March 19, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode, Karol interviews Aaron Sibarium, a staff writer at the Washington Free Beacon. They discuss Aaron's journey into writing, his experiences at Yale, and his reporting on wokeness and institutional capture. Aaron shares impactful stories from his career, reflects on the current state of free speech on campuses, and offers advice to his younger self. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
In today's mailbag, I got a familiar note, Hi, Carol.
Your episode from a few months ago about the teenage
daughter who has friends but doesn't know how to make
plans with them stuck in my mind. My daughter was
always very social and had a lot of friends. She
(00:22):
graduated college in May and lives in a new city,
and I'm noticing that she doesn't have the kind of
social life she had before. She's not dating anyone, and
while she has a few friends, most weekends she does
not go out. I'm not sure what suggests to her.
What do you think I'd always read about young people
being homebodies now, but it had not happened in our
(00:43):
family before. Well, this is a question I've gotten again
and again. I think it's the most common question I've
gotten on the show. Real life life is getting harder
and harder to come by, especially for young people. But
because these questions are anonymous, I can't ask follow ups
(01:04):
like how did she choose this city, what's her job,
what are her interests? And that kind of thing. So
I'll try to speak more generally about this. It's the phones.
We all know it. I've talked about it, and I've
written about it, but we can't even say it's social
media anymore. We're all just watching TV basically all the time.
(01:26):
If we were actually watching our actual televisions for eight
hours a day, eight plus hours a day, we'd know
it's a giant problem. But because we watch it in
one or three or five minute clips, it seems fine.
And look again, I admit that I am just as
addicted as anyone to my phone. I'm not giving this
(01:47):
advice from my high perch over here, but I'm so
aware of it, and I try every single day to
change it. I've given some of my tips on here before.
Don't use your apps when you're on vacation. For me,
it's x that really I spend most of my time
on that site, so I don't use it when I'm
on vacation. I remove it from my phone altogether, read
(02:09):
a book before bed instead of just scrolling for hours.
Leave the phone in your bag when you're out with
friends or with your kids. I would also say, really
minimize how much your kids are using their phones when
they're interacting with others. I get it, kids are just
as susceptible as the rest of us to screen time.
(02:29):
But when they're out with their friends, they should not
be staring at their phones. And I don't do any
of this perfectly, but I think recognizing the problem is
really the first step. If you're the person who wrote
this in to me, you have to tell your daughter
to start with trying to change her phone habits. It's
entirely too easy to lose yourself in hours and hours
(02:50):
of scrolling. And from there you can suggest that she
make the first move with new friends, invite them to
dinner or in activity, but it has to start with
living life outside her apartment. The main thing is to
stress to your child that the way her life is
right now is easily the way her life could stay.
(03:11):
It's very hard to change things. Would she be happy
with that or is she imagining that she will make
friends at some point along the way, Because if it's
that second, one, encourage her to get started right now.
It's so much harder to make friends as she gets older.
And I know right now it seems to her like
she's in a tough spot, tougher than it's ever been
(03:33):
for her before. That time after college when everyone seems
to be going their own way, but really it only
gets harder from there. Soon people will pair off, get married,
have children, and really settle into their ways. It's actually
a moment right now where all the post college kids
are still scrambling around for how their lives are going
(03:55):
to go. She can lean into it and find her
people best right now, but it will require putting down
the phone and leaving the house. Thanks for listening. Coming
up my interview with Aaron Sibariam. But first, after more
than a year of war, terror and pain in Israel,
(04:15):
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call eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ. That's eight
(05:19):
eight eight four eight eight IFCJ eight eight eight four
eight eight four three two five. Welcome back to the
Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Aaron Sibarium.
Aaron is a staff writer at the Washington Free Weekend.
Hi erin so nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Thank you for having me, Carol Aarin.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I think of you as super young, am I right?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'm twenty nine and when I hit twenty nine, I
felt the crushing weight of being just one year away
from thirty suddenly hit me. So I don't feel as
young as I used to, but I suppose objectively we're
still relatively young.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I started reading you several years ago now, so you
were like in your earlier mid twenties. So I guess
my take is pretty correct. And I got to tell you,
the thirties were a phenomenal decade. I highly recommend going
into it without any fears.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Good. Good to know.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So, how did you get into this world? How did
you become a writer?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
So, I wrote opinion pieces for my high school newspaper
and enjoyed stirring the pot a little bit. Even as
a high schooler. I liked it so much that I
decided to do the same thing when I got to
Yale University. I joined the school newspaper as an opinion columnist,
(06:52):
and then served as the opinion editor of a school
paper for a year, and by the end of college
I basically just yeah, I like writing. I like writing
for a public audience. That's what I want to do
in some capacity. Graduated, went to a small now defunct
magazine called The American Interest as an editor. To the
(07:14):
extent I did writing there, it was mostly about kind
of the what were then very ourcurant debates about liberalism
and postliberalism, things that I think are still in the
ether but have lost some of their novelty. This was
all kind of debates that have been stirred up on
the right by by Trump's twenty sixteen election, and now
(07:36):
you know, the shock of that is born off and debate.
