March 7, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, Ian Haworth shares his journey from the tech industry to becoming a prominent voice on antisemitism and societal issues. He reflects on the challenges faced by Jewish communities, the importance of activism, and the need for honest discussions about hate. Ian expresses a cautious optimism about the future, emphasizing the significance of personal responsibility and the value of genuine relationships. He also contrasts cultural differences between the UK and the US, offering insights into his experiences and perspectives on life. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
#IanHowarth #antisemitism #activism #techindustry #culturaldifferences #personalgrowth #societalconcerns #optimism #commentary
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
I had two conversations recently where the person said something
like women are choosing career over relationships and that's why
marriage rates are down. I know this is a standard line.
People say it all the time, people have said it
on my show before, but I don't quite agree. I've
(00:28):
known lots of career women in my life, and I'm
talking titans of industry and girl bosses with MLM scams,
and they're always trying to meet a man at the
beginning of their careers in the middle always They may
have less time to devote to it, sure, but some
(00:49):
of them do treat it like another job. There are
times in your life that are right for finding your person. Yes,
it's probably not going to be the year you're trying
to make partner, but it won't be your career that's
standing in the way for a decade or more. The
problem from the woman's perspective, I think is they believe
(01:12):
they have more time than they do, so they might
spend their twenties in a dead end relationship with maybe
even a good guy, but someone they don't plan to
marry or have kids with. And sometimes the guy is
not that good. I can think of many examples of
women in my life who wasted many years on a
guy they knew all along wasn't right for them. Often
(01:35):
they are dazzled by his looks. That's a very common thing,
and they don't want to let go of someone who's
nice to them and looks good when they're around. So
I think the whole I just focused on my career
is actually what women tell themselves to console themselves when
it doesn't go the way that they hope in a relationship.
If I were giving advice to a young women, I
(01:55):
tell them that they have less time than they think.
And I get that they hear this elsewhere biological clock
and all that, but that's not even what I mean.
I mean, don't waste your time with people who you
know aren't right for you. Just to have someone It
could easily end up being five or ten years that
shoot right by you. And yes, you'll look back at
(02:18):
that time and you'll say, oh, I was building my career,
But really you were tied up with someone who wasn't
going to be the one for you. If you could
figure that out early and leave yourself space and time
to meet the person you actually want to marry, and
please go ahead have the career too. You'll be in
a much better spot than spending time with someone who's
(02:43):
kind of a placeholder for the one you actually want.
Thanks for listening. Coming up next and interview with Ian Haworth.
Join us after the break.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Ian Howarth. Ian is a syndicated columnist, speaker,
and podcast host. Hi, Ian, so nice to have you
on CAYL.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So I've been reading you for a long time, but
I don't see any particular beat in your work except
since October seventh. You've obviously covered a lot about Israel
and Jewish issues. Did you have one like something that
you particularly focused on before that?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Anti Semitism was always one of my main focuses. It's
actually how I got into this space in the first place.
So for those listening who've never heard of me or
haven't followed my work particularly long, it's cut used to
work in I used to work in big tech before this,
So before this stuff, I did the learned to code thing,
but completely backwards. So I graduated from opposite university with
bachelor's and masters in computer science. And the way it
(03:47):
works in the UK is you do just one subject
for your entire college experience. So I know people love
to joke about, you know, you do like one art
class here, you do a women's studies thing here, and
all of these nonsense courses they made up. Now I
just did one thing, which is good it makes you
an expert in something, but also means you're really only
qualified to do one thing. So I always knew I
(04:08):
wanted to come to America. That was like one of
one of my goals, one of my dreams. So after graduating,
move over to Silicon Valley and was working as a
software engine theer and a bunch of different companies, and
I was actually at Facebook at the time. I worked
at Facebook for about four years or so. And it
was in twenty eighteen when it was the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting,
and I was looking around, you know, Silicon Valley, the
Bay Area, California. It's very left wing, well the coastal
(04:31):
areas of California are very left wing. And I was
looking at all these supposedly tolerant, supposedly compassionate people, seeing
what was happening and really either ignoring it or making
it an attack on right wing people and using it
as a weapon, and then really kind of snowballed there.
I was like one of the few conservatives I knew
in that area, and I thought, well, this might be
(04:53):
a good opportunity for me just to speak out and
provide a voice for right wing people in that space,
and it just snowballed from there. So I too about
antemptism a lot, but really I try and talk about
any issue I think is important, because really everything is
all encompassing. We like to focus on a single issue,
I think, which makes sense if you're a journalist. I've
never really seen myself as a journalist. I just like
(05:13):
to talk about things I find interesting and important. I
try and push the needle in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It's so interesting because I was writing about anti semitism
a lot even before Pittsburgh. But Pittsburgh was the one
anti Semitic attack that the people around me when I
lived in Brooklyn did want to talk about because it
appeared to be somebody, you know, a crazed right winger,
and so that was the attack that they did kind
of circulate opinions on, and the rabbi commented, you know,
(05:43):
it's a local, like very leftist reform synagogue. But the
other attacks that had been going on in Brooklyn for years,
they didn't say a word because the perpetrators weren't wearing
Maga hats. So it's funny that that's what spurred you
into the political world. Do you ever miss, you know,
the tech world.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
I do and I don't. I think I very much
enjoy being my own person and just being able to
say what I think. I think it's a real honor
to be able to do that, to have a job
that allows you to do that. I think a lot
of people who think the same way as I do.
I knew a lot of conservatives who worked in tech
who worked in other industries. They have to keep their
mouth shut, right, and so being able to be a
voice for those people is really wonderful. I think I
(06:24):
miss elements of it. I think every industry has its perps, right.
