April 15, 2026 • 20 mins
On this episode of the The Karol Markowicz Show, Karol sits down with Tablet Editor-in-Chief Alana Newhouse for a wide-ranging conversation on the collapse of trust in media, the rise of AI-driven information chaos, and what comes next for institutions in America.
Alana shares the origin story behind Tablet and how it evolved from a niche cultural publication into a broader voice tackling the failures of legacy media. She explains her concept of “brokenness” in modern institutions—and why Americans are increasingly skeptical of everything from journalism to higher education.
The conversation dives into:
- Why AI is accelerating distrust in online content
- The surprising return of print media and Gen Z’s demand for credibility
- How legacy media can rebuild trust (and which outlets won’t survive)
- The future of American institutions over the next five years
- A personal look at Alana’s work in biotech and gene editing
Plus, Alana offers a simple but powerful tip to improve your daily life in a world dominated by social media.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is a Lana Newhouse, editor in chief
of Tablet, which she founded in two thousand and nine. Hi, Alana,
is so nice to have you on. Hi Carol. So
that was news to me that you founded Tablet. I
don't know why, but what made you want to start
a magazine?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, if you think back, Tablet was founded eighteen years ago,
and if you think back to two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine, we all thought the Internet was
going to be a really fun, cool place of.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Great this course.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Interaction. I was really excited about the possibility for that.
The Internet had to give me an audience of people
who wanted an in depth, high brow, high level engagement
with Jewish identity and Jewish culture. A lot of the
pieces were going to be long, some pieces were going
(01:08):
to be scholarly, they were going to be in depth.
I wasn't imagining a huge audience. I was imagining a
very specific, small audience. But the Internet would allow that
audience to be found not just in New York but globally.
So I started Tabit with that in mind. What I
then didn't realize was that all of journalism was coming.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Apart around.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So that it was a strange thing. And in the
first few years it was almost like it was almost
unspoken that we started to do more reportage and more
news based pieces, in part because we intuited these soft
spots in what was then the only media there was,
(01:56):
which was we now call legacy media or mainstream media.
And then as we started to fill those gaps, we
started to realize that it wasn't just that there were
one or two areas of weakness, but actually that the
whole structure of American public opinion and journalism was decaying.
(02:18):
And so we ended up filling more and more spots,
including starting to cover the world outside of narrowly Jewish
life for h and so that's kind of how we
got here.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, because I you know, I definitely think of you
as a primarily and by you, I mean Tablet, a
primarily Jewish magazine. And I would say I think of
it as a right of center Jewish magazine. Is that
fair to say?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I don't see things as right and left. I really
do see things as you know. I wrote a series
of pieces a few years ago about what I think
is the central debate, which is really about the health
of institutions or the health of commonly held assumptions and ideas.
And I think that Tablet is, you know, I split
(03:06):
people up into kind of brokennesss and status quoists, and
I think that Tablet is with enormous respect for status quoists. Increasingly,
Tablet's a brokenness magazine, which means that we want to
engage with ideas, with the news, with the world around us,
(03:28):
without the assumption that what everyone believes is right. So
now that lands different ways politically for different readers.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Right, Tablet does kind of zig when everybody else zags.
