In this episode of Normally, Mary Katharine Ham and Karol Markowicz break down several major stories shaping politics, media, and culture right now. They dive into shocking examples of government waste and fraud, including questionable Medicaid spending, suspicious broadband subsidies, and identity theft scams exploiting taxpayer-funded programs.
The hosts also examine the media firestorm surrounding CNN’s coverage of the attempted New York City bombing, criticizing how CNN framed the attack and discussing the controversy involving CNN anchor Abby Phillip. What does this incident reveal about trust in media, narrative framing, and accountability in modern journalism?
Finally, Mary Katharine and Karol tackle a growing concern for parents and educators: the explosion of screen time in schools. From kindergarten iPads to classroom laptops replacing books, they explore how education technology may be hurting students’ attention spans, literacy, and learning outcomes—and what parents can do about it.
Plus: lessons from the pandemic era of remote learning, why traditional reading methods may still work best, and how families can reclaim healthier tech habits for kids.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Normally to show normal. It takes the women news gets weird.
I am Mary Katherine Ham.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Carol Markowitz. Are you wrapping up your time
at Hillsdale?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Mary Catherine?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I am. I'm going out to dinner one last time
tonight and uh teaching my last class today. And I
still have no tweed jackets with elbow patches, but I
will work on.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I think that you gotta get it when you get back.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
To the coast.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
They're ever going to invite me back again. I really need.
I was visited by Molly Hemingway came to my lecture.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh so nice.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
That was really nice. And I had a line in
my speech, not knowing that she would be there, that
was a bit of a shout out to you and her,
because I said, it's important to surround yourself with people
who will test you on your beliefs and your outfuot choices.
And I happen to have a group of Mauthy broads
who are my friends, who will not let me give
(01:02):
me a pass on everything, and most of them have
been fellows here.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So yeah, maud abroad's for the wind.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
It's important, all right, Let's.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Get into it. What is going on in the news.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
You know, again, we're not talking you Ron in this
episode because things are just keep on keeping on. I
saw news that we're ahead of schedule, which not clear
what that means, but but glad to know we're ahead
of schedule, better than being behind schedule.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But we will update the normally.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Listeners when we hear of any breaking news or potential
news or stories developing there that are different from the
day to day.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah. But meanwhile, on the home front, we have lots
and lots of fraud, Carol. I know that Vice President
Jade Vance has been put in charge of sort of
like an overarching fraud fraud busting project Frauds and the
frauds are and it seems like it's needed. I mean, I,
(02:05):
as somebody who's skeptical of what government does with our money,
even I think I didn't imagine the immense ridiculousness that
comes with, particularly in the Biden era, handing out millions
and billions and then but simultaneously cutting the verification for
(02:27):
these processes, and so you just end up with piles
of money going to utter nonsense. A couple examples from
just this week we have this is a Wall Street
journal piece about an information super highway to nowhere. It
was a a DC based saying where they go looking
(02:48):
for this money? They say they took They took two
hours looking from address to address because DC had asked
a government agency for four million dollars to connect fifty
five unserved locations. So a couple people get their boots
on and they go walking around look at these addresses,
and they find the unserved sites that DC wanted taxpayers
(03:10):
to subsidize for four million dollars.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Among them were a shed along some train tracks, an
open field, a Catholic University fieldhouse, a Pepco utility facility
that's our power company in the area, construction trailer next
to visible fiber. And after they did this review, this
little group of lawmakers DC said, uh, okay, maybe actually
(03:34):
we had zero things that needed right.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Like yeah, shout out to Ted Cruz who get to
mention here. In twenty twenty three, he found dozens of
DC's supposedly unserved locations were inside the National Zoo.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So just amazing stuff. And this is Aril Ross wrote this.
She works for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration inside
the Department of Commerce, and they sniffed this out and
did the shoe leather work that sometimes reporters have been
known to do in the past, right in back in history,
not in this case. But that's just one story. We
(04:12):
have another one from the Wall Street Journal. Again, this
is about the Boom and autism therapy, and it's a
medicaid fraud. So listen to this. And I don't think
this one might not even technically qualify as fraud because
the perpetrator here is just openly saying this is what
I did. Here we go. When Megan Mitchell first launched
her autism therapy business in twenty nineteen, she took aim
(04:33):
at an unlikely source of profit, Indiana's tax payer funded
Medicaid program, the public insurance system for the poor. The
bet paid off in twenty twenty three. The state paid
Mitchell's company, piece by piece Autism Centers twenty nine million
to provide therapy to just eighty four parent patients, about
three hundred and forty thousand dollars a child. According to
(04:54):
a Wall Street Journal analysis, That amount surpassed what Indiana
Medicaid typically spends in a year treating a diagnosed one
cancer patient, or covering a year of nursing home care
piece by piece, became one of Medicaid's most expensive providers.
And she bought herself like three homes right.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Like, as she's buying these and they know, they point
out a two point five million dollar home in Florida
Santa Belle Island and six hundred thousand dollars waterfront house
on the typical New River, Indiana, Like, how is I
mean she must be aware she's committing fraud.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Well, she should make about it, right.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Well, she's like, I didn't break any of the rules.