The debate isn't a bit of a different place, but
that's kind of what I was interested in. And then yeah,
in twenty twenty, you know, I heard the Free Beacon
was hiring and decided it's probably time for a change.
I'll try this and went over as an editor. But
(07:57):
within a few months me and my boss decided I'd
be more of an asset as a reporter. So I,
having never done any reporting before, tried doing reporting. And
I mean, I wouldn't actually say I'm particularly gifted at it,
but no, I see.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
You as a natural reporter. I'm surprised that that was
your first reporting job.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
No, I don't think I'm actually like, I don't think
I have any kind of special talent, like I'm not,
but but I worked hard, and I guess i'd sort
of just a lucky kind of combination of connections and
early hits and curiosity about topics that we were very hot,
(08:41):
and so it kind of just turned into but kind
of by chance, I just ended up becoming, I mean,
relatively successful, I guess as a center right reporter. What
do you consider your beat, wokeness and institutional capture very broadly,
I mean, I wouldn't say that that's the only thing
I've ever done reporting on, but that's what most of
(09:03):
it ultimately comes down to. I've done a lot on
universities and higher education, but I've also done things on
medicine and law. My interests are definitely broader than just
higher ed, but probably the most famous, slash impactful stories
I've done have ultimately had something to do with education.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
What's been your biggest story so far or among.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
The in terms of raw impact.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I guess Claudine Gay exposing a lot of cases of
plagiarism and former Harvard President Claudine Gay's work, because that
was kind of the strong break of the camels and
led to a resignation from Harvard. So I guess I
probably have to say that one, you know, in terms
of stories I'm actually most maybe proud of, because they
required the most work and were most interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I don't know. I did one on.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
UCLA Medical School appears to have implemented a kind of
covert unofficial system of racial preferences and violation.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That was a really good uh.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, California and federal law that I think was pretty important.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I did some stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
This might be the one that I actually think is
objectively the most important. I did some stuff on the uh,
the racial rationing of COVID drugs if you call, and actually,
I think you might have been the one who got
me on this beat, because you had to.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think it was you.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Carol tweeted something about New York that's this race based
policy for allocating monoclonic antibodies in late twenty twenty one,
and I remember I saw that tweet and thought, huh,
I wonder if other states were doing it, And just
in like two hours of googling, was able to find
two other, I think even more brazen examples.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And then I read the fine print.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It was like, oh, they're citing the Food and Drug
Administration Emergency Use Authorization guidance to justify this completely insane
trioch justs okay, and basically just wrote that up. And
then you know, within like two weeks, Tucker Carlson had
tooked about it on his then Fox show, and the
programs have been canceled in Utah and Minnesota. Those were
(11:05):
states that were doing this. So that I think was
pretty impactful to just show that, like we actually could
get to the point where life saving medical care was
being rationed based on race.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
But so what's interesting about that is I think that
that shows what a natural reporter, you are, because I
heard that story and I was like, wow, New York
is crazy, and that's you know, that's where I left it.
You were like, wait, is this happening elsewhere? Like how
do I get to the bottom of this. I'm not
a reporter. I've never been a reporter. So I could
see the difference in our approach to it. Like, to me,
it was a I tweeted it and I was done,
(11:39):
and you went much deeper.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'm just saying maybe you are a natural reporter and
you're you just don't know it. So was there ever
a plan B? Was there ever, like if you don't
become a writer, you're going to be a.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I don't know. I mean I thought that being.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Like working at a think tank or doing some kind
of policy where it could be interesting, you know, which
would still involve writing, but in a bit of a
different context. You know. I think there was a period
where I thought, oh, like I like philosophy, I like
going to school, I could be an academic. But then
the problem is that at the time I was actually
(12:22):
an undergraduate at Yale, that those were the years when
Yale was kind of rocked by what you might call
a kind of embryonic version of what happened in twenty twenty. Right,
there was this rather silly scandal over cultural appropriation and
Halloween costumes that's somehow spiraled into months of protests and
(12:45):
recriminations and mo behings and name changes and all sorts
of other things that really prefigured what I think the
country saw following George Floyd in twenty twenty. It happened
at year kind of first in twenty fifteen, being on
campus during that time and being maybe a kind of
(13:08):
semi public figure on campus because I was the head
of the opinion page at the Yale Daily News, so
I was fielding all the op eds related to this controversy.
I am writing some of my own stuff. I this
experience certainly pushed me somewhat to the right. I come
(13:30):
into college a pretty moderate democrat. It was like, a
Holy crap, these people are insane and they're going to
rule us in five years. I don't like them to
fifteen years. These are the next those of the EPA
and the Justice Department.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Holy crap.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And you know, but also you know, these are this
is the future of academia. These are the people who
are going to be making hiring decisions. And these are
the sorts of people students I would have to teach,
and potentially the sorts of colleagues I would have to
deal with. If I wanted to just you know, write
(14:07):
about abstract problems and metaphysics or moral philosophy. Right, it
was like, you know, forget it, Like that's that. If
I could just write my stuff in peace and have
fun philosophy debates with students every day, that'd be great.
But if I actually were to have try to have
fun philosophy debates with students, I'd get canceled for a
politically incorrect thought experiment within two weeks.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So that's right.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I can't do that, right.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
My my teenage daughter likes to quote this comedian who
had a joke like, oh, you're getting a philosophy degree?