You guys just started a print edition in the last
year or so, Yes, since June. How's that going. It's
amazing because you know, not a lot of places are
leaning into print.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So I think that that's about to change. Yeah, I
think we're at the tip of the spear here. If
you just zoom out for a second and you think
about the effect of AI and the effect of technology
on discourse right now, Right, if you go on X
and you see ideas getting two one hundred thousand retweets
(04:21):
or whatever, and then you have really no sense of
who those people are, or if they are people right
in a way, I don't even know if you're like,
I don't actually know if you're real.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I might not be right.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I assume you're real because you look just like the
person that I've seen in real life. But but the
bottom line is I think increasingly people are going to
be looking for trusted media, by which I mean literally
the actual distribution method. And we move to print because
(04:56):
of our gen Z readers. Really yeah, it was our
youngest readers who basically there was one I have like
WhatsApp groups with different cohorts of readers, and one of
them said it so beautifully. He just basically said, look,
I grew up with the Internet was the wallpaper of
my life.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I know.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I could start a website in my basement and call
it the Cleveland Post and put up absolute garbage and
it will be seen as news. But when you send
me something that is in print, it's not that I
automatically believe it, but somebody paid money to make that
and to put that, to print it, and to send
(05:40):
it to me interesting, and I just trust it more
than I trust the Internet, which I use for a
million different things, but increasingly not for trust on opinions
or ideas so.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Interesting because what we always hear is that the younger
set wants fewer guardrails, but you're saying that because of AI,
they might want more of them.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I definitely, I think that it's definitely true of I mean,
I know this sounds grandiose, but it's true if smarter readers,
like the smarter readers are looking for they want to
you know, it's fun to get a million retweets.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
On its doesn't like that, right?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
But then what's hard is that when you realize a
month later that you were wrong, or that the person
who you retweeted, who you thought was actually had didn't
have any idea of how the world works and turned
out to be completely misguided, and something.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
That goes Now, people that you retweeted were real smart
turned out to be right. Right? Yeah, but so, but
does that mean that you're never going to publish somebody
you regret publishing or you know, it could happen in
real life too. I mean, I in real life I
have friends that I don't understand anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You know what I would say is you have a
weird thing. I don't. Ever, I try really hard not
to regret anything. I feel like it's important to be
thoughtful and even if you make a mistake, it's a mistake,
and that mistake should teach you something. I on the
other hand, part of what we've tried really hard to
(07:19):
do at Tablets not to say that every single piece
we've ever published is a piece we would publish today.
But I think every piece. I really can't think of
that many pieces that we've published that I feel like
that little twinge, yeah, anxiety around And I think it's
okay that we I mean, I think that one of
(07:41):
the things that's really hard right now is that a
lot of people are losing their.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Minds, and that is very hard, actually, and.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
That's different than having been wrong about something or misguided.
I think that people are becoming weirdly, like schizophrenic and bizarre,
but that's different, and I think that that's really really
hard to see.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What were you doing before Tablet? So before Tablet, I
was actually at The Forward. I was the culture.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Editor of The Forward for seven or eight years, and
I published a line of books and I did the
first book, which was a history of ethnic newspapering through
the eyes of particularly in New York, and I did
a museum exhibit at the City.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Of New York around it. Oh cool, it was really
it was fun. Did you always want to be a writer?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I did, although I got distracted a little bit at
certain points in my life. You know, I wasn't necessarily
a really good student. I was in high school. I
was really good at only I was good at a
couple of things. I was really good at putting on
lip liner and a dark cat.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Oh yeah, that.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I had a really steady hand. So I did really
good French manicure, and I was really good at English.
I was really good at at literature and at writing.
And on the strength of that, I got into Barnard,
which was a really strange thing for me because I
wasn't necessarily and it's like I wasn't looking to be
(09:18):
engaged intellectually. But Barnard really changed my life really and
then at that point I went into politics for a
little bit after college, and then went to journalism school
and got myself back into writing.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So interesting. So what would you have done if this
hadn't worked out, If you know, being a writer hadn't happened.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Maybe I would become a manicurist.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And I was saying manicurists or like makeup artist, I
mean beauty influencer, say steady hands is actually a tough ask.
Anybody could be a writer, like but draw drawing on
like a lip line.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I agree, I really agree, and so and look, who knows,
maybe that's still in my future.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I'm going to hold on to that. I count you
out for that. And I'm definitely going to have you
do my nails at some point because I would like
to see this, this perfect French manicure you speak of,
what are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So I have a kind of side gig in my
life which weirdly relates a lot to my general view
of the world, which is I have a side gig
in the world of biotech and gene editing. I have
a son with a genetic disorder and work on helping
with gene editing and run a foundation called the Foundation
(10:33):
for Angelman's Drone Therapeutics. And for a variety of reasons
that we don't have to get into right now, it
just so happens to be like a neurogenetic disease that's
going to be cured in like the next few years. Incredible,
and it also has the technology to help other genetic diseases.