And truly that might be the case, because what happened
is that in a lot of these programs, democrats insisted
there'd be no rules.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Right, She's just like the smartest person alive.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And it should be embarrassing because this money is taken
from families who probably have trouble getting their children treated
for the various things that they need their children treated for,
while this woman's making off with three hundred and forty
k per kid.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right right. One of the common on the tweets about
it comes from a KK bird and she writes thirty
to forty hours a week of ABA therapy. No way,
my kid was lucky. If you sat for it was
approved for an hour or two a week. It's either
a fake therapy or babysitting scam. Absolute fraud. Yeah, it
sounds bra delicious, definitely.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well, and like the problem is you hit a point
with this stuff. I was talking to a friend earlier
today about you know, the future of careers and AI
and economic issues and stuff, and she's like, you want
to touch back in a couple hours and like, brainstorm
some ways to do the fraud because it seems like
a lot of people are doing the fraud. And eventually
(06:43):
people do think, well, this whole process is so fraudulent,
why am I not getting my slice of this pop?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah. I can imagine the average taxpayer just being like,
I'm a sucker for working a normal job and paying
my taxes and not committing fraud. I think after the
Somali daycare fraud, I heard a lot of that on
the Internet where people were just like, am I the
last person working?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Mm hmm. It feels that way sometimes, or it feels like,
by the way, if you wanted to start your own
practice or medicaid Medicaid funded thing or your own practice
or something that worked outside of government. By the way,
without any subsidies. The state would give you such a
hard time, right, like she can't just help and start
a daycare. But it turns out it's real easy as
(07:31):
long as you don't follow any of the laws. CBS
is also doing some work out in California where they
found a hospice fraud in la. This is the reporter
there saying, at age sixty nine, len Iyani is a
pickleball whiz, zipping from dinks to drives energetically. When she
suffered an injury on the court two years ago, she
(07:51):
sought physical therapy and was surprised to learn her Medicare
insurance wouldn't cover it. She was, according to Medicare records,
dying and in hospice. Someone had taken her identity. It
was making money regularly off of this woman who's outliving
a life. We're paying double for this person. And by
(08:12):
the way, all the illegal immigration makes identity theft and
all of these things so much worse because the Left
doesn't want to deal with any of that crime, right either.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
That's right, and this comes out of CBS News, and
it's it's interesting because would the old CBS pre Barrier
wise had done anything like this. Obviously, this fraud is
being committed in California. I think they would be protecting
Gavin Newsome and not reporting on this, so bind changes
come me too.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And in general, reporters think that government money is government money.
They do a lot of left leaning reporters do not
recognize it as your money, right, so they're just like,
who really cares? Who needs to check on this? I
would note that they found eighty nine hospice companies were
registered to a single building and Van Nuys. You can't
have hospice services for eighty nine people and van Nis.
(09:05):
And by the way, this is designed when they do
it for autism and hospice, those are vulnerable populations on purpose,
so that the people running off with this money and
the people facilitating them running off with this money can go.
How dare you come after the dying and the disabled children?
That's right, and that's what's happening, because that's not who
(09:25):
these people are.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Absolutely on the story. On the tweet from this story,
John Bachmann from Newsmax, Our friend John writes to the
California Governor and governor Press Office, accounting any comment. You're
so worried about our troops getting lobster and steak. You
embarrass yourself daily because there is a story right now
about the amount of money that our military spends on
(09:48):
things like lobster or steak for our military troops.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And it's like special occasion dinners for deployed.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I'm perfectly okay with that, and I don't see any
evidence of fraud there. I think that the idea that
we can't splurge on meals for our active duty member
military members is insanity.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, and by the way, it's worth pointing out that,
unlike in the Biden administration Christy Nome, at least one
person has been demoted slash disciplined in some way for
having misspent money. This happened in his first term too.
I believe a Zinke was out for doing similar in
another maybe a DHS guy at one point. I've always
(10:31):
appreciated that Trump can fire people. Biden's mistake was never
firing anyone for doing anything. And yet often the misspending
of money by actual officials is pales in comparison to
these massive fraud operations.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, you know, you said you were surprised. I feel
like Russian from Brooklyn. I'm not that surprised. In fact,
I'm always like, please know Russian names and these stories.
And by that I don't mean Russian from Russia, I
mean ex Soviets who live in America. But yeah, I
think that these broad scams have been so prevalent for
(11:12):
so long that really the story here is that they're
being uncovered and stopped now, and I'd love to see
that continue.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
I really I had hope.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
In DOGE and that kind of thing, and of course
government spending went up even despite DOGE, So now my
hope is broadbusting.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Really, that's the only thing we have left.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
The Medicaid story comes from a data release from DOGE,
so that is just an issue of having enough enterprising
numbers people to go through the Medicaid info. So I
think we'll be seeing more from that. And it did
originate from DOGE. So getting to the bottom of this
stuff is sometimes a slow process, and it turns out
(11:53):
and maybe we should all be inspired to put on
our boots and walk around and be like, what is
this address again? That is getting all my money?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Oh man?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, you know, I would say just tell my Twitter
followers like what to do, and they'll they'll they'll go
do it because they are investigative reporters.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Those people. I have a story.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I may have told it on here before, but one
time I was in Texas and I didn't tell my
followers that I was in Texas and I posted a
tray of barbecue. Didn't say anything except I kind of
jokingly said, like Brooklyn Barbecue, Like somebody nailed not just
the barbecue place, but like the dish that I ordered,
it was. It was wild. Yeah. I was like, Okay,
(12:32):
I can't, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, be careful.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Well, I'm glad you got some non Brooklyn barbecue.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Hey, Brooklyn barbecue is not bad.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Except for that one notorious picture, which was right, y'all
didn't say that's an old that's an old meme.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Basically inside Twitter joke. But Brooklyn Barbecue, if you happen
to be in Brooklyn and wanting some barbecue, hometown and
red Hook.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Is legit nice. Just by the way, can I just
wint out that I thought somebody had this genius idea
and I can't even tell you who it is right now,
but I'm going to say the genius idea. There's a
there's a two dudes who are running around New York
City alphabetically trying to have food from every single nation
on our own. That's cool and it's so fun. They
just go to these tiny little places. So I believe
in New York. I believe that New York can produce
(13:18):
Southern food.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
But I'm glad you pointed.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Us to the right place.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
All right, We're going to take a short break and
be right back with more normally. We are back on normally,
where CNN has been just painting itself in glory since
the attempted terrorist attack in New York City on Saturday.