It was amazing to work on some of the projects
that you get to work with in that space, to
work with some of the people, like the creativity. It's true,
the sense of the world in terms of that area
of innovation and things like that, but it's just what
I'm doing now I find much more kind of motivating
and much more rewarding on a personal level because I
(06:46):
feel like, for me looking at it, my main goal
was just to affect some kind of change, and positive change. Obviously,
there's a lot of people out that are trying to
affect any kind of change, just that negative, sure, whatever,
don't get the clicks, But for me, it was always
about the positive change. And I found that working in
the software space, it wasn't something I truly loved. And
I don't think everyone needs to find something they truly
(07:07):
love in work because you get other things from it.
But this was kind of a whole in my heart
in a lot of ways, and it was something I
was good at but didn't enjoy. And so I think
doing this, you know, I'm still kind of finding my way.
I'm compared to a lot of people, I'm relatively new,
but I get a lot more enjoyment out of it,
a lot more fulfillment out of it by changing someone's
mind or something, or affecting a pace of change on
(07:28):
something that truly matters, rather than just cranking out a
product that someone else could do that job and I'd
like to think that what I do only I could
put out what I think in the way I do it,
And I think that's true of everyone and their opinions.
Everyone is unique in that way, and so I don't
really miss it. There's obviously pieces I missed. The free
food was pretty amazing, but otherwise, no, I'm pretty happy
where I am right now.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, we don't get free food in the podcast world,
which I think is unfair. We really do need the
free food. So you're doing something meaningful, and it's still
a very hard subject to be covering. Do you feel
optimism or We're recording this a few days after the
return of the Bbis Family, and obviously it's been a
(08:11):
very difficult time, really sad, kind of somber a few days.
Do you have a sense of optimism right now or
is it kind of bad times for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I try and not look at it in those terms
because I think it's somewhat unrealistic. Again, I don't want
to say I'm just a realist, because I think that
can be almost pessimistic within different branding. The way I
try and look at it is just taking one step
forward every single day and I have optimism for the
people I think who are pushing the right ideas. I
(08:45):
think there's a lot of Jewish people who have woken
up and really been vocal and stood up in a
way that I haven't seen in my lifetime. So I'm
optimistic about that. I'm optimistic about Jewish communities fighting for
their own right to stay on their own two feet
and not be persecuted into the ground, which sounds like
a normal thing that most people would do, but for
a lot of Jewish communities in my lifetime, I've looked
(09:05):
around and I've seen people shrink into the shadows and
just let things go. And so I think I'm optimistic
in that way. The way I approach things like an
sempitism those I try and do it from a just
a realistic perspective of trying to truly get through to
people of the enemy we are facing and the evil
we are facing, because I think you can find optimism
and pessimism in everything, but it's very easy to be
(09:26):
pessimistic in the face of what we're seeing, which is
rampant ant semptism across the world and in the United
States and on college campuses. But then I find that
almost motivating because that just speaks to the importance of
everyone stepping up. So I'm optimistic in a way if
people keep making these steps. But it's something we have
to keep moving forward. We have to keep approaching this
(09:48):
with the same relentless that our enemies are doing, because
one day we back off, one day we let it go,
and then we're back to where we were before October seventh,
and it will keep happening. So I know that's an
unsatisfactory answer, it's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, I like that. Do you have a particular strategy
for countering the arguments of the other side.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I think it's going to be speaking honestly to the
scale and the breadth of the issue, because I think
a lot of people when they talk about an Semitism,
as I mentioned before, they like to talk about what
I call politically advantageous and Semitism. So you'll see a
lot of right wing people talk about Elano, Oma, Rashida
to leave. You know, they're really easy targets. They absolutely
should talk about those people, and often people on the
left you see them talking about white supremacists and Semitism,
(10:30):
which again they should absolutely be talking about. But for me,
I always am kind of calling on both sides to
speak about the issue honestly, and that includes doing things
that might not be so politically advantageous, you know. So
when someone like Tucker Carlson, for example, comes out says
something pretty broadline as semitic and sometimes not so bordline,
and a lot of people who want to get on
his show are just pretty quiet. But if you saw
ilan Omar Rashida Sleeve say exactly the same thing, they
(10:52):
would be up in arms cracking out content about it.
And so I think for me, it's just about having
that conversation honestly, do you care about Anthemitism or do
you care about it? Is one as many tools to
promote yourself or your brand or your political movement. And
I think that's what I'm seeing a lot of positives
in kind of the so called Jewish movement right now,
is because it's really apolitical in a lot of ways.
(11:14):
I've made a lot of connections with people that prior
to walk to over seventh would never have spoken to
me because I'm a gasp conservative, right, But I think
now we're actually seeing people come together and realizing this
is more than politics. So I think that's a great thing,
that is.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I actually have been so impressed with how many Jews
have woken up. I still think there's so many more
to go, obviously, but I've had so many friends who
are awake and alert after October seventh in a way
that they never had been before.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
And they always had seen that threat in.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The distance, but never so close up. I guess my
thinking on the anti Semitism of the right is it's
a lot less obvious. I mean, forget about the you know,
the crazy podcasters who say insane things, and you know
the I don't know, the various people on the right
who you know, some of them I never even heard
of until they became anti Semitics. So it's kind of,
(12:05):
you know, with the canvass Owens and whatever. I think
the problem is that a lot of them, again not
very obvious ones, with the rest sort of danced around
the topic, and they're not very obvious in the way
that the left is, and they don't say I don't
want Israel to exist or you know, terrible things about
Jews in particular. They kind of are much more vague
(12:26):
than the left. So it gets to where people are like, well,
what did they actually even say, how do you counter that?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I think a lot of that is trying to take
it on a case by case basis, at least in
my experience of trying to work out the intent behind it,
because I think sometimes there is just pure ignorance if
someone says something off the cuff or without really meaning it,
and then you actually get to the hearts of it,
and usually those people come around they actually maybe learn
something about Israel, they learn something about Jews, or they
learn something about the history of antemitism that is motivating
(12:56):
that thought. Then you have people who are genuinely hateful
who just hate Jews for some unknown reason. There's always
going to be hating the world, though, I think sometimes
I don't like to make this just about Jews, because
there is hate against all groups. That's just human nature, unfortunately.
