they actually develop happiness from wanting to do something. Very often, most things that we do in our life, we do because we need to do.

[00:03:11] Like you need to wake up in the morning. You don't even know if you want to wake up. You need to go shop. You need to go buy food. You need to eat. You need to survive. You need to work. And if you need to get divorced, I've seen that those people end up litigating their divorce. There's a higher level of realizing that you want to get divorced. It's not that you're happy that you're in the situation you're in. You wish you never were in that situation. You wish you would have fixed up. You wish you would have never ate that slice of pizza that gave you a stomach ache. Right? You wish.

[00:03:41] But now that you're here, now that you're here in this situation, could you hit yourself that you want to be here? And there's a lot of healing that needs to be done for a person to want to get divorced. And I've seen the men who went through that healing until they reached a level of wanting to get a divorce, not needing to get a divorce. I've seen a transformative healing that I don't think exists with needing to get a divorce. Wow. So they heal before they come to you or during.

[00:04:09] Have you ever heard of the religious idea called a get? No. Okay. So it's fascinating. A lot of religions have an ownership over marriage. Right? Like a church frowns upon divorce. It's like, what? Okay. Why are you frowning upon a divorce? Just what do you have to do with my marriage? What do you have to do with my family? And you understand that a marriage is about bringing God into the house. Right? So religion understands that marriage is bigger than just a husband and wife. Marriage is something like something that was destined to happen almost.

[00:04:39] For different religious communities, like in the Muslim community, in the Christian community, and the Jewish community, to dissolve marriage is complicated. Right? So the Catholics believe you cannot dissolve marriage. Yeah. And it's not like they made it up. There's text that backs. Right? Right? So if you look at the New Testament in Matthew 19, Jesus articulated and said, God put husband and wife together. What God put together, nobody should separate. Right? So Jesus' disciples asked him a question.

[00:05:07] And they said, Jesus, the New Testament means that there was an Old Testament. And in the Old Testament, Moses gave a commandment about divorce. Why do you, Jesus, feel – why do you feel comfortable arguing with Moses' commandment about divorce? And Jesus answered, and you can look it up in Matthew 19. He basically said that Moses only allowed divorce when the Israelites were in the desert. Right? They just left Egypt. Right? So they were slaves. Right?

[00:05:34] They were slaves for 210 years in the civilization of Egypt. And they left there. And they left with Moses into the desert. And God didn't right away take them into Israel. He made them stay for 40 years in the desert. Because when you leave slavery, you need to heal first before you go into the promised land. You can't go right away into the promised land. And during that time, that's when Moses gave them the commandment about divorce. And Jesus was bothered by that. Like, why is that the appropriate time? It should have been written before. Right?

[00:06:04] There were divorces before. Right? So Abraham divorced one of his siblings. And they divorced. It was like, why fear? Jesus said that it's because in the desert, you guys didn't know how to get along. Right? Right? So since you guys didn't know how to get along, there was nobody to teach you how to get along. Therefore, divorce was allowed as the lesser of two evils. That's what the New Testament believes. The Jews oppose that thought. The Jews do not believe that divorce is the lesser of two evils.

[00:06:31] The Jews believe that divorce could be a reunification. Meaning, let me ask you this question. Do you have a child from your spouse who you were married to? Yes. You probably know that what I'm going to say is true. That fathers and mothers can't get divorced. Only husbands and wives can get divorced. Yeah. Correct. So as much as you claim you got divorced, once you have children, you can't really get divorced. Correct. Divorce means separating like you don't know each other. That doesn't work. Everything.

[00:06:59] What you can do is reset up the relationship of father and mother differently. So it used to be the relationship of father and mother were between a husband and a wife who couldn't get along. Divorce could allow for the father and mother to have a relationship with the husband and wife getting along because they're not anymore in the same house. And in order for that to happen, the husband or the man needs to want to get divorced. He needs to realize, okay, I'm not being the best version of the father that I could be. It's just not happening right now.

[00:07:29] And I don't know why. I don't know whose fault it is. But I want to reach a level of feeling that maybe this divorce can allow me to be a great father. And let me use this as an opportunity to rewrite history almost. And instead of being married to my spouse, I'm going to be a co-parent with my spouse. And I think that's even maybe a greater relationship. It's very easy to co-parent with somebody who you're sleeping with in your same room. It's not easy to co-parent with somebody who's in a different house. I respect those co-parents.

[00:07:58] I respect those parents more than I respect the parent that lives in the same house as co-parent. And it's pretty easy when you're living in a safe room. It's tough. Oh, definitely. It's very tough. And therefore, you need to do something because you want to do it. You need to want to get divorced that way in order to co-parent that beautifully. That's what I'm a big fan of Isaac Grimm. He's really trying to promote this narrative of getting divorced beautifully. I call it a romantic divorce. Wow.