We talked about various media outlets miscovering You know, I
(13:49):
can't even call it miscovering right because they weren't doing
it accidentally. This is on purpose covering the attack by
two young Muslim men on anti is Islam protesters. This
attack has now been portrayed as somehow on Zoram'm Donnie
the mayor of New York City and his wife, and
(14:09):
not on the people who would actually was targeted to
and not from these two young Muslim men who have
affinity for Isis. So yesterday on Tuesday, CNN tweeted a
story where this is how the tweet went Two Pennsylvania
teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what
(14:30):
could have been a normal day enjoying the city during
abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their
lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested
but throwing homemade bombs during an anti Muslim protest outside
of Mayor Zora.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Ma'm Donnie's home. Here's what we know so far.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I mean, it obfuscates what happened in such a deep
way that I go back to the.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Point I made on our show on.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Tuesday, which is, this is the kind of thing that
leads people to conspiracy theory. They see blaytant lies and
they start not to believe anything. And I understand that
this path, this is where it comes from, and CNN
really needs to be held accountable. However, of course they
won't be, and they haven't been, and lead us into
(15:17):
the Abbe Phillips story that relates what Mary.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Kathy Benson and I call this anti journalism. Like your
object here is to tell your audience the opposite of
what happened, because you don't like the thing that happened,
and Abby Phillip was engaged in that on her show
in uh the is it Primetime?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Last night?
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Here's Abby Phillip.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here after an attempted
terror attack against New York's Mayor zor On Mamdanie and
the House Speaker Mike Johnson says nothing really to condemn
those comments.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Okay, so yeah, man, number one focus is already Islamophobia,
right from Mumdannie and from Abby Phillip on the news.
So we've already turned where the story is over of
the actual homegrown terrorism. We're not going to address that.
We're going to dress help people react to the terrorism,
and the people that we don't like, we're going to
(16:13):
punish them for reacting in bad ways. But we're the
bomb throwing. There's sort of a side issue for her.
And then Mom Donnie's house is not the target. American
protesters saying that they don't like Islam were the target.
Now that speech is protected, and they weren't doing anything violent.
(16:34):
You may think they're being jerks, but they weren't doing
anything violent. Yeah, and this makes people watching that show
think the opposite of what happened happened. The proximity to
Gracie mansion is because the anti Islam protest was happening
outside Gracie Mansion.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Right, it's done on purpose to cover what happened. Abby
Philip took to Twitter today to apologize or what she said.
She says she read it off a teleprompter, but you know,
I mean you tweeted that. The fact that she didn't
notice it until the next day and issues a correction
online and not on.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Air, that's the whole ballgame to me, Like, is she.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Going to get on the air tonight and say I'm
sorry I made a mistake. But how did that kind
of mistake get made? How does that get into the teleprompter?
How do you just read that and not think it
over and not say this is not what happened.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
How do you not come back and say that was
a mistake right away. Yes, it's all kind of a
big tell.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
So yeah, I think that she is reading prompter. This
is a tease. It is not necessarily the anchor's job
to fact check every tease. But I would suggest if
the words are going to come out of your mouth,
you need to not ron Burgundy it and you need
to be aware of what's happening. The problem is that
at every step of the way, each person involved in
this process, writing the prompter, checking it, sending it to her,
(17:55):
her reading it. All of them have systematically missing fled
themselves right about what happened on this day. And the
fact that nobody in her circle during commercial break was like, dude,
do you know what you just said? Right? No one
did that. You know who did do that is Joe Borelli. Yeah,
the conservative sitting on set who has to correct her?
(18:18):
And I used to play this role at CNN a lot,
because everyone at the table agrees with each other and
doesn't know certain things, and so then you have to
be like, actually, on a Navarro, who is inverting this incident?
What happened is these guys were not attacking mom Donnie.
They were attacking these protesters.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
An Navarro, by the way, seems super out of it
on this clip. I feel like, you're too nice to
say anything like this, but I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
She seems a little drunk.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
She's like slurring and yelling at Joe Borelli, and she's like,
I believe may mum Donnie was raised Muslim, Like it's
just all unrelated, and she's saying that Finally, Republicans are
talking about anti Islamic rhetoric because of this attack. Like again, ma'am,
(19:10):
it's the rhetoric is not the problem here.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
The bombs being thrown are the problem here.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I really think the bombs are the problem. We should
also do a quick flashback of Abby Philip talking to
Joy Read about what she believes her role as a
newscaster is.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Conservatives are living in a completely different information world, absolutely
and liberals, and breaking that down needs to be done
because when you don't ever even hear the facts, it's
hard to even know that you're wrong. And that happens
a lot. I think that one time that that person
brings up something that is debunked and false and I
(19:51):
debunk it at the table might be the very first
time that someone out there has heard an alternative point
of view.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, it looks like she could all things opposite, because
what happened at that table is that Joe Borelli was
the one person debunking the thing and the rest of
them hadn't heard it right or we're just willfully lying.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, yeah, and again, whatever you think of conservative media,
we know what the liberals are saying.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
We know they need yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
We are fully aware of what the other side believes.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
We are fully aware of all their positions.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
We take extra care to get the actual facts right
because if we get the fact wrong or completely dismissed,
it's just I mean again, liberal privilege like this just
doesn't exist on our side.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Well, even though there are people who are bad actors
on both sides, our ability or our incidental oh running
into liberal thought is just off the charts, Like it
happens all the time. It's the world that you live in.
If you're consuming news, you have to go out of
your way to get alternative viewpoints, not Abby Pillip's viewpoint.