And then there's the middle ground of the people who
are trying to kind of profit from both sides. I
feel like those are the people who very carefully word
(13:17):
what they are saying. I'm just asking questions, very questions,
because I almost respect the people who are genuinely hateful
more than the people who are just kind of playing
this cowardly game where they're trying to attract the people
who are ignorant, they're trying to pander to the people
who are hateful, but they're also trying to leave an
(13:38):
escape route. Essentially, when they do get called out or
they do get at least questioned on their ridiculous views,
and they say, oh, I wasn't Actually I don't agree
with these people. I'm trying to proper from I'm not
like them. I'm just asking questions. I find that quite exhausting.
I stay away from those people because I don't think
they're genuine I find much more success in reaching the
(13:59):
people who genuinely hate me or her genuinely anger, and
I don't think those people are I don't want to
necessarily say it this way, but I don't think those
two people are as bad as the people who are
playing both sides because I don't know what you mean. Yeah,
fully knowing what they're doing. But I think someone who's hateful,
you can reach them. You've just got to get to
the root of their hate. And it's something I think
(14:20):
we should all be spending time on. Obviously, there are
some things who cannot be reached. There's a lot of
people on the edge that if you just reach out
to them with love and kindness, you can make a
huge difference.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah. My co author of the book I wrote, Stolen Nuth,
Bethany Mandel, she once wrote an article about how we
should be trying to convince neo Nazis like away from
neo Nazism, and it gets thrown in her face all
the time, like people are constantly like tweeting that article
back at her, like how dare you have said this?
And then a few years ago, of course aoc A
(14:50):
Passio Cortez she said the same thing, and that became
an okay thing to say, Like, if you have family
members drifting into this kind of hate, you know, try
to try to get them back, try to argue points
with them, try to show them love and be like
I still love you and I just want you to
come back to reality. It's tough, though, when you are
(15:11):
trying with these people who hate you. But I agree
with you that they're a lot more honest than the
dancers what I call the dancing around the reality that
just asking really stupid questions crowd. And it's interesting that
you find those people kind of more reachable.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, And because I think someone can make a mistake
of logic or a mistake of emotion, and that can
build an entire platform for a bunch of different views.
But if you get to that route, it's actually pretty
easy to solve. I you see this all the time
of people who've been hateful. Let's say, you know radical
Islamic terrorists who have come back, and now they speak
out against radical Islam and terrorism, and no one is
(15:52):
locked into their ideology. I think all these people can
be reached. You've always got to pick your battles, because
there are some people who are way too deep that
it's actually quite dangerous to try and reach them. But
then there's all these people on the fringe who if
you just leave them to the whims of the extreme,
then they're going to go somewhere. I think that's the
problem I've seen in a lot of media when people
speak to, for example, young men, there's a lot of
people are very dismissive and quite I think nasty in
(16:16):
a way of just like laughing at people who feel lost,
who don't feel supportive, who don't feel like someone truly
listens to their issues, and sure their issues compared to
other people's issues might not be as bad, or they
might have an easier time of it by nature of
their skin color, which you can have a whole can
of worms debate over. So that doesn't mean their problems
aren't important. And then we're surprised when people like Andrew
Tait and Dan Bazeri and all these people rush in
(16:37):
to fill the void. You know. It's like people are
complaining that these people have an audience while also ignoring
their audience. And I think that's a really important thing
that everyone needs to understand, is that if you mock people.
We've seen this in politics, we've seen in culture. If
you mock people and bully them, you can't then be
surprised when they go somewhere where they are they are
not mocked and bullied. It's like a very simple human
(16:57):
response is to go somewhere where you feel supported. The
problem is that being supported by people who don't actually care, right,
That is.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
The that is the issue where we're pushing these people away,
or they're being pushed away and falling into the arms
of people waiting.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
To accept them.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's it's a tough, tough situation. We're going to take
a quick break and be right back on the Carol
Marcowitch show. What do you worry about? What's like on
your mind when you are you know, what's your general worry?
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Ask a neurotic jew what they worry about? How long
you have? I think the highest level thing I worry
about beyond you know, my own life and you know,
my own family and that kind of thing is I
think our society taking what we have for granted and
returning to what has been the norm for the vast
majority of human kind, which is pain and suffering and tyranny,
(17:52):
all these kind of things. And it's not just political,
it's like a it's a very it's a very cultural
thing too. Western culture is good. I feel like we're
constantly fighting this battle of people who want to tell
you that all cultures are equal New Slash. They are
not the idea that Western culture is in some ways
far worse than the other. No. Western culture has given
us all the best things in humankind, and there's obviously
(18:15):
always room to improve. We're not a perfect civilization. That's
true of all humans ever. But I think everyone takes
the granted for what we have. They take for granted
the peace we have post World War Two. The peace
we have is as a result of the massive, unimaginable
sacrifice that people in their teens and twenties made in
the thirties and forties, that I couldn't see people today
(18:37):
making that same sacrifice. I saw people losing their mind
of not being able to buy toilet paper at quite
the same level what they did the year before. And
that's what I worry about, is because a civilization that
doesn't respect what we have and the history or what
we have and why we have it, I think is
doomed to just descend into the norm for humans, which
(18:57):
is suffering and poverty and not having access to basic things,
and not having the basic rights that have become the
norm for us, but only the norm because we made
it so. So I think that's that's my high level
worry beyond the personal.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Do you miss Britain at all?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I miss my family and my friends there. I miss
elements of the history. I do not miss modern day Britain.