[00:08:26] And those divorces, by the way, those divorces cost way less because you don't spend money on legal fees. You don't need a co-parent. You don't need a forensic evaluator. You don't need that whole court system, which is beyond powerful. You don't heal through the court system. No one has ever healed by hurting the person they one time loved. Yeah. Wow. How does your background in religious and civil mediation, which you just talked about, influence your methods of conflict resolution?

[00:08:55] Because we're going to dive into conflict resolution here in a little bit. Everything about conflict resolution was influenced to me by religion. There's not one aspect. I think religion is conflict resolution. I think that's the definition. If you would ask me how I would define religion, it would be how to resolve conflict. It's like the idea of religion is having conflict with a human. Let's say you're familiar with Sigmund Freud's work.

[00:09:23] So Freud had this idea that the human psyche is broken up of three things. He called it the ego, which is like you. He had the id, which is the immature you who wants to get away and do immature things. The child of you that was developed as a child. And then there's the superego, right? And the superego is like what society wants you to become. And the superego clamps down on the id.

[00:09:48] And the ego, according to Freud, mediates between the superego and the id, between the child of you and the mature you. Right? That's how Freud understood the human psyche. The superego is religion. It's you are mediating between your religion and who you want to be. Religion tries to prevent you from getting away with what you want to get away with. And you are your mediator. So anyone who's religious is practicing mediating daily. The religion is saying, go to pray. No, I'm not interested in praying right now.

[00:10:16] The religion is saying, and you, if you're religious, all you're doing is conflict resolution the whole day. You're settling conflict between you and God. You're struggling with God. Hence, I don't know if the name Israel comes from a biblical story that Jacob one day wrestled with God. He met God and he wrestled with him. He was alone with God. I don't know if probably divorced men could relate to the idea of being alone. Right? And when you're alone, you wrestle. You wrestle. Who are you really wrestling with?

[00:10:46] You're wrestling with different ideas of who you could become. It's like you're wrestling with God. And he wrestled. The biblical text says Jacob wrestled the whole entire night until the morning until God said, let me go. Right? And he said, I'm not going to let you go. And he said, what's your name? He said, my name is Jacob. My name is Jacob because I tricked my brother. He said, no, your name is Israel because you wrestled with God and you were successful. The name Israel is those who wrestle with God, those who are in conflict with God.

[00:11:16] Socrates was a great philosopher. Before he was a philosopher, he was a wrestler. Philosophy and wrestling is the same thing. It's wrestling with ideas. It's being in conflict with ideas. It's being in conflict with yourself until you come up with new answers. It's never being happy with the status quo. And that aspect of religion really got me to be involved in conflict since I've been involved in religion, since I've been a child. Gotcha.

[00:11:42] What can you tell a man over 40 who's going to mediation and he's wrestling with that conflict? How does he get a hold of that? What are some of the methods he can tame or try to handle that? I'm going to say something and I can tell you every person I said this to got triggered. So you have to put a lot of... Bring it on, baby. Yes. Trigger-friendly me. Men don't get divorced. Only ladies get divorced. I just want you to... Okay. Explain that one. Oh, yeah.

[00:12:11] Oh, okay. I found this... I read a lot. I read a lot. I'm addicted to reading it. I read old. The older the manuscripts are, the better. I found this manuscript dated 2,000 years ago. It's called The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer, a guy who lived at the same time, a little bit before Jesus, a little bit like 100 years, 150 years before the common era. About it, I would say around the time of Alexander the Great, Aristotle in that era. Okay. And he wrote a book, a philosophical book.

[00:12:40] And in there, he wrote, there are six times where there's a cry that comes out from the universe, and it's so loud that nobody could hear it. A weird terminology, right? The voice of the scream and cry is so loud that nobody could hear it. Right? It's very poetic what that means. It's so loud, and nobody could hear it. And one of them is when a lady gets divorced.

[00:13:06] There's this cry that shatters the world, and it's so loud, and nobody could hear it. And I was like, what about men? What about when men get divorced? How come it's only when ladies get divorced? And I went to go study the topic, and I realized that throughout history, men were able to marry more than one wife. Always. Right? Until the 1300s, it was common in every community for a man to have a few wives. I mean, think about it. It used to be most women got married to be protected from other men.