(21:00):
That one is everywhere, so we just hear it all
the time. They do not. But she seems to think,
with this blind spot that she has on joy Reads show,
that she's the one who's the arbiter. I hope she
doesn't hon air apology. She may do a correction on this.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
We'll what do you think she will?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Well, we'll talk about this on our next episode.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I'm going to go with no.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, you're gonna say no, Okay, I'll tak credibility on
the line here, right.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Right, And I hope you're right I hope she does,
because that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
And I hope she does the right thing.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
All right, We're going to take a short break and
come right back with Maura normally.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Alrighty, this is a bit of a now it can
be told right and definitely we're still mad bro about
too much technology in the classroom. The New York Times
did a feature iPads in kindergarten YouTube on breaks the
school screen time battle, and what you find out in
(22:12):
the article is that some places the battle has been lost.
The battle has been lost, and why are we surprised
by this? By the way, the entire education public education
system told you in twenty twenty to twenty twenty three
that it was not just something worth doing for survival,
but good for your kids to be online listening to
(22:34):
their teacher in a zoom for six to eight hours
a day. That's what they do. It was a lie,
and now we have this. This is an anecdote from
the story. A few months before her daughter started kindergarten,
Claire Benois saw a Facebook post that stunned her. Another
family with an incoming kindergartener was wondering if it was
true that children in the Croton Harmon School District, forty
(22:56):
miles north of New York City, receive iPads when they
start school. Their parents confirm that during school, kindergarteners often
use iPads to play games and watch television shows and
YouTube videos. School administrators assured her that I've had time
would be limited to fifteen minutes a day, but once
school started, her daughter suddenly knew jingles from the diaper
and car commercials that would play before YouTube videos she
(23:16):
saw in the classroom. Other parents talk about limiting their
screen time at home and working really hard to do it,
and then finding out their kids are on for hours
a day at school.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I remember during the pandemic where my kids suddenly knew commercials.
They'd be like, in this company, we believe, you know,
And they'd be like, we're a car company.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
But we have values, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, And you're like, where did you get that? Right?
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
That, you know. Every time I'm asked to talk about
cell phone bands and schools, I say, it's a good start,
because that's what it is. And the thing is that
I you know, in a perfect world, we would have
mechanisms by which we would limit screen in time use
and not just take it away like my sixteen year
old daughter school, her school head banned has banned cell phones.
(24:08):
She says that one of the things her and her
friends used to do is like snap a picture of
each other when they would see each other across campus,
and now they can't do that anymore. Little cute things
have been lost. And know, her and her friends are
not super screen time teenagers, so they just feel like
they've been punished because other people are playing video games
all through school. I get that, and it does suck.
(24:31):
But in lieu of having policies that are you know,
sane and limit you kind of have to take it
away completely. And what we have now is that they've
taken away the phones, but people in classes, the kids
are on laptops or tablets and they're playing games, they're
(24:51):
watching videos, they're having chats, they're fully having you know,
conversations with their friends on various chat programs. What have
we really accomplished by taking away the phones, Like now
the kids don't have access to it between classes, but
if they have screens in classes, it really doesn't do
that much to limit their actual screen time. I don't
(25:13):
know how we walk this back. I think you're right
that the battle has been lost.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And in some places for sure, but because part of
it is that, well, parents got sold a lie, and
then a lot of them during the pandemic kind of
had to lean on devices. They had to work at home.
And I get it, but you got to pull out
of the dive as a parent. They are sabotaging you
at school. You need to take that to your school board.
(25:37):
You need to make noise about this. And with your kids,
you need to say no to them. At home. You
need to say no to them. A lot of a
lot of parents are like, well it would be really
hard to say no. Yeah, but you have to.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
It's really hard, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Jonathan Hate said, even beyond the phone problem, as you
note that there was some charts showing that the drop
off and ability to read and have attention span for
a long TEX starts dropping as soon as ed tech
is introduced into the classroom. And I can understand for
a short time being like, this is the new tool.
We must use the new tool. Sure, but if the
(26:13):
new tool is making things worse, you need to abandon
the new tool and you need to go back to basics.
And I would just point out also my friend Karen Vates,
who covers literacy, notes that in places like Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee,
guess what they use in classes not at Yeah, they
use paper, they use full books. They are tech free
(26:34):
zones for teaching reading for the most part. And it
turns out that that's what makes your brain work.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, going back to basics is what it's all about.
And you know, there's also this thing on Twitter where
people are always like, oh, look what was taken from us?
And I got it into a conversation with Matt Walsh
the other day where he was saying, like, he posted
a picture of some kid riding his bike at like dusk,
and he's like, you know, this no longer exists.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And I was like, that could act?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Should we be my kid, like with the bad haircut
and all this is, this could be my child on
his bike at dusk?
Speaker 3 (27:06):
I like, it does exist. It's outside my house.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
And he commented back to me that while Okay, even
if you limit screen time in your house, the other
kids don't. Else just say, if you get your kids
outside and playing, other kids will join.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
You go outside and you start playing, and other kids
see you and they start playing, and yeah, maybe they're more.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Screen time kids than they used to be.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
My kid, you know, my younger son referred to one
of his friends as an indoor kid. That kid, that
kid's an indoor kid. But they've always been indoor kids.
They've always been indoor kids who didn't want to be
outside with the rest of the gang. I think that
you can make the changes in your own house and
you can watch it flourish in your neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
It's completely possible.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I agree, And I think the thing that many people
might be missing is that you have to be more
intentional about it than you were in the past.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
You could, you.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Could count on the community to perhaps be passively. The
default is that everyone's outside and playing. Maybe that's not
the default now, And maybe your kids are the ones
who go out and play. This is what ours do.
They go out and play, and we limit the amount
of indoor time they get to do at other people's houses.
