On this episode, Karol debuts a new advice segment with Buck Sexton, addressing a listener’s concerns about infidelity discovered just before marriage. They discuss the importance of trust, communication, and traditional relationship values. Later, Karol welcomes Ashley Rindsberg, senior editor at Pirate Wires, who exposes the dangers of media misreporting and information warfare, particularly by outlets like The New York Times and Wikipedia. They discuss the need for media skepticism, personal responsibility, and a return to foundational values in both relationships and public discourse. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Marcowood Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm introducing a new segment today where I start some
episodes off with answering your questions that you could submit
anonymously through the form that I post on X today.
I'm joined for this segment by my good friend, co
host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hi, Buck, So nice to have you on.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hey, thank you, Carol. Appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You and I get into all kinds of topics and
a lot of times we talk about relationships and dating
and marriage and friendships and all that kind of stuff,
and I think our conversations on it are smart and
can be helpful to other people. So I figured why
not let the Carol marco Wood Show audience in on it.
And We're going to get started with a real doozy today.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
This question. I got a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I got a lot of responses to my ex post
about you coming on and joining me for this segment.
This question, I was like, this is going to be
the first question I ask for sure, Here we go.
Our first question was submitted anonymously, and this person writes, Hi, Carol,
new listener to both of your shows, which I found
through Clay and book, and while I like your approach,
(01:16):
I was hesitant to write in this one because I
felt like I needed a man's opinion.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
When you mentioned you were doing this.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
With Buck, I figured it would be good to hear
both the female and male perspective on my problem. I
got married four months ago, and a month before our wedding,
it came out that my girlfriend of three years had
slept with someone else several times in the first few months.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of our relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I say came out because she didn't tell me. I
learned this information in a surprising way, which made everything worse.
She says we weren't exclusive then, which is true, but
she was applying pressure to make us exclusive, and while
I was resistant, I also wasn't sleeping with anyone else.
I'm sickened and not sure I can get over it.
The first few first four months of our marriage have
(02:03):
been okay, and I do love her, but this is
stuck in the front of my mind. What do you
think about this book?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Well, I think that the situation, the clarity offered there,
or the clarification is very important, which is why why
does it bother you, I mean in our I'm gonna
I'm gonna sort of back into this one.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Right, all right, I feel like we might disagree right
off the bat.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Okay, I'm going back into this.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
We we have a generally speaking, a dating culture in America,
you know, for let's say, adults post college, where you know.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
People people sleep with people. That is the thing that
is happening on a regular basis. I've heard about Yeah,
I've heard. I've heard rumors and stories about this. Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And the expectation I think that most people have in
dating is that you have a there is a conversation
and understanding that you have at some point like hey,
and this is for you know, emotional and relationship reasons,
also for I think health reasons in some context too.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
You know, are we you know, are we dating?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Are we exclusively seeing each other? And you know that
I think is very That makes a lot of sense.
And I think that the issue that comes up here is, Okay, well,
if you're not, if you haven't entered in that contract,
so to speak, that verbal contract, what are your expectations?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
So we are going to disagree, I see, we know
we are, Oh, we are we are Okay, keep going,
because I'll tell you my perspective.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Look, I think that you know, if you I think
that if you're playing the field, then you're a single person.
You know, you conduct yourself, hopefully male or female, as
with kindness and with respect for you for your fellow
human beings in these relationships you're in. But I think
that until you've had the talk, uh, there's no expectation
(03:58):
of I mean, I think until you had a discussion
about monogamy. If you're two people that haven't been monogamous,
like or haven't been celibate before, that it doesn't It's
so now I understand why someone might be kind of
emotion by the way, I don't know I was going
to get this kind of question is yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I asked you, do you want to hear the question?
And you were like, no, I got this.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
No, I think I think this is not nom There
are rules, and the rules are you have a conversation
about exclusiveness and monogamy, and until that conversation occurs, you
try to be respectful of the person. But they can't
have expectations beyond what has been stated and understood.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So I'm going to have to disagree here, And maybe
it's because I was in You know, I haven't been
in the dating world in a long time. I've been
married for over fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's definitely possible that things have changed.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
I get that, but I will say that this guy,
it's clear that it's eating him up.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And I don't know personally.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
If I found out today that my husband slept with
somebody in the first few months we were dating, I
don't know that I would get over it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I really know.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
That's kind of a different, isn't that a little.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Bit when he's saying what do I do? And I
not that I'm saying leave your wife.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Look, you know, nobody's pushing any divorce here, but I
don't know that I would be able to get over it.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And if you're the kind of person that.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Will not be able to proceed in this marriage and
be happy in your life and it's going to eat
your live, which it would totally eat me alive.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I don't know he is married.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
He's married. He's married for four months, and he found
out a month before he got married, so he's only
had this knowledge for five months, but four of those
they've been married. And I don't know I would not
be able to live with it. And I look, I
know people forgive and what else?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
What does that mean then, Carol, I'm going to cross
examine you if you wouldn't be able to handle it,
but you don't want divorce, Well what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
By the way, are the kids here too?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Because I always I mean, I don't know because it
was somebody submitted this s anonymously. He didn't give any name,
so I have no clue about who it is. But
I so no because it's only four months, right, but they.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Dated for three years? But ill, let's go with no kids, right?
But I I just yeah, again, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Going to divorced. You're not going to get me on
a technicality, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Well, there's what's on ethic, were on a break?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
No, there's what's unethical, and then there's what you can handle. Yes, right,
those are those are different things, right? Or rather, those
aren't necessary I should say those aren't necessarily the same thing.
I mean because here here, for example, it's like, okay, well,
what also are the rules here for when people are
in the first stages of going I've heard rumors there
are guys and girls who are men and women who
(06:40):
are popular with the opposite sex, and when they are dating,
they will go out with different people over the course
of a week, and that will even include if they
kind of like somebody but they're not sure.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Do you have to disclose like it should?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Should you sit down with somebody on a second date
and be like, hey, I'm really enjoying this just you know,
some other guy last night because I just want to
be totally honest with you and transparent.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
But I mean, you know, no, right, people no longer
have the.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Who I've been hooking up with during this time period. Talk,
is that just not something that goes on when you
when you do enter into a formal relationship.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I mean, my look, my my sense of this is
it's a lot cleaner for for everybody involved. My my
personal belief is that you know, if you're sleeping with somebody,
that's the person you should be sleeping with.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And that is that crazy, right, But that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
He didn't want to be in a relationship, but he
also wasn't sleeping with anyone else.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
So but I do think that you know, it's you
get into gray area with like, what what are expectations?