[00:13:35] Think about it if you had a village, right? If you had a village, and you're like 10 years old, 11 years old, and you're watching people just be barbaric, and whoever's stronger wins. Right? So, of course, who are you going to be attracted to? The stronger man, the more dominant man. And guess what? The strongest man is going to have six wives, and the weakest man is going to get eaten for dinner one night. He's not going to survive. So, it used to be an average man was marrying two, three women. So, if a man got divorced, think about it. What does that mean?

[00:14:04] She got divorced, not him. You could just add on another wife. When he wasn't happy, he never divorced his wife. He just added on a second one. And that went off for thousands and thousands of years. Maybe if people, if you believe humanity started millions and millions of years ago, this went on for millions of years. What does that do to the psyche of the brain, of the common man, who genetically has evolved from such men? I don't believe men ever get divorced. And most, what they do is they let their wife marry another man.

[00:14:35] Now, that is a weird thing. So, what do you mean? I'm not divorced from her, but she's divorced from me? Hell no. If she's divorced from me, I'm going to show her what it means to be divorced from me. And I think that's the biggest mistake because what you do is you create some split personality, some part of you that loves her and some part of you that hates her. That's going on a roller coaster. You want to go on a roller coaster, go on that roller coaster. So, how can men handle that then? Realize you're not getting divorced. Only she is. Dang.

[00:15:07] I know. I told you, trigger friends. Wow. Trigger family. You're getting divorced as a man. Divorce doesn't exist. And you're most marrying a second wife. At most. You have two wives. One you're divorced from and one you're married to. One you're sleeping with, one you're not. That's it. But what happens if the guy doesn't have a wife, extra wife? He'll go searching. Like, every man is going to go searching. He'll figure it out. He'll go. He'll be a hunter and he'll go out there and he'll go find a beautiful lady that he can go hang out with. But it's interesting.

[00:15:37] Oh, my God. It's not a substitute. It's a second one. And therefore, you should still support your first wife. I'm a big fan of that, your first wife. You know what you want to do? What is your first wife? It means your first wife that you divorce. You should try to still give her spousal support, especially if you share children. Try to help her. She's the mother of your children. Learn to love her. Learn to love her. Learn to want to get divorced. But what happens if she tries to cut your throat?

[00:16:07] Metaphorically, of course. Metaphorically, maybe. Maybe you're a real person. I've seen that. I've seen that. I've seen that. Look. Yeah. Because most divorces are contemptuous. Most of them don't go the Isaac method. And it's hard for men to stay civil, I think. Especially when the soon-to-be ex-wife is not civil. Because they don't. I don't think. I really don't. And I should collect more data on this. I don't think it's because of life.

[00:16:37] I've seen men control themselves when people weren't civil to them when they want to. Oh, yeah. When they want to. The question is, does the man who's going to mediation or arbitration or court, does he want to be there? Or does he need to be there? I'm telling you, most men feel that they need to be there. Like I said, most men don't want to get divorced because they're never really getting divorced anyways. Let me just, you know what? If I can't get along with you, I'm going to go to the bar at night and pick up another girl anyways. And I could still stay married to you. It's a different mentality.

[00:17:07] So it's a man who's getting divorced doesn't want to get divorced. And therefore, he feels he needs to get divorced. That's why he's acting out the way he's acting out. And I beg of men to realize that if you are getting divorced, go for healing to figure out how you want to be in your situation. Now, that's a radical statement, which means that, look. I don't want to be in this situation. How do you get me to want to be in a situation that I don't want to be in? That's healing. It's a lot of healing. It's almost like you have to accept it.

[00:17:37] You can get to wanting to do it without accepting. I can promise you that. Accept is accepting. And then accepting is like forgiving also. Could you forgive her? Could you forgive yourself for allowing yourself to be in this situation? There's a lot. Look, divorce could be an opportunity of the biggest healing. It's possible that a human might not have another opportunity. Look, in Judaism, you have to understand, this is the difference between Christianity and Judaism. Moses, who is the Messiah of the Jews, right?

[00:18:05] He was born from divorced parents that ended up getting back together. So think about that. Think about what God is trying to share with that message. His parents got divorced. And then they were able to get back together. Get back together. You know what type of beautiful divorce you need to be able to have in order to get back together? Divorce is like when marriage is not good, you're getting divorced, which means a divorce should be fixing a bad marriage, not making it worse. Correct. So if you want to continue fighting, stay married.

[00:18:35] Fighting enhance those emotions. I tell people all the time, divorce is not a solve all for everything. You got to really be wanted to be divorced because it's not fun. And people throw that word out so easy. They throw it out like butter. Yeah. So when you do with co-parenting, what are some of the psyches with the conflicts with co-parenting that you see? Because kids, people use the kids sometimes as weapons.