We're not just going to mooch snacks and screen time
elsewhere right right, what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Sas Okay, they move, they can mooch the snacks, they
go to my neighbor's house.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
They eat all the snacks, knock on the door say
can Johnny come out to play? And if Johnny doesn't
want to come it to play, you go to the
next house and find another kid. But it has I
have found that a lot of kids end up outside
when you have that as the.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Environment, right, be the leader, make it happen.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Thanks for joining us on Normally.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you could subscribe anywhere
you get your podcasts. Get in touch with us at
normally theepod at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening and
when things get weird, act normally
Normally to show normal. It takes the women news gets weird.
I am Mary Katherine Ham.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Carol Markowitz. Are you wrapping up your time
at Hillsdale?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Mary Catherine?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I am. I'm going out to dinner one last time
tonight and uh teaching my last class today. And I
still have no tweed jackets with elbow patches, but I
will work on.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I think that you gotta get it when you get back.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
To the coast.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
They're ever going to invite me back again. I really need.
I was visited by Molly Hemingway came to my lecture.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Oh so nice.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
That was really nice. And I had a line in
my speech, not knowing that she would be there, that
was a bit of a shout out to you and her,
because I said, it's important to surround yourself with people
who will test you on your beliefs and your outfuot choices.
And I happen to have a group of Mauthy broads
who are my friends, who will not let me give
(01:02):
me a pass on everything, and most of them have
been fellows here.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So yeah, maud abroad's for the wind.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
It's important, all right, Let's.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Get into it. What is going on in the news.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
You know, again, we're not talking you Ron in this
episode because things are just keep on keeping on. I
saw news that we're ahead of schedule, which not clear
what that means, but but glad to know we're ahead
of schedule, better than being behind schedule.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But we will update the normally.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Listeners when we hear of any breaking news or potential
news or stories developing there that are different from the
day to day.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah. But meanwhile, on the home front, we have lots
and lots of fraud, Carol. I know that Vice President
Jade Vance has been put in charge of sort of
like an overarching fraud fraud busting project Frauds and the
frauds are and it seems like it's needed. I mean, I,
(02:05):
as somebody who's skeptical of what government does with our money,
even I think I didn't imagine the immense ridiculousness that
comes with, particularly in the Biden era, handing out millions
and billions and then but simultaneously cutting the verification for
(02:27):
these processes, and so you just end up with piles
of money going to utter nonsense. A couple examples from
just this week we have this is a Wall Street
journal piece about an information super highway to nowhere. It
was a a DC based saying where they go looking
(02:48):
for this money? They say they took They took two
hours looking from address to address because DC had asked
a government agency for four million dollars to connect fifty
five unserved locations. So a couple people get their boots
on and they go walking around look at these addresses,
and they find the unserved sites that DC wanted taxpayers
(03:10):
to subsidize for four million dollars.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Among them were a shed along some train tracks, an
open field, a Catholic University fieldhouse, a Pepco utility facility
that's our power company in the area, construction trailer next
to visible fiber. And after they did this review, this
little group of lawmakers DC said, uh, okay, maybe actually
(03:34):
we had zero things that needed right.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Like yeah, shout out to Ted Cruz who get to
mention here. In twenty twenty three, he found dozens of
DC's supposedly unserved locations were inside the National Zoo.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So just amazing stuff. And this is Aril Ross wrote this.
She works for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration inside
the Department of Commerce, and they sniffed this out and
did the shoe leather work that sometimes reporters have been
known to do in the past, right in back in history,
not in this case. But that's just one story. We
(04:12):
have another one from the Wall Street Journal. Again, this
is about the Boom and autism therapy, and it's a
medicaid fraud. So listen to this. And I don't think
this one might not even technically qualify as fraud because
the perpetrator here is just openly saying this is what
I did. Here we go. When Megan Mitchell first launched
her autism therapy business in twenty nineteen, she took aim
(04:33):
at an unlikely source of profit, Indiana's tax payer funded
Medicaid program, the public insurance system for the poor. The
bet paid off in twenty twenty three. The state paid
Mitchell's company, piece by piece Autism Centers twenty nine million
to provide therapy to just eighty four parent patients, about
three hundred and forty thousand dollars a child. According to
(04:54):
a Wall Street Journal analysis, That amount surpassed what Indiana
Medicaid typically spends in a year treating a diagnosed one
cancer patient, or covering a year of nursing home care
piece by piece, became one of Medicaid's most expensive providers.
And she bought herself like three homes right.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Like, as she's buying these and they know, they point
out a two point five million dollar home in Florida
Santa Belle Island and six hundred thousand dollars waterfront house
on the typical New River, Indiana, Like, how is I
mean she must be aware she's committing fraud.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Well, she should make about it, right.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Well, she's like, I didn't break any of the rules.