So but my time at Tablet and the Brokenness stuff
(10:57):
actually really helped me understand health and other things about
American society and American institutions. So it's very very central
to all these things are kind of they're related in
my head. So I'm really proud of that, and I
feel really grateful that I get to do that work
(11:17):
with some amazing people.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
It's amazing. I mean, those are two very different things. Having,
you know, something in science and something in English. Those
are you know, tend to be not things that people
can do at the same time. How do you manage
it or how did how did you get it?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
How did you make it happen?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So basically, the short version is that my son, he
has a very very rare mutation of this genetic disorder
and he was very hard to diagnose. And I've actually
written for the Free Press about it a little bit,
and it's a very long story. But when he got diagnosed,
(11:56):
it just so happened that I knew the people who
I knew, the woman who it's a kind of incredible
genius who who has a daughter, she's a translational scientist
who has a daughter with the same disorder, and she's
been working for ten years advancing the science and so,
but she didn't know how to run a nonprofit. So
(12:17):
they roped me in to kind of come and help them,
just with some nonprofit organization and structural work. So now
I get to I mean, truly I am. I'm technically
the president of the organization, but my role is really
to help buttress them. Who are the real the scientists
(12:39):
and the staffers who do the work, who are the
real stars.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Incredible. My kids read your article about struggling with you know,
whether to take up the advancements that are happening in
this genetic therapy. Would that be the right way to
phrase it? And you were kind of struggling because you
have a belief in God and you were wondering if
that was appropriate. And it's just such a beautiful piece.
(13:05):
They all really loved it and thought you absolutely should
go for it. And uh, and my daughter, who is
very I would say God fearing, also said, you know,
God wouldn't want us not to use therapies that he helped provide.
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I do some sort of private conversations particularly with religious
groups around around gene editing, which is a very complicated topic,
and I don't want to I never want to make
it seem like it's simple. But it was fascinating because
there were in the conversation their discomfort somebody, somebody approached
(13:49):
their discomfort with me, and I said, Okay, I get
I get where you're coming from. Let's talk about this
for a second. So X number of thousands of babies,
for example, with Down syndrome have been aborted in the
last decades. If I could fix that chromosome in utero,
(14:11):
we would have saved all those babies.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah. So, before we start going.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
To kind of hilarian eugenicism, what if we actually understand
the technologies are always dangerous, They always hold the possibility
of danger, and part of what we do when we
build as societies we try to build guardrails around technology
and around capacity that allow us to make the world
better and not worse. Right, Absolutely, so it's about understanding
(14:41):
that that's fundamentally that's our responsibility is not to restrain
the technology from advancing, but to engage as citizens and
potentially leaders.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
And doing nothing like you said also leads to loss.
So it's not like it's only doing nothing has no
side effects. There certainly is.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I mean, and here's the bottom line. China's going to
do it. Yeah, like China's doing it. So then the
question is do we want to engage and create a
model for the way to do it right, way to
do it morally, or do we want to just seed
the field?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
To me, there's no question.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Absolutely we're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Give us a
five year out prediction, and it could be about anything
at all.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
You know. So part of the thing about I published
that the first of my sort of brokenness pieces was
a piece called Everything Is Broken, which I published five
years ago, and in it I basically diagnosed this sense
that I felt happening in all parts of American life
(16:00):
of bottoming out of trust in institutions that many of
us thought were solid and had legitimacy. Not that they
were not that they were perfect, sure, but I'm talking
about you know, universities, health institutions, our doctors, the government, media,
(16:20):
and the arts. These these were places that we could
we could make fun of but or tweak or want
to be changed a little different, but we roughly believed
that they did their jobs well. And what I felt
was happening was that there was a real bottoming out
of that relationship between Americans, particularly Americans. I think it's
(16:42):
a global issue, but my interest is in America and
those institutions. I think that we're looking at five years
of I don't want to say correction, because I don't
think of it that way, but I think we're looking
at five years of Americans starting to ask what happens
(17:03):
if we have no institutions, What happens if we have
no guardrails, What happens if all we do is burn
stuff down or abandon stuff and we don't invest in
institutions to make them what we want them to make
to be. And I think that you're going to see more. Obviously,
(17:24):
this depends on what happens in the world, but I
think you're going to see more investment, even in legacy institutions.