I think it has changed a lot in the way
that Europe has changed. I think it is losing its
way again. It's not fighting for what made it great,
it is not fighting to protect its own history and
the good things it did. I don't really miss the weather.
(19:35):
I don't miss the lack of air conditioning. I don't
miss having to go to a restaurant and being treated
like garbage.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
So they just don't have it over there.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
They do not, they do not. I mean, people always
mock America for that kind of thing, so I can't
believe tipping. Tipping is fantastic, And so I don't really
miss miss Britain in that way. I miss the people there,
like all my family there. I have friends there, obviously,
But I love America like all America is my home.
America is where I'm going to stay. It's just it's
(20:04):
a country like no other. And I think you hear
that from a lot of people who move here, is
that it truly is unique. It's not a cliche. It's
truly unique in so many ways. So I can't imagine
living anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I love that. And you know, I lived in Scotland
for a few years and they mock our the way
we all say have a nice day and all that.
But it's quite nice to hear have a nice day.
It's you know, at the time, I was like embarrassed
about it. I was in my early twenties or late teens,
and I, you know, kind of wanted them to accept
(20:35):
me or whatever, and they would say like, oh, why
do you Americans, you know, tay statements like that. But
now I really do appreciate it. I think we really
have a good thing going here, and the customer service
is really can't be beat.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah. And I think also something I learned after moving
to the US as well is that it is quite
jarring when you come from a place where people don't
really talk to each other, like I live in Tennessee now,
so it's even more so in the South, the people
genuinely talking to each other. But it's the genuine element
of it that I think people not from the United
States don't understand is that when someone asks, you know,
like how are you doing, or have a nice day,
(21:10):
it's kind of actually genuine position. In many cases of
actual of course, there are people who say it don't
mean it, yeah, but like the conversation she'll have with
someone in a supermarket or something. If that happens in
the UK, you're a little on edge, like that's not
normal because British people aren't quite as social stereotypically, But
when it comes here, it's it's jarring until you realize
it's genuine, and then it's it's nice. It's like when
someone says, oh, pray for you. That's not meaning sarcastic,
(21:34):
it's a meaningful statement of care. I think the moment
you understand that it really is life changing.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
It really, it really is. I also in Britain when
they when they ask and answer the question how's you
all right? Like it's one sense that's.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Just I don't even know where to start with that one.
Some parts of Scotland it's barely English. So that's a
tough one.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
True true. So what advice would you give your sixteen
year old self had to offer some thoughts?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I think for me a few things. Is the easy
one is to, you know, not care as much about
what other people think. I think that's one of the
hardest parts about being younger, is you put so much
weight on what people who don't matter what they think.
But I think that goes into adulthood too. Another thing
I think I tell my sixteen year old self is
just to try and find that balance between working really
(22:23):
hard to get what you want next, but also not
working so hard that you kind of lose everything else
that's important. I think a lot of people when they're young,
they see everything is all encompassing, like I have to
pass this exam otherwise my entire life will fall apart.
You know, I have to get top grade in college
otherwise I'll never get a job. And you know, I
work really hard. I went to Oxted University. I was
(22:45):
really proud of that. When I was at Oxford, I
can never quite get to like the top of the class.
I was always getting kind of like mid range grades.
By make sure that it was a class of seventeen
people and they're all computer science geniuses and I was
not a pure science genius part of it then. But
I honestly felt like in that moment I was. It
was very difficult at times because I was never going
(23:06):
to get to that level, and I was trying so
hard to get to that level. I had this impression
in my life just wouldn't work out unless I got
past that line. And then I got my first job
in tech and no one cared what grade I got
to college. They just cared that you went to college
and you have this piece of paper. And then I
got my second tech job and no one cared. When
I went to college, I just cared about what I
did before. Once you have that realization, doing well enough
(23:27):
to get to the next step, as long as you're
happy with that next step is great. If you can
balance your life and be happy with that, your life
will be much happier than always trying to take everything
out of a situation, making a lot of sacrifices in
the meantime when the difference between ninety five percent and
ninety six percent five years down the line is meaningless,
but it feels like everything when you're in the moment.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
It really does. And nobody ever asked even to see
my diploma or any of my grades or anything. It's
whether or not you could do the jobs. It actually
is sort of eye opening how little they care and
how much we obviously cared at the time. So I've
loved this conversation. This has been really awesome. I've followed
you for a long time and I think you're just great.
(24:08):
Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been
a pleasure. I think I have a few quick ones
I'm going to throw in. Yeah, I think one is
like a money one. Always people talk about people saying
money doesn't matter. Money does matter. It's about finding that
line where you can make enough to be happy and comfortable,
rather than letting it run your life. I think in
terms of relationships, the best advice I heard on this
(24:36):
is always been like trying to choose friends who are
investments rather than bills. That really changed my life. Looking
at it that way, I have had a lot of
friends who have been bills in my life, and my
life is much better with the investments. And the final one,
the final one is just taking responsibility for your life.
I think it's really easy to bad things will happen.
People will screw you over, you won't get those promotions,
(24:57):
your manager will screw you over. All of these things
will happen, and obviously you should fight back when you're
able to. But I think taking responsibility for your life
and not letting the blame part of it take over,
will make your life much happier because everything good that
happens is because of you, and everything bad that happens
is despite everything you try to do, and it's I
(25:18):
think you can move forward each day knowing that you
did the best you could and you ultimately are standing
on your own two feet as an adult and not
looking for someone else to save you. I think if
everyone did that the world would be a much better place,
and we would be able to care for each other
more as well, because we would see people take responsibil
with themselves and want to help them. So I think
taking responsibility is something I go on college campuses all
(25:39):
the time. It's the one thing I tell people. Take responsibility,
and every problem in our lives would be better.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I love that. Here's Ian Howarth. Check him out, follow
him on X read all of his stuff. He's really wonderful.