Is that to go work at the new philosophy factory
that opened in town? You know, so you had you
had you had a vision for how it would go,
and maybe outside the philosophy factory, but still it's interesting
that you saw that coming and then you ended up
(14:51):
being somebody that writes about it. And you know, I
think about those early days that before times of when
insanity was really just on campuses and we didn't think
it was going to jump off campus, but then it did.
And I think that that's, you know, a tough spot
(15:12):
that we ended up in. Would you like if you
had to do it over again, like, would you send
your kids to Yale? Would you go to Yale again?
It was it?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, I experience anyway.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
No, I would definitely go to Yale again because it
helped shape me into who I am. And the being
kind of constantly embattled for four years was I think
ultimately a good experience.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Money even though you started as a moderate Democrat, you
feel like you were in battled for four years. Like,
that's that's tough. Imagine being a conservative from the start,
you know.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, And I honestly still I don't really like labels.
I don't mean functionally on the center right and spot.
So if people call me a conservative, that's fine, But
I don't really have strong views on some people who
become kind of partisans of these debates about what the
true essence of conservatism is because they feel very invested
in being a conservative. I don't really feel that way.
(16:10):
I tend to look at things more on a case
by case basis and just say I have certain commitments
and principles that, as a contingent sociological matter put me
on the center right in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
But that could change.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
But yes, that could easily change, right, I think, if
you know, I could easily have been like a Bill
Clinton Democrat.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
But that's just interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I do feel kind of committed to my conservative You're right,
but I like, I don't feel committed to the Republican Party.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
For example.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I feel yeah to my conservative principles, and I realized
that that could be anything, you know, that that can
move me anywhere in the future.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
I mean, I think I have certain philosophical commitments that
probably are more traditionally conservative. I probably have others that
are more traditionally liberal or just or or just would
better be characterized as some kind of other tradition that's
totally orthogonal to liberal first conservative. But I would definitely
(17:10):
say ditto on not being a committed member of the
Republican Party. You know, there's plenty of things they do
that I think are crazy and stupid. So I'm not
you know, I'm not someone who's gonna make it my
professional job to defend everything that.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Bear does.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah. Absolutely, We're going to take a quick break and
be right back on the Carol Markcoid Show. What do
you worry about?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Well, you ask about you're asking me about my politics,
and I just said, I'm not a committed Republican. One
of the reasons I'm not maybe a committed partisan Republican
is that I think there is the potential for the
(18:02):
current crapdown on campuses in the name of protecting Jewish
students to really backfire and end up just kind of
reinforcing the worst parts of the civil rights apparatus that
helped lead to campus censorship and CI in the first place.
(18:25):
So I part ways with some of my conservative friends
and colleagues in that I obviously think that the you know,
Prohamas kids are crazy and most of what's happened at
Columbia is disgraceful, and I'm all for cutting the federal
funding of a lot of these institutions that just repeatedly
show that they were unwilling to maintain order on campus.
(18:46):
But the more important thing is that they've just completely
strayed from the purposes for which they were given tax
exempts to us in the first place. Right, and clearly
no longer respect academic freedom or anti discrimination law or
any number of other important values intellectual diversity, et cetera.
(19:07):
And that, to me is the main reason why they
can't be trusted to reform themselves. In some kind of
external government interventioned is necessary. So, you know, I'm kind
of supportive of the broader adversarial posture that the Republican
Party has taken towards the universities. But what I'm not
supportive of is a that they've justified that posture almost
(19:30):
not entirely, but almost exclusively in terms of protecting Jewish students.
And b I'm not supportive of this idea that Jewish
students are at imminent risk of physical harm and say
therefore therefore students who organize the encampment should not merely
(19:54):
be expelled, but actually if their green card revoked without
due process and deported.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
You know, I think maybe there is a case for
doing it.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But but I but I'm I'm a bit concerned that
it's being done in a very haphazard way, that that
that could set some bad precedents. And moreover, right, I
don't love this phenomenon of say Jewish students creating lists
of people, or Jewish activist groups creating lists of activists
(20:26):
who they would.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Like to be deported. I just think that is sent
that is.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Creating a kind of culture, a snitch like culture, that
is not good for free speech, whatever the merits, you know,
in a particular case. And moreover, I don't think it's
ultimately good for Jewish students themselves to live in this
state of constant fear and to see themselves as obligated to,
(20:57):
you know, kind of go to war with woke activists
who they don't like over the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I
just think that's fundamentally not why you go to college, sure,
you know, to be an activist. And I and I
really strongly reject the notion that people are made unsafe
(21:17):
by deeply offensive speech.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Well, so it's interesting because I disagree with you on
a few things there, but I like that you have,
you know, a perspective of this, even though you're, like,
you know, pretty deeply into covering them and not in
a positive light obviously, But like, I think that there
are boundaries of free speech that these activists are way overstepping.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Oh, I agree with that, to be clear, well.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And there is violence violence against Jews in New York
is New York is number one for violence against Jews.