And truly that might be the case, because what happened
is that in a lot of these programs, democrats insisted
there'd be no rules.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Right, She's just like the smartest person alive.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And it should be embarrassing because this money is taken
from families who probably have trouble getting their children treated
for the various things that they need their children treated for,
while this woman's making off with three hundred and forty
k per kid.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right right. One of the common on the tweets about
it comes from a KK bird and she writes thirty
to forty hours a week of ABA therapy. No way,
my kid was lucky. If you sat for it was
approved for an hour or two a week. It's either
a fake therapy or babysitting scam. Absolute fraud. Yeah, it
sounds bra delicious, definitely.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Well, and like the problem is you hit a point
with this stuff. I was talking to a friend earlier
today about you know, the future of careers and AI
and economic issues and stuff, and she's like, you want
to touch back in a couple hours and like, brainstorm
some ways to do the fraud because it seems like
a lot of people are doing the fraud. And eventually
(06:43):
people do think, well, this whole process is so fraudulent,
why am I not getting my slice of this pop?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah. I can imagine the average taxpayer just being like,
I'm a sucker for working a normal job and paying
my taxes and not committing fraud. I think after the
Somali daycare fraud, I heard a lot of that on
the Internet where people were just like, am I the
last person working?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Mm hmm. It feels that way sometimes, or it feels like,
by the way, if you wanted to start your own
practice or medicaid Medicaid funded thing or your own practice
or something that worked outside of government. By the way,
without any subsidies. The state would give you such a
hard time, right, like she can't just help and start
a daycare. But it turns out it's real easy as
(07:31):
long as you don't follow any of the laws. CBS
is also doing some work out in California where they
found a hospice fraud in la. This is the reporter
there saying, at age sixty nine, len Iyani is a
pickleball whiz, zipping from dinks to drives energetically. When she
suffered an injury on the court two years ago, she
(07:51):
sought physical therapy and was surprised to learn her Medicare
insurance wouldn't cover it. She was, according to Medicare records,
dying and in hospice. Someone had taken her identity. It
was making money regularly off of this woman who's outliving
a life. We're paying double for this person. And by
(08:12):
the way, all the illegal immigration makes identity theft and
all of these things so much worse because the Left
doesn't want to deal with any of that crime, right either.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
That's right, and this comes out of CBS News, and
it's it's interesting because would the old CBS pre Barrier
wise had done anything like this. Obviously, this fraud is
being committed in California. I think they would be protecting
Gavin Newsome and not reporting on this, so bind changes
come me too.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And in general, reporters think that government money is government money.
They do a lot of left leaning reporters do not
recognize it as your money, right, so they're just like,
who really cares? Who needs to check on this? I
would note that they found eighty nine hospice companies were
registered to a single building and Van Nuys. You can't
have hospice services for eighty nine people and van Nis.
(09:05):
And by the way, this is designed when they do
it for autism and hospice, those are vulnerable populations on purpose,
so that the people running off with this money and
the people facilitating them running off with this money can go.
How dare you come after the dying and the disabled children?
That's right, and that's what's happening, because that's not who
(09:25):
these people are.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Absolutely on the story. On the tweet from this story,
John Bachmann from Newsmax, Our friend John writes to the
California Governor and governor Press Office, accounting any comment. You're
so worried about our troops getting lobster and steak. You
embarrass yourself daily because there is a story right now
about the amount of money that our military spends on
(09:48):
things like lobster or steak for our military troops.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And it's like special occasion dinners for deployed.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I'm perfectly okay with that, and I don't see any
evidence of fraud there. I think that the idea that
we can't splurge on meals for our active duty member
military members is insanity.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, and by the way, it's worth pointing out that,
unlike in the Biden administration Christy Nome, at least one
person has been demoted slash disciplined in some way for
having misspent money. This happened in his first term too.
I believe a Zinke was out for doing similar in
another maybe a DHS guy at one point. I've always
(10:31):
appreciated that Trump can fire people. Biden's mistake was never
firing anyone for doing anything. And yet often the misspending
of money by actual officials is pales in comparison to
these massive fraud operations.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, you know, you said you were surprised. I feel
like Russian from Brooklyn. I'm not that surprised. In fact,
I'm always like, please know Russian names and these stories.
And by that I don't mean Russian from Russia, I
mean ex Soviets who live in America. But yeah, I
think that these broad scams have been so prevalent for
(11:12):
so long that really the story here is that they're
being uncovered and stopped now, and I'd love to see
that continue.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
I really I had hope.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
In DOGE and that kind of thing, and of course
government spending went up even despite DOGE, So now my
hope is broadbusting.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Really, that's the only thing we have left.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
The Medicaid story comes from a data release from DOGE,
so that is just an issue of having enough enterprising
numbers people to go through the Medicaid info. So I
think we'll be seeing more from that. And it did
originate from DOGE. So getting to the bottom of this
stuff is sometimes a slow process, and it turns out
(11:53):
and maybe we should all be inspired to put on
our boots and walk around and be like, what is
this address again? That is getting all my money?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Oh man?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, you know, I would say just tell my Twitter
followers like what to do, and they'll they'll they'll go
do it because they are investigative reporters.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Those people. I have a story.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I may have told it on here before, but one
time I was in Texas and I didn't tell my
followers that I was in Texas and I posted a
tray of barbecue. Didn't say anything except I kind of
jokingly said, like Brooklyn Barbecue, Like somebody nailed not just
the barbecue place, but like the dish that I ordered,
it was. It was wild. Yeah. I was like, Okay,
(12:32):
I can't, I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, be careful.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Well, I'm glad you got some non Brooklyn barbecue.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Hey, Brooklyn barbecue is not bad.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Except for that one notorious picture, which was right, y'all
didn't say that's an old that's an old meme.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Basically inside Twitter joke. But Brooklyn Barbecue, if you happen
to be in Brooklyn and wanting some barbecue, hometown and
red Hook.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Is legit nice. Just by the way, can I just
wint out that I thought somebody had this genius idea
and I can't even tell you who it is right now,
but I'm going to say the genius idea. There's a
there's a two dudes who are running around New York
City alphabetically trying to have food from every single nation
on our own. That's cool and it's so fun. They
just go to these tiny little places. So I believe
in New York. I believe that New York can produce
(13:18):
Southern food.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
But I'm glad you pointed.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Us to the right place.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
All right, We're going to take a short break and
be right back with more normally. We are back on normally,
where CNN has been just painting itself in glory since
the attempted terrorist attack in New York City on Saturday.