Thank you so much, Iaan for coming on.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for joining us
on the Carol Marko Rich Show. Subscribe wherever you get
your podcasts.
Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
I had two conversations recently where the person said something
like women are choosing career over relationships and that's why
marriage rates are down. I know this is a standard line.
People say it all the time, people have said it
on my show before, but I don't quite agree. I've
(00:28):
known lots of career women in my life, and I'm
talking titans of industry and girl bosses with MLM scams,
and they're always trying to meet a man at the
beginning of their careers in the middle always They may
have less time to devote to it, sure, but some
(00:49):
of them do treat it like another job. There are
times in your life that are right for finding your person. Yes,
it's probably not going to be the year you're trying
to make partner, but it won't be your career that's
standing in the way for a decade or more. The
problem from the woman's perspective, I think is they believe
(01:12):
they have more time than they do, so they might
spend their twenties in a dead end relationship with maybe
even a good guy, but someone they don't plan to
marry or have kids with. And sometimes the guy is
not that good. I can think of many examples of
women in my life who wasted many years on a
guy they knew all along wasn't right for them. Often
(01:35):
they are dazzled by his looks. That's a very common thing,
and they don't want to let go of someone who's
nice to them and looks good when they're around. So
I think the whole I just focused on my career
is actually what women tell themselves to console themselves when
it doesn't go the way that they hope in a relationship.
If I were giving advice to a young women, I
(01:55):
tell them that they have less time than they think.
And I get that they hear this elsewhere biological clock
and all that, but that's not even what I mean.
I mean, don't waste your time with people who you
know aren't right for you. Just to have someone It
could easily end up being five or ten years that
shoot right by you. And yes, you'll look back at
(02:18):
that time and you'll say, oh, I was building my career,
But really you were tied up with someone who wasn't
going to be the one for you. If you could
figure that out early and leave yourself space and time
to meet the person you actually want to marry, and
please go ahead have the career too. You'll be in
a much better spot than spending time with someone who's
(02:43):
kind of a placeholder for the one you actually want.
Thanks for listening. Coming up next and interview with Ian Haworth.
Join us after the break.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Ian Howarth. Ian is a syndicated columnist, speaker,
and podcast host. Hi, Ian, so nice to have you
on CAYL.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So I've been reading you for a long time, but
I don't see any particular beat in your work except
since October seventh. You've obviously covered a lot about Israel
and Jewish issues. Did you have one like something that
you particularly focused on before that?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Anti Semitism was always one of my main focuses. It's
actually how I got into this space in the first place.
So for those listening who've never heard of me or
haven't followed my work particularly long, it's cut used to
work in I used to work in big tech before this,
So before this stuff, I did the learned to code thing,
but completely backwards. So I graduated from opposite university with
bachelor's and masters in computer science. And the way it
(03:47):
works in the UK is you do just one subject
for your entire college experience. So I know people love
to joke about, you know, you do like one art
class here, you do a women's studies thing here, and
all of these nonsense courses they made up. Now I
just did one thing, which is good it makes you
an expert in something, but also means you're really only
qualified to do one thing. So I always knew I
(04:08):
wanted to come to America. That was like one of
one of my goals, one of my dreams. So after graduating,
move over to Silicon Valley and was working as a
software engine theer and a bunch of different companies, and
I was actually at Facebook at the time. I worked
at Facebook for about four years or so. And it
was in twenty eighteen when it was the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting,
and I was looking around, you know, Silicon Valley, the
Bay Area, California. It's very left wing, well the coastal
(04:31):
areas of California are very left wing. And I was
looking at all these supposedly tolerant, supposedly compassionate people, seeing
what was happening and really either ignoring it or making
it an attack on right wing people and using it
as a weapon, and then really kind of snowballed there.
I was like one of the few conservatives I knew
in that area, and I thought, well, this might be
(04:53):
a good opportunity for me just to speak out and
provide a voice for right wing people in that space,
and it just snowballed from there. So I too about
antemptism a lot, but really I try and talk about
any issue I think is important, because really everything is
all encompassing. We like to focus on a single issue,
I think, which makes sense if you're a journalist. I've
never really seen myself as a journalist. I just like
(05:13):
to talk about things I find interesting and important. I
try and push the needle in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
It's so interesting because I was writing about anti semitism
a lot even before Pittsburgh. But Pittsburgh was the one
anti Semitic attack that the people around me when I
lived in Brooklyn did want to talk about because it
appeared to be somebody, you know, a crazed right winger,
and so that was the attack that they did kind
of circulate opinions on, and the rabbi commented, you know,
(05:43):
it's a local, like very leftist reform synagogue. But the
other attacks that had been going on in Brooklyn for years,
they didn't say a word because the perpetrators weren't wearing
Maga hats. So it's funny that that's what spurred you
into the political world. Do you ever miss, you know,
the tech world.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
I do and I don't. I think I very much
enjoy being my own person and just being able to
say what I think. I think it's a real honor
to be able to do that, to have a job
that allows you to do that. I think a lot
of people who think the same way as I do.
I knew a lot of conservatives who worked in tech
who worked in other industries. They have to keep their
mouth shut, right, and so being able to be a
voice for those people is really wonderful. I think I
(06:24):
miss elements of it. I think every industry has its perps, right.
It was amazing to work on some of the projects
that you get to work with in that space, to
work with some of the people, like the creativity. It's true,
the sense of the world in terms of that area
of innovation and things like that, but it's just what
I'm doing now I find much more kind of motivating
and much more rewarding on a personal level because I
(06:46):
feel like, for me looking at it, my main goal
was just to affect some kind of change, and positive change. Obviously,
there's a lot of people out that are trying to
affect any kind of change, just that negative, sure, whatever,
don't get the clicks, But for me, it was always
about the positive change. And I found that working in
the software space, it wasn't something I truly loved. And
I don't think everyone needs to find something they truly
(07:07):
love in work because you get other things from it.