Brooklyn specifically is top of the list. But you know,
I almost feel like the thing here is that these
leftist activists have made us play by these ridiculous rules,
(22:08):
and now they're being caught up in their own rules,
and I kind of want to see where it goes.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Also,
one one more thing about the Green cards is when
you're here on a Green card, you have to live
up to certain rules of the Green card. And they,
as far as I understand, they're literally saying you, you
(22:30):
you spurred violence. For example, it wasn't just about your speech,
it was you You did not allow Jewish kids to
go to class, you did not allow them to go
to the library. You had just altercations on campus that
went beyond speech. And they're saying that that violates the
rules of the Green card. But again, I get what
(22:52):
you're saying. I don't think that Jews should live in
a perpetual, fearful state. Of course, it's a lot harder
for them to have to live in that state when
they're incapable of protecting themselves. They don't have Second Amendment
rights in New York City largely, and the school won't
do anything to step in and help them.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Sure, I mean I should clarify, you know, it may
well turn out that the sky did violate the terms
of his screen card, and in that case, sure, if
you should be deported. My concern is that I don't
know if it this is being done in a procedurally
valid way. I also will freely admit that I don't
know the law on this very well. This is just
(23:31):
based on things I've read. And then the other thing
I would say, though, is like, yeah, so I agree
there's a distinction between speech and violence, and you should
obviously have been expelled for taking over Hamilton Hall, right Like,
all of that is totally that's not free speech.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
You know. My other concern about how.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
They're going about it is you want to be careful
not to make martyrs out of people when you don't
have to.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Your backlash point is a very good one.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And I worry that this particular guy might not be
the best target for various reasons. You know, I would
also say too that that although there obviously is violent
hate crime against Jews in New York City. That's not
(24:18):
coming mainly from Columbia students. That's coming from, in many cases,
just kind of deranged psychopaths that the city's sort of
jailbreak liberalist regime has allowed to run free. Really, I mean,
there's an easy solution there, which is just if you
(24:38):
have lots of criminal convictions and prior arrest, you just
shouldn't be allowed on.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
It's like, it's like a really good idea that one.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Right, Like, like deporting all the foreign kids at Columbia
who protested or broke the rules will not materially make
most the average Jew on the streets of New York saper.
What would make them safer is if you just put
a lot more cops out there and say, yeah, yeah,
if you're a crazy psychopath, you don't get to walk
around on the street.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Forcing the rules overall, I think would be a step
in the right direction. Yeah, what advice would you give
your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Two pieces of advice.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
One would be I was like a really awkward kid
in high school who frankly didn't even have very much
interest in dating as a high schooler. I'd probably go
back in time and say, you know, just like go
on a few dates to just like get the hang
of it, because it's college is not a good time
for that to be your first experience dating, nor for
(25:42):
that matter, really is after college. It's it's better if
you have a little experience with this in high school.
So that's probably what I would say.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
My third writer is on his like sixth girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
So well, he's he's getting started early. That's that's good
to hear.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
And then I think the other piece of advice is
I was always a really serious student who wanted to
get straight a's and worried about every little you know,
any point off of an assignment risk, No, no, you know,
nothing less than one hundred percent. It's an okay attitude
to have in high school. If you're trying to get
(26:21):
into a good college, I would say, once you get
to college, gratitude, Yeah, that attitude is important to maintain
if you think you might want a job that requires
you to get into a really good law school or
get really good grades. It's frankly not very important to
(26:42):
maintain if you're going to go into the field that
I ended up going into. It doesn't mean it doesn't help,
Like I think if you take classes seriously and learn, you.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Know you will.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Nobody's ever asked us for our transcript.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
You'll be in a better place if you were a
somewhat serious student. But if you like take tough classes
that are curved in STEM and you get like a
C or B, I mean, no one in journalism will
care about that. And if you take you know, even
if you kind of goof off in one semester and
you don't do as well on your papers and like, yeah,
(27:15):
it's just not going to matter as long as you
have good clippings and show that you're a decent writer
who can work relatively hard, and you know, to be honest, right,
you don't need to be a serious philosopher to be
a journalist, like right, I mean it can it can
maybe help indirectly, but it's not it's really not a
requirement of the job.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
So I there are.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Very few requirements of this job.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yes, yes, yes, And so I would probably tell my
sixteen to maybe twenty two year old self, you know,
just you don't need to you don't need to be
as hung up about GPA. It's really not going to
matter for you in the light.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Probably true for a lot of kids. Well, I've loved
this conversation. This has been really interesting. End us here
with your best tip for my listeners on how they
can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
I mean I kind of hesitate to offer any advice
on this because I'm like a single twenty nine year
old guy.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I don't really time to get married.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Let's go, Aaron, Well.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, I don't know if I have any great advice.
I guess I would say build in space to your
schedule to read. I think it can be very easy
to let the demands of work and the day to
day overtake you, and then you get home and you
just want to veg in front of the TV. I mean,
I do this, but it's it's important that you kind
(28:41):
of force yourself to carve out space to read and
have some kind of I think quasi kind of intellectual pursuit,
or at least I have found that I feel like
my life is more meaningful and better when I do,
even though it's hard, and I've been trying to do
it more regularly.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Reading is as a popular one. You might be surprised,
but it is a popular answer to that question.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Thank you so much for.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Coming on Aaron He is Aaron Sabariam. Check him out
at Washington Free Weekend. Thanks again, thank you, thanks so
much for joining us on the Carol Marko Witz Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
In today's mailbag, I got a familiar note, Hi, Carol.