I mean, also the notion that it is eating him
up so much. I mean, I think that marriage and
I'm a new I'm like relative newly we.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Compared to Carol.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
I think that marriage there's such an elevation, and you know,
it's obviously in the Catholic faith, it's a sacrament, and
it's considered something so far beyond dating that if you've
taken that step of marriage with somebody and within the
marriage they have been a good spouse, and you think
you're building a good life together, you know, the dating
(08:13):
phase is a different thing with entirely different expectations, and
I think that people should understand that at some level, right,
I mean, now, whether that means you can go around
and act like.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
A fluzy, I think that's the isn't that in the forties? Yeah,
I am.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
I am anti acting like a fluzy out there. But
I will tell you that even as from a male
perspective in the dating world, and I was in the
dating world for many, many many years because I didn't
get married until I was forty, from the male perspective,
it's actually a challenge sometimes to slow down women who
want and it's going to sound very like let me
(08:51):
tell you about the challenges of life some of us
have had. But sometimes women want to accelerate the physical
part of the relationship because they view it as like
you knowing things in a bit more.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Oh interesting, As a.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Guy, you're in this position where it's like, well, I
don't want I actually don't want to like be.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
The you know, fust of all your guy friends, I
did not want to have sex with un Like Yeah,
and that can be its own problem.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
So, but sometimes women are the ones that actually are
really along the physical part of the relationship a lot more.
And I also believe in this. Maybe it's controversial these days,
athough it shouldn't be at all because of like all
of human history, the physical and chemical reactions that women
get from that level of intimacy I think are just look,
they take more, they take more biological risk, and I
(09:36):
think they have more built in biochemical attachment than men do.
And I think that's pretty clear.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Even though so even more.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So if he's like thinking that back to his girlfriend
in the first few months of them dating, sleeping multiple
times with somebody else. Okay, so what's our advice to
this anonymous person? I'm saying, if you know yourself and
you don't think that you can live with yourself four
months as to the marriage. I think you have to
make a very serious call. Don't let it be four
(10:08):
years into the marriage where you decide you can't live
with it anymore.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
I think if you have somebody who and whether it's
a priest or a rabbi, perhaps a trusted intermediary.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yes, us, that's this is who he's coming to.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Well, but I mean to sit down with his spouse
and that person and just really have a really have
a conversation about it. But you know, I mean, I'm
inclined to say I think I think you in this
situation unless he's unhappy in the marriage itself. I mean,
(10:44):
he's holding somebody to a standard of I think at
some level it's unfair to hold somebody with a standard
that you didn't set and that you just figured now
that technicality, yeah versus fair versus Look, there's also things
we don't really know here, Okay, I mean, he says,
in the early stage of our relationship, did did his
(11:04):
wife sleep with somebody when they were on the like
second or third date.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, he says that she was pushing for them to
make it official, and he was resistant. And during that
time where she wanted to be official with him.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
This is what else.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
This is what I mean, this is what happened. This
is what happens with guys. Uh.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
And this doesn't get talked about very much, but I
do know of this from my male friends in the
dating world and from what I you know, was observing
out there in the world. Is if you're a guy
and you're with a girl who is who is you know,
sort of high value a lot of a lot of
men are interested in and she's like, let's go, let's
take this to the next level, and you slow that
down physically. In a lot of cases, what happens is
(11:46):
the guy who's in the number number two slots, so
to speak, is like, oh, I'll just I'll escalate, like
I'm I'm happy to be a to be a you know, fellain.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Oh this is all horrible.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I'm so glad that I'm not damagating.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Really, it's really it's carnage out there, man. I mean,
the dating world is a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
It's because the online stuff has all sort of commoditized
it and everyone has endless options and they think they
have a video game. No, it's like a video game
and it really has. It has made it unfortunately all
too easy, which I think has really all aspects of
it are sort of too straightforward now and too simple,
and I think that has really bad ramification. So I
(12:28):
feel for this guy for sure, and I get that,
you know, if we could have like a sort of
a lighthearted moment about it. I mean, it's like, didn't
Jerry and Seinfeld find out that a girl like Newman
broke up with a girl that was beautiful that he's that's.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Different looking out your girlfriend slept with Newman?
Speaker 4 (12:46):
No, you know, I'm just saying like there was that,
you know, Jerry, she was like beautiful and he thought
she was really cool.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
But it's like, oh, man, no, you can't live with it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
If it's something you can't live with, you might have
to let them go. And I hate starting the first
episode being like, hey, maybe break up your marriage.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
But.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Kind of, you know, I really like the marriages for life.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Unless I know, I know, but this is like, but
it's also like if you if it's not going to work,
like stop it as soon as you can, don't don't
let it, don't go have kids and go, you know,
for years and years holding this grudge I think you
don't let it go or you know, get off the
pot whatever.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I think having a conversation though, that's what I meant about,
like the third party or you know, the uh, you know,
marriage counselor or whatever it is you want to say,
and what we have it because I think he may
be able to reach a point where he realizes, like
what she did when she didn't really know you is
not a reflection necessarily of of her feelings for you
now and how she will be as a spouse, like
(13:49):
when you've made a vow. You know, there's a difference
between I think someone's going to do something and I've
given someone my word that I will do something. And
I think that's very important, right, You're right. I think
civilization is kind of built on that. You know, I
keep my word, and my word is my bond. I
give you my word about this. I pledge myself to you.
If you're assuming something.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That's a different it's a different situation, so you know
you're I don't know. I feel like I agree with
you on so many things.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I'm psyched with you, very hard ass on this.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Like.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Out a little bit on this one.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Started our first segment of.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
My salmon colored T shirt.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Which salmon colored T shirt? Actually, it looks very good
on you very much, suit too.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Thank you for coming on buck Sexton for our first
segment where we give advice to my listeners. Please write
into the Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com, or
if you want to do it anonymously, find my form
on x I repost it all the time.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Stay tuned for my interview with Ashley Rinsburg coming up.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Ashley Rinsburg. Ashley is a senior
editor at Pirate Wires and the author of The Gray
Lady Winked How The New York Times misreporting, distortions, and
fabrications radically alter history.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
So nice to have you on, Ashley.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Thank you, Carol. I'm happy to be with you.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I've been reading you for a while, and I would say,
out of all my guests, I know least about you.
I literally when you came on, we were chatting right
before this, I wasn't sure if you were going to
have a British accent. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I literally know nothing about you.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
If you if you wouldn't mind, but you do live
in London, and I don't know why I expected you
to be British. Tell me about yourself. How did you
get into this, you know, whole thing that we do.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
Oh wow, Yeah, So I'm I'm American, and well, I grew.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Up in America.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
I was born in South Africa, and I was after
university doing that kind of figuring it out thing, and
decided to get a job on a sailing yacht as
a deckhand, so helping move the boat from Italy to Greece,
(16:08):
so southern Italy. We sailed it for like two months
with me and me and another hand, and it's a
nice route. It was a great route, and you learn
you're you're literally traveling backward through time to the land
of Odysseus, sailing through the Ionian Islands, sailing through the
ag and the Corinth Canal. And we got the boat
(16:28):
to its destination and it was time for me to
move on. I didn't want to go back to the US.