But this was kind of a whole in my heart
in a lot of ways, and it was something I
was good at but didn't enjoy. And so I think
doing this, you know, I'm still kind of finding my way.
I'm compared to a lot of people, I'm relatively new,
but I get a lot more enjoyment out of it,
a lot more fulfillment out of it by changing someone's
mind or something, or affecting a pace of change on
(07:28):
something that truly matters, rather than just cranking out a
product that someone else could do that job and I'd
like to think that what I do only I could
put out what I think in the way I do it,
And I think that's true of everyone and their opinions.
Everyone is unique in that way, and so I don't
really miss it. There's obviously pieces I missed. The free
food was pretty amazing, but otherwise, no, I'm pretty happy
where I am right now.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, we don't get free food in the podcast world,
which I think is unfair. We really do need the
free food. So you're doing something meaningful, and it's still
a very hard subject to be covering. Do you feel
optimism or We're recording this a few days after the
return of the Bbis Family, and obviously it's been a
(08:11):
very difficult time, really sad, kind of somber a few days.
Do you have a sense of optimism right now or
is it kind of bad times for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I try and not look at it in those terms
because I think it's somewhat unrealistic. Again, I don't want
to say I'm just a realist, because I think that
can be almost pessimistic within different branding. The way I
try and look at it is just taking one step
forward every single day and I have optimism for the
people I think who are pushing the right ideas. I
(08:45):
think there's a lot of Jewish people who have woken
up and really been vocal and stood up in a
way that I haven't seen in my lifetime. So I'm
optimistic about that. I'm optimistic about Jewish communities fighting for
their own right to stay on their own two feet
and not be persecuted into the ground, which sounds like
a normal thing that most people would do, but for
a lot of Jewish communities in my lifetime, I've looked
(09:05):
around and I've seen people shrink into the shadows and
just let things go. And so I think I'm optimistic
in that way. The way I approach things like an
sempitism those I try and do it from a just
a realistic perspective of trying to truly get through to
people of the enemy we are facing and the evil
we are facing, because I think you can find optimism
and pessimism in everything, but it's very easy to be
(09:26):
pessimistic in the face of what we're seeing, which is
rampant ant semptism across the world and in the United
States and on college campuses. But then I find that
almost motivating because that just speaks to the importance of
everyone stepping up. So I'm optimistic in a way if
people keep making these steps. But it's something we have
to keep moving forward. We have to keep approaching this
(09:48):
with the same relentless that our enemies are doing, because
one day we back off, one day we let it go,
and then we're back to where we were before October seventh,
and it will keep happening. So I know that's an
unsatisfactory answer, it's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, I like that. Do you have a particular strategy
for countering the arguments of the other side.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
I think it's going to be speaking honestly to the
scale and the breadth of the issue, because I think
a lot of people when they talk about an Semitism,
as I mentioned before, they like to talk about what
I call politically advantageous and Semitism. So you'll see a
lot of right wing people talk about Elano, Oma, Rashida
to leave. You know, they're really easy targets. They absolutely
should talk about those people, and often people on the
left you see them talking about white supremacists and Semitism,
(10:30):
which again they should absolutely be talking about. But for me,
I always am kind of calling on both sides to
speak about the issue honestly, and that includes doing things
that might not be so politically advantageous, you know. So
when someone like Tucker Carlson, for example, comes out says
something pretty broadline as semitic and sometimes not so bordline,
and a lot of people who want to get on
his show are just pretty quiet. But if you saw
ilan Omar Rashida Sleeve say exactly the same thing, they
(10:52):
would be up in arms cracking out content about it.
And so I think for me, it's just about having
that conversation honestly, do you care about Anthemitism or do
you care about it? Is one as many tools to
promote yourself or your brand or your political movement. And
I think that's what I'm seeing a lot of positives
in kind of the so called Jewish movement right now,
is because it's really apolitical in a lot of ways.
(11:14):
I've made a lot of connections with people that prior
to walk to over seventh would never have spoken to
me because I'm a gasp conservative, right, But I think
now we're actually seeing people come together and realizing this
is more than politics. So I think that's a great thing,
that is.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
I actually have been so impressed with how many Jews
have woken up. I still think there's so many more
to go, obviously, but I've had so many friends who
are awake and alert after October seventh in a way
that they never had been before.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
And they always had seen that threat in.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The distance, but never so close up. I guess my
thinking on the anti Semitism of the right is it's
a lot less obvious. I mean, forget about the you know,
the crazy podcasters who say insane things, and you know
the I don't know, the various people on the right
who you know, some of them I never even heard
of until they became anti Semitics. So it's kind of,
(12:05):
you know, with the canvass Owens and whatever. I think
the problem is that a lot of them, again not
very obvious ones, with the rest sort of danced around
the topic, and they're not very obvious in the way
that the left is, and they don't say I don't
want Israel to exist or you know, terrible things about
Jews in particular. They kind of are much more vague
(12:26):
than the left. So it gets to where people are like, well,
what did they actually even say, how do you counter that?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I think a lot of that is trying to take
it on a case by case basis, at least in
my experience of trying to work out the intent behind it,
because I think sometimes there is just pure ignorance if
someone says something off the cuff or without really meaning it,
and then you actually get to the hearts of it,
and usually those people come around they actually maybe learn
something about Israel, they learn something about Jews, or they
learn something about the history of antemitism that is motivating
(12:56):
that thought. Then you have people who are genuinely hateful
who just hate Jews for some unknown reason. There's always
going to be hating the world, though, I think sometimes
I don't like to make this just about Jews, because
there is hate against all groups. That's just human nature, unfortunately.