Your episode from a few months ago about the teenage
daughter who has friends but doesn't know how to make
plans with them stuck in my mind. My daughter was
always very social and had a lot of friends. She
(00:22):
graduated college in May and lives in a new city,
and I'm noticing that she doesn't have the kind of
social life she had before. She's not dating anyone, and
while she has a few friends, most weekends she does
not go out. I'm not sure what suggests to her.
What do you think I'd always read about young people
being homebodies now, but it had not happened in our
(00:43):
family before. Well, this is a question I've gotten again
and again. I think it's the most common question I've
gotten on the show. Real life life is getting harder
and harder to come by, especially for young people. But
because these questions are anonymous, I can't ask follow ups
(01:04):
like how did she choose this city, what's her job,
what are her interests? And that kind of thing. So
I'll try to speak more generally about this. It's the phones.
We all know it. I've talked about it, and I've
written about it, but we can't even say it's social
media anymore. We're all just watching TV basically all the time.
(01:26):
If we were actually watching our actual televisions for eight
hours a day, eight plus hours a day, we'd know
it's a giant problem. But because we watch it in
one or three or five minute clips, it seems fine.
And look again, I admit that I am just as
addicted as anyone to my phone. I'm not giving this
(01:47):
advice from my high perch over here, but I'm so
aware of it, and I try every single day to
change it. I've given some of my tips on here before.
Don't use your apps when you're on vacation. For me,
it's x that really I spend most of my time
on that site, so I don't use it when I'm
on vacation. I remove it from my phone altogether, read
(02:09):
a book before bed instead of just scrolling for hours.
Leave the phone in your bag when you're out with
friends or with your kids. I would also say, really
minimize how much your kids are using their phones when
they're interacting with others. I get it, kids are just
as susceptible as the rest of us to screen time.
(02:29):
But when they're out with their friends, they should not
be staring at their phones. And I don't do any
of this perfectly, but I think recognizing the problem is
really the first step. If you're the person who wrote
this in to me, you have to tell your daughter
to start with trying to change her phone habits. It's
entirely too easy to lose yourself in hours and hours
(02:50):
of scrolling. And from there you can suggest that she
make the first move with new friends, invite them to
dinner or in activity, but it has to start with
living life outside her apartment. The main thing is to
stress to your child that the way her life is
right now is easily the way her life could stay.
(03:11):
It's very hard to change things. Would she be happy
with that or is she imagining that she will make
friends at some point along the way, Because if it's
that second, one, encourage her to get started right now.
It's so much harder to make friends as she gets older.
And I know right now it seems to her like
she's in a tough spot, tougher than it's ever been
(03:33):
for her before. That time after college when everyone seems
to be going their own way, but really it only
gets harder from there. Soon people will pair off, get married,
have children, and really settle into their ways. It's actually
a moment right now where all the post college kids
are still scrambling around for how their lives are going
(03:55):
to go. She can lean into it and find her
people best right now, but it will require putting down
the phone and leaving the house. Thanks for listening. Coming
up my interview with Aaron Sibariam. But first, after more
than a year of war, terror and pain in Israel,
(04:15):
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call eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ. That's eight
(05:19):
eight eight four eight eight IFCJ eight eight eight four
eight eight four three two five. Welcome back to the
Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Aaron Sibarium.
Aaron is a staff writer at the Washington Free Weekend.
Hi erin so nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Thank you for having me, Carol Aarin.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I think of you as super young, am I right?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'm twenty nine and when I hit twenty nine, I
felt the crushing weight of being just one year away
from thirty suddenly hit me. So I don't feel as
young as I used to, but I suppose objectively we're
still relatively young.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I started reading you several years ago now, so you
were like in your earlier mid twenties. So I guess
my take is pretty correct. And I got to tell you,
the thirties were a phenomenal decade. I highly recommend going
into it without any fears.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Good. Good to know.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So, how did you get into this world? How did
you become a writer?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
So, I wrote opinion pieces for my high school newspaper
and enjoyed stirring the pot a little bit. Even as
a high schooler. I liked it so much that I
decided to do the same thing when I got to
Yale University. I joined the school newspaper as an opinion columnist,
(06:52):
and then served as the opinion editor of a school
paper for a year, and by the end of college
I basically just yeah, I like writing. I like writing
for a public audience. That's what I want to do
in some capacity. Graduated, went to a small now defunct
magazine called The American Interest as an editor. To the
(07:14):
extent I did writing there, it was mostly about kind
of the what were then very ourcurant debates about liberalism
and postliberalism, things that I think are still in the
ether but have lost some of their novelty. This was
all kind of debates that have been stirred up on
the right by by Trump's twenty sixteen election, and now
(07:36):
you know, the shock of that is born off and debate.
The debate isn't a bit of a different place, but
that's kind of what I was interested in. And then yeah,
in twenty twenty, you know, I heard the Free Beacon
was hiring and decided it's probably time for a change.