I've been living at San Francisco working at Internet Archive,
which is the wayback machine, guys. Yeah, So I moved
onwards towards Israel, and I went to Israel and I
stayed there for a while, and it was there that
I was reading through books and just leafing through stuff
(16:49):
that you find.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
There's a lot of books.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Around Israel, and I found this book about the Second
World War World War called The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich. And in that book was a little
tidbit about the New York Times saying that on the
day that hostilities broke out, the New York Times reported
Nazi propaganda saying that Poland had invaded Germany. And I
was like, excuse me, what crazy New York Times lead
(17:15):
story Poland had invaded Germany? Like, how could anybody think
that in nineteen thirty nine? How could the New York
Times think that in nineteen thirty nine. So I started
to wonder how many more errors of that order the
New York Times had made in history? How many times
did it misreporting actually change the course of history? That
was the That was the bar for the book. I'm like,
(17:36):
I'm going to do a chapter if it changed history
in some meaningful way, not just some piece of gossip.
So that became the book, The Gray Lady Winked. I
wrote it in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Wow, So you know, on the Amazon page.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
There's kind of the subhead think a newspaper can't be
responsible for mass murder. Think again, that's I mean, a
powerful statement, but I don't think it's over And when
we're talking about the New York Times, you.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Know, if you look at a case like Ukraine famine,
which they completely fell down on, and it was done
more or less deliberately, and I believe it was done
not just with the complicity of the New York Times
institution for getting Walter Durant as an individual who's the
one who'd made the lie, who denied that there was
a famine in the Ukraine in the early thirties, and
(18:25):
it all got shuffled onto him. They just blamed him.
I don't think that was the case. I think it
was all about the New York Times ownership and business interest,
as it always is with The New York Times. We
factor out that it's owned by a family, the Sulzburgers.
It's a dynasty. It's one of the last great remaining
American industrial economic dynasties. We just don't talk about it.
(18:47):
That's the people who own that, who control that newspaper,
and for them, it was all about money and it
was all about getting access to the Russian market, and
they denied it because that was in their interest to
do so. So in that sense, if people had known
that this was happening, if people had known that Stalin
was perpetrating mass starvation to the effect of five million people,
(19:08):
it could have changed things for America. It could have
changed things for American geopolitics, could have changed a lot
of the decisions that were made at the time about
Communist Russia and how we would treat Communist Russia, whether
as a legitimate government or as this evil unknown, which
is actually what it was.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
So you're in Israel, you find this book, you decide,
you know, how many more stories are there in the
New York Times. But if you're not already a writer,
how do you make that leap to writing a book.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
It was just one of those things that almost happened
on its own, which like I've written lots of different
things in my day, including books, and that almost never happens.
And it just was. I just enjoyed it so much.
I didn't think about it. You know, like when you
hear great like athletes, I mean not to say I'm great,
but when you hear athletes talk.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
About you can be great.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I mean, maybe one day I will be, but you know,
they they forget themselves in that in that activity, and
that's kind of how it was. I forgot myself and
I was just that's all I did.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I didn't.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
I mean, there was always, you know, stuff going on
in Tel Aviv and the nightlife and everything happening around you.
But for the most part, I just went to a
cafe every day on DISNEYV Street and sat there and
wrote the book and did as much research.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
As I could.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
So what would have been Plan B if you didn't
become a writer, What would have been an alternate path
for you?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Would you have stayed in? Like was it tech that
you were in?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I was never.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
I was never, I would say in tech, I was
always around it. Plan B, Oh my god. I honestly
I think I tried to Plan B and C and
D and E n F and they all failed. So
I just had to go back to Plan A, which
is being a writer. Yeah, I think I.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Would just kind of not stay on the on the ship,
not be ad.
Speaker 5 (20:52):
Backhand, I did think about it at that moment, like
because it's something people do, but it just felt like
like standing in place a little bit too much, like
you would just kind of get lost in that, and
there was just something that felt like it was pulling
me forward towards some kind of what turned out to
be like, you know, quite a chaotic, like coming from
the tranquility of Greece and then into Tel Aviv in
(21:16):
just at the end of the Intifada, the second Inada,
the tail tale end of it, and you know, a massive,
massive shift. But when that was really meaningful?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What do you consider your beat?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
At pirate Wires?
Speaker 5 (21:31):
I cover at this point a lot of I mean,
some just plain tech, but mostly the thing I do,
or at least that I'm known best for, is information
information warfare type stuff. Right now, what's happening on Wikipedia
where you know, you're seeing entire topic areas hijacked by
essentially edit gangs. Some of them are let's say, pro Hamas,
(21:53):
some of them are pro China, some of them are
whatever they are, and they're able to completely contort all
the articles in that given area, and nobody really knows that,
and it's all getting fed into the LLLM SIN it's
getting pinned into Google as the top result and we're
just not aware of it. So a lot of that
kind of story where things are happening on these big
(22:14):
platforms and they're very, very significant, but no one has
any idea that it's even happened.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
How do you let the American people know how big
of a problem that is. I just feel like the
average person would be like, well, so don't use dy Wikipedia,
just use something else. But it's kind of hard to
convey to people that Wikipedia is this giant thing that
needs to be somewhat correct and it needs to be
somewhat fair. Do you find that argument difficult to make
(22:41):
to kind of the normies?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I don't think.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
I don't think I've tried to yet, and I don't
know that anyone else has either. I think it's probably actually,
i'll take it back. The one person who has is
Elon Musk, has actually really done that in a big
way as you would from him. I don't think that
story's really been told, and I think it's confusing for
a lot of people when they see it, Like when
Eland's like Wikipedia is broken, he's drawing on so much
(23:08):
knowledge that he has so much institutional experience with the
entire ecosystem, not just Wikipedia, that for him it's obvious,
but for most people. I would say ninety nine point
nine percent of people and sometimes including myself. You don't
quite understand what it means until you really dive into
the details of how it worked and why it works
that way, and who decided it should work that way,
(23:29):
And that's when you start to really open your eyes.
And I think it's about telling that story to as
many people as you can.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Is it governments that are gaming Wikipedia or individuals?
Speaker 5 (23:43):
It's everybody. It's everybody that's involved in gaming every other
platform and gaming the entire digital information ecosystem. So that's governments,
that's terror organizations, that's people aligned to those types of groups.