[00:19:05] They weaponize the kids, which makes no sense to me. Yes. There's nothing worse, in my opinion, than children watching their parents go through a divorce. Because you show the worst part of you. When you're in such a conflict, you show parts of you that you're even embarrassed. You ever heard of a philosopher that I like reading?

[00:19:30] As a kid, he went through Stalin's gulags and sentencing horrific torture. And his name was Alexander Stolzhenitsyn. And he wrote in one of his books called The Gulag Archipelago. He writes that, I know that you're lying to me. You're still okay to continue lying to me. When I read that line, it reminded me of parents co-parenting who are saying, no, what I'm doing is best for the children. I'm only doing this because I care about my kids.

[00:20:00] And I'm like, let you know that I know that you're full of BS. Because if you're not litigating, you're hurting your kids more than anyone right now. And whenever somebody tells me, this is a hard no because I care about my children. I'm like, no, you don't. I promise you, you don't. And it's very sad because it's horrific what children witness and what it's going to do to them. I don't even think we really fully appreciate what's going to happen. Talking about Isaac Gernabell, he one time ran a show called Divorce Untethered on YouTube.

[00:20:29] Where what he did was interviewed adults who were children when their parents got divorced. And he did nine, ten interviews on YouTube. Of hearing those adults discuss. Yeah, just check it out. Discuss their childhood experience of their parents going through their divorce. Nothing worse than including your children in conflict. And I believe that any parent who ends up in court with their children, the judges should take away their children from them. I don't think you should be allowed to go to court with your children. What's this business going to court over child custody? What you did?

[00:20:58] The judge knows better than you. I think any parent who allows a case, I'm very close to a lot of divorce lawyers. I know them very well. They're still shocked by how much money they make over child custody litigation. You're fighting about what? What are you going to serve a dinner for your kids? You're going to be in litigation over that? It's horrific and it needs to be stopped. It needs child custody battles need to be penalized at the end of the court. And the judges are guilty, by the way. Don't give me, like don't, everyone's, everyone over here is guilty.

[00:21:28] The parents are bringing the case to court. The community for allowing it to go to court. All three levels. Everyone is guilty. Child custody should not be in court. It should have to be settled. You cannot get divorced. Don't get married. Dang. Man, you have, you have, you have. If marriage is a technology, marriage fails in America 58% of the time, right? Yep. Correct. Would you buy into an investment into a stock for a 58% failure?

[00:21:58] Do it because we love and we want to love. We're brave humans. We're us men. We're brave. We're willing to risk 50% of our assets. Love somebody. But the biggest chance is that it will end up in divorce. Make sure you marry somebody that you could divorce. Don't marry someone you can't divorce because that's going to be hell. That's going to be hell. Even worse. It's easy to stay married and have a happy marriage when things are going great. Questions. Could you get along with this person when things are not going well, when you're in conflict? Could you get, be in conflict with this individual?

[00:22:28] And if you can't, don't get married. Don't have a child with that person. You're killing a child. Bring a child. When you're tethered to him big time. Yeah. The tethered rope is even thicker. Gosh. God, I had a bunch of questions. Let me get back to it. Boy, you threw me. Man, you threw me. You threw a wrench in this puppy. Big time. That's okay. What are some of the common mistakes men make trying to set boundaries in a conflict resolution? How do boundaries apply in conflict resolution?

[00:22:58] It's a good question. First of all, you have to understand that boundaries is a made-up idea, right? It's something that we're trying to make up. We're like, these are my boundaries and I want you to respect. And that's made up. Right? One day my boundaries can be larger. One day they can be smaller. It depends on what. So I'm trying to take something that I'm making up and I'm trying to impose that on someone else. And I want them to see the value of it. People can't see the value of made-up things.

[00:23:25] So I have to respect that people are not going to respect my boundaries in order for me to make boundaries. And once I'm okay with that, I can make boundaries. But expect that they're going to be crossed. Boundaries are for you. They're not for someone else. They're like, okay, when the person does this, then I know I'm not going further. When the person does this, I know I'm not getting engaged. But they're not to impose on somebody else. And I've seen this over and over with order of protections and conflict.

[00:23:53] And it's like people try to impose their safety on other people. Your safety is for yourself. You can't ask somebody else to understand and respect it because they're not. You're asking them to respect something that they don't see. They are. They're just patronizing. They're like, oh, I'm respecting those boundaries. No, you're not. You can't respect something you don't see. You can't respect something you don't understand. You could lie and you could fake it to someone. Say, how can I respect those boundaries that I don't know what they are? Boundaries are subjective. They're not objective.