We talked about various media outlets miscovering You know, I
(13:49):
can't even call it miscovering right because they weren't doing
it accidentally. This is on purpose covering the attack by
two young Muslim men on anti is Islam protesters. This
attack has now been portrayed as somehow on Zoram'm Donnie
the mayor of New York City and his wife, and
(14:09):
not on the people who would actually was targeted to
and not from these two young Muslim men who have
affinity for Isis. So yesterday on Tuesday, CNN tweeted a
story where this is how the tweet went Two Pennsylvania
teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what
(14:30):
could have been a normal day enjoying the city during
abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their
lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested
but throwing homemade bombs during an anti Muslim protest outside
of Mayor Zora.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Ma'm Donnie's home. Here's what we know so far.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I mean, it obfuscates what happened in such a deep
way that I go back to the.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Point I made on our show on.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Tuesday, which is, this is the kind of thing that
leads people to conspiracy theory. They see blaytant lies and
they start not to believe anything. And I understand that
this path, this is where it comes from, and CNN
really needs to be held accountable. However, of course they
won't be, and they haven't been, and lead us into
(15:17):
the Abbe Phillips story that relates what Mary.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Kathy Benson and I call this anti journalism. Like your
object here is to tell your audience the opposite of
what happened, because you don't like the thing that happened,
and Abby Phillip was engaged in that on her show
in uh the is it Primetime?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Last night?
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Here's Abby Phillip.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here after an attempted
terror attack against New York's Mayor zor On Mamdanie and
the House Speaker Mike Johnson says nothing really to condemn
those comments.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Okay, so yeah, man, number one focus is already Islamophobia,
right from Mumdannie and from Abby Phillip on the news.
So we've already turned where the story is over of
the actual homegrown terrorism. We're not going to address that.
We're going to dress help people react to the terrorism,
and the people that we don't like, we're going to
(16:13):
punish them for reacting in bad ways. But we're the
bomb throwing. There's sort of a side issue for her.
And then Mom Donnie's house is not the target. American
protesters saying that they don't like Islam were the target.
Now that speech is protected, and they weren't doing anything violent.
(16:34):
You may think they're being jerks, but they weren't doing
anything violent. Yeah, and this makes people watching that show
think the opposite of what happened happened. The proximity to
Gracie mansion is because the anti Islam protest was happening
outside Gracie Mansion.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Right, it's done on purpose to cover what happened. Abby
Philip took to Twitter today to apologize or what she said.
She says she read it off a teleprompter, but you know,
I mean you tweeted that. The fact that she didn't
notice it until the next day and issues a correction
online and not on.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Air, that's the whole ballgame to me, Like, is she.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Going to get on the air tonight and say I'm
sorry I made a mistake. But how did that kind
of mistake get made? How does that get into the teleprompter?
How do you just read that and not think it
over and not say this is not what happened.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
How do you not come back and say that was
a mistake right away. Yes, it's all kind of a
big tell.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
So yeah, I think that she is reading prompter. This
is a tease. It is not necessarily the anchor's job
to fact check every tease. But I would suggest if
the words are going to come out of your mouth,
you need to not ron Burgundy it and you need
to be aware of what's happening. The problem is that
at every step of the way, each person involved in
this process, writing the prompter, checking it, sending it to her,
(17:55):
her reading it. All of them have systematically missing fled
themselves right about what happened on this day. And the
fact that nobody in her circle during commercial break was like, dude,
do you know what you just said? Right? No one
did that. You know who did do that is Joe Borelli. Yeah,
the conservative sitting on set who has to correct her?
(18:18):
And I used to play this role at CNN a lot,
because everyone at the table agrees with each other and
doesn't know certain things, and so then you have to
be like, actually, on a Navarro, who is inverting this incident?
What happened is these guys were not attacking mom Donnie.
They were attacking these protesters.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
An Navarro, by the way, seems super out of it
on this clip. I feel like, you're too nice to
say anything like this, but I'm just going to say it.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
She seems a little drunk.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
She's like slurring and yelling at Joe Borelli, and she's like,
I believe may mum Donnie was raised Muslim, Like it's
just all unrelated, and she's saying that Finally, Republicans are
talking about anti Islamic rhetoric because of this attack. Like again, ma'am,
(19:10):
it's the rhetoric is not the problem here.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
The bombs being thrown are the problem here.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I really think the bombs are the problem. We should
also do a quick flashback of Abby Philip talking to
Joy Read about what she believes her role as a
newscaster is.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Conservatives are living in a completely different information world, absolutely
and liberals, and breaking that down needs to be done
because when you don't ever even hear the facts, it's
hard to even know that you're wrong. And that happens
a lot. I think that one time that that person
brings up something that is debunked and false and I
(19:51):
debunk it at the table might be the very first
time that someone out there has heard an alternative point
of view.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, it looks like she could all things opposite, because
what happened at that table is that Joe Borelli was
the one person debunking the thing and the rest of
them hadn't heard it right or we're just willfully lying.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, yeah, and again, whatever you think of conservative media,
we know what the liberals are saying.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
We know they need yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
We are fully aware of what the other side believes.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
We are fully aware of all their positions.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
We take extra care to get the actual facts right
because if we get the fact wrong or completely dismissed,
it's just I mean again, liberal privilege like this just
doesn't exist on our side.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Well, even though there are people who are bad actors
on both sides, our ability or our incidental oh running
into liberal thought is just off the charts, Like it
happens all the time. It's the world that you live in.
If you're consuming news, you have to go out of
your way to get alternative viewpoints, not Abby Pillip's viewpoint.
(21:00):
That one is everywhere, so we just hear it all
the time. They do not. But she seems to think,
with this blind spot that she has on joy Reads show,
that she's the one who's the arbiter. I hope she
doesn't hon air apology. She may do a correction on this.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
We'll what do you think she will?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Well, we'll talk about this on our next episode.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I'm going to go with no.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, you're gonna say no, Okay, I'll tak credibility on
the line here, right.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Right, And I hope you're right I hope she does,
because that's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
And I hope she does the right thing.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
All right, We're going to take a short break and
come right back with Maura normally.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Alrighty, this is a bit of a now it can
be told right and definitely we're still mad bro about
too much technology in the classroom. The New York Times
did a feature iPads in kindergarten YouTube on breaks the
school screen time battle, and what you find out in
(22:12):
the article is that some places the battle has been lost.