I think you're going to start to see legacy media,
certain brands, and legacy media come back and come back
into trust. I think you're going to start to see
investment in certain institutions and higher ed institutions in culture,
(17:47):
and I think It's going to be really interesting because
the question is is once you decide that you're going
to be skeptical but engaged, to me, that becomes incredibly
rich and very generative.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know, I just don't talk to that many people
who are optimistic about the institutions and media companies coming back.
I have to tell you, this is a very unique perspective.
Haven't got a five year prediction legacy media companies are
going to return. That's a definitely.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
But here's what I wanted so well. I want to
just because in case this is this ever comes back
to bite me, I want to be clear. It's going
to be the legacy media that looks look it's looks
in the mirror and understands why they lost the trust
and realizes that they have gold in their brand awareness.
(18:42):
They have gold that they can save. It's not going
to be all legacy media. It's going to be some
of them, but the ones that I think will are
able to actually be that self aware have a real future.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
I love that, Alana. You're a super fascinating person. I
have enjoyed this conversation so much. I really every time
I see you, I'm like that Alana is very very interesting.
Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Get off social media at least for a little give
yourself boundaries around it. So I know I sound like
some fuddy duddy or some like gross adult or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
But you sound like a gen z or really I
really like.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's boiling your brain. And even just saying to yourself,
there are going to be three hours a day where
I don't touch it.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Will you will help yourself? I love that, and I'm
going to try to do the three hours a day.
I always try to like minimize it, but I like
the idea of a block of time every day where
I actually don't touch it.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
You also can do You can do three blocks, so
you don't have to do with a block of three hours. Right.
You can say, I I don't do it eleven to twelve,
I don't do it three to four, I don't do
it at eight to nine.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Love that. Yeah, Just any time that.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You remember that you're a human being who's not intelluctably
connected to that machine will help you.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Love it. She is a Lana new House. Check her
out at tablet. Everything that she does is fantastic. Thank
you so much. Alana, thanks so much,
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitch Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is a Lana Newhouse, editor in chief
of Tablet, which she founded in two thousand and nine. Hi, Alana,
is so nice to have you on. Hi Carol. So
that was news to me that you founded Tablet. I
don't know why, but what made you want to start
a magazine?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, if you think back, Tablet was founded eighteen years ago,
and if you think back to two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine, we all thought the Internet was
going to be a really fun, cool place of.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Great this course.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Interaction. I was really excited about the possibility for that.
The Internet had to give me an audience of people
who wanted an in depth, high brow, high level engagement
with Jewish identity and Jewish culture. A lot of the
pieces were going to be long, some pieces were going
(01:08):
to be scholarly, they were going to be in depth.
I wasn't imagining a huge audience. I was imagining a
very specific, small audience. But the Internet would allow that
audience to be found not just in New York but globally.
So I started Tabit with that in mind. What I
then didn't realize was that all of journalism was coming.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Apart around.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So that it was a strange thing. And in the
first few years it was almost like it was almost
unspoken that we started to do more reportage and more
news based pieces, in part because we intuited these soft
spots in what was then the only media there was,
(01:56):
which was we now call legacy media or mainstream media.
And then as we started to fill those gaps, we
started to realize that it wasn't just that there were
one or two areas of weakness, but actually that the
whole structure of American public opinion and journalism was decaying.