I'll try this and went over as an editor. But
(07:57):
within a few months me and my boss decided I'd
be more of an asset as a reporter. So I,
having never done any reporting before, tried doing reporting. And
I mean, I wouldn't actually say I'm particularly gifted at it,
but no, I see.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
You as a natural reporter. I'm surprised that that was
your first reporting job.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
No, I don't think I'm actually like, I don't think
I have any kind of special talent, like I'm not,
but but I worked hard, and I guess i'd sort
of just a lucky kind of combination of connections and
early hits and curiosity about topics that we were very hot,
(08:41):
and so it kind of just turned into but kind
of by chance, I just ended up becoming, I mean,
relatively successful, I guess as a center right reporter. What
do you consider your beat, wokeness and institutional capture very broadly,
I mean, I wouldn't say that that's the only thing
I've ever done reporting on, but that's what most of
(09:03):
it ultimately comes down to. I've done a lot on
universities and higher education, but I've also done things on
medicine and law. My interests are definitely broader than just
higher ed, but probably the most famous, slash impactful stories
I've done have ultimately had something to do with education.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
What's been your biggest story so far or among.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
The in terms of raw impact.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
I guess Claudine Gay exposing a lot of cases of
plagiarism and former Harvard President Claudine Gay's work, because that
was kind of the strong break of the camels and
led to a resignation from Harvard. So I guess I
probably have to say that one, you know, in terms
of stories I'm actually most maybe proud of, because they
required the most work and were most interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I don't know. I did one on.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
UCLA Medical School appears to have implemented a kind of
covert unofficial system of racial preferences and violation.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That was a really good uh.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, California and federal law that I think was pretty important.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I did some stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
This might be the one that I actually think is
objectively the most important. I did some stuff on the uh,
the racial rationing of COVID drugs if you call, and actually,
I think you might have been the one who got
me on this beat, because you had to.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think it was you.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Carol tweeted something about New York that's this race based
policy for allocating monoclonic antibodies in late twenty twenty one,
and I remember I saw that tweet and thought, huh,
I wonder if other states were doing it, And just
in like two hours of googling, was able to find
two other, I think even more brazen examples.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And then I read the fine print.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It was like, oh, they're citing the Food and Drug
Administration Emergency Use Authorization guidance to justify this completely insane
trioch justs okay, and basically just wrote that up. And
then you know, within like two weeks, Tucker Carlson had
tooked about it on his then Fox show, and the
programs have been canceled in Utah and Minnesota. Those were
(11:05):
states that were doing this. So that I think was
pretty impactful to just show that, like we actually could
get to the point where life saving medical care was
being rationed based on race.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
But so what's interesting about that is I think that
that shows what a natural reporter, you are, because I
heard that story and I was like, wow, New York
is crazy, and that's you know, that's where I left it.
You were like, wait, is this happening elsewhere? Like how
do I get to the bottom of this. I'm not
a reporter. I've never been a reporter. So I could
see the difference in our approach to it. Like, to me,
it was a I tweeted it and I was done,
(11:39):
and you went much deeper.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'm just saying maybe you are a natural reporter and
you're you just don't know it. So was there ever
a plan B? Was there ever, like if you don't
become a writer, you're going to be a.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I don't know. I mean I thought that being.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Like working at a think tank or doing some kind
of policy where it could be interesting, you know, which
would still involve writing, but in a bit of a
different context. You know. I think there was a period
where I thought, oh, like I like philosophy, I like
going to school, I could be an academic. But then
the problem is that at the time I was actually
(12:22):
an undergraduate at Yale, that those were the years when
Yale was kind of rocked by what you might call
a kind of embryonic version of what happened in twenty twenty. Right,
there was this rather silly scandal over cultural appropriation and
Halloween costumes that's somehow spiraled into months of protests and
(12:45):
recriminations and mo behings and name changes and all sorts
of other things that really prefigured what I think the
country saw following George Floyd in twenty twenty. It happened
at year kind of first in twenty fifteen, being on
campus during that time and being maybe a kind of
(13:08):
semi public figure on campus because I was the head
of the opinion page at the Yale Daily News, so
I was fielding all the op eds related to this controversy.
I am writing some of my own stuff. I this
experience certainly pushed me somewhat to the right. I come
(13:30):
into college a pretty moderate democrat. It was like, a
Holy crap, these people are insane and they're going to
rule us in five years. I don't like them to
fifteen years. These are the next those of the EPA
and the Justice Department.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Holy crap.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
And you know, but also you know, these are this
is the future of academia. These are the people who
are going to be making hiring decisions. And these are
the sorts of people students I would have to teach,
and potentially the sorts of colleagues I would have to
deal with. If I wanted to just you know, write
(14:07):
about abstract problems and metaphysics or moral philosophy. Right, it
was like, you know, forget it, Like that's that. If
I could just write my stuff in peace and have
fun philosophy debates with students every day, that'd be great.
But if I actually were to have try to have
fun philosophy debates with students, I'd get canceled for a
politically incorrect thought experiment within two weeks.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So that's right.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I can't do that, right.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
My my teenage daughter likes to quote this comedian who
had a joke like, oh, you're getting a philosophy degree?