The battle has been lost, and why are we surprised
by this? By the way, the entire education public education
system told you in twenty twenty to twenty twenty three
that it was not just something worth doing for survival,
but good for your kids to be online listening to
(22:34):
their teacher in a zoom for six to eight hours
a day. That's what they do. It was a lie,
and now we have this. This is an anecdote from
the story. A few months before her daughter started kindergarten,
Claire Benois saw a Facebook post that stunned her. Another
family with an incoming kindergartener was wondering if it was
true that children in the Croton Harmon School District, forty
(22:56):
miles north of New York City, receive iPads when they
start school. Their parents confirm that during school, kindergarteners often
use iPads to play games and watch television shows and
YouTube videos. School administrators assured her that I've had time
would be limited to fifteen minutes a day, but once
school started, her daughter suddenly knew jingles from the diaper
and car commercials that would play before YouTube videos she
(23:16):
saw in the classroom. Other parents talk about limiting their
screen time at home and working really hard to do it,
and then finding out their kids are on for hours
a day at school.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I remember during the pandemic where my kids suddenly knew commercials.
They'd be like, in this company, we believe, you know,
And they'd be like, we're a car company.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
But we have values, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, And you're like, where did you get that? Right?
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
That, you know. Every time I'm asked to talk about
cell phone bands and schools, I say, it's a good start,
because that's what it is. And the thing is that
I you know, in a perfect world, we would have
mechanisms by which we would limit screen in time use
and not just take it away like my sixteen year
old daughter school, her school head banned has banned cell phones.
(24:08):
She says that one of the things her and her
friends used to do is like snap a picture of
each other when they would see each other across campus,
and now they can't do that anymore. Little cute things
have been lost. And know, her and her friends are
not super screen time teenagers, so they just feel like
they've been punished because other people are playing video games
all through school. I get that, and it does suck.
(24:31):
But in lieu of having policies that are you know,
sane and limit you kind of have to take it
away completely. And what we have now is that they've
taken away the phones, but people in classes, the kids
are on laptops or tablets and they're playing games, they're
(24:51):
watching videos, they're having chats, they're fully having you know,
conversations with their friends on various chat programs. What have
we really accomplished by taking away the phones, Like now
the kids don't have access to it between classes, but
if they have screens in classes, it really doesn't do
that much to limit their actual screen time. I don't
(25:13):
know how we walk this back. I think you're right
that the battle has been lost.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And in some places for sure, but because part of
it is that, well, parents got sold a lie, and
then a lot of them during the pandemic kind of
had to lean on devices. They had to work at home.
And I get it, but you got to pull out
of the dive as a parent. They are sabotaging you
at school. You need to take that to your school board.
(25:37):
You need to make noise about this. And with your kids,
you need to say no to them. At home. You
need to say no to them. A lot of a
lot of parents are like, well it would be really
hard to say no. Yeah, but you have to.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
It's really hard, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Jonathan Hate said, even beyond the phone problem, as you
note that there was some charts showing that the drop
off and ability to read and have attention span for
a long TEX starts dropping as soon as ed tech
is introduced into the classroom. And I can understand for
a short time being like, this is the new tool.
We must use the new tool. Sure, but if the
(26:13):
new tool is making things worse, you need to abandon
the new tool and you need to go back to basics.
And I would just point out also my friend Karen Vates,
who covers literacy, notes that in places like Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee,
guess what they use in classes not at Yeah, they
use paper, they use full books. They are tech free
(26:34):
zones for teaching reading for the most part. And it
turns out that that's what makes your brain work.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yeah, going back to basics is what it's all about.
And you know, there's also this thing on Twitter where
people are always like, oh, look what was taken from us?
And I got it into a conversation with Matt Walsh
the other day where he was saying, like, he posted
a picture of some kid riding his bike at like dusk,
and he's like, you know, this no longer exists.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And I was like, that could act?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Should we be my kid, like with the bad haircut
and all this is, this could be my child on
his bike at dusk?
Speaker 3 (27:06):
I like, it does exist. It's outside my house.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
And he commented back to me that while Okay, even
if you limit screen time in your house, the other
kids don't. Else just say, if you get your kids
outside and playing, other kids will join.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
You go outside and you start playing, and other kids
see you and they start playing, and yeah, maybe they're more.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Screen time kids than they used to be.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
My kid, you know, my younger son referred to one
of his friends as an indoor kid. That kid, that
kid's an indoor kid. But they've always been indoor kids.
They've always been indoor kids who didn't want to be
outside with the rest of the gang. I think that
you can make the changes in your own house and
you can watch it flourish in your neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
It's completely possible.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I agree, And I think the thing that many people
might be missing is that you have to be more
intentional about it than you were in the past.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
You could, you.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Could count on the community to perhaps be passively. The
default is that everyone's outside and playing. Maybe that's not
the default now, And maybe your kids are the ones
who go out and play. This is what ours do.
They go out and play, and we limit the amount
of indoor time they get to do at other people's houses.
We're not just going to mooch snacks and screen time
elsewhere right right, what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Sas Okay, they move, they can mooch the snacks, they
go to my neighbor's house.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
They eat all the snacks, knock on the door say
can Johnny come out to play? And if Johnny doesn't
want to come it to play, you go to the
next house and find another kid. But it has I
have found that a lot of kids end up outside
when you have that as the.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Environment, right, be the leader, make it happen.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Thanks for joining us on Normally.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you could subscribe anywhere
you get your podcasts. Get in touch with us at
normally theepod at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening and
when things get weird, act normally
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Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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