(02:18):
And so we ended up filling more and more spots,
including starting to cover the world outside of narrowly Jewish
life for h and so that's kind of how we
got here.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, because I you know, I definitely think of you
as a primarily and by you, I mean Tablet, a
primarily Jewish magazine. And I would say I think of
it as a right of center Jewish magazine. Is that
fair to say?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I don't see things as right and left. I really
do see things as you know. I wrote a series
of pieces a few years ago about what I think
is the central debate, which is really about the health
of institutions or the health of commonly held assumptions and ideas.
And I think that Tablet is, you know, I split
(03:06):
people up into kind of brokennesss and status quoists, and
I think that Tablet is with enormous respect for status quoists. Increasingly,
Tablet's a brokenness magazine, which means that we want to
engage with ideas, with the news, with the world around us,
(03:28):
without the assumption that what everyone believes is right. So
now that lands different ways politically for different readers.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Right, Tablet does kind of zig when everybody else zags.
You guys just started a print edition in the last
year or so, Yes, since June. How's that going. It's
amazing because you know, not a lot of places are
leaning into print.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So I think that that's about to change. Yeah, I
think we're at the tip of the spear here. If
you just zoom out for a second and you think
about the effect of AI and the effect of technology
on discourse right now, Right, if you go on X
and you see ideas getting two one hundred thousand retweets
(04:21):
or whatever, and then you have really no sense of
who those people are, or if they are people right
in a way, I don't even know if you're like,
I don't actually know if you're real.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I might not be right.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I assume you're real because you look just like the
person that I've seen in real life. But but the
bottom line is I think increasingly people are going to
be looking for trusted media, by which I mean literally
the actual distribution method. And we move to print because
(04:56):
of our gen Z readers. Really yeah, it was our
youngest readers who basically there was one I have like
WhatsApp groups with different cohorts of readers, and one of
them said it so beautifully. He just basically said, look,
I grew up with the Internet was the wallpaper of
my life.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
I know.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I could start a website in my basement and call
it the Cleveland Post and put up absolute garbage and
it will be seen as news. But when you send
me something that is in print, it's not that I
automatically believe it, but somebody paid money to make that
and to put that, to print it, and to send
(05:40):
it to me interesting, and I just trust it more
than I trust the Internet, which I use for a
million different things, but increasingly not for trust on opinions
or ideas so.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Interesting because what we always hear is that the younger
set wants fewer guardrails, but you're saying that because of AI,
they might want more of them.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I definitely, I think that it's definitely true of I mean,
I know this sounds grandiose, but it's true if smarter readers,
like the smarter readers are looking for they want to
you know, it's fun to get a million retweets.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
On its doesn't like that, right?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
But then what's hard is that when you realize a
month later that you were wrong, or that the person
who you retweeted, who you thought was actually had didn't
have any idea of how the world works and turned
out to be completely misguided, and something.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
That goes Now, people that you retweeted were real smart
turned out to be right. Right? Yeah, but so, but
does that mean that you're never going to publish somebody
you regret publishing or you know, it could happen in
real life too. I mean, I in real life I
have friends that I don't understand anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You know what I would say is you have a
weird thing. I don't. Ever, I try really hard not
to regret anything. I feel like it's important to be
thoughtful and even if you make a mistake, it's a mistake,
and that mistake should teach you something. I on the
other hand, part of what we've tried really hard to
(07:19):
do at Tablets not to say that every single piece
we've ever published is a piece we would publish today.
But I think every piece. I really can't think of
that many pieces that we've published that I feel like
that little twinge, yeah, anxiety around And I think it's
okay that we I mean, I think that one of
(07:41):
the things that's really hard right now is that a
lot of people are losing their.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Minds, and that is very hard, actually, and.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
That's different than having been wrong about something or misguided.
I think that people are becoming weirdly, like schizophrenic and bizarre,
but that's different, and I think that that's really really
hard to see.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What were you doing before Tablet? So before Tablet, I
was actually at The Forward. I was the culture.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Editor of The Forward for seven or eight years, and
I published a line of books and I did the
first book, which was a history of ethnic newspapering through
the eyes of particularly in New York, and I did
a museum exhibit at the City.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Of New York around it. Oh cool, it was really
it was fun. Did you always want to be a writer?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I did, although I got distracted a little bit at
certain points in my life. You know, I wasn't necessarily
a really good student. I was in high school. I
was really good at only I was good at a
couple of things. I was really good at putting on
lip liner and a dark cat.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Oh yeah, that.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I had a really steady hand. So I did really
good French manicure, and I was really good at English.