And then there's the middle ground of the people who
are trying to kind of profit from both sides. I
feel like those are the people who very carefully word
(13:17):
what they are saying. I'm just asking questions, very questions,
because I almost respect the people who are genuinely hateful
more than the people who are just kind of playing
this cowardly game where they're trying to attract the people
who are ignorant, they're trying to pander to the people
who are hateful, but they're also trying to leave an
(13:38):
escape route. Essentially, when they do get called out or
they do get at least questioned on their ridiculous views,
and they say, oh, I wasn't Actually I don't agree
with these people. I'm trying to proper from I'm not
like them. I'm just asking questions. I find that quite exhausting.
I stay away from those people because I don't think
they're genuine I find much more success in reaching the
(13:59):
people who genuinely hate me or her genuinely anger, and
I don't think those people are I don't want to
necessarily say it this way, but I don't think those
two people are as bad as the people who are
playing both sides because I don't know what you mean. Yeah,
fully knowing what they're doing. But I think someone who's hateful,
you can reach them. You've just got to get to
the root of their hate. And it's something I think
(14:20):
we should all be spending time on. Obviously, there are
some things who cannot be reached. There's a lot of
people on the edge that if you just reach out
to them with love and kindness, you can make a
huge difference.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah. My co author of the book I wrote, Stolen Nuth,
Bethany Mandel, she once wrote an article about how we
should be trying to convince neo Nazis like away from
neo Nazism, and it gets thrown in her face all
the time, like people are constantly like tweeting that article
back at her, like how dare you have said this?
And then a few years ago, of course aoc A
(14:50):
Passio Cortez she said the same thing, and that became
an okay thing to say, Like, if you have family
members drifting into this kind of hate, you know, try
to try to get them back, try to argue points
with them, try to show them love and be like
I still love you and I just want you to
come back to reality. It's tough, though, when you are
(15:11):
trying with these people who hate you. But I agree
with you that they're a lot more honest than the
dancers what I call the dancing around the reality that
just asking really stupid questions crowd. And it's interesting that
you find those people kind of more reachable.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, And because I think someone can make a mistake
of logic or a mistake of emotion, and that can
build an entire platform for a bunch of different views.
But if you get to that route, it's actually pretty
easy to solve. I you see this all the time
of people who've been hateful. Let's say, you know radical
Islamic terrorists who have come back, and now they speak
out against radical Islam and terrorism, and no one is
(15:52):
locked into their ideology. I think all these people can
be reached. You've always got to pick your battles, because
there are some people who are way too deep that
it's actually quite dangerous to try and reach them. But
then there's all these people on the fringe who if
you just leave them to the whims of the extreme,
then they're going to go somewhere. I think that's the
problem I've seen in a lot of media when people
speak to, for example, young men, there's a lot of
people are very dismissive and quite I think nasty in
(16:16):
a way of just like laughing at people who feel lost,
who don't feel supportive, who don't feel like someone truly
listens to their issues, and sure their issues compared to
other people's issues might not be as bad, or they
might have an easier time of it by nature of
their skin color, which you can have a whole can
of worms debate over. So that doesn't mean their problems
aren't important. And then we're surprised when people like Andrew
Tait and Dan Bazeri and all these people rush in
(16:37):
to fill the void. You know. It's like people are
complaining that these people have an audience while also ignoring
their audience. And I think that's a really important thing
that everyone needs to understand, is that if you mock people.
We've seen this in politics, we've seen in culture. If
you mock people and bully them, you can't then be
surprised when they go somewhere where they are they are
not mocked and bullied. It's like a very simple human
(16:57):
response is to go somewhere where you feel supported. The
problem is that being supported by people who don't actually care, right,
That is.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
The that is the issue where we're pushing these people away,
or they're being pushed away and falling into the arms
of people waiting.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
To accept them.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's it's a tough, tough situation. We're going to take
a quick break and be right back on the Carol
Marcowitch show. What do you worry about? What's like on
your mind when you are you know, what's your general worry?
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Ask a neurotic jew what they worry about? How long
you have? I think the highest level thing I worry
about beyond you know, my own life and you know,
my own family and that kind of thing is I
think our society taking what we have for granted and
returning to what has been the norm for the vast
majority of human kind, which is pain and suffering and tyranny,
(17:52):
all these kind of things. And it's not just political,
it's like a it's a very it's a very cultural
thing too. Western culture is good. I feel like we're
constantly fighting this battle of people who want to tell
you that all cultures are equal New Slash. They are
not the idea that Western culture is in some ways
far worse than the other. No. Western culture has given
us all the best things in humankind, and there's obviously
(18:15):
always room to improve. We're not a perfect civilization. That's
true of all humans ever. But I think everyone takes
the granted for what we have. They take for granted
the peace we have post World War Two. The peace
we have is as a result of the massive, unimaginable
sacrifice that people in their teens and twenties made in
the thirties and forties, that I couldn't see people today
(18:37):
making that same sacrifice. I saw people losing their mind
of not being able to buy toilet paper at quite
the same level what they did the year before. And
that's what I worry about, is because a civilization that
doesn't respect what we have and the history or what
we have and why we have it, I think is
doomed to just descend into the norm for humans, which
(18:57):
is suffering and poverty and not having access to basic things,
and not having the basic rights that have become the
norm for us, but only the norm because we made
it so. So I think that's that's my high level
worry beyond the personal.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Do you miss Britain at all?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I miss my family and my friends there. I miss
elements of the history. I do not miss modern day Britain.
I think it has changed a lot in the way
that Europe has changed. I think it is losing its
way again. It's not fighting for what made it great,
it is not fighting to protect its own history and
the good things it did. I don't really miss the weather.