Is that to go work at the new philosophy factory
that opened in town? You know, so you had you
had you had a vision for how it would go,
and maybe outside the philosophy factory, but still it's interesting
that you saw that coming and then you ended up
(14:51):
being somebody that writes about it. And you know, I
think about those early days that before times of when
insanity was really just on campuses and we didn't think
it was going to jump off campus, but then it did.
And I think that that's, you know, a tough spot
(15:12):
that we ended up in. Would you like if you
had to do it over again, like, would you send
your kids to Yale? Would you go to Yale again?
It was it?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, I experience anyway.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
No, I would definitely go to Yale again because it
helped shape me into who I am. And the being
kind of constantly embattled for four years was I think
ultimately a good experience.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Money even though you started as a moderate Democrat, you
feel like you were in battled for four years. Like,
that's that's tough. Imagine being a conservative from the start,
you know.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, And I honestly still I don't really like labels.
I don't mean functionally on the center right and spot.
So if people call me a conservative, that's fine, But
I don't really have strong views on some people who
become kind of partisans of these debates about what the
true essence of conservatism is because they feel very invested
in being a conservative. I don't really feel that way.
(16:10):
I tend to look at things more on a case
by case basis and just say I have certain commitments
and principles that, as a contingent sociological matter put me
on the center right in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
But that could change.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
But yes, that could easily change, right, I think, if
you know, I could easily have been like a Bill
Clinton Democrat.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
But that's just interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I do feel kind of committed to my conservative You're right,
but I like, I don't feel committed to the Republican Party.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
For example.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
I feel yeah to my conservative principles, and I realized
that that could be anything, you know, that that can
move me anywhere in the future.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
I mean, I think I have certain philosophical commitments that
probably are more traditionally conservative. I probably have others that
are more traditionally liberal or just or or just would
better be characterized as some kind of other tradition that's
totally orthogonal to liberal first conservative. But I would definitely
(17:10):
say ditto on not being a committed member of the
Republican Party. You know, there's plenty of things they do
that I think are crazy and stupid. So I'm not
you know, I'm not someone who's gonna make it my
professional job to defend everything that.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Bear does.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah. Absolutely, We're going to take a quick break and
be right back on the Carol Markcoid Show. What do
you worry about?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Well, you ask about you're asking me about my politics,
and I just said, I'm not a committed Republican. One
of the reasons I'm not maybe a committed partisan Republican
is that I think there is the potential for the
(18:02):
current crapdown on campuses in the name of protecting Jewish
students to really backfire and end up just kind of
reinforcing the worst parts of the civil rights apparatus that
helped lead to campus censorship and CI in the first place.
(18:25):
So I part ways with some of my conservative friends
and colleagues in that I obviously think that the you know,
Prohamas kids are crazy and most of what's happened at
Columbia is disgraceful, and I'm all for cutting the federal
funding of a lot of these institutions that just repeatedly
show that they were unwilling to maintain order on campus.
(18:46):
But the more important thing is that they've just completely
strayed from the purposes for which they were given tax
exempts to us in the first place. Right, and clearly
no longer respect academic freedom or anti discrimination law or
any number of other important values intellectual diversity, et cetera.
(19:07):
And that, to me is the main reason why they
can't be trusted to reform themselves. In some kind of
external government interventioned is necessary. So, you know, I'm kind
of supportive of the broader adversarial posture that the Republican
Party has taken towards the universities. But what I'm not
supportive of is a that they've justified that posture almost
(19:30):
not entirely, but almost exclusively in terms of protecting Jewish students.
And b I'm not supportive of this idea that Jewish
students are at imminent risk of physical harm and say
therefore therefore students who organize the encampment should not merely
(19:54):
be expelled, but actually if their green card revoked without
due process and deported.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
You know, I think maybe there is a case for
doing it.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
But but I but I'm I'm a bit concerned that
it's being done in a very haphazard way, that that
that could set some bad precedents. And moreover, right, I
don't love this phenomenon of say Jewish students creating lists
of people, or Jewish activist groups creating lists of activists
(20:26):
who they would.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Like to be deported. I just think that is sent
that is.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Creating a kind of culture, a snitch like culture, that
is not good for free speech, whatever the merits, you know,
in a particular case. And moreover, I don't think it's
ultimately good for Jewish students themselves to live in this
state of constant fear and to see themselves as obligated to,
(20:57):
you know, kind of go to war with woke activists
who they don't like over the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I
just think that's fundamentally not why you go to college, sure,
you know, to be an activist. And I and I
really strongly reject the notion that people are made unsafe
(21:17):
by deeply offensive speech.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Well, so it's interesting because I disagree with you on
a few things there, but I like that you have,
you know, a perspective of this, even though you're, like,
you know, pretty deeply into covering them and not in
a positive light obviously, But like, I think that there
are boundaries of free speech that these activists are way overstepping.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Oh, I agree with that, to be clear, well.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And there is violence violence against Jews in New York
is New York is number one for violence against Jews.