I was really good at at literature and at writing.
And on the strength of that, I got into Barnard,
which was a really strange thing for me because I
wasn't necessarily and it's like I wasn't looking to be
(09:18):
engaged intellectually. But Barnard really changed my life really and
then at that point I went into politics for a
little bit after college, and then went to journalism school
and got myself back into writing.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So interesting. So what would you have done if this
hadn't worked out, If you know, being a writer hadn't happened.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Maybe I would become a manicurist.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
And I was saying manicurists or like makeup artist, I
mean beauty influencer, say steady hands is actually a tough ask.
Anybody could be a writer, like but draw drawing on
like a lip line.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I agree, I really agree, and so and look, who knows,
maybe that's still in my future.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I'm going to hold on to that. I count you
out for that. And I'm definitely going to have you
do my nails at some point because I would like
to see this, this perfect French manicure you speak of,
what are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So I have a kind of side gig in my
life which weirdly relates a lot to my general view
of the world, which is I have a side gig
in the world of biotech and gene editing. I have
a son with a genetic disorder and work on helping
with gene editing and run a foundation called the Foundation
(10:33):
for Angelman's Drone Therapeutics. And for a variety of reasons
that we don't have to get into right now, it
just so happens to be like a neurogenetic disease that's
going to be cured in like the next few years. Incredible,
and it also has the technology to help other genetic diseases.
So but my time at Tablet and the Brokenness stuff
(10:57):
actually really helped me understand health and other things about
American society and American institutions. So it's very very central
to all these things are kind of they're related in
my head. So I'm really proud of that, and I
feel really grateful that I get to do that work
(11:17):
with some amazing people.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
It's amazing. I mean, those are two very different things. Having,
you know, something in science and something in English. Those
are you know, tend to be not things that people
can do at the same time. How do you manage
it or how did how did you get it?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
How did you make it happen?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So basically, the short version is that my son, he
has a very very rare mutation of this genetic disorder
and he was very hard to diagnose. And I've actually
written for the Free Press about it a little bit,
and it's a very long story. But when he got diagnosed,
(11:56):
it just so happened that I knew the people who
I knew, the woman who it's a kind of incredible
genius who who has a daughter, she's a translational scientist
who has a daughter with the same disorder, and she's
been working for ten years advancing the science and so,
but she didn't know how to run a nonprofit. So
(12:17):
they roped me in to kind of come and help them,
just with some nonprofit organization and structural work. So now
I get to I mean, truly I am. I'm technically
the president of the organization, but my role is really
to help buttress them. Who are the real the scientists
(12:39):
and the staffers who do the work, who are the
real stars.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Incredible. My kids read your article about struggling with you know,
whether to take up the advancements that are happening in
this genetic therapy. Would that be the right way to
phrase it? And you were kind of struggling because you
have a belief in God and you were wondering if
that was appropriate. And it's just such a beautiful piece.
(13:05):
They all really loved it and thought you absolutely should
go for it. And uh, and my daughter, who is
very I would say God fearing, also said, you know,
God wouldn't want us not to use therapies that he helped provide.
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I do some sort of private conversations particularly with religious
groups around around gene editing, which is a very complicated topic,
and I don't want to I never want to make
it seem like it's simple. But it was fascinating because
there were in the conversation their discomfort somebody, somebody approached
(13:49):
their discomfort with me, and I said, Okay, I get
I get where you're coming from. Let's talk about this
for a second. So X number of thousands of babies,
for example, with Down syndrome have been aborted in the
last decades. If I could fix that chromosome in utero,
(14:11):
we would have saved all those babies.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah. So, before we start going.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
To kind of hilarian eugenicism, what if we actually understand
the technologies are always dangerous, They always hold the possibility
of danger, and part of what we do when we
build as societies we try to build guardrails around technology
and around capacity that allow us to make the world
better and not worse. Right, Absolutely, so it's about understanding
(14:41):
that that's fundamentally that's our responsibility is not to restrain
the technology from advancing, but to engage as citizens and
potentially leaders.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
And doing nothing like you said also leads to loss.