It's corporate, it's just individuals, it's business interests. There is
(24:04):
so much going on underneath the hood of Wikipedia. There
is a massive, let's say, pay to play cottage industry
where if you want changes to an article, if you
want an article created or removed, you're going to pay
these people illicitly. It's against the rules, but it is
absolutely diffuse, like it happens just every single day on
a massive scale, and everybody knows it except for the
(24:26):
people on the other end of this thing that the
regular user doesn't know any of this and the people
on the inside know all of it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Is there a Wikipedia book in you? Is that the
next kind of topic?
Speaker 5 (24:38):
I think, you know, I think right now my instinct
is that, like people really like video, and I think
that's an amazing way to tell this particular story. Yeah,
I think it can be chopped up. I think it
can be shown to be if you show it graphically
sometimes like visually, it just becomes more accessible to people.
(24:59):
And that so maybe that's what's first.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
What do you worry about.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
I worry about a lot of this stuff. I worry
about the propaganda. I mean, I go on social media
and I'm just I'm flabbergasted. And this is we live
our lives inside of the media right now, we live
on lives inside of social media. And I go onto
X number of and not to use the word X
number two coincidentally, but you just see such insane stuff happening.
(25:23):
You see so much of it, and you know so
much of it is just completely fake, just bought and
paid for. It's it's sometimes it's just random, and sometimes
it's ideological. Sometimes it's warfare, and sometimes it's just business.
But it's so much of it, and you're like this
is what we consume, this is what our children are consuming. Yeah,
what is going to happen? How are we going to
(25:44):
continue to be to educate ourselves about the world, to
communicate and connect with each other freely when you've got
this thing in the middle that's real, just garbage, but
garbage screaming about its own right to free speech.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's interesting because you say, you know, we are so
inside the media, and I think you and I certainly are,
But like how much of this filters out? And I
guess this is something that I think about a lot,
like what normal people see and think.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
How much of it is crossing over?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And I'm definitely worried about my kids in the future
and that kind of thing also, But do you think.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
That we're seeing kind of.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Not a rebuff of this kind of thing, but definitely
somewhat moving away from it, especially in the younger generations
where they're not on X all day, they're not consuming
what we're consuming all day.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
That's true, and I think there's definitely some new path
that's being forged right now by the younger generation. Of
users online. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Exactly what it is.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
I know it's a lot about messaging, and that's like
primarily what they're doing. But I think these forms of
information they sort of seep into the ground, so the
ideas seep in, the language, seeps in, people start thinking
in the way that they talk, and I think it
has that effect anyways, maybe not a total effect, but
(27:12):
it's there.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Are you optimistic about I don't know, the future. I
guess in general or we're sort of in a real.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Moment of optimism in the US right now. Every guest
I kind of have had recently is sort of like
looking to the future very positively. It definitely is the
Donald Trump election very vibe shift. You don't seem as optimistic.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
It seems, Yeah, it seems like people are just at
loggerheads with each other all the time. Not just in
the US, I think it's all over the place. And
when you see that kind of like people not just
fighting on social media, like fighting almost sounds too quoint.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
It's war.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
It's in turns seen war all the time, and you think,
how can you ever resolve that? You know, how how
does that actually get resolved into something that's at least
a discourse. And I actually have no idea.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Can I get resolved?
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I guess I like I I almost feel like, yeah,
they'll they'll keep fighting, but the rest of the world
will move on without them.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Do you not think so?
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Yeah? You know that might be. I think you know
they say Twitter is not real life or x is
not real life?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, right, do you think it is?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
You do agree?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
That's not No, it's not real.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Yeah, it's totally fake life. It's the fakest of fake life.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
But yeah, we spent a lot of time on it.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
And buying into it.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yet I yet I refresh it all day long. What
comes next?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
What's the kind of next frontier of this.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Kind of thing?
Speaker 5 (28:49):
You know? I actually don't know. I think it's a
great question. I think what we are obviously going to
all be paying attention to the l lms. There's just
no way we're getting around that. And it's going to
become a focus of how information gets parceled out and
what's considered reliable not reliable, how you hack that system.
(29:09):
And it's already begun. People have already on a business level,
and I'm sure and for sure on a propaganda level,
people are figuring out how to hack the lllms just
by publishing stuff online that just gets pulled by the
machine and then spat back into the user. So you know,
I reported on how that's happening on Reddit. A pro
(29:29):
hamas propaganda network active on Reddit has learned how to
do that, and they're not the only ones, so I
think that'll.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Be the We're recording this shortly after Grock lost its
mind and called itself mecha.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Hitler and.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Elmow got hacked and talking about like Jeffrey Epstein and Jews,
and it's just replete. It's replete. So the AI, the hacking,
the like, all of it together, it's all just this
one strange thing right now. And it's so fast, Like
unlike traditional media, which had its own propaganda issues, it
(30:06):
kind of played out slowly. Here, it's just the moment
by moment.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
I almost feel like because it's so fast, people don't
treat it as seriously as they would, you know, the
traditional media or things that move slower, and they kind of.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Get used to in a deeper sense. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
I would love to read more about it, So if
if you're up for writing another book about it, you
know you're writing up for writing a book about it.
Speaker 5 (30:35):
You let me know I would definitely do that.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What advice would you give your sixteen year old self
if Ashley had to do it all over again? Are
you still on that boat from Italy degrees?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (30:51):
I would, I would definitely to I don't know if
i'd tell my sixteen year old actually I would, because
when I was sixteen, I was definitely interested in doing
that kind of or even even like more intense and
I think a lot of the times you get held
back by the unknown and the uncertain and what's scary.
I think I would be more like I would want
(31:12):
to have taken more of those risks younger, even though
it took.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Enough, right, Yeah, it sounds like it took some risks.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
I took some risks. Yeah, but I feel like you
can it's like fractal, you know, like a Babushka, Like
within the risk you take, you can continue to take
smaller risks as you live it out. And you know,
I think that's always an important thing. But at at sixteen,
in particular, I would have said that.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Well, I love this conversation, I love getting to know
you a little more. Leave us here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
I would just say to read more, and to read
the books that are a little scary to you because
they feel intimidating and challenging, and you know, but sometimes
the end up being books I give you a lot
because you're really with it. So that is what improves
my life a lot. And staying out of social media.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, good one.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
I would love to start taking that advice. But you know,
easier said, I guess. I do take my Twitter breaks,
and I'm heading to vacation soon, so I disconnect on
Twitter completely.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I take it off my phone X. You know, Yeah,
read more is always a good piece of advice.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
He is Ashley Rinsberg, senior editor at Pirate Wires. Check
out his book The Gray Lady Winked anywhere you buy
your books.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Thanks so much for coming on, Ashley.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
Thanks Charle
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Marcowood Show on iHeartRadio.