(19:35):
I don't miss the lack of air conditioning. I don't
miss having to go to a restaurant and being treated
like garbage.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
So they just don't have it over there.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
They do not, they do not. I mean, people always
mock America for that kind of thing, so I can't
believe tipping. Tipping is fantastic, And so I don't really
miss miss Britain in that way. I miss the people there,
like all my family there. I have friends there, obviously,
But I love America like all America is my home.
America is where I'm going to stay. It's just it's
(20:04):
a country like no other. And I think you hear
that from a lot of people who move here, is
that it truly is unique. It's not a cliche. It's
truly unique in so many ways. So I can't imagine
living anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I love that. And you know, I lived in Scotland
for a few years and they mock our the way
we all say have a nice day and all that.
But it's quite nice to hear have a nice day.
It's you know, at the time, I was like embarrassed
about it. I was in my early twenties or late teens,
and I, you know, kind of wanted them to accept
(20:35):
me or whatever, and they would say like, oh, why
do you Americans, you know, tay statements like that. But
now I really do appreciate it. I think we really
have a good thing going here, and the customer service
is really can't be beat.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah. And I think also something I learned after moving
to the US as well is that it is quite
jarring when you come from a place where people don't
really talk to each other, like I live in Tennessee now,
so it's even more so in the South, the people
genuinely talking to each other. But it's the genuine element
of it that I think people not from the United
States don't understand is that when someone asks, you know,
like how are you doing, or have a nice day,
(21:10):
it's kind of actually genuine position. In many cases of
actual of course, there are people who say it don't
mean it, yeah, but like the conversation she'll have with
someone in a supermarket or something. If that happens in
the UK, you're a little on edge, like that's not
normal because British people aren't quite as social stereotypically, But
when it comes here, it's it's jarring until you realize
it's genuine, and then it's it's nice. It's like when
someone says, oh, pray for you. That's not meaning sarcastic,
(21:34):
it's a meaningful statement of care. I think the moment
you understand that it really is life changing.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
It really, it really is. I also in Britain when
they when they ask and answer the question how's you
all right? Like it's one sense that's.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Just I don't even know where to start with that one.
Some parts of Scotland it's barely English. So that's a
tough one.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
True true. So what advice would you give your sixteen
year old self had to offer some thoughts?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I think for me a few things. Is the easy
one is to, you know, not care as much about
what other people think. I think that's one of the
hardest parts about being younger, is you put so much
weight on what people who don't matter what they think.
But I think that goes into adulthood too. Another thing
I think I tell my sixteen year old self is
just to try and find that balance between working really
(22:23):
hard to get what you want next, but also not
working so hard that you kind of lose everything else
that's important. I think a lot of people when they're young,
they see everything is all encompassing, like I have to
pass this exam otherwise my entire life will fall apart.
You know, I have to get top grade in college
otherwise I'll never get a job. And you know, I
work really hard. I went to Oxted University. I was
(22:45):
really proud of that. When I was at Oxford, I
can never quite get to like the top of the class.
I was always getting kind of like mid range grades.
By make sure that it was a class of seventeen
people and they're all computer science geniuses and I was
not a pure science genius part of it then. But
I honestly felt like in that moment I was. It
was very difficult at times because I was never going
(23:06):
to get to that level, and I was trying so
hard to get to that level. I had this impression
in my life just wouldn't work out unless I got
past that line. And then I got my first job
in tech and no one cared what grade I got
to college. They just cared that you went to college
and you have this piece of paper. And then I
got my second tech job and no one cared. When
I went to college, I just cared about what I
did before. Once you have that realization, doing well enough
(23:27):
to get to the next step, as long as you're
happy with that next step is great. If you can
balance your life and be happy with that, your life
will be much happier than always trying to take everything
out of a situation, making a lot of sacrifices in
the meantime when the difference between ninety five percent and
ninety six percent five years down the line is meaningless,
but it feels like everything when you're in the moment.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
It really does. And nobody ever asked even to see
my diploma or any of my grades or anything. It's
whether or not you could do the jobs. It actually
is sort of eye opening how little they care and
how much we obviously cared at the time. So I've
loved this conversation. This has been really awesome. I've followed
you for a long time and I think you're just great.
(24:08):
Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been
a pleasure. I think I have a few quick ones
I'm going to throw in. Yeah, I think one is
like a money one. Always people talk about people saying
money doesn't matter. Money does matter. It's about finding that
line where you can make enough to be happy and comfortable,
rather than letting it run your life. I think in
terms of relationships, the best advice I heard on this
(24:36):
is always been like trying to choose friends who are
investments rather than bills. That really changed my life. Looking
at it that way, I have had a lot of
friends who have been bills in my life, and my
life is much better with the investments. And the final one,
the final one is just taking responsibility for your life.
I think it's really easy to bad things will happen.
People will screw you over, you won't get those promotions,
(24:57):
your manager will screw you over. All of these things
will happen, and obviously you should fight back when you're
able to. But I think taking responsibility for your life
and not letting the blame part of it take over,
will make your life much happier because everything good that
happens is because of you, and everything bad that happens
is despite everything you try to do, and it's I
(25:18):
think you can move forward each day knowing that you
did the best you could and you ultimately are standing
on your own two feet as an adult and not
looking for someone else to save you. I think if
everyone did that the world would be a much better place,
and we would be able to care for each other
more as well, because we would see people take responsibil
with themselves and want to help them. So I think
taking responsibility is something I go on college campuses all
(25:39):
the time. It's the one thing I tell people. Take responsibility,
and every problem in our lives would be better.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I love that. Here's Ian Howarth. Check him out, follow
him on X read all of his stuff. He's really wonderful.
Thank you so much, Iaan for coming on.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for joining us
on the Carol Marko Rich Show. Subscribe wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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