Brooklyn specifically is top of the list. But you know,
I almost feel like the thing here is that these
leftist activists have made us play by these ridiculous rules,
(22:08):
and now they're being caught up in their own rules,
and I kind of want to see where it goes.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Also,
one one more thing about the Green cards is when
you're here on a Green card, you have to live
up to certain rules of the Green card. And they,
as far as I understand, they're literally saying you, you
(22:30):
you spurred violence. For example, it wasn't just about your speech,
it was you You did not allow Jewish kids to
go to class, you did not allow them to go
to the library. You had just altercations on campus that
went beyond speech. And they're saying that that violates the
rules of the Green card. But again, I get what
(22:52):
you're saying. I don't think that Jews should live in
a perpetual, fearful state. Of course, it's a lot harder
for them to have to live in that state when
they're incapable of protecting themselves. They don't have Second Amendment
rights in New York City largely, and the school won't
do anything to step in and help them.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Sure, I mean I should clarify, you know, it may
well turn out that the sky did violate the terms
of his screen card, and in that case, sure, if
you should be deported. My concern is that I don't
know if it this is being done in a procedurally
valid way. I also will freely admit that I don't
know the law on this very well. This is just
(23:31):
based on things I've read. And then the other thing
I would say, though, is like, yeah, so I agree
there's a distinction between speech and violence, and you should
obviously have been expelled for taking over Hamilton Hall, right Like,
all of that is totally that's not free speech.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
You know. My other concern about how.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
They're going about it is you want to be careful
not to make martyrs out of people when you don't
have to.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Your backlash point is a very good one.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And I worry that this particular guy might not be
the best target for various reasons. You know, I would
also say too that that although there obviously is violent
hate crime against Jews in New York City. That's not
(24:18):
coming mainly from Columbia students. That's coming from, in many cases,
just kind of deranged psychopaths that the city's sort of
jailbreak liberalist regime has allowed to run free. Really, I mean,
there's an easy solution there, which is just if you
(24:38):
have lots of criminal convictions and prior arrest, you just
shouldn't be allowed on.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
It's like, it's like a really good idea that one.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Right, Like, like deporting all the foreign kids at Columbia
who protested or broke the rules will not materially make
most the average Jew on the streets of New York saper.
What would make them safer is if you just put
a lot more cops out there and say, yeah, yeah,
if you're a crazy psychopath, you don't get to walk
around on the street.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Forcing the rules overall, I think would be a step
in the right direction. Yeah, what advice would you give
your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Two pieces of advice.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
One would be I was like a really awkward kid
in high school who frankly didn't even have very much
interest in dating as a high schooler. I'd probably go
back in time and say, you know, just like go
on a few dates to just like get the hang
of it, because it's college is not a good time
for that to be your first experience dating, nor for
(25:42):
that matter, really is after college. It's it's better if
you have a little experience with this in high school.
So that's probably what I would say.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
My third writer is on his like sixth girlfriends.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
So well, he's he's getting started early. That's that's good
to hear.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
And then I think the other piece of advice is
I was always a really serious student who wanted to
get straight a's and worried about every little you know,
any point off of an assignment risk, No, no, you know,
nothing less than one hundred percent. It's an okay attitude
to have in high school. If you're trying to get
(26:21):
into a good college, I would say, once you get
to college, gratitude, Yeah, that attitude is important to maintain
if you think you might want a job that requires
you to get into a really good law school or
get really good grades. It's frankly not very important to
(26:42):
maintain if you're going to go into the field that
I ended up going into. It doesn't mean it doesn't help,
Like I think if you take classes seriously and learn, you.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Know you will.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Nobody's ever asked us for our transcript.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
You'll be in a better place if you were a
somewhat serious student. But if you like take tough classes
that are curved in STEM and you get like a
C or B, I mean, no one in journalism will
care about that. And if you take you know, even
if you kind of goof off in one semester and
you don't do as well on your papers and like, yeah,
(27:15):
it's just not going to matter as long as you
have good clippings and show that you're a decent writer
who can work relatively hard, and you know, to be honest, right,
you don't need to be a serious philosopher to be
a journalist, like right, I mean it can it can
maybe help indirectly, but it's not it's really not a
requirement of the job.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
So I there are.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Very few requirements of this job.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yes, yes, yes, And so I would probably tell my
sixteen to maybe twenty two year old self, you know,
just you don't need to you don't need to be
as hung up about GPA. It's really not going to
matter for you in the light.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Probably true for a lot of kids. Well, I've loved
this conversation. This has been really interesting. End us here
with your best tip for my listeners on how they
can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
I mean I kind of hesitate to offer any advice
on this because I'm like a single twenty nine year
old guy.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I don't really time to get married.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Let's go, Aaron, Well.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, I don't know if I have any great advice.
I guess I would say build in space to your
schedule to read. I think it can be very easy
to let the demands of work and the day to
day overtake you, and then you get home and you
just want to veg in front of the TV. I mean,
I do this, but it's it's important that you kind
(28:41):
of force yourself to carve out space to read and
have some kind of I think quasi kind of intellectual pursuit,
or at least I have found that I feel like
my life is more meaningful and better when I do,
even though it's hard, and I've been trying to do
it more regularly.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Reading is as a popular one. You might be surprised,
but it is a popular answer to that question.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Thank you so much for.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Coming on Aaron He is Aaron Sabariam. Check him out
at Washington Free Weekend. Thanks again, thank you, thanks so
much for joining us on the Carol Marko Witz Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com