I'm introducing a new segment today where I start some
episodes off with answering your questions that you could submit
anonymously through the form that I post on X today.
I'm joined for this segment by my good friend, co
host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, Buck Sexton.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hi, Buck, So nice to have you on.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hey, thank you, Carol. Appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You and I get into all kinds of topics and
a lot of times we talk about relationships and dating
and marriage and friendships and all that kind of stuff,
and I think our conversations on it are smart and
can be helpful to other people. So I figured why
not let the Carol marco Wood Show audience in on it.
And We're going to get started with a real doozy today.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
This question. I got a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I got a lot of responses to my ex post
about you coming on and joining me for this segment.
This question, I was like, this is going to be
the first question I ask for sure, Here we go.
Our first question was submitted anonymously, and this person writes, Hi, Carol,
new listener to both of your shows, which I found
through Clay and book, and while I like your approach,
(01:16):
I was hesitant to write in this one because I
felt like I needed a man's opinion.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
When you mentioned you were doing this.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
With Buck, I figured it would be good to hear
both the female and male perspective on my problem. I
got married four months ago, and a month before our wedding,
it came out that my girlfriend of three years had
slept with someone else several times in the first few months.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Of our relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I say came out because she didn't tell me. I
learned this information in a surprising way, which made everything worse.
She says we weren't exclusive then, which is true, but
she was applying pressure to make us exclusive, and while
I was resistant, I also wasn't sleeping with anyone else.
I'm sickened and not sure I can get over it.
The first few first four months of our marriage have
(02:03):
been okay, and I do love her, but this is
stuck in the front of my mind. What do you
think about this book?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Well, I think that the situation, the clarity offered there,
or the clarification is very important, which is why why
does it bother you, I mean in our I'm gonna
I'm gonna sort of back into this one.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Right, all right, I feel like we might disagree right
off the bat.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Okay, I'm going back into this.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
We we have a generally speaking, a dating culture in America,
you know, for let's say, adults post college, where you know.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
People people sleep with people. That is the thing that
is happening on a regular basis. I've heard about Yeah,
I've heard. I've heard rumors and stories about this. Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And the expectation I think that most people have in
dating is that you have a there is a conversation
and understanding that you have at some point like hey,
and this is for you know, emotional and relationship reasons,
also for I think health reasons in some context too.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
You know, are we you know, are we dating?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Are we exclusively seeing each other? And you know that
I think is very That makes a lot of sense.
And I think that the issue that comes up here is, Okay, well,
if you're not, if you haven't entered in that contract,
so to speak, that verbal contract, what are your expectations?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
So we are going to disagree, I see, we know
we are, Oh, we are we are Okay, keep going,
because I'll tell you my perspective.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Look, I think that you know, if you I think
that if you're playing the field, then you're a single person.
You know, you conduct yourself, hopefully male or female, as
with kindness and with respect for you for your fellow
human beings in these relationships you're in. But I think
that until you've had the talk, uh, there's no expectation
(03:58):
of I mean, I think until you had a discussion
about monogamy. If you're two people that haven't been monogamous,
like or haven't been celibate before, that it doesn't It's
so now I understand why someone might be kind of
emotion by the way, I don't know I was going
to get this kind of question is yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I asked you, do you want to hear the question?
And you were like, no, I got this.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
No, I think I think this is not nom There
are rules, and the rules are you have a conversation
about exclusiveness and monogamy, and until that conversation occurs, you
try to be respectful of the person. But they can't
have expectations beyond what has been stated and understood.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So I'm going to have to disagree here, And maybe
it's because I was in You know, I haven't been
in the dating world in a long time. I've been
married for over fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
It's definitely possible that things have changed.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
I get that, but I will say that this guy,
it's clear that it's eating him up.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And I don't know personally.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
If I found out today that my husband slept with
somebody in the first few months we were dating, I
don't know that I would get over it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I really know.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
That's kind of a different, isn't that a little.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Bit when he's saying what do I do? And I
not that I'm saying leave your wife.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Look, you know, nobody's pushing any divorce here, but I
don't know that I would be able to get over it.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And if you're the kind of person that.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Will not be able to proceed in this marriage and
be happy in your life and it's going to eat
your live, which it would totally eat me alive.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I don't know he is married.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
He's married. He's married for four months, and he found
out a month before he got married, so he's only
had this knowledge for five months, but four of those
they've been married. And I don't know I would not
be able to live with it. And I look, I
know people forgive and what else?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
What does that mean then, Carol, I'm going to cross
examine you if you wouldn't be able to handle it,
but you don't want divorce, Well what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
By the way, are the kids here too?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Because I always I mean, I don't know because it
was somebody submitted this s anonymously. He didn't give any name,
so I have no clue about who it is. But
I so no because it's only four months, right, but they.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Dated for three years? But ill, let's go with no kids, right?
But I I just yeah, again, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Going to divorced. You're not going to get me on
a technicality, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Well, there's what's on ethic, were on a break?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
No, there's what's unethical, and then there's what you can handle. Yes, right,
those are those are different things, right? Or rather, those
aren't necessary I should say those aren't necessarily the same thing.
I mean because here here, for example, it's like, okay, well,
what also are the rules here for when people are
in the first stages of going I've heard rumors there
are guys and girls who are men and women who
(06:40):
are popular with the opposite sex, and when they are dating,
they will go out with different people over the course
of a week, and that will even include if they
kind of like somebody but they're not sure.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Do you have to disclose like it should?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Should you sit down with somebody on a second date
and be like, hey, I'm really enjoying this just you know,
some other guy last night because I just want to
be totally honest with you and transparent.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
But I mean, you know, no, right, people no longer
have the.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Who I've been hooking up with during this time period. Talk,
is that just not something that goes on when you
when you do enter into a formal relationship.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
I mean, my look, my my sense of this is
it's a lot cleaner for for everybody involved. My my
personal belief is that you know, if you're sleeping with somebody,
that's the person you should be sleeping with.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And that is that crazy, right, But that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
He didn't want to be in a relationship, but he
also wasn't sleeping with anyone else.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
So but I do think that you know, it's you
get into gray area with like, what what are expectations?