So it's not like it's only doing nothing has no
side effects. There certainly is.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I mean, and here's the bottom line. China's going to
do it. Yeah, like China's doing it. So then the
question is do we want to engage and create a
model for the way to do it right, way to
do it morally, or do we want to just seed
the field?
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
To me, there's no question.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Absolutely we're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Give us a
five year out prediction, and it could be about anything
at all.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
You know. So part of the thing about I published
that the first of my sort of brokenness pieces was
a piece called Everything Is Broken, which I published five
years ago, and in it I basically diagnosed this sense
that I felt happening in all parts of American life
(16:00):
of bottoming out of trust in institutions that many of
us thought were solid and had legitimacy. Not that they
were not that they were perfect, sure, but I'm talking
about you know, universities, health institutions, our doctors, the government, media,
(16:20):
and the arts. These these were places that we could
we could make fun of but or tweak or want
to be changed a little different, but we roughly believed
that they did their jobs well. And what I felt
was happening was that there was a real bottoming out
of that relationship between Americans, particularly Americans. I think it's
(16:42):
a global issue, but my interest is in America and
those institutions. I think that we're looking at five years
of I don't want to say correction, because I don't
think of it that way, but I think we're looking
at five years of Americans starting to ask what happens
(17:03):
if we have no institutions, What happens if we have
no guardrails, What happens if all we do is burn
stuff down or abandon stuff and we don't invest in
institutions to make them what we want them to make
to be. And I think that you're going to see more. Obviously,
(17:24):
this depends on what happens in the world, but I
think you're going to see more investment, even in legacy institutions.
I think you're going to start to see legacy media,
certain brands, and legacy media come back and come back
into trust. I think you're going to start to see
investment in certain institutions and higher ed institutions in culture,
(17:47):
and I think It's going to be really interesting because
the question is is once you decide that you're going
to be skeptical but engaged, to me, that becomes incredibly
rich and very generative.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know, I just don't talk to that many people
who are optimistic about the institutions and media companies coming back.
I have to tell you, this is a very unique perspective.
Haven't got a five year prediction legacy media companies are
going to return. That's a definitely.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
But here's what I wanted so well. I want to
just because in case this is this ever comes back
to bite me, I want to be clear. It's going
to be the legacy media that looks look it's looks
in the mirror and understands why they lost the trust
and realizes that they have gold in their brand awareness.
(18:42):
They have gold that they can save. It's not going
to be all legacy media. It's going to be some
of them, but the ones that I think will are
able to actually be that self aware have a real future.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
I love that, Alana. You're a super fascinating person. I
have enjoyed this conversation so much. I really every time
I see you, I'm like that Alana is very very interesting.
Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Get off social media at least for a little give
yourself boundaries around it. So I know I sound like
some fuddy duddy or some like gross adult or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
But you sound like a gen z or really I
really like.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's boiling your brain. And even just saying to yourself,
there are going to be three hours a day where
I don't touch it.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Will you will help yourself? I love that, and I'm
going to try to do the three hours a day.
I always try to like minimize it, but I like
the idea of a block of time every day where
I actually don't touch it.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
You also can do You can do three blocks, so
you don't have to do with a block of three hours. Right.
You can say, I I don't do it eleven to twelve,
I don't do it three to four, I don't do
it at eight to nine.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Love that. Yeah, Just any time that.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You remember that you're a human being who's not intelluctably
connected to that machine will help you.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Love it. She is a Lana new House. Check her
out at tablet. Everything that she does is fantastic. Thank
you so much. Alana, thanks so much,
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