[00:24:23] And therefore, create boundaries for yourself 100%. Respect the boundaries for yourself. So don't impose them on other people. So with all this conflict you're dealing with, how do you relax? What's your go-to? So I know this is going to sound weird. Hey, buddy, nothing's going to sound weird anymore. Trust me. But I grew up studying what the Talmud. You ever heard of the Talmud? The who?

[00:24:53] The Talmud. T-A-M-U-D. So I grew up studying the Talmud. And I can say most of my life, sometimes up to 20 hours a day straight. And studying the Talmud is like having the most political debate you could possibly have, but enjoying it. So I've spent hours a day just debating. That means the way when I went to university, the way we set up the university is there was a lecture every two days for an hour.

[00:25:19] But at the time you sat with a partner and you debated over the lecture. That's it. You did. If it was an ethical class. If it was a legal class. If it was a biblical class. If it was a class on faith. Whatever it was, you debated the class. And one of the most important principles of studying is finding contradictions and allowing those contradictions to create solutions. And those solutions would have not come into existence without the conflict to begin with.

[00:25:49] That's how cool those solutions up. So I look forward to conflict. So when I'm sitting and chilling, even on a weekend afternoon with a few friends and we're having beers or we're drinking or having scotch or cigars, we're having conflict. We're bringing up conflict. And if not, we just like, why are we here? Hey, what can we talk about? What can we debate? In a friendly, healthy way, respecting everyone's opinion. No one's opinion is not valid.

[00:26:12] If anything, the more valid everyone's opinion is, the more possibility there is to create a third new solution, which can't be created without having that other opinion say you're wrong. Man, I've got the title. Conflict is necessary in divorce recovery. It is. From what you tell me, conflict is necessary for life. Yeah. Unless you want to stop with your own opinion the whole day. Like that's it. I get that third answer you talk about. Yeah, exactly. Because I know myself.

[00:26:42] I know that. I know how stupid I am. Right? I really know better than anyone else how foolish I could be and how stupid I could be. Right? So why should I fully just trust myself? Why would I want to be in that situation? What I would love to do is find someone else who's just as stupid and useless as I am. And then say, hey, I'm going to share with you my stupidity. You share with me your stupidity. Let's see where they disagree. Because if we have to then figure out what the answer to that is, that's cool.

[00:27:12] And that's going to be something real. More real than my opinion alone. So my opinion means nothing if I can't find someone else to almost rub it against and see what we could create as a third opinion. Because I know my opinion is full of foolish biases. Man, I'd like to get you and Isaac on the podcast. That would probably be awesome. We got off the rails? On the rails. Oh, yeah, baby. Oh, yeah. I want to thank you, man. That was unexpected.

[00:27:41] Oh, my gosh. I'm going to have a fun time trying to edit this one. And I love something different. And you definitely gave us something different today. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Enjoy it. I enjoy it. Because I'm starting this podcast. This is new for me. I am. And what is the last podcast? Something Peace. Yeah. I did that a few years ago. Argument Peace. What was it called? Argument Peace. Argument Peace. Yes. What is Argument Peace? It was the same idea. It was the same idea.

[00:28:08] So I have a friend, a very good friend of mine, an attorney, divorce attorney, James Sexton. A very good friend of mine. And we have a very interesting relationship. And we both heard of each other in the industry. He was known to be this fierce litigator who, when there were the most controversial divorces, he was representing one side. And I was no mediator trying to settle divorces. And then one day we met each other. We had to be in the same group. And we ended up having such a unique conversation that I turned to him after. I said, hey, we should do a podcast together.

[00:28:38] And we started doing a podcast together. And then it fell apart. It was just, it was a lot of work and editing and videoing. And it fell apart. And he then went on his own. And right now he has over 100,000 followers on Instagram. And he's been going on really, he's going on Joe Rogan's show in a few weeks. And I don't know if I'm supposed to be saying that publicly. That's all right. Hey, man, the way the world is right now, it doesn't matter what you say. Yeah, he went on Lex Freeman. He went on Lex Freeman. Like, you could check him out. And it was great. It was fun.

[00:29:08] I actually share office space with him. Right? Oh, that's cool. We were good friends. And what we do, we actually, two weeks ago, we did a podcast together. I didn't get the clips, but we did a small video together again. Oh, that's cool. Now he became this huge celebrity. And he's brilliant. You should try to get him on your show. He's brilliant. Brilliant. He's a brilliant litigator. He's been involved in a while. There you go. For years. I respect him and love him tremendously. He's a great mentor. All right, Avi. I don't want to keep you too late, man. Yeah, wife and kids? Yeah, yeah.

[00:29:38] I got a wife and a great wife. A wife I love. I had four kids. Okay. Hold on the line and we'll clock out. Don't go anywhere. But I appreciate your time.

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