I mean, also the notion that it is eating him
up so much. I mean, I think that marriage and
I'm a new I'm like relative newly we.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Compared to Carol.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
I think that marriage there's such an elevation, and you know,
it's obviously in the Catholic faith, it's a sacrament, and
it's considered something so far beyond dating that if you've
taken that step of marriage with somebody and within the
marriage they have been a good spouse, and you think
you're building a good life together, you know, the dating
(08:13):
phase is a different thing with entirely different expectations, and
I think that people should understand that at some level, right,
I mean, now, whether that means you can go around
and act like.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
A fluzy, I think that's the isn't that in the forties? Yeah,
I am.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
I am anti acting like a fluzy out there. But
I will tell you that even as from a male
perspective in the dating world, and I was in the
dating world for many, many many years because I didn't
get married until I was forty, from the male perspective,
it's actually a challenge sometimes to slow down women who
want and it's going to sound very like let me
(08:51):
tell you about the challenges of life some of us
have had. But sometimes women want to accelerate the physical
part of the relationship because they view it as like
you knowing things in a bit more.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Oh interesting, As a.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Guy, you're in this position where it's like, well, I
don't want I actually don't want to like be.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
The you know, fust of all your guy friends, I
did not want to have sex with un Like Yeah,
and that can be its own problem.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
So, but sometimes women are the ones that actually are
really along the physical part of the relationship a lot more.
And I also believe in this. Maybe it's controversial these days,
athough it shouldn't be at all because of like all
of human history, the physical and chemical reactions that women
get from that level of intimacy I think are just look,
they take more, they take more biological risk, and I
(09:36):
think they have more built in biochemical attachment than men do.
And I think that's pretty clear.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Even though so even more.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So if he's like thinking that back to his girlfriend
in the first few months of them dating, sleeping multiple
times with somebody else. Okay, so what's our advice to
this anonymous person? I'm saying, if you know yourself and
you don't think that you can live with yourself four
months as to the marriage. I think you have to
make a very serious call. Don't let it be four
(10:08):
years into the marriage where you decide you can't live
with it anymore.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
I think if you have somebody who and whether it's
a priest or a rabbi, perhaps a trusted intermediary.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yes, us, that's this is who he's coming to.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Well, but I mean to sit down with his spouse
and that person and just really have a really have
a conversation about it. But you know, I mean, I'm
inclined to say I think I think you in this
situation unless he's unhappy in the marriage itself. I mean,
(10:44):
he's holding somebody to a standard of I think at
some level it's unfair to hold somebody with a standard
that you didn't set and that you just figured now
that technicality, yeah versus fair versus Look, there's also things
we don't really know here, Okay, I mean, he says,
in the early stage of our relationship, did did his
(11:04):
wife sleep with somebody when they were on the like
second or third date.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, he says that she was pushing for them to
make it official, and he was resistant. And during that
time where she wanted to be official with him.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
This is what else.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
This is what I mean, this is what happened. This
is what happens with guys. Uh.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
And this doesn't get talked about very much, but I
do know of this from my male friends in the
dating world and from what I you know, was observing
out there in the world. Is if you're a guy
and you're with a girl who is who is you know,
sort of high value a lot of a lot of
men are interested in and she's like, let's go, let's
take this to the next level, and you slow that
down physically. In a lot of cases, what happens is
(11:46):
the guy who's in the number number two slots, so
to speak, is like, oh, I'll just I'll escalate, like
I'm I'm happy to be a to be a you know, fellain.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Oh this is all horrible.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I'm so glad that I'm not damagating.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Really, it's really it's carnage out there, man. I mean,
the dating world is a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
It's because the online stuff has all sort of commoditized
it and everyone has endless options and they think they
have a video game. No, it's like a video game
and it really has. It has made it unfortunately all
too easy, which I think has really all aspects of
it are sort of too straightforward now and too simple,
and I think that has really bad ramification. So I
(12:28):
feel for this guy for sure, and I get that,
you know, if we could have like a sort of
a lighthearted moment about it. I mean, it's like, didn't
Jerry and Seinfeld find out that a girl like Newman
broke up with a girl that was beautiful that he's that's.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Different looking out your girlfriend slept with Newman?
Speaker 4 (12:46):
No, you know, I'm just saying like there was that,
you know, Jerry, she was like beautiful and he thought
she was really cool.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
But it's like, oh, man, no, you can't live with it.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
If it's something you can't live with, you might have
to let them go. And I hate starting the first
episode being like, hey, maybe break up your marriage.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
But.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Kind of, you know, I really like the marriages for life.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Unless I know, I know, but this is like, but
it's also like if you if it's not going to work,
like stop it as soon as you can, don't don't
let it, don't go have kids and go, you know,
for years and years holding this grudge I think you
don't let it go or you know, get off the
pot whatever.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I think having a conversation though, that's what I meant about,
like the third party or you know, the uh, you know,
marriage counselor or whatever it is you want to say,
and what we have it because I think he may
be able to reach a point where he realizes, like
what she did when she didn't really know you is
not a reflection necessarily of of her feelings for you
now and how she will be as a spouse, like
(13:49):
when you've made a vow. You know, there's a difference
between I think someone's going to do something and I've
given someone my word that I will do something. And
I think that's very important, right, You're right. I think
civilization is kind of built on that. You know, I
keep my word, and my word is my bond. I
give you my word about this. I pledge myself to you.
If you're assuming something.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That's a different it's a different situation, so you know
you're I don't know. I feel like I agree with
you on so many things.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
I'm psyched with you, very hard ass on this.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Like.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Out a little bit on this one.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Started our first segment of.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
My salmon colored T shirt.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Which salmon colored T shirt? Actually, it looks very good
on you very much, suit too.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Thank you for coming on buck Sexton for our first
segment where we give advice to my listeners. Please write
into the Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com, or
if you want to do it anonymously, find my form
on x I repost it all the time.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Stay tuned for my interview with Ashley Rinsburg coming up.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Ashley Rinsburg. Ashley is a senior
editor at Pirate Wires and the author of The Gray
Lady Winked How The New York Times misreporting, distortions, and
fabrications radically alter history.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
So nice to have you on, Ashley.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Thank you, Carol. I'm happy to be with you.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
I've been reading you for a while, and I would say,
out of all my guests, I know least about you.
I literally when you came on, we were chatting right
before this, I wasn't sure if you were going to
have a British accent. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I literally know nothing about you.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
If you if you wouldn't mind, but you do live
in London, and I don't know why I expected you
to be British. Tell me about yourself. How did you
get into this, you know, whole thing that we do.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
Oh wow, Yeah, So I'm I'm American, and well, I grew.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Up in America.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
I was born in South Africa, and I was after
university doing that kind of figuring it out thing, and
decided to get a job on a sailing yacht as
a deckhand, so helping move the boat from Italy to Greece,
(16:08):
so southern Italy. We sailed it for like two months
with me and me and another hand, and it's a
nice route. It was a great route, and you learn
you're you're literally traveling backward through time to the land
of Odysseus, sailing through the Ionian Islands, sailing through the
ag and the Corinth Canal. And we got the boat
(16:28):
to its destination and it was time for me to
move on. I didn't want to go back to the US.
I've been living at San Francisco working at Internet Archive,
which is the wayback machine, guys. Yeah, So I moved
onwards towards Israel, and I went to Israel and I
stayed there for a while, and it was there that
I was reading through books and just leafing through stuff
(16:49):
that you find.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
There's a lot of books.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Around Israel, and I found this book about the Second
World War World War called The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich. And in that book was a little
tidbit about the New York Times saying that on the
day that hostilities broke out, the New York Times reported
Nazi propaganda saying that Poland had invaded Germany. And I
was like, excuse me, what crazy New York Times lead
(17:15):
story Poland had invaded Germany? Like, how could anybody think
that in nineteen thirty nine? How could the New York
Times think that in nineteen thirty nine. So I started
to wonder how many more errors of that order the
New York Times had made in history? How many times
did it misreporting actually change the course of history? That
was the That was the bar for the book. I'm like,
(17:36):
I'm going to do a chapter if it changed history
in some meaningful way, not just some piece of gossip.
So that became the book, The Gray Lady Winked. I
wrote it in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Wow, So you know, on the Amazon page.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
There's kind of the subhead think a newspaper can't be
responsible for mass murder. Think again, that's I mean, a
powerful statement, but I don't think it's over And when
we're talking about the New York Times, you.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Know, if you look at a case like Ukraine famine,
which they completely fell down on, and it was done
more or less deliberately, and I believe it was done
not just with the complicity of the New York Times
institution for getting Walter Durant as an individual who's the
one who'd made the lie, who denied that there was
a famine in the Ukraine in the early thirties, and
(18:25):
it all got shuffled onto him. They just blamed him.
I don't think that was the case. I think it
was all about the New York Times ownership and business interest,
as it always is with The New York Times. We
factor out that it's owned by a family, the Sulzburgers.
It's a dynasty. It's one of the last great remaining
American industrial economic dynasties. We just don't talk about it.
(18:47):
That's the people who own that, who control that newspaper,
and for them, it was all about money and it
was all about getting access to the Russian market, and
they denied it because that was in their interest to
do so. So in that sense, if people had known
that this was happening, if people had known that Stalin
was perpetrating mass starvation to the effect of five million people,
(19:08):
it could have changed things for America. It could have
changed things for American geopolitics, could have changed a lot
of the decisions that were made at the time about
Communist Russia and how we would treat Communist Russia, whether
as a legitimate government or as this evil unknown, which
is actually what it was.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
So you're in Israel, you find this book, you decide,
you know, how many more stories are there in the
New York Times. But if you're not already a writer,
how do you make that leap to writing a book.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
It was just one of those things that almost happened
on its own, which like I've written lots of different
things in my day, including books, and that almost never happens.
And it just was. I just enjoyed it so much.
I didn't think about it. You know, like when you
hear great like athletes, I mean not to say I'm great,
but when you hear athletes talk.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
About you can be great.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
I mean, maybe one day I will be, but you know,
they they forget themselves in that in that activity, and
that's kind of how it was. I forgot myself and
I was just that's all I did.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I didn't.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
I mean, there was always, you know, stuff going on
in Tel Aviv and the nightlife and everything happening around you.
But for the most part, I just went to a
cafe every day on DISNEYV Street and sat there and
wrote the book and did as much research.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
As I could.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
So what would have been Plan B if you didn't
become a writer, What would have been an alternate path
for you?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Would you have stayed in? Like was it tech that
you were in?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I was never.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
I was never, I would say in tech, I was
always around it. Plan B, Oh my god. I honestly
I think I tried to Plan B and C and
D and E n F and they all failed. So
I just had to go back to Plan A, which
is being a writer. Yeah, I think I.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Would just kind of not stay on the on the ship,
not be ad.
Speaker 5 (20:52):
Backhand, I did think about it at that moment, like
because it's something people do, but it just felt like
like standing in place a little bit too much, like
you would just kind of get lost in that, and
there was just something that felt like it was pulling
me forward towards some kind of what turned out to
be like, you know, quite a chaotic, like coming from
the tranquility of Greece and then into Tel Aviv in
(21:16):
just at the end of the Intifada, the second Inada,
the tail tale end of it, and you know, a massive,
massive shift. But when that was really meaningful?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What do you consider your beat?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
At pirate Wires?
Speaker 5 (21:31):
I cover at this point a lot of I mean,
some just plain tech, but mostly the thing I do,
or at least that I'm known best for, is information
information warfare type stuff. Right now, what's happening on Wikipedia
where you know, you're seeing entire topic areas hijacked by
essentially edit gangs. Some of them are let's say, pro Hamas,
(21:53):
some of them are pro China, some of them are
whatever they are, and they're able to completely contort all
the articles in that given area, and nobody really knows that,
and it's all getting fed into the LLLM SIN it's
getting pinned into Google as the top result and we're
just not aware of it. So a lot of that
kind of story where things are happening on these big
(22:14):
platforms and they're very, very significant, but no one has
any idea that it's even happened.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
How do you let the American people know how big
of a problem that is. I just feel like the
average person would be like, well, so don't use dy Wikipedia,
just use something else. But it's kind of hard to
convey to people that Wikipedia is this giant thing that
needs to be somewhat correct and it needs to be
somewhat fair. Do you find that argument difficult to make
(22:41):
to kind of the normies?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I don't think.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
I don't think I've tried to yet, and I don't
know that anyone else has either. I think it's probably actually,
i'll take it back. The one person who has is
Elon Musk, has actually really done that in a big
way as you would from him. I don't think that
story's really been told, and I think it's confusing for
a lot of people when they see it, Like when
Eland's like Wikipedia is broken, he's drawing on so much
(23:08):
knowledge that he has so much institutional experience with the
entire ecosystem, not just Wikipedia, that for him it's obvious,
but for most people. I would say ninety nine point
nine percent of people and sometimes including myself. You don't
quite understand what it means until you really dive into
the details of how it worked and why it works
that way, and who decided it should work that way,
(23:29):
And that's when you start to really open your eyes.
And I think it's about telling that story to as
many people as you can.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Is it governments that are gaming Wikipedia or individuals?
Speaker 5 (23:43):
It's everybody. It's everybody that's involved in gaming every other
platform and gaming the entire digital information ecosystem. So that's governments,
that's terror organizations, that's people aligned to those types of groups.
It's corporate, it's just individuals, it's business interests. There is
(24:04):
so much going on underneath the hood of Wikipedia. There
is a massive, let's say, pay to play cottage industry
where if you want changes to an article, if you
want an article created or removed, you're going to pay
these people illicitly. It's against the rules, but it is
absolutely diffuse, like it happens just every single day on
a massive scale, and everybody knows it except for the
(24:26):
people on the other end of this thing that the
regular user doesn't know any of this and the people
on the inside know all of it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Is there a Wikipedia book in you? Is that the
next kind of topic?
Speaker 5 (24:38):
I think, you know, I think right now my instinct
is that, like people really like video, and I think
that's an amazing way to tell this particular story. Yeah,
I think it can be chopped up. I think it
can be shown to be if you show it graphically
sometimes like visually, it just becomes more accessible to people.
(24:59):
And that so maybe that's what's first.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
What do you worry about.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
I worry about a lot of this stuff. I worry
about the propaganda. I mean, I go on social media
and I'm just I'm flabbergasted. And this is we live
our lives inside of the media right now, we live
on lives inside of social media. And I go onto
X number of and not to use the word X
number two coincidentally, but you just see such insane stuff happening.
(25:23):
You see so much of it, and you know so
much of it is just completely fake, just bought and
paid for. It's it's sometimes it's just random, and sometimes
it's ideological. Sometimes it's warfare, and sometimes it's just business.
But it's so much of it, and you're like this
is what we consume, this is what our children are consuming. Yeah,
what is going to happen? How are we going to
(25:44):
continue to be to educate ourselves about the world, to
communicate and connect with each other freely when you've got
this thing in the middle that's real, just garbage, but
garbage screaming about its own right to free speech.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's interesting because you say, you know, we are so
inside the media, and I think you and I certainly are,
But like how much of this filters out? And I
guess this is something that I think about a lot,
like what normal people see and think.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
How much of it is crossing over?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And I'm definitely worried about my kids in the future
and that kind of thing also, But do you think.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
That we're seeing kind of.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Not a rebuff of this kind of thing, but definitely
somewhat moving away from it, especially in the younger generations
where they're not on X all day, they're not consuming
what we're consuming all day.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
That's true, and I think there's definitely some new path
that's being forged right now by the younger generation. Of
users online. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Exactly what it is.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
I know it's a lot about messaging, and that's like
primarily what they're doing. But I think these forms of
information they sort of seep into the ground, so the
ideas seep in, the language, seeps in, people start thinking
in the way that they talk, and I think it
has that effect anyways, maybe not a total effect, but
(27:12):
it's there.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Are you optimistic about I don't know, the future. I
guess in general or we're sort of in a real.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Moment of optimism in the US right now. Every guest
I kind of have had recently is sort of like
looking to the future very positively. It definitely is the
Donald Trump election very vibe shift. You don't seem as optimistic.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
It seems, Yeah, it seems like people are just at
loggerheads with each other all the time. Not just in
the US, I think it's all over the place. And
when you see that kind of like people not just
fighting on social media, like fighting almost sounds too quoint.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
It's war.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
It's in turns seen war all the time, and you think,
how can you ever resolve that? You know, how how
does that actually get resolved into something that's at least
a discourse. And I actually have no idea.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Can I get resolved?
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I guess I like I I almost feel like, yeah,
they'll they'll keep fighting, but the rest of the world
will move on without them.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Do you not think so?
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Yeah? You know that might be. I think you know
they say Twitter is not real life or x is
not real life?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, right, do you think it is?
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
You do agree?
Speaker 2 (28:27):
That's not No, it's not real.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Yeah, it's totally fake life. It's the fakest of fake life.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
But yeah, we spent a lot of time on it.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
And buying into it.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yet I yet I refresh it all day long. What
comes next?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
What's the kind of next frontier of this.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Kind of thing?
Speaker 5 (28:49):
You know? I actually don't know. I think it's a
great question. I think what we are obviously going to
all be paying attention to the l lms. There's just
no way we're getting around that. And it's going to
become a focus of how information gets parceled out and
what's considered reliable not reliable, how you hack that system.
(29:09):
And it's already begun. People have already on a business level,
and I'm sure and for sure on a propaganda level,
people are figuring out how to hack the lllms just
by publishing stuff online that just gets pulled by the
machine and then spat back into the user. So you know,
I reported on how that's happening on Reddit. A pro
(29:29):
hamas propaganda network active on Reddit has learned how to
do that, and they're not the only ones, so I
think that'll.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Be the We're recording this shortly after Grock lost its
mind and called itself mecha.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Hitler and.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
Elmow got hacked and talking about like Jeffrey Epstein and Jews,
and it's just replete. It's replete. So the AI, the hacking,
the like, all of it together, it's all just this
one strange thing right now. And it's so fast, Like
unlike traditional media, which had its own propaganda issues, it
(30:06):
kind of played out slowly. Here, it's just the moment
by moment.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
I almost feel like because it's so fast, people don't
treat it as seriously as they would, you know, the
traditional media or things that move slower, and they kind of.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Get used to in a deeper sense. It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
I would love to read more about it, So if
if you're up for writing another book about it, you
know you're writing up for writing a book about it.
Speaker 5 (30:35):
You let me know I would definitely do that.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What advice would you give your sixteen year old self
if Ashley had to do it all over again? Are
you still on that boat from Italy degrees?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (30:51):
I would, I would definitely to I don't know if
i'd tell my sixteen year old actually I would, because
when I was sixteen, I was definitely interested in doing
that kind of or even even like more intense and
I think a lot of the times you get held
back by the unknown and the uncertain and what's scary.
I think I would be more like I would want
(31:12):
to have taken more of those risks younger, even though
it took.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Enough, right, Yeah, it sounds like it took some risks.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
I took some risks. Yeah, but I feel like you
can it's like fractal, you know, like a Babushka, Like
within the risk you take, you can continue to take
smaller risks as you live it out. And you know,
I think that's always an important thing. But at at sixteen,
in particular, I would have said that.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Well, I love this conversation, I love getting to know
you a little more. Leave us here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
I would just say to read more, and to read
the books that are a little scary to you because
they feel intimidating and challenging, and you know, but sometimes
the end up being books I give you a lot
because you're really with it. So that is what improves
my life a lot. And staying out of social media.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, good one.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
I would love to start taking that advice. But you know,
easier said, I guess. I do take my Twitter breaks,
and I'm heading to vacation soon, so I disconnect on
Twitter completely.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I take it off my phone X. You know, Yeah,
read more is always a good piece of advice.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
He is Ashley Rinsberg, senior editor at Pirate Wires. Check
out his book The Gray Lady Winked anywhere you buy
your books.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Thanks so much for coming on, Ashley.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
Thanks